re catholic doctrine of predestination in article may geneva rutgers edu creps lateran ucs indiana edu stephen a creps writes in article may athos rutgers edu noye midway uchicago edu writes the catholic doctrine of predestination does not exclude free will in any way since god knows everything he therefore knows everything that is going to happen to us we have free will and are able to change what happens to us however since god knows everything he knows all the choices we will make in advance god is not subject to time too often arguments pit predestination against free will we believe in both curiously enough this subject has occupied a good bit of my prayer life recently god s experience of time is so completely different from our own since he is both within and without it using words like foreknowledge and predestination are semantically incorrect when it comes to describing god s perception of our action because for god the beginning living and ending of our lives are all the same sort of for god there is no before when he did not know so he could not have foreknowledge of our lives or a time when he could have predestined our actions in fact since our understanding of things is so tied to our linear experience of time i would say that it is impossible for us to understand completely how our free will interacts with god s control of the universe tom ault
