Free Will

This is not an entertaining blog... more of just a way for me to back up my papers so next time my hard drive is destroyed by an untimely accident, i'll still have them...mhmm... so this is an incredibly tedious and boring and if any of you actually read it, be sure to leave a comment to let me know, because i know i sure wouldn't read it. anyhows...

-A Defense of Free Will-

If God has divine foreknowledge of all future events, then future events are not contingent and free will is an illusion. This is the essential precept of theological fatalism, a concept, wherein either human free will or God’s omniscience must be rejected. Unfortunately, neither of these options is compatible with Biblical Christianity, thus, the argument poses one of the most formidable threats to human free will of any of the fatalistic argument. Various solutions to this dilemma have been proposed, but perhaps one of the strongest of these was offered by Saint Thomas Aquinas. The purpose of this essay is first, to present the dilemma of theological fatalism, secondly, to show why this dilemma is incompatible with Biblical Christianity, and thirdly, to refute this argument by means of the Thomistic ideology of free will.

Theological Fatalism
Theological fatalism begins with the assumption that God, being omniscient, must possess infallible knowledge of future events, specifically all future human decisions. This proposition can be assumed to be true given our understanding of the intrinsic nature of God’s being. If God’s divine foreknowledge of future events is truly infallible, then, if today, God believes X event will occur tomorrow, then X event must invariably occur. Nothing can deny this occurrence. This is inherent in the definition of infallibility. For the purpose of this explanation, X will represent the murder of one man by another. God’s knowledge of this future occurrence, being infallible, cannot be altered. So the murder must take place. If the occurrence of this murder is predetermined by God’s foreknowledge of it, then the murder was not committed freely. This is the dilemma of theological fatalism.

The argument requires that human free will cannot be reconciled with God’s divine foreknowledge, therefore one of these must be denied. However, each of these is foundational to the Christian belief system. If divine foreknowledge is rejected, then the omniscience of God has been denied and His deity has been compromised. The idea of God with the absence of divine foreknowledge is inherently self-contradictory. The denial of human free will is equally problematic. If there is no free will, then the murderer mentioned before cannot be held personally responsible for any of his actions. The elimination of personal responsibility necessitates that the guilt of all sins committed must ultimately reside with the creator Himself. Thus God must be guilty of all sins committed, while the human race must be innocent of all sin and utterly guiltless. This scenario wherein free will is denied, is in every way contradictory to Christian doctrine. The argument for theological fatalism demonstrates that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with free will. However, Christianity will not subsist with the removal of either of these things. Therefore, the refutation or modification of the argument itself is essential to Christianity.

In resolving this dilemma, Aquinas prescribes to the Boethian solution, which begins with the denial of the first premise; That today, God believes that X event will occur tomorrow. This premise is denied on the basis that God is an atemporal being and as such, cannot hold a belief in either the past, or the future. The strength of this argument rests on the presupposition of God’s atemporality, which will be considered momentarily. Aquinas explains how God, being an atemporal being, can concurrently know past, present, and future characteristics of temporal reality, using the analogy of a circle. The central point of the circle is equidistant to every point along the circumference. In the same way, God may be understood to exist in a state of eternal now, outside of temporality, from which He views every point in time. All events within the temporal realm are before the mind of God simultaneously. Of course to use a word like “simultaneously” to describe God’s perspective, is using a temporal metaphor to ascribe meaning to that which cannot be understood. A more accurate description would be devoid of all tense, as tense involves time, and God is timeless. However such language, while inaccurate, is helpful in denoting the infinite nature of God in a comprehensible, finite sense. With this in mind, the claim can be made that from the omniscient perspective of God, there are no future events or past events, only present events. As such, God does not view future events as they will be, rather as they are. If the atemporality of God can be substantiated, then the first premise of the dilemma can be denied and the dilemma itself will have been refuted.

Timelessness
The atemporality of God can be confirmed on the basis of His immutability, which can likewise be confirmed through His simple nature which repels composition. For a being to change, it must attain something which it did not already possess. It must exist in two different states, each one lacking something that the other possesses. If God was changeable, this would contradict His understood being in several ways. First, His omnipresence would be denied. If God exists everywhere perpetually, then it is impossible for Him to change His position and exist elsewhere. Similarly, His omniscience would be denied. He could not be all-knowing and yet be changed by increasing or decreasing in knowledge. These, as well as other unique characteristics which delineate God’s being, are infinite in nature and deny change by definition. A being that is mutable could not be God. Therefore, God must be immutable. Time will be defined as a movement or change from one moment to the next. If time necessitates change, then mutability is a prerequisite for temporality. If that is the case, then God, being immutable as shown above, cannot exist in any state but one of atemporality. Having demonstrated the atemporality of God, consideration must now be given to the subject of future contingency.

Future Contingency
Restated, the argument for the incongruency of free will and divine foreknowledge is based on three claims: First, that free will is dependent on the contingency of future events. Second, that future contingencies are unknowable by nature. Third, that God’s nature is such that He must have knowledge of these future contingencies. The following statements are logically incompatible, thus presenting a dilemma.
However, a contingent event may be understood in two different ways. First, in the sense in which it exists in itself, in the present tense. Within this case, it is not considered a future event, or even a contingent event at all, because once a future contingent has become present, it is no longer contingent.31 It is important to note that in this first understanding, wherein the event is non-contingent, it has become completely knowable. For example, the aforementioned murder, designated as X event, is a future contingent, thus allowing for the free will of the murderer. However when X ceases to be a future event and becomes a present event, the contingency is lost, and knowledge of the event’s outcome then becomes possible.

The second way a contingent event may be considered is as it exists in its cause, in the future tense. In this context, the event is undetermined, and unknowable. While mankind can only have knowledge of the latter of these two views of contingency, God has knowledge of both of them. Though contingent events occur successively, God views them not successively, as they are in their cause, but simultaneously, as they are in their being. This is evident in God’s atemporal perception, through which there are no future or past events but only present events. As such, contingent events may be known by God, not as future contingencies but as timeless actualities. It can then be concluded that the argument for theological fatalism is inherently flawed, as it is incorrect to argue that God possesses divine foreknowledge today that X event will occur tomorrow. This posits a temporality of God’s knowledge that has been shown to be false in view of His timeless nature, by which He is able to possess infallible knowledge of contingent events while still allowing for human free will.