Actually, one line of theistic reasoning is that free will is not affected by durress.
Our mental and other resources may be affected by durress, but not free will itself.
This reveals the assumption that free will is something that is unaffected by anything material, and as such, always applies. Ie. material phenomena cannot diminish our free will.
Thus it can also be argued that as far as material things are concerned, they are irrelevant to our free will and our free will is irrelevant to them; the two are merely circumstantial to eachother, but not causal.
(E.g. it is not my free will that causes me to eat an orange or plant flowers in the garden.)
Usually, when we talk about free will, however, we talk about it in relation to material things. We say that if one cannot do something, this indicates a lack of free will.
But this is wrong reasoning. If I cann't eat ten kilos of oranges at once, this does not indicate my lack of free will, it indicates that there are limits both to how many oranges my stomach can take and to how much strain I am ready to put on my body in the course of eating.
Usually, the things we consider to be proof of a lack of free will, are actually a matter of limited resources.
So to get back to the apparent mutual exclusivity of God's omniscience and our free will:
As per above reasoning, that God knows all of our material actions and that those are determined has no bearing on our free will, because material actions have no bearing on our free will to begin with.
The only sphere of action where free will would really apply, is the non-material, the spiritual.
There are a few problems with this and some points to make:
1. We are not always in touch with the spiritual, we often don't know what it is.
2. We are used to acting in the material world, with all its limitations, and thus, we tend to believe our free will is limited or non-existent.
3. If the spiritual is our true identity (given by God), then when we act in line with the spiritual, we are acting in line with our true identity. Surely God has omniscience of this too. But in this case, God's omniscience does not imply the same kind of determinism as with material actions.
When we act in line with out true identity, this is indeed a kind of determinism, but it is a kind of determinism as in, say, that scissors are made for cutting, or that a clock is made to show the time, or that oranges are orange. It is simply a matter of the identity of scissors that they are made for cutting, or that a clock is made to show the time, or that oranges are orange. We do not see "made for cutting," "made to show the time," or "being orange" as a diminishing of the identity of scissors, clocks or oranges, nor do we see it as an unnatural determinism.
In a similar manner, the decisions we actually make in relation to God, are in a sense determined by our identity. This identity being given to us by God.
We must be careful though not to confuse the spiritual and the material.
A good sign that such confusion is taking place: if we deem that our choices regarding God are limited, then we have confused something material to be the spiritual.
Our mental and other resources may be affected by durress, but not free will itself.
This reveals the assumption that free will is something that is unaffected by anything material, and as such, always applies. Ie. material phenomena cannot diminish our free will.
Thus it can also be argued that as far as material things are concerned, they are irrelevant to our free will and our free will is irrelevant to them; the two are merely circumstantial to eachother, but not causal.
(E.g. it is not my free will that causes me to eat an orange or plant flowers in the garden.)
Usually, when we talk about free will, however, we talk about it in relation to material things. We say that if one cannot do something, this indicates a lack of free will.
But this is wrong reasoning. If I cann't eat ten kilos of oranges at once, this does not indicate my lack of free will, it indicates that there are limits both to how many oranges my stomach can take and to how much strain I am ready to put on my body in the course of eating.
Usually, the things we consider to be proof of a lack of free will, are actually a matter of limited resources.
So to get back to the apparent mutual exclusivity of God's omniscience and our free will:
As per above reasoning, that God knows all of our material actions and that those are determined has no bearing on our free will, because material actions have no bearing on our free will to begin with.
The only sphere of action where free will would really apply, is the non-material, the spiritual.
There are a few problems with this and some points to make:
1. We are not always in touch with the spiritual, we often don't know what it is.
2. We are used to acting in the material world, with all its limitations, and thus, we tend to believe our free will is limited or non-existent.
3. If the spiritual is our true identity (given by God), then when we act in line with the spiritual, we are acting in line with our true identity. Surely God has omniscience of this too. But in this case, God's omniscience does not imply the same kind of determinism as with material actions.
When we act in line with out true identity, this is indeed a kind of determinism, but it is a kind of determinism as in, say, that scissors are made for cutting, or that a clock is made to show the time, or that oranges are orange. It is simply a matter of the identity of scissors that they are made for cutting, or that a clock is made to show the time, or that oranges are orange. We do not see "made for cutting," "made to show the time," or "being orange" as a diminishing of the identity of scissors, clocks or oranges, nor do we see it as an unnatural determinism.
In a similar manner, the decisions we actually make in relation to God, are in a sense determined by our identity. This identity being given to us by God.
We must be careful though not to confuse the spiritual and the material.
A good sign that such confusion is taking place: if we deem that our choices regarding God are limited, then we have confused something material to be the spiritual.
