Foreknowledge and Free Will 

            1. Reflective Knowledge 

God's knowledge of future actions is non-causal, God knowing X or that X will occur =/= God is causing X.

William Lane Craig writes: “Suppose God knows that some  causally  free  event will  occur.  How  does  his  merely  knowing  about  it  constrain  it  to  occur? Imagine  the  numbered  points  in  figure 1  represent  events  in  history  and  the arrows  stand  for  causal  connections.  Event  6  is  causally  unconstrained;  it can  happen  or  not.  Now  suppose  the  broken  line  represents  God’s foreknowledge.  How  does  his  knowing  about  event  6  constrain  it?  Suppose we erase  the  broken  line.  The  theological  fatalist  would  say  event  6  is  now not  constrained  or  fated.  But  what  has  changed? How  does  the  addition  or deletion  of  the  factor  of  God’s  simply  knowing  some  act  in  advance  affect the freedom of that act?” (The Only Wise God, pp. 59-60) 

           2. Dependent Knowledge

We know that’s Gods knowledge does not cause events, but a further point to be made here is that the contents of Goss knowledge, which are contingent, depend on free human actions. God knows I will do X because I chose to do X, had I chosen to do otherwise, God simply would have foreknown otherwise, Craig writes: “6.  So  if  God  believed  that  Jones  would  mow  his  lawn  on  Saturday afternoon,  Jones  can  refrain  from  mowing  his lawn  only  if  one  of the following alternatives is true: 

i. Jones has the power to make God’s belief false;

ii. Jones has the power to erase God’s past belief;

iii. Jones has the power to erase God’s past existence; or

iv. Jones  has  the  power  to  act  in  a  different  way,  and  if  he were  to  act  in  that  way,  God  would  have  believed differently.

We  may  thus  admit  that  Jones  cannot  make  God’s  belief  false  or  erase God’s  past  belief  or  erase  God’s  past  existence.  But  he  can  do  something different  (from  what  he  will  do)  in  such  a  way  that  God  would  have  held  a belief  different  from  the  belief  he  in  fact  holds.  For  example,  Jones  can choose  to  go  golfing  on  Saturday  afternoon  instead  of  mowing  his  lawn. Now  since  God  foreknows  that Jones  will  mow  his  lawn,  we  know  that Jones  will  in  fact  mow  the  lawn  rather  than  go  golfing.  But  it  does  not follow  that  Jones  must  mow  the  lawn  or  that  he  lacks  the  power  to  go golfing.  He  can  go  golfing,  but  he  merely  will  not.  If  he  were  to  go  golfing, then God  would have  foreknown that instead.” (The Only Wise God, pp. 60-61)

Simply put, had Jones in fact acted differently, this would only mean God had a different belief about what Jones will do, God knows that Jones will do X, but Jones does not do X out of necessity, nor is he forced to do so by some causal connection between God's knowledge and Jones actual actions. It would suffice to say that there is no contradiction, at least prima facie , between Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will.

           3. Divine Timelessness and the Boethian Solution 

When talking about God and his knowledge, we often use temporal terms like before and after, mostly for the sake of clarity or ease, regardless of whether this is befitting of God in reality or not. But, if God is timeless as many theists hold to be true, then it is not the case that God knows things before they happen, but knows all events simultaneously and timelessly. For us, there is a temporal succession between events, for God, there is no such thing. Boethius then looks at God as a point in the middle of a circle: “The circle represents the succession of temporal moments, while the central point represents the divine point of view of the temporal series. Although the temporal moments have different relationships with each other (e.g., they are more or less distant from each other), the central point is at the same distance from every temporal moment, so that none of them is privileged. Consequently, divine knowledge of the future is not foreknowledge in the genuine sense. God does not know what an agent will do before she acts because God’s relationship with the future is the same as His relationship with the present and the past. God simply sees what the agent does at a certain time, but this knowledge of the agent’s choice does not imply that the agent is not free when she acts.” [1]

All events are present from God's timeless perspective.

Question: Does this entail backwards causation?

Response: Nothing about this response to theological fatalism entails backwards causation, indeed, we are denying any causal relations in the first place, Craig writes: “This analysis, however, seems to rest upon a misunderstanding in which the causal relation between an event or thing and its effect is conflated with the semantic relation between a true proposition and its  I choose B2 alone, then the proposition "W chooses B~  because of the semantic relation which obtains between a true proposition and the corresponding state of affairs which makes it true; by the same token" W will choose " is omnitemporally true. The relation obtaining between a true proposition and its corresponding state of affairs is semantic, not causal. Now God, knowing all true propositions, therefore knows the true future contingent proposition concerning my choice of the boxes. Again no causal relation obtains here. Hence, the charge of backward causation seems entirely misconceived: we have simply the semantic relation between true propositions and their corresponding states of affairs and the divine property of knowing all true propositions.” [2]

To summarize, no causation, let alone backwards causation, obtains between God's knowledge of X and X here.

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[1] - In defense of the timeless solution to the problem of human free will and divine foreknowledge, Ciro De Florio · Aldo Frigerio, pp. 4 (DOI: 10.1007/s11153-014-9471-4)

[2] - Divine Foreknowledge and Newcomb's Paradox, William Lane Craig, pp. 7