In a recent exchange, Dr. Theologician attempted to draw a strong distinction between Calvinism and metaphysical fatalism by appealing to the idea that the future is known by God with certainty but is not fixed. His assertion: “All events being necessitated/fixed via divine decree, unchangeable, from eternity past…is NOT the same as God decreeing man to be free whilst knowing with certainty what man will do.”

In response, I pointed out that the real issue in metaphysical fatalism is not causal necessity, but the fixity of future truths. The core concern is whether the truth values of future-tensed propositions are already determined. If they are, the future is closed—regardless of how those truths are known.

To this, Dr. Theologician replied:

“Yeah… I fundamentally disagree that the future is fixed because it can be known with certainty.”

And again:

“I hold that the future is dynamic and open and yet God knows it with certainty.”

This reply pushes his position squarely into the camp of Open Theism, even if he doesn’t use that label. And yet, such a view faces a deep logical problem: it is impossible for the future to be truly open while God infallibly knows what will happen. Here’s why.

1. Certainty Entails Fixity

To say that God knows a future event with certainty is to say that the event cannot fail to occur. If God knows with infallibility that “John will eat toast tomorrow,” then it must be the case that John will eat toast. There is no possibility of any other outcome.

But then, that event is fixed. It is not ontologically open—it’s settled.

If, on the other hand, John could do otherwise in a libertarian sense (i.e., contrary to what God knows), then God’s knowledge would be fallible. But that’s incompatible with classical theism and omniscience.

2. Open Futures Lack Truth Values

Dr. Theologician seems to suggest that the future is “dynamic and open,” yet still fully known. But an open future, by definition, cannot contain actual future-tensed truths. If something is truly undetermined, then it is not yet true that it will happen.

This is the truth-value problem in Open Theism. If there is no fact of the matter about what John will do tomorrow, then God can’t know it—not because of any limitation in God, but because there is nothing there to be known.

Certainty about something that has no determinate truth value is incoherent.

3. God’s Knowledge Must Be Grounded

In every coherent system of theology, God’s knowledge must be grounded in something:

• In Calvinism, it’s grounded in God’s eternal decree.
• In Classical Arminianism, it’s grounded in the fixed truth values of future events.
• In Open Theism, there is no ground—because the future is not settled.

So if the future is ontologically open, God can only “know” the future in a probabilistic or general way. But this isn’t knowledge in the classical sense—it’s divine speculation. And that’s a downgrade from omniscience.

Dr. Theologician may want to preserve libertarian freedom and deny metaphysical fatalism, but he does so at the cost of certainty. He must either affirm that the future is fixed in some meaningful way (and thus metaphysically closed), or admit that God’s knowledge of it is not infallible, but conditional and tentative.

He cannot have it both ways.

If the future is known by God with certainty, then it is fixed.
If it is not fixed, then it cannot be known with certainty.

That’s not a Calvinist claim. It’s logic.

UPDATE:

Dr. Theologician’s response, however, illustrates precisely the incoherence the article exposes. He writes:

“I reject the notion that we can know how God’s omniscience works. I simply agree that he is, omniscient.

I also agree, with Scripture, that the future is open.

If I don’t fit your categories, I don’t care.”

But the issue isn’t about “how” God knows—it’s about what it means to claim that God infallibly knows things that are not yet true. That’s not a mystery of divine mechanics; it’s a question of basic coherence. If God knows that X will happen, then X must happen. And if it must happen, it is not open in the sense required by open theism. What Dr. T wants is the rhetorical comfort of both affirming divine omniscience and preserving libertarian freedom, but he offers no account of how both can be true without collapsing into contradiction.

Furthermore, his confident appeal to Scripture is without exegetical foundation. Nowhere does the Bible teach that the future is metaphysically open—that is, that future propositions lack truth value or that God merely knows possibilities rather than actualities. On the contrary, the biblical witness is unequivocal: “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose’” (Isa. 46:10). God does not merely observe a developing future; He ordains it. The betrayal of Christ, the casting of lots, the rise and fall of nations—Scripture treats all these as divinely predestined, not as open-ended possibilities (Prov. 16:33; Acts 2:23; 4:27–28; Isa. 44:28–45:1). What Dr. T calls “open,” Scripture calls “foreordained.”

As John Frame rightly observes, “Open theism presents a God who plans, but who doesn’t know whether his plans will work out. That is not planning; it is wishing.”¹

And yet Dr. Theologian insists that God does infallibly know the future, even while denying that the future is settled. In effect, he is saying he knows not how this is possible, but that it is possible—and not only possible, but actual. Even if the claim is logically incoherent, he insists that’s just what’s true. But if one takes that approach, what grounds remain to reject any other theological tension as invalid or unworkable?

Ironically, if Dr. T truly held to that level of fideism—that a doctrine can be affirmed despite its apparent incoherence—then he would not appeal to the “author of evil” objection against Calvinism. That objection is itself built on rational argumentation: that if God ordains all things, He must be morally culpable for evil. But Dr. T doesn’t wave that away with “mystery.” Instead, he treats it as a defeater. Apparently, logical coherence does matter—just selectively. As he once quipped:

“If you meet a system of theology, or a theologian, that makes God the author of evil… flee as fast as you can.” — Logic

For Dr. T, logic is acceptable when deployed against theological systems he disfavors—but dispensable when applied to his own. Is that an honest way to do theology?

Ironically, if Dr. T truly held to that level of fideism—that a doctrine can be affirmed despite its apparent incoherence—then he would not appeal to the “author of evil” objection against Calvinism. While I reject that objection as false—Calvinism does not entail that God is the author of evil—Dr. T treats it as a defeater based on logical reasoning. But he doesn’t wave that away with “mystery.” Instead, he appeals to coherence. Apparently, logical consistency does matter—just selectively.

¹ John Frame, Open Theism and Divine Foreknowledge, link