How does Augustine reconcile free will with God's foreknowledge?

Answer 1

I am looking for the answer to this question as well, but I can contribute a basis for understanding Augustine's argument.

From my university lectures, I gathered that God (which can be made analogous to the Platonic One for those who have an understanding of this) thinks outside of time in an eternal present governed by the providential plan. Based on this providential plan, all the actions in the eternal present (and thus in all of time as it is perceived by us through our temporal minds) are known to God. So it is not such that God knows ahead, per se (as this would suggest the defeat of free will), but rather, God knows outside of time what we chose in time. In a way he foreknows what we will choose: but beware here; my prof explained that foreknow can be subject to different interpretations.

This is an account for what i gathered from the lectures on his work,On Free Choice of the Will, but I delved a little deeper and took a look at Confessions:

Here he gives an interesting account of time that anticipates Boethius when he describes how time is imaginary and a human "misperception", if you will. Augustine says that the division of time in order to establish it as a distinction between the three temporal frames: past, present, and future, is illusionary because time can be infinitely divided and in this way it is demonstrated how one can never be said to be living in a present state of time.

Here is where I am going to make an interjection, so bear in mind this isn't Augustine anymore, but this concept might help you understand the concept of existing atemporally (outside of time):

The space-time relationship is very strong, the two are bound to each other synonymously in physics. It is generally understood as an illumination of this principle that the farther you travel in space, the further back in time you travel. In the ancient Greek geo-centric universe articulate by Aristotle, combined with the Platonian One and Augustine's notions of God's identity and characterisation, they form to point to a distinction when coupled with the aforementioned physical principles of space and time:

The One/God/The Good, is all of being in its totality. Much like all the cells individually contribute to make you, all matter contributes to form the One divine mind (God) and it goes about in its natural order (the providential plan) outside of time, but experienced temporally by those who fail to unite with the One and see things as God sees them. This explains why God does not know in time, because he is outside of time physically speaking. It also explains why we fail to understand God (in the same way one of our cells doesn't understand us or sees things as we see them). We are independent of our true identity of God who made us in his image, and exists through us. These religious sayings have the philosophical undertones that can be applied to Platonism and modern physics.