Divine Simplicity and human free will

Walter Pound

There is a view of God's nature called divine simplicity, where God is described as non-composite; in this view, while everything that is not God is a composite of other things, God's essence is identical to his existence which is identical to his omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness and so on. Humans and angels, however, are composite beings, composed, respectively, of form and matter or essence and existence.

My question is this: can such a view of God be compatible with libertarian free will?

Usually, the debates of libertarian free will and God's existence comes from explaining how God's omniscience and libertarian free will can coexist, but my question really stems from this issue: if divine simplicity is true, then any knowledge that God has should be identical to God's necessary existence; thus, God's knowledge is also necessary and whatever God knows must occur, necessarily.

Here is the argument is a more organized form:

Premise 1: Divine simplicity is true.
Premise 2: If divine simplicity is true, then God's omniscience is identical to God's necessary existence.
Premise 3. If God's omniscience is identical to God's necessary existence, then God's omniscience is as necessary as his existence.
Premise 4: If God's omniscience is as necessary as his existence, then anything God knows must occur necessarily.
Premise 5: If anything God knows must occur necessarily, then libertarian free will is impossible.
Premise 6: If libertarian free will is impossible, then humans do not have libertarian free will.
Therefore: Humans do not have libertarian free will.

Of course, there are other ways to describe God's nature, and not all theists even believe in divine simplicity, but, for sake of argument, imagine that premise 1 is true and you were tasked with explaining how libertarian free will is not threatened by premise 1; do you think that these two beliefs can co-exist?

Can even God have free will if divine simplicity is true? Consider that God's necessary existence is identical to his thoughts and so those thoughts are as necessary as his existence. If this is the case, then anything God does is necessary and it is hard to see how God could have free will if everything he does is necessary.

Thanks for any help, and please be polite. :sweat:

RegularGuy

Also, God is the Creator. So not only does He know what you will do, but He also created you knowing what you will do. So, He created what you will do.

Walter Pound

↪Noah Te Stroete

There are two responses that I can imagine that the theist will respond with: just because you create something does not mean that you determine its actions and that this line of argument commits the modal fallacy.
A summary of the modal fallacy can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL10VLLgvGQ
A fuller explanation of the modal fallacy can be found here: https://www.iep.utm.edu/foreknow/#H6

RegularGuy

↪Walter Pound

But He creates you KNOWING what you would do. He didn’t create you without omniscience.

Walter Pound

↪Noah Te Stroete

Yes, and the theist will respond in this manner: Just because God knows that you do X, does not mean that he determines that you will do X.

Maybe this video will be to your liking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sWHd3b8Y68&t=456s

It is by an atheistic philosopher who makes an argument similar to yours.

RegularGuy

↪Walter Pound

You don’t get it.

Walter Pound

↪Noah Te Stroete

Okay, so can you explain what you mean?

RegularGuy

↪Walter Pound

God is the eternal, omniscient creator. As an eternal Being, He is outside time. He sees all of time as an eternal Present. So, He knows all of time as present to Him. He also created all of time, as time is just the fourth dimension of our universe. So, He created your past, present, and future.

Walter Pound

↪Noah Te Stroete

I am sympathetic to this argument.

It sounds like your argument is the following (but correct me if I am wrong):
1. The past, present, and future are ontologically equivalent.
2. If the past, present and future are ontologically equivalent, then humans do not have free will.
Therefore, humans do not have free will.

I think that if eternalism is true, then free will can't exist since eternalism entails that becoming is not a real feature of reality and if becoming is not a real feature of reality, then whatever thought that occurs in our mind has always existed, along with any act we engage in, since our thought and our action both coexist eternally and tenselessly.

However, can you tell me what you make of this particular theist's response?
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/question-answer/P90/does-the-b-theory-of-time-exclude-human-freedom
He tries to argue that just because the past, present and future exist that determinism is not necessarily true. Do you think his argument succeeds?

RegularGuy

↪Walter Pound

Frankly, I find Craig’s response incomprehensible. It seems he believes in LFW because he wants to, not because he is following logic.

Walter Pound

↪Noah Te Stroete

yes, it is hard to see how his argument works, even if we grant him whatever theory of the mind he would like. If all thoughts and actions exist tenselessly and eternally, then how can our thoughts and actions be uncaused causes- which is necessary for libertarian free will to be possible.

RegularGuy

↪Walter Pound

I agree with you.

Walter Pound

↪Noah Te Stroete

Well, thanks for your input, I am sure others will come in and add their own commentary soon.

RegularGuy

↪Walter Pound

Though I don’t think most proponents of LFW would call our choices “uncaused causes”, but rather “self-caused causes”. However, this just pushes the problem back to God.

Wayfarer

My question is this: can such a view of God be compatible with libertarian free will? — Walter Pound

I think there's a tension between libertarianism and belief in God. The reason being, that the first duty of a Christian believer is 'not my will be done, but thine'. This is expressed in innumerable ways in Christian scriptures, but the fundamental text is probably 'For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.' (Matt 16:25).

But on the other hand, Christianity also emphasises the worth of every individual, and Christian doctrine recognises that individuals are free to do as they please. However I would think that the Christian view would be that whilst the individual has liberty to do as they please, that if they misuse that freedom then they will suffer the consequences of so doing. So they are free to choose, but not all choices are of equal value.

As regards the 'divine simplicity', my belief is that it is impossible to understand the meaning of that idea in a purely discursive or intellectual sense. That is why the virtue of simplicity is enjoined to Christian believers; that they themselves must become simple, so that the simplicity of God can manifest in them and to them. You will find many statements to this effect in for example Meister Eckhardt's sermons and it is also the underlying rationale behind Christian monasticism of 'poverty, chastity and obedience'. Of course it's pretty remote from today's civic religions, but that is neither here nor there.

RegularGuy

↪Wayfarer

I tend to think that we all have certain urges that compel us toward some action. Personally, I don’t get urges to run marathons, write esoteric equations on the walls, go bungee jumping, or learn Swahili. However, I do get the urge to philosophize. So, I do philosophy.

That said, I think the whole free will debate is pretty unnecessary unless we are discussing culpability or morality. Most people are garden variety sinners. It’s the heinous acts that make us wonder about free will. Would you have disavowed the Nazis if you were a German of military enlistment age in 1930s Nazi Germany? Most of us would like to think so, but most of them probably didn’t have much real choice. That’s not an argument for the permissibility of genocide, but I think it is something to think about regarding free will. The more you know about someone, their nature and nurture, the less culpable you tend to find them. I think that’s why we tend to defend our loved ones more so than strangers. We know their histories.

Or maybe I’m just speaking for myself.

Walter Pound

↪Noah Te Stroete

Hey noah, how exactly does the Christian theist even fit divine simplicity with his doctrine of the holy trinity and of Jesus Christ who is both fully human and fully God?

RegularGuy

↪Walter Pound

I just posted something on that in the other thread about the Trinity. Please read that, and you can address your questions there.

TheMadFool

↪Walter Pound

This is just another way of stating the omniscience-freewill paradox.

I was thinking about this and haven't made any progress whatsoever in this regard.

What I think is God's omniscience can be ''explained'' in terms of his omnipresence. I'm quite surprised that omnipresence isn't one of his atrributes.

So, God knows everything (is omniscient) because He is everywhere. In a stone, a tree, in your mind, etc. His knowledge, we could say, is real time and not, if I may use the word, a priori. God doesn't know what's going to happen beforehand. He knows it while it's happening.

As you can see this doesn't preclude freewill. We're free to choose but this can't be done without God's knowledge as he's omnipresent.

I feel something's wrong with this argument. What is it?

`

SapereAude

↪Walter Pound

Hey Walter, great question. For me, I think the concept of "omniscience" itself can be put into question. Ok, let's break this down a bit. The basic idea is that "everything in existence" is the object of God's knowledge. But, in my mind, another factor involved in Divine Simplicity is that God constitutes the most fundamental reality and that his essence cannot involve negation.

Please correct me if I am wrong, I think that your question actually has more to do with the idea of Theistic determinism + plus the idea of free will in the shadow of human evil.

Because under the framework you created above, there is an inherent problem - that God is both entirely good and all-knowing. Does God necessarily as the "uncaused cause" of everything cause the evil actions of men? That cannot be. But neither does it seem possible that Evil should exist as an autonomous entity, powerfully independent from God.

I am interested to hear your response,

Sapere Aude

Mariner

There is a terminological issue underlying the problem. The word "will" is not univocal. It is used to address different movements (or, powers) of the psyche, and "freedom" does not apply to all of them with the same fit (or at all).

In Latin (for example), the word is translated (at least!) as either libido or voluntas. (We must not forget that free will is liberum arbitrium, yet a third word).

Libido, the chain of passions, is never construed as free. Plato represented it as the dark horse in his chariot analogy. St. Paul referenced it by saying that "the evil that I do not want to do, that is what I do". The most common Christian reference to it talks of it as slavery --i.e., the opposite of freedom. Expressions such as "slave to sin" and "slave to death" are found in the New Testament.

Voluntas, on the other hand, is the thing/movement/power of the psyche that is deemed to be free to choose between alternatives. {Cf. Buridan's Ass). Its freedom, by itself and unaided, does not give it power to overcome the slavery of libido. Plato speaks of the "weak tug of the golden cord"; Buddhism is a full program for taming the passions so as to enable the freedom of the will to reach the forefront; Christianity emphasizes the role of grace (i.e., how the will, unaided, cannot choose the good). Etc.

Summing up, libertarian free will, by treating the human will as a monolithic thing/power/movement, loses explanatory power and becomes more of a slogan than a useful concept. It is important to observe the various internal aspects of what is called, in English, "will", and to predicate freedom only of the part that is actually able to choose among alternatives.

Dgallen

My main objection with the argument is within premise five. There’s an underlying assumption within your argument that God’s omniscience implies knowledge of the future, and if God does have knowledge of the future, then human actions are determined (libertarian free will does not exist). Additionally you claim there is a causal link between God’s knowledge and what occurs (“if anything God knows must occur necessarily”). The claim that if God has foreknowledge of an event, then it is determined, is not necessarily true. God can know the outcome of an event, but his foreknowledge is not the cause of that outcome. It can be true that both God knows the outcome of an event, and a person chooses and acts freely. God has knowledge or holds beliefs because they are true, his knowledge or beliefs do not create truth. Additionally, it is not necessarily correct to claim God has foreknowledge of an event, provided that we understand God as existing outside of time. If God exists outside of time, then his knowledge of an event does not exist before the event happens. If his knowledge of an event does not exist before an event happens, but exists outside of time, then it would be more correct to claim God knows everything that will occur and has occurred, rather than anything God knows must occur necessarily. The former has no causal implication, and leaves open the possibility of libertarian free will. Additionally, there is a problem with premise four. If premise four is true, then God can’t have separate traits, only one all encompassing trait. If that’s the case, then all of God’s traits are necessary, but what he gets from them may not be. It could be the case that God’s omniscience is necessary, but that doesn’t mean everything he perceives with it is as well.

Divine Simplicity and human free will

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