Maimonides on Free Will, Divine Omniscience and Repentance

Ben Zion Katz

The problem of reconciling the notions of man’s free will and Divine omniscience is an ancient one. As early as Mishna Avot 3:15 Rabbi Akiva states that “everything is known [by God] but permission (i.e. free will) is given [to people]”. Maimonides begins to tackle this question in his Laws of Repentance (הלכות תשובה) from Book One (The Book of Science סּפּר המדע) of the Mishnah Torah. In chapter 5 paragraph 5 Maimonides brings up the conundrum of Divine Omniscience vs human free will: How can people have free will if God knows the future? Maimonides insists that one who claims that God does not know people’s (future) actions is a heretic (Chapter 3 paragraph 8). He also claims that there is no doubt that people have free will (מעשה האדם ביד האדם) and that there are clear philosophical proofs (ראיות ברורות מדברי החכמה) for this. So how can these two competing concepts be explained? Maimonides insists that there is an answer, but that it is quite complicated/long (תשובת שאלה זו ארוכה). In the Mishnah Torah itself Maimonides only hints at a possible solution, stating that God’s knowledge is different (כי לא מחשבותי מחשבותיכם; Isaiah 55:8).

To pursue this matter further, one must turn to the Rambam’s philosophical masterpiece, The Guide of the Perplexed, where in Book Three, Chapter 20 Maimonides explains this idea further: that God’s knowledge is different from human knowledge because ”His knowledge is His essence and His essence is his knowledge” (Shlomo Pines, Moses Maimonides The Guide of the Perplexed, University of Chicago Press, 1963, hereafter “Pines”, p. 481). The reason for this is that “His knowledge is not a thing … outside of His essence” (Pines, p. 482). In simpler terms, for people, knowledge is separate from their being, but this is not true for God. A consequence of this idea, according to Maimonides is that “His knowledge concerning what will happen does not make this possible thing quit its nature” (Pines, p. 482). In other words, if human nature includes free will, the fact that God knows what will happen does not in any way abrogate that free will. Stated differently, if an event has two possible outcomes, “God’s knowledge…does not bring about the actualization of one of the two possibilities” (Pines, p. 483).

Several examples are often given to explain this difficult concept. The first is that if one is atop a mountain and sees two trains at right angles hurtling towards each other, foreknowledge of the impending collision does not in any way effect the outcome. The second, more philosophical approach is that for God who does not change, time is meaningless; future and past are equivalent. Therefore, just as one’s knowledge of the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo does not affect its outcome, so too God’s knowledge of future events does not affect their outcome. Thus God can be omniscient in a way we cannot fully comprehend, man can have free will, people have the capacity to repent and God can still punish evildoers.

This question of free will vs God’s omniscience comes up again in a different way in chapter 6 of the Laws of Repentance, paragraph 3, where Maimonides discusses the difficult question of the stiffening of Pharoah’s heart, a common trope in the story of the Exodus (see Exodus 4:21 and the discussion therein in Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary Exodus, Jewish Publication Society, 1991, p. 23). Here again, the question is: if God stiffens Pharoah’s resolve, why was Pharoah deserving of God’s punishment? It seems as if Pharoah had no free will in the matter. Maimonides also discusses the fact that God prophesied to Abraham that Abraham’s descendants (the Israelites) will be oppressed by the Egyptians (Genesis 15:13). If this oppression was pre-ordained, how could God then exact punishment upon the Egyptians (Genesis 15:14) since seemingly God’s omniscience rules out free will on the part of the Egyptians? Maimonides answers the latter question in paragraph 5 of chapter 6 of the Laws of Repentance by explaining that God’s prophecy concerned the Egyptians as a nation but not individual Egyptians. Thus, presumably only those Egyptians who chose to torment the Israelites would be punished. Maimonides answers the first question regarding the stiffening or hardening of Pharoah’s heart by explaining that after Pharoah repeatedly sinned, part of his punishment was God’s withholding from Pharoah the latter’s ability to repent.

Thus, as has been pointed out by many others, Maimonides had a single philosophical program running through all of his major works (see e.g., Herbert Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works, Oxford University Press 2005, pp. 303-4). By reading about similar themes both in the Mishnah Torah and the Guide of the Perplexed, one can obtain a better idea of Maimonides’ contributions to Jewish thought. Using this approach we have shown that Maimonides was able to retain expansive concepts of Divine omniscience and man’s free will, and demonstrate the importance of repentance even if God “knows” whether or not you are actually going to repent.