If that was to me, that poor verse also contains the word before. There is also the burden of the reality of God’s providence, so that poor verse is not lonesome.
(What kind of theology?)
I do not understand this claim.
Lets imagine that someone takes a video of the behavior and decisions of some humans, ten years from now. Then the video is somehow sent back in time, so that you can watch what the persons will select. After that, you know what these people will decide in the future. Does your knowing take away their free will?
My answer is no, it does not.
As I wrote earlier, I do not believe that we can choose whatever we want because of our history and circumstances. If the ‘libertarian free will’ is used to mean a completely free choice, then there is not that kind of free will in this universe. Yet, knowing what someone will choose does not reduce the amount of free will from the level we have now, except if you arrest or somehow limit the freedom of the person because of the foreknowing you have.
So even tho’ my future is sent back in time, I can’t watch it?
How is your understanding of quantum physics?
My answer is yes, it does, unless it creates an entirely new time line which invalidates everything you see on the video – at that is one way of trying to make sense of the nonsense of time travel. Frankly, by invoking the fantasy of time travel, you are dabbling in circularity.
It is a fundamental fact of quantum physics that measurement creates what it measures. To know what what will be changes the future from a superposition of possibilities to a future which is already written. And not only do I think they have no free will but no consciousness either. The characters in a book or movie are not conscious beings.
Agreed. Free will is limited by all kinds of things. It is fragile and far from universal or absolute. But that is an entirely different issue.
Knowing what someone will choose means there are no other real possibilities and thus no sense in which their choice is real or free. Someone else has already made all the choices that matter. Limiting the choices does not alter free will, but making it so their choices are all fixed to an already written script most certainly does erase all free will.
Choice is irrelevant and meaningless. God doesn’t have it.
Note the “will do” – that is a tensed verb and does not strictly apply. There is a mysterious (read “inscrutable”) dynamic between God’s timeless (actually ‘timeful’) will and ours where his ‘plans’ (another tensed word) come to pass and ‘simultaneously’ our free will is not violated. The wonderful and delightful mystery (or repulsive and terrifying to some) is seen when contemplating his orchestrations of providential interventions in his children’s lives.
Just within the last hours, a ‘trivial’ (there is no such thing with respect to God’s sovereignty unfettered by time), a ‘trivial’ example occurred that I can recount:
I had my first cataract surgery yesterday, and while my vision wasn’t terrible (glare at night was), I was surprised post-op by how much whiter whites were and how much brighter things are overall (today after pupil dilation had returned to normal ; - ). So I read:
Joy & Strength
So what jumps out at me but “…each eye their brightness sees”. 
And then:
Nothing comes by pure accident, not even the interruptions in our busy day! And such as follow on to know God’s will see in all events what may lead to good, and so trust grows into a habit, as habit grows by perpetual use, till every circumstance may be seen to be but a fresh manifestation of the will of God working itself out in us.
Of course that latter is more than a little pertinent when speaking of Christians and doubt. (We also see examples of bad habits of thinking grow by perpetual use, some of mine included!)
So there is an example of God’s providential ordering of events, multiple relevant and interrelated ‘co-instants’ – though none ‘life-path-changing’ that we can see now anyway or like we have seen elsewhere here. No one’s free will was violated nor did anyone feel like a puppet in my making the appropriate appointments and scheduling as well as those involved at the ophthalmologist’s office and the surgery center, not to mention the timing of the devotional and its contents or its being read and by whom.
I’m not an analytic philosopher, but as mitchellmckain commented, I’m pretty sure that Libertarian Free Will is not defined as “the ability to do anything conceivable”.
But as to the mind problem you posed of someone video-taping events in the future, and then sending it back in time so I could watch it… I don’t think the scenario can be applied to God. This is because I (a human) can simply, neutrally watch the video without affecting the actors in the future. However, God (unlike me as a human observer) created the world and so had the power (presumably) to create alternate worlds had he so chosen… and so as soon as you combine this omnipotence (the power to create whatever scenario and universe you want) with omnicience–ability to “at the same time” know and forsee each action in the future that derives from those starting conditions…then it seems logically impossible for the actors to have free will…
hard to get my mind around, but that’s how I understood the logic.
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That sounds a lot like Molinism – I think it works intellectually and as an academic exercise, but I dislike it because it seems to depersonalize God and makes him an “epistemic calculator” as I’ve seen another critic describe it.
(I don’t think Molinists would say that, but… I don’t know enough to characterize it well. WL Craig and Alvin Plantinga endorse it I believe.)
Thanks for the comment. Yeah…I have to confess I haven’t read much about Molinism and how it differs from Open Theism. One advantage of Open Theism is that it absolves God of the paradox of creating evil, and it does not necessitate God being a (cold) epistemic calculator–God’s boundless knowledge is simply sufficient to know all the possible future options (for him “calculating” one future track is no more difficult than him knowing all potential tracks) Open Theism also seems to be compatible with a God interacting in a very realistic way with his children: personal and loving (i.e. truly free encounters between humans and God)-- The Open Theistic framework doesn’t exclude the ability of God to act in providential ways—but it admits that free will actors may do things that are against his will (are evil) and in that sense not everything that currently happens on earth “is his proximate will”. Yet we have hope because God’s ultimate will/ plan can’t be thwarted by the free-will choices of others.
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Oh gee. I should be careful what I wish for (wink). Found this online blog about the contrast between Molinism and Open Theism. Seems to be some dense concepts to wade through, but maybe I should give it a shot…
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Regarding evil, I like the term and idea that I just learned the other day indirectly via @heymike3 and already mentioned above, skeptical theism (and analogous thinking that could be derived from it).
Boyd talked himself in to a very weird mess some years ago and wouldn’t talk his way back.
God wastes none of His infinite capacity on all possible future options. Why would He? He fixes everyone regardless.
This is an interesting term I hadn’t heard before, and from the little I’ve read, I like it too. Open Theism posits that God (sovereign over his own sovereignty) chose to give real “say-so” to other free will actors in the universe, opening the possibility that they might choose evil, but not creating evil himself. Apparently God thought the risk and ultimate outcome was worth it—and I don’t think I have the wisdom to question God’s decision.
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I also question our ability to clearly understand human personhood. A lot is lost when we argue for an individual faced with possibilities and choices. We are persons within relationships that are there from birth, through growth and ultimately death. Comments have correctly pointed to our limitations, and the discussion may be expanded from this to include our relationships, (eg friends, family, ethnicity, etc), and how we may include faith statements which address our relationship to Christ, the Church (communion) and God the Father.
Within the context I am alluding to, we may then ask what we mean by will (will to action, will to power, will to good or evil…???) and our perception of freedom.
Perhaps from there we may try to discuss “predestination” and decisions we think God has made.
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When did He make it?
I disagree.
Lets think a person of the past, for example Stalin. We can read what he did from the history books. I assume that we can agree that our knowing the past does not take away the free will of Stalin.
If our knowing of past does not take away the free will, how would our knowing (or accurate prediction) of future take away free will, assuming that we just observe?
Knowing (or accurate prediction) of what a person will chose in the future may leave only one path to future but the path is something the person himself decided. Until we, or someone else, make something to prevent the foreknown decision from happening, the possibility to make choices (free will) remains. We just observe the path determined by her/his decisions, either towards the past or future.
Can you point to Stalin’s free will from the history books?
I disagree.
The creation of a particular kind of world, for example our universe, does limit the free will of humans as the circumstances prevent us from selecting whatever we want. Within these limits, we have a freedom to chose and watching our decision does not take that freedom away. I do not believe that the starting conditions determine the future.