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Freewill: the paradox of human choice and divine omniscience

The Rabbis derive the idea of human freewill from the earliest parts of the Torah, but their understanding of G-d's attributes creates a
tension that is reflected in rabbinic literature until today. We will look at some of the sources which attempt to reconcile our
conception of an all-knowing G-d with a belief that we have ultimate control over the decisions we make.
Related topics not addressed here: Divine Providence (guidance and care over the world), Freewill vs. Determinism

1. "THE PROBLEM"
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2. "SOLUTIONS"
a) Rambam (1135-1204)

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Thought Experiment: Take out a dollar bill and look at its serial number. Rearrange the digits however you want,
so that you now have the original serial number and the rearranged number that you just created. Subtract the
smaller number from the larger. Secretly write down the answer, and add your age to the result. Tell a nearby
stranger just this final number, and she will have sufficient information to correctly guess your age. How?

b) Ra'avad (1125-1198) & R. Yosef Dov Soloveitchik (1903-1993)

, " "

[This author - i.e. Rambam - has not acted as the wise customarily do] ...
i.e. he directed the] [ he left them unresolved]
[ as it is, for men of simple faith] .[ reader, to rely

,[ definite] " ,
' ,[ better to rely on a partial answer than to have none at all]
[ power] .
.[ astrologers] ,
[ i.e. man] [ i.e. to be influenced by the stars]
- [ i.e. to elude their hold]
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Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, On Repentance, pg. 174
Rabbi Abraham ben David (Ra'avad) wishes to bring out here that when we say man has free choice, we don't
mean that life is without stability or that there is no fixed course for man to follow. . . . The law of cause and
effect, action and consequence, does prevail in a man's life. He reacts to various phenomena in a set manner
and not according to haphazard caprice. For example, "people do not lie about things which are likely to
become known" . . . "a man does not act impertinently towards his creditor"; "no man pays his debts before
they are due" - and all the other presumptions of law which are founded upon human psychology, on a definitive
pattern of human behavior. . . . When [the Ra'avad] states "And it is well-known that all of man's deeds, great
or small, were given by God to the power of the Fortunes," his meaning is that though life is stamped with
causative regularity, "God also gave man the intelligence to elude the hand of Fortune; and this is the power
given man for good or evil."
EXERCISE: "QUICK! THINK OF A NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10! WHAT IS IT?

c) Tannaitic sources (+) on the meaning of the root "..."

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R. Akiva said: "I was watching Rabban Gamaliel and R. Yehoshua (and I saw) that (although) all the people were waving their
lulavim, they waved them only at " ,'"

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' ' ...

It is told of Rabban Gamaliel and the elders that they were traveling by boat and Shabbat arrived: they asked Rabban Gamaliel,
"Should we disembark?" He said to them, "I was watching and (I observed that) we were within the Shabbat-limit before nightfall."

Two more sources....

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( c. 1310 1249) .iv

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He [R. Akiva] meant to say by the phrase " " that all actions are known to Him [G-d], a man cannot evade [the Almighty], as
the Sages said "and all of your actions are written in a book." (Avot 2:1) [similarly, in Mahzor Vitry: "[He] beholds all the deeds of the
children of men."

d) "The Science of God"

Gerald L. Schroeder, The Science of God: the Convergence of Scientific and Biblical wisdom, p. 157
Two perspectives on time

+ atemporality =

B
.