How Does God Foreknow Free Choices?

Reasonable Faith ^ | 12/24/2014 | William Lane Craig

[SeekAndFind]

Greetings,

I have been listening to and reading a lot of your material over the last year, and have been learning a lot - not least from the Defenders podcast. I've been searching in your material for the answer to a specific question, but haven't found it - and therefore I write you now.

I'm trying to sort out the matter of free will and God's foreknowledge, and I've come to understand that there is no contradiction between God's foreknowing a free choice, and that choice being truly free. Foreknowing doesn't equal determining.

But - here is my question: How? How does God foreknow what I would freely choose? I can see how he could foresee my choices if I was determined to make a specific choice, based on my genetics/upbringing/situation. But then the will isn't free - is it?

If God knows the position and speed of every particle in the universe - then he could foresee every future event, where the cause/effect is within the realm of materia. But our free choice isn't.

So - in short: By what means can God know what I would freely choose?

Thanks for your time, and for your great work in the Lord.

Paulus

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I’ve addressed this question, Paulus, in Part 3 of my book The Only Wise God (rep.ed.: Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2000). I refer you to the discussion there.

Your question presupposes that God exists in time, as we do. But if God exists timelessly, He does not have literal foreknowledge. For what is future for us is not future for Him. So He knows what is future for us, but He does not foreknow it. Defenders of divine timelessness, then, have no difficulty with your question, since it presupposes a temporal deity.

But suppose we think, as I do, that God does exist at every time that there is and so does literally foreknow the future. As you rightly point out, foreknowledge of free choices cannot be based upon inference from present causes, for that would imply determinism and annihilate free choice. So God must know future free choices in some other way.

In getting at this question, it is useful to distinguish two models of divine cognition: a perceptualist model and a conceptualist model. The perceptualist model thinks of God’s cognition on the analogy of sense perception. This model is implicitly presupposed when people talk, as you do, of God’s “foreseeing future events.” He somehow looks ahead in time and “sees” what is there. The language is metaphorical, but I can think of at least two ways to make a perceptualist model of divine foreknowledge work, though they both involve ontological commitments which I am not willing to make.

One way would be to adopt a tenseless theory of time, according to which all events, past, present, and future, are equally real and temporal becoming is just a subjective illusion of human consciousness. The perceptualist model runs into trouble only if time is tensed, for then there is nothing in the future to see. But if all events in time are equally existent, then there is something there for God to perceive. He can just look and see what actually lies ahead.

Another way would be to hold that there are abstract objects (propositions) which bear the values true or false. On a realist view of such objects, there is no need for God to look into the future in order to know what will happen. Rather He can know the future simply by inspecting future-tense propositions (or tenseless propositions about future events) which presently exist and bear the properties true or false. An omniscient God cannot be ignorant of the properties which presently inhere in things. If we are reluctant, as I am, to ascribe reality to abstract objects like propositions, perhaps we could substitute for propositions God’s own belief states or thoughts and the truth values inhering in them.

But there is no reason to adopt a perceptualist model of divine cognition, which is a terribly anthropomorphic way of thinking of God’s cognition—God certainly doesn’t know mathematical or ethical truths, for example, on the basis of anything like sense perception. Rather we can adopt a conceptualist model, which thinks of God’s knowledge more on the analogy of innate ideas. Plato thought that human knowledge is innate and that education consists in simply helping us to recollect the knowledge that we have forgotten. However implausible such a model might be for human cognition, it seems perfectly suited to divine cognition. As an essentially omniscient being God has the property of believing only and all truths. He didn’t get this knowledge from anywhere; He just has it innately. Compare other divine attributes like omnipotence. It makes no sense to ask how God is omnipotent. Exercise? Practice? No, God simply has the essential property of being omnipotent. In the same way He simply has the essential attribute of being omniscient. But then it follows that He must know all future-tense truths, which gives Him complete knowledge of the future.

I am perfectly satisfied with such a simple conceptualist model of divine cognition, but we can push the analysis a notch further. For if God has what theologians call “middle knowledge,” then foreknowledge immediately follows as a consequence. By His middle knowledge God knows what every free person He could have created would freely do in any set of circumstances in which God might place him. So by creating certain persons and placing them in certain circumstances, God knows exactly what they will do, and that without abridging their freedom in any way. God knows the future simply on the basis of His middle knowledge and His knowledge of His choice of which persons and circumstances to create, without any sort of perception of the world.

Of course, this raises the question of the basis of God’s middle knowledge, and here the same sort of answers will be replayed. For example, if individual essences exist (e.g., your essential properties), then God can simply inspect them to see what contingent counterfactual properties inhere in them concerning what the relevant persons would do in various circumstances, were those essences to be instantiated. I’m inclined to regard God’s middle knowledge simply as innate knowledge, which is His in virtue of being an omniscient being.

[SoothingDave]

We have little brains compared to God. God is outside of time. This doesn’t mean He lives forever, but that He transcends time. The past, the now, the future are all the same.

We really can’t understand. We must live as if our choices have consequences. That much is clear.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

So - in short: By what means can God know what I would freely choose?

The mind of man cannot comprehend such things. He that created Man and Time has no trouble with such pesky things.

[Alex Murphy]

But suppose we think, as I do, that God does exist at every time that there is and so does literally foreknow the future. As you rightly point out, foreknowledge of free choices cannot be based upon inference from present causes, for that would imply determinism and annihilate free choice. So God must know future free choices in some other way.

What a tortured answer! Try "you're too big to box with God." That's the answer right there.

[ExGeeEye]

A very limited example: I have knowledge that a certain large rock in a public park cannot be moved by an adult human acting alone.

Central Park, New York City

Walking through the park with a small child, he runs over to the rock and attempts to push it.

I "foreknow" that the child will be unable to move the rock. That "foreknowledge" has no effect on the desire of the child to make the attempt.

To take it a step further, I may order the child not to make the attempt, on pain of punishment for disobedience. If the child is habitually disobedient or defiant, I may have enough "foreknowledge" to begin mentally preparing to mete out the the punishment before the child leaves my side to go push the rock. This still does not alter the fact that the child has the free will to choose disobedience.

God knows whether we're going to go push the rock before we do. This has no effect on our free choice in the matter.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Hebrews 4:13
Psalm 33:13
Proverbs 15:3

God knows your every move.....

[RushingWater]

But if God exists timelessly,

There is nothing Biblical to support such an answer. It is very consistent theology that God exists like the early church believers believed in time like we do and that our actions are not a reality until they occur. Can God predestine certain events, i.e. like the prophecy of King Cyrus?- yes. But it is consistent with Biblical guide that our choices are not known from eternity past - God talks of evil that never entered His mind, Jesus marveled at a man's faith, God had regrets that he had made man. God knows all that is knowable, but our free will decision to live a life to bless and serve God is exactly that and a decision that God anticipates in real time(Luke 15:10).

[Lee N. Field]

What a tortured answer! Try "you're too big to box with God." That's the answer right there.

"Philosophy and empty deceit"

[shineon]

Einstein said that the only reason for time was so that everything doesn’t happen at once. It could be for God, that everything indeed does happen at once. So in this case free will is known but not determined. On the other hand Predestination is spoken by Paul in the New Testament. He addresses this question and only has this to say. Can the pot say to the potter, “why did you make me this way?”. Another reference is between Jacob and Esau. “From before the womb, Jacob have I loved Esau have I hated”

Jesus delivers to us that God is love. The lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Because it was pre determined, does this make his sacrifice any less out of free will? The garden of Gesthemane says NO. The blood sweat and tears say NO.

Not to mention the rock band who probably had little or no opinions on this matter.

[Nea Wood]

Doesn’t it say somewhere in the Bible that humans had gotten so bad, God regretted making them? That sounds like He didn’t know they were going to get that bad, and if He’d known, He wouldn’t have made them.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

But I believe (like some Gnostics) that God gave us Free Will-—because of this he doesn’t know what we will do—what choices we make—the good ones and the bad. I think that makes the world more interesting for God. God doesn’t know the end of the story—only that its coming. In the choices we make (both good and bad) we learn and grow in spirit. Sometimes the bad choices cause more learning than the good ones.

[odawg]

Concerning: 2 Chron 32:31: “God left him (Hezekiah) to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart.”

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

If God knows that you will freely choose to do X, then you will freely choose to do X. It is a contradiction to say that if God knows you will freely choose to do X, then you will be compelled to do X without choice.

[hosepipe]

[huldah1776]

From this laywoman’s point of view, there are 2 ways to look at it. As an artist (or an engineer) and a creator of an object, I would know the medium (or properties) of the object.

Thus, I would know how much paint to use, or how much water to add, or how to mix the colors to get a result (or the stress point of a submarine or a support). So God knows what the stress points are and also the needs of His creation (maintenance or nature).

The other fact is that if God knows how many hairs I have on my head, He probably knows what my genes are going to do and He also knows what my mother went through while I was an unborn child (fetus) in the womb and how that environment effects my genes (turning some on or off). He also knows how I have been nurtured. Needless to say He knows us better than we know ourselves and better than even our parents know us. He knows every circumstance that we have ever been in and shares emotions and reactions as we do (more so, I think), especially since we are created in His image.

After I thought about this I have decided that I might get out of the boat and pray for God to bring about circumstances that will enhance my responses for His glory. He will have to chisel a bit because my joints are stiff and my heart may have stones in it (like kidney stones) but He does have a plan for us all.

He has won the war for our souls but the battles remain. What a fantastic military genius. What is it called - strategic command?

[HonorInPa]

We are bound by our inability to see time in anything but a linear mode. We can remember things past but cannot see things yet to come. God is not so limited. Imagine your entire life is a sequence of photographs taken at every instance of your life. We have to see those pictures one at a time but God can move to any picture in or out of sequence. He sees the totality of our lives not just the instantaneous snapshot we see.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Then you believe in a very weak ‘god’....

Romans 9:20-24
Isaiah 46:10
Psalm 33:11
Proverbs 19:21
Isaiah 14:24

God knows His creation inside and out. Nothing is a surprise to Him. Merry Christmas!

[JAKraig]

So many arguments are ended with what I think is a baseless argument that God exists in all times at the same time.

I do not believe this, it sounds wonderful but because Christ too is God like His Father then he too would exist in the same way in all times, but, he told his Apostles that no one knew the time of his return including Him, only His Father. To me that denies the existence in timelessness.

I am not an intelligent philosopher like many here but that is what my little mind sees.

When my children were small I knew what they would do in a given situation, they never surprised me until they got older and had experiences and influences that I was not aware of. God is aware of all of our experiences and knows us better than we know ourselves. We would not be satisfied being judged on what we would have done, to our finite minds we must have the opportunity to make choices, good and bad and see for ourselves if we will make the right choices and to know the judgement is true.

It would be easy to say “I would have accepted Christ and followed His law.” It is another thing entirely to do it. Being judged without seeing for ourselves what we would do would seems most unfair to many or perhaps most of us. I believe that like I love my children so God loves us and wants us happy and created this earth so that we could see our own test results instead of being informed of what we would have done given the chance.

[reasonisfaith]

It seems the time when Christ returns is only “a time” in this world. In God’s reality it must be something very different.

[mrsmith]

“But then the will isn’t free - is it? “

Most often it isn’t. The ability to make free choices is a difficult skill to learn.