I grew up in the occult. My adoptive Mom was the practitioner and a raging blackout alcoholic. It was not the dark satanic sacrificial worship type. Unlike people I have known, I never killed anything, nor was I sexually abused. It was more along the lines of Wiccan witchcraft, occultism, voodoo, and black magick. My childhood was filled with demonic encounters in the spirit realm, so much so that they were everyday experiences until my mother died of cancer just after my eleventh birthday.
My Dad remarried a year later to someone who was a devout Episcopalian, and we began attending her church. The following year, I went to a YMCA camp on Catalina Island off the west coast and had an experience with God that opened my heart to Him. One year later, after another week's stay at the YMCA camp, I watched TV late at night while babysitting a neighbor's kids. There were only a few channels to choose from, and I clicked on the ending of a Billy Graham Crusade when he turned to the camera and pointed to the TV audience, asking if they wanted to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. I can't explain exactly how or what happened next, but I said a genuine 'yes' in my mind and heart, and at that very moment, I had a radical supernatural experience with Jesus. The heavy darkness of sin within me and the demonic presence around me were replaced with the brilliant light of God. I felt clean from the inside out and light as a feather for the first time.
Well, needless to say, that changed EVERYTHING moving forward. The demonic encounters began to lessen dramatically, and I began to seek after knowing all about Jesus both experientially and intellectually. That passionate, burning desire has never ceased to this day, 55+ years later. The more I seek Jesus, the more I love Him. Absolutely nothing in this world satisfies like Jesus.
My experiences throughout life and how I got to the place of receiving Jesus as my Lord and Savior raised questions about libertarian free will versus the divine sovereignty of God's will.
- Were these experiences' Divine Appointments' I was destined to make or just accidental?
- Did I freely make the choices that led me to Jesus, or did He predetermine them according to His providential will and lead me to make them?
- God has foreknowledge, so does that mean He lets human beings choose their courses of action?
- Does God know the future, observe how it will unfold, and then proclaim His eternal plan after reviewing actual history? Isn't that fatalism, and how could it be compatible with human freedom?
- Could it be that God directly determined my visit to Camp and my night of babysitting when I became Born-Again? Was that libertarian free will, or did God make me choose it by 'Divine Appointment'?
- Is humanity free but also a slave?
- Are human beings entirely unable to choose equally between good and evil?
- Does a Born-Again Christian have the external option to choose or reject Jesus but does not because they really do not have free will?
- Does God take steps to guarantee that someone will freely select one course of action over another and is incapable of any other method of action?
- How do we reconcile human free will with divine sovereignty?
It is an empirical fact that God desires all people to come to repentance and be saved.
"This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." (1 Timothy 2:3-4 ESV)
"The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." (2 Peter 3:9 ESV)
- Do these verses mean God makes all people desire to seek Him?
- Does a person have the desire for their 'Divine Appointment' at a given time and day, and the person, using their free will, then chooses to make it at a specific time? Doesn't that insinuate God alone determines a person's actions and free will has nothing to do with it?
- Does God coerce someone with His divine sovereignty to want to do something, and if so, doesn't that mean there is actually no human freedom of willful choice?
- If God desires that "all should come to repentance" and is equal to His foreknowledge and power, why are some people lost and destined for Hell?
I had pondered these questions for decades, and my years of formal education, which included studying Calvinism, Arminianism, Determinism, Compatibilism, etc., etc., etc., revealed they were inadequate in providing persuasive answers to reconcile the seemingly contradictory doctrines of God's grace and free will. God is exponentially beyond human logic and understanding.
FREE WILL
Throughout history, the church has debated human free will and divine sovereignty. The subject of human Free Will is not explicitly addressed in the Bible. Webster's Dictionary defines 'free will' as the "freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention" (2023 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated).
Free will is the power or capacity of human beings to be the ultimate originators and sustainers of their choices, decisions, and efforts that cause or bring about their purposes, which are not dependent on any prior event or state of the universe and must be reconciled with God's grace, omniscience, and kind goodness.
Five specific Greek words are used in the New Testament regarding human will, and four words are used regarding human choice.
WILL
The word 'thelema' is used as a noun regarding both God's will and human will (Matthew 18:14; Mark 3:35; John 1:13; Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 7:37; Ephesians 2:3)
The words' hekon,' 'prothumos,' and 'hekousios' are adjectives used regarding human will and are translated as "of free will, willingly, of its own free will, of my own free will" (Matthew 26:41; Mark 14:38; Romans 8:20; 1 Corinthians 9:17; Philemon 14).
The word 'eudokeo' is a verb and is rendered as "we are/we were willing/of one's own accord" regarding human will (2 Corinthians 5:8, 8:3,17; 1 Thessalonians 2:8)
CHOICE
The words "eklego," "epilego," "haireo/nairetizo" are verbs rendered as "to pick out, select, to choose/take for oneself, make a choice" (Mark 13:20; Luke 6:13; 9:35; 10:42; 14:7; 6:70; 13:18; 15:16,19; 1:2,24; 6:5; 13:17; 15:7,22,25; Acts 15:40; 1 Corinthians 1:27-28; Ephesians 1:4; Philippians 1:22; James 2:5; Hebrews 11:25; 2 Thessalonians 2:13).
Throughout history, the church has debated human free will and divine sovereignty.
DETERMINISM
Sir Isaac Newton presented the philosophical concept that all events in the universe are predetermined or predestined, and specific properties of the universe imply that reality is not wholly determined but rather a matter of probability. This concept is anchored in the idea that differential equations give the motions of bodies and can be solved. The future can be known and predicted and inevitable and inescapable. As long as fixed, immutable equations govern motion, so is our life on earth predestined, and we live like gears in a mechanical clock, so we do what these equations of motion force us to do. We have no free will; the past, present, and future are apparitions. The laws of nature are also deterministic rather than probabilistic and all-encompassing rather than limited in scope.
In Theology, Determinism is the theory that God has infallible knowledge of all true propositions (right or wrong), including a person's future actions, and He alone determines all that we will do, either by knowing our actions in advance, via His omniscience, or by decreeing our actions in advance. Every event has a cause, which means that the libertarian free will choice of a person makes no difference to anything that happens because those choices have already been predetermined in the past before time began, no matter what is chosen or decided, and are outside their control which makes them never free or morally responsible. If God has predetermined every action we take, there is no free will. Yet, we understand the past, know that we live in the present and often agree that much of the future is unpredictable.
The Bible tells us that we can do nothing to change the past because it is immutable and unchangeable, just as Newtonian Physics tells us the past was predestined and inescapable. Yet, Quantum Physics agrees with the Bible, which reveals that the world is not deterministic and individual events of our future are unknowable, unpredictable, and uncertain because the physical world cannot be fully described using deterministic equations and every event in the future is not predetermined by God.
COMPATIBILISM
Compatibilism (aka soft determinism) is a theological theory that deals with the topics of God's sovereignty, free will, and predestination and claims that determinism and free will are compatible. It attempts to reconcile the suggestion that every event is causally determined, ordained, and decreed by God with human free will, even though it seems irreconcilable with the proposition of determinism.
INCOMPATIBILISM
Incompatibilism is the theory that no deterministic world is a free-will world and that it is possible for people to have free will that depends on a contingent fact about the past and the laws that govern the universe in an indeterministic way. People can choose between alternative courses of action only if their choosing and doing otherwise is compatible and possible in conjunction with the actual past and those laws.
The consequences of a choice are based upon probabilistic causes the person has control over, such as beliefs, desires, reasoning, etc., that can cause only current or future events. A free and responsible action is caused and controlled by the person, which makes it incompatible with deterministic event-causation because it takes away the libertarian free will to make choices. Therefore, people can never do anything other than what they choose to do.
Compatibilism and Incompatibilism are propositions contrary to each other, and only one can be true. If they are both false, then impossibilism, the theory that free will is conceptually or metaphysically impossible for human beings, is true.
THE QUANTUM QUANDARY
Years ago, after seeing so much New Age nonsense creeping into the Church, I began an in-depth study of Quantum Physics that was more than just a simple "Google" search. It took months to wrap my head around it. I ended up writing a book about my discoveries entitled "The Quantum Love Of God." During the study, I saw how the scientific theories of Quantum Physics could help to bring clarity and understanding of the Creator's sovereign knowledge of the future and His divine providence and predestination without hindering the free will of human beings.
The discoveries of Quantum Physics are infinitely outside of the traditional teaching of apostolic and historic Christianity. However, they do not undercut the four foundational truths of the Reformation that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and according to the Scriptures alone. My study has been more of an exercise in philosophical theology. This message is intended to introduce different perspectives for reflection and re-evaluation of certain teachings drawn from Scripture by finite human beings that have created significant historical divides within the church.
The study of Quantum Physics has opened the door to a transcendent metaphysical reality beyond what human senses can perceive. It suggests that there are grounds for God to know everything apart from His observation. It shows that God knows what choice a person will make independently from actualizing that choice without it being contrary to fact. He knows the outcome of any possible event and every free choice that could be made whether or not a specific event exists under specified conditions. There are no limitations to God's divine omniscience.
God accomplishes His will perfectly in the lives of human beings through the use of His omniscience. Because God knows all things, He knew before He spoke creation into existence the outcome of every possible creation scenario and also created human beings perfectly free with moral responsibility and individual liberty of thought and action to make whatever choices they desire and then foreordained the world according to His perfect sovereignty and foreknowledge. God also knows the outcome of every seemingly random event to bring about His ultimate will.
The study helped my knowledge of God and how He can elect Born-Again Christians to salvation, as well as understanding that human beings can still have a choice to freely accept or reject His love without Him having already determined that a person cannot choose otherwise or resist His grace (See Deuteronomy 30:19; Luke 13:34; Acts 4:28; Ephesians 1:11). God knows, on multi-dimensional levels, everything that does or will happen and what a human being would freely choose if placed in any circumstance.
It is indisputable that God does not travel through time at the same rate as human beings, yet He remains engaged with them throughout history. The timeless God enters into time with His creations and continually works together with them to achieve His specific and ultimate plan. There is no 'before' with God. He exists in the eternal 'present' at the exact moment then as now and sees the past, present, and future from the same vantage point.
One of God's attributes is omnipresence, so He simultaneously is at every point in time as we understand it. He knows what everyone on the planet will choose, but He still allows them to choose because He loves everyone individually.
Quantum Physics helps in understanding that human beings possess libertarian free will to choose or do anything because they are more than mere physical beings. It is a phenomenon of the present rather than the past. God does not want anyone to die an eternal death because of what they have done.
"This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." (1 Timothy 2:4 ESV)
The Triune God wants everyone to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, repent of their rebellion and sin, and submit their life to Him as a free act of love. He gave them the freedom to make that choice (See also Ezekiel 18:23; John 3:16; 2 Peter 3:9).
The Quantum world reveals that God has complete free knowledge of all logical truth in every situation, whether before the beginning, at the end, or in between, under all possible interpretations of any component.
When a person chooses to accept the gift of salvation, God instantly chooses them out of the world of lost, guilty sinners. This choice was already made in eternity past for those who would call upon Him (See Ephesians 1:4). The purpose of this choice is their perfect standing before Him because of what Jesus did on their behalf.
"If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." (John 15:19 ESV)
As a result of the price Jesus paid for the release from the bondage of sin, the Born-Again Christian no longer belongs to the world; they now belong to Jesus! When a person becomes a child of God, they are predestined to be conformed or molded into the likeness of Jesus.
"For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers." (Romans 8:29 ESV)
The Born-Again Christian should naturally grow and mature as a child of God, so it is only natural that they reflect God's character and qualities - including love!
UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
Within the study of Quantum Physics, there is the "Uncertainty Principle" that was formulated by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in 1927. He hypothesized that humans can't accurately know the position and speed of wave-like particles such as photons or electrons. This same problem is also found in mathematics.
Quantum Physics, as measured by the uncertainty principle, reveals that the physical universe has an indeterministic free will reality that is consistent with human beings having a spiritual/moral free will that gives them the ability to determine for themselves what can happen in their lives by the choices they make in the present that can affect their future and eternal destiny. The non-predetermined physical reality is consistent with the spiritual and moral reality described in the Bible. It cannot be fully explained using deterministic equations.
God has a plan that includes uncertainty because it is affected by human free will. He created the universe from nothing. Adam and Eve were given free will to make choices. Human free will is a phenomenon of the present because their free will can't change the past or events in the future.
IN-BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE
"Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you" (Matthew 11:21-24 ESV - also Luke 10:13-14)
These words of Jesus seem to raise the possibility that God has 'in-between' knowledge about events that would happen under any condition or circumstance. If the "mighty works" had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes long ago. However, if the mighty works had been done in Sodom, they would have remained until now. God already had the information about what the inhabitants of those cities would freely do under certain circumstances. God foreknew that Sodom would become a depraved city, yet if they had freely repented, the "mighty works" would have been done there as well.
Jesus told Bethsaida that if He had come to Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes. He knew this even though it did not happen because He knows what would or could take place in any given circumstance. God knew what would happen if David remained in Keilah and if he did not (See 1 Samuel 23:1-14). God told Moses that the Israelites would forsake Him after being delivered from Egypt (See Deuteronomy 31:16-17).
GOD'S POSSESSION
"You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you."... "Therefore the world hates you." (John 15:16,19 ESV)
"Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do." (Colossians 3:12-13 NKJV)
Every Born-Again Christian is God's possession and is considered "holy and blameless before him" (Ephesians 1:4 ESV). He owns them and has the complete right to authority over them. They are His "elect" now and forevermore without blame. Their sins have been forgiven, and the guilt of sin has been pardoned. They are holy in position because the righteousness of Jesus completely covers them.
Their election is "according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be yours in abundance" (1 Peter 1:2 ESV).
The proof that a Born-Again Christian is now His possession is made evident by outward signs and will automatically bring about changes in their moral character and behavior. As one of "God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved," a Christian must "clothe" their self "with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience" (Colossians 3:12 NIV).
In the Quantum world, God can create universes and worlds in multiple dimensions and then survey all possible worlds and actualize into existence a particular one without manipulating or destroying the free will of human beings in various circumstances. God knows in advance every potential free will choice a person will make and then predestines and saves the one He knows will choose Him. He can enter into every life situation and circumstance and work it out for the best (See Romans 8:28).
God knows what human beings would choose independently from the materialization of that choice. He knows the outcome of every possible decision that will or could be made. In other words, He knows what free decisions people will make independently of His controlling decree. He knows from eternity past what a person would have done or would do in any hypothetical circumstance or situation, but He does not necessarily pronounce what will happen.
God knew what would happen if David remained in Keilah and if he did not (1 Samuel 23:1-14). God told Moses that the Israelites would forsake Him after they were delivered from Egypt (See Deuteronomy 31:16-17).
God does not unilaterally or causally determine every outcome of any unforeseen event, as that would be at the expense of human freedom. God is a good God, and He would never actively bring about overt acts of evil, or suffering or pain, or sin even though He has foreknowledge of evil deeds (See also Deuteronomy 28:51-57; Proverbs 4:11; Jeremiah 38:17-18; Ezekiel 3:6-7; Matthew 12:7; 17:27; 23:27-32; 24:43, 26:24; Luke 4:24-44, 16:30-31, 22:67-68; John 15:22-24, 18:36, 21:6; 1 Corinthians 2:8).
DIVINE PROVIDENCE AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
God is free because He is the perfect moral Being who came to earth and became 100% human while remaining 100% God. He is love, all-powerful, all-knowing – including all outcomes, present everywhere, and He retains His divine providence without hindering the libertarian freedom of humanity (See Genesis 50:20). God knows every possible future, and, in His infinite wisdom, has planned for every contingency. He knows what each person would do given any possible circumstance and arranges the world in such a way as to bring about His will using their free choices.
If human beings are not free moral agents to accept or reject Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, then they do not possess freedom regarding any choice they make. The freedom of the human will constantly contribute to the motives of their present decision-making by both the experiences and choices made in the past. However, human beings possess a sinful nature inherited from Adam and Eve that permeates everything and influences their motives and actions (See Romans 7:5-13). The sinful nature has conditioned the human heart to be "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9 KJV)
The freedom given by God is not absolute, which is why a person cannot work at saving themselves or make themselves justified and holy before God. Only by the divine grace of God, given through Jesus Christ, can a person be truly free from the slavery and bondage of sin and its eternal effects (See Romans 6:20).
CONCLUSION
In review, Quantum Physics opens the possibility that God possesses libertarian anthropology that He actualized using His knowledge of multiple dimensions between His knowledge of necessary truths and His creative decrees (See Isaiah 10, 45:7; Matthew 11:21-24). He knows all possible outcomes and retains His divine providence without hindering the libertarian freedom of each human being (See Genesis 50:20).
God is sovereign and can do anything, however, and whenever He chooses, which is fully compatible with libertarian free will. The sovereignty of God includes omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience, which affords Him the knowledge of all truth in every potential situation and allows for His providential control and foreknowledge of multiple possibilities that every free will choice could bring or cause in just one world. Because He is omniscient, God has absolute natural knowledge of all possible worlds. God knows everything that will or does happen. He knows everything natural, accessible, and anything as true and absolute in any possible contingency of free will choice whether or not it has occurred in the present, future, or before the foundations of the world (See Isaiah 46:10-11).
Before He spoke the world into existence, God knew independently what a person would freely choose if placed in any possible circumstance or situation. The sovereignty of God's providence can elect Born-Again Christians and come to God freely by their choice without being contradictory or predetermined. It affirms that God grants salvation while allowing every human being to freely accept, resist, or even reject the gospel message of God's grace because God definitively knows that, if a person were placed into a particular situation, they would not reject it.
God's knowledge is not dependent on the free actions of human beings because nothing is uncertain to Him. All things are under the power of His providence and decrees (See Ezekiel 11:5; Psalm 147:5; Acts 15:18, 17:24-28; Hebrews 4:13; Colossians 1:17; Romans 11:33-34). He is singularly dependent on His eternal decrees, which are not contingent upon the free will acts of human beings, whether or not they are acted upon. Humans cannot save themselves.
God's grace is unequivocally necessary for any action towards salvation. He does not create a world based upon assessing a person's choices that are freely made in a specific situation and circumstance and then creates the world based upon that evaluation.
The Gospel message presents freedom, patterned after Jesus, that He offers to all. He can free anyone so they "will be free indeed" (John 8:36 ESV). This freedom comes from union with Jesus, "for apart from" Him they "can do nothing (John 15:5 ESV). That choice is theirs to make freely, and when they make it, they experience the wondrous law of liberty as the Holy Spirit takes up residence within to lead and empower them to fulfill both the Great Commandment and Great Commission (See Matthew 22:37; Mark 16:15; Luke 4:18; James 1:25, 2:12; Romans 8:2-3).
God alone grants salvation. God has sovereign control over the unfolding of history while human beings remain genuinely free. Because He is Love, He gave humans the free will to accept or reject Him and love or hate Him. He knew independently what a person would freely choose, whether good or bad if placed in any possible circumstance or situation, just as a parent can understand their child's choices in a given situation, whether or not they actually make them. He perfectly accomplishes His will in their lives. He knew that sin would enter into the world, but He is not the author of sin. God does not actively bring about overt acts of sin, suffering, or pain because He is a good God and wants everyone to be saved and spend eternity with Him (See 1 Timothy 2:4).
The sovereignty of God's providence can elect the Born-Again Christian, and they can also come to God freely by their choice without being contradictory or predetermined. It affirms that God grants salvation while allowing every human being to freely accept, resist, or even reject the Gospel message of His grace because He definitively knows if a person were placed into a particular situation, they would not reject it.
God's grace is unequivocally necessary for any act toward salvation. He does not create a world based on assessing a person's freely made choices in a specific situation and circumstance and then creating the world based on that evaluation. God has providential control and foreknowledge of multiple possibilities that every free will choice could bring or cause.
He knows everything that will or does happen. Before God spoke the world into existence, He perfectly accomplished His will in their lives (See Matthew 11:23).
I have concluded that the condition of grace depends upon the free consent of the will. God alone grants salvation. Because God is love, He gave humans the free will to accept or reject Him and love or hate Him. God knows everything within the past, present, and future simultaneously. He knows the possibilities of every circumstance and every different choice a human might make and will step in when the free-will choice is made to work it out for the good (Romans 8:28). God knows logically all possible and necessary things, as well as all possible combinations of every event and choice. It is altogether natural for God to know the logical truths of the Cosmos, such as how many solar systems there are, as well as all potential events that might occur in different circumstances.
So, is free will compatible with God's 'Divine Appointments'? Yes! Because God can draw those He knows will be drawn by the relevant circumstances, they will experience Him working in all things to produce good in their situation or a message He wants them to hear.
