If God knows everything, are we free?

Judaism

Rabbi Akiva’s saying holds both truths without explaining either away. The Torah insists on choice: “I have set before thee life and death… therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). The Talmud adds a striking line: everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven (Berakhot 33b). God may decide a great deal about your life, but not whether you love Him.

Maimonides called free will a pillar of the Torah. Without it, he said, commandments, praise and blame would make no sense. How it fits with God’s knowledge, he admitted, is beyond us, because God’s knowing is not like ours.

Christianity

“God, who foreknoweth all things, still looks down from above, and the ever-present eternity of His vision concurs with the future character of all our acts.”

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Book V, prose 6 · H. R. James (1897), public domain

Christians have argued about this more than almost anything. Augustine said God’s foreknowledge no more forces our choices than our memory forces the past. The Roman thinker Boethius, writing in prison in about 524 while awaiting execution, gave the answer many still use. God does not live inside time as we do. He sees all of time at once, in an “abiding present”, the way someone on a tower might watch a traveller on the road below. Seeing does not make the traveller walk. “The freedom of man’s will stands unshaken,” he concluded.

Later Christians divided. Calvinists stress God’s sovereign choice. Arminians, including John Wesley’s Methodists, stress the human response. Catholics and the Orthodox say grace and freedom work together. Paul put both in one breath: “work out your own salvation… for it is God who works in you” (Philippians 2:12–13).

Islam

“Lo! We have shown him the way, whether he be grateful or disbelieving.”

Qur’an 76:3 · Pickthall (1930)

Belief in al-qadar, God’s decree, is one of the six articles of Muslim faith. The Qur’an says God has measured out everything, and also that people choose: “Say: (It is) the truth from the Lord of you (all). Then whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve. Lo! We have prepared for disbelievers Fire. Its tent encloseth them. If they ask for showers, they will be showered with water like to molten lead which burneth the faces. Calamitous the drink and ill the resting-place!” (18:29, Pickthall). It even sets both side by side: you may will to go straight, yet “Unto whomsoever of you willeth to walk straight. And ye will not, unless (it be) that Allah willeth, the Lord of Creation.” (81:28–29, Pickthall).

When the Prophet Muhammad’s companions asked why they should act at all if each person’s place was already written, he told them to keep going: do good, for each person will find easy the path they were made for (Bukhari 4949). A well-known report in al-Tirmidhi gives the practical rule: tie your camel, then trust in God. Muslim theologians argued fiercely here. The Mu’tazila stressed human freedom. The Ash’ari school said God creates our acts and we “acquire” them. Most Muslims hold the balance: God knows and decrees, and we are responsible.

Without religion

Many non-religious thinkers are compatibilists, like the philosopher Daniel Dennett, who argued that the freedom worth wanting is the power to act on reasons and to learn. Others, such as Sapolsky and the writer Sam Harris, think free will is an illusion. They draw a gentle conclusion from it: since no one chose their genes or childhood, we should judge less harshly and help more. Many believers notice that this sounds a lot like mercy.

Sikhi

“You yourself sow, and you yourself eat. Nanak: by the divine order we come and go.”

Guru Granth Sahib, ang 4 (Japji, pauri 20) · our rendering

Sikhs speak of hukam, the divine order that runs through everything. Nothing is outside it. Yet Guru Nanak also teaches that we reap what we sow, and that we can choose to live in tune with hukam rather than in haumai, ego. Sikhs often describe it like swimming with a river’s current instead of against it. The river is God’s; the strokes are ours.

Hindu traditions

“Meditate! And—as thou wilt—then act!”

Bhagavad Gita 18:63 · Edwin Arnold, The Song Celestial (1885), public domain

Karma is often mistaken for fate, but it is closer to the opposite. It teaches that actions have consequences, so what you do now shapes what comes next. Past karma deals you your hand; your free action decides how you play it. At the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna has given his whole teaching, and then hands the choice back to Arjuna.

Beyond the Abrahamic faiths

Buddhism teaches that there is no fixed self pulling the levers, yet choice matters enormously: the whole path is training the mind, one intention at a time. The Stoics of ancient Greece and Rome taught that we cannot control events, only our response, and that this is where freedom lives.