Free Will v. Fate

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PhanxicoXavier

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What is the Catholic teaching on Free Will versus Fate? Thank you.
 
Disclaimer: I’m not a philosopher by any stretch of the imagination. But here’s something we need to keep in mind when it comes to free will versus fate. God knows everything, including what we are going to choose to do or not do. But there is no causal relationship between His foreknowing and our choices.

Example: Jesus knew Judas Iscariot would betray Him. But Judas chose to betray Jesus. Jesus, by foreknowing what Judas would do, did not cause Judas to betray Him.
 
Victorious said:
Disclaimer: I’m not a philosopher by any stretch of the imagination. But here’s something we need to keep in mind when it comes to free will versus fate. God knows everything, including what we are going to choose to do or not do. But there is no causal relationship between His foreknowing and our choices.

Example: Jesus knew Judas Iscariot would betray Him. But Judas chose to betray Jesus. Jesus, by foreknowing what Judas would do, did not cause Judas to betray Him.
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I think you are quite the closet philosopher, Victorious. You should give yourself more credit. 😉 Great explanation.👍
 
Victorious said:
Example: Jesus knew Judas Iscariot would betray Him. But Judas chose to betray Jesus. Jesus, by foreknowing what Judas would do, did not cause Judas to betray Him.
Click to expand...
Yes. People have free will, but imagine if you could travel through time. If you went into the future you could learn what someone had done, then come back to the present and “predict” it. That doesn’t force him to then go and do it; you just know what he’s going to choose because you’ve seen the future. Similarly if you learned the results of tomorrow’s lottery, it doesn’t mean the numbers aren’t chosen randomly from millions of possibilities, just that you know which number is going to be randomly chosen. God created space and time, and he exists outside of time as well as in all times. His omniscience includes complete knowledge of the future, but just because he knows how you will exercise your free choice doesn’t mean it isn’t free choice.
 
I’m readin’ through the Summa entry on “Fate”:
newadvent.org/summa/1116.htm

What does Boethius mean when he says:
“As reasoning is to the intellect, as the begotten is to that which is, as time to eternity, as the circle to its centre; so is the fickle chain of fate to the unwavering simplicity of Providence.” ?
 
PhanxicoXavier said:
I’m readin’ through the Summa entry on “Fate”:
newadvent.org/summa/1116.htm

What does Boethius mean when he says:
“As reasoning is to the intellect, as the begotten is to that which is, as time to eternity, as the circle to its centre; so is the fickle chain of fate to the unwavering simplicity of Providence.” ?
Click to expand...
The analogy is obscure, but I think he means, basically, this: Reasoning is an instrument of the intellect. The begotten is produced by what (currently) is. Time falls in line within eternity. A circle is produced by reference to its center. Likewise, the “fickle” (or so it seems to us) “chain of fate” is produced by and is an instrument of Providence (the Divine Mind of God), and it doesn’t go off on its own, but is defined by reference to the Divine Mind, and is chained to it.

So, Boethius writes:
[T]he order of destiny issues from the essential simplicity of providence. For as the artificer, forming in his mind the idea of the thing to be made, carries out his design and develops from moment to moment what he had before seen in single instant as a whole, so God in His providence ordains all things as parts of a single unchanging whole, but carries out these very ordinances by fate in a time of manifold unity. (De Consol. IV).
Therefore, because God has set things in the world into motion, and determined the laws by which they will interact and cause other things to happen, things “which otherwise would ebb and flow at random” are in fact restricted by causal laws subsisting within the Divine Mind, “[a]nd so it happens that although to you who are not altogether capable of understanding this order all things seem confused and disordered, nevertheless there is everywhere an appointed limit which guides all things to good.” And because men are in the world, “the destinies of men” are bound “by an indissoluble nexus of causality, and, since it issues in the beginning from unalterable providence, these destinies also must of necessity be immutable.”
 
I believe that there are boundaries on our free will–we can will all we like to become a major league pitcher, but without the natural ability, it is not going to happen–and I believe that God sees all times as a single all-visible Now, but I also think there are relatively few times when the boundaries of free will narrow down one’s destiny to a single immutable Fate that could not have happened a different way, no matter what one’s choices were. It is much less all-or-nothing than that. It is my understanding that this is within Church teaching.
 
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