Q&A: Foreknowledge and Free Choice
Foreknowledge and Free Choice
Question
Hello,
Can you explain what is problematic about the position that says: a person has free choice, and the Holy One, blessed be He, knows (but does not decree) what the person will choose?
Answer
Is that all? Honestly, that’s a question for a line or two. 🙂
See the series of columns here on the site, 299–303 (except for 300), which dealt with this. And also the talkbacks there. I suggest not starting a discussion before you’ve seen what went on there. It was exhausted to the point of bleeding dry.
Discussion on Answer
Read it and then we’ll talk. You’re jumping in and asking about things that were discussed there to exhaustion.
Print out those columns and read them in synagogue. Two birds with one stone.
They really are very foundational columns. Spoiler: your question (the movie argument) is the only point Michi isn’t completely settled about… There’s something slippery about that claim, but on the face of it it’s self-contradictory; see there.
It’s clear to me that this is a very loaded topic (I’m in the middle of listening to the series on YouTube), and even so I still just want to go back to this critical point. In column 299 you formulate the difficulty like this:
"The argument is built as a dilemma: let us assume for the sake of discussion that my actions are indeed given over to my free choice. If I choose to take a step contrary to what the Holy One, blessed be He, knew in advance, then it turns out that His knowledge was mistaken, and that of course contradicts His omnipotence. That cannot be. And if there is no possibility that I will do something else, then it is not true that I have free choice. In short, divine foreknowledge is not compatible with my freedom to choose. Seemingly, we need to give up one of these two beliefs."
So now I’m asking: why can’t we say that the choice is in my hands, and the Holy One, blessed be He, simply knows in fact what I chose? I don’t understand the sentence, "If I choose to take a step contrary to what the Holy One, blessed be He, knew in advance"—if I claim that what the Holy One, blessed be He, knew in advance is what will in fact turn out to be what I chose (because the Holy One, blessed be He, is above time, whatever exactly that means…).