Free Will and Omniscience

[Cerebrum123]

You're right. Most people don't see to the logical conclusion...or they do see the paradox but just shrug and say God isn't bound by logical paradoxes. They don't see that they are effectively using the old "can God make a rock so big even he can't lift it?" type argument.

To me the worst part is that even when you simplify it down to the most basic components they still can't see it. When ApologiaPhoenix was talking about the same issue I still couldn't even get him to understand the very simple syllogism I laid out. It was quite frustrating.

[Machinist]

You can only get there by assuming your philisophical constructs of time are in play here. I submit that the way you and most of us view time is based almost entirely on the Greek thoughts time, and our thoughts of God in time are from Plato. Consider this:

When Reading in the Greek, We See that God:
- is timeless
- in an eternal now
- without sequence or succession
- without moment or duration
- atemporal and outside of time
- not was, nor will be, but only is
- has no past
- has no future.
But, point of order NOT ONE of these phrases is in the Bible. They're ALL from Plato and the Platonists philosophers. The Greek I reference isn't the Greek New Testament, it's the Greek writings of Plato.

The Greeks developed definite verb-forms which could express the distinction between past, present, and future in several different modes. Now using their way of thought, I would argue: That if the Scriptures teach that God Himself experiences change in sequence, that would indicate that God exists in time, in the present, with a past, and looking forward to a future. This would demonstrate that timelessness, is not a necessary attribute of God. So here is an example of a biblical proof demonstrating that God has a "past" and therefore showing that God is not outside of time:

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Wow. That's mind bending!

The Greek translations are all that I have ever been exposed to. I understand that Jesus spoke Aramaic? I wonder what an objective reading of an Aramaic New Testament would be like? I mean, why are we so Greek biased here in the west?

I wish I had more time to spend investigating this!

Thanks again for your time in posting this information!

[Cerebrum123]

Wow. That's mind bending!

The Greek translations are all that I have ever been exposed to. I understand that Jesus spoke Aramaic? I wonder what an objective reading of an Aramaic New Testament would be like? I mean, why are we so Greek biased here in the west?

I wish I had more time to spend investigating this!

Thanks again for your time in posting this information!

Greek philosophers have had a lot of influence in the west, and still do because many are unwilling to let some of their ideas go.

[Ronson]

You can only get there by assuming your philisophical constructs of time are in play here. I submit that the way you and most of us view time is based almost entirely on the Greek thoughts time, and our thoughts of God in time are from Plato. Consider this:

When Reading in the Greek, We See that God:
- is timeless
- in an eternal now
- without sequence or succession
- without moment or duration
- atemporal and outside of time
- not was, nor will be, but only is
- has no past
- has no future.
But, point of order NOT ONE of these phrases is in the Bible. They're ALL from Plato and the Platonists philosophers. The Greek I reference isn't the Greek New Testament, it's the Greek writings of Plato.

The Greeks developed definite verb-forms which could express the distinction between past, present, and future in several different modes. Now using their way of thought, I would argue: That if the Scriptures teach that God Himself experiences change in sequence, that would indicate that God exists in time, in the present, with a past, and looking forward to a future. This would demonstrate that timelessness, is not a necessary attribute of God.

True. But God operating within time does not mean He is bound by it, or did not create it. Like building a chair and then sitting in it. You can't say "Since God is sitting in the chair then he couldn't have created it." The only "sequence" that presents the problem you are noting is creation itself; before all creation and after all creation is a change that created time itself (assuming time was created). However, just because the western world is tied up in Greek phrasing for a linear time, it is a linguistic issue. There's no reason it is not circular, or takes some form we cannot even describe with language.

So here is an example of a biblical proof demonstrating that God has a "past" and therefore showing that God is not outside of time:

Before the foundation of the world, God the Son was not at that time the Son of Man; but then He "became" flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14) as "the Son of Man" (Mat. 12:8), and now, God the Son remains eternally "the Man Jesus Christ" (1 Tim 2:5). therefore, God has a past, a present and a future.

This to me shows that God experienced time, and therefore exists in time. The Incarnation has eternally changed God the Son, and therefore, also His relationship with the Holy Spirit and the Father. The Incarnation shows us conclusively that God, (in this case, in the person of the Son), has undergone change. The Bible seems to clearly show that the Son exists in Time even now.

But who is to say that this change was required? If God chooses to operate within time then this is a byproduct of that choice. Just as "God the Son" is a role, a title and function that was voluntarily chosen.

Now, one other thing to consider is that the Hebrew way of thinking of time was not the same as the Greeks view. And since all the authors of the books of the Bible are Jewish, then we really need to read the Bible with the Jewish thought process and not the Greek. (and it's hard to do but stay with me here) yhe Hebrews have two tenses: complete… and incomplete What we here in the west view as past would be the Hebrew idea of complete, and what we view as future would be the Hebrew idea of incomplete. So, think about whether this difference might not provide a better framework to consider time when looking at Scripture.

In his book called "Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek", Thorleif Boman writes:

“From the psychological viewpoint, it is absurd to say that we have the future before us and the past behind us, as though the future were visible to us and the past occluded. Quite the reverse is true...”
"What our forebears have accomplished lies before us as their completed works… the present and the future are, on the contrary, still in process of coming and becoming.”

His conclusion is thus:

Within this Hebraic understanding of time, we must think of the past as what God and people have completed and the future as what God and people have not yet done. And in this view, there’s no need for God to exist outside of time. In fact, it makes no sense to think of God existing outside of time, because there are things God as well as people have not yet completed. Not only this, but the idea that God knows the future partly as a realm of possibilities presents no problem, for that is how the future actually is. And if it isn’t a pre-settled ‘timeline,’ we can more easily understand how God can interact with His creation in the present moment without a predetermined future.

OK, if all you say is correct, then how do you account for omniscience? Or do you even accept that attribute?

[Machinist]

From my understanding, what he is saying is that God is omniscient insofar as He knows only what can be known. Beyond that, nothing is known. So it's not omniscience in it's most absolute sense.

[Ronson]

From my understanding, what he is saying is that God is omniscient insofar as He knows only what can be known. Beyond that, nothing is known. So it's not omniscience in it's most absolute sense.

That pre-qualifier changes the definition of omniscience. I could say "I am omniscient" about the objects in my kitchen, but that is misusing the term, IMO.

And, who decides what can/can't "be known"? Mankind? Then we are putting limitations on God based on our own limitations. To say God can't know the future is doing just that.

[Machinist]

That pre-qualifier changes the definition of omniscience. I could say "I am omniscient" about the objects in my kitchen, but that is misusing the term, IMO.

And, who decides what can/can't "be known"? Mankind? Then we are putting limitations on God based on our own limitations. To say God can't know the future is doing just that.

But then if you say He knows the future, you'll have to reconcile that with free will.

And that is what I was asking earlier with the quantum reference...the existence of two contradictory things at once.

Sparko's analogy of the football video is a great analogy, but something about it seems to miss the point. Unless you are talking about some quantum function where something that shouldn't exist simultaneously in two different places, somehow does.

[Machinist]

What you're saying would require God to be in a separate space/time continuum, I get that. I glimpse that from time to time. That's probably why I seem to go back and forth alot.

[Sparko]

You have yet to show from Scripture that your view of God outside of time is correct. You keep assuming it as fact then proceed to circular reason your way to your view.

And so you keep making the same mistake assuming you get to move the goal post without actually addressing the whole argument. I said that "it becomes fatalistic regardless whether (you think) he causes it or not." I say that your view of God's foreknowledge renders God impotent. You ignore the fact that your view of God knowing every past, present and future event and decision means that it is already a fixed reality. We can't say that, we aren't God....but your view of God does. Because, since God knows it perfectly it therefore can't be anything else but what God knows as the reality that is already fixed. You keep wanting on the one hand to lose God outside of Time but then insist that that absolves the fixed reality that he perfectly knows as not deterministic/fatalistic. You can't eat your cake and have it too. They are not mutually exclusive...they are tied at the hip in fact. The logical conclusion of this view is that the future that God perfectly knows is a FIXED REALITY and cannot be changed...not even by God. Fatalism.

You keep making this comparison as if it explains everything but, again, you are saying that because you knowing what you did yesterday didn't negate that it was a free choice...but continues to ignore the fact that it's also NOT changeable. It's "fixed reality". Just like the your view of God's knowing the future exhaustively as a now present reality...it can't be changed. Again, it's FIXED REALITY.

Yeah, this is a common poisoning of the well argument against Open Theism. However, as an OVT, I say that instead of limiting God, the open view actually depends upon the infinite intelligence of God. Think of God as something like an infinitely intelligent chess player. It's been said that the average beginning chess player can think ahead three or maybe four possible moves. If I do this, then, my opponent may do this, that, or maybe that. I could then do this, this, or that to counter, and he may respond with this, that, or the other. However, it's said that some Grand Master class chess players can think ahead up to thirty combinations of moves. So, now consider that God’s perfect knowledge would allow him to anticipate every possible move and every possible counter move, together with every possible response he might make to each of those counter moves, for every possible person throughout all of history. AND he would be able to do this from eternity past to eternity future.

Wouldn't you say that a God who is able to know perfectly these possibilities would be wiser than a God who simply foreknows (Arminianism) or predetermines (Calvinism/Molinism) one story line that the future will follow? And isn’t a God who perfectly anticipates and wisely responds to every free will decision a person makes would be more intelligent than a God who simply knows what that person will do? Anticipating and responding to possibilities takes problem-solving intelligence. Your view reduces God to simply having a crystal ball vision of what’s coming, nothing more.

If God doesn't know the future but just is making an educated guess, then he can be wrong. Which would make him a false prophet. The OVT God is also subject to time, rather than the master and creator of it. Time is greater than God. How can you trust the promises and prophesies of a God that doesn't know what will happen but is just making an educated guess? The only way he could make sure it happens would be to take control and use his omnipotence to force it to happen. Which leads you right back to fatalism and a universe without free will.

Also we know now that time is just an aspect of space and matter itself. Without spacetime there is no time, since God created spacetime, he also created time. Time started with the universe. So God created time. He is not bound by it any more than he is bound by matter.

[Sparko]

Many don't seem to understand that for a choice to be truly free means that there must have been an alternative choice that could be made. Removing all possible alternatives, which is what Sparko's model ends up boiling down to, is just as much a removal of freedom as forcing someone to make a choice by direct control. Just like the no win scenarios that you find in movies and TV shows. Or some video games where you are given multiple dialogue options that all say the same thing. No alternate choices being possible in principle isn't freedom. At best you can get an illusion of free will.

I am not 'removing all possible alternatives" -- I am simply saying that whichever alternative you DO choose, that is what God foreknows. You can only make a decision once. You can't choose an alternative once you have made that decision. And whatever that decision ends up being, is what God knows.

Imagine God's point of view is from say 1 million years in the future. He would know everything that happened previous to that point, right? To him, the year 2022 is in the past, so he knows what you will do in 2022, even though you don't know yet. But what you do is still up to you.

Looking back at 2020, you know everything you did, right (assuming a good memory). And you can't change what you did now right? It's "fixed." -- Yet, what you did do was entirely your free will choice right? If you could contact yourself in 2018 and give him a letter telling him everything he will do in 2020, but tell him not to open it until Jan 1, 2021, he would find that everything you wrote down came true. Yet it was all his free will.

(If he did open the letter and read that you wrote down he would go fishing on May 1, and he decided, "hey I will not go fishing, then," it would mean that you wrote down he would not go fishing on May 1 (since your knowledge is based on what actually happened) and then he would have read that he didn't go fishing and then decided to go fishing, which would flip the letter back to the way it was and create a time loop that would probably destroy the universe )

[Cerebrum123]

I am not 'removing all possible alternatives" -- I am simply saying that whichever alternative you DO choose, that is what God foreknows. You can only make a decision once. You can't choose an alternative once you have made that decision. And whatever that decision ends up being, is what God knows.

Imagine God's point of view is from say 1 million years in the future. He would know everything that happened previous to that point, right? To him, the year 2022 is in the past, so he knows what you will do in 2022, even though you don't know yet. But what you do is still up to you.

Looking back at 2020, you know everything you did, right (assuming a good memory). And you can't change what you did now right? It's "fixed." -- Yet, what you did do was entirely your free will choice right? If you could contact yourself in 2018 and give him a letter telling him everything he will do in 2020, but tell him not to open it until Jan 1, 2021, he would find that everything you wrote down came true. Yet it was all his free will.

(If he did open the letter and read that you wrote down he would go fishing on May 1, and he decided, "hey I will not go fishing, then," it would mean that you wrote down he would not go fishing on May 1 (since your knowledge is based on what actually happened) and then he would have read that he didn't go fishing and then decided to go fishing, which would flip the letter back to the way it was and create a time loop that would probably destroy the universe )

You still don't get it, in your scenario God's foreknowledge if logically prior* to any choice anyone can possible make. Also under your scenario since God knows X, then I can't do Y. It thus removes freedom from the equation without direct forcing of a mind change or anything like that needed.

Free will is the ability to freely choose things of your own volition.

In order to choose something and for it to be free there must be alternatives that one can choose from, and no outside imposition on your will.

In your scenario no one could ever choose anything other than what God foresaw. Meaning no alternative options were ever real possibilities at any point.

Therefore no choice was ever free. Everything was set in stone from eternity past, and is set in stone for eternity into the future in this scenario. This is 100% fatalistic determinism. You can at best get an illusion of free will.

*Because God, and all of His attributes are by necessity logically and temporally prior to anything that exists. He created the universe and everything in it after all.

[Sparko]

You still don't get it, in your scenario God's foreknowledge if logically prior* to any choice anyone can possible make. Also under your scenario since God knows X, then I can't do Y. It thus removes freedom from the equation without direct forcing of a mind change or anything like that needed.

Free will is the ability to freely choose things of your own volition.

In order to choose something and for it to be free there must be alternatives that one can choose from, and no outside imposition on your will.

In your scenario no one could ever choose anything other than what God foresaw. Meaning no alternative options were ever real possibilities at any point.

Therefore no choice was ever free. Everything was set in stone from eternity past, and is set in stone for eternity into the future in this scenario. This is 100% fatalistic determinism. You can at best get an illusion of free will.

*Because God, and all of His attributes are by necessity logically and temporally prior to anything that exists. He created the universe and everything in it after all.

No, it is you who is not getting it. Does your knowing what, say, your mom did yesterday (and no, she cannot change it once she did it.) mean it was determined? Knowledge isn't Cause, no matter where the person knowing it is located in time or out of it. If the knowledge is based on the action then no matter where the person knowing it is located his knowledge will be determined by the action, not the other way around.

If you could go back to last week, you would still know what your mom did on July 13, 2021, even though it was in the future to you now. She will freely choose to do what you remember. Because what you remember is based on what she does. If for example, she DID do something else on July 13, 2021, then THAT is what you would remember, even though you are now a week in the past. No matter what she decides to do, that is what you would know, no matter where in time you were located. To you it would always look "fixed" and unchangeable.

[Ronson]

But then if you say He knows the future, you'll have to reconcile that with free will.

Not necessarily. I'm of the camp that says the two are compatible. So long as God does not intervene in our decisions, free will exists. This is the bugaboo that keeps going around in circles here: Foreknowledge does not negate free will.

And that is what I was asking earlier with the quantum reference...the existence of two contradictory things at once.

Sparko's analogy of the football video is a great analogy, but something about it seems to miss the point. Unless you are talking about some quantum function where something that shouldn't exist simultaneously in two different places, somehow does.

Because none of know exactly what time is, we are never going to be able to agree on it. We do the best we can in understanding it and apply our unique vision. My vision of time allows God to see the future just as he does the past. Just as we can see the past. Our knowledge of the past does not affect the free will of those who lived in it, and God's knowledge of OUR future does not negate the free will of those who live(d) in it.

[Cerebrum123]

No, it is you who is not getting it. Does your knowing what, say, your mom did yesterday (and no, she cannot change it once she did it.) mean it was determined? Knowledge isn't Cause, no matter where the person knowing it is located in time or out of it. If the knowledge is based on the action then no matter where the person knowing it is located his knowledge will be determined by the action, not the other way around.

If you could go back to last week, you would still know what your mom did on July 13, 2021, even though it was in the future to you now. She will freely choose to do what you remember. Because what you remember is based on what she does. If for example, she DID do something else on July 13, 2021, then THAT is what you would remember, even though you are now a week in the past. No matter what she decides to do, that is what you would know, no matter where in time you were located. To you it would always look "fixed" and unchangeable.

I do understand what your saying, it just doesn't work the way you think. Just because you think such actions would be free under your model doesn't mean that they are free. You are stuck with a universe in which everything is predetermined from eternity past despite your protests otherwise. Again, for a choice to be truly free the alternatives must have been a real possibility, if they were not a real possibility, then they weren't truly free. What you've failed to recognize yet again is that freedom can be constrained by more than just direct intervention. Your view just leads to the conclusion of fatalism, and that what we experience as "time*" is completely illusory. God being "outside of time" doesn't detract from the fact that absolutely everything will happen in a 100% specified way that can not be changed. We have no meaningful input in such a scenario, and are just automatons made of meat.

*As is change, since all of space and time would be a static 4D block.

[tabibito]

If God knows not what just will happen, but everything that might happen and the probability of each and every might, omniscience extends beyond the narrow boundaries of the concept of a fixed and unalterable time line. Claims that God is not responsible for any given action fall flat when those claims extend to God creating a fixed time line, knowing in advance what will happen. He made it as it will be with no possibility of variation - it is his responsibility - start to finish.