Divine determinism would mean that Divine guidance is redundant
and freedom is illusionary
Premise: It is possible to Not follow divine guidance.
If one is Not following the presently given divine guidance, then what we do is probably not in line with divine purpose and good, since the divine guidance was showing us how to be truly in the good.
Thus, to declare that all things are divinely guided, while also believing that one can be divinely guided or not guided; well, this is a blatant contradiction.
Resistance to Higher Will cannot also be the work of Higher Will.
God would not be the Power compelling or influencing one to make mistakes nor do harm. Rather, God is the power urging us to be good and do good. If everyone were doing just what God wishes them to do, or what God powers them to do, then resistance would be impossible, and mistakes would be impossible, and everything would really be perfect. Yet if this were true, then we should be praising everything everyone does.
If one can possibly reject divine guidance or ignore it, and thus move into a different direction from that suggested by guidance; then it is a blatant contradiction to believe that this self direction (which ignored the divine guidance or even went opposite to it) is really the divine direction all along, that this self-direction is really part of the divine purpose and plan, and is really for the Greater Good, along with everything that happens.
To believe that everything which happens in this world is part of the divine purpose and plan and is really for the Greater Good… is to suggest that everything anyone does is really for the Greater Good, since much of what happens in our world is by human action, and also then it has to imply that everything I do is also part of the divine purpose and plan and is really for the Greater Good. Yet this belief would blatantly contradict another belief that the human ego is capable of not following divine guidance and acting in opposition to divine love and God’s Will.
How is it not contradictory that a man can reject divine guidance and love in their actions, yet still act in a way that is God’s Will or part of a greater good? The contradiction is most transparent in the following statement. A man rejected God’s guidance and instead spitefully acted in opposition to God’ guidance, yet this man’s actions were in perfect accord with God’s purpose and intended plan for the greater good. In other words, the man’s action only appeared to be bad, but were really good (since those actions perfectly lead to a greater good); yet this man’s actions were in opposition to God’s guidance.
The man rejected God’s guidance but this rejection is really for the greater good? The man acted in direct opposition to God’s guidance yet his action was really God’s Will all along? In one moment there is a possibility of right and wrong action, but in the next moment there is only good ever possible in this world. The ridiculousness of all this is apparent. And it is even more ridiculous to justify this as a divine paradox or divine mystery.
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Some things are God’s Will, but not everything is
This View has been critical of certain kinds of theological thinking, such as that everything is God’s Will, or everything is part of divine plan, or that everything is really good. Our View is only against the absolutism of everything being as such. For we accept that some things are God’s Will, part of a divine Plan, or actually good; we just deny that everything is. We are saying that any event is possibly God’s Will, yet possibly not God’s Will. Both are possibilities. But the wrong View is that there is only the possibility that all is God’s Will, and they deny the possibility of something not being God’s Will. So we are only saying that either is possible. Now the next point to make is that no one can know for certain what events are God’s Will and what are not. This is simply an admission of limited human knowing. And yet, this fact of ultimate uncertainty is no excuse to not make discernments about what is Good or not. Because it is our human responsibility to make such discernments, and as well make decisions based on what we believe is right or wrong. If one were to always stay on the fence and never make discernments (or never make judgments about right and wrong), because of one’s ultimate uncertainty; then one would have no basis (or rationale) for making decisions and thus one would probably avoid decisions, just as one avoids judgments about right and wrong.
So, we need to recognize the possibility that an event could be God’s Will or not, and then realize that we don’t know for sure whether a particular event is or is not. This uncertainty is a humble recognition of our limited knowing. And yet we could not live practically if we always stopped at this uncertainty and just sat on the fence, without trying to discern what is true and what action to best take. We need to use our God-given discernment and make choices based on this, even if we are not absolutely certain about anything. So when something happens, it is true that no one can know for certain if this is ultimately bad or good, or if it is part of a divine plan or not. Yet, we have to decide on something.
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God’s Will cannot be concluded (or known) on the basis of what actually happens in the world. There are those who believe that whatever DOES happen in our world must therefore be God’s Will. This is reasoned because of a faith-assumption that everything which happens in our world must be God’s Will – since there is only One Power.
Let us imagine a possible conference of world leaders. And let us imagine two possible outcomes from this conference: world war or world peace. Or maybe the possible alternatives are world fascism or world democracy, as planned by these leaders. In such cases, God DOES have a Will in such decisions. One way would be God’s Will, while the other way would not. We don’t have to necessarily view God as making decisions in a human manner; for we could view God as a Love-Wisdom, or the Great Will-to-Good, or the Principles of. Either way, there IS a God’s Will (or Divine Will) in direct relation to our world affairs. For, the Divine Will is in favor of peace and democracy, over the opposing alternatives.
Some events are God’s Will. What I mean by this is that some events are aligned with Divine Goals for our world, such as cooperation, love, service; Or that some events are aligned with Divine Love-Wisdom (God’s Love and Wisdom). This follows a well-used meaning of the word ‘will’; for example, one could say that peace in the world would be one’s will for the world. However, I do not mean that one particular election choice is “willed by God” in the sense of being made to happen by the Higher Power. (though I would grant that God’s Power may at times enter into the world – as in cases of special healings or sudden spiritual realizations). It would be quite doubtful that God “makes happen” one election choice over another; as though God either messed around with the ballots or compelled enough people to vote one way over another. In fact, an election is a great example of man’s freedom in this world, whereby man is not compelled by God; and yet, I see nothing theologically odd in believing that God can inspire or even suggest (through our inner conscience) certain choices over another.
God does have a “Will” in relation to our world and what happens in this world. Otherwise, God would be in apathetic relation to us. God’s Power and Will enters into this world, or at least influences this world; …. but without God determining every event in this world.
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People say “from God” but there are two different meanings in this, which often get mixed and confused. A circumstance or event occurs and someone says it’s “from God” or ‘due to God’. Yet two very different meanings are possible. Not realizing these two meanings creates confusion. One meaning refers to fate. Whenever anything happens, we could consider this as fate. We cannot do anything about it. It is simple what has happened, so we attribute it to a power called fate. This idea is very common throughout many cultures, religions and times. So many people call this God. It is what the world gives us, and all we can do is accept it.
But this meaning of God is different from God as Good-Will. We know intuitively that God must be a Source for Good and a great Will-to-Good. Also we should know that God loves justice and truth, not fraudulence and debauchery. God wills the Good, not also the bad. Yet in our world we find good and bad. We find good and bad people, as well as good and bad circumstances. The good is what God Wills, yet the bad is merely fate.
This is where many are confused. They say that God must have willed both good and bad, since both happen. It is true that both happen, but not all is God’s Will. Some is just fate. We have to accept what is given, just as we accept God, but sometimes this is an acceptance of fate, rather than God’s Will. Or some people say that God makes no distinctions between good and bad, as if those distinctions were not even spiritually valid. They see what appears good and bad, but they deny their own senses and call this spiritual. Thy mistakenly think that it must all be good, since it all comes from God. Yet much is only from fate. Fate is just the way things happened to have turned out. It doesn’t mean that a great power decided it should be this way. God is not a strict dictator, nor a micro-manager. These are false models of God. Instead, there is flexibility and freedom within the scheme of things. There is always a Will-to-Good at every moment, coming from God, but not always a perfect fulfillment. Instead, there is often fate – the way things happen to turn out. Within the Mind of God, there is always a Higher Intention for greater good, a higher possibility for each moment, but this rarely gets fulfilled. Instead, lesser possibilities more often occur. These events are still within the spiritual manifestation of the One God, but they should be distinguished as fate rather than as God’s Will. Or we could say that most events are merely along the evolutionary-learning curve, but not necessarily perfect from God’s Will, nor spiritually intended.
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In this philosophy we are not holding an extreme position that everything we encounter in the world is a necessary teaching or necessary learning; since this would imply that everything encountered was somehow set into place by a higher divine intelligence. This view is rejected as mistaken, because it is not allowing for the possibility of learning in some other way. For example, if a driver runs into another car because they were tailgating too closely, then the resulting crash is a kind of teaching for that person. But it was not exactly necessary, since the person could have thought about the problem of tailgating and resolved that stupidity before anything bad anything bad happened. So the crash was not necessary; it was not required in order to learn. It did, hopefully, help the person learn a lesson, or we can think of it as a learning opportunity, but it was not necessary. And neither was it a set-up by the divine intelligence; the divine intelligence is not setting up every little occurrence for our learning. In fact, we don’t need a higher intelligence to set up mistakes so we can learn from them, because our own stupidity and carelessness will do very fine in setting up mistakes for which to learn by. Thus, what is true is that everything we encounter, or that which happens, affords some degree of opportunity to learn.
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There has to the possibility of moving away from God’s Will, or away from good, in order for there to any logical meaning in moving towards God’s Will, or towards good. So if all actions are necessarily God’s Will, or God doing the action; then there could not be any actions that are Not God’s Will, and no distinction could ever be made between moving towards and moving away from God. And if God is doing everything, then there isn’t any real meaning in personal responsibility.
So in this universe there is both possibility of moving towards God and moving away from God; or we could understand this as moving towards Love and Light, or moving away from Love and Light. Once we accept this possibility as real, there is a contradiction in saying that every action is God’s Will or God doing it; unless one proposes an absurd notion that God willfully pushes us away at some times rather than always persuading us to come closer to goodness and love.
The possibility of approaching nearness to God and Light, in contrast to moving away, gives rise to the dual reality of lighter and darker. This dual reality, though, exists within the overall Reality of Unity. The possibilities of lighter and darker, which can also be translated as good and bad, or better and worse, function within a Unified Purpose and also a Unified Process. The Cosmic Purpose for dualistic contrasts, such as lighter and darker, is for the sake of Knowledge and Experience. The Cosmic Process requires this dualistic contrast, because Process needs to move from one pole to another.
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A logical contradiction between beliefs of predestination and divine intervention
It doesn’t make any sense if both are right. There are various narratives about predestination, but let us just consider a belief that God has already decided what events shall come to be, which would have to include a pre-decision about how people will choose and act, since these are also life-changing events in the world. This belief also includes, and presupposes, the more common belief that God is all-knowing of everything that will ever occur, since God perceives all time from beyond time. Some philosophers argue that an all-knowing God, of this sort, would necessarily entail predestination – that everything is already worked out. But some philosophers disagree; they see omniscience and predestination as different issues. Our discussion here, though, is only concerned with predestination.
Now, if predestination is true, and God has already decided what shall transpire and has already set this into an inevitable destiny, or divine providence; then it doesn’t make any sense to also believe that God intervenes in our world. Why would God have to intervene, or want to intervene, if God already decided what shall be or what shall best be? Is God changing his/her mind, but if so then the predestination would have to change. Predestination has to imply a fixed and set creation, so divine intervention doesn’t make any sense at all in the predestination view. God could still be viewed as active in the world, but this would be predestined activity rather than God intervening in his/her pre-determined creation. And so if predestination eliminates divine intervention, it also eliminates any significance of prayer; for if everything is already decided or planned out or predestined, from a kind of beginning of time, then what use is prayer if nothing could possibly be changed anyway? Of course, these are just a few of the logical and common-sense problems with predestination.
Scientific materialism also believes in causal determinism
In relation to predestination or predeterminism, scientific materialism tends to favor a metaphysical theory of causal determinism – that everything and all events of time must be already unalterably pre-determined because every event must have determining causes and those causes must produce inevitable results. In other words, distant events of billions of years ago must have caused subsequent events and so on, such that whatever is occurring at this moment in our world must be causally determined by a long chain of preceding events, and things can only happen as they do because of unalterable material laws or properties. So everything that happens, including even our own thoughts and choices, must be already predetermined at the beginning of its causal chain. Everything that happens could only have happened the way it has, since everything is governed by definite and unalterable material laws of causation. Just as a machine has a destined amount of functional efficiency, absolutely depending on how it was made and the material life-span of its working parts; so too with humans that what we do, or how we perform, is absolutely dependent on the functional conditions of our parts and also dependent on our unique capacities for responding to environmental circumstances. This, in this scientific materialist view of deterministic causality, everything and everyone is merely doing what it has been caused to do, and could not possibly do anything else at that moment. This view, then, is basically the same as a religious belief in predestination, except that in the scientific view the [first-cause] Creator-God is replaced by natural or material causal necessity and the first cause is viewed as a cosmic accident rather than as an intelligent intention.
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Another problem with understanding God's will as based on what happens in the world, rather than on one's own moral intuition, is the difficulty if not impossibility of forming any consistent principles about what is God's will or what is good. Because if your strategy for learning is to study the facts or events of the world, in order to understand principles of what is God's will, then you will be in quite a muddle. You will have to accept the atrocities of Hitler as being God's will or significantly serving a higher purpose. You will have to accept as good (or good serving) all of the events that our common-sense morality feels is bad. So how is this going to help you make moral decisions?
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