God's Knowledge of the Future.

In my previous post I gave an example, at least to my mind, of God foreknowing something without ordaining it. But this doesn't answer how this is possible for God to do. And nor does it demonstrate it to someone who won't trust the Bible.  So how does God know the future?

I've heard agnostics and atheists say something along the lines of: “If God knows what my choices are how can He judge me?” Their argument seems to be: if God knows my choices, then my choices must be determined, so I only have an illusion of choice. Thus, how is it fair for God to judge me for an action when I could do no other?

I think the problem with this view, and with Calvinist statements such as

God foreknows what will be because He has decreed what shall be. From here.

No event can be foreknown unless, in some sense, it has been predetermined... Foreknowledge demands certainty, and certainty demands foreordination. From here.

is that they think of God as stuck in time like us. They picture God in the present peering into the future. Because He knows the present perfectly He can run the universe forwards in His mind to see the future. This view only works if we live in a deterministic universe. If indeterminate things are possible then this view of God's foreknowledge can't work or else God can't know the future. But I think that this is a mistaken view of God. Time is part of the universe. Time came into being when the universe began. In fact, according to General Relativity, time flows at different rates at different parts of the universe. This necessitates that God is timeless. He sees the whole of time at once. He knows the outcome of an indeterminate event in the future because He is there, observing it occurring. Just as me observing a coin spinning and twisting through the air and finally landing – didn't determine whether it was a head or a tail – so God observing me in the future doesn't imply that my actions, desires or decisions were predetermined.

It's hard for us temporal beings to picture God knowing all of time at once. So maybe this will help.  Imagine a one dimensional object moving randomly along a line between two points A and B. Because the object is moving randomly we can't predict, from its initial position, where it will be at time t1. But if we are outside of time (see the picture) we can see that at t1 it will be at point B. So because we can see the whole of time we can know with certainty where the being will be at a given time without its position being the result of some deterministic law.

 

I hope this post shows how it is possible for God to know the future exhaustively and allow the possibility that not all our choices are predetermined. However it doesn't answer why God chose to make this particular universe containing you and me and the choices we make.  And I'm not sure if we'll ever be able that question. But we can rejoice that God knows all things.

Remember the former things, those of long ago;
   I am God, and there is no other;
   I am God, and there is none like me. 

 I make known the end from the beginning,
   from ancient times, what is still to come.
I say, ‘My purpose will stand,
   and I will do all that I please.’

Isaiah 46:9-10