Q&A: Free Choice
Free Choice
Question
Hello Rabbi,
1. In your first YouTube lesson on free choice, you said that a decision that stems from free choice actually creates a timeline (or more precisely, a different reality) that there is no way to predict. You also said there that, among other things, this is why one cannot say that the Holy One, blessed be He, can know what a person’s decision will be and what will happen afterward, in a libertarian worldview. According to your view, that is like claiming that the Holy One, blessed be He, can create a square triangle. But I still haven’t really managed to understand why one has to go so far as to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot know. Can’t one say that He knows several possibilities regarding what a person will choose and what will happen as a result, instead of saying that He has no indication at all of what the future will be?
2. Among other things, you also said there that God too is, in a certain sense, subject to the laws of logic, like the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot create a square triangle because this is a meaningless expression, and that this does not detract from His omnipotence. I would be happy to know whether this is an innovative idea of yours or whether others also share this view. In addition, I wanted to ask—although this may sound like a somewhat silly question—whether there is any sense to the claim that, since the Holy One, blessed be He, is beyond all these concepts, there is in fact a reality in which He can create a square triangle, only we have no ability to picture it. (A few rabbis and Haredim I spoke with told me something along those lines.)
Thank you, and sorry for the length and perhaps for some inaccuracies in the points above.
Answer
All these claims were discussed at length in my series of columns on knowledge and free choice (starting from 299 through 303). I do not deal with the question of who thought like me and who did not. It does not really interest me.