Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.8

Then said I, “Again am I plunged in yet more doubt and difficulty.”

“What are they,” she asked, “though I have already my idea of what your trouble consists?”

“There seems to me,” I said, “to be such incompatibility between the existence of God's universal foreknowledge and that of any freedom of judgment. For if God foresees all things and cannot in anything be mistaken, that, which His Providence sees will happen, must result.

“Wherefore if it knows beforehand not only men's deeds but even their designs and wishes, there will be no freedom of judgment. For there can neither be any deed done, nor wish formed, except such as the infallible Providence of God has foreseen. For if matters could ever so be turned that they resulted otherwise than was foreseen of Providence, this foreknowledge would cease to be sure. But, rather than knowledge, it is opinion which is uncertain; and that, I deem, is not applicable to God.”

—from Book 5, Prose 3

This is another one of those spots in the text where people are prone to jump ship; the topic may seem too abstract, the concepts involved too confusing. It’s the sort of problem, like a tree falling in the forest, or going back in time to kill your father, or the sound of one hand clapping, that just makes the head hurt.

My own experience suggests to me, however, that my confusion and frustration does not necessarily mean a question is either irrelevant or unsolvable. Sometimes it simply indicates that I am not being clear in defining the terms involved, or I am seeing a contradiction where none needs to be present, or I am failing to ground the theory in concrete practice. Oftentimes I am all twisted up on all three.

If I start by asking about the dilemma of causal compatibility between Divine omniscience and human autonomy, I am already in over my head. Let me begin with something more immediate and direct, to help me understand why any of this even matters, and to give me some indication of how I can make sense of it.

It is important to me to know that the world has a sense of order and purpose to it, and it is at the same time important to me to know that I am in control of my own choices. It would be disconcerting to live in a universe where nothing makes sense, but it would also be discouraging to live in a universe where I am just a machine with no control over my own life.

Philosophers will sometimes swing between extreme models of what they call determinism and freedom, and yet I find that no one is ever quite satisfied with having one at the exclusion of the other.

Is it possible for things to be subject to design, to a single measure of existence, and still allow people to follow their own paths? Put that way, there is already a sneaking concern: if God runs it all, what’s left for me to run?

Couldn’t God simply choose to let us choose? Yet if God, or however we wish to name such an ultimate reality, is perfect, then He will also possess absolute power and complete knowledge, that which has no limit and beyond which there can be nothing. Surely the Divine, then, must be both omnipotent and omniscient?

This may seem quite fine, until I specifically start wondering more about God’s knowledge, and then it feels like my brain is tied up in knots.

If God knows absolutely everything, He must know what I am going to do, even before I have decided to do it. Furthermore, if God knows everything, He must know it with absolutely certainty; if He didn’t, His knowledge would hardly be perfect.

So, does this end up meaning that I really have no freedom at all? I can’t seem to say that God knows my future actions without a doubt, and then add some sort of conditions to that knowledge, that His knowledge depends on what I choose. If God knows it, surely it will happen, and it has to happen. I now worry whether God has to go, or my freedom has to go, because it’s hard to see how they can go together.

Oh dear. Do I now have to become either a Sartre or a Spinoza? Sorry, that’s a philosopher’s inside joke. Is it possible for my judgment and God's judgment to coexist?

Written in 1/2016