How, though, can anyone know the future?

How, though, can anyone know the future? And how, in particular, is it possible to know the future in such detail? There are two models of divine foreknowledge - the predictive model and the observational model - that seek to give answers to these questions. The predictive model of divine foreknowledge holds that God knows the future by prediction, by calculating the way that the world is going to be on the basis of the way that the world is now.

There are laws of nature that govern the way that the different entities in the world interact. Using these laws, even we, with our imperfect knowledge, can often make accurate predictions about the future. Think about the way that we calculate the future positions of satellites orbiting the Earth. We know where the satellites are now, and what laws govern their interactions, and so project where they will be in the future.

According to the predictive model of divine foreknowledge, God’s foreknowledge is derived from calculations such as these but on a much grander scale. Given perfect knowledge of the present state of the world, and perfect knowledge of the laws that govern the interaction of its parts, it seems, it should be possible to predict with perfect accuracy the way that the world will be at any given point in the future.

This, according to the predictive model of divine foreknowledge, is how God knows, in perfect detail, what will happen in the future. The problem with the predictive model of divine foreknowledge is that it only works given the assumption that determinism is true.

Determinism holds that each state of the world wholly determines the subsequent states of the world; given the way that the world is now, determinism holds, there is only one possible way in which the rest of history could play itself out.

This assumption is necessary for the predictive model of divine foreknowledge to work, because if there were several ways in which the rest of history could play itself out then, even with perfect knowledge of the present, and perfect knowledge of the laws of nature, God could not know for certain which of those possible futures would come about. If the present does not determine the future, then the future cannot be predicted with certainty. Determinism, though, does not seem to be true.

Quite apart from the scientific concerns about indeterminacy involving small particles, indeterminacy seems to enter the world through the choices of free agents.