The only important sense in which God is represented in Scripture as having foreknowledge is that He makes promises and knows not only that he intends to keep them but also that He will keep them. This is the sense in which the prophets tell us what will happen. It is a philosophical/theological question whether we should also believe that God knows, in advance and in every detail, what is going to happen. If we think of God as the being than which (whom) none greater can be conceived, we can ask whether it is greater to have such foreknowledge or greater not to have it. Is it greater not to be able to be surprised by anything that happens, or greater to be able to be surprised?
It is hard to answer this question even as applied to merely human wisdom. It is plausible to say that someone who has become wise through long experience is less apt to be surprised than someone with less experience. And yet experience also shows that those who are less likely to become wise through experience are precisely those who are adept at ignoring things that do not fit their preconceptions. And this makes it plausible that the wiser person is the one who is more likely to welcome surprises and hence to be surprised.
Someone might object that using the word “surprise” is likely to give us a bias in favor of thinking it is better to be able to be surprised than not, because the word has positive connotations, as when out of the blue something happens to inject a feeling of joy that we didn’t expect. Let’s ask, then, whether it is greater to be able to be disappointed or greater to be unable ever to be disappointed. Surely no one likes to be disappointed. But what could make it so that one would be unable ever to be disappointed? One way would be simply not to have any expectations in the first place. For us humans, with our limited knowledge and reliance on expectations shaped by desires and experience, this is difficult or perhaps impossible. But supposing that God has infallible foreknowledge, it would be not only easy but inevitable. He would never be disappointed because He would always already know what was going to happen. For the same reason, He would never be pleasantly surprised by anything that happens. But since pleasant surprises in our lives add joy, can we believe that the being than which none greater can be conceived never has joy in that way? Would it be greater not to have infallible foreknowledge so that one could have pleasant surprises? A first thought was that the lack of infallible foreknowledge is also what makes one subject to disappointments, and that a being who is not subject to disappointment is greater than one who is. Can we conceive of the being than whom none is greater as lacking infallible foreknowledge in such a way as to make the joy of pleasant surprises possible without also making the pain of disappointment possible? Maybe the greatest being conceivable doesn’t know in advance and in every detail what is going to happen, but does know that at any time He can make happen whatever He wants to happen. It is plausible that this would take the sting out of possible disappointments while still allowing Him the joy of pleasant surprises. And while we humans aren’t relieved of the sting of disappointment by having the power ourselves to make happen whatever we want to happen, still our disappointments can be mollified by considering that the greatest conceivable being does have that power and exercises it, so that we can be sure that despite our disappointments everything comes out all right. And nothing stands in the way of our having the joy of pleasant surprises.
Hey Jack, while your essay is interesting, it obviously relies on a value judgement: “Is it greater not to be able to be surprised by anything that happens, or greater to be able to be surprised?’ I would assert that in this context the question has little meaning (excepting the case of incarnation, but that’s a much longer discussion).
However, it’s my belief that technology, and in particular computing, is by definition an analog of how we perceive and process our experience. And in that context I think it may make sense to bring the idea of simulation into play.
The purpose of running a simulation is to predict what will happen in the “real world.” So, for example, a meteorologist runs a program, which runs “outside of time,” in the sense that it happens as quickly as the processor can operate, not in “real time.”
I think it’s a useful analogy insofar as we can conceive of god as existing outside of our “spacetime,” and us existing as “avatars” within a simulation. We are experiencing a flow of time, but if we were in a sufficiently fast computer, the outcome of the simulation would be known virtually instantly. Ipso facto, foreknowledge.
Similarly, we may conceive of our lives as having been encoded on a computer’s hard drive. The entirety of our experience may be encoded, but the computer must retrieve the file sequentially — in this context, through time.
To the “external” observer, the entirety of the simulation would be known, but to the process going on in the system, the future would not be.
Of course, when the simulation was over, we would have already experienced the entirety of the simulation. Analogies, as the saying goes, can’t be made to walk on all four legs. Nevertheless, I think it’s a useful exercise in trying to come to terms with some of the implications of “foreknowledge.”
Hi Brad,
Good to hear from you! Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on my little essay.
Yes, of course, the phrasing “a being than which none greater can be conceived” involves value judgments to fill in what is meant by “greater,” such as the question I asked, “Is it greater not to be able to be surprised by anything that happens or greater to be surprised?” You seem to think it’s a weakness for a philosophical/theological essay to rely on a value judgment, but I don’t see why. Neither do I understand why you assert that in the context of considering the question whether God has infallible foreknowledge the question, whether it is greater not to be able to be surprised by anything that happens, has little meaning. I assume you mean by this that it is irrelevant. Surely someone who has infallible foreknowledge is unable to be surprised by anything that happens. If we think God is the being than which none greater can be conceived, and we want to know if it follows that He has infallible foreknowledge of everything that is ever going to happen, and someone who has infallible foreknowledge is unable to be surprised, then we need to consider whether in fact being unable to be surprised has greater value than being able to be surprised.
If we are avatars in a simulation, then I am an avatar who argues that we cannot coherently believe both that some things are truly and ultimately up to us and that we are avatars in a simulation in which everything that happens is the inevitable consequence of the initial conditions and the transformation rules set up by the creator(s) of the simulation. [See “God Waits for Us”, which I posted after you posted your comments.] You are an avatar whose point, I take it, is that it can still seem to us that we are in control of some things, because within the simulation we are represented as making choices. I don’t dispute that. I’m just saying that those “choices” wouldn’t really be choices of ours but merely the product of our ignorance of the details of how the simulation works. Only the creator(s) of the simulation would have any real control over the outcome of the simulation by changing the initial settings or the transformation rules.
The creator of the simulation is analogous to God, and the avatars in the simulation to us. You recognized that the analogy is not perfect. I believe that God is more than a creator of a simulation because He has created a world in which some of his creatures don’t just appear to have but really have choices among alternatives that are equally consistent with initial conditions and the playing out of transformation rules (laws of nature) up to that point.