Always struggled with God knowing the future

[johnnyjones]

Of course God knows the future, what will happen. God knows what sins you will commit, yet you pray to avoid them. Or God knows a child will die but you pray that the child won’t die. It seems prayers would be useless if the outcome is already determined. Unless we we say God knew you would pray for this or that and he gave a certain outcome.

For me, destiny, what God knew would happen, seems sometimes to make my prayers fruitless. This concept could be applied to creation. Why create a world that you knew would be evil. It is possible to say it was created that way so that there would be a "bad’ to counteract the good but sometimes it seems so purposless. Knowing all this you could say that God knew Jesus would suffer before the creation of the world (which is the teaching of the church). So eons could have been passing while this plan was still to take place no matter what.

For my finite mind it will always be perplexing. Any thoughts? It’s not really a question?

 

[George_Stegmeir]

Like you, I am “born again” to use the Protestant phrase.
Anyway, I find that the old hunters saying “You think too much, its better to just aim” goes a long way. I find that it is easier to have the faith of a little child, and just accept the teaching of Holy Mother Church instead of intellectualizing everything.
So many times it is Satan nudging our egos that causes us to nit pick our faith. This makes us suceptable to false teaching and heresy.
When you are tempted to such thoughts, say a simple prayer, like “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner” followed by a couple of Hail Marys.
If you must intellectualize, why not begin by reading some of the classics of Holy Mother Church, like “The Immitation of Christ”.

 

[Itari]

I have heard said that God exists out of time, so his knowing of events is due them already having come to pass because he does not exist in time as we know it. In some ways its not quite the complete answer. But if everything has been determined, which i believe it is not, then we still have the duty to do the best because we cannot know what god had in mind. For some it is a way to marginalize the effects of sin, saying ‘oh no God knew i was going to sin, so he is responsible not I,’ but our freedom lies not with whether or not God knows what we do, but with whether we do what is right with what we know. I detract. For me thinking God as existing out of time has helped me come to terms with this question.

Another thing seems to be a question as to why God allowed evil to occur, and this is a question philosophers have struggled with since the beginning. The existence of evil exists because good exits. Let me rephrase. Whether or not something is good or evil depends on a matter of choice. For example we perceive natural disasters to be evil events, but they are not evil, even if they kill people. We assign the evil to the event, but it just exists, it cannot choose its actions. Now as rational beings we can choose, and then the actions that arise from them can be judged as being good or evil. But that very ability to choose evil also means that good can be chosen, so good actions do come out. If good is to exist then evil must also exist along it because if not there is no choice and thus there is no good, everything would be good and no one would be free.

I hope you can make sense out of this, it confuses me and I wrote it!

 

[MarcoPolo]

For me, destiny, what God knew would happen, seems sometimes to make my prayers fruitless.

If God furnished the temporal realm complete with your free decisions included, your prayers would, of course, be fruitful.

 

[Gabriel_Serafin]

It seems prayers would be useless if the outcome is already determined. Unless we we say God knew you would pray for this or that and he gave a certain outcome.

God knows everything and knows the outcome of every possible combination of choices a soul will or could have made. He knows that if you pray for your family certain graces will come to them; He also knows that if you do not pray for your family certain graces will not come to them. About prayer, Archbishop Sheen explained that there are countless favors hanging from heaven on silken cords, and prayer is the sword that cuts them down.

An analogy should help. Three possible scenarios which God knows the outcome of:

A) A man hiking in the wilderness is destined to be gobbled up by the hungry lion, provided the man forgets to take his rifle.

**B) **The same man is destined to aim his rifle and pull the trigger to shoot the lion, provided he remembers to take his rifle.

C) The lion is destined to be killed by the bullet exiting the man’s rifle, provided the man’s wife prays that he not forget to load his rifle before he goes into the wilderness.

Thus it is true that we should never cease to pray, never cease to commend ourselves and our loved ones in prayer to God’s protection. Now read all the graces that flow into a person’s life, provided the daily rosary is prayed with devotion:

FIFTEEN PROMISES OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN TO CHRISTIANS WHO FAITHFULLY PRAY THE ROSARY

** 1. **To all those who shall pray my Rosary devoutly, I promise my special protection and great graces.

** 2. **Those who shall persevere in the recitation of my Rosary will receive some special grace.

** 3. **The Rosary will be a very powerful armor against hell; it will destroy vice, deliver from sin and dispel heresy.

** 4. **The rosary will make virtue and good works flourish, and will obtain for souls the most abundant divine mercies. It will draw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.

** 5. **Those who trust themselves to me through the Rosary will not perish.

** 6. **Whoever recites my Rosary devoutly reflecting on the mysteries, shall never be overwhelmed by misfortune. He will not experience the anger of God nor will he perish by an unprovided death. The sinner will be converted; the just will persevere in grace and merit eternal life.

** 7. **Those truly devoted to my Rosary shall not die without the sacraments of the Church.

** 8. **Those who are faithful to recite my Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plenitude of His graces and will share in the merits of the blessed.

** 9. **I will deliver promptly from purgatory souls devoted to my Rosary.

** 10. **True children of my Rosary will enjoy great glory in heaven.

** 11. **What you shall ask through my Rosary you shall obtain.

** 12. **To those who propagate my Rosary I promise aid in all their necessities.

** 13. **I have obtained from my Son that all the members of the Rosary Confraternity shall have as their intercessors, in life and in death, the entire celestial court.

** 14. **Those who recite my Rosary faithfully are my beloved children, the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.

** 15. **Devotion to my Rosary is a special sign of predestination.

 

[Polycarp1]

Of course God knows the future, what will happen. God knows what sins you will commit, yet you pray to avoid them. Or God knows a child will die but you pray that the child won’t die. It seems prayers would be useless if the outcome is already determined. Unless we we say God knew you would pray for this or that and he gave a certain outcome.

For me, destiny, what God knew would happen, seems sometimes to make my prayers fruitless. This concept could be applied to creation. Why create a world that you knew would be evil. It is possible to say it was created that way so that there would be a "bad’ to counteract the good but sometimes it seems so purposless. Knowing all this you could say that God knew Jesus would suffer before the creation of the world (which is the teaching of the church). So eons could have been passing while this plan was still to take place no matter what.

For my finite mind it will always be perplexing. Any thoughts? It’s not really a question?

God is eternally present. As stated he is not limited by time or space. It is man who marks time in a linear fashion and God speaks to us in ways that we will understand, but after all how does the all knowing all seeing “eternal Being” explain himself to man with our limited capacity and intellect. (Talk about having to dummy things down!) That is how God can see and know what will happen in our future without interfering with our freewill to choose. God looks as our lives in terms of eternity and not as we often do as the short period between birth and physical death. He knows that like it or not that we are here spiritually for all eternity and that our time of earth is just a drop of water compared to the unlimited sea of eternity.
While we see the loss of life through disasters, disease or crime as something immediately horrible, God is more concerned with the rest of eternity than how long we actually physically inhabit the earth. The good dying young is only terrible to us as it reminds of our own physical frailty but young is not that big a deal when we are talking eternity. Never-the-less it can be painful for us to see and God does care even if I may sound a little callous.
God is love. Love cannot be forced and can only be given freely. God created man and wants them to love Him so in order to be true to His nature he had to give us the option not to love him, even to hate Him. God will not force his love on us. It follows that God has His positive will and His permissive will allowing us to accept or reject Him. In order for us to have freewill we have to be able to choose between good and evil. As He created us in His own image an instinct for good is instilled or inherent in us. (His precepts were written on our hearts so to speak) We can reject this and do when we sin. We can rationalize it away. When we choose evil we cut ourselves off, individually or collectively, from God’s grace. When we cut ourselves off from God’s grace bad things can and will happen again individually or collectively. It’s our choice. Only repentance and prayer can restore our life of grace from God. When we ask how can God let that terrible thing happen, we are usually looking at things from our own limited point of view and our own limited sense of what we want justice to be. We don’t often see things through the eyes of God. When we do it’s called Wisdom.

 

[wcknight]

I think God ‘can’ know or predict the future, BUT I think He chooses not to pre ordain or look into anyone’s future beyond deteriming how long one has to live, except maybe for some special cases.

One would be the determination of bringing Christ into the world. That was planned long ago. Another may be Judas and his betrayal, and a third may be when they end of the world will occur.

Otherwise I think God lets us use our free will and best judgement to control our own lives. IF we ask for help He may or may not intervene. Depends on the situation, and how much faith we have. He has given us angels to assist us, but how much they can help is not certain.

 

[DigitalFish_20]

Fate and free will are not necessarily opposites of each other. Someone can be fated to make a choice.

The way I see it, God has His plans for everyone, but we still can make choices to freely accept or reject it along the way.

 

[belorg]

Fate and free will are not necessarily opposites of each other. Someone can be fated to make a choice.

The way I see it, God has His plans for everyone, but we still can make choices to freely accept or reject it along the way.

How is a ‘fated’ choice free in any way?

 

[Perplexity]

It seems to me that the only way God could know the future decisions, or actions of free-moral agents, is if something like compatibilism was true. That is, only if free-will is such that it would exist regardless of whether determinism was true, could God know the future decisions, or actions of free-moral agents.

If indeterminism is a necessary condition for a moral agent to be free with respect to X, then prior to the agent’s of X, there is no fact of the matter whether or not X will obtain. But, if there is no fact of the matter, then there is no true proposition to be known. Hence, an omnipotent God wouldn’t know whether X will or will not obtain prior to its actual occurrence.

 

[DigitalFish_20]

How is a ‘fated’ choice free in any way?

I am viewing it as freedom in the positive sense.

To define some terms:

Negative freedom is freedom from external interference that prevents you from doing what you want, when you want to do it.

Positive freedom is the freedom to control and direct one’s own life by discriminating between all possible opportunities.

To illustrate the difference: I was born with an aptitude for academics, but I am only average in physical strength. I did not choose to be born with the skill set I currently posses; my freedom is restricted in the negative sense; however, from that starting point, I have a wide array things I can discern, choose, and decide to do with those skills.

Another example: schooling is very restrictive in the negative sense; however, it trains me to sharpen my intellect and critical thinking skills. As a result of those options, I have a greater ability to direct my life and thus I have more positive freedom.

 

[johnnyjones]

I have heard said that God exists out of time, so his knowing of events is due them already having come to pass because he does not exist in time as we know it. In some ways its not quite the complete answer. But if everything has been determined, which i believe it is not, then we still have the duty to do the best because we cannot know what god had in mind. For some it is a way to marginalize the effects of sin, saying ‘oh no God knew i was going to sin, so he is responsible not I,’ but our freedom lies not with whether or not God knows what we do, but with whether we do what is right with what we know. I detract. For me thinking God as existing out of time has helped me come to terms with this question.

Another thing seems to be a question as to why God allowed evil to occur, and this is a question philosophers have struggled with since the beginning. The existence of evil exists because good exits. Let me rephrase. Whether or not something is good or evil depends on a matter of choice. For example we perceive natural disasters to be evil events, but they are not evil, even if they kill people. We assign the evil to the event, but it just exists, it cannot choose its actions. Now as rational beings we can choose, and then the actions that arise from them can be judged as being good or evil. But that very ability to choose evil also means that good can be chosen, so good actions do come out. If good is to exist then evil must also exist along it because if not there is no choice and thus there is no good, everything would be good and no one would be free.

I hope you can make sense out of this, it confuses me and I wrote it!

I understand what you are saying. I may have written it the same way but you put a few extras in there I didn’t fully contemplate. Thank you.

 

[johnnyjones]

Like you, I am “born again” to use the Protestant phrase.
Anyway, I find that the old hunters saying “You think too much, its better to just aim” goes a long way. I find that it is easier to have the faith of a little child, and just accept the teaching of Holy Mother Church instead of intellectualizing everything.
So many times it is Satan nudging our egos that causes us to nit pick our faith. This makes us suceptable to false teaching and heresy.
When you are tempted to such thoughts, say a simple prayer, like “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner” followed by a couple of Hail Marys.
If you must intellectualize, why not begin by reading some of the classics of Holy Mother Church, like “The Immitation of Christ”.

Yes I have gotten too deep at times, your right. I like the saying you quoted. Thanks.

 

[johnnyjones]

God knows everything and knows the outcome of every possible combination of choices a soul will or could have made. He knows that if you pray for your family certain graces will come to them; He also knows that if you do not pray for your family certain graces will not come to them. About prayer, Archbishop Sheen explained that there are countless favors hanging from heaven on silken cords, and prayer is the sword that cuts them down.

An analogy should help. Three possible scenarios which God knows the outcome of:

A) A man hiking in the wilderness is destined to be gobbled up by the hungry lion, provided the man forgets to take his rifle.

**B) **The same man is destined to aim his rifle and pull the trigger to shoot the lion, provided he remembers to take his rifle.

C) The lion is destined to be killed by the bullet exiting the man’s rifle, provided the man’s wife prays that he not forget to load his rifle before he goes into the wilderness.

Thus it is true that we should never cease to pray, never cease to commend ourselves and our loved ones in prayer to God’s protection. Now read all the graces that flow into a person’s life, provided the daily rosary is prayed with devotion:

FIFTEEN PROMISES OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN TO CHRISTIANS WHO FAITHFULLY PRAY THE ROSARY

** 1. **To all those who shall pray my Rosary devoutly, I promise my special protection and great graces.

** 2. **Those who shall persevere in the recitation of my Rosary will receive some special grace.

** 3. **The Rosary will be a very powerful armor against hell; it will destroy vice, deliver from sin and dispel heresy.

** 4. **The rosary will make virtue and good works flourish, and will obtain for souls the most abundant divine mercies. It will draw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.

** 5. **Those who trust themselves to me through the Rosary will not perish.

** 6. **Whoever recites my Rosary devoutly reflecting on the mysteries, shall never be overwhelmed by misfortune. He will not experience the anger of God nor will he perish by an unprovided death. The sinner will be converted; the just will persevere in grace and merit eternal life.

** 7. **Those truly devoted to my Rosary shall not die without the sacraments of the Church.

** 8. **Those who are faithful to recite my Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plenitude of His graces and will share in the merits of the blessed.

** 9. **I will deliver promptly from purgatory souls devoted to my Rosary.

** 10. **True children of my Rosary will enjoy great glory in heaven.

** 11. **What you shall ask through my Rosary you shall obtain.

** 12. **To those who propagate my Rosary I promise aid in all their necessities.

** 13. **I have obtained from my Son that all the members of the Rosary Confraternity shall have as their intercessors, in life and in death, the entire celestial court.

** 14. **Those who recite my Rosary faithfully are my beloved children, the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.

** 15. **Devotion to my Rosary is a special sign of predestination.

Very informative an helpful. Thank you.

 

[belorg]

I am viewing it as freedom in the positive sense.

To define some terms:

Negative freedom is freedom from external interference that prevents you from doing what you want, when you want to do it.

Positive freedom is the freedom to control and direct one’s own life by discriminating between all possible opportunities.

So, fated choices are not positive free choices.

To illustrate the difference: I was born with an aptitude for academics, but I am only average in physical strength. I did not choose to be born with the skill set I currently posses; my freedom is restricted in the negative sense; however, from that starting point, I have a wide array things I can discern, choose, and decide to do with those skills.

Not if you are fated to make a certain choice.

Another example: schooling is very restrictive in the negative sense; however, it trains me to sharpen my intellect and critical thinking skills. As a result of those options, I have a greater ability to direct my life and thus I have more positive freedom.

Pergaps, but I feel you still haven’t asnwered my question: how can a choice that was fated be free?

 

[belorg]

It seems to me that the only way God could know the future decisions, or actions of free-moral agents, is if something like compatibilism was true. That is, only if free-will is such that it would exist regardless of whether determinism was true, could God know the future decisions, or actions of free-moral agents.

If indeterminism is a necessary condition for a moral agent to be free with respect to X, then prior to the agent’s of X, there is no fact of the matter whether or not X will obtain. But, if there is no fact of the matter, then there is no true proposition to be known. Hence, an omnipotent God wouldn’t know whether X will or will not obtain prior to its actual occurrence.

I think that is true.
It is impossible to have factual knowlegde about counterfactuals.

 

[johnnyjones]

I think that is true.
It is impossible to have factual knowlegde about counterfactuals.

Would a God who is capable of creating a universe need man made understandings to know the future?

 

[DigitalFish_20]

So, fated choices are not positive free choices.

Not if you are fated to make a certain choice.

Pergaps, but I feel you still haven’t answered my question: how can a choice that was fated be free?

You’re going to have to define what you mean by “free” for me. Its a word with many commonly used meanings and I do not think we have the same definition in mind.

I also don’t see how being thrust into a circumstance removes positive freedom from one’s life. Within a situation I can freely make choices that have lasting consequences. For example, I might be thrust onto a scene in which I am witnessing someone being attacked. I have no control over being put into this situation, but from there I can still choose whether to assist the person or walk away.

I also ask that you provide reasoning for why you think it removes positive freedom, or I cannot really offer much to say as I do not know what you are looking for.

 

[Gabriel_Serafin]

how can a choice that was fated be free?

Man’s intellect is made for truth, and his human will is made for goodness and love. Since God is Truth, Goodness and Love itself, man was destined for serve God. But man is free to choose to misuse his intellect and will; this misuse is called sin. Sin is a willful rejection of God. God knows who will be saved, and who will not, much like we know won the past Superbowl. You can watch a taped video of the game from beginning to the and already know all the choices made by the players and coaches, but you already know the fate of the game.

Time and matter came into existence together, whereas God exists* outside of time and matter* which means the past and the future are present to Him. Thus in your time on earth God showers you with actual grace and good inspirations, but you are free to ignore, and reject them, or to act and do God’s will.

 

[johnnyjones]

Man’s intellect is made for truth, and his human will is made for goodness and love. Since God is Truth, Goodness and Love itself, man was destined for serve God. But man is free to choose to misuse his intellect and will; this misuse is called sin. Sin is a willful rejection of God. God knows who will be saved, and who will not, much like we know won the past Superbowl. You can watch a taped video of the game from beginning to the and already know all the choices made by the players and coaches, but you already know the fate of the game.

Time and matter came into existence together, whereas God exists* outside of time and matter* which means the past and the future are present to Him. Thus in your time on earth God showers you with actual grace and good inspirations, but you are free to ignore, and reject them, or to act and do God’s will.

But if he knows what your going to do, why are you praying about it? Thats my dilema. Don’t get me wrong, I will continue to pray. I’m just looking for a fuller understanding. I don’t see how the football game analogy helps. maybe it could be elaborated upon. Is it fair to say that God knew before the dawn of existence that I would pray for or about a particular thing, so the outcome was set anyway? I always think of praying in the moment for a situation but forget it’s all planned already. In addition, prayer is to change me, not to always alter an outcome (I think).