Q&A: On the Question of Divine Foreknowledge and Free Choice
On the Question of Divine Foreknowledge and Free Choice
Question
With God's help,
On the question of foreknowledge and free choice, Maimonides resolves the question according to the accepted explanation (in his view), that His knowledge is not like our knowledge, even though there is a logical contradiction here.
Even though Maimonides himself agrees that there are divine impossibilities (and so does Rabbi Joseph Albo—for example, whether God can create another god).
In addition, regarding the doctrine of negative attributes, it emerges that one cannot say anything about God (although the negation does advance me, as Rabbi Joseph Albo writes),
so if I cannot say anything at all about God (neither attributes nor His essence), what stops me from simply remaining silent and saying nothing, or from reaching all kinds of conclusions (for example: God does not know what will be, because there is a logical contradiction here)? If I assume that I am incapable of grasping the divine logic, since I live within a different logic that is imprinted in me a priori, then perhaps we should simply remain silent and say nothing—other than that His knowledge is not like our knowledge?
Or conversely, if I do resolve the questions, then seemingly I am in fact saying something, because in my starting assumption I am saying that God is bound by my logic?
Answer
Precisely because Maimonides himself agrees that there are impossibilities with respect to God (that is, that He is bound by logic—and contrary to what you wrote, it is not "ours"), the conclusion is the opposite of yours: he does not resolve the difficulty but accepts it. When he says that His knowledge is not like our knowledge, he is essentially saying that knowledge in the sense familiar to us, He truly does not have. Why? Precisely because foreknowledge logically contradicts freedom of will, and therefore it is impossible for the Holy One, blessed be He, to maintain both. He gave up His foreknowledge in order to allow our freedom of choice.
As for the doctrine of negative attributes, that is a painful subject. In my opinion these are meaningless statements, so I will not be able to explain them to you.
I have written about this in several places. See Two Carts and The Sciences of Freedom, and also search here on the site.