David Hunt - Does God Know the Future?

What would it mean for God to know the future? Know the general patterns of history and lives? Or know every last, minute fact about every possible thing that happens? Next, is God a super-good predictor or forecaster of the future? Or does God in some sense literally 'see' the future as if watching a film, so that it is impossible for God to be wrong?



David Hunt is a professor and Department Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Whittier College in Whittier, CA.


Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[willyh.r.]

Remember humans define(d) God. From human definition any speculation is possible.

[MoodyG]

I don’t see a foreknower problem. The way I see it, it’s not that I’ll go left because he knew it, it’s that he knows it because I will.. seems to me that many people are getting it backwards. For me, it’s as if the foreknower got his knowledge about me going left by flying into the future, seeing me gone left at the fork, and then flying back into the past retaining the knowledge of what’s gonna unfold, and so he knows it because I’ll do it and not the other way around.

[salvatoredifalco]

Didn't know John Malkovich was such a wizard.

[tyronedawson]

Foreknowledge doesn't deny what you couldn't do, it clerifies what you wouldn't do.

[zach]

"There's a lot I don't know about what I don't even know exists." Isn't this what he should have led with?

[ndwd]

The present actions determins the future, God surely knows the future because he drives reality, but how? Thats beyond our minds to understand because God is infinite, we are not

[publiusovidius]

They talk about a hypothetical being as if it were real. That's not getting closer to truth.

[amityaffliction]

I always find it amusing whenever there is a discussion about God, be it just only discussion, how many people immediately feel the need to say there is no God like a child saying nuh uh 😂😂

[lameiraangelo]

Our loving and omnipotent God can see and knows the future...
If tomorrow a bus full of innocent children is about to have an accident and fall into a river...

Why the loving God doesn't save them?
*The same example can be giving about "Catholic priests who rape children, He knows in advance and yet God doesn't do anything to prevent it from happening".
He knows it's about to happen, but decides to watch without interfering... how loving.

[chenkadhirvelb]

*If Time is the part of the God*
God knows both nothing and everything..
Complete spectrum from nothing to everything.

[purpleflametarot]

Of course he knows. IMO the path we take to get there is free will, but we end up where we're supposed to be. Some people do go around the world to get to their elbows, lol. It's a learning journey for everyone on our path, as well as us.

[sierrabianca]

"One can come up with models, but that could just be blowing hot air"....Speaking of which here's my model of God with his "time telescope"! Irony overload!

[stephenmcconnell]

The bigger question is “Is there a God.”

[mohdbilalabbasi]

I envy those people who have not even thought about these things and live peacefully. Once you ponder on these kind of questions then there is no returning back to innocence.

[Strelnikov]

To everyone always complaining in these comment sections that the interviewees never give definitive answers...

If you came here to find answers... you're in the wrong place. If you came here to better equip yourself to approach the questions... you're home.

[TheMirabillis]

1. God does not have any free will if He knows for certain what He will always do.
2. God can’t be timeless because before creation there was no Creation. Create is something God would do and "would do" requires a future and a future requires time.

[angelmanuelvilar]

Believers always find a "solution" to Gods problems.

[Robinson]

This guy is a probably a good professor in the field he is in. However one may agree or disagree, he put his case well forward.

[danielpaulson]

God in every flavor, is imaginary or conspicuously absent and detached from us. Invalid question.

[richardvannoy]

Also, the foreknowledge/free will paradox can be resolved by simply theorizing that God knows what we will freely do in the future. Doesn’t need to be a deterministic condition. An existence outside of time would allow that.