“A wonderful inference, and difficult to grant”

In The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius makes this delightful statement after Philosophy has made an elaborate argument about free will based on the difference between providence and fate, one which we experience in time, the other which God experiences outside, or perhaps above time. This argument, which touches on chance and free will, takes up much of the last third of The Consolation of Philosophy. It is a wonderful inference, one I’d like to embrace. And like many such arguments, much too neat. I’ve never found either idea neat, and even less so when taken together.

When I think of how free will and God’s omnipotence might both be true, the quandary that troubles most, I think of my daughter who lives in Washington two thousand miles away. When she calls, I know I’m either going to get a happy go lucky gypsy on the other end of the line who loves flowers and puppies and everyone—or I’m going to get an angry woman who is mad at the world, her boyfriend, now ex, her boss, the guy in the car in front of her who is too stupid to actually have a driver’s license. Did I mention she is moody? Oh, I guess I should also mention I get a hundred moods in between. The point is, I know her. I know her intimately, through years of talking and crying and laughing together. There is little that she might do that would surprise me, though I allow that she might.

Now, let’s think about that in terms of free will and God. A god who is omniscient knows you and I intimately, enough so that there is little we could do that would surprise him. This seems to fit the difference between providence and fate, at least it is a wonderful inference to me.

Compare Philosophy's argument to this one in The Atlantic. They are both wonderful inferences: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/