Free Will and Divine Foreknowledge Essay

Augustine discusses a critical issue which is the incompatibility of earthly concerns detached leave and graven images precognition. So the question is, do we really have free forget in spite of the particular that god foreknows everything? If perfection knows what must necessarily happen next, consequently how do have the free will to make our induce choices? Augustine comes up with a series of arguments to prove that we sin by our own will with no intervention of the divine foreknowledge. Augustine first argued a characteristic of God that He has free will, and that He has foreknowledge of his own actions.Therefore, two Gods will and foreknowledge go along with each other. From this wind he then assumes that mans will and Gods foreknowledge are both compatible. provided croupe we compare God with man? And is this argument convincing enough? More elaboration has to be apt(p) in order to make it more convincing. Augustine then proceeds to do so. He states that people who do not believe in the compatibility of free will and divine foreknowledge are those who are more intense to excuse than confess their sins (p. 73).That means that people who always blame others for their own unconventional doings rather than admitting it are those who claim that we have no free will and that everything is already known by God, and that nothing can be changed, which they also use as a justification for their wrong actions. These people live their life by chance, leaving everything according to the hatful rather than crusadeing to take good actions. An example for that is the beggars, who always try to take money from people without giving anything in return or even having a job, although they have the ability to do so.But because of their acedia and their belief that this is what they were created to be, they leave everything to happen by luck and according to Gods foreknowledge that couldnt be changed (p. 73). Augustine then moves to another point which is t he relation between the will and the power to achieve that will. He states that the will itself is within our power. Therefore, our desire to commit certain acts is a power that we own. But if we will something that is not within our power then it is not considered as a will because we can only will what is within our power.Augustine then discusses that if something good happens to us then it is accordance to our will, not against it. So for example, cosmos quick, although God foreknows that you will be so, doesnt mean that we are happy against our will. Thus, Gods foreknowledge of our happiness doesnt take outdoor(a) our will to be happy (p. 76). And so, he concludes that if God foreknows our will, then definitely this will is going to occur, and so it will be a will in the future. Consequently, his foreknowledge doesnt take away our will. And since that what we will is in our power, God foreknows our power and He will not take it away.Hence, we will have that power because God foreknows it (p. 77). So Augustine made it clear that it is essential that whatever God has foreknown will happen, and that he foreknows our sins in such a way that our wills remain free and are with in our power (p. 77). However, the feature that Gods foreknowledge of our sins is consistent with our free will in sinning nonoperational stays questionable. Taking into consideration the fact that God is just, so how does He punish our sins that happen by necessity? Or is Gods foreknowledge not an obligation? The topic is still confusing so Augustine then proceeds to make it clearer.To conclude, Augustine succeeded in approach shot up with a good argument showing that mans free will and Gods foreknowledge are both compatible. The sequence of his ideas made his argument understandable and convincing for any reader. As a reader, Ive always thought about that subject that didnt receive any answers. However, reading On Free option of the Will made everything clear for me and made me well convinced that Gods foreknowledge doesnt intervene with our own choices that we make. Works Cited Williams, Thomas. On Free Choice of the Will. Indianapolis Hackett Publishing Company