Divine Providence and Free Will

Divine Providence and Free Will  

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My students often ask me the following question: If God knows everything we’ve ever done and everything we ever will do, how can we have free will? This is certainly a good question, and one that Catholics need to know how to answer, since we believe that God knows everything (including our future actions) but also that we have freedom of choice.

I usually answer the following way: Just because God knows what we’re going to do in the future doesn’t mean He causes us to do it. I’m sure that there are people in our own lives that we now very well and whose actions we could predict. One of my students who asked me this question, for example, had a twin sister. So I asked her, "If your twin sister found a wallet with $100 inside, would she return it or keep the money?" My student said that her twin would return the money. To which I responded, "Would the fact that you know what she would do change the fact that she asked freely?"

Of course the answer is no, and the same is true for God. God knows us more intimately than we know ourselves, and therefore can see every action that we will perform them. But that doesn’t change the fact that, indeed, we are the ones performing our actions.