Terminology Tuesday: Divine Foreknowledge
Divine Foreknowledge: God’s knowledge of future events, including future free human choices. Some philosophers argue that since God’s knowledge cannot be mistaken, and since the past cannot be changed, God’s knowing future events before they occur implies that no other events could possibly occur and that free will is an illusion (the determinism viewpoint). A variety of responses to this problem have been given, including holding that since God is timeless he has no knowledge before an event but knows all things in a timeless now. Others accept Molinism, the view that God’s foreknowledge and providence are linked to his middle knowledge, which is a knowledge of how free creatures would act in different circumstances. Still others limit God’s foreknowledge by holding that, while omniscience includes knowing all true or false propositions, some propositions about the future are as of yet neither true nor false. And similarly, others limit divine foreknowledge by holding that, while God knows all that it is logically possible to know, it is logically impossible to have infallible prior knowledge of free decisions.1
1. C.Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 45.