“Kahit anong gawin mo, kung hindi para sa ‘yo, hindi talaga mapupunta sa ‘yo”� (”No matter what you do, you can’t have something if it’s not meant for you”). You may have noticed that there are others that work really hard, but get nowhere near success. On the other hand, there are entrepreneurs who seem to have an easy way with things and become successful with the least effort. This issue, which had been nagging me for years, is not confined to one's economic status, but also applies to all aspects of life. In fact, the generality of this issue was the focus when this article was first posted. 

1. The Calvinist view. According to this view God is like a novelist, and human beings are like the characters who live the pages of God’s novel. Within the pages of the novel the characters are genuinely free and freely make their choices. But beyond their freedom is the greater freedom of the novelist who exist in a sphere which is qualitatively (i.e., not merely quantitatively) greater than the sphere of the novel. The freedom of the novelist encompasses and determines the freedom of the novel’s characters. Nevertheless the freedom of the novel’s characters qua characters of and in a novel, remains genuine.

2. The Arminian view. Here human beings are like drivers on the ground, driving their cars and not knowing what is at the end of the road. God, on the other hand, is like the pilot of a plane. He does not interfere with our driving, but he is in a position to see what is at the end of the road. God exists outside of time. He does not interfere with history (at least most of the time!) but he does see both the beginning and the end of history, as well as its middle. He doesn’t determine your choices, but he already knows what you will choose.

3. The Neo-Arminian or Open Theist view. According to this view God has exhaustive knowledge of the past and the present. But he only has partial knowledge of the future; i.e., there’s a lot about the future that he doesn’t know about (especially that part of the future which involve free human choices). In this view, God is a God who takes “genuine” risks and the future is more or less “open” even to him. But he is confident that whatever turns up he is resourceful enough to deal with it.