Facts, Freedom, and the Blue Shirt I Didn’t Choose

Why Knowing Isn’t Necessitating, and Freedom Still Stands

It seems obvious to me that if God creates a world in which nothing—neither the laws of nature nor any supernatural force—causally determines my mental or physical actions, then I possess genuine, libertarian freedom. Not only am I the source of my actions, but I can truly do otherwise—even if (in fact) I won’t.

Let’s make it concrete.

Imagine I choose to wear a red shirt today. Suppose it’s a fact that I won’t wear the blue one. That might well be true. But let’s be clear: that fact, if it exists at all, is not some cosmic force constraining me. Facts are abstract objects. They don’t push, pull, or predetermine. They’re causally inert. They don’t make things happen—they simply reflect what does happen.

Think of facts like road signs: they indicate where you are—they don’t put you there. A sign that says, “You’re at Mile 47,” doesn’t cause you to be at Mile 47. It’s true because of where you are—not the other way around.

This is where the conversation about free will and divine foreknowledge often goes off the rails. Some folks assume that if it’s true I’ll choose red, then I must (necessarily) choose red. But that’s to confuse the order of knowing with the order of being—or worse, to treat abstract truths as metaphysical bullies. That’s not how it works.

If nothing in the natural world—and nothing in the supernatural realm—deterministically prevents me from choosing blue, then I remain free to choose it, even if I don’t. The only thing stopping me from wearing blue… is me. I am the source of my own choice. I am the agent who deliberates, considers reasons, evaluates, and acts. No metaphysical muzzle. No puppeteer strings. Just me, making a choice.

Here’s the key: Even if it’s a fact that I’ll choose red, that fact doesn’t cause me to choose red. I don’t choose red because the fact exists. Rather, the fact exists because I will freely choose red. The direction of ontological dependence flows from choice to fact—not fact to choice.

This is where fatalism crumbles. Some Calvinists and Open Theists assume that if it’s true I’ll do X, then I cannot avoid X. But that’s a confusion between truth and causality. Truth describes what happens—it doesn’t determine it. The future isn’t fixed because facts fix it; facts are fixed by the future we freely create.

Counterfactuals

Now, some philosophers and theologians raise a different worry. They say: “But what about counterfactuals? What if it’s a fact that if you were placed in situation S, you would choose red? Isn’t that determinative?”

Not at all.

I agree such counterfactuals might be true—and in fact, on Molinism, I affirm that God knows such truths. But those truths don’t deterministically constrain me; they reflect what I as a libertarian agent would freely do in that situation. They’re true not because something outside me necessitates the choice, but because I—as a rational agent—freely choose it. The truth is grounded in me: in my deliberation, my agency.

That’s the difference between divine omniscience and divine puppeteering.

God doesn’t determine your decisions. He simply knows what you would do—freely—in any possible non-deterministic scenario. That’s not a threat to freedom. It’s the very thing that makes providence possible without turning us into robots or props in a cosmic stage play.

So let me say it plainly:

Even if it’s a fact that I won’t wear the blue shirt, nothing—not nature, not God, not logic—is preventing me from doing so, except me.

And if I had freely chosen blue instead of red, that would’ve been the fact.

Facts follow freedom. They don’t destroy it.

And that, I believe, is what real agency looks like.

Stay reasonable (Isaiah 1:18),

Dr. Tim Stratton