Free Will and Divine Knowledge: Are we really in control of our lives? Or is everything already known and decided by God?
One of the most common questions about belief in God is the question of free will. On the one hand, Judaism teaches that God is all-knowing. He knows the future; He knows our destiny; He knows every choice we will make. On the other hand, though, Judaism insists that human beings have free will. Can these two ideas coexist? How can we untangle the paradox?
Why This Question Matters
The question of free will is one of the great philosophical dilemmas of human history. It’s been debated for thousands of years from every possible angle. But before diving into the Jewish perspective, it’s instructive to consider the following: Why do people care about this question altogether?
Most of us live with the strong sense that we do, in fact, have free will. We feel that we are the ones who choose how we will get to work in the morning, whom we will marry, and what we eat for dinner every night. It feels obvious that we’re in control of our decisions.
But then the question arises—what if it’s all an illusion? What if we’re just responding to internal and external forces we can’t control? What if the sense that we’re free actors who make our own decisions is simply a mirage?
What If We Don’t Have Free Will?
If humans don’t truly have free will, what are the alternatives? Historically, philosophers have outlined two primary possibilities:
Fatalism — The belief that our lives are entirely predetermined by God’s will and that we cannot do anything to change our fate. In this view, everything is fixed, regardless of our actions.
Determinism — The idea that all our decisions are simply the result of prior causes and natural laws. Every thought or action is simply the inevitable outcome of genetics, upbringing, and circumstance. We might feel like we’re choosing, but everything was already predecided by the conditions we were born into.
Both views deny any meaningful human freedom of choice or responsibility.
The Paradox of God’s Knowledge and Our Freedom
Here lies the central paradox: Judaism teaches that God is infinite and omniscient. He knows everything—past, present, and future. But if God already knows what I will choose, do I really have free will? Doesn’t His foreknowledge lock in the outcome?
On the flip side, if I truly have free will, does that mean God doesn’t know what I will choose?
Judaism responds with a third, more nuanced position: God knows what I will choose, but His knowledge doesn’t interfere with my freedom to choose.
Limited Free Will
Rabbi Chasdai Crescas, a medieval Jewish philosopher, suggested that human free will exists within limits. In theory, we can choose anything, but in practice, our decisions are constrained by who we are and the values we’ve absorbed.
For example, someone raised in a society that values human dignity might feel strongly that stealing is wrong. As that person develops morally, stealing may no longer feel like a real option at all. So while free will exists, it’s often limited by our conscience, environment, or life circumstances.
Can I choose to fly to the moon right now or meet the Queen of England? Obviously not. Our choices are limited. But within those limits, our freedom is real.
Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, a 20th-century thinker, compared this to a battlefield. In a battle, two armies face off, but the actual fighting happens only along the front lines, where the two armies confront one another. Far from the front lines, hundreds of kilometers from the battle zone, the two warring armies are not involved in active combat. Likewise, free will doesn’t apply to every single part of our lives, but it absolutely applies to the “battle zones” where we encounter moral or spiritual challenges.
“Everything Is Foreseen, Yet Freedom of Choice Is Given”
This tension is captured in a famous rabbinic teaching: “Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given.” (Pirkei Avot 3:15)
God knows everything that will happen, but we are still responsible for our choices.
The Rambam (Maimonides), one of Judaism’s greatest philosophers, put it this way:
Know that the resolution to this question [can be described as]: “Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea.”…just as it is beyond the potential of man to comprehend and conceive the essential nature of the Creator, as it states: “No man will perceive, Me and live,” (Shemot 33:20), so, too, it is beyond man’s potential to comprehend and conceive the Creator’s knowledge. This was the intent of the prophet’s statements: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways, My ways” (Yeshayahu 55:8).
Accordingly, we do not have the potential to conceive how the Holy One, blessed be He, knows all the creations and their deeds. However, this is known without any doubt: That man’s actions are in his [own] hands and the Holy One, blessed be He, does not lead him [in a particular direction] or decree that he do anything (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 5:5)
In short, we can’t resolve the paradox because of the built-in limitations of the human mind that cannot comprehend God’s Infinite and Unlimited existence. God exists beyond time and space, and His knowledge doesn’t work the same way ours does.
Beyond Time
Part of the challenge is that we conceive of God in human terms and assume that He is present “in time” in a way that conforms with our human experience. But Judaism teaches that God is eternal. He exists in the past, present, and future simultaneously. For us, time is linear. For God, time is one unified reality. Just as God isn’t limited by physical space, He also isn’t limited by time. That’s why the Tanach (Hebrew Bible) says, “The whole earth is filled with His glory” (Yeshayahu 6:3). He is present everywhere, all at once. And from His eternal perspective, He knows our choices, but He does not interfere with them.
But What About Destiny?
If someone is born with certain tendencies or “under a certain star,” does that override free will?
Jewish tradition says no.
Long before modern genetics, the Talmud noted that a person born “under the influence of Mars” may be inclined toward bloodshed, but that tendency could express itself in many ways:
One who was born under the influence of Mars will be one who spills blood. Rav Ashi said: He will be either a blood letter, or a thief, or a slaughterer of animals, or a circumciser (Shabbat 156a).
The tendency is real, but the way one chooses to use it is up to the individual.
Even King David, according to tradition, was born under Mars. But instead of becoming destructive, he channeled his passion into becoming a courageous warrior and beloved king.
The Vilna Gaon explained that people can’t entirely erase their natural tendencies, but they can decide to direct them toward good or evil. That’s the essence of free will.
Free will doesn’t mean we control everything in our lives. We are shaped by genes, circumstances, and upbringing. But within that context, we are free to decide how to respond, how to live, and who to become. God may know our future, but we still get to write it through our choices.
In recent years, neuroscientists have increasingly tried to explain the human mind in purely biological terms, suggesting that we are nothing more than highly advanced machines. Love, for example, is no longer seen as a noble emotion but rather, according to British neurophysiologist Professor Semir Zeki, as “the suppression of neural circuits typically responsible for regulating social judgment and negative emotions.”
From this perspective, reason, faith, morality, political beliefs, decision-making—and even free will are viewed as nothing more than neurological processes. In fact, some brain researchers now claim that free will is just an illusion.
But not all scientists agree. Professor Shimon Marom, a neuroscientist himself, challenges this reductionist approach in his essay “The Eternal Temptation.” He argues that modern neuroscience lacks clear standards for determining whether its findings are truly relevant to understanding the human spirit. He writes, “Even if we someday prove that damage to a specific neural network impairs our ability to love, it would be like searching for the meaning of ‘travel’ inside a car engine. We can disassemble, study, and understand every spring and bolt in the engine… but that still tells us nothing about what it means to travel.”
Free will, and alongside it, all the deep feelings and human experiences we hold most dear, may well involve biological mechanisms. But they also point to something higher: a soul. And that is something that some scientists are still reluctant to acknowledge.
Dr. James Fallon, a professor of forensic psychiatry, was one of the world’s leading experts in brain imaging. His deep knowledge of brain anatomy enabled him to identify neurological disorders like schizophrenia, psychopathy, and even depression just by analyzing brain scans. Fallon traveled extensively to testify on behalf of convicted serial killers, explaining in court that their actions weren’t the result of free will but of how their brains were wired.
In 2005, while conducting research on Alzheimer’s disease, Fallon needed a control group for comparison and decided to scan the brains of his own family members. But then something strange happened: one of the scans was indistinguishable from that of a diagnosed psychopath. When he checked with his research assistant, it turned out there had been no mistake. The brain scan in question was his own.
The man who spent his career arguing that psychopaths are not responsible for their actions since their violent nature is an outgrowth of the anatomical structure of their brains had just discovered that he himself had the brain of a killer. He carried all 15 genes linked to violent, aggressive behavior. And yet, he had never acted violently.
It turned out the traits were there, dormant, but never expressed. Those who knew him well described him as manipulative, charming-but-sinister, an intellectual bully, egocentric, incapable of deep love, cunningly dishonest, irresponsible, and lacking guilt. In other words, he could have turned out very differently.
So why didn’t he?
Fallon offered two main explanations. First, he grew up in a warm, loving home that recognized and responded to his more troubling traits. And second, free will. He chose to channel his nature into something productive, like forensic psychiatry.
Reflecting on the discovery, Fallon later said:
After all my research, I started thinking of this experience as an opportunity to do some good, maybe make up for the way I’ve acted like a jerk most of my life. Instead of trying to completely change who I am, which is really hard, I decided to take what some might call flaws and turn them into strengths. To use them for something good.
Professor Peter Ulric Tse, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, argues that free will exists, even from a biological standpoint, though it does have certain limits. His favorite example is planning a dinner. Imagine someone decides to host friends for a meal, but not everyone gets along. After settling on the guest list, they have to choose the menu:
“Rachel is vegetarian, so the food has to be vegetarian. What about baked potatoes? No, that’s too simple. I want to make a good impression. Maybe spinach lasagna? That sounds good. But I don’t have spinach, so I’ll have to go to the store.”
This kind of internal dialogue—generating ideas, evaluating them, refining them, and settling on a choice—is familiar to all of us. It may sound mundane, but Tse brought this process into his lab and identified the actual neural mechanisms behind decision-making.
His model is surprisingly concrete: decisions begin in the front of the brain, where they’re abstract. As they become more concrete, like narrowing down a menu, they shift toward the back of the brain.
The back-and-forth “ping-pong” of ideas (e.g., “No meat. Rachel’s vegetarian,” “Spinach lasagna?”) unfolds between neurons in milliseconds. With every mental “serve,” new information is processed and updated according to changing criteria. This updating is driven by a process called synaptic facilitation; essentially, it adjusts the strength of neural connections to change how neurons evaluate and transmit information.
The decision is made when one option meets the internal requirements (“Vegetarian lasagna, perfect!”). And the next time Rachel comes for dinner, the brain will already contain updated criteria from the last experience (“That lasagna was a disaster”).
In other words, our free choices, over time, evolve into patterns. And those patterns become part of who we are.
Can man reach a point where he loses his ability to exercise his free will? According to Professor Dan Ariely, a well-known behavioral economist, the answer is, at times, yes.
In his bestselling book Predictably Irrational, Ariely describes a study he conducted with university students. He asked them to reflect on how they would behave in various morally charged situations: Would they act violently? Would they be disrespectful? Could they imagine physically attacking someone? Almost unanimously, the students responded that such behavior was unthinkable.
But then Ariely introduced a twist. He triggered intense emotional arousal in the participants and then asked them the exact same questions again. This time, many of the same students admitted they could imagine acting aggressively or even violently. What had once seemed impossible suddenly felt likely, even natural.
Why the shift? In the heat of the moment, raw impulses overwhelmed rational thought. The ability to pause and consider the consequences was temporarily sidelined.
Jewish tradition is acutely aware of the power of human impulse. The Talmud teaches, “There is no steward for restraining sexual immorality” (Ketubot 13b). In other words, no one is fully immune to temptation. Even the most moral person can lose clarity when desire or emotion takes over.
That’s why Judaism doesn’t only emphasize making the right choices. It emphasizes staying out of situations where the wrong choice becomes too easy. Because when an emotional storm hits, free will is weakened (even if it doesn’t disappear entirely). And when that happens, prevention becomes the best form of strength.
One of the most well-known voices behind the claim that humans lack free will was American neuropsychologist Benjamin Libet. In a series of famous experiments, Libet connected subjects to electrodes and asked them to press a button whenever they felt like it. He found that brain activity began about half a second before the person consciously decided to press the button. In later experiments, this gap between unconscious brain activity and conscious action was observed to be as long as seven seconds.
These findings were widely interpreted as proof that free will is an illusion, that the brain “decides” before we are even aware of having made a decision.
But not all scientists were convinced. Professor Peter Ulric Tse, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, strongly challenges that conclusion. He argues that Libet’s experiments don’t actually say anything meaningful about real free will. After all, he notes, pressing a button or not pressing a button is a meaningless binary choice:
It’s a decision between two trivial options, so there’s no reason to assume it was made consciously. In my view, these kinds of studies try to reduce an incredibly complex subject to a scenario stripped of the very element that defines free will: deliberation and attention. In decisions that involve real thought, the brain behaves very differently than it does in Libet’s experiments. These studies eliminated the most essential part of free will and then concluded that it doesn’t exist. That’s a mistake.
In short, Tse argues that the absence of conscious reflection in a shallow lab experiment is not evidence that meaningful, value-driven decision-making is just an illusion.
In recent years, neuroscientists have increasingly tried to explain the human mind in purely biological terms, suggesting that we are nothing more than highly advanced machines. Love, for example, is no longer seen as a noble emotion but rather, according to British neurophysiologist Professor Semir Zeki, as “the suppression of neural circuits typically responsible for regulating social judgment and negative emotions.”
From this perspective, reason, faith, morality, political beliefs, decision-making—and even free will are viewed as nothing more than neurological processes. In fact, some brain researchers now claim that free will is just an illusion.
But not all scientists agree. Professor Shimon Marom, a neuroscientist himself, challenges this reductionist approach in his essay “The Eternal Temptation.” He argues that modern neuroscience lacks clear standards for determining whether its findings are truly relevant to understanding the human spirit. He writes, “Even if we someday prove that damage to a specific neural network impairs our ability to love, it would be like searching for the meaning of ‘travel’ inside a car engine. We can disassemble, study, and understand every spring and bolt in the engine… but that still tells us nothing about what it means to travel.”
Free will, and alongside it, all the deep feelings and human experiences we hold most dear, may well involve biological mechanisms. But they also point to something higher: a soul. And that is something that some scientists are still reluctant to acknowledge.
Professor Peter Ulric Tse, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, argues that free will exists, even from a biological standpoint, though it does have certain limits. His favorite example is planning a dinner. Imagine someone decides to host friends for a meal, but not everyone gets along. After settling on the guest list, they have to choose the menu:
“Rachel is vegetarian, so the food has to be vegetarian. What about baked potatoes? No, that’s too simple. I want to make a good impression. Maybe spinach lasagna? That sounds good. But I don’t have spinach, so I’ll have to go to the store.”
This kind of internal dialogue—generating ideas, evaluating them, refining them, and settling on a choice—is familiar to all of us. It may sound mundane, but Tse brought this process into his lab and identified the actual neural mechanisms behind decision-making.
His model is surprisingly concrete: decisions begin in the front of the brain, where they’re abstract. As they become more concrete, like narrowing down a menu, they shift toward the back of the brain.
The back-and-forth “ping-pong” of ideas (e.g., “No meat. Rachel’s vegetarian,” “Spinach lasagna?”) unfolds between neurons in milliseconds. With every mental “serve,” new information is processed and updated according to changing criteria. This updating is driven by a process called synaptic facilitation; essentially, it adjusts the strength of neural connections to change how neurons evaluate and transmit information.
The decision is made when one option meets the internal requirements (“Vegetarian lasagna, perfect!”). And the next time Rachel comes for dinner, the brain will already contain updated criteria from the last experience (“That lasagna was a disaster”).
In other words, our free choices, over time, evolve into patterns. And those patterns become part of who we are.
One of the most well-known voices behind the claim that humans lack free will was American neuropsychologist Benjamin Libet. In a series of famous experiments, Libet connected subjects to electrodes and asked them to press a button whenever they felt like it. He found that brain activity began about half a second before the person consciously decided to press the button. In later experiments, this gap between unconscious brain activity and conscious action was observed to be as long as seven seconds.
These findings were widely interpreted as proof that free will is an illusion, that the brain “decides” before we are even aware of having made a decision.
But not all scientists were convinced. Professor Peter Ulric Tse, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, strongly challenges that conclusion. He argues that Libet’s experiments don’t actually say anything meaningful about real free will. After all, he notes, pressing a button or not pressing a button is a meaningless binary choice:
It’s a decision between two trivial options, so there’s no reason to assume it was made consciously. In my view, these kinds of studies try to reduce an incredibly complex subject to a scenario stripped of the very element that defines free will: deliberation and attention. In decisions that involve real thought, the brain behaves very differently than it does in Libet’s experiments. These studies eliminated the most essential part of free will and then concluded that it doesn’t exist. That’s a mistake.
In short, Tse argues that the absence of conscious reflection in a shallow lab experiment is not evidence that meaningful, value-driven decision-making is just an illusion.
Dr. James Fallon, a professor of forensic psychiatry, was one of the world’s leading experts in brain imaging. His deep knowledge of brain anatomy enabled him to identify neurological disorders like schizophrenia, psychopathy, and even depression just by analyzing brain scans. Fallon traveled extensively to testify on behalf of convicted serial killers, explaining in court that their actions weren’t the result of free will but of how their brains were wired.
In 2005, while conducting research on Alzheimer’s disease, Fallon needed a control group for comparison and decided to scan the brains of his own family members. But then something strange happened: one of the scans was indistinguishable from that of a diagnosed psychopath. When he checked with his research assistant, it turned out there had been no mistake. The brain scan in question was his own.
The man who spent his career arguing that psychopaths are not responsible for their actions since their violent nature is an outgrowth of the anatomical structure of their brains had just discovered that he himself had the brain of a killer. He carried all 15 genes linked to violent, aggressive behavior. And yet, he had never acted violently.
It turned out the traits were there, dormant, but never expressed. Those who knew him well described him as manipulative, charming-but-sinister, an intellectual bully, egocentric, incapable of deep love, cunningly dishonest, irresponsible, and lacking guilt. In other words, he could have turned out very differently.
So why didn’t he?
Fallon offered two main explanations. First, he grew up in a warm, loving home that recognized and responded to his more troubling traits. And second, free will. He chose to channel his nature into something productive, like forensic psychiatry.
Reflecting on the discovery, Fallon later said:
After all my research, I started thinking of this experience as an opportunity to do some good, maybe make up for the way I’ve acted like a jerk most of my life. Instead of trying to completely change who I am, which is really hard, I decided to take what some might call flaws and turn them into strengths. To use them for something good.
Can man reach a point where he loses his ability to exercise his free will? According to Professor Dan Ariely, a well-known behavioral economist, the answer is, at times, yes.
In his bestselling book Predictably Irrational, Ariely describes a study he conducted with university students. He asked them to reflect on how they would behave in various morally charged situations: Would they act violently? Would they be disrespectful? Could they imagine physically attacking someone? Almost unanimously, the students responded that such behavior was unthinkable.
But then Ariely introduced a twist. He triggered intense emotional arousal in the participants and then asked them the exact same questions again. This time, many of the same students admitted they could imagine acting aggressively or even violently. What had once seemed impossible suddenly felt likely, even natural.
Why the shift? In the heat of the moment, raw impulses overwhelmed rational thought. The ability to pause and consider the consequences was temporarily sidelined.
Jewish tradition is acutely aware of the power of human impulse. The Talmud teaches, “There is no steward for restraining sexual immorality” (Ketubot 13b). In other words, no one is fully immune to temptation. Even the most moral person can lose clarity when desire or emotion takes over.
That’s why Judaism doesn’t only emphasize making the right choices. It emphasizes staying out of situations where the wrong choice becomes too easy. Because when an emotional storm hits, free will is weakened (even if it doesn’t disappear entirely). And when that happens, prevention becomes the best form of strength.
This powerful story was shared by one of the leading educators of our generation:
One year, I had a pair of twin brothers in my class. Physically, they looked identical—so much so that people constantly confused them. But internally, they couldn’t have been more different. One was talented, diligent, and sharp. His teachers loved him, his peers admired him, and he always radiated a sense of joy and fulfillment. Thanks to his ambition and hard work, his grades were outstanding, much to the delight of his parents and mentors.
The second twin was the exact opposite. He was sluggish and lacked focus; during class, his mind was always elsewhere. His grades were poor, and he almost never did his homework. Naturally, the first brother was showered with compliments and warmth, while the second grew accustomed to a constant stream of criticism and reprimands.
A few days before Yom Kippur, I was teaching the class about the High Priest’s service in the Holy Temple. I described the two goats brought on that holy day—two animals that had to be identical in appearance and height. To determine their fates, lots were drawn: one lot “For God” and the other “For Azazel” (the Scapegoat). The goat designated “For God” was offered as a sacrifice, while the other was sent out into the wilderness. There, it was pushed off a jagged cliff, tumbling down until it was shattered to pieces.
Suddenly, a voice rang out in the classroom: “I am the Scapegoat!”
It wasn’t hard to guess who said it—it was the struggling twin. He wasn’t joking. You could see in his eyes that the words came from a very deep, painful place in his soul. In that moment, I chose to ignore the comment, pretending I hadn’t heard anything, and continued the lesson. But when the bell rang for recess, I asked that student to take a walk with me in the schoolyard.
I placed my hand on his shoulder as we strolled. After some small talk, I gently asked, “I think you said something in class about the Scapegoat… would you mind explaining what you meant?” The boy struggled to answer. Tears welled up in his eyes. He looked down and whispered, “When Rabbi told the story of the two goats that look like identical twins, I thought about my brother and me. Even though we look the same, our lives are so different. My brother is the goat ‘For God’—talented, loved, and successful in everyone’s eyes. And I… I’m the miserable one, the outcast. I’m the Scapegoat.”
I squeezed his hand warmly and said with genuine compassion: “My dear student, I understand your heart and I feel your pain. But you must remember one thing: even if you feel like that goat, there is a massive difference between you and them. A goat’s fate is sealed by a lottery; it can never change its essence because that is what was decreed. But for you, no one has drawn a lot. You weren’t ‘destined’ to be a failure. With a real will, with prayer, and with God’s help, you can change everything. You can take the unique talents the Creator planted within you and reach the highest peaks.”
The educator continues: Thirty years passed. Recently, I was invited to my niece’s wedding in the north of Israel. Everyone was buzzing about the arrival of the groom’s Rosh Yeshiva (Head of the Academy), who was set to officiate the ceremony. I was told he was a brilliant scholar who, despite his young age, had built a magnificent institution and raised elite students. As the Rosh Yeshiva walked toward the canopy, his eyes suddenly met mine.
To my surprise, he walked straight over to me and asked, “Do you recognize me?”
I looked closely at his face but couldn’t place him. He smiled emotionally and said, “I am the Scapegoat.”
He continued, “I want you to know that the words you told me during that recess thirty years ago have stayed with me my entire life. I drew so much strength from them. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t remember what you said: ‘No lot was drawn for us. We can always change.'”
(From: Pninei Beit HaLevi)
