On the issue of Free Will

[AngelDragon]

I hope I'm in the right place. . . .

I've asked many people this same question, to no avail. Hopefully, you guys can help.

The problem of free will comes up a lot. "How can we have free will and an all-knowing God? If God knows the future, then He knows what you will do before you do it, and so we have no free will."

This is usually responded to with this: "Humanity makes it's own choices. God may know what will happen, but the fact remains that the only reason it happened was by the choices of the people involved."

Now, this responce is all well and good, but sometimes when I use it, an argument like this one will come up:

"Okay, but what if God influences those choices? Take for example the Tree of Knowledge: If God knew Adam would eat the Forbidden Fruit, then why did God plant the tree there in the first place? Just to punish Adam and Eve, and thus all of humanity? And why did God create Satan, if He knew that he would rebel and cause so much pain?"

I have no responce to this. I doubt anybody does. I can live without knowing the answer until I meet God myself, but if possible, I'd rather learn it now.

Does anybody have an answer?

[ApologiaPhoenix]

I hope I'm in the right place. . . .

I've asked many people this same question, to no avail. Hopefully, you guys can help.

The problem of free will comes up a lot. "How can we have free will and an all-knowing God? If God knows the future, then He knows what you will do before you do it, and so we have no free will."

This is usually responded to with this: "Humanity makes it's own choices. God may know what will happen, but the fact remains that the only reason it happened was by the choices of the people involved."

Now, this responce is all well and good, but sometimes when I use it, an argument like this one will come up:

"Okay, but what if God influences those choices? Take for example the Tree of Knowledge: If God knew Adam would eat the Forbidden Fruit, then why did God plant the tree there in the first place? Just to punish Adam and Eve, and thus all of humanity? And why did God create Satan, if He knew that he would rebel and cause so much pain?"

I have no responce to this. I doubt anybody does. I can live without knowing the answer until I meet God myself, but if possible, I'd rather learn it now.

Does anybody have an answer?

Hi AngelDragon! Thanks for the question!

I'd say in this case, there are no easy answers, but let's state some things.

First off, God does know the end from the beginning. I believe this is shown all throughout Scripture.

Secondly, I believe free-will is just as much shown.

Now how do these get reconciled? The way you said. God knows our decisions without causing them.

Why create creatures that will rebel? I'd say because the possibility of loving always includes that of not-loving, and the only way to avoid that would be to control the choices made. God can influence, but I do not see him controlling choices. Ultimately, if someone winds up in Hell for instance, they have no one to blame but themselves.

This is why I believe God put the tree in the garden. Adam and Eve needed to be able to love, but also have the possibility to not love. Of course, God knew they would actualize this though, but it still had to be there for it to be a real choice.

Why Satan? Because angels have to have choice. It seems God would not be really interested in freedom if he only created creatures that he knew would love him. Again, there is much I'm still digesting on this point. I wouldn't say this is a total answer, but it is an answer for now.

Hope this helps!

[themuzicman]

I hope I'm in the right place. . . .

I've asked many people this same question, to no avail. Hopefully, you guys can help.

The problem of free will comes up a lot. "How can we have free will and an all-knowing God? If God knows the future, then He knows what you will do before you do it, and so we have no free will."

This is usually responded to with this: "Humanity makes it's own choices. God may know what will happen, but the fact remains that the only reason it happened was by the choices of the people involved."

Now, this responce is all well and good, but sometimes when I use it, an argument like this one will come up:

"Okay, but what if God influences those choices? Take for example the Tree of Knowledge: If God knew Adam would eat the Forbidden Fruit, then why did God plant the tree there in the first place? Just to punish Adam and Eve, and thus all of humanity? And why did God create Satan, if He knew that he would rebel and cause so much pain?"

I have no responce to this. I doubt anybody does. I can live without knowing the answer until I meet God myself, but if possible, I'd rather learn it now.

Does anybody have an answer?

I think the problem is how we view "all knowing." We seem to have assumed in that statement that the exact course of the future is knowable, and thus God must know it.

However, we acknowledge that God doesn't know a square circle or how large a rock to make such that HE cannot lift it. These things are logically unknowable, but we still say that God is all-knowing

Now apply that to the future. If the future is logically unknowable, then God is still all-knowing without having knowledge of the future.

This, then, resolves the problem of free will and exhaustive, definite foreknowledge.

(Welcome to Open View Thiesm)

Michael

[AngelDragon]

Hi AngelDragon! Thanks for the question!

I'd say in this case, there are no easy answers, but let's state some things.

First off, God does know the end from the beginning. I believe this is shown all throughout Scripture.

Secondly, I believe free-will is just as much shown.

Now how do these get reconciled? The way you said. God knows our decisions without causing them.

Why create creatures that will rebel? I'd say because the possibility of loving always includes that of not-loving, and the only way to avoid that would be to control the choices made. God can influence, but I do not see him controlling choices. Ultimately, if someone winds up in Hell for instance, they have no one to blame but themselves.

This is why I believe God put the tree in the garden. Adam and Eve needed to be able to love, but also have the possibility to not love. Of course, God knew they would actualize this though, but it still had to be there for it to be a real choice.

Why Satan? Because angels have to have choice. It seems God would not be really interested in freedom if he only created creatures that he knew would love him. Again, there is much I'm still digesting on this point. I wouldn't say this is a total answer, but it is an answer for now.

Hope this helps!

That's a good answer, though I doubt it would satisfy some people.

Thanks!

[AngelDragon]

I think the problem is how we view "all knowing." We seem to have assumed in that statement that the exact course of the future is knowable, and thus God must know it.

However, we acknowledge that God doesn't know a square circle or how large a rock to make such that HE cannot lift it. These things are logically unknowable, but we still say that God is all-knowing

Now apply that to the future. If the future is logically unknowable, then God is still all-knowing without having knowledge of the future.

This, then, resolves the problem of free will and exhaustive, definite foreknowledge.

(Welcome to Open View Thiesm)

Michael

It would, but God is always in the future, isn't He? Always in the past, present, and future, all at the same time, with time being non-existant, and God seeing every possible event in every possible timeframe? Look at it this way: Humanity sees time as a line drawn on a piece of paper, always moving in one direction, starting at one point and ending at another. But God would be more like the paper on which the line is drawn, on all points on the line at the exacts same time.

Also, God said that to Him, yesterday's sins are as today's sins, meaning it doesn't matter if you lied about taking a cookie from the cookie jar twenty years ago; You're still guilty of it today.

Now, applying that to what you said, I highly doubt that God does not know the future, though it could be possible.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go somewhere where my head can explode.

Thanks for the welcome.

[brtangel3]

No creature has ever had a perfectly free will since the fall of mankind. That is precisely what was lost at the fall. That is what makes the fall so tragic. We are as free as a bird...in a cage...to fly anywhere within its confines...but never out. God's will is forever and always a higher freedom than ours. Anyone who thinks he is perfectly free is severely decieved.

[nikolai_42]

I play this little shareware game called "Isle Wars" (not a plug for it, but in case anyone wants to do their own experiments, the unregistered version is free!). In this game, there are 4 players - 1 human player and 3 computer players. The game has variations - although that doesn't really have an impact on this discussion - that vary the difficulty. The objective, like in the board game "Risk", is to conquer the world. To do so, you pit your armies against other armies. If you have 5 armies and the computer has 3, each time you hit "Attack", the computer decides which side loses an army. If one side ends up defeating the other and has at least 2 armies, that side gets the territory and can move remaining armies onto the conquered land. But the key is that the computer decides. So you may outnumber the other side 9-2 and keep hitting "attack", but in the end the computer (for whatever reason its programming determines) could have you lose an army every time until you are decimated. It can get very frustrating to almost get a territory and then be stonewalled because your hordes couldn't defeat what amounted to a few men with guns (of course, this is all color commentary - all you see is a map with different colors and numbers in each territory).

I don't see how it's a stretch to make a comparison to life. We live on the earth and strive to do this and that and think our destiny is in our hands. But God (who declares that the nations are as a drop in the bucket) has the last say on what happens. Battle is just an extreme reminder that this is the case. There are many instances throughout history of very surprising victories and astonishing defeats. Some of these battles had profound effects on history for millennia afterwards. A battle near the end of the 7th century AD, for example, was the West's last stronghold against the Muslim invaders who were trying to establish a universal kingdom. Should the Turks have won that battle, there is little doubt that most of Europe would have been speaking Arabic and Christianity would have become far less of an influence than it is today. So it is no stretch to say that the Lord's hand has to be in the outcome of war.

But what of the individual? Aside from the fact that it seems backwards to believe that God is Sovereign over nations but not over individuals (which are directly and significantly affected by those nations!), aren't our lives just a microcosm of the larger scale conflicts that occur in games like this and the world in reality? Just like the nations in the game, we struggle (or not...) to see our will come to fruition. And just like in the game, it ultimately doesn't really matter whether we have great talent or no resources, the only determinant in our will being done (or not) is (finally) God. Take something as simple as getting a haircut. We may will to walk up to the barbershop or salon, but such a (seemingly) foregone conclusion (that you will have your haircut within the next couple of hours) can easily be set at naught by the smallest of inconveniences or unforseen happenings. And if God is not Sovereign over that (but, for example, someone else is over his own will to do something that will, unbeknownst to him, deny you a trip to the barbershop), then how can any conclusions be certain even in the prophetic? If God is not Sovereign even over the smallest details, the largest events can be no more certain.

Step back a bit from the game. Look at the board and compare it to the earth. There is a sense in which man is free. He can choose to attack or not. He can decide who he will assault. But from the standpoint of man's depravity, if he doesn't have God's will in mind (perfectly), then his actions will belie that and he will be frustrated. His goals are not God's goals even if he is an Alexander the Great who conquered most of the known world. God must restrain and release man as He wills (and by no other standard) otherwise man will do only his own will (which is, by definition, corrupted).

There is more here, but that's about all I can get to now - and probably all I can clearly express...

[Protoman2050]

Yes, I know I'm responding to a thread three years old.

No-one, not even God, has free will, because will is determined by nature. No-one does what they do not want to do. E.g. It is my nature to abhor beans, therefore, I will not have anything to do with them, especially eating them. I cannot not abhor beans. Likewise, e.g., it is God's nature that He is truthful, therefore He will not lie. He cannot not lie.

Also, God knows the future because He decreed the future. This is perfectly consistent with the above, as it is like time is a movie for God. From His perspective, He knows the ending and that we are determined to do what He writes in the script. But from our perspective, our choices are our own, and no-one is forcing us to do anything.

And He determined that we would fall, so that He would implement His plan of salvation, so that His glory would be multiplied.

[theology101]

Interesting conversation and I put my thoughts in my blog. One point I would make is that God has no need to know every detail of thought and action in this world. Why would he? Because of Jesus Christ all things will be reconciled, either forgiven or punished according to eternal justice or mercy. The perfect judgement is what makes it all work out.

http://endlesstimeandspace.blogspot....h/label/Agency