Possible Worlds, Divine Foreknowledge, and Determinism
Somebody over on the Philosophy group wanted a case made that God's foreknowledge of all events entails a deterministic view of the universe. Here's my shot at it.
Begin at The Beginning.
God exists, and nothing else exists, yet. But infinitely many created worlds are possible.
God, being omnipotent, can create any world He likes. And, having omniscient foreknowledge, God knows the full range of events that would occur in any world He might create. So, God looks at His possible worlds, and all their possible events, and eventually picks one world -- presumably differing from its infinitely many nearest neighbors only by single events or facts -- and creates it. The created world is now the actual world, with all its actual events and choices.
That means that for any single choice in this world, there was a possible world in which the choice went differently. But God did not create the possible world in which the choice went differently, he created the actual world. So this world exists at all only because of the particular choices made in it.
Trivially, that's true of any world. The world we're in now exists because of a bunch of choices went a particular way. My surname exists as what it is, only because I married my husband, and so on. But creation with Divine foreknowledge requires a much stronger claim than that. In the ordinary way, we think of my choice to marry my husband as only affecting what possible world exists *after* I make that choice. If we presume God created one particular world out of all possible worlds based on His foreknowledge, then my choosing to marry my husband also affects what world exists *before* I made that choice, right back to the beginning of the world. If I choose to marry him, the world and its entire history back to its beginning and on to its end, exists. If not, then not. So every single choice that occurs in this world exists only because that is the choice that is made (which God chose, in advance, to actualize). No other choice could have been made, because the world in which it was different never existed. The alternative choice was left in an uncreated world, based on God's foreknowledge of that world, and that choice.
So, God has used his foreknowledge to choose every single choice that occurs in the actual world. Every single choice that occurs in the actual world was pre-chosen by God before the beginning of the world. If that isn't predetermination, I don't know what is.
Begin at The Beginning.
God exists, and nothing else exists, yet. But infinitely many created worlds are possible.
God, being omnipotent, can create any world He likes. And, having omniscient foreknowledge, God knows the full range of events that would occur in any world He might create. So, God looks at His possible worlds, and all their possible events, and eventually picks one world -- presumably differing from its infinitely many nearest neighbors only by single events or facts -- and creates it. The created world is now the actual world, with all its actual events and choices.
That means that for any single choice in this world, there was a possible world in which the choice went differently. But God did not create the possible world in which the choice went differently, he created the actual world. So this world exists at all only because of the particular choices made in it.
Trivially, that's true of any world. The world we're in now exists because of a bunch of choices went a particular way. My surname exists as what it is, only because I married my husband, and so on. But creation with Divine foreknowledge requires a much stronger claim than that. In the ordinary way, we think of my choice to marry my husband as only affecting what possible world exists *after* I make that choice. If we presume God created one particular world out of all possible worlds based on His foreknowledge, then my choosing to marry my husband also affects what world exists *before* I made that choice, right back to the beginning of the world. If I choose to marry him, the world and its entire history back to its beginning and on to its end, exists. If not, then not. So every single choice that occurs in this world exists only because that is the choice that is made (which God chose, in advance, to actualize). No other choice could have been made, because the world in which it was different never existed. The alternative choice was left in an uncreated world, based on God's foreknowledge of that world, and that choice.
So, God has used his foreknowledge to choose every single choice that occurs in the actual world. Every single choice that occurs in the actual world was pre-chosen by God before the beginning of the world. If that isn't predetermination, I don't know what is.