Q&A: Questions Regarding Divine Knowledge and Free Choice
Questions Regarding Divine Knowledge and Free Choice
Question
Hello Rabbi!
1. Why is there any problem at all with God knowing and yet there still being free choice? After all, God is beyond time, while choice takes place within time. So God knows what a person will choose, but the person is the one who chooses, no?
Why does Maimonides get tangled up in his answer and not answer as you do, that there is no knowledge? After all, Maimonides himself writes that there is no logical contradiction here, unlike a square that is a triangle.
On the subject of logical contradictions:
It is well known that the place of the Ark did not take up space, and that the Land of Israel is called “the land of the deer” even though its neighboring lands are not like that, and that people stood crowded together yet bowed with ample space.
And that seems, on its face, to be a logical contradiction, since it is not only that some law of physics was bent, but in the case of the Ark, for example, if you measure from one side with the Ark, you get a certain number, and if you measure without it, you get that same number. And the Ark also has its own size. That makes no sense.
Thanks for everything!
Answer
Elchanan, you are raising questions and arguments that have been discussed here to death. There is an entire series on divine knowledge and free choice, and if you read it you will see that Maimonides did not write that; he wrote the opposite.
As for logical contradictions, you should ask Maimonides and the Rashba, who wrote this. They might say that these miracles were only in the person’s perception and not in the object itself (that is, that this is how it appeared to us, not that this is how it actually was). Regarding “they stood crowded together,” that seems straightforward; regarding “the Ark did not take up space,” that is harder, though still possible.
Discussion on Answer
No. It has been explained here on the site several times. Search for “laws of logic.”
In your opinion, can God violate the laws of logic..?