Can free will be possible with an all knowing God?

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agarber

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This is a question that hangs on me and I have yet to find an answer I can wrap my mind around. I will try my best to explain what I mean but this question.

If God is an all knowing God who knows everything from the beginning to the end of time, then that would mean he knows what we will do today, tomorrow, and the day that we die. God knows who will be saved and who will turn away from him. God knows every decision I will make before I even know I have a choice of a decision.

My conflict is that if this is true, then how I am truly living a life of free will? Yes I can say and feel that I made the decision as to what shirt to wear today, but God knew what my decision would have been before I made it. This to me makes me feel like I am living through a predestined script of my life that God knows every detail of rather than truly guiding my own path of life through the decisions I make.

This is not a way of trying to say that what we do does not matter or that our decisions are with out consequence, but rather that God already knows if in the end we will make the right decision to follow him or to reject him. How is this free will if the end of our life stories is already known?

I hope that helps my question make sense.
 
agarber said:
how I am truly living a life of free will?
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Perhaps the following thought experiment might help.

There are plenty of books and movies that include the theme of time travel in it. However, we already know (from history) what choices and decisions people made in the past. Thus, if we were to time warp together invisibly and imperceptibly back to the US East Coast around 1776 and thereafter, we would see history unfold as it did - assuming we didn’t interfere, of course (and for our thought experiment let’s also make this impossible - the characters of history cannot be aware of our presence nor does our presence alter anything at all - we’re like an invisible ghost, let’s say). Notwithstanding, our own personal knowledge of what the US Founding Fathers would say and do on such-and-such a day and at such-and-such a time, doesn’t mean they didn’t (or aren’t) actually freely making those decisions.

In other words, knowledge of what someone will actually choose to do doesn’t mean they didn’t freely make that choice. We are writing history, so to speak, every moment of our lives: each of our decisions becomes concrete and can be known to others. Notwithstanding, this does not mean we aren’t freely making the decisions.

Again, and in summary, there is no reason for us to assume that knowledge of people’s decisions makes those decisions predetermined. Why should that be the case? Again, we know history but that doesn’t mean the persons involved in it didn’t freely make their decisions any less freely than we make our own.

So our own experience tells us that we can make choices between alternatives based on our own reasons, one; and two, our knowledge also tells us that while we can know that we freely choose, our knowing this does not change the reality of it.

Hope this helps!
 
agarber said:
This is a question that hangs on me and I have yet to find an answer I can wrap my mind around. I will try my best to explain what I mean but this question.

If God is an all knowing God who knows everything from the beginning to the end of time, then that would mean he knows what we will do today, tomorrow, and the day that we die. God knows who will be saved and who will turn away from him. God knows every decision I will make before I even know I have a choice of a decision.
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Your problem arises from the assumption that knowledge amounts to compulsion -which is certainly not self-evident and has to be proved. Often we can predict what people will do but we obviously have no effect on their behaviour unless we tell them. Then they may well do the opposite to prove we’re wrong!

We also have to remember that God’s knowledge is completely different from ours. How can we possibly know He is incapable of giving us free will? It could also be argued that we cannot have free will because God has created us and sustains us every moment of our existence. How can creatures possibly reject their Creator?

One answer lies in the reality of evil. If we don’t have free will then evil is an illusion because we’re not responsible for anything we do. It is absurd to blame us if we have no choice. Yet we do blame ourselves and others - and feel very strongly about injustice and causing unnecessary suffering. Why?
 
agarber said:
This is a question that hangs on me and I have yet to find an answer I can wrap my mind around. I will try my best to explain what I mean but this question.

If God is an all knowing God who knows everything from the beginning to the end of time, then that would mean he knows what we will do today, tomorrow, and the day that we die. God knows who will be saved and who will turn away from him. God knows every decision I will make before I even know I have a choice of a decision.

My conflict is that if this is true, then how I am truly living a life of free will? Yes I can say and feel that I made the decision as to what shirt to wear today, but God knew what my decision would have been before I made it. This to me makes me feel like I am living through a predestined script of my life that God knows every detail of rather than truly guiding my own path of life through the decisions I make.

This is not a way of trying to say that what we do does not matter or that our decisions are with out consequence, but rather that God already knows if in the end we will make the right decision to follow him or to reject him. How is this free will if the end of our life stories is already known?

I hope that helps my question make sense.
Click to expand...
While God knows your decision, he is not forcing you to choose what you choose, the choice is yours.
 
agarber said:
This is a question that hangs on me and I have yet to find an answer I can wrap my mind around. I will try my best to explain what I mean but this question.

If God is an all knowing God who knows everything from the beginning to the end of time, then that would mean he knows what we will do today, tomorrow, and the day that we die. God knows who will be saved and who will turn away from him. God knows every decision I will make before I even know I have a choice of a decision.

My conflict is that if this is true, then how I am truly living a life of free will? Yes I can say and feel that I made the decision as to what shirt to wear today, but God knew what my decision would have been before I made it. This to me makes me feel like I am living through a predestined script of my life that God knows every detail of rather than truly guiding my own path of life through the decisions I make.

This is not a way of trying to say that what we do does not matter or that our decisions are with out consequence, but rather that God already knows if in the end we will make the right decision to follow him or to reject him. How is this free will if the end of our life stories is already known?

I hope that helps my question make sense.
Click to expand...
In the past, I’ve used the following analogy.

A free choice is made in the human mind. It’s a process that goes on in my thoughts, which begins with some information about the choice I’m making, and proceeds through the choice itself, until I make my decision.

Now, suppose some fortune teller on the other side of the world were reading a crystal ball or something, and received a revelation of the decision I was about to make. Just the fact that she knew what decision I was about to make doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be making that decision. The process going on in my mind would still be under my control.

Even if she used her knowledge of my actions to prevent me from getting what I wanted, the process in my thoughts wouldn’t have been changed by that. My decision would still be my own. Therefore, neither being predicted, nor being routed takes away free will.

P.S.: In fact, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, we have free will because God commands that we have free will.

P.P.S.: By contrast, without that command, everything would just be the result of chemical reactions and such, which would make the universe fully deterministic, and therefore make free choices impossible.
 
agarber said:
This is a question that hangs on me and I have yet to find an answer I can wrap my mind around. I will try my best to explain what I mean but this question.

If God is an all knowing God who knows everything from the beginning to the end of time, then that would mean he knows what we will do today, tomorrow, and the day that we die. God knows who will be saved and who will turn away from him. God knows every decision I will make before I even know I have a choice of a decision.

My conflict is that if this is true, then how I am truly living a life of free will? Yes I can say and feel that I made the decision as to what shirt to wear today, but God knew what my decision would have been before I made it. This to me makes me feel like I am living through a predestined script of my life that God knows every detail of rather than truly guiding my own path of life through the decisions I make.

This is not a way of trying to say that what we do does not matter or that our decisions are with out consequence, but rather that God already knows if in the end we will make the right decision to follow him or to reject him. How is this free will if the end of our life stories is already known?

I hope that helps my question make sense.
Click to expand...
When you watch a movie so many times that you know every line, every scene etc., nothing comes as a surprise, does that mean you have the power to change whatever the main character is gonna do or say next? You have as much power to change whatever a character in a movie is gonna say next as God has the power to (insert example of something that you know is displeasing to God, that he doesn’t approve of, yet that he allows because he respects people’s free-will). Next question.
 
agarber said:
This is a question that hangs on me and I have yet to find an answer I can wrap my mind around. I will try my best to explain what I mean but this question.

If God is an all knowing God who knows everything from the beginning to the end of time, then that would mean he knows what we will do today, tomorrow, and the day that we die. God knows who will be saved and who will turn away from him. God knows every decision I will make before I even know I have a choice of a decision.

My conflict is that if this is true, then how I am truly living a life of free will? Yes I can say and feel that I made the decision as to what shirt to wear today, but God knew what my decision would have been before I made it. This to me makes me feel like I am living through a predestined script of my life that God knows every detail of rather than truly guiding my own path of life through the decisions I make.

This is not a way of trying to say that what we do does not matter or that our decisions are with out consequence, but rather that God already knows if in the end we will make the right decision to follow him or to reject him. How is this free will if the end of our life stories is already known?

I hope that helps my question make sense.
Click to expand...
Sure, your question makes sense. God knows what we will do before we do it but never tells us. So, your free will is indeed free.

Peace,
Ed
 
agarber said:
This is a question that hangs on me and I have yet to find an answer I can wrap my mind around. I will try my best to explain what I mean but this question.

If God is an all knowing God who knows everything from the beginning to the end of time, then that would mean he knows what we will do today, tomorrow, and the day that we die. God knows who will be saved and who will turn away from him. God knows every decision I will make before I even know I have a choice of a decision.

My conflict is that if this is true, then how I am truly living a life of free will? Yes I can say and feel that I made the decision as to what shirt to wear today, but God knew what my decision would have been before I made it. This to me makes me feel like I am living through a predestined script of my life that God knows every detail of rather than truly guiding my own path of life through the decisions I make.

This is not a way of trying to say that what we do does not matter or that our decisions are with out consequence, but rather that God already knows if in the end we will make the right decision to follow him or to reject him. How is this free will if the end of our life stories is already known?

I hope that helps my question make sense.
Click to expand...
God omniscience in strong form (knowledge of our decisions) is false as it can be shown that it leads to determinism. The proof is in fact very easy, namely creation is made of things (that move according to the law of nature) and beings (who make decision in each given situation), so knowing of decisions of beings implements that the state of creation evolves deterministically.
 
agarber said:
This is a question that hangs on me and I have yet to find an answer I can wrap my mind around. I will try my best to explain what I mean but this question.

If God is an all knowing God who knows everything from the beginning to the end of time, then that would mean he knows what we will do today, tomorrow, and the day that we die. God knows who will be saved and who will turn away from him. God knows every decision I will make before I even know I have a choice of a decision.

My conflict is that if this is true, then how I am truly living a life of free will? Yes I can say and feel that I made the decision as to what shirt to wear today, but God knew what my decision would have been before I made it. This to me makes me feel like I am living through a predestined script of my life that God knows every detail of rather than truly guiding my own path of life through the decisions I make.

This is not a way of trying to say that what we do does not matter or that our decisions are with out consequence, but rather that God already knows if in the end we will make the right decision to follow him or to reject him. How is this free will if the end of our life stories is already known?

I hope that helps my question make sense.
Click to expand...
I believe that free will is “possible with an all knowing God” because the all knowing, all present, and eternal attributes of God allow Him to keep tabs on and communicate with His creatures and His creation from beginning to end. And since God has no beginning and no ending and that “He sees the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10), He is able to perceive at once in total all the past, present, and future choices that human beings have made. God’s knowledge of all events is based on His eternity; in other words, all things are equally present to God. He has the results of every choice that has ever been made in the past, is being made now, and will be made in the future as though they were sitting on His desk.
 
If God knew everything before it happened why would he need to intervene, wouldn’t it have been superior to have created the world which did not need any intervention?
 
the said:
If God knew everything before it happened why would he need to intervene, wouldn’t it have been superior to have created the world which did not need any intervention?
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God, a perfect being, does not need anything. That He intervenes is not for His benefit, but for that of His creatures.
So, no it would not be superior.
 
the said:
If God knew everything before it happened why would he need to intervene, wouldn’t it have been superior to have created the world which did not need any intervention?
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If you have a child is it superior to leave it entirely to its own devices?
 
the said:
If God knew everything before it happened why would he need to intervene, wouldn’t it have been superior to have created the world which did not need any intervention?
Click to expand...
That depends what you mean by “intervention.” In a certain sense, creating the world is already a type of “intervention.” Therefore, it’s impossible to create a world that does not require “intervention” in this sense.

If what you’re saying, however, is that it’s more perfect to create a world in which all of your interactions with the world (creating, supporting, interacting with it, etc…) are all done at once, during the same act of creation, well, guess what? That’s exactly what God did.

According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, all of the actions of God upon the world, though they may seem separate to us, because of our being stuck within linear time, nevertheless, in God, are only a single action. It is a perfect, eternal action, which has always been done and will always be done by God. We just don’t see all of the effects of this action at once.
 
mytruepower2 said:
In the past, I’ve used the following analogy.

A free choice is made in the human mind. It’s a process that goes on in my thoughts, which begins with some information about the choice I’m making, and proceeds through the choice itself, until I make my decision.
Click to expand...
This argument works for humans, but it doesn’t work for God. God has perfect foreknowledge of both what others will do and what He Himself will do.

Does God have free will, or is He constrained to act in the way He already knows that He will act?

rossum
 
rossum said:
This argument works for humans, but it doesn’t work for God. God has perfect foreknowledge of both what others will do and what He Himself will do.

Does God have free will, or is He constrained to act in the way He already knows that He will act?

rossum
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For all we know, God might have a taste in celestial music, with hyper-dimensional harmonic overtones, and featuring choirs of angels doing Michael Jackson moonwalks, while at the same time He considers the fate of billions on earth.

He’s quite free to do what He likes for His own good pleasure, but constrained by His concern for His creatures viz. “Not a sparrow falls without your Father’s consent”. He will be faithful to Himself in HIs concern for others, and therefore in that sense constrained. But He is constrained only because He made us, and therefore is responsible for us.

I think it is this constraint for the sake of others, that allows the devil so much power, and that is what the devil plays on. It’s like a criminal using the fine points of the law through a clever barrister to get away with murder. The law has to be faithful to itself (if you’ll pardon a sense of cynicism even as I write this), and as a result, it is under constraint.

We’d be better employed to remember the choice He sets before all of us, as articulated to the ancient Jews -
Deuteronomy 30:19 NIV "This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.** Now choose **life, so that you and your children may live.
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That’s our choice, whether God sees it in advance or not.
 
agarber said:
This is not a way of trying to say that what we do does not matter or that our decisions are with out consequence, but rather that God already knows if in the end we will make the right decision to follow him or to reject him. How is this free will if the end of our life stories is already known?
Click to expand...
Interesting question. Had a look around but couldn’t see a clear answer. Apparently it’s taxed philosophers for centuries. These links are not easy but they do at least show how many people have tried to work it out:

plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/
plato.stanford.edu/entries/omniscience/

There’s an old thread on whether the CCC teaches an all-knowing God dogmatically but I don’t think it reached any conclusions - forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=121193
 
rossum said:
This argument works for humans, but it doesn’t work for God. God has perfect foreknowledge of both what others will do and what He Himself will do.

Does God have free will, or is He constrained to act in the way He already knows that He will act?

rossum
Click to expand...
Well, firstly, nothing about the argument has failed with regard to the question as it was originally asked. Namely, can free will be possible with an all knowing God? This example, in fact, establishes that it can be possible for people to have free will, even if God knows what actions they will take in the future. God’s knowledge is not a causal factor, and so it does nothing to interfere with the free will of human beings.

However, the objection that you do raise is only problematic if you believe that God is a temporal being who progresses from one moment to the next, and this isn’t the view I hold. In my view, God’s will is free because he might not have done some of the things he did, and still did them because he chose to, but not in the sense of his thoughts progressing from one moment to the next.

Furthermore, in a certain sense, it’s not right to speak of God knowing about an action of his, then doing it later. God is a timeless entity, and so to him, there is no “earlier” and “later.” He is perfectly present at all times, and views them as a fundamentally simple whole, rather than a series of connected events, as we do.

In fact, in a way, you could say that God’s knowledge isn’t propositional at all.
 
agarber said:
This is a question that hangs on me and I have yet to find an answer I can wrap my mind around. I will try my best to explain what I mean but this question.

If God is an all knowing God who knows everything from the beginning to the end of time, then that would mean he knows what we will do today, tomorrow, and the day that we die. God knows who will be saved and who will turn away from him. God knows every decision I will make before I even know I have a choice of a decision.

My conflict is that if this is true, then how I am truly living a life of free will? Yes I can say and feel that I made the decision as to what shirt to wear today, but God knew what my decision would have been before I made it. This to me makes me feel like I am living through a predestined script of my life that God knows every detail of rather than truly guiding my own path of life through the decisions I make.

This is not a way of trying to say that what we do does not matter or that our decisions are with out consequence, but rather that God already knows if in the end we will make the right decision to follow him or to reject him. How is this free will if the end of our life stories is already known?

I hope that helps my question make sense.
Click to expand...
perhaps things are not true or false until they actually take place. To use an analogy, “I am eating ice-cream.” How would you know from the statement alone that I am indeed actually eating ice-cream? There’s no way, you would have to see me actually eating ice-cream in order to say that the statement is true. “someday I will die,” you could be tempted to say that the statement is true, but, why should it be true now? a more accurate way of seeing this is that it will be true when it takes place.
 
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