Does God take risks? It is becoming ever more popular to believe that God creates and governs through chance. It is said that God does not control every event, but gives His creation the freedom to develop in novel, unpredictable ways. Chance is said to be necessary for such things as human freedom, quantum effects, biological evolution and solving the problem of evil.

The existence of chance seems to contradict historic Christian notions of God's sovereignty, providence and omniscience. Many promoters of chance (e.g., Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne) therefore postulate that God has self-limited His power and knowledge. This leads to Open Theology or, even worse, Process Theology.

Recently, Dr. James Bradley, in an article Randomness and God's Nature, contends that chance is compat­ible with the historic Christian understanding of God's nature.

Let's see if this is so.

1. Defining Chance⤒🔗

First, what is meant here by "chance" (or "randomness")? This does not refer to something simply accidental or unplanned, such as by chance a man saw Saul on Mount Gilboa (2 Sam.1:6). Nor does it refer to events, like casting a lot (Prov.16:33), that though fully determined, are unpredictable to humans due to our limited knowledge or calculating ability. This is often called apparent (or epistemic) chance.

Instead, chance is meant to refer to events that are inherently indeterminate and, hence, in principle unpredictable. This is often called genuine (or ontological) chance.

Note that genuine chance is not a causal force. Rather, it denotes the absence of a sufficient cause for an event. For example, quantum events, such as the decay of a radioactive atom, are often alleged to occur by chance. This means that there are multiple possible outcomes (i.e., at any particular time there is either decay or no decay), which are not fully determined by prior circumstances. To say that atoms decay by chance entails that nothing determines the choice. It just happens.

2. Does chance exist?←⤒🔗

As examples of genuine chance, Dr. Bradley refers to quantum events, poisson processes, and libertarian free will. However, none of these are shown to require genuine chance; they could all be interpreted in terms of merely apparent chance.

Indeed, Bradley grants that it is virtually impossible to prove that our world contains any examples of genuine chance. Such a proof would require us to show that the phenomenon in question is not fully determined by the present state of the universe, which is humanly unknowable. Hence, the postulation that our world contains genuine chance events is a philosophical assumption that goes beyond the empirical data.

Suppose one could establish that some events (e.g., quantum events) do lack a fully natural cause. Note, first, that this would contradict naturalism, which assumes that our universe is entirely explicable in terms of natural causes.

Moreover, the absence of a natural cause does not entail the absence of any cause. Such a conclusion is based on a metaphysical assumption that bans supernatural causes. To postulate that events occur without any cause is to give up on rational explanation, and to resort to magic. Any postulated cause, no matter how apparently implausible, is better than no cause at all. As Sherlock Holmes deduced, "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth".

Thus, a supernatural cause of an allegedly chance event is rationally preferable to no cause at all. Accordingly, several theistic philosophers have proposed that apparently chance quantum events are all specific, intentional acts of God.

3. Chance and Providence←⤒🔗

Dr. Bradley contends that God's has ordained a system in which chance events occur, but that we should not consider each event as God's particular will. Rather, we should respect the freedom God gives His creation.

According to the Bible, however, God is completely sovereign. He created the world and gave all creatures their forms and properties (Gena). Thereafter, the universe is not autonomous, but continues to exist from one moment to the next only because God upholds it by His word (Hebr.1:3). Everything that happens is determined by God's all-encompassing plan (Eph.1:11, Acts 2:23, Acts 4: 28, Prov.16:33). This includes even seemingly insignificant details such as sparrows and hairs (Matt. 10:29-30). History unfolds exactly in accordance with God's plan, established before the foundation of the world. Hence, God knows the future perfectly (Is.46:10).

Reformed theology has thus always rejected chance as contrary to the biblical notions of God's sovereignty, providence and fore-knowledge. For example, the Belgic Confession (Art.13) states that, after God created all things "He did not give them up to chance ... but governs them so that nothing happens without His appointment". Similarly, the Heidelberg Catechism (Answer 27) asserts "all things come to us not by chance but by His fatherly hand."

Although God is the primary cause of each event, He usually works through secondary causes. God generally upholds the universe, from one moment to the next, in accordance with the properties He has assigned to His creatures. But He may at times act differently. Thus, if a quantum event could be shown to have no physical cause, this may merely indicate that God acted more directly, perhaps through an angel.

Further, no action can occur without God's concurrence or co-operation. At each instant, for God to actuate the universe at the next instant, He must have prior knowledge of the intended actions of all His creatures. Then He may decide whether to concur or not. To actuate the universe at each instant God must have full prior knowledge of all its details. This, too, rules out the notion of chance.

4. Chance and Divine Foreknowledge←⤒🔗

If genuine chance events do exist then the future is uncertain. How, then, can God have certain foreknowledge of the as yet uncertain future? Many advocates of chance solve this dilemma by limiting God's knowledge of the future (e.g., John Polkinghorne).

Dr. Bradley tries to combine chance with divine foreknowledge by appealing to Molinism. Luis Molina (1553-1600) was a Jesuit theologian who held that God has middle-knowledge: God knows what free creatures would do in any hypothetical situation. Thus, for example, if a specific radioactive atom is embedded in the universe in a particular state at a given time, God would know whether it would decay or not.

It is reasonable to suppose that God knows how His creatures would act in any hypothetical situation (cf 1 Sam.23:12). Yet, if God knows how, say, an atom will behave in a given hypothetical situation, then this entails that the atom will always behave in exactly the same way in those circumstances. But then the outcome is not chance-like. Rather, it is fully set by the circumstances. In short, although middle-knowledge may refer to "free" creatures, it implicitly presumes determinism.

Conclusion←⤒🔗

In sum, the supposed existence of genuine chance is a philosophical assumption that goes beyond the empirical data. The notion of genuine chance is unnecessary. Moreover, it has various negative theological conse­quences that undermine the majestic nature of God as revealed to us in the Bible. Any randomness we experience should therefore be attributed to merely apparent chance, reflecting the deficiency of our human knowledge.