Boethius: If God knows the future, can we have free will?

Boethius while awaiting his death gives the classical answer to this dilemma

In his final book of the Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius asks, “If God knows the future, can we have free will?” The question mattered to him deeply since he was about to die for his pursuit of justice. Did his pursuit of virtue and the goodness that God is matter, if God simply pre-determined every event whatsoever? Would our suffering for justice's sake mean anything if our choices were not free?

Boethius will affirm that, yes, we do have free will, and, yes, God does providentially guide all things by his foreknowledge. What fascinates me is that Boethius does not need to posit middle knowledge or speculate about counterfactuals. His answer involves affirming the classical doctrine of God, as presented by theologians such as Augustine.

Argument Simply Stated

• Humans, by nature, are rational creatures with intellect and will (5.2).

• God, by nature, is eternal and omniscient.

• God foreknows all things, which implies that they cannot not occur. So, how can rational agents (us) truly have a will, a faculty of choice, when God’s foreknowledge means we act out of necessity?

• Boethius denies this fatalistic point of view because he knows that some things are necessary only upon the condition of their presently happening.

• God’s simplicity of nature and eternality mean that he sees all things in his indeterminate present. In other words, the condition of God’s foreknowledge means that creaturely acts are conditionally necessary, but that does not mean, from our perspective, that we lack the faculty of will and its freedom.

• Importantly, this means that foreknowledge does not mean seeing time in a sequence as if God watches the future on a computer screen. Rather, God sees all at once in his eternal existence outside of space and time.

• Boethius introduces a final distinction of two kinds of necessity, simple and conditioned, which allows him to preserve human freedom.

• Thus, Boethius believes God’s foreknowledge and freedom of will can exist side-by-side without one eliminating the other.

To understand this argument further, we need to first talk about how Boethius understands necessity.

Necessity and Free Will

If God knows the future by his foreknowledge, then the future is certain. But does that mean we lack freedom of will? Can we be free when God knows the future? That is the dilemma Boethius aims to resolve.

The key question hinges on what makes something necessary. Can God foreknow all things without imposing a necessity upon us that eliminates our free will? Boethius thinks so. For example, he speaks of a charioteer who guides his horse teams (5.4, p 409). At each moment, the chariot team runs freely.

Put it another way, imagine you see someone walking down a path. Since they are certainly walking, they are necessarily walking. This conditioned necessity (conditional upon our seeing someone walk) does not eliminate their free will.

Our knowledge gained by seeing someone walk in the present means that someone is necessarily walking, but we have not caused them to do so. They walked voluntarily. From our viewpoint, they walked necessarily as a condition of our seeing them walk; from their viewpoint, they have acted voluntarily and freely.

Boethius calls this conditional necessity because it necessarily happens in the present, but the person walking could have done otherwise. For him, the power of free will involves the power of contrary choice: “before they happened, they might not have happened” (5.6).

So Boethius has told us that the knower and the thing known differ when it comes to necessity. The knower knows a person walks necessarily, while the walker freely walks. This distinction will matter greatly when Boethius next asks what sort of knower God is.

God’s Nature and Knowledge (Eternity)

God, as knower of our free actions, need not cause all of them necessarily in a way to eliminate free will. The reason why is that God sees all events in his eternal present. Like the person seeing someone walk, God sees simultaneously what we understand to be past, present, and future events.

Boethius explains: “God is eternal … Therefore let us consider, what is eternity; for this makes plain to us both the divine nature and the divine knowledge. Eternity, then, is the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of boundless life, which becomes clearer by comparison with temporal things” (5.6).

By contrast, “whatever lives in time” (i.e., us) “does not simultaneously comprehend and embrace the whole space of its life, though it be infinite, but it possesses the future not yet, the past no longer” (5.6).

Distinguishing created (us) and uncreated (God) nature further, Boethius writes:

“Since then every judgment comprehends those things subject to it according to its own nature, and God has an always eternal and present nature, then his knowledge too, surpassing all movement of time, is permanent in the simplicity of his present, and embracing all the infinite spaces of the future and the past, considers them in a simple act of knowledge as though they were now going on. So if you should wish to consider his foreknowledge, by which he discerns all things, you will more rightly judge it to be not foreknowledge as it were the future but knowledge of a never passing instant” (5.6).

The point is that God’s nature and knowledge are eternal and simple. He does not exist in our order of time, but lives as only God can live. So his foreknowledge sees all things as eternally present. “So then the divine perception looking down on all things does not disturb at all the quality of things that are present indeed to him but future with reference to imposed conditions of time” (5.6).

Like the watcher and the walker, God watches all acts in his simple and eternal vision. From God’s vision, we act according to conditional necessity. But from our point of view, we act in such a way as being able to do otherwise (freely).

Conditional and Simple Necessity

One last distinction clarifies Boethius’s argument. He recognizes that even with the above view of God, it still is true that what God knows does occur and cannot not occur. Some may call this a kind of necessity as well. Granting that possibility, Boethius distinguishes between (1) simple necessity and (2) conditional necessity to explain the kind of necessity involved in God’s foreknowledge of occurrences.

“I shall say an answer that the same future event, when it is related to divine knowledge, is necessary, but when it is considered in its own nature it seems to be utterly and absolutely free. For there are really two necessities, the simple, as that is necessary that all men are mortal; the other conditional, as for example, if you know that someone is walking, it is necessary that he is walking. Whatever anyone knows cannot be otherwise than as it is known, but this conditional necessity by no means carries with it that other simple kind. For this sort of necessity is not caused by a thing’s proper nature but by the addition of the condition; for no necessity forces him to go who walks of his own will, even though it is necessary that he is going at the time when he is walking.” (5.6)

It is proper to human nature to be mortal. The word “proper” means belongs by nature. It is thus necessary for a human to be mortal. By contrast, it is not naturally necessary that a human always be walking. But when a human walks, that condition of walking in the present means that the walker is necessarily walking. The walker retains his free will, his voluntary choice to walk.

Boethius will now point out that God’s foreknowledge of all things falls into line with conditional necessity.

“Now in the same way, if providence sees anything as present, that must necessarily be, even if it possesses no necessity of its nature. But God beholds those future events which happen because of the freedom of the will, as present; they therefore, related to the divine perception, become necessary through the condition of the divine knowledge, but considered in themselves do not lose the absolute freedom of their nature. Therefore all those things which God foreknows will come to be, will without doubt come to be, but certain of them proceed from free will, and although they do come to be, yet in happening they do not lose their proper nature, according to which, before they happened, they might also not have happened.” (5.6)

Notice the earlier distinction of knower and thing known comes into play. God foreknows all in his eternal present, making them conditionally necessary (conditioned upon his foreknowledge). But this conditional necessity does not gainsay our proper nature, which contains the power of contrary choice: “before they happened, they might also not have happened.”

This power of contrary choice approximates what Boethius means by freedom of the will, at least practically speaking. He, of course, also includes being of a rational nature since a rational nature needs the faculty of will to choose. But here he claims that humans retain the power to choose otherwise.

Conclusion

In summary Boethius concludes that God does not look into the future. God in his eternity simply comprehends all things at once. From our perspective then, it is as God was watching us walk in the park whether in our past, our present, or our future. We naturally and voluntarily walk, and God knows that we are walking necessarily.

I should note that Boethius certainly believes God does cause certain things to happen, but here he focuses on our free will because he wants us to know that pursuing virtue and avoiding vice matter. It is not fatalistic to pursue the good and deny evil.

Learn more

My friend Matthew Hoskin and I just finished podcasting through the Consolation of Philosophy. Do listen to our episodes here: