If God knew before creation that billions would go to hell, do humans actually have free will — or is 'freedom' just the story we tell to let God off the hook?

• R

  Reese3w ago

  The moment you accept that God knew before creation who was going to hell and made them anyway, free will becomes a theatrical performance staged for an audience of one who already knows the ending. Calling that 'freedom' is like calling a train on a fixed track 'free' because nobody's holding a gun to the conductor's head.

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• T

  Theo2w ago

  Can we be honest about something? Most Christians don't actually believe in free will in any robust philosophical sense. They believe in free will when it comes to salvation (so God isn't to blame for hell) and they believe in predestination when it comes to their blessings (so God gets credit for the good stuff). We apply whichever framework is convenient and call it nuanced theology.

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• I

  Iris2w ago

  If you disagree that free will is compatible with divine foreknowledge, I want you to explain something: how is God JUST if He punishes people for choices they were always going to make, based on a nature they were created with, in a story He wrote before they existed? Because if you can't answer that with something more substantive than 'Romans 9' or 'who are you to question God,' then I'd argue you don't have a theodicy — you have a demand for silence.

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• CR

  Casey R.2w ago

  My father died without ever accepting Christ. He was a good man who grew up in a home with abusive 'Christians' who drove him away from the faith before he had a fair chance to evaluate it honestly. If Calvinism is correct, God decided before creation that my father was not elect. Before he drew a single breath. I cannot worship that God. I'm sorry. I just can't.

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• O

  Omar2w ago

  Foreknowledge ≠ causation. I knew my son was going to spill his juice this morning before he did it. Did I cause it? Did I take away his ability NOT to spill it? No. Same logic applies to God. Omniscience doesn't collapse freedom, it just means someone with a higher vantage point can see what you're freely doing.

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• N

  Nina2w ago

  I appreciate the humility angle but if 'we can't understand it' is the answer, please stop writing systematic theologies, selling conference tickets about the sovereignty of God, and disfellowshipping people for not agreeing with your position on predestination. Pick one — either we can know enough to argue about it or we can't.

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• Q

  Quinn2w ago

  I spent three years in a Calvinist church and left partly because of this issue. When you push hard Calvinist elders on it they'll eventually say something like 'God's justice is not YOUR justice' and 'He is the potter, we are the clay.' Okay fine. But that answer only works if you're already inside the system. From outside it looks identical to: God creates people for hell and then punishes them for going there. I couldn't teach that to my kids.

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• AS

  Avery S.2w ago

  Telling a grieving person 'your feelings don't determine doctrine' in a tone-deaf paragraph and then calling it 'holiness we don't understand' is exactly the kind of thing that sends people out of the church and doesn't bring them back. Theologically you might have a point worth discussing. The way you delivered it was not okay.

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• D

  Drew2w ago

  The honest answer that most pastors won't say from the pulpit: this tension is baked into Christian theology and has never been resolved. Arminians, Calvinists, Molinists, Open Theists — brilliant people for 2,000 years have tried and every solution either limits God's foreknowledge, limits human freedom, or makes God look unjust. At some point the honest thing is to sit with the unresolved tension rather than pretend your camp figured out what Augustine and Aquinas couldn't.

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• KM

  Kofi M.2w ago

  The juice analogy drives me absolutely crazy because you did NOT know with perfect certainty before he was born that he would spill that exact juice at that exact moment in 2024. That's the entire difference. Your 'foreknowledge' is a guess based on patterns. God's foreknowledge, if orthodox theology is right, is infallible and eternal. Those are not the same category of thing.

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• CR

  Casey R.2w ago

  What changes? Literally the entire character of the God you're worshipping. Whether He is just or unjust. Whether hell is a tragedy or a stage prop He wrote into the script. Whether love is real or performance. Whether your repentance is real or God unilaterally pulling a lever. Those aren't small stakes.

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• MM

  Maya M.2w ago

  Every time I see Romans 9 quoted in these discussions, someone is using it to end the conversation rather than continue it. Paul is quoting an objection and answering it — 'who are you, O man, to answer back to God?' That's not a philosophical argument for predestination, it's Paul silencing a hypothetical objector with a rhetorical question. Treating a rhetorical question as a systematic theology statement is a reading error.

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• M

  Morgan2w ago

  grew up being told I was free to choose God and now im reading Ephesians 1 and Romans 9 as an adult and like... paul doesnt seem to think i chose anything lol. 'chosen before the foundation of the world.' either paul is wrong or my sunday school teacher was wrong. one of them has to be.

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• S

  Sam2w ago

  Compatibilism: the philosophy invented specifically to let theologians have it both ways and feel smart about it. 'You were determined to choose X but the choice was still meaningfully yours.' That's not a solution, that's a redefinition of freedom that empties the word of its content.

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• OL

  Omar L.2w ago

  The 'just trust the invitation' answer is devotionally sweet and philosophically evasive. The Bible ALSO says God hardens hearts. It says Pharaoh was raised up for a specific purpose. It says Judas's betrayal was preordained AND he's held responsible. The text holds both simultaneously without resolving the tension, and maybe that's honest — but it means the 'just look at the invitation and ignore the rest' approach is selective reading.

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• A_

  Alex _x2w ago

  Hard determinist here, former atheist now Reformed Christian. Oddly, believing in absolute predestination made me MORE grateful, not less. I didn't choose God — God chose me. That's not oppressive, that's grace. The alternative — that I was smart or moral enough to make the right choice while others weren't — sounds more arrogant to me than anything in Calvinism.

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• TL

  Theo L.2w ago

  This is exactly why Open Theism makes more sense to me than classical theism. If God genuinely doesn't know the future in exhaustive detail — if He limits His foreknowledge as an act of love to make room for genuine creaturely freedom — then the problem dissolves. I know that's a minority position but I honestly can't find a more coherent answer.

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• R

  Ravi2w ago

  i think people get too philosophical about this and lose the forest for the trees. the Bible says 'choose this day whom you will serve.' it says 'believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.' God addresses humans as if the choice is real and available. i'm going to take God at His word and not outsmart myself into paralysis. whatever the metaphysics are, the invitation is genuine.

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• K

  Kofi2w ago

  Molinism is clever and I've spent time with it. My problem is: if God chose THIS world out of all possible worlds, He still chose a world where specific identified individuals go to hell when He could have chosen differently. Middle knowledge doesn't escape the original problem, it just adds an extra step before you arrive at the same uncomfortable place.

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• RS

  Riley S.2w ago

  Genuine question: does it even matter which view is true if we live identically either way? Libertarian free will person prays, chooses, evangelizes. Hard determinist person still prays, chooses, evangelizes. Both act like their choices matter. So functionally... who cares? I mean this sincerely, not sarcastically. What changes in your actual life based on the answer?

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• P

  Priya2w ago

  Open Theism is heresy, full stop. A God who doesn't know the future is not the God of the Bible. Isaiah 46:10, Psalm 139, the entire prophetic tradition — God declares the end from the beginning. You don't get to shrink God's knowledge to solve a philosophical puzzle you're uncomfortable with.

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• J

  Jamie2w ago

  That last comment is the most accurate thing I have read in a Bible forum in years and I hate how true it is.

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• J

  Jamie2w ago

  Nobody ever considers that maybe we're just not equipped to understand this. The created creature reasoning about the uncreated Creator's relationship to time, foreknowledge, and freedom is like a 2D figure trying to understand a 3D world. We're pointing at shadows on a wall and arguing about what they mean. Humility might be the only honest position here.

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• J

  Jordan2w ago

  compatibilism is the answer and i wish more people in these discussions actually understood what it means before dismissing it. you can be causally determined AND morally responsible. your choices are REAL even if they flow from your nature. the question isnt whether God knew, its whether the choice was YOURS in the relevant sense. read Jonathan Edwards before you write this off.

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• D

  Drew2w ago

  Romans 9:21 — 'Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?' If you're uncomfortable with God's sovereignty over human destiny, your argument is with Paul, not with Calvinists.

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• N

  Noah2w ago

  Came here expecting the usual Calvinist vs Arminian shouting match. Did not expect it to be this actually interesting. Saving this thread.

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• JT

  Jamie T.2w ago

  Molinism. Middle knowledge. God knows every counterfactual — every choice every possible person would make in every possible world — and creates the world where the maximum number of people freely come to Him. Free will is preserved because the choices are GENUINELY free. Foreknowledge is preserved because God knows all true propositions including counterfactuals. This isn't new — Molina wrote this in 1588. Why are we acting like this question has no answers?

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• RR

  Reese R.2w ago

  To the person who mentioned their father — I'm genuinely sorry for your loss and I don't want to be cold about this. But our emotional response to a doctrine doesn't determine whether it's true. The Israelites didn't want to wander 40 years in the desert either. God's ways aren't always comfortable. That's not cruelty — that's holiness we don't fully understand yet.

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