Free will, determinism and predestination — Judaism

What the specification asks for

Paper 1, Section 1, 1.4 (Judaism). Assessed on AO1 (knowledge and understanding) and AO2 (analysis and evaluation), weighted equally. Incandio is aligned to this specification. It is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson, and it reproduces none of Pearson's indicative content — the point numbers are given so you can check every unit against your own copy.

1 · Understand it

The Mishnah says: all is foreseen, and permission is given. It is usually quoted as a paradox, and it is presented as a teaching. The rabbis state both halves in one sentence and make no attempt to reconcile them — which tells you something about the method as well as the doctrine.

What it means

Bechirah chofshit is free choice, the freedom on which the commandments depend. Hashgachah is divine providence, God's involvement in the world, held alongside that freedom. Determinism is the view that every event including a choice is fixed by prior causes. Predestination — that God has decided a person's fate in advance — is a doctrine Judaism does not teach, and attributing it is a straightforward error.

Deuteronomy states the practical version: life and death are set before you, therefore choose life. The word doing the work is 'therefore', because a command to choose presupposes that choosing is real. The commandments are addressed to people, and a commandment addressed to something that cannot do otherwise makes no sense.

Judaism also takes the limits on freedom seriously. Circumstance, upbringing and character constrain what a person can realistically do, and Jewish law reflects that: coercion is a defence, ignorance mitigates, and responsibility is assessed rather than assumed.

Two ways of handling the tension with foreknowledge are worth knowing. The standard move is that knowing is not causing — a parent who can predict a child's choice has not made it. Maimonides argues something stronger: that God's knowledge is not of the same kind as ours and therefore does not stand in the same relation to time at all. Both are available and neither is claimed to close the matter.

Why believers hold it

The reasoning is that Judaism is a religion of commandments, so free will is not an optional doctrine it happens to hold — it is a precondition of the entire structure. Remove genuine choice and the commandments become addressed to nobody, teshuvah becomes pointless, and the whole apparatus of responsibility collapses.

That is why Jewish thought has generally accepted the tension with divine foreknowledge rather than resolving it by abandoning either side, and why predestination never took root as it did in some Christian traditions. Holding two things you have grounds for is treated as more honest than purchasing consistency by giving one up.

The strongest objection is not from theology but from neuroscience: every choice is a brain event with prior causes, and nobody chose their genes, upbringing or circumstances. The compatibilist reply is that acting freely may mean acting from your own reasons rather than being uncaused — which is untouched by those reasons having histories, and which is entirely available to a Jewish thinker without giving anything up.

The theological objection is sharper than the usual version. Infallible foreknowledge is stronger than prediction: if a belief cannot be wrong, then the alternative was arguably never open. Maimonides' answer contests the premise rather than the inference, and it is a real argument rather than an evasion — though a defensible answer says that it is contested and does not pretend otherwise.

Where it comes from

• The Torah — Deuteronomy 30:19 (translated)

  I have set before you life and death ... therefore choose life.

  Free will stated as a command: the choice is genuinely the human being's, and it is a real choice with real consequences.

  What it is doing here: Turns free will from a description into an instruction, which is why the doctrine is a precondition of the commandments rather than a claim beside them.

• The Torah — the Ten Commandments (Aseret ha-Dibrot) — Exodus 20:1–17; Deuteronomy 5:6–21 (translated)

  Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

  The commandments given at Sinai, covering duty to God and duty to other people, and the basis of Shabbat observance.

  What it is doing here: Demonstrates the structure that requires freedom, since commands about conduct presuppose somebody able to comply or refuse.

• The Tanakh — Ketuvim (Writings) — Job 38–42 (esp. 38:4) (translated)

  Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

  God's answer to Job is not an explanation of his suffering but a question about the limits of human understanding.

  What it is doing here: Marks the limit of what human understanding can settle, which is the tradition's own reason for holding the tension rather than resolving it.

Where it bites

It shows in how Jewish law assigns responsibility. Coercion is a defence, ignorance mitigates, and the age of obligation is marked publicly at Bar and Bat Mitzvah — the point at which a person becomes bound by the commandments because they are now held capable of choosing. It shows in teshuvah, which would be pointless if the next choice were already fixed, and in the assumption running through Jewish ethical writing that a person can be argued with rather than merely conditioned.

It also shows in what Jewish tradition does not do: there is no doctrine of election to salvation and no account on which some people were never in a position to do right, which is exactly the space predestination occupies elsewhere.

What people get wrong

People think: Jews believe everything is predestined by God.

Actually: Judaism does not teach predestination, and confusing it with Calvinist Christianity is the recorded error here. The tradition affirms genuine choice, holds it alongside divine knowledge, and declines to resolve the tension — which is a different position from either fatalism or a doctrine of decreed fates.

People think: If God knows what you will do, God has decided it.

Actually: Knowing and causing are different, and the step from one to the other has to be argued rather than assumed. The standard reply is that prediction does not compel; Maimonides goes further and denies that divine knowledge stands in our relation to time. Treating the two as obviously equivalent skips the whole argument.

People think: Karma is God punishing you for what you did wrong.

Actually: Karma is cause and effect rather than a verdict, and nobody weighs the evidence or passes sentence. It matters here because the same instinct — reading every account of consequence as a judge deciding — is what makes learners misread the Jewish position on foreknowledge as a decision already taken.

What the examiner expects you to understand

• Quote the Mishnah's formula and note that it is offered as a teaching rather than as a problem to be solved.
• Use the word 'therefore' in Deuteronomy 30:19, because the instruction to choose is the argument.
• Never attribute predestination to Judaism; it belongs to a different tradition.
• Do not treat foreknowledge as causation without arguing the step.
• Include Jewish material rather than general philosophy, which the grid caps as generic.

2 · Grade 9 Notes

Core belief / issue

Judaism holds free will and divine knowledge together without pretending the combination is easy. The classic statement is the Mishnah's: all is foreseen, and permission is given. Deuteronomy makes the practical version explicit — life and death are set before you, therefore choose life — and the word 'therefore' is the whole doctrine, because a command to choose presupposes that choosing is real.

Key terminology

Incandio's mark schemes credit the religion's own vocabulary; spelling variants are accepted, a vague paraphrase is not.

Bechirah chofshit (also bechira)

Free choice; the Jewish term for the freedom on which the commandments depend.

Hashgachah (also hashgacha)

Divine providence; God's involvement in the world, held alongside human freedom.

Determinism

The view that every event, including a choice, is fixed by prior causes.

Predestination

The view that God has decided a person's fate in advance; a doctrine Judaism does not teach.

Mitzvah

A commandment — and a commandment addressed to someone who could not obey it would make no sense.

What Judaism teaches

• shared — Human beings genuinely choose, and Deuteronomy 30:19 makes the choice an instruction rather than a description.
• shared — The Almighty knows what will happen, and that knowledge does not remove the freedom — the Mishnah states both together without resolving them.
• shared — Because choice is real, human beings are accountable for what they do, and the whole system of mitzvot presupposes it.
• shared — Freedom is limited by circumstance, upbringing and character, and Jewish law takes those limits seriously in judging responsibility.

Why it teaches this

The reasoning is that Judaism is a religion of commandments, and a commandment is meaningless addressed to something that cannot do otherwise. So free will is not an optional doctrine that Judaism happens to hold — it is a precondition of the entire structure. That is why Jewish thought has generally accepted the tension with divine foreknowledge rather than resolving it by abandoning either side, and why predestination never took root as it did in some Christian traditions.

Sources of authority

• The Torah — Deuteronomy 30:19 (translated)

  I have set before you life and death ... therefore choose life.

  Free will stated as a command: the choice is genuinely the human being's, and it is a real choice with real consequences.

  How to use it: It is the cleanest scriptural answer to determinism in any of the six religions — God's foreknowledge and human choice are held together rather than resolved.

  What it does not settle: The philosophical problem of how divine knowledge and human freedom coexist is not solved by it.

• The Torah — the Ten Commandments (Aseret ha-Dibrot) — Exodus 20:1–17; Deuteronomy 5:6–21 (translated)

  Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

  The commandments given at Sinai, covering duty to God and duty to other people, and the basis of Shabbat observance.

  How to use it: The Sabbath commandment is grounded in creation itself, which is why Shabbat is described as sanctifying time rather than as a day off.

  What it does not settle: How strictly the commandments bind divides Orthodox from Reform Judaism, and that divergence is worth naming.

• The Tanakh — Ketuvim (Writings) — Job 38–42 (esp. 38:4) (translated)

  Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

  God's answer to Job is not an explanation of his suffering but a question about the limits of human understanding.

  How to use it: The book REFUSES a theodicy, which is itself an answer: a religion can hold that suffering has meaning without claiming to know what it is.

  What it does not settle: It offers no reason for suffering, which is precisely the point and must be presented as such.

• The Tanakh — Nevi'im (Prophets) — Micah 6:8 (translated)

  To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

  The prophetic summary of what God requires: justice, mercy and humility, in place of sacrifice performed without them.

  How to use it: It answers the accusation that religion is ritual: the prophet himself says ritual without justice is worthless.

  What it does not settle: It states the standard, not the policy.

Different interpretations

• Foreknowledge read as compatible with freedom because knowing is not causing — the standard move, and a good one.
• Foreknowledge read as of a different kind altogether, since God is outside time; Maimonides argues this way, and it is worth citing.
• Freedom read as absolute, and read as real but constrained; rabbinic teaching is comfortable with the second, which is also what modern psychology suggests.

Differences within Judaism

Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism all affirm free will and all reject predestination. The difference is philosophical taste in how the tension with foreknowledge is handled, not disagreement about whether people choose.

The traditions broadly agree here. Saying so is a stronger answer than inventing a division.

Application to the issue

It shows in how Jewish law assigns responsibility: coercion is a defence, ignorance mitigates, and the age of responsibility is marked publicly at Bar and Bat Mitzvah — the point at which a person becomes obligated by the commandments because they are now held to be capable of choosing. It also shows in teshuvah, which would be pointless if the next choice were already fixed.

Arguments supporting

• A commandment presupposes the ability to obey it. — Deuteronomy tells people to choose, which would be absurd if they could not. (judaism)
  Answered by: The text establishes what Judaism assumes, not that the assumption is true.
• Knowing what someone will do is not making them do it. — A parent who can predict a child's choice has not made it. (shared)
  Answered by: Infallible knowledge is stronger than prediction: if it cannot be wrong, the alternative was never open.

Arguments challenging

• Every choice is a brain event with prior causes, so freedom is an illusion. — You did not choose your genes, your upbringing or your circumstances. (non-religious)
  Answered by: Acting freely may mean acting from your own reasons rather than being uncaused, which is untouched by those reasons having histories.
• If God knows the outcome, the alternative was never genuinely available. — Infallible foreknowledge and open futures cannot both hold. (shared)
  Answered by: Maimonides argues God's knowledge is not of the same kind as ours and therefore does not stand in the same relation to time; the reply is contested but it is a real argument.

Secular / non-religious perspective

Hard determinists hold that every choice is fully caused and that moral responsibility as usually understood is a useful fiction. Compatibilists — probably the most common position among non-religious philosophers — hold that freedom means acting from your own desires without external compulsion, which is entirely consistent with those desires having causes.

Examinable throughout Paper 1. Nothing here earns a mark on Paper 2.

Evaluation

The hinge: Whether freedom requires being uncaused, or only requires acting from your own reasons. Almost every position in this unit is decided by that definition.

Defensible conclusions

• Judaism's refusal to resolve the tension is intellectually honest rather than evasive: it holds the two claims it has grounds for and declines to sacrifice either.
• Compatibilism is the strongest position overall, and it is available to a Jewish thinker without giving anything up.
• Even limited freedom is enough for the work responsibility has to do, which is what Jewish law assumes when it treats coercion as a defence.

Not defensible

• Attributing predestination to Judaism; it is a doctrine the tradition does not hold.
• Treating divine foreknowledge as obviously equivalent to divine causation, without arguing for the step.

Exam use

• Identify · 3 marks — Three Jewish beliefs about free will. Short phrases only.
• Outline · 4 marks — Two beliefs developed. 'Jews believe people genuinely choose (1) — which is why Deuteronomy commands them to choose life, and why the mitzvot are addressed to them at all (1).'
• Explain · 6 marks — Explain Jewish beliefs about free will: the commandments presuppose it, foreknowledge is not causation, freedom is limited but real.
• Evaluate · 12 marks — 'If everything is predestined there is no point in trying to live a good life.' Judaism denies the premise, which is the cleanest structure available.

Common mistakes

• Saying Jews believe in predestination, confusing Judaism with Calvinist Christianity.
• Treating God knowing and God deciding as the same thing without argument.
• Writing about free will with no Jewish material at all, which the grid caps as generic.

“Karma is God punishing you for what you did wrong.” — Karma is a law of cause and effect, not a verdict. No one weighs the evidence and no one sentences you; the action itself conditions what follows.

Write instead: Karma is the principle that intentional action produces consequences which shape future experience. In Buddhism it turns on intention specifically. Sikh teaching holds karma alongside God's hukam and God's grace. Sikhism is the genuine middle case: karma operates, and liberation comes by God's grace rather than by accumulated merit. Saying so is a strong distinction.

“Judaism is the Old Testament part of Christianity.” — Judaism is a living religion with its own scriptures, its own two-thousand-year tradition of rabbinic interpretation, and its own account of what God requires. The Tanakh is not the Christian Old Testament in either arrangement or authority.

Write instead: The Tanakh has three divisions — Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim — and is read alongside the Talmud and rabbinic tradition. Jewish teaching about the afterlife, salvation and law is developed on its own terms. The scriptures overlap substantially, and the differences in ordering, canon and interpretation are real. Naming the Tanakh's structure is directly examinable at Paper 2 1.2.

Grade 9 insight

The Mishnah's formula — all is foreseen, and permission is given — is usually quoted as a paradox. A Level 4 answer notices that it is presented as a teaching rather than as a problem: the rabbis state both halves in one sentence and do not attempt a reconciliation. That is a deliberate intellectual choice, and it tells you something about Judaism's method. It would rather hold two things it has grounds for than purchase consistency by giving up one of them.

Carry on through Judaism

• Previous unit: 1.3 · Selfishness, greed, ignorance and sin
• Next unit: 1.5 · Ultimate reality
• Free will, determinism and predestination in the other religions: Buddhism · Christianity · Hinduism · Islam · Sikhism
• All of Judaism · Incandio Religious Studies · The 4RS1 specification