Q&A: Knowledge and Free Choice
Knowledge and Free Choice
Question
Hello Rabbi,
If God is above time and for Him everything is like the present, then what is the problem with knowledge and free choice? After all, His knowledge is because of our choice.
Answer
The statement that the Holy One, blessed be He, is above time is meaningless. We are not above time. If from our perspective He knows the future now, then the question remains: how do we have the freedom to choose tomorrow? Why does it matter what happens from His perspective, if the ones asking the question are us?
Beyond that, even if you assume that He is above time (whatever that even means), at most that would explain how He obtains the information about what will happen tomorrow. But the question of knowledge and free choice is the opposite question: assuming that He has indeed obtained the information and already knows it today, how is it possible that I have free choice tomorrow? Am I also above time?
Bottom line, vague statements of this kind resolve nothing; they only confuse the public.
Discussion on Answer
It seems there is a problem here in the phrasing…
You ask: if it is known what I will do tomorrow, how do I have freedom of choice?
The answer is that He does not know today what I will do tomorrow; rather, He knows tomorrow what I did tomorrow after I did it, and being atemporal, the concepts of knowing today or tomorrow do not apply to Him, because His knowledge is not that He knows today about tomorrow, but that for Him there is no today and tomorrow at all.
Therefore the main question is what it means that He is above time, but if that is defined there is no obstacle to saying that He knows (knowledge as above) what I will choose (by free choice) tomorrow.
All that remains for you is to define it, and everything, everything will be wonderful.
Please, go on…
If I may,
I didn’t understand why the fact that God knows what I chose yesterday harms my freedom of choice less than if He knows what I will choose tomorrow (with the emphasis on the fact that I chose it).
By the way, it seems to me that the ability to be atemporal (or above time, in this wording) is fairly well-defined once we accept that time is something created.