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)
