Question
Dear Gramps,
If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, how do we have free will? That seems to contradict itself. If he is all powerful and all knowing, then why would he be making/allowing people to live their life in a way that would derail them from the presence of God? Would he not want all his children to return home to him? I know the answer to that is, yes of course he does. And I understand we have agency and he wants us to learn how to CHOOSE to follow him. How is that really our own?
Haylee
Answer
Haylee,
Well, looks like there are a few questions under the umbrella of “free will” in relation to our moral agency and God’s foreknowledge and power (omniscience and omnipotence). The answers to your questions revolve around and intertwine the following doctrines within the gospel of Jesus Christ:
1. Moral Agency
2. God’s Foreknowledge
3. God’s Work and Glory
In a devotional talk given by Elder Todd D. Christofferson he provided three elements necessary for us to have moral agency:
1. “First, there must be alternatives to choose among.”
2. “Second, for us to have agency, we must not only have alternatives but we must also know that they exist and what they are.”
3. “Third, after the existence of choices and a knowledge of choices, is the next element of agency: the freedom to make choices.”
To read the entire answer: Ask Gramps
