God's Knowledge and My Free Will

Mark Dunagan
05/03/09 - Sunday Morning

In a previous lesson we talked about the subject of free will and in this lesson I want to address the interplay between our free will and God’s ability to know the future. Does God’s foreknowledge regarding what we’re going to do, mean that we don’t really have free will? In what ways does God’s foreknowledge free us? And how can we use free will as a motivator to serve Him faithfully?

God Can Know the Future

It is clear that God has the ability to know about future events:

• “Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, Thou dost know it all” (Psalm 139:4).
• “Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done” (Isaiah 46:10).

Equally clear is that God has the ability to know about specific events and even decisions that will be made by even just one individual:

• Jesus knew that Peter would deny Him three times on a specific night (Mark 14:30).
• Jesus knew that Judas would betray Him (John 6:64).
• Jesus knew what the Jews and Romans would do to Him (Mark 10:33-34).
• He knew minute details about future human actions (Mark 14:13-15).

One reason God can do this is because God lives “outside of time” and has the ability to see the entire sequence of historical events at once. He has a wider vista available to Him as he sees human choices and how they will interact with other choices and affect the future. Thomas Aquinas used the analogy of one who sits on a mountaintop and sees travelers walking along a long stretch of road. The person on the mountaintop is in a far better position to anticipate what the travelers can expect because he has such a wide vision. Yet, in knowing the future God certainly does much more than simply “infer” or “guess” what may happen. For example, with a lot of research one might “guess” that someone would eventually come to the aid of the Jewish nation in captivity, but no amount of homework could “guess” the exact name of the person 150 years before he even existed (Isaiah 44:28). God knows the future.

Knowing the Future Does Not Eliminate Free Will

This is often the first thing people forget when contemplating God’s ability to know the future and our free will. “God’s knowledge of future actions does not by itself hinder human freedom since knowledge does not actually cause anything” (That’s Just Your Interpretation, Paul Copan, p. 78). For example, from reading the Bible I know about a specific future event, the return of Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). Yet my knowledge of this future event is not what causes it to happen. Again, knowing about future things does not necessarily cause them. There are times when God speaks of knowing about something He will do (come on Judgment Day), and other times God speaks of knowing about something that people will do-- their reactions on that day (Matthew 7:22; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3). So foreknowledge and free will are not contradictory truths because in foreknowing the future what God is often doing is simply foreknowing human actions.

Plan A and Plan B

There are a number of passages that indicate that God has the ability to know different futures depending upon how people live at this moment. Thus, the future is not written in stone, rather it is often the product of our choices:

• “Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand?” (1 Samuel 23:11). On this occasion David is asking God about what would happen if he chose to remain in the city of Keliah. Will the men of the city defend him or surrender him? God clearly says, “They will surrender you” (23:12). Now this event never happens, because David leaves the city. Thus, David’s life was not rigged in advance by God. Something could have happened, yet it does not happen because of the choice that David made.
• At other times God through the prophets gives warnings of what will happen if people act in one way rather than another. Jonah was told to go the city of Nineveh and proclaim, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4). Yet Nineveh will not be overthrown in forty days because the people repent (3:6-9). Notice what the king of Nineveh says, “Who knows, God may turn and relent, and withdraw His burning anger so that we shall not perish?” (3:9). Even an Assyrian monarch knew something about Divine Foreknowledge and human free will. He knew that they worked together. He knew that both exist and that they are not contradictory. He knew that if people decide to change that God often changes the earthly consequences.
• Jeremiah 18:7“At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it”. This is an example of Divine Foreknowledge. Jeremiah 18:8 “if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it”. Here is human free will, and the free will here alters the future.

So instead of saying that God knows the future, it might be more accurate to say that God knows various futures. God knows my future if I remain faithful, and God knows my future if I do not remain faithful. God knows what my marriage will be like if I work on it and follow His word and God knows what it will be like if I ignore it. God knows what children can become with good parenting and their honor and obedience, and God knows what can happen when good parenting is neglected or discarded.

The Past and the Future

“Some people will say that if God knows past and future truths, then both sets of truths are logically the same in that they are ‘locked in place’. The future is just as unpreventable as the past. But besides being counter-intuitive, such a fatalistic position is simply not true. By definition, we cannot act on or cause anything in the past (backward causation). We simply have no power over it, whereas we can act in the present to bring about future events” (Copan p. 79). In addition to this, there are things that we can presently do to break from the past. We can break from the past of faithfulness or we can break from the past of unfaithfulness (Ezekiel 18:26-28). Thus, the past is not even “locked in place” for the righteous. Ezekiel makes it very clear that a righteous person can undo all his or her past good actions by going back into sin.

How God’s Foreknowledge Frees Us

Instead of feeling confined and limited by God’s foreknowledge, rather, we should be motivated by it:

• God has already told all mankind that He is coming again to judge (2 Corinthians 5:10). This should serve as tremendous motivation to properly exercise our free will.
• God has also revealed to us that we will be judged according to Scripture (John 12:48). He has been very specific about what will bring His displeasure (Galatians 5:9-21; Ephesians 5:1-6; Revelation 21:8; Matthew 25:31ff), and what will bring His pleasure (Galatians 5:22-23; John 14:15; Matthew 7:21). Thus, foreknowledge should take away all the surprises.
• God has told us that we can alter our destinies and we are ultimately the ones who make the final choice, “Enter by the narrow gate” (Matthew 7:13).
• God has told us that we can repent of any sin, thus, we are completely able to get out of sin, in fact, even if we have been yielding to it for years (John 8:11; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Colossians 3:7-8 “and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. But now you also, put them all aside”). It is easy to forget that the people who were being told in the New Testament Epistles to stop lying, fornicating, etc…, were people who had been living in such things. These were frequently people who had not been raised by Christian parents, who had not been brought up in the Scriptures and who had not known the truth, and yet they were fully expected to change (Ephesians 2:1-3).
• God is also using His foreknowledge to give us time to repent (2 Peter 3:9). “Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked...rather than that he should turn from his ways and live?” (Ezekiel 18:23). Obviously, God’s foreknowledge can never be viewed as a hindrance to our free will, if while knowing the future God is patiently waiting for men to repent.

And this should not surprise us. Everything God has done has been for our ultimate benefit. God freely chose to create the world. He did not have to. God freely chose to offer a redeemer once man sinned, again, He did not have to, “For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you” (1 Peter 1:19; Titus 2:11). Therefore, God uses His attributes in a manner that always benefits man and gives us the best possible opportunity to be saved.