It's About Time

-or- Free Will and What God Knows about the Future

If humans have free will, then God cannot be omniscient.
Omniscient is defined as "all-knowing."
Usually by "all-knowing," one means that God not only knows everything about what has been and what is, but also about what will be.  That is, to be truly omniscient, God would have to know the future.  However, if God knew the future, then the future would have to be determined.  And if the future is determined, then free will is impossible.

Let us take an example.  Tomorrow, I would like to take a bike ride.  Let's say I even plan on taking a bike ride.  I still do not know if I will take a bike ride tomorrow or not.  It is possible that I will, but it is also possible that it won't.  I, the actor, will not know until tomorrow comes and I actually take a bike ride, or I don't.  Oh, I can look at my schedule and see if I have free time for a bike ride.  If I do not, then the statistical probability that I will take a bike ride is very low.  It is, however, still possible.  In order for anyone to know--even God--whether or not I am to take a bike ride tomorrow, then the future would have to be predetermined.  True and correct knowledge is only of the actual and not of the possible.  I can know that there is a possibility that I will take a bike ride tomorrow, but that is only because there is an actual possibility (I have a bike, I am able to ride, bicycles exist, for that matter I exist, etc.).

If God has knowledge of the future, then as soon as God knows that future, possibility is destroyed and the only actual outcome must be what God knows.  Therefore, any future actualities that I may think are possible are really impossible.  Even if I still choose to ride my bike tomorrow, it is really a straw choice, since God has foreknowledge of the event.  If God knows that I will go on a bike ride, it must play out in that way--there is no other possible sequence of events.

One answer to this conundrum is to argue that God sits outside of time, and therefore can see the future without affecting its outcome by that foreknowledge.  On the face of it, this argument seems to solve the problem.  God can simply see now what I will freely choose tomorrow.  Time flows linearly, but God is standing outside of the stream, able to see up and down the timeline.  God stands outside of time, in eternity, and therefore can experience any moment in time at any point in (or, as the case may be, out of) time.

But when we explore this idea further, we realize that human free will is still in jeopardy.  Although God is atemporal, temporally all-encompassing, God's knowledge still delves into time when God looks forward to see the future.  Think, for example, about rewinding and fast-forwarding a movie.  I, the one who holds the remote control, stand outside of the flow of time within the movie.  At any moment, I can see any point in the movie that I want to see by choosing a scene and scanning forward or backward from that scene selection.  I can look ahead to see how the movie will end.  I can come to know this because the events in the movie are determined.  The movie will always end how it ends, and therefore, I can fast forward in order to know the ending before the sequence of events occurs that led to that ending.

If God is able to see ahead in time because he stands outside of time, free will is still abolished.  Not because God's knowledge somehow affects the determinacy of time, but rather because in order for God to be able to look ahead in time and know anything, then the future must be determined.  It is not the foreknowledge that makes predestination, but rather we see that predestination must be at work in order for anyone--even God, who sits outside of time--to know the future.  In other words, the phenomenon of free will is a variable of life that keeps everything in the realm of the possible until it becomes actual.  And so, if the actual is able to be known before it occurs, then all other possibilities are destroyed and the future is determined.

So, if God is to be omniscient even as human beings have free will, we must ask the question, "What does God know about the future?"  The answer reveals a God who is more spectacular than a being who can simply know the future: God has an omniscience that sees and knows all of the possibilities.    God can see all of the possible paths and the choices that we will be faced with in the future.  However, God is unable to see the actual, until the actual takes place in time.  [One of my underlying assumptions, clearly, is that there is something unique about the present.  That is, the present is absolute and universal.  At any given time, there is but one moment that is the boundary between past and future.  Moreover, that boundary is such that even God must experience time in that way.  God is able to look beyond the boundary of now into the future, but what he sees is not yet actual (because the moment of the present has not come yet), and yet God is able to see all of the possibilities beyond the present moment.]  God can still, in such a case, be surprised by our choices, without being taken by surprise.

Why does any of this matter?
Well, for me, God is a God of possibilities.  Evil is horribly unoriginal.  And when we are trapped into predetermined actions, we are essentially being held captive by sin--it is sin that is making us predictable, sin that is determining our choices.  But God always works to free us from sin, to give us more and more possibilities for the future.  Our God is a God that safeguards our freedom, making it possible for us to actually become new each moment.  And if the future becomes anything but a bundle of possibilities, then predetermination threatens the freedom God has given us.