Read a couple articles on Divine Providence vs. Free Will [View All]

This guy Nelson Pike made the argument that divine foreknowledge makes it impossible for humans to have free will. As Pike put it himself: “if God exists, no human action is voluntary.” Since omniscience is implied in the very nature of God, He can never hold false beliefs. If this means God knows all, he must know about future events before they occur. This is where Pike steps in, and says that if current events have been already witnessed by God, than there is a connection between the two. After all, if God knows something particular will happen in full detail, than it can’t not happen. That would be as logically contradictory as making a square circle. If God knows Jones is going to do X, than he has stripped Jones of his ability to do otherwise.

So if you're anything like me, you wonder about the difference between simply knowing the cause and causing by knowing. Did God’s foreknowledge mean anything other than God simply knew ahead of time? Does God’s foreknowledge necessarily cause the event to happen? In the article, Pike first finds the need to define “necessary” as the antonym of “voluntary.” Whenever an action is not voluntary, it is necessary. Jones doing X was not necessary in the modal-logical concept, but because it was not voluntary, because of the argument Pike presented above. Jones may not have needed to do X but since God knew that he would ahead of time, Jones’ ability to choose not to do X cannot exist. Pike also refutes the notion that “it is because men act as they do that God foreknows what He foreknows,” due to the fact that it claims men actually determining what God thinks, violating God’s essence as being self-sufficient. Besides, the present cannot change the past.

So I looked for a debunking article. Turns out this dilemma posed by Pike has been answered by Hugh J. McCann, who argues that God exists atemporally, in an eternity outside of time. He agrees with Pike that an omniscient God should know every proposition that is true. However, with God existing atemporally, outside of time as we know it, God cannot know events either before or after they occur, or even simultaneously! His knowledge is timeless, so His knowledge encompasses all of existence. However, since He is by very nature outside of time, this does not mean He knows the event occurring (let’s say John mowing his lawn) before it does. But He does know about John mowing his lawn because he has always been aware of that fact. God, by his very nature, cannot differentiate which moment in time is present, past or future, therefore God is unable to know any tensed proposition.

This argument concurs with something I've read about called "Open Theism" by claiming that God does not foreknow that Jones will cut the grass. But Open Theism offers a different argument for the explanation. Open Theism argues that no one can know certain things in the future because nothing is yet to be true about them, due to the fact those certain things in the future simply don’t exist yet. The future is coming; that much is unquestionable. But what will happen is still up for grabs, and this preserves libertarian free choice (meaning simple, voluntary choice). Yet God can predict the future, based off a particular person’s character or based off the plan He has set up for the future, but He cannot know it.

Another guy named Alvin Plantinga offers a rebuttal of Pike’s dilemma as well, but his defense differs from McCann’s and Open Theism’s. He draws questions not with God’s omniscience, nor with Pike’s points of the impossibility of logical contradiction, but with God’s omniscience determining Jones’ mowing his lawn. But instead of saying Jones might defy God’s omniscience, thereby making Him wrong, Plantinga argues that Jones still has the ability to do something other than what God had foreknown, and that God simply knows he won’t.

Interestingly enough, Plantinga incorporates other worlds to explain his response to the notion of men’s actions determining what God can know. God knows before Jones does that in the actual world Jones will mow his lawn. But that there can be other worlds where Jones does refrain from doing what God foreknows. If those other worlds were actual, God would have been wrong. But how do we know what God would believed in other worlds? It’s still possible that God has correctly foreknown what will occur in other worlds, even as He knows what will occur in this actual one. So in all worlds God can still know on His behalf without depending on Jones to determine the knowledge for Him.

I'm still kind of torn on the issue. Anybody have any additional thoughts on the issue?