Just to get the intellectual juices flowing, consider this argument:
- God’s knowledge is true and comprehensively consists of all things past, present, future, and contingent, including those acts of the human will that are done freely.
- Since God’s knowledge is true and comprehensive, no human can perform any act that would in any way modify God’s knowledge.
- Therefore, all expressions of human free will are confined to and work from within the boundaries of God’s knowledge.
Put differently, humans, by their free acts, do not have the ability to alter (make false) any aspect of God’s knowledge. Free acts of the will are confined within the parameters of God’s knowledge. This is not to say that God’s knowledge of free acts causes human acts. Only, that no human activity is outside the scope of God’s knowledge, which is the stage upon which all human activity plays out in time. If God’s knowledge is true and comprehensive, and nothing occurs that has not been known, planned, and permitted by God, then humans are not “free” in any absolute, autonomous sense. Human freedom, therefore, is relative to God’s true and perfect knowledge.
And so it follows that:
If autonomous free will, then no omniscient God.
If omniscient God, then no autonomous free will.
One cannot have their cake and eat it too.
Nice topic for consideration Paul: So here’s what came to me – God’s knowledge is timeliness, limitless and agreeably extends from before the beginning and past any possible end. God knows all before, during and after any action. God created boundaries as we understand them, therefore isn’t God’s knowledge limitless – all things created by God have limits. Knowledge can be a confiner in human terms when we would, for example, refuse to learn. God doesn’t give us a box within which to choose x or y, although he knows our choices and the outcomes he does not force us to chose them nor does he limit the choices we have. Freewill is the ability for the individual to choose and not have the decision laid upon them – God knows the outcome but doesn’t change our ability to choose. If we are placed on the path and don’t choose our path, wouldn’t we long for something else – something that would free us?
Thanks Paul – there is no time better spent than in discussion with God!
Greetings Gina and thanks for commenting.
As I understand you, I believe you’re summing many of the things I offer. My take is basically: God’s knowledge is a constraint within which all human choices are made. Thus, no human choice falls outside God’s knowledge. Of course, this does not entail human choices are not free in some sense; only they are not free in any absolute sense. Put differently, human choices are relatively free, not absolutely free; free that is with respect to God’s knowledge.
As for God’s knowledge being “timeless”….well, the jury’s still out on that one, at least for me, because I need better to understand God’s relationship to time. See, e.g., Bill Craig’s article “Omniscience, Tensed Facts, and Divine Eternity”.