Omniscience and free will

Omniscience and free will

I'm struggling with the notion of 'omniscience' of God, at least in the stronger and usually accepted meaning of the term, i.e. that God knows all future contingents, i.e. all events that will happen. The problem I have is that it seems to imply a strict determinism. However, if one accepts the notion that our choices are not determined ('free will'), determinism would be a problem.

To appreciate the problem, one has to consider the fact that if determinism in any form is true all our choices are inevitable. Hence, all bad deeds that human beings made in the history of humanity were actually inevitable. But if they were inevitable, it doesn't make any sense to me to think that those who did those bad deeds are responsible. They couldn't do otherwise.   

Notice that this problem doesn't arise in a 'weaker' notion of 'omniscience', in which God knows all possible future events, rather than which events will indeed happen. Under this definition of 'omniscience', the undetermined status of the outcomes of future choices doesn't conflict with God knowing all possible events.

I point out that this is independent of any eschatological view: it might be the case that there are multiple possible endings, or that God created the world in a way that all possible histories 'converge' in the same 'ending', whatever it is. The same goes for the Incarnation: it might be the case that God created the world in such a way that the Incarnation will occur in all possible histories at a given point.

So in terms of histories, the 'stronger' view omniscience says that God knows all possible histories and also which one that will actually occur whereas the 'weaker' view of omniscience says that while God knows all possible histories, He doesn't know which one will 'actualize'.

One argument that I have seen that tries to reconcile free will and the stronger version of the doctrine of omniscience says that God's point of view is timeless and God knows all events at once. Like, say, if one saw all frames of a movie at the same time. However, I don't get how this doesn't imply determinism or even the stronger version of it in which the flow of time itself is illusory (which I guess better fits with non-dualist positions about the Divine rather than positions that accept a distinction between the created and the uncreated, without denying the reality of the former).

Interestingly enough, physics itself is indecisive on the question of determinism. Some interpreters of the theory of relativity, for instance, suggest a 'block world view', i.e. the flow of time is purely illusory. On the other hand, some interpreters of quantum mechanics would say that quantum mechanics, in their view, suggests that determinism is false because some physical processes seem to be random. Experts in the field disagree with each other, so it is matter of speculation.

There are also thinkers that adopt a view called 'process theology' that say that God's knowledge evolves, precisely because future contingents are not fixed (they might be fixed in potency - i.e. all possible events are always known by God - but not in act - i.e. what will actually happen). But I do recognize that if God is the absolute ground of being, God should be impassible, unconditioned and changeless, in any way not dependent on creation. So, I think that we have a real conundrum for all theistic worldviews on the matter of 'omniscience'. Either one accepts the stronger doctrine of 'omniscience' at the cost of rendering the existence of genuine freedom of choice a pure or enigma or one rejects the stronger doctrine of 'omniscience' and one then has to admit that God changes in some ways. There are indeed nowadays some theologians, as I said, that accept 'process theology' but this is far from the 'consensus' view about God among all theistic religious traditions as far as I know.   

A possible way to escape the problem is admit an apophatic stance on this problem.

If God is timeless and doesn't change in any way, I don't understand how He can act. The only possibility that I can conceive is that His active act is also timeless and the result of this creative act, i.e. creation, is also timeless. This would be consistent with the idea that the flow of time is a perspectival illusion, which inplies determinism.

Or perhaps the the relation between the timeless and unchanging God and the ever-changing creatures like us is beyond our understanding. So, no complete explanation of the relation can be given. After all, apophaticism is a rather important aspect of the Christian theological tradition. So we can't really conceive God's unchanging 'perspective' with our finite minds.

I'm not against apophaticism really but I would like to understand when it is appropriate to have an apophatic stance and when, instead, it is appropriate to have a kataphatic stance, i.e. when we can conceive in an albeit imperfect way something about God. So regarding a statement like 'God is love' we might say that is a kataphatic statement about God because we can imperfectly understand the meaning of 'love' in that phrase based on our experience of being loved and loving in this life. I honestly can't undestand how to reconcile God's foreknowledge with the experience that future seems to be open. Indeed, it seems to imply that all events are fixed. However, it might be the case that this is an instance in which we have to use an apophatic approach.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ancient and Medieval witnesses of the presence of ‘universalism’ in Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia

Ancient and Medieval witnesses of the presence of ‘universalism’ [1] in  Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia Introduction *Update (12/08): an updated version of this post can be found here:  https://ancientafterlifebelifs.blogspot.com/2026/05/ancient-and-medieval-witnesses-of.html   * In this text, witnesses of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s and Diodore of Tarsus’ eschatological ‘universalist’ views, are reported.  As shall we see, the attestations of Diodore’s endorsement of a form of apokatastasis are always accompanied by an attestation of his disciple, Theodore, endorsing the same view. All these common testimonies are from Syriac sources, both Eastern-Syriac - Isaac of Nineveh (fl. 7 th century in his Second Part, 39.7-14; for Theodore only in his Second Part, 3.3.94 ), Solomon of Basra (fl. 13 th century in his book of the Bee, 60 ), Theodore bar Konai (fl. 8 th century in his Liber Scholiorum 2.63 ) - and Western-Syriac - John of Dara (fl. 9 th century...
Read more

On the presence of universalism in East Syrian tradition

On the presence of universalism [1] in East Syrian tradition *Update (12/08) : An updated version of this post can be found here: https://ancientafterlifebelifs.blogspot.com/2026/05/on-presence-of-universalism1-in-church.html * East Syrian theologians were influenced by Diodore of Tarsus (fl. 4 th century), his disciple Theodore of Mopsuestia (fl. 4-5 th century) who is called the ‘Interpreter/Exegete/Expositor’ in the East Syrian church (also called ‘Church of the East’), and Evagrius Ponticus (fl. 4 th century) [2] .  The point of this text is to show that there a was significant prevalence of the idea in this tradition (this doesn’t necessarily mean that it was a majority view). For more details about Diodore and Theodore see my previous post: https://ancientafterlifebelifs.blogspot.com/2026/01/ancient-and-medieval-witnesses-of_28.html A testimony of an opponent: Babai the Great (fl. 6 th century): Let me start with the testimony of an opponent of ‘universalism’ in the Eas...
Read more

On the possible presence of universalism in some ancient Christians Latin authors

  On the possible presence of universalism in some ancient Christians Latin authors *Update(12/08): an updated version of this post can be found here:  https://ancientafterlifebelifs.blogspot.com/2026/08/possible-traces-of-universalism-in.html   * Introduction In what follows, I’ll present some evidence for the presence of a doctrine or a sympathy of universalism (i.e. the belief that all human beings will be ultimately saved) in some Latin Fathers. There are some suggestive passages in the writings of Ambrose of Milan and John Cassian. Also, Rufinus of Aquileia, in his quarrel against Jerome of Stridon, while admitting that the fate of the wicked is a mystery shows a clear sympathy for the doctrine of universalism. However, it should be noted that none of the figures I quote in this post have been cited as universalists (as far as I know) before the 19 th century and, also, the interpretation of their texts never seem to have caused controversy among later writers...
Read more