From The Archives 11: Omniscience and Choice

I took a good bit of philosophy and religion classes my 2nd year, and what a surprise- this essay is from a Medieval Philosophy & Religious Though class I was in. I personally believe that free will and destiny work together, so that's the perspective I was from.

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March 2017

              The question as to whether you can choose your destiny has been long debated. When both God’s omniscience and the free will of humans have been both accepted as true, it becomes a matter of understanding how two seemingly opposing concepts can both remain intact. Boethius responds to Augustine’s discussion of free will by claiming God to be outside of time, but Anselm’s suggestion of the words of God’s in the action of creation makes Boethius’s timelessness problematic. An alternative explanation of the complicated congruence of free will and omniscience will follow the same basis of thought as the philosophers but with a different perspective of creation and their relation between time and knowledge.

            Augustine lays out the groundwork on free will by saying that God gave all human beings free will, allowing for the individual choice between good actions and evil actions. Good actions would bring a person closer to God and to heaven, whereas evil actions would do the opposite. Rather than give humans a will where they only do good, by giving them the choice between good and evil gives worth to good actions. The existence of free will is generally agreed upon among philosophers and non-philosophers alike. Additionally, medieval philosophers generally agree also on the existence of God’s qualities such as justice, wisdom, omnipotence, and omniscience. Omniscience becomes problematic for free will because if God knows the future, are we actually choosing our life of our own accord? Augustine argues that God’s knowledge of your choices through free will confirms our freedom. A weak argument of little substance, Augustine does nothing to actually prove that free will is confirmed. 

            To combat Augustine’s weak argument, Boethius takes God literally off the timeline. God is eternal, so it is not a stretch to accept that God is timeless as well. If God exists not within the human timeline of past, present, and future, it is not that God knows the future, but that God lives within a context where all time is happening simultaneously. Therefore, the fact that God knows everything, including what we understand to be our future, does not mean that he’s insuring it, only that God is seeing it happen all at once. This gives us the existence of our free will even providing God’s omniscience.

            Since God only needs to look into God’s nature in order to know all, God need not look into the world in order to know all that is there. When Anselm thinks about creation, he claims that God creates the world from the Words of God and from the ideas in God’s own mind. But can timelessness exist between the before and after of creations? It would appear that the very fact of creation creates a placing of time. Whereas God can look at the past, present, and future of mankind all from the perspective of being withdrawn from time, can God act in a timeless way? Is it only God’s perspective that is outside of time, or all of God? 

Considering the significant difference between from before and after creation, it does not seem possible that it can exist outside of time. God’s actions are an interaction between his timelessness and our human timeline; therefore they must in some way partake of our quality of time. Additionally, it is believed by many that God helps humans, that God has messengers sent to our world, and that God may even perform miracles or appear in some form on earth occasionally. To do that, God must place himself within our time. So it would make sense that God resides within a perspective outside of time with the ability to act inside of time.

So if creation is placed within time, and the Words of God give substance to the creation of the world out of nothing, then God still knows everything after creation before it happens. Can God have knowledge outside of time if the subjects and events being known about are existent only after being created within time? Because they originate as nothing, and God is using the Words to shape creation, aren’t God’s Words forming creation in the way of God’s choosing rather than through humans’ free will? Simply taking God out of time does not fully resolve the issues of omniscience and choice.

But what if God’s knowledge works in a different way than what has been assumed? The power of creation was significant enough that it created all of the world and humanity out of nothing. God did not need to be all knowing in something he had not yet created. God could have known what to do and how to do it and by using his power to create, created more knowledge for God to know. Then within the act of creation, he created the world, humanity, a timeline, a purpose, and free will. God would have existed timelessly beforehand, and then with creation, created and discovered all that would come to pass in a form like a vision. While God would still exist outside of the timeline, his creating formed the beginning of our timeline, and so he participated in the timeline at that point, and continues to do so at other points. 

Before creating, God knew all there was to know. In creating, God expanded what there was to know, and became all knowing again. As the creator, there was never a point where God did not know all, but there were difference existences of things to know. Additionally, God would know, in creating, all the potential paths for every human and for humanity as a whole. Knowledge of what would actually come to pass should be thought of more as faith than fate. Fate is defined by being enacted by the supernatural. Because free will exists, this cannot be accepted as the way of the world. Faith, however, is a quality strongly connected with God. We as humans do not necessarily have exact, logical, or explainable proof for existence of God, and yet, God exists. It is a knowing without the need for proof or our own actions in order for existence of what is to be known. Similarly, God knows what will come to pass with humanity and each being because of a faith-like knowledge that is completely confident of its truth without the need for proof, explanation, or action. 

Because God is all knowing and all-powerful, God knows when humans are asking for help or when humanity needs help in general. God can help people when it is needed, and in the larger instances of need, give help in a bigger way. For example, to atone for the sin of Adam and Eve, God sent Christ in order to help humanity. This was to spread more knowledge and understanding with humanity at the time where it was needed and necessary and to give atonement for others souls in a way that wasn’t just an action of God, but a combined action of God and man. This allows for God to help humanity along its path without infringing on the human right of free will.

It wouldn’t be amiss for humanity and creation to have a purpose. It is said that free will is given for humans to “act rightly.” If something as characteristically significant for humanity as free will is given with a certain meaning, then that meaning must be key to its purpose. By acting rightly, one becomes closer to God and heaven, which is undoubtedly the ultimate goal. By having the choice to do evil, acting rightly, and the achievement of heaven obtain much more worth than if everyone was automatically good and accepted into heaven. The purpose of humans must then be to act rightly of free will and achieve heaven, and the goal for humanity is for all to arrive at that point. Giving purpose to humanity can’t take away free will because free will is the necessary method for the purpose to be achieved. What purpose does do, however, is give a reason for existence, a reason to choose rightly with your free will, and a reason for time to exist in a natural state. If humanity were to exist outside of time as well, there would be no timeline for beings to move forward through while in pursuit of their purpose. The specific purpose as well must not be a general knowledge fact of life like that of knowing that you must eat food. Purpose must be searched for and discovered so that beings can come into acting rightly, and give reason for acting rightly rather than just knowing that as a being, you should act rightly and arrive at heaven. It could be thought of as fate for humanity to eventually reach a point where all act rightly, but there is no required fate for each being because each individual being ends up wherever they end up through the choice of their free will. Their individual purpose is only to do as best as they can, and God knows that they will end up there, no matter where that might be.

The question of the coexistence of God’s omniscience and humans’ free will is not one that can ever be answered with absolute certainty. By using the combined understanding from each philosopher and Boethius’ concept of a timeless God to form a situation where all aspects make sense together and form a more solid approach affirming their coexistence it has become a combined effort from humanity in understanding our world and abilities within it. As it turns out, the power of creation and faith is what will help us move forward and emerge as humanity that acts rightly.