Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of God, Part 14.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Now, the study of divine omniscience, as I explained last time, involves two questions,

to problems which are very much discussed and which we want

to now address ourselves.

And the first of these is the famous question of divine foreknowledge and human freedom.

And the objection arises here that if God knows in advance everything that happens, every choice

that you will ever make, then isn't everything fated to occur?

For example, if God knows in advance and predicts that Peter will deny Christ three times, then

when the time arrives, isn't Peter fated to deny Christ three times? Isn't it necessary

that Peter deny Christ three times? How could he do anything else since God knows and has predicted that he would do so and God cannot err?

It would seem if Peter could do anything else, then God could be mistaken, which is impossible.

So doesn't it follow from God's complete foreknowledge

of the future that fatalism is true, that everything that happens happens necessarily?

Well, some Christian theologians agree with this. Martin Luther, for example, believed that in virtue of divine foreknowledge of the

future, there is no human free will, that human freedom is illusory. Others in the reformed theological

tradition have said that God's foreknowledge of the future is based upon his foreordination of everything. Because God

foreordains unilaterally everything that will ever happen, then of course by knowing his own will

and his omnipotent ability to bring about whatever he ordains, God thereby knows the future.

So on these views, there really is no human freedom to do otherwise.

Everything that happens necessarily.

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