Friday Files: Picirilli

In Robert E. Picirilli’s article Foreknowledge, Freedom, and the Future, he explains that Reformation Arminians hold that God knows what we will freely choose in the future, whereas Neo-Arminians (a.k.a. Open Theists) disagree. With a little help from Arminius and Richard Watson, Pircirilli carefully defends his thesis that “there is nothing about the certainty of the future that is in conflict with the ability of human beings to make free, moral decisions” by defining certainty, necessity and contingency and demonstrating how contingency and certainty don’t conflict. Picirilli explains that the difference between Calvinists and Arminians is foreordination, not foreknowledge. For the Reformation Arminian, then, the final set of facts to hold is: (1) the future is certain and foreknown certainly by God; (2) this is in full harmony with the fact that human beings make free, moral choices for which they are held justly responsible. (link)