GOD’S KNOWLEDGE IS GREATER UNDER LFW THAN COMPATIBILISM

Definitions I am using:

Compatibilism = An agent will always and only choose according to their greatest desire.

Libertarian Free Will (LFW) = An agent can (at least sometimes) choose from among a range of options, each compatible with their nature.

If Compatibilism is true, then there is literally (and definitionally) only ONE possible outcome at every decision juncture – the greatest desire. Hence, someone with good enough information and models could accurately or even perfectly predict the person’s choice – it is, in a manner of speaking, a known formula that can be calculated. Like a supercomputer conquering the stock market or weather forecasts – under Chaos Theory these things are only seemingly random, but if we knew every variable we could perfectly calculate the outcome.

So God (or a supercomputer) would just need to know the starting parameters of the universe, and then would perfectly predict the ONE outcome possible for every agent in existence ever, simply by calculating the greatest desire in each circumstance. There is literally (and definitionally) NO variance or chaos. There is also much less complexity as one goes further down the chain of intersecting choices, since they all have only one possible respective outcome at each juncture.

But if LFW is true, then no matter how ‘predictable’ all the influencing factors might seem to be, the agent can choose from among a range of options – there is (at least sometimes) the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, more than one possible real choice for the agent to decide upon. So a supercomputer could have perfect data and models from the start of the universe, but FAIL to predict the exact outcomes – because there is REAL variance and chaos. Desires are influences on, but not the cause of a choice. We don’t always choose according to the greatest desire.

Whereas God perfectly knows the outcomes despite the LFW choices of agents (all interacting and intertwining, mind you, increasing quadratically in complexity!) – because God has better than mere calculative algorithms, God has PERFECT MIDDLE KNOWLEDGE.

See also COMPATIBILISM, LFW, REAL OPTIONS & 1 COR 10:13.

Two Summaries That Reflect My View of Molinism, Soteriology

Maybe my explanation is not fully formed, but the way I see it… If you don’t want to choose damnation in the actualized world, then DON’T CHOOSE DAMNATION!

God cannot/will not actualize a world that is not feasible with your choices. If you don’t choose damnation, God won’t actualize a world where you are damned. God is not to be blamed for your free choice.

I think this is what WLC means by ‘God plays the cards He is dealt’, He can’t actualize a world where you are damned if you never freely choose damnation in any world

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12:24 “All four of those possible futures are filled with free will. By selecting one of those possible futures and saying ‘I want this one to happen’, when God predestined that future, Jackie’s free will is still there. Jackie’s making choices and God’s making choices.”

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Foreknowledge and Free Will

How natural it is, for example, for Believers, when knowing that their child was on board a particular ship, and learning that the ship has met a terrible calamity and sunk – with some passengers being lost and some others being rescued – to pray to God that their child is among the survivors. Is there any way to rationalize such behavior and render it non-blasphemous?

Modern modal logic again comes to the rescue. Remember, on traditional accounts, God is (along with being all-good) omniscient and omnipotent. God, being omniscient, will have known, since the beginning of time, that the parents would pray (at such and such a time) for the survival of their child. In particular, God would have known at the time of the ship’s sinking that the parents would pray sometime later, and God could have chosen to answer those prayers in advance of their being uttered. On this view, God is not changing the past at all; God is making the past one particular way among the infinite number of different ways it could have been. One must attend to the modalities. Under this view, God does not change the past from the way it was (which activity would be a violation of the principle of non-contradiction), but rather God makes one possibility (the child’s surviving) actual, and makes another possibility (the child’s perishing) nonactual. There is no violation of the principle of non-contradiction, and the parents’ prayers are not blasphemous.

And it bears emphasizing that it is not God’s knowing beforehand that the parents would pray in a certain manner that ‘brings it about’ (‘necessitates’, ‘forces’) their praying that way. It is, quite the contrary: it is the parents praying of their own free will that God have saved their child from death that moves God to do (have done) as he did.