By Blake T. Ostler
The foreknowledge of God has seemed to many persons to be incompatible with human
free will. How can God know with certainty what might or might not happen? The survey of
answers to the source of Gods infallible foreknowledge of contingent events such as free human
choices suggests that any way a person can come up with that satisfactorily explains how God
can know human choices with certainty before those choices have actually been made will not be
compatible with genuine human freedom. However, it still remains possible, in some persons
views quite likely, that there is much about the nature of divine knowledge which escapes our
ability to understand. For such persons, due deference to human ignorance requires a very
limited conclusion about how God can know future contingent events with certainty, i.e., we just
dont know how God knows such things. For such persons, a demonstration of incompatibility of
free will and divine foreknowledge is required to settle whether God can consistently know
contingent events with certainty.
An Unsound Argument for Incompatibility
The question of the compatibility of human free will and infallible foreknowledge
approaches the problem from a different angle. A well know statement of the incompatibility
question was given by Augustine in his De libero arbitrio:
Surely this is the question that troubles and perplexes you: how can the following two
propositions, that [1] God has foreknowledge of all future events, and that [2] we do not
sin by necessity but by free will, be made consistent with each other? If God foreknows
that man will sin, you say, it is necessary that man sin. If man must sin, his sin is not
the result of the wills choice, but is instead a fixed and inevitable necessity. You fear now
that this reasoning results either in the blasphemous denial of Gods foreknowledge or, if
we deny this, the admission that we sin by necessity, not by will.
The compatibility question, as framed by Augustine, is thus, whether:
Argument A
( A 1 ) God foreknows with certainty that an agent A will sin
is incompatible with
( A 2 ) A will sin freely.
The problem of free will and foreknowledge, as outlined by Augustine, seems to be stated
as follows:
( A 3 ) If God foreknows that A will sin, then it is necessary that A will sin.
( A 4 ) If it is necessary that A will sin, then A is not free to refrain from sinning.
( A 5 ) If A is not free to refrain from sinning, then A is not free.