Divine Epistemology
There is far too much to say about this problem in one blog post, and it would be above me to offer a full-proof solution here. But I would like to discuss one simple insight that I think is often overlooked.
Peter's Betrayal, Carl Heinrich Bloch
Most people have never thought about the problem of foreknowledge in terms of formal philosophical arguments; nevertheless, many of us have an intuition that perfect foreknowledge cannot be reconciled with free will.
I think that intuition generally follows a thought process something like the following: Whenever I know something about the future, I know it because something about the way the world is now means that the future must necessarily be a certain way. This is the only way I can truly know something about the future; in fact, knowledge of the future is impossible unless the future is determined by the past and present. So if God knows what our future “choices” will be, we really have no “choices” at all, because they have all been determined. I never could have done otherwise, and thus have no free will.
At the end of the day, this line of reasoning could turn out to be correct. But, for my part, I think it fails to distinguish between human epistemology – the processes by which humans obtain knowledge – and divine epistemology – the processes by which God obtains knowledge. It makes inferences about how God thinks about the future from human modes of thinking about the future, without pausing to consider the implications of such an inference.
If God were merely superhuman, I think such an inference would be valid, and He would have a genuine problem on His hands with foreknowledge and free will. But God is not superhuman; He is God. His ways are not just higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:9), but fundamentally different from our ways. And there is no reason, therefore, to assume that God would “anticipate” the future in the same manner that we do, by deduction from the present.
By what other means, then, does He know the future? At the moment, I’m not completely sure; I haven’t given the matter sufficient thought. Perhaps God is “timeless,” as C.S. Lewis suggested in Mere Christianity: “[S]uppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call ‘tomorrow’ is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call today.” Perhaps He has some other means more inscrutable to our imaginations.
Regardless, there is no prima facie reason to limit God’s epistemic tools to our epistemic tools – no reason, in other words, to think of God as the Old Man in the Sky. Thank God for that.
John, two follow up thoughts: 1.) just like I mentioned in Nico’s previous post, I question the “intuition” that if human behavior falls into the realm of cause & effect then it is not “free”. I actually don’t think this is true at all…but 2.) even if it did seem compelling to someone, couldn’t the same argument you employ here (which I love, I think Christians need to use it more instead of always remaking God in our image with all of our limitations!), namely, that God’s ways are not only “higher” than ours, but also “different” from them in a profound sense. If this is true, couldn’t God relate to the world in such a way that He is infallibly bringing to pass all that He wills, and YET at the same time human choices be free even though they are within the realm of cause and effect?
I know that’s not where you were going with your analogy, sorry to go down a side road!
Here is what I would say:
I don’t see any real way around the incompatibilist intuition; every version of compatibilism I’ve seen has merely redefined “free will” rather than reconciling free will with determinism. Why do you not share this intuition with me and Nico?
That being said, (2) is the main thing preventing me from precluding compatibilism outright. (Actually, I think that what’s going on with our actions is pretty complicated and doesn’t reduce very well to any particular story told by modern analytic philosophers. As far as I can tell, in the Bible, human choice is both an active decision and a passive reception of God’s power, Spirit, &c. So there are ostensibly “free” and “un-free” components there. Free will itself is paradoxical; our decisions are “free,” and yet certain decisions correlate with “determined” factors such as genetics. So…yeah.)
I should also point out that there are means of resolving the foreknowledge problem that are at least semi-intuitive to me, while incompatibilism is completely counterintuitive to me. And we want a God who is truly Other, but we don’t want an illogical God.
And so we hover in between Athens and Jerusalem…
Hey John, with you and Nico posting back to back on this (unintentionally, I think), I’m inspired to write up a few thoughts soon expounding and defending a different account of human freedom and responsibility…so, until then, I’ll hold off on addressing your concerns. But I would just point out for now that the “intuition” you mention that seems to be self-evident for you is no universal experience, and many philosophers have (and still do deny) that counter-causal ability is necessary for moral responsibility. A few good resources either from this other perspective, or presenting multiple perspectives, are listed below:
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Views-Great-Debates-Philosophy/dp/1405134860/ref=pd_sim_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Oxford-Readings-Philosophy/dp/019925494X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255122674&sr=1-3#noop
http://www.amazon.com/Importance-What-Care-About-Philosophical/dp/0521336112/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255122874&sr=1-1
Jops,
A little hand-wavy here. As long as knowledge has content, and as long as knowledge’s content is propositional, it looks like the argument for the compatibility of freedom and foreknowledge goes through. I’ve never bought Lewis’s argument here. Regardless of the relation God bears to time, as long as he can truly be said to know that P, then P.
We can appeal to a capacity of God that has no content or that doesn’t have factual content, but then it looks like it would be stretching words to call such a capacity the capacity to know. That’s just not how we think or talk about knowledge. Certainly God doesn’t need to fit cleanly into our conceptual categories. But if he doesn’t we shouldn’t talk using words like “know” that make it seem like he does.
-Nico
Nico,
I’m not exactly sure what you’re trying to communicate. A few thoughts based on what I think your position is:
1. If Jesus didn’t have foreknowledge of Peter’s betrayal, what did he have?
2. I don’t have to know what God’s epistemic tools are to take objection to an argument that essentially assumes He has no epistemic tools beyond those familiar to humanity.
3. The title “Divine Epistemology” does not refer to our knowledge of God, but to the study of God’s knowledge. In case that wasn’t clear.
4. We know about people’s free will choices in the past. Our knowledge does not negate the freedom with which those choices were made. Now, if God does not exist “in time,” then He is not truly “foreknowing” – that is, knowing on the basis of previous information. He could be knowing about our future free will choices because He is aware of them as if they were in the present – or the past. And this does not affect the metaphysics of choice, as far as I can tell.
I think I wasn’t very clear in my first post. I’ve committed the cardinal sin of philosophy – sorry!
Let me start over. Here’s what I thought you were saying (in outline):
There seems to be a problem of divine foreknowledge and free will. The problem is that knowledge about the future seems to be possible only if the future must be a certain way (that is, if the future is determined), and if the future is determined, then we don’t have free will. But this problem only exists because we’ve assumed that God knows things in the very same way we know things. Maybe he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, maybe there really isn’t a problem of divine foreknowledge and free will.
I believe I misunderstood what you were saying the first time I read through it. In the context of what you actually said my comment “As long as knowledge has content, and as long as knowledge’s content is propositional, it looks like the argument for the compatibility of freedom and foreknowledge goes through” seems pretty opaque.
Here’s what I was trying to convey. You argue that my now-knowledge about the future is incompatible with my free-will because determinism is a condition for the possibility of my having now-knowledge about the future. That’s fine, but I think we can go even further. I think that we can distance the argument from any particular being’s perspective by talking about knowledge in general. This is how I think we can do it:
On an intuitive understanding of knowledge, one knows /facts/. That is, knowledge has content, and the content of knowledge is facts (i.e. true propositions). So consider the question of whether tomorrow I will go to work in the laboratory. Tomorrow is October 10, 2009. If God knows that on October 10, 2009, I will go to the laboratory, then the proposition that on October 10, 2009, I will go to the laboratory is true. Then it cannot be the case that tomorrow I will NOT go to the laboratory. Then, by definition, I do not have free will about going to the library.
Notice (and I think this is important) that the argument I have just presented does not have as a premise any claim about the way in which God arrives at his knowledge. It is not that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with free will because the negation of free will is a condition for the possibility of divine foreknowledge. It is that the knowledge of future facts ITSELF forces us to give up on free will. This is what I meant when I said that as long as God knows facts about the future we can’t have free will.
If I am correct, it shouldn’t matter ‘when’ God knows about the future. God can bear any conceivable relation to time. As long as there are facts about exactly what we are going to do, we don’t have free will. And if God, whatever his relation to time, knows facts about the future, then those facts exist.
My second point built on my first point. We think and talk about knowledge as if it has factual content. So if something doesn’t have factual content (it seems reasonable to say), that thing can’t be identical with knowledge. But now the appeal to God’s different way of knowing seems strange. If God’s way of knowing is such that he knows facts, we haven’t gotten around the problem of divine foreknowledge and free will. If, on the other hand, God’s way of knowing ISN’T such that he knows facts, then we probably shouldn’t call it ‘knowing’.
Of course, your 4 complicates things. It’s a strong objection to what I’ve been saying, but I don’t think it works. Here’s why:
Suppose we’re talking about my choice to go to lab last week. We can correctly say “last week Nico went to lab” without thereby committing ourselves to determinism about my actions. We can, for example, say something like “last week Nico went to lab, /but he could have stayed home/.” But in so saying, what have we actually said? Certainly not that it is now possible that I did /not/ go to lab last week. We mean something else entirely – we mean that /last week/, when I was deciding whether to go to lab, I could have stayed at home. The existence of the fact that I went to lab last week does indeed entail that things could not be any other way. Nevertheless, I had free will last week, /because at that time there was no fact about whether I would go to lab/.
I realize that I’m denying facts an existence totally separate from time. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It seems intuitive (to me at least) that as time passes more and more facts come into being.
I hope that’s clarified things a little. I love this topic!
In Christ,
Nico
Also, I think it’s important to clarify that the argument here is about the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and phree will. If you don’t believe in phree will, there isn’t a problem.
But you should believe in phree will.
Nico, here’s where I want to make the Bible a central issue in the midst of our attempts at rational constructions of what reality must be like–and let me say that, in some ways, I am favorable to your argument (I’m just not as concerned with it as John needs to be since we don’t have “phree will” on my interpretation of things and hence it isn’t a problem:)
However, regardless of the differences between the three of us, would you not consider it indisputable that, on any fair reading of the many relevant passages, the Scriptures consistently depict God as not just knowing the future in a comprehensive way, but also knowing the future free choices of human beings in an extremely particular fashion?
It’s one thing to start with philosophy, to determine a priori how things “must” be in the world and the nature of God’s active relationship to His creation, and then see if there is any way the Bible can possibly be worked to “fit” it into our system…but it is another thing altogether to argue that this interpretation of the Bible is in line with the actual intentions of the authors themselves when they wrote and therefore what the most plausible reading of the text is.
By which I mean: what happens to your argument if, on simple biblical grounds alone, it is determined that the Bible teaches that God knows all future facts that will be, including human behavior and decisions? Who wins when there is conflict? What source of knowledge gets treated with authority and designated as entirely and necessarily truthful? There are some things that–if Christianity is true–are simply off the table before we even begin constructing our philosophical systems (i.e. the proposition that God is morally evil or untrustworthy is not an option WITHIN the community of believers, even if it is in another sense once you stop assuming Christianity is valid and objectively true).
I would NOT put the nature of human freedom in that boat (that is, I happily admit that I could be wrong on this matter and that phree will is consisent with or even taught by the Scriptures), but I WOULD put exhaustive divine foreknowledge in the “untouchable” realm.
The options, then, would seem to be 1.) we don’t have phree will OR 2.) phree will & divine foreknowledge are compatible in some way, whether through a model of “simple” direct foreknowledge, “timeless” foreknowledge, middle, indirect foreknowledge (Molinism), or some other construct currently unknown to us, OR 3.) there is mystery here and we cannot understand how they can both be true, but by faith we trust that they are. 4.) We have phree will, we are responsible, and therefore God doesn’t know our future free actions before we commit them is not a plausible option in the history of Christian theology.
http://www.amazon.com/Divine-Foreknowledge-James-K-Beilby/dp/0830826521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255144594&sr=8-1
[written last night]
So you make a good point, Nico: we should distinguish between (i) compatibilism concerning free will and determinism and (ii) compatibilism concerning free will and foreknowledge (though the two are, of course, related). I think Nick think is a “compatibilist” in both cases. I am a compatibilist only with regards to the latter. And you are (I think) an incompatibilist about both.
Regarding your objection to (4):
If there are no facts about free wil choices in the future, then the future is, in some broad sense, less “real” than the past. But I don’t think that’s the case, especially if God stands in some different relation to time than we do. If God stands “above the time line” (whatever that means), the “future” stands in no different a relationship to Him than the “past.”
If there can be contingently true facts about the past (such as your free will choice to go to lab), there can be contingently true facts about the future. God’s knowledge of both depends upon (and even presupposes) our contingent free will choices. So I don’t see what’s violated.
I have more thoughts on the matter, but I am le tired.
If I’m wrong about the philosophy, what is your exegesis of Peter’s betrayal? I’ve read a bit about open theists’ attempts to interpret the Bible in light of free will-foreknowledge incompatibilism, and they seem very…contrived.
Oh, interesting!
I think it’s pretty standard and intuitive to think of the future as less real than the past, unless you’ve grown up in a deterministic intellectual climate.
Anyway, what you said about contingency is really interesting, and I’ll have to think about it more. I wish I’d done more reading in epistemology!