Free Will: Explanations of God’s Foreknowledge Are Unnecessary
This post concludes the first difficulty of denying the reality of free will. That first difficulty is that it underestimates the nature and power of God.
2.1.2.2 Even explaining God’s foreknowledge while accepting free will is too great a limit on God.
Using God’s foreknowledge of possibilities as a means of explaining freedom while maintaining God’s control of events misses the significance of freedom (Molinism’s failure regarding the significance of human freedom is not the point of this paper, but it can be mentioned briefly. Creating layers between God’s knowledge and the actions of his creatures in the future does not eliminate the apparent problem for freedom foreknowledge forces. That is, if God knowing the activity of a person means she does not have an option, then God knowing what she will do in every possible circumstance still does not leave her a genuine option since God knows which world [and therefore which circumstances] He will actualize. That is, God actualizing only the circumstances which will produce a certain choice makes her choice no freer than the compatiblist’s subject, although her determination is buried one layer deeper) and inappropriately attempts to explain the knowledge of God. The question is how God could Read the rest of this entry »
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