Does God Know Everything You Are Going to Do

Here is a Spiritual Puzzler submitted to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life by a reader named Josh:

It says in the Bible that God knows our every word before it fifty-fifty leaves our natural language. If God already knows what we're going to do, then how could we take free will?

Cheers for the great—and classic—question, Josh. I'll get right to the point, so we'll explore the question in a little more than depth.

The most basic respond to this question is that knowing something is not the same as causing something.

If I hold a book upwardly in the air and allow get of it, I know that it will fall to the floor. Just I do not crusade it to autumn to the flooring. Gravity does that.

In the very aforementioned mode, God knowing what we will practice does not mean God causes us to do it.

Further, the very thought that God "already" knows what nosotros "will" do in the future is human, time-spring thinking, and a misunderstanding of how God knows everything. God does not look into the time to come and see what's going to happen. Rather, God sees everything from an eternal state of being exterior of fourth dimension and space. God simply sees and therefore knows everything that to usa is by, nowadays, and future.

In other words, just as yous and I can survey an entire scene from the top of a hill or mountain, and see everything in information technology in one view, then God tin survey the entirety of creation, not merely taking in everything that exists everywhere in all of space all at once, but besides taking in everything that exists in all of fourth dimension all at once.

But simply as our seeing a vast panorama from a mountaintop doesn't cause that scene to be the way information technology is, and so God'southward seeing everything that exists in all of fourth dimension and space does not crusade all of those things to exist the fashion they are.

We'll expect at these things more than closely in a minute. But beginning, let's take a look at the Bible passage Josh is referring to.

The Bible on God's foreknowledge

Here is the relevant Bible verse, in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):

Even before a discussion is on my natural language,
O Lord, yous know information technology completely. (Psalm 139:4)

However, this and similar translations are probably reading a little too much into it. In the original Hebrew, there is no "before." Here information technology is in Immature'due south Literal Translation:

For there is not a word in my tongue,
Lo, O Jehovah, G hast known it all!

And in the traditional King James Version:

For there is not a discussion in my natural language,
only, lo, O Lord, 1000 knowest it birthday

In other words, the Hebrew is talking most God knowing everything about what nosotros are saying, rather than God knowing ahead of time what we are going to say.

Yet a passage after on in the same Psalm suggests that God does know everything about u.s.a. before information technology even happens:

Your optics beheld my unformed substance.
In your volume were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as nevertheless existed. (Psalm 139:16, NRSV)

Though we could quibble almost this translation as well, the general bulletin is clear enough: God knows what we will exist non merely equally we are forming, but before nosotros have been formed.

And this is supported past a whole series of passages that speak of God knowing and declaring what will happen in the time to come. Hither are three of them from the book of Isaiah:

See, the sometime things take come to pass,
and new things I now declare;
before they bound forth,
I tell y'all of them. (Isaiah 42:ix)

Who is like me? Let them proclaim it,
let them declare and set information technology forth before me.
Who has appear from of erstwhile the things to come up?
Let them tell usa what is however to be. (Isaiah 44:7)

Recall the erstwhile things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is no one similar me,
declaring the stop from the beginning
and from aboriginal times things not notwithstanding done,
saying, "My purpose shall stand up,
and I will fulfill my intention." (Isaiah 46:9–10)

Farther, the first epistle of John in the New Testament states flatly:

God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:20)

Everything includes . . . everything. If there were some future thing God didn't know, then God would not know everything.

In brusque, though God'southward foreknowledge is non a major theme in the Bible, the Bible does go far clear that God is all-seeing, and that God's omniscience includes knowing the future. Which brings us correct back to Josh's question: If God knows the future, how can we accept free will?

Knowing is non the same equally causing

One time once more, knowing something is not the same as causing something. If I drop something, I know it's going to fall, but it's gravity, not my noesis about gravity, that causes it to fall. My knowing how things piece of work doesn't cause them to work that fashion.

"Yep," you say, "But y'all didn't create gravity. God did!"

Adept point. God did create the universe, and everything in it. So for God, unlike for usa, isn't knowing things the same as causing them? After all, information technology was God who made everything to exist the style it does, and caused everything to happen the way it happens!

Whoa there!

That's actually a whole different issue, and a whole dissimilar question. Let's not get the two confused.

Is God's knowledge the same as causation?

The question Josh asked is, basically, whether God'due south knowledge of things that we recollect of as the future (more on that later) means that God, not us, causes them to happen, so that we don't actually have free will.

And the simple answer to that question, one time once again, is: No. The fact that God knows things doesn't necessarily hateful God causes those things. Knowledge and causation are but not the aforementioned thing. Just considering God knows our future actions, that doesn't mean God causes us to do those things. Only that God knows that's the activeness we volition take. (But once over again, for God it is not in the future. We'll go to that presently!)

The question this oft gets all tangled upwardly with in people's minds is whether God determines everything, or whether God has created at least some of the universe—nosotros humans—with the ability to make up one's mind and determine things for ourselves.

In other words, did God give us complimentary volition? And what near the rest of the created universe? Did God give some sort of complimentary volition to everything God created?

God created the universe with free will

On these questions, my belief is that everything God created has a sure level of complimentary will, and that humans have the greatest level of free will. For an extended discussion and explanation of this, please encounter:

God: Puppetmaster or Managing director of the Universe?

Curt version: God creates the universe in such a way that even though all of its power to be and to human action comes from God every moment, nonetheless created things act on their own initiative, with a certain level of randomness or free will, in doing the things they do.

This is especially truthful of human beings. We human activity past our own choice from the abilities and power that God gives us.

Specifically, God gave u.s. the ability to make choices, otherwise known as gratuitous will. Merely we, not God, are the ones who actually make those choices.

For instance: a auto

Consider, for example, an motorcar manufacturer and the cars it manufactures.

The auto manufacturer creates a car with an engine, a drive railroad train, wheels, a body, and various controls.

Just once the car rolls off the assembly line, does the auto manufacturer make it get?

No. The motorcar itself does that, as controlled by its driver. The manufacturer doesn't button the motorcar along the route. Nor does the manufacturer inject the fuel and air mixture into the cylinders and transport pulses of electricity from the bombardment to the spark plug to ignite it. The car does all of this on its own, based on its design by the manufacturer, and at the will of its human driver.

In brusque, once the auto is made, it, not the manufacturer, causes itself to drive down the road when the driver turns the key, puts information technology in gear, and steps on the gas pedal.

Practice the manufacturers know that the car will do this?

Yes.

Practise the manufacturers cause the car to do this?

No. The car itself does it, based on the abilities the manufacturer gave it.

Our free will is real, and information technology is what makes us human

­We humans are, of course, far more complex than cars. But the principle is the same. God gives the states certain equipment and capabilities. But we, non God, are the ones who really do things with that equipment and those capabilities.

In other words, God doesn't cause everything we do. Rather, God gives the states the ability to do what nosotros do. We act on our own initiative, using the abilities that God gives usa, to do what we want to practise.

That is why we have non only a sense of having gratis will, but nosotros actually do have free will.

Sure, we're not radically free. There are many things nosotros wish nosotros could practice that we tin't do. And there are many things we do because it was drilled into u.s.a. by our parents or teachers. Only each of us does have the ability to make decisions nearly what we will and won't do. And that includes deciding that even though Mom and Dad ingrained this habit into the states, we're going to break the addiction and do that instead.

Our ability to brand these decisions about our own life, our own actions, and our own grapheme is what makes us human being. And that'southward peculiarly true when nosotros make ourselves work hard to change who nosotros are and what direction we're going. We are at our most man when we are doing the difficult work to modify our grapheme and our life based on a decision we've made about who and what nosotros want to be.

God does non "see the futurity"

Now let's get dorsum to the question Josh actually asked, and wait at the second point I fabricated at the outset in response to it.

We humans live embedded in time and space. We are here and not there. Nosotros are in the nowadays moment. The past has already happened. The future hasn't happened yet. It is very difficult for us to think almost anything without thinking in terms of space and time.

However, God exists outside of space and fourth dimension.

Space and time, we now know, are backdrop of the physical universe. Modern physics tells united states of america that space and fourth dimension are not some external gridwork in which the universe exists and moves. Rather, infinite and time are simply two different attributes of the physical cosmos. Without the existence of the material universe and the physical entities that compose it, at that place would exist no space and fourth dimension.

This means that there is no such affair every bit "before the universe was created." Before the universe was created, there was no before and after. Time only didn't exist. From a theological perspective, fourth dimension came into existence with the creation of the physical universe. All of those questions about what God did before God created the universe have no pregnant.

Instead, God exists in a state of beingness that is beyond and outside of infinite and time. In the being and consciousness of God, at that place is no time and space.

God does not take the limitations that we do of being in this space and at this time, and not in all of the other spaces and times. For God, all of space and time are a nowadays reality in an eternal at present. In other words, God sees everything everywhere, and all things in all fourth dimension—what to united states of america is by, present, and future—all at once.

From God'due south perspective, in that location is no such thing equally God "knowing the future." For God, at that place is no time to come, and no past. It is all in the present to God. God only sees everything, everywhere, in every time, just as we stand up on a mountaintop and see the whole vista spread out earlier our optics at in one case.

God does not know "what nosotros're going to exercise"

For us, living within the arrow of time, the future is still unknown and largely undetermined. We can take some ideas about what will happen, but we don't know for sure what will happen.

A lot of what will happen to usa depends upon the choices we make. If we determine to get drunk instead of going to work, we're going to lose our task, and our life is going to fall apart. But if we then decide to get sober, we can rebuild a expert life for ourselves. Sure, information technology will be hard work. Simply that is something we tin decide to practise, and thereby change the form of our life. And once more, the very conclusion to modify our life, and the difficult piece of work nosotros exercise to comport out that decision, is what makes usa human.

God doesn't "know what we're going to do" in the usual sense. God isn't looking into our future from the present and proverb, "Josh is going to purchase a new car." Once once again, God is not embedded in fourth dimension the style we are. God looks at everything from outside of time.

In other words, for God, Josh is buying that new car, and Josh is beingness born, and Josh is dying and going to heaven. God sees the whole sweep of our life from the eternal present in which God lives. For God it'southward not something that is going to happen. Information technology'due south something that is happening.

Who decides what we're going to practise?

Does this mean that God causes united states to exist born, or to buy a car, or to dice, or to go to heaven?

No.

• Our parents are the ones who caused us to be born.
• We're the ones who make up one's mind it's time for a new car.
• All sorts of factors go into determining the fourth dimension of our death. Doing stupid things in a auto could take something to do with information technology!
• And we are the ones who decide whether we'd prefer to spend eternity in sky or in hell.

In other words, even though God sees, from the timeless land in which God exists, everything we choose and everything we practise throughout our unabridged lifetime, we are still the ones making those choices, and we are the ones really doing the things nosotros do.

That'southward because God has created us with the crucial, human capability of free will, especially in the moral and spiritual class we will take. That free will is God'southward nigh precious souvenir to u.s. after God's dear and our life itself. And our costless volition is a gift that God will never violate or take away from us.

In curt, we make the choices. God just sees our choices.

God sees everything, and therefore knows everything. But God has created a universe, and usa in it, so that we can decide for ourselves what we volition do, and who we will be.

This article is a response to a spiritual conundrum submitted by a reader.

For further reading:

• Containers for God
• God: Puppetmaster or Director of the Universe?
• How did God Create the Universe? Was the World Actually Created in Six Days?
• Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth

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Source: https://leewoof.org/2018/02/15/if-god-already-knows-what-were-going-to-do-how-can-we-have-free-will/

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