Freewill v Predestination

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Quick question-actually, the question belongs to my son-“if we have freewill how can God know ahead of time what’s going to happen?” :confused:
Please validate your response, as my son will most certainly ask me for proof (he asked his CCD teacher but, the guy basically, side-stepped the question with some lame excuse!) I posted this question earlier in AAA area but, I don’t think that forum is actually up and running at the moment. At any rate, thanks in advance.
 
When I drop a ball I know that if I exercise my free-will and catch it again it will be caught.
 
God is Infinite, we are finite.

He can see all the possible scenarios. Think of a tree with branches with branches growing out of those branches etc etc The person is the seed that became the tree, God sees the whole of the fully grown tree and knows which leaf on which twig is our final end, but it is up to us which it is.

While God can know what the eventual outcome will be, He does not CONTROL us except by sending us every grace and blessing, even angels, to help us choose the right path.

Looking back I can see several instances where I made a decision that, although I didn’'t realise it at the time, drew me closer to God.

It is in the choices we make throughout our lives that we either choose God or ultimately reject Him.
 
This subject is not easily understood because it deals with a mystery of God. He by His divine providence allows us a freewill by our own chioces, however also by His divine providence He knows what we will choose. I suggest reading a book called Predestination by Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP. It is in print by TAN books. It is almost 400 pages dealing precisely with this subject. I hope this helps.
 
The best analogy I have heard is the man on the mountain top.

If a man is on a mountain top, and sees a road below him, and sees two cars coming in opposite directions on the road, and knows they are going to crash, does that mean that he caused the crash?

Another analogy is with timelessness

You know what happened yesterday, but cannot change it,

all time is now and all of it is yesterday to God,
so God knows everything, even the future, without changing it.

A lone Raven

Hope these help
 
Rimmer said:
Quick question-actually, the question belongs to my son-“if we have freewill how can God know ahead of time what’s going to happen?” :confused:
Please validate your response, as my son will most certainly ask me for proof (he asked his CCD teacher but, the guy basically, side-stepped the question with some lame excuse!) I posted this question earlier in AAA area but, I don’t think that forum is actually up and running at the moment. At any rate, thanks in advance.
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All of human history is present to God in an “eternal now”. Time is the measure of that which changes. God is without shadow of turning…changeless. If he changed, he would be something now that he wasn’t then, and consequently, not infinite. But he is infinite, as he made us. He made us, thus he is infinite. He is infinite, thus he is changeless. He is changeless, there he is outside of time. He is outside of time, thus he can see “now” what you will do tomorrow, of your own free will.
 
Trelow said:
God trancends time.
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I think this hits the nail on the head. God exists (for lack of a better word) outside of time and space. He sees it all, backwards and forwards. We cannot take human terms that we use to describe the physical cosmos and apply them to God.

God is truly transcendent. If one still wrestles with how God could know/accomplish something, they need to keep “raising” their view of Him until it makes sense.

God is not like the Pantheon where the gods were essentially exaggerated man. He is different. (The mother of all understatements.)

BTW, your sig contains more wisdom than I’ve seen in a thousand postings (especially mine). I think 90% of what everyone says isn’t worth saying.
 
Rimmer said:
Quick question-actually, the question belongs to my son-“if we have freewill how can God know ahead of time what’s going to happen?” :confused:
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To know a thing will happen is not to cause it to happen. Just because God knows every choice you will make, does mean that He causes every choice you will make.
 
a_priori said:
BTW, your sig contains more wisdom than I’ve seen in a thousand postings (especially mine). I think 90% of what everyone says isn’t worth saying.
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The catch is that I usually say it anyway. Still working on that, but at least I’ve identified the problem. 😃
 
Rim - I don’t know how old your son is, but it seems to me that the simplest and most direct answer to his question is that God allows us to choose good or evil (that is, to exercise free will). At the same time, He knows all things (present, past, and future), including which of the two we will choose.

Chuck
 
Just because we know something, dosn’t necessarily mean we caused it. I like the guy on the mountian watching example. I was in that situation myself yesterday. I pulled my car out of a parking space and had to wait as another guy was backing out in the same row. As I watched a truck started coming around the corner. I could tell they were going to hit each other. Both driving blindly on not paying attention to one another… I honked and a split second later they crashed. I kept thinking… maybe if I had thought to honk sooner they would have stopped to look around? But maybe not too. You know, we humans miss the warnings God all the time. We toodle on without paying attention and then WHAM we hit something and then we say “God why did you allow this to happen??” and He’s over there saying “Why weren’t you paying attention?”
 
Wow! What support. I truly appreciate everyone’s (name removed by moderator)ut. It really is a tough concept to grasp, huh? Naively, I was hoping for a direct-concise answer that would address the issue point blank but, I can see that is apparently an impossible feat.
Like most of ya’ll, I tried approaching the idea from the “afar and up-close” scenario via the “eagle and tortoise story.” ." Atop the tallest tree, an eagle rest upon his perch. His view was far and wide to the forest below. Beneath the limbs, to the ground trudged a tortoise in the sand. To each, life was theirs to live. The difference was perspective although, to both, just as fair. Around the bend, was a drop that fell sharply to jagged rocks. To the eagle, all was clear-shortly, the tortoise would be no more. Without a worry in the world, the tortoise made his way, one step at a time until…The conclusion being, that the eagle because, of his view, was able to know what would take place with the tortoise before it actually took place. Of course, my son said,“but, what if, for whatever reason, the tortoise decided to turn around and back-track?” Wouldn’t the eagle’s (God’s) conclusion be wrong? Obviously, I was at a loss for words-that’s when I decided to seek help from you guys because, it was apparent, I was out of my deepth on the subject.
At any rate, I certainly appreciate the effort-God Bless! 🙂
 
so i have to resurrect this thread and hope that i will be answered this time cuz i was told that it should be discussed here.

this was my post from another topic
stillwater said:
but why can’t he just take away our sins? can’t he think of another way to wash our sins? afterall, he is omnipotent, right? if everything is all his plan, then he surely knows that we will sin…so why not eradicate evil at the very start?
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Predesitnation is a foolish and heretical concept that is the product of the Reformation, where a handful of men had nothing better to do than to randomly philosphisze about such nattersm ti disastrous results. I keep responding here as though there were some equal weight to protestantism, when all it is is a monstrous exclusion of religious truths encompassing many heresies.
 
jbuck919 said:
Predesitnation is a foolish and heretical concept that is the product of the Reformation, where a handful of men had nothing better to do than to randomly philosphisze about such nattersm ti disastrous results. I keep responding here as though there were some equal weight to protestantism, when all it is is a monstrous exclusion of religious truths encompassing many heresies.
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Predestination is explicitly referred to in the Bible! If you’re Catholic, then you have to believe in it! I suggest you go and do a bit of reading on it… Also, your ad hominems on the Reformers really doesn’t help anyone. It just looks like the ravings of a bitter person who isn’t interested in rational debate. Sorry for being candid.

Ephesians 1:11:
In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,
 
stillwater said:
so i have to resurrect this thread and hope that i will be answered this time cuz i was told that it should be discussed here.

this was my post from another topic
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Well that isn’t exactly what happened. Usually in forums (and especially in a forum such as this one, where you can get anywhere up to 100 posts a day in a particular thread), you want to keep each thread focussed on a single topic. Your questions about free will were actually quite off-topic for the other thread; therefore it would be more appropriate to discuss your questions elsewhere. Now, you said:
but why can’t he just take away our sins? can’t he think of another way to wash our sins? afterall, he is omnipotent, right? if everything is all his plan, then he surely knows that we will sin…so why not eradicate evil at the very start?
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Simply for the fact that God loves us. He loves us so much, that He utterly refuses to force us to love Him back. It is not love if it is forced, now is it? I once had a discussion with a Protestant, and I posed the following question to her:
If Mary had not wanted to bear Christ, would God have forced her to anyway?
The Protestant in question did not believe in free will, and answered yes! I was utterly gob-smacked. Now I’m not trying to say that every Protestant believes in this, but perhaps it is a logical conclusion of the denial of free-will.
 
stillwater said:
how bout the seven plagues? didn’t he force the egyptians to worship and/or love him back?
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No. Those were the means by which He manifested His power and obtained the release of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. He wasn’t trying to force their worship and love.
 
jbuck919 said:
Predesitnation is a foolish and heretical concept that is the product of the Reformation, where a handful of men had nothing better to do than to randomly philosphisze about such nattersm ti disastrous results. I keep responding here as though there were some equal weight to protestantism, when all it is is a monstrous exclusion of religious truths encompassing many heresies.
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Properly defined (a la Catholicism), predestination is a teaching of the Church. What the Church doesn’t teach is the notion of some Protestants (of the Calvinist sort) of double-Predestination. This article explains the Catholic teaching:

bringyou.to/apologetics/a83.htm
 
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