Foreknowledge and Free Will

If God already knows infallibly what each person will do, the future seems fixed and human freedom seems lost.

If God knows infallibly that a person will perform a certain action tomorrow, then that person will perform it, and it seems that the person cannot do otherwise. But if the person cannot do otherwise, the action does not appear to be free. The argument therefore presents a dilemma: either God's knowledge is not infallible, or human beings are not free in the sense that moral responsibility requires.

The difficulty deepens because the problem does not depend on God causing the action; knowledge alone, if it cannot be wrong, seems enough to fix what will happen.

The Argument in Form

God infallibly knows every future action.
If God infallibly knows that a person will act in a certain way, that person will act in that way.
If a person cannot act otherwise, the action is not free.

Conclusion: Therefore, either God's foreknowledge is not infallible or human actions are not free.

Proponents and History

The problem was sharpened by Boethius in the sixth century and debated throughout the medieval period by Augustine, Aquinas, and Ockham. It returned in modern philosophy of religion as part of the wider debate about determinism, freedom, and moral responsibility. Contemporary discussion often turns on whether God's knowledge is timeless, whether some facts about the future are soft facts, and whether God knows what free creatures would do in any circumstance.

Standard Responses

Boethian timelessness replies that God does not know the future in advance at all, but knows all times timelessly, as present to God; a timeless knower does not fix the future any more than present observation fixes the present. Ockhamism replies that God's past beliefs about the future are soft facts that depend on what will happen, so they do not harden the future. Molinism adds middle knowledge: God knows what every free creature would do in every circumstance, and chooses which world to create on that basis. Open theism, a minority response, accepts the dilemma by denying exhaustive foreknowledge of free actions.

References

Foreknowledge and Free Will (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Free / open access

Related Across the Site

Argument from Non-Belief Argument — The sheer scale of unbelief in the world is said to fit naturalism better than theism.
Cosmological Disproof Argument — Modern cosmology is said to remove the need for a first cause of the universe.
Divine Hiddenness Argument — If God were perfectly loving, reasonable people would not remain without belief; yet many do.
Omnipotence Paradox / Coherence of Theism Argument — The stone paradox asks whether a God who can do anything can make a stone too heavy for God to lift.
Omnipotence and Omniscience Incoherence Argument — The divine attributes themselves are said to conflict, so that no being could hold them all together.
Ontological Disproof Argument — The ontological argument is said to fail because existence is not a property that can be built into a definition.
Problem of Evil Argument — The suffering of the world is said to count against a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good.
Teleological Disproof Argument — Evolution and natural explanations of fine-tuning are said to remove the need for a designer.

Related Arguments

Omnipotence Paradox / Coherence of Theism — The stone paradox asks whether a God who can do anything can make a stone too heavy for God to lift.
Omnipotence and Omniscience Incoherence — The divine attributes themselves are said to conflict, so that no being could hold them all together.
Argument from Reason — The reliability of human reason, and the laws of logic themselves, point to a rational ground beyond the natural world.