If you think about it carefully it seems impossible to reconcile two things which most people would very much like to believe – one, that they enjoy free will and in some ultimate sense are masters of their fates, and, two, that the God of all creation is omnipotent and has a master plan for us all which is beneficial. The two do not appear logically compatible. Surely there must always be a conflict between human freedom and the infinite knowledge and power of God. Even the angels, Milton tells us, were in “endless mazes lost” when they tried to figure out how God could know in advance what we humans were not programmed to do in advance. Philosophers have twisted themselves into verbal knots to surmount the problem – finding some favour, for instance, has been the argument for “backward causation”: when we freely act today, we bring it about that God foreknew yesterday that we would so act today. Work that one out if you can.
Servants or masters of our fate?
