Friday, December 1, 2023

William Hasker on Free-Will and the Foreknowledge Problem

  

People will often say that God does not determine our actions, but he nevertheless knows in advance exactly what we will do. But there is a strong argument which seems to show that divine foreknowledge is just as inconsistent with free will as is predestination. Suppose, for instance, that I am going to have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. We can then construct the following argument:

 

1. It is now true that I will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (Assumption)

 

2. It is impossible that God should at any time believe anything false or fail to believe anything which is true. (Assumption: divine omniscience)

 

3. Therefore God has always believed that I will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (Inference from 1 and 2)

 

4. If God has always believed a certain thing, it is not in my power to bring it about that God has not always believed that thing. (Assumption: the inalterability of the past)

 

5. Therefore it is not in my power to bring it about that God has not always believed that I will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (Inference from 3 and 4)

 

6. It is not possible for it to be true both that God has always believed that I will do not in fact have one. (Inference from 2)

 

7. Therefore it is not in my power to refrain from having a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (Inference from 5 and 6) So I do not have a free will with respect to the decision whether or not to eat an omelet.

 

The argument can also be summarized briefly as follows I cannot now change what God has always believed about what I will do, nor is it possible for me to act in a way that would contradict God’s belief about me. So I have no free-will—in this case, or in any other.

 

Can this argument be refuted? It is often pointed out that one cannot reasonably assume that God’s knowing (or believing) what I will do causes me to act accordingly. But the argument makes no such assumption. The argument does indeed simply that God’s belief is a sufficient condition of my acting accordingly; this is just to say that it is impossible for God to believe in one way and for me to act in another. (William Hasker, Metaphysics: Constructing a World View [Contours of Christian Philosophy; Downers Grover, Ill.: IVP Academic, 1983], 51-52)

 

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