*I am using the word “choice” here, even though one might quite plausibly suggest that my finding X meaningful isn’t always a matter of my choosing to find X meaningful—it might often be that I find X meaningful just because of how I am constructed or because of my personal history. It isn’t entirely clear to me that a personal history that included belief in an intrinsic purpose of the universe would be guaranteed to make me find life more meaningful than otherwise; I will grant, though, that human beings often seem to derive comfort from the feeling that although they may die, they will not have lived in vain. Yet, anyone who helps someone else or who does anything constructive or beneficial to or for anyone will not have lived in vain.

Far from liberating, I find such a view stifling. In fact, when I held to this view, all I did was stay in bed all day. Consciousness angered me. I could not bring myself to simply live as though life is meaningful though in fact it isn’t, which what existentialism amounts to: utter despair or self-delusion.

Apparently this argument is taken up in Plantinga & Tooley’s Knowledge of God, which is hot off the press. I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

Second, what *is* necessary is the connection between God’s foreknowing that agent S will choose to do x and S’s subsequently choosing to do x and not not-x. (a) In one sense, this is just like my knowing that the Packers won Super Bowl I: Assuming that I cannot be mistaken about the Packers’ victory (just as God cannot be mistaken about S’s future choice to do x), my knowing is a sufficient condition for the Packers to have actually won Super Bowl I, and yet my knowing doesn’t *make it a fact* that the Packers won Super Bowl I–my knowing doesn’t *bring it about* that the Packers won Super Bowl I. In this sense, God’s foreknowledge that S will do x, while a sufficient condition for S’s subsequent performance of x, needn’t *make it a fact* that S will do x–God’s foreknowledge needn’t *bring it about* that S will do x. This, I think, is at least a large part of the sense of freedom you have in mind: A sufficient condition isn’t the same thing as a determining condition, and God’s foreknowledge that S will do x, while sufficient, isn’t determinative. (b) But in another sense, this necessary connection between God’s foreknowledge that S will do x and S’s doing x is unlike the necessary connection (assuming my infallibility with respect to past events) between my knowledge that the Packers won Super Bowl I and their actually having won Super Bowl I. The dissimilarity consists in this: Nothing I now say or do can induce anyone to do anything to make the Packers fail to win Super Bowl I; but if S is really free with respect to action x, then there are, presumably, things one can now say or do to induce S not to take action x–S’s choice can still be *influenced*. Yet neither connection–the one between my postknowledge of the Packers’ victory and that victory nor the one between God’s foreknowledge of S’s choice to do x and S’s actual performance of x–can be broken. In particular, this means that God cannot do anything to influence S to do not-x, if God foreknows that S will do x. And the simplest way of influencing S to do not-x would be to say to S, “I know you’re going to do x, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Some agents might want to go ahead and do x anyway, but other agents would want to do not-x, just to be contrary. Yet, if God foreknew that S would do x, the connection between his foreknowledge of S’s doing x and S’s subsequently doing x could not be broken. A contrary agent S, then, would be *unable to do what he wanted to do* at the moment of choice. And being unable to do what one wants to do at the moment of choice seems like a violation of freedom to me!

For this reason, I think you’re demanding too much before acknowledging a limitation on freedom. Nx would violate freedom; but so would N(p–>x) for some true proposition p, since x would then be guaranteed in actual reality despite not being guaranteed in all possible worlds. (Let’s remember that it’s actual reality we’re concerned with!) I’ll try to read the Plantinga article you cite–although it has to come after another one I’m working on comprehending (one on rationality in light of evolutionary theory and naturalism).

I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood Plantinga and the traditional way theists have understood omniscience. I agree with Plantinga, as most theists would, that God is necessarily omniscient (essentially omniscient). But from that it does not follow that God has necessary foreknowledge. This is because just what omniscience entails—i.e., foreknowledge, or that foreknowledge is necessary—is entirely debatable. And with respect to that, as I pointed out, “Christian theologians have always insisted that the content of God’s foreknowledge is not necessary. He could have created a world different from this one or no world at all, in which case his foreknowledge would be different. Necessarily, whatever God knows is true, but it is not necessary that God know what he knows” (William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Forenkowledge and Human Freedom [Wipf and Stock, 1999], p. 75). Perhaps the main reason this has been the traditional position is because “[t]o say God’s foreknowledge is necessary is to say that this is the only world he could have created and that he created it necessarily” (Idem), which of course is absurd. So you’re forcing a conclusion I don’t think can be properly drawn from Plantinga.

What’s more is that Plantinga’s position is that even if certain truths are necessarily foreknown by God this still wouldn’t eliminate human freedom. Quite the contrary! Plantinga has shown that “divine foreknowledge threatens human freedom only if God is not essentially omniscient,” where omniscience entails the knowledge of truths necessarily foreknown. See his “On Ockham’s Way Out,” Faith and Philosophy, 3 (1986), pp. 235-269.

So far as I can see your other arguments and examples still do not eliminate genuine freedom. From the fact that in every possible world God foreknows S’s decision it does not follow that S’s decision was necessary. Or again it does not follow from the fact the God’s telling S that S will do x that S does x necessarily. In both cases the consequence of God’s antecedent knowledge is merely that S will or shall do x, not that S will or shall do x necessarily. Hence, freedom is preserved. Again, just look at your argument—it does not establish Nx.

So long as freedom is to lack necessary antecedent conditions determining actions, you’re yet to show how foreknowledge poses a threat.