Theological debates about human free will and divine foreknowledge have been going on for centuries with minimal progress¹. For those unfamiliar with the dominant positions in this debate, here is a brief overview of the terms, as well as an oversimplified summary statement about how they view God’s relationship to the future:

 

Calvinism

•⁠  ⁠God controls everything, including every choice people make (though most traditions say he does this in a way that doesn't violate free will).  

•⁠  ⁠Strength: It shows God is fully in charge and nothing happens outside His plan.  

•⁠  ⁠Weakness: It seems to make God responsible for everything—including evil and suffering.

“God causes what will happen in the future.”

 

Molinism

•⁠  ⁠God knew what people would freely choose in any and every situation, and he used that to decide what reality to bring into existence.  

•⁠  ⁠Strength: It tries to protect both God's absolute sovereign control and human freedom.  

•⁠  ⁠Weakness: In the end, everything still happens because God chose that exact setup—so freedom feels limited and God seems responsible.

“God knows what would have happened in every hypothetical future.”

 

Arminianism (Simple Foreknowledge)

•⁠  ⁠God gives people genuine freedom to choose, and their choices determine what God knows.

•⁠  ⁠Strength: It emphasizes real free will and personal responsibility such that God is not responsible for evil.

•⁠  ⁠Weakness: It can seem like God’s knowledge and God's plans depend too much on human choices.

“God simply knows what will happen in the future.”

 

Open Theism

•⁠  ⁠God knows everything that can be known, but he only knows the future in terms of possibilities because the future is not yet determined, so there's nothing definite to know.

•⁠  ⁠Strength: It makes God truly relational and responsive and shows why he is not responsible for evil.

•⁠  ⁠Weakness: It's considered by many to be unorthodox in limiting God's omniscience.

“God knows what might happen in the future.”

 

Of course, people in each tradition would say that the primary strength of their position, and the main weakness of all the others, is based, first and foremost, on what the Bible says about these issues - they just interpret certain passages very differently.  

 

In this article, I will propose what I believe is a novel position that seeks to solve many of the perennial problems of this debate by integrating a perspective informed by physics. While I don’t believe this view has been articulated in quite this way before, overall, it sits comfortably in the Arminian tradition, while providing a more robust, philosophically defensible view of God’s relationship to time consistent with simple foreknowledge. 

 

Various views of time

Questions about the nature of time have gotten as much (if not more) attention in philosophy as questions about God. Rather than attempting to summarize a history of the philosophical perspectives on the nature of time, I’ll simply describe some dominant views most relevant to the questions of sovereignty and free will. 

 

A-Theories of Time: These views hold that the "Now" is a unique, objective property of reality that exists as time flows from the past into the future. Within this category is Presentism, which says that the future doesn’t exist yet, and the past doesn’t exist anymore - only the present moment is real. You could visualize Presentism like this, where the dot represents what is truly real:

Another perspective within A-theory is the Growing Block view of time. In this view, the future does not exist, but the past and present are real, and time grows as each successive moment of “Now” gets added to it.

B-Theories of Time: In contrast to A-theories, proponents of B-theories don’t believe there is anything special about the present moment. They claim that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously; what we experience as “now” is purely subjective. This is often called Eternalism or the Block Universe because the past, present, and future are all real parts of a unified 4-dimensional block called spacetime.

 

While A-theories of time generally feel the most intuitive to the majority of people (we live in the present moment and experience temporal becoming as the future comes into existence and then disappears into the past), B-theories seem to align better with the theory of relativity, (especially the relativity of simultaneity which shows that there is no objective “now” - it all depends on one’s speed and location relative to a given event), as well as some interpretations of quantum mechanics. According to B-theories, the question of “now” is like the question of “here”, it all depends on where you are when you say it. Because of the evidence from physics, the majority of physicists believe in the B-theory of time².

 

 

The main issues we are considering have to do with the nature of time - what it is and what parts are truly real. Also, how does God relate to time?

 

Is God “outside of time”?

This is another debate that is long and complicated, so I’ll try to summarize the ideas in broad strokes. How we address questions of foreknowledge and free will will obviously depend on both what we believe time is and on how God relates to it. Christians have often talked about God being “outside” of time, which would seem to imply a B-theory of time, where God sees the whole simultaneously. This view has been expressed throughout history, from Boethius to C.S. Lewis, to explain God’s knowledge of the future. But the idea that God does not experience some kind of succession of events is very hard to imagine and would seem to rule out his interacting or responding meaningfully in the world. This is why the philosopher William Lane Craig concluded that God must be timeless without the universe, but temporal from the point of creation. 

 

Notice that when we view the diagrams above, we are imagining ourselves as being outside whatever reality is represented by the diagram. When we look at the timeline, we can see the past, present, and future simultaneously, just as Boethius and Lewis said God could see our time. But if A theory is true and only the present moment is real (with the past and present not even existing), even our vantage point from “outside” would only let us see that one point at a time.

 

In an attempt to cut through some of the fog caused by the terminology (e.g distinguishing terms like “timeless”, “atemporal”, “eternal”, “infinite”) and the spatial metaphors (“in time”, “outside of time” “above time”, etc), for now, I’ll just say that I believe God experiences a unique kind of time (he can do one thing, then another, then another), but that his experience and perspective is not like ours, and he is not bound to the physical universe of objects moving through time and space. 

 

So for now, we’ll go back to our diagrams about the time that exists in our universe, and we’ll use a frame of reference from “outside” of it, assuming for the time being that, if God is temporal, his time is somehow different from ours. 

 

What does God know?

If the only thing that exists is the present moment, it would follow that God would perfectly know that moment, but it is difficult to imagine how he would know the future. If, on the other hand, the past, present, and future are real, it would follow that God would know all of time in its totality, but it’s hard to imagine how humans could make truly free choices in a world where future events are fixed certainties. 

 

There are two relatively simple solutions to this tension: one could take a Hyper-Calvinist approach and deny the existence of free will, or one could take the Open Theist approach and deny that God perfectly knows the future. Before we dismiss these ideas as heretical, it’s important to realize the basis for these views of God’s knowledge. Both camps acknowledge that God is omniscient, having all knowledge that exists, but the Hyper-Calvinists typically have a B-theoretic view of time (the future “already” exists because God has determined all that will come to pass), whereas the Open Theists have an A-theoretic view (the future does NOT exist, so there’s nothing for God to know). 

 

Calvinist B-Theoretic view of what God knows

Greg Boyd, a prominent Open Theist, has clarified that he believes the future exists as a realm of possibilities - it consists not just of what will or will not happen, but also includes things that might or might not happen. Because the future is genuinely open, existing as a branching stream of possibilities, that is precisely what God knows. Boyd claims that the Open View is not primarily a statement about God’s knowledge; rather, it is a statement about the nature of time and the future. God knows everything there is to know, and that means that because the future is open, God knows it perfectly, just as it is - a realm of possibilities

 

The Open view of what God knows:

It’s important to clarify that this is not the Many Worlds idea from quantum physics. The Many Worlds idea is popular in science fiction, where there are infinite possible universes and everything that can occur does occur in some alternate timeline (like in the Marvel Universe or the film Everything Everywhere All at Once). On Open Theism, the field of possibilities is modal - the paths are logically possible, but they are not ontologically real. They only “exist” (if that word is even appropriate in this context) in an abstract logical space or in the mind of God - they’re not actually out there anywhere (that’s why they are colored grey in the diagram). 

 

I’m sympathetic to this view and believe it falls within the realm of Christian orthodoxy (Boyd has made a strong biblical case for it), but it does imply that God does not actually know what specific events will happen in the future. Greg Boyd believes that, if the future exists as a set of settled facts (even if just in the mind of God), humans couldn’t have genuine free will. Openness, according to Boyd, is a requirement for genuine free will, so we must therefore conclude that God does not know the details of the future. It must be acknowledged that, while logical, this is not the majority historic Christian perspective on God’s omniscient foreknowledge.

 

So Calvinist determinism makes it difficult to imagine how humans could have genuine free will, and the future being open makes it difficult to imagine how God could perfectly know it. 

 

Some attempts at a resolution

One proposed solution to this tension from the Calvinist side of the spectrum is the philosophical idea of Compatibilism. Compatibilism is not just the idea that God’s sovereignty and human free will are compatible (practically every Christian tradition affirms that idea); it is rather the claim that free will is compatible with absolute determinism. Compatibilism says that you can still be considered “free” in your decisions even if you could never have done otherwise, as long as your decision reflects what you genuinely want to do. 

 

While this idea seems compelling at first, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that there’s a lot of redefining going on. On deterministic Compatibilism, all your choices are predetermined, but so are all your thoughts, beliefs, values, and deliberations. Not only are you incapable of acting otherwise, but you are even incapable of thinking, believing, or considering otherwise. In fact, what you will “decide” tomorrow was actually already decided before the creation of the universe. Every process, every brain state, and every step of the formation of who you are as an individual was predetermined long before you ever existed and could never have been any different. This is what Compatibilists call “free will”, but it’s difficult to imagine how this view provides anything close to what we would normally call “free will”. In fact, on any kind of determinism, including compatibilism, it’s hard to see how humans are anything more than a predetermined series of processes executing whatever programs were programmed into us before the beginning of time. In my opinion, Compatibilism is just good ol’ fashioned determinism with a layer of moral language painted over it.

 

In philosophy, the Principle of Alternative Possibilities states that a person is morally responsible for their actions only if they could have done something else. While compatibilists deny that the ability to do otherwise is a necessary component of free will, there is another semi-deterministic approach that attempts to get back that key piece of a genuine, alternative choice.

 

Molinism claims that God knows, not just what you will do, but he also knows what you would do in any and every possible context and situation. Molinism suggests that, before creating the universe, God knew all the possible worlds that could ever exist as well as everything that could possibly happen in every situation. From this modal field of logically possible and feasible worlds, God chose one specific path to bring into existence. 

 

Molinism: God chooses one specific world to actualize from a field of possibilities

Molinism preserves a high view of God’s sovereignty (God ultimately decides which world will be actual and is therefore the creator and cause of all things and all events in the universe), but it also allows for God to factor in human decisions. 

 

A very helpful philosophical idea necessary for the Molinist view is the distinction between temporal priority and logical priority. According to William Lane Craig, a prominent Molinist, God’s knowledge of what you will freely do in any situation is temporally prior to your choice (he knew it even before he created the universe), but your choice is logically prior to God’s knowledge of it (if you had freely chosen to do something else, God’s knowledge would have been different). So human free choices logically cause (technically "ground") what God knows, even if his knowledge happens before the free choice in time. This distinction between logical and temporal priority is, in my opinion, one of the most helpful concepts in the topic of free will and divine foreknowledge. It’s so helpful in fact, that many people claim none of this other extra philosophising is necessary - it is enough simply to say that God knows the future and that does not mean he causes the future. 

 

This claim of God’s Simple Foreknowledge seems to me to be the default position of most non-philosophers as well as that of the majority of Christian traditions throughout history. God simply “sees”  what’s in the future, and him seeing it does not imply anything about him causing it. Most Christians seem to intuitively want to believe several things simultaneously: 

 

- People make genuinely free choices.
- They could have made different choices.
- God can respond to people’s free choices.
- God perfectly knows what people will choose in the future.
- God’s knowledge of what we will choose does not mean God causes our choices or that we were fated to make them. 

 

It is only when people start thinking more deeply about the details of how those claims might be reconciled that they realize the logical challenges. If God knows something as a settled fact, doesn’t that mean it must necessarily happen and therefore can't be otherwise? If God passively sees what will take place in the future, how can he use that knowledge to make his plans or intervene, since his acting in the world would change the timeline, meaning he would have seen something different? Maybe simple foreknowledge isn’t so simple. And maybe our universe of space and time is fundamentally more complex than the simple timelines and even the branching tree diagrams imply. 

 

Timelines in Superposition

The view I’m presenting here is rooted in some fundamental ideas from science, but, as I’ve tried to explain this idea to friends, I have come to realize that most people are unfamiliar with the basic principles of quantum mechanics. But that’s ok! Richard Feynman, a Nobel prize-winning quantum physicist, famously said, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” So we’re in good company.

 

Here, I’ll attempt a very basic introduction to some key concepts so that you too can join the community of people confused by quantum mechanics!

 

One of the core ideas is the concept of superposition. The way I imagine superposition is to think of a string (like a guitar string or a harp string) that is vibrating. When a note is played on a guitar string, it vibrates through a range of positions very rapidly, such that we can’t see precisely where it is - its displacement is spread across multiple places at once. We might also reasonably say that the string’s location is best represented by a field of space within a certain range. If we could freeze the position of that string in space, we would immediately know its precise position, BUT a string that isn’t moving doesn't have a frequency, so we could not define its note. In order to define the frequency of a vibrating string, we need to talk about its multiple locations in space and across time, and in order to define its position precisely, we need to “freeze” time in such a way that frequency no longer makes sense. 

 

This is an example of the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which is not just about how hard it is to measure small things or the fact that we inevitably change the state of a system when we measure it. It is about the unavoidable logic that some properties, such as frequency and position, are inversely related³. 

 

For example, if I want to know how often you go to the gym, that’s a question of frequency, and it logically and necessarily needs to be expressed in words about being spread out across time (e.g, 4 times a week, 10 times a month, once every two years). If on Tuesday at 7:43, I check the gym and find that you are there, that gives me a very precise fact for that one moment, but it tells me nothing about how often you go to the gym. If, on the other hand, I know that you average 15 visits to the gym every month, it doesn’t really make sense to ask if you are or are not at the gym in February. The most accurate fact of the matter is that you are both at the gym and not at the gym during the month of February. And there is a particular frequency that you are there, such that there is a certain probability of finding you there on any given day. It's like the state of "you being at the gym” is in a “superposition” of states in the month of February.

 

This idea, that there are some properties that simply cannot be perfectly defined at the same time, is even more fundamentally true in quantum mechanics. It's not just that we don't know where a particle is at any given time; it's that the thing we imagine as a little dot is more accurately represented by a wave of possible states. In order to make true statements about the state of tiny particles and quantum systems, we use the language and math of probability, frequency, and wave amplitudes, not because we’re bad at measuring, but because those are the most accurate statements about the state of quantum systems. It’s weird and unintuitive to imagine that a particle can be in multiple places at once, but it’s not even possible to imagine a wave as being in only one very definite location - a wave is spread out by definition, or it can't be a wave. A string must vibrate at specific frequencies in order to make music. These frequencies layer on top of each other and are added together in a superposition of multiple simultaneous sound waves. Collapse the vibration at certain nodes and you can shape the music (like pressing on a violin string), but if you stop the string entirely, the music stops.

What if the most accurate facts about the future are best expressed in the language and math of quantum mechanics? It’s not that the future does not exist (as in A theories of time) and it’s not that the future is already fixed (as in typical B theories of time), rather the future exists, but it exists in a superposition of states. It’s not like a simple line or even a branching tree; it’s more like a vibrating string that exists in a superposition of multiple states at once. 

And what if the future is not totally open (branching off infinitely into endless possible worlds), but it is bounded/constrained by God such that there is only a finite range of possible scenarios? God does not causally and deterministically fix the timeline of the future (like in Calvinism and Molinism), nor is he “along for the ride” and uncertain about the future (as in A-theoretic Open Theism). On this view, it’s more like God creates a vibrating field of possibility and then actively presses on it at different points to shape and weave it, not into a fixed certainty, but into a network of vibrating superpositions. 

I was asked recently what this perspective is called and, at the time, I did not have a straightforward answer. “Metric four-dimensional spacetime vibrating in a superposition of states within a hyperdimensional non-quantized topological manifold and constrained by deterministic nodes of time-independent causal relationships” is reasonably accurate, but not quite as catchy as it could be. For the sake of (relative) brevity and so as to more easily compare it with views like Calvinism, Molinism, and Open Theism, let's just call the perspective I'm describing Superpositionism⁴. 

The Payoff

I believe this incorporation of the principle of superposition solves several of the traditional problems that arise in the free will/divine foreknowledge debates while providing a more nuanced and logically consistent mechanism for salvaging the best pieces of all the other views.

 

As in Calvinism, God is totally sovereign. He is the creator of all of time and space, and is the first and ultimate cause of all that occurs because he defines the boundaries of everything that may, by his permission, come to pass. This Superpositionist view allows for God to sovereignly and unilaterally bring into actuality any state of affairs he chooses because he can collapse the possible states into definite outcomes at any point in history. This means he can predestine the salvation of any individual, and he can decree in advance the death of Christ, and he can sovereignly guarantee that, no matter what else happens, he will accomplish his good purposes in the world. None can resist his will because, like a musician plucking a string or a weaver spinning thread or a potter molding clay, the universe must always bend to his power and authority. All must necessarily collapse into whatever reality he determines to bring about.

But unlike traditional Calvinism, this view does not require defining God’s sovereignty in terms of absolute, meticulous determinism. Fortunately, I don’t believe absolute, meticulous determinism is biblical anyway, and the belief that God actively causes every event that occurs (including every rape, child molestation, and genocide) is not usually the hill the Calvinists are most eager to die on. God’s sovereignty is real, God’s knowledge is perfect, God’s power is unchallenged, and God's purposes cannot be thwarted, but he gives humans genuine free will through what he sovereignly chooses should remain in superposition. 

 

I believe this view of God's sovereignty, in which He unilaterally determines some things but allows for a range of options in others, is the view most consistent with the Bible. This is how God can tell David that the men of Keilah will surrender him (given a certain trajectory), even if there exists a possible outcome where they don't (1 Samuel 23:9-13). He can tell Saul that he would have established his kingdom forever (that outcome was genuinely within the range of possible states), even if Saul’s disobedience later made that world inaccessible (1 Samuel 13:13-14). And God can honestly and unambiguously promise that, in every temptation, there exists a real, accessible "way out" - he never decrees that you will inevitably and necessarily sin (I Corinthians 10:13). I have never heard anything close to a satisfactory exegesis of I Corinthians 10:13 from a proponent of determinism. On compatibilism, there doesn’t seem to be any sense in which the way out is ever genuinely provided. Even on Molinism, this way out would no longer be accessible once God decided to create the world where the sin occurs.

 

On Superpositionism, as in Molinism and Simple Foreknowledge, human decisions are logically prior to God’s knowledge even though his knowledge is temporally prior, preserving free will. But unlike in Molinism, there is something real for God to know, because the superposition of states exists ontologically. The foundational idea in Molinism is that God knows what you would do in every possible world, even if those worlds never actually exist (these are called the Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom). But how can something non-existent have a truth value? This is the Grounding Objection, and it’s the main philosophical objection to Molinism. 

 

One time in a theology group, we were discussing the topic of God’s knowledge. I asked the group what God knows, and the consensus was generally that “God knows everything”. I then asked, “So does God know that I’m a 65-year-old Asian woman?” This gave everyone pause for a few seconds before one person answered: “He knows that that is false.” I like that answer, and I think it illustrates that what we claim about God’s knowledge also depends on what we claim about the nature of reality. God knows positive truths (e.g. I’m a man in my 40s) and negative truths (e.g. I’m not an Asian woman in my 60s), but does it make sense to claim that God also knows true facts about non-existent situations? Does he know that if I were an Asian woman, I would wear blue earrings on Tuesday, or is there simply no fact of the matter to know in that case? 

 

To make matters worse, not only am I not an Asian woman, but it’s hard to imagine how there could exist a world where I live my whole life as an Asian woman and am still “me” in any meaningful sense. Just how far do these counterfactuals of creaturely freedom go? Does God know which ear tentacle I would use to pick up my termite sandwich if I were a creature in a universe that ate such things? Would I use a different tentacle if it were rye bread instead of pumpernickel? At what point does the modal field of possibilities become so nonsensical that it makes more sense to simply conclude that there just isn’t anything there to know? 

 

While the grounding objection may be the main philosophical objection to Molinism, there is a moral and emotional objection that I feel presents a much more significant problem. On Molinism, the deterministic view of God’s sovereignty is preserved. While many see this as a strength (Molinism provides a philosophically robust mechanism for plausibly harmonizing determinism and a kind of free will), I think the fundamental problem with all forms of determinism is that they leave God as the one responsible for all events, including all instances of sin and evil. 

 

The Problem of Evil

On Molinism, God chose, before the foundations of the world, not just to allow the possibility of evil, but to actualize the specific sequence of events where children were sacrificed on altars to pagan gods, and eaten by their own starving mothers, and sexually abused by their pastors and priests. Yes, there is a logically possible explanation that God had good reason for choosing and actualizing this world specifically (perhaps it’s the one where the most people freely come to him), but I find it very hard to believe that, out of the infinite modal field of possible timelines, this reality was the single best one. And I intuitively feel that, any time I sin by doing something God has explicitly commanded me not to do, that I really could have done otherwise - not in some hypothetical nonexistent universe, but in this one I’m in here and now. I believe that every time I have sinned, there was a real, legitimate way out that was available to me and that I failed to take (1 Corinthians 10:13).

 

To be fair, there is no philosophical or theological view that doesn’t acknowledge that God allows all kinds of evil and suffering in the world. There’s no way around this, and it presents an emotional challenge for every perspective on God’s sovereignty. But I find the free will explanation to be much more satisfactory than any deterministic option. God has chosen to allow all kinds of evil and suffering to enter his good world in order to create the opportunity for genuine free will, true love, and many other good things. That is a very different claim than saying God sovereignly ordained everything that comes to pass, and that all sin and evil are the result of his decree and happen according to his will. Humans do all kinds of things that are not God’s will. It is only his own actions that perfectly reflect the counsel of his will.

 

In summary, I believe this Superpositionism idea is less susceptible to the grounding objection and the problem of evil than Molinism. On Superpositionism, there is a definite set of possible states that exist ontologically and which ground God’s knowledge of them. But this does not mean that any one outcome is frozen in inevitable certainty. Returning to our analogy: God knows that the guitar string is playing a G note (the music is real), but if you ask him where the string is when playing the note, he could correctly give you the mathematically accurate wavefunction rather than making a less precise claim about it being in a fixed position. If you asked for both the frequency and the position simultaneously, God could politely correct your illogical question and your bad math by explaining the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. And God would play music on a string instrument, not by sovereignly dictating a single frozen shape for the string to take, but in a similar way to the one used by all musicians: by shaping the soundwave through a specific combination of constrained nodes and open vibrations.

 

In the same way, God knows the whole range of possible free choices you will make tomorrow, and he knows the probabilities of all those choices. But he has also limited those choices to a finite range of options. The guitar string doesn’t infinitely vibrate from one end of the universe to the other in every possible wave configuration; it has a very small, bounded mode of existence. And in the same way that a guitarist makes music by leaving some parts to vibrate freely, God, as a gracious expression of his sovereign wisdom and love, has gifted people the capacity to be like him in a small way, as we too, collapse probabilities into certainties via our free choices.

 

Isn't this just Open Theism?

Almost, but not quite. As in Open Theism, God knows the future as a set of possibilities that are not inevitably fated or fixed to be a certain way. As in Open Theism, there are many things that are genuinely open such that humans have legitimate freedom and God can respond dynamically to them. Greg Boyd consistently describes the future in terms of possibilities, and, for all I know, he may have already talked about this in terms of a superposition of states.

 

The primary difference is that, on Superpositionism, God really does know the future perfectly and not just because he's really smart or really good at predicting, but because the future actually exists ontologically. Superpositionism is not an A-Theory of time like Open Theism, in which the future does not exist; it is more like a B theory where the future exists, but, instead of being a fixed block, it vibrates dynamically. God knows the future in a simple foreknowledge way, by “seeing” it. He sees the things he has decided to bring to pass as fixed certainties, and he sees the multiple paths of free choice as the vibrating waves that they are.

 

No, but really…that just sounds like Open Theism 

The key differences have to do with the nature of the universe that God knows. Because the future is ontologically real, there is something real for God to know and “see”. The vibrating superposition is not just a set of modal possibilities (though it is that also), the paths are real⁵ - there really was a version of David who was handed over at Keilah, and a version of Saul whose kingdom was established forever, and a version of Paul's journey where there was no shipwreck (Acts 27:21) and a version where not everyone was saved because they didn't listen to Paul (Acts 27:31). God predestined certain events like Paul's trial before Caesar (this collapsed node is described in Acts 27:24), but there were multiple real paths to get there.

 

This time, we really are talking about something kind of like a many-worlds situation where there are multiple timelines and parallel realities. Where this differs from the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is that not every event that could happen does happen because God creates good worlds and prevents absurd nonsense universes. God has set boundaries and constraints on the universe he created, such that the vast majority of hypothetical timelines can never occur and don't exist ontologically. There is almost certainly not a universe where I have hot dogs for fingers or where I'm a sandwich-eating creature with ear tentacles (even if those worlds are technically possible in an abstract sense, they don't exist anywhere, so there are no facts to know about them). 

 

Open but bounded; limited but genuinely free

There may have been a universe where some other disciple betrayed Jesus (Judas and every other disciple made free choices), but someone was certainly going to do it because the crucifixion was a collapsed node of certainty that God predestined, and the betrayal by a friend was prophesied. Superpositionism describes a universe where many things are causally determined by God. These could include the initial conditions of the universe, using Joseph to save many people from famine, the judgment of Egypt through the raising up of an arrogant Pharaoh, the crucifixion of Jesus, his second coming, and many more. But it also leaves room for genuine free will because we can choose whom we will serve (Joshua 24:15), God’s judgments are never deterministic (Jeremiah 18:5-10), and people can choose whether to be vessels used for honorable purposes or dishonorable purposes (2 Timothy 2:21-22).

 

Incidentally (because this is by no means the basis for these ideas about how God’s sovereignty might work), the Greek word for “predestine” seems to reflect this picture pretty well. I associate the English word “predestine” with a kind of unavoidable destiny or fate that must certainly happen, but the Greek word proorizo just means to pre-determine or pre-decide, and doesn’t seem to have the same fatalistic connotations. The word orizo refers to a boundary line or limit (as in our English word “horizon”), and so pro-orizo literally/etymologically refers to establishing boundaries or setting limits in advance. So you can freely choose your ice cream, but you can't single-handedly choose the president because you haven't been given that degree of power. You can't cause a supernova on the other side of the universe, and you can't prevent Jesus from coming back. You, in your limited freedom, can in no way thwart God's plan, but you are genuinely free.  

 

Summary

 

While Superpositionism could be considered a kind of Calvinism (insofar as there are streams of Calvinism that seek to harmonize God's sovereignty with genuine free will and alternative possibilities⁶), a kind of Molinism (where God actualizes certain realities from a field of modal possibilities) or a kind of Bounded Open Theism (where God knows the future in terms of possible paths), I believe it fits most comfortably in the Classical Arminian or Simple Foreknowledge camp, while providing a plausible mechanism for how the claims of Simple Foreknowledge can be logically coherent.

 

If you so desire (using your God-given agency to freely choose to do so!), you can add to the Arminian/Simple Foreknowledge view some additional clarifying points:

 

Arminianism/Simple Foreknowledge/Superpositionism:

•⁠ ⁠God gives people genuine freedom to choose from a finite range of possibilities. God knows both the range of possibilities and the details of each choice because the future is real, but vibrates in a superposition of possible states.

•⁠ ⁠Strengths: It explains how God's sovereignty and foreknowledge can be absolute without violating free will. God's omniscience is not limited in any way, but he can still have a dynamic, responsive relationship with his creation.

•⁠ ⁠Weaknesses: It's hard to understand, involving complex and counterintuitive concepts from quantum mechanics. It has some weird implications (which we'll have to address in another post).

“God has always known what will happen in the future because the future consists of a real network of branching, vibrating paths - including both God-ordained certainties and genuinely free human choices - created, sustained, and constrained by his will.”

 

This view requires further clarification - I haven’t mentioned anything about the difference between metric spacetime and topological time, the potential for retrocausality, or the scale-invariant agency of wavefunction collapse via non-Markovian stochastic processes - but I’ve said enough to communicate the basic idea. I find this view of God’s sovereignty and human freedom to be far more compelling than any of the alternatives I’ve come across.

 

Imagine God as a conductor, leading a community of free people in a glorious symphony; the sheet music is provided and directed, but each musician must also do their part. Or imagine God as a loving parent, unilaterally determining some things for his children, but also giving them freedom to play within certain boundaries and limits. Or imagine God as a jazz musician, expertly and dynamically shaping the tones and frequencies of existence into a song that is guaranteed to incorporate and resolve any initial dissonance into a beautiful harmony. God exercises his sovereign control by collapsing superpositions into definite states at certain fixed nodes (like pressing on a guitar string at a specific point), and human freewill operates within a bounded set of possibilities which God allows (like the finite range of positions on a vibrating string). 

 

Our universe is like God jammin’ on his time harp or singing reality into existence.

And we’re invited to sing along.