Reading: Pike, “Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action”, pp. 144-149
This is an excerpt from a longer article that appeared in Philosophical Review in 1965. In the longer article, Pike considers a couple of attempts to render traditional assumptions about omniscience compatible with human freedom. Here, the editors have chosen to focus on Pike’s description of the basic problem. The problem that Pike is concerned with is this: GIVEN certain assumptions about the nature of God, omniscience itself, knowledge, the limits of human power, and what is required for voluntary action, divine omniscience is incompatible with voluntary action. Thus, no human action is voluntary. The editors have given a very good summary/overview on p. 144 of Pike’s argument, so I recommend reading that before reading the article. Note: Pike is not concerned with the question of whether each of these assumptions is true; rather, he is simply taking some common assumptions and pointing out that they jointly produce the conclusion that divine omniscience is incompatible with human freedom. According to Pike, we can escape this conclusion only by rejecting one or more of the assumptions that jointly entail it.
In editing this, the editors cut out Pike’s initial explication of the doctrine of omniscience and what it entails. However, Pike’s assumptions about knowledge and about the implications of omniscience are stated on p. 147 beginning with “To conclude:”. I recommend reading this paragraph before reading the article. In this summation, Pike also explains the concept of essential omniscience. To say that God is essentially omniscient (omniscience is essential to God’s nature) is to say that God is by definition omniscient; any being who claims to be God, but is not omniscient is not God. In Pike’s formal statement of the argument on p. 146, premises 1 and 2 “make explicit the doctrine of God’s (essential) omniscience with which I am working” (146).
Things to Think About:
- Is Pike right? That is, does endorsing all of these assumptions entail that divine omniscience is incompatible with human freedom?
- Many Christians would find Pike’s conclusion that omniscience is incompatible with human freedom disturbing. Should they find this conclusion disturbing?
- Assuming that the theist wants to preserve both God’s omniscience and human freedom, how might he do this? Which, if any, of the traditional assumptions about omniscience, God, etc., should the theist reject? Note: in thinking about this, think about the implications of rejecting particular assumptions.
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12 comments:
While Pike’s argument is interesting it falls way short of being a legitimate argument of why an omniscient God makes human action involuntary, which he does admit. The dilemma is interesting that if God knew Jones would mow his lawn eight years in advance then it would seem Jones is not able to choose to not mow his lawn, but Pike makes no attempt to identify the mechanism that restricts Jones to the single action. If I drop a book, I know, with as much certainty as I know anything, that the book will fall, but it is absurd to equate this with my making the book fall as if my knowing that the book would fall was the mechanism that made it fall and not gravity. It seems Pike is confusing correlation and cause. If A then B is not equivalent to A bringing about B. So while it appears God’s foreknowledge may mean Jones is not free to not mow his lawn, without any attempt to find a mechanism that determines Jones’ actions other than Jones’ own free will, I remain unconvinced there is a problem here.
Does God's omniscience have to clash with our free will? I'm not convinced that the two are in conflict (and Pike does little to convice me otherwise. His logic based approach should not apply to a spiritual being who may or may not operate within the realm of human logic). Omniscience seems to be more like psychic vision. God can see what I'm going to do in the future, but only because I will make the choice. He might know exactly what I'm going to do at any given time, but my actions are based on my decisions. Just because he can see into the future does not mean that he is making the choice for me.
In the Christian religion there are those who believe that God has pre destined everything in our lives. On the other hand, some believe that God may have a plan for us, however we have the free will to do what we choose. If God does know everything we are going to do before creating us, then how do we explain people like Hitler? If God created Hitler knowing everything that he would do, he was already setting him up for failure. It makes more sense to say that God gives us the free will to choose good, however there is still evil left to choose. If God did not give us free will then why would he pre destine people to do evil? I don't think this view is in conflict with having a omniscient God because that is the way he chose to create humans. He may have a path for you, however if you choose evil then he gave you the free will to do so.
Pike's main argument that if God were to know that Jones was going to mow his lawn eighty years prior to the event merely scratches the surface of omniscience. Pike claims that if the above statement is true, humans truly have no free will because their actions are already written and inevitably controlled by God; however, omniscience does not simply state that a being knows the future outcome of a person or event. Omniscience is the state of knowing anything and everything to include feelings, thoughts, desires, etc. In the example of Jones mowing his lawn, it's not that God has foreseen eighty years in advance that Jones mows his lawn, it's that God knows Jones through and through. He knows his likes, his dislikes, his pet peeves, etc. God is omniscient because he knows that on that Saturday Jones will get the feeling that his lawn is too long, he can't stand the way it looks and he has an obligation to do something about it. Thus, while Jones truly has the free will to choose whether or not to mow his lawn, God sees in his heart that he is going to take care of the task without failure.
In response to your "Many Christians would find Pike’s conclusion that omniscience is incompatible with human freedom disturbing. Should they find this conclusion disturbing?" question, I think Christians should find this conclusion disturbing. Pike, in my opinion, goes into to much depth to make his point. To me, it conflicts much more easily than looking at it through multiple alternatives. If a God is all knowing, then that God knows what is going to happen in all cases. The idea of voluntary action greatly conflicts with the idea of an omniscient God. It's either God knows something is going to happen or he doesn't, and if he doesn't then he is not omniscient. If he does, then that take away free will in a sense. That free will would have to be considered "sort of free will," because if God knew one would do something before it happened, then he would have had the ultimate hand in making that happen. The idea of free will is great, but in a since there is pre-design with an omniscient God. For one to say that voluntary action actually occured, they would have to deny that God already knew it would happen. For example, if a child is raped, from a Christian perspective would they say it was free will? If so, then they are somewhat denying that God was all knowing and that he saw it happening before it did, and if he did know, then that conflicts with the "all good" concept, but that's a different animal.
I can't help thinking about the idea of the timelessness of God, at least in the way I learned it in 390. If we are to accept that God exists outside of time instead of like Pike's argument, where God seems to exist in the same timeline, I don't see the conflict. Existing outside of time allows God to see the past, present, and future all at the same time, which is the sense and cause of part of his omniscience. It's complicated because it throws all of what we know about linear time out the window. But then again, just because God sees how people are going to make decisions does not negate that they make them freely, as long as God is not interfering with the timeline. He does not see it before it happens, I'm under the impression that he sees everything *as* it happens, all at the same time. Pike addresses this, but I feel he does it poorly. Simply because God can see it does not mean that person did not make that choice. I simply don't see how they're in that big of a conflict with each other. I could decide to believe in God tomorrow- just because he sees that before/as/after it happens doesn't mean I didn't choose it. Nobody else chose it for me.
(I would also like to say that it took me a very long time to complete this reading, I found it extremely confusing.)
Pike’s argument looks logically sound to me. I understand how his argument that God’s omniscience is incompatible with human free will. I think the only way for a theist to argue that God is omniscient and humans have free will is to say that God’s “knowledge” of the future is beyond our reason (similar to what we talked about in class last time). Honestly I don’t think that God not having omniscience (in the sense that he knows the future) is disturbing because maybe he still has the power to know what everyone is thinking which is still quiet an attribute even if he can’t tell the future.
If you take a look at this issue from within the church you get a calvinist view that our salvation is even predetermined. If you take this view, what is the point of going to church? You could do whatever you want and still go to heaven? There is no free will to be good or bad. However, if we do have free will and thus salvation is determined by our actions, it is not in conflict to say that God knows what our actions are going to be.
If God is able to know and see everything for all of time, why wouldn't He be able to know every possible combination for a decision I am going to make? Instead of Him knowing that I will just wash my car at a certain time on Saturday, He would know that I could wash my car, or go for a run, or go to a movie, etc. Basically God would know everything that I could do at that point in time, and this is not limited to just one thing. I disagree with Pike and think that we do have freedom in our lives and God knows that but does not control it.
Pike needs to think outside the box. His arguments are well thought out and make a very compelling case for a logical contradiction given his implied framework of understanding. One example assumption that I'm referring to is that his arguments only hold up if there is only this one reality which we perceive. The crux of the problem is that God cannot know I will do one thing and myself have the freedom to do the contrary. Perhaps though, God’s power being infinite and all, in creating the universe, God created it in such a way that I have made both choices. Perhaps, at the moment of deciding, reality continues along two different paths. In this way, God knows precisely what outcome being faced with this decision will produce, and yet (seeming contradictory), I have the freedom to follow a path of my choosing.
There is one fundamental flaw in Pike's reasoning: the assumption that God is only omniscient in the same system of chronological time we know as human beings. He uses this belief to claim that free will would be negated if God "knew" or "believed" an individual would do something eighty years prior to the event happening because the individual would have no other alternative at that time. Now, if we negate the underlying assumption of God's temporal nature and assume that he exists outside the realm of time and space, there would be another alternative: the individual has free will to do whatever he or she wants, but God would have the ability to exist in multiple periods of time simultaneously. God's "prediction" of the future therefore becomes an "observation" of some other present. The individual would therefore still have full control of their actions, yet God's omniscience would allow him to seemingly "know things before they happen."
In reading Boethius and Wolterstorff I tend to agree with Wolterstorff and find his biblically based argument a more compelling basis for a Christian definition of God. However, one interesting thing I like about Boethius’ argument is that it seems to allow for prayer over events that have already taken place. If I pray for something, I realize this example is somewhat trivial, like an exam my brother has taken 3 days ago, only I don’t yet know the outcome, if God is eternal then that prayer could be just as effective as one prayed before the exam. However, this may also be possible in Wolterstorff’s view if God’s foreknowledge of a prayer would have an influence, even though the prayer is not yet prayed. Finally, I would like to add a biblical example that supports Wolterstorff’s claim about the Christian God. In Matthew 22:29-32m Mark 12:24-27 and Luke 20:34-39 Christ is responding to Sadducees who do not believe in the resurrection. He says,
“And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
If God were timeless as Boethius suggests then the conclusion that the dead are resurrected does not follow from the premise that to God Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive since a timeless God would still see them alive in the past while to us they would remain dead.
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