Freewill V's Prophecy?

Question

How can these two co-exist.
If we have freewill, then prophecy can not be true.
If prophecy is true, then we do not have freewill.

If freewill exists, then nothing is set in stone. We can change situations before they happen, our responses and actions are not predetermined. Which means that prophecy is inaccurate at best.

If prophecy is true, then we have no freewill. Our futures are predetermined and no matter what we do, we can not change it.

Whats your opinion?

Thanks for the answers so far.
It was a question that just popped into my head and I was curious what people thought.

Answer 1

Your premise is not quite true. Prophecy describes a possible future event. The possibility of the event occurring can be influenced by free will. The choices that people make could prevent the prophecy even happening.

What does negate free will is the presence of an omniscient deity, unless the deity is hands-off. A deity who is omniscient will know all possible outcomes of the choices made by free will. If this deity interferes in the world, then free will is overruled.

Either way, we are on our own folks. Time to face up to the responsibility.

Answer 2

God is timeless, therefore He abides in the past, present and future all at once. Time only is allotted unto man. Because of this God already knows the future, and He knows how we are going to exercise our free will agency. Just because He already knows what we are going to do does not mean He made us do it. No, we make the choices, for good or bad. God only knows how it will turn out in the end, and sometimes moves upon a prophet on how it will turn out. I know of one instance where a prophet was given knowledge of the future but was forbidden to share it with others until a much later date because it would have influenced the actions of the people at that time.
Imagine if God gave you a prophecy that you were going to apostatize and turn evil and go to hell. Why then you would just give up and not even try to resist sin and fulfill it all the sooner. While if that information was withheld, then you did it all on your own and have nobody to blame but yourself.
Sometimes prophecies are conditional where Jonah was commanded to preach to the Ninevites and told to repent or be destroyed in 40 days. Well they repented and the destruction did not happen to that generation. Later a future generation became evil and they were destroyed.
Peter was told in a prophecy that he would deny Christ thrice yet Peter denied he would do such a thing, even swore up and down. Yet he did it, Jesus knew Peter better than Peter did.

Answer 3

Prophecy is, to me, an indication of where things are most likely to head at a *particular* moment in time. Thus, what was a potentially accurate prophecy at one time can easily become invalidated by future actions. Thus, prophecy and free will. ... And of course, there are prophecies that deal with natural disasters/occurence that have absolute squat to do with free will. If some deity decided that california needs an earthquake tomorrow and someone prophecied the occurence and date, this does not impact at all upon my free will. If anything it would give me a *larger* range of choice than not knowing.

Answer 4

The two cannot be reconciled. Prophecy rules out free will. Saying that events are all apart of "Gods Plan" takes the stance of Hard determinism which is not compatible with free will.

Please continue on your holy crusade. Keep smashing logical reasoning into the heads of "Delusional Christians" so that they may wake up, and become rational human beings.

Answer 5

We have free will in regards to our own actions. But the events around us are out of our control.

Say 9/11 fulfills a biblical prophesy (there are people who believe this) then does that mean bin laden is blameless? It was his part in god's plan.

Or maybe god knows what choices we will make before we do, making existence pointless.

Answer 6

Freewill is a very misunderstood thing. In the hierarchy of heaven before man none were given choice as to whether they would serve God. On earth and in man that IS the only free choice you have that matters in the end.

We build our own world and destruction or salvation. God knew before creation what we would do and who would do what.

Answer 7

Fore knowledge does not change a man's free will and there are things which are predestined salvation is predestined but your individual life is not predestined.