Was the Incarnation a Risk?

You asking me? That's a bit above my praygrade, but I've always wondered what's the point if it was all predetermined from eternity. Some folks find that comforting. Others find it puzzling. 

Is every man's story -- including Jesus' -- is already written? Why then bother living it out in time? Indeed what is the point of time if it's really just the serial unfolding of a predetermined sequence? Why stretch out what has already occurred necessarily? Why leave us in suspense -- suspended between the present and future? Why do we have to wait for what is inevitably going to happen anyway? 

Why even do anything when it has already been done?

Hope is a theological virtue. But does it make any sense to hope for what is bound to happen anyway? That's a variant of the definition of insanity: doing anything at all and hoping for an outcome different from the preordained one.

I couldn't believe that if I wanted to. But I don't want to, because it simultaneously explains too little and too much. In explaining everything it explains nothing.

Anyway, back to the question of whether God took a risk with the Incarnation, or whether the whole thing was scripted from eternity. 

I'm thinking in particular of the Crucifixion. Was this truly the plan all along? If so -- no irreverence intended -- then some plan. If I understand correctly, a Swiss watch. In other words, if God could foresee the horror of his own torture and death, why not tweak the plan to insure a less gruesome outcome? 

Could it be that the Passion was a creative response to contingent events as they unfolded on the ground? Supposing that humans were truly free in their responses to Jesus, then how could it be otherwise? How can Christ be the victor if the game is rigged from the start?

Now, the traditionalist will argue, I suppose, that the Crucifixion was the most fitting plan, with the best possible outcome -- similar to the felix culpa of the fall, which paves the way for the greatest possible good, which is to say, the incarnation and redemption of Christ. It implies that God's grace and mercy are so powerful that they can turn even the greatest evil into a source of immense good. 

But again, if the whole thing is predetermined, I fail to see the point, because we're all just NPCs in God's already completed script.

Gemini, are there any theologians who argue that Christ's Crucifixion wasn't foreordained or inevitable, but rather, more of a creative response to how he was received by people?

Many traditional Christian theological perspectives, particularly those within Calvinist traditions, emphasize God's sovereignty and foreknowledge. From this viewpoint, Christ's crucifixion was part of God's divine plan from the beginning. This perspective highlights the idea that Christ's sacrifice was necessary for the atonement of sins, and therefore, it had to occur.

Alternative Perspectives (Contingency): 

Some theologians propose that while God may have foreseen the possibility of the crucifixion, it was not necessarily a predetermined event. Instead, they emphasize the role of human free will and the responses of people to Jesus's teachings and actions. 

This view suggests that the crucifixion occurred as a result of the choices made by individuals and authorities at the time. Therefore, while God may have used this event for redemptive purposes, it was not an inevitable outcome. 

"Open Theism" holds that God does not know absolutely everything that will happen in the future, but rather that God knows all that can be known, and that the future is partly open, dependent upon human free will. Within this viewpoint, the crucifixion would be viewed as a result of human free will. It arose from the interplay of human choices and historical circumstances.

Hartshorne in particular "reframes the crucifixion as a tragic event that reveals God's deep involvement in human suffering, rather than a predetermined act in a divine script."

Okay then. This prompted me to pull out Hartshorne's Philosophers Speak of God, because it has a lot of good stuff in it, even if Hartshorne himself goes too far in limiting God. Rather, there must be a better way to balance human freedom with divine omnipotence and omniscience, and we aim to do that.

Let me first finish reviewing what Hasker has to say about the risk God takes in creating truly free creatures. He writes that

God's capacity to control the detailed course of events is limited only by his self-restraint, not by any inability to do so.

This is somewhat similar to the Kabbalistic idea of tzimtzum, whereby God willingly "contracts" himself in order to make a space for an autonomous creation with genuine freedom. 

The question is, "Is it better if God takes risks with the world, or if he does not?" Is it actually preferable to have "a world in which nothing can ever turn out in the slightest respect differently than God intended"? If that's the case, then "the significance and value of human creativity" is essentially nullified, because "our most ennobling achievements are just the expected printouts from the divine programming."  

Back to the Incarnation: are the actions flowing from Christ's human nature just "the expected printouts from the divine programming"? Or are they contingent upon the free actions of events and people around him? Again, how could the whole thing be scripted from eternity and temporally free? Which is to say necessary and contingent?  

I'm going to let that question percolate, because I've never actually thought through the implications. But somehow, God had to plan a world in which his designs would be achieved by creatures acting freely. A tall order!

My brain is a little overwhelmed at the moment, since there are so many different directions I could take the post, and there are a number of different sources I want to bring into the discussion, and where to begin?

Here's just one, from a philosopher and theologian named E.S. Brightman, cited in Philosophers Speak of God:

it is religiously much more essential that God should be good than that he should be absolutely all-powerful. Hence, not a few thinkers have suggested the possibility of a God whose power is in some way limited.... foreknowledge inevitably contracts freedom.

Or this, from Jules Lequier: 

God, who sees things change, changes also in beholding them, or else he does not perceive that they change.... it is necessary to recognize that either God in his relationship to the world contracts a new mode of existence which participates in the nature of the world, or else this world is before God as though it did not exist.... God, who sees these things change, changes also in beholding them.

We're only just beginning, but we'll end this post with an observation by Louis Dupré:

In giving birth to the finite, God himself inevitably assumes a certain passivity in regard to the autonomy of finite being, a passivity that may render him vulnerable and that indeed, according to the Christian mystery of the Incarnation, has induced him personally to share in the very suffering of finite being.