Similarities Between Free Will And God's Foreknowledge

Human Free Will and God’s Foreknowledge The argument of the compatibility and incompatibility of God’s foreknowledge and human free will have been going on for hundreds of years. Concerning the definition of freedom, to get a better understanding, can be described as an act that an individual can do freely without being restrained or force. Philosophers that are well known in this subject matter are Alvin Plantiga and Nelson Pike. Pike will argue that human freedom is incompatible with God’s foreknowledge based upon facts such as God being omniscient. Whereas, Plantiga argues that Pike’s theory is based upon confusion and that human free will can coexist with God’s foreknowledge. Let’s get in to the differences in predictability and God’s
Pertaining to this situation Pike states, “ … if God held such a belief eighty years [T1] prior to [T2], Peter did not have the power on [T2] to do something that would have made it the case that God did not hold this belief eighty years later.” (Pojman & Rea 99) This fact goes on to say that it is with the omniscience of God that, no matter what, His belief will not have changed in between [T1] and [T2]. The argument can still be accepted in an statement made by St. Augustine, “… it is not necessary to deny that God foreknows all things while at the same time our wills are our own. God has foreknowledge of our will, so that of which he has foreknowledge must come to pass. In other words, we shall exercise our will in the future because he has foreknowledge that we shall do so; and there can be no will or voluntary action unless it will be in our power.” (Hopkins 112) The argument here is that, even though God foreknows that Peter will eat the apple does not require Him to limit the humans free will; It was with knowledge and not restraint that Peter made his
This is backed up by stating that God is omniscient and because of that the action by the human is not, in fact, under his will. Due to the belief of the event occurring before the time it does occur does not allow the human any other choices. This cannot be compared to anything that is predicted as it would falsify the omniscience of God. To compare the belief of a situation occurring to the prediction a human might make of a wind-up toy or close friend is also untrue as it would then allow for anyone to be called “God” because anyone is able to make such a prediction. The previous statement would negate that only an omniscient being can be called “God” since the human that can predict is not