Online research in philosophy

The ‘middle knowledge’ doctrine salvages free will and divine omniscience by contending that God knows what agents will freely choose under any possible circumstances. I argue, however, that the Leibnizian problem of divine knowledge of human evil is best resolved by applying a Theodicy II distinction between determined, foreseen, and resolved action. This move eliminates deference to middle knowledge. Contingent action is indeed free, but not all action is contingent, and so not all action is free. For Leibniz, then, God’s knowledge extends to the sum pattern of determinates for an act, rather than to contingent events.

Suppose there are possible worlds in which God exists but Anselm does not. Then (I argue) there are possible worlds in which Anselm does not exist, but God cannot even entertain the thought that he does not. In such worlds Anselm does not exist, but God does not know that. This, I argue, is incompatible with (a straightforward construal of) the doctrine of God's essential omniscience. Considerations involving negative existentials also call into question a certain picture of creation, on which God chooses which particular (possible) individuals to create. They suggest that there is an element of brute contingency about which individuals exist.

This paper argues that there is a conflict between divine omniscience and the human right to privacy. The right to privacy derives from the right to moral autonomy, which human persons possess even against a divine being. It follows that if God exists and persists in knowing all things, his knowledge is a non-justifiable violation of a human right. On the other hand, if God exists and restricts his knowing in deference to human privacy, it follows that he cannot fulfill the traditional function of being the perfect and final judge of all things.

This essay examines a conflict between God's omnipotence and His omniscience. I discuss our intuitions regarding omnipotence and omniscience and describe a method by which we can decide whether a being is omnipotent. I consider the most promising versions of omnipotence and argue that they produce a genuine conflict with omniscience. Finally, I suggest that we can take the example of omniscience and generalize it to several of God's essential properties and thereby reveal incompatibilities that result even from sophisticated conceptions of divine attributes. (Published Online August 11 2004).

A certain objection to belief in God is based on the intrinsic incoherence of the concept of Divine Being or God. In particular, it questions the major traditional characteristic, notably omniscience, and its relation to omnipotence, moral unassailability, and absence of embodiment on the part of the Divine Being. In this paper, an attempt is made to counter this objection by an appeal, not to natural theology, but rather to physicalism in its application to human beings, and by extension to the possible consistency of God’s omniscience with the other divine attributes, which philosophers such as Michael Martin have found to be mutually inconsistent and therefore wanting.

Two major objections to divine atemporality center on supposed tensions between the claim that God is omniscient and the claim that he is timeless. Since most defenders of divine timelessness are even more firmly committed to omniscience, driving a wedge between the two is intended to convert such persons to a temporal view of God. However, I believe that both arguments fail to demonstrate an incompatibility between omniscience and timelessness, and that the objections themselves rest in large part on misunderstandings regarding both the motivation for and substance of the doctrine of divine timelessness.

A difficulty for a view of divine eternity as timelessness is that if time is tensed, then God, in virtue of His omniscience, must know tensed facts. But tensed facts, such as It is now t, can only be known by a temporally located being.Defenders of divine atemporality may attempt to escape the force of this argument by contending either that a timeless being can know tensed facts or else that ignorance of tensed facts is compatible with divine omniscience. Kvanvig, Wierenga, and Leftow adopt both of these strategies in their various defenses of divine timelessness. Their respective solutions are analyzed in detail and shown to be untenable.Thus, if the theist holds to a tensed view of time, he should construe divine eternity in terms of omnitemporality.

It is said that faith in a divine agent is partly an attitude of trust; believers typically find assurance in the conception of a divine being's will, and cherish confidence in its capacity to implement its intentions and plans. Yet, there would be little point in trusting in the will of any being without assuming its ability to both act and know, and perhaps it is only by assuming divine omniscience that one can retain the confidence in the efficacy and direction of divine agency that has long been the lure of certain religious traditions.