If God knows everything, and He knows the future, how can I still have a choice about my future?

Question

He's perfect, so His knowledge of the future must be correct. So I have to do what He knows I will do, and I no longer have a choice. Or do I?

Answer 1

Well, I don't know if this will convince you, but the response of Thomas Aquinas is that there is no causal relationship between God's knowledge of the future and your actions in the future. So in other words, although God knows what you're going to do, he is not the cause of what you're going to do. Therefore, you're still free. God's knowledge of what you're going to do is very particular and unique to Him, and does not change your freedom.

Answer 2

I don't believe in any specific God or gods. But theoretically, knowledge of the future and freewill can coexist if the following are true: 1. God planned everything he would ever do in the universe before it happened. What he sees himself doing in the future was predetermined choice. 2. People do not know the future. Since normal people cannot predetermine all future decisions, they cannot know the future without it affecting their freewill (if, of course, we assume there is an absolute future instead of alternate realities). 3. God doesn't interfere with people's thoughts, he only observes. This is the most confusing point of the three. It means that God can know what we will decide without affecting our decision process. It seems counter intuitive; if God knows what we decided, then thats what we have to decide, right? NO: Its just what you DID decide. Since you didn't know the future, and God was only observing what you are doing, you are the only thing that made your decision. God just knows where your thoughts will lead you.

Answer 3

God gave each of us the ability to create our own reality through the gift of free will.

We can change our reality from moment to moment. The truth is, we live all possibilities simultaneously in different dimensions.

This life that you are experiencing in the here and now is only one aspect of one reality. There are many others and we live each and every choice.

In this life, we are only capable of comprehending this one reality. When we return the spiritual dimension, upon the death of this physical life, we will reconcile all of the different aspects or dimensions of life we have experienced. We may even choose to come back and live this life over again, to do something different. This reality is very limited and is not even the beginning of all the possibilities that the eternal life we have has to offer! This is where "deja vu" comes from.

So, yes, we always have a choice. And yes, God knows the outcome because in the spiritual dimension does not have the limits of time and space that we have. Everything has already happened and everything is still yet to happen.

Neale Donald Walsch wrote an excellent book which offers a much better explanation than mine called Home with God. I highly suggest reading it.

Answer 4

God; being omnicient; must know everything past, present, and future. This is because time does not exist for God, it is an illusion of our mortal existence. We however, live in an illusion of time as a linear progression. What you experience as a sequence of events; God knows as a totality. This is how you can still have free will, while existing in a predestined universe.

The next question would be: If God knows the ultimate end of things; and God is pure love. God must want all people to be "saved". Doesn't it stand to reason that utimately all beings will be saved because of that love? Universal redemption and salvation? I am a Buddhist.

Answer 5

You have free will and choices. God has a plan and sets things in motion. You decide what path to take...easy or hard. Right or wrong...in each path is more choices, more chances to do what is right, be the person you were destined to be.

To touch someones' life when they need it the most...like the story of the young man who saved another life just by helping him with his school books one Friday. The story goes on about how the boy had cleaned out his locker to save his Mom from having to do it as he was planning on killing himself that weekend. Another young man saw him struggling with all his stuff and helped him home and befriended him that day. Years later the first boy revealed what he had planned that weekend and thanked the second boy for saving his life...

Is this story just another email urban myth? Or could it be real? A helping hand, a kind word, a moment spent thinking of others could very well make the difference between life and death for anyone at anytime. You choose...it's always been about choice..that is why so many men die in wars, fighting for what they believe...and the choice given to them.

Answer 6

You have to choice to lead a good life for yourself and provide a good life for your loved ones. God does not care if you are a doctor or a garbage man, it is how you live your life that god is interested in. The world could end tomorrow, have your done the right thing. I am not perfect, nor very religious, but the way the world is going, I am getting a little nervous, god is forgiving if you can forgive yourself and apologize for what you have done, that is what the "future" shoud mean in this instance..

Answer 7

Lots of answers about God knowing but you still having the ability to choose. But if you truly can choose, then how can God know unless it's merely a set-up? So yours is an excellent point.

Calvinism has a pretty good answer for it though. The only way for it to make sense is if none of it matters, i.e. free will of only one choice because of your sinful nature -- rejection of God. No one seeks Him, He must give His own any faith they are going to have. What He knows doesn't matter since we ALL stand guilty before Him save for His loving grace.

Answer 8

We on the earth know our time in minutes, hours, days, years, centuries. However, the creation of earth took approximately 7,000 years, and each 1,000 years is like ONE DAY to God. Therefore, he does not have the limitations of earthly time. He can probably move forward or backward, whereas we only see where we are now. If this is true, he will know your future, although it will be YOU who make it that way, not Him. It's like you offer a cookie to a child and you KNOW they will take it, but is that taking their choice away? Nope. They choose. You choose. The end results are known by God.

Answer 9

Nope. As long as one being knows for sure what will happen in the future, it means that there has to be a future already set in place.

So 100 billion years before you were born, God knew you would steal that cookie. It was going to happen. There's absolutely no way around it, no other decision that could have possibly come about, otherwise that would mean that God isn't omniscient.

That is, if you buy all that bull.

Answer 10

God did give you free will and he (being God and having a capacity to understand and hold more knowledge than we can comprehend while in these earthly bodies) knows the outcome of every possible decision you might make. But he allows you to make those decisions, hoping you will choose him.