Online research in philosophy

Michael Bergmann and Jan Cover summarize the essence of their paper as follows: “We argue that divine responsibility is sufficient for divine thankworthiness and consistent with the absence of divine freedom. We do this while insisting on the view that both freedom and responsibility are incompatible with causal determinism.” In this response I argue that while it makes sense for believers to be thankful that God exists, it makes no sense for them to thank him for doing the best act he can, given the circumstances.

Newcomb's Paradox thus serves as an illustrative vindication of the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. A proper understanding of the counterfactual conditionals involved enables us to see that the pastness of God's knowledge serves neither to make God's beliefs counterfactually closed nor to rob us of genuine freedom. It is evident that our decisions determine God's past beliefs about those decisions and do so without invoking an objectionable backward causation. It is also clear that in the context of foreknowledge, backtracking counterfactuals are entirely appropriate and that no alteration of the past occurs. With the justification of the one box strategy, the death of theological fatalism seems ensured. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A0985044 00003.

William Hasker and Anthony Brueckner have critically discussed my argument for the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. I reply to their commentaries.

Warfield (1997, 2000) argues that divine foreknowledge and human freedom are compatible. He assumes for conditional proof that there is a necessarilyexistent omniscient being. He also assumes that it is possible for there to be a person who both does something and could have avoided doing it. As supportfor this latter premise he points to the fact that nearly every participant to the debate accepts the falsity of logical fatalism. Appealing to this consensus, however, renders the argument question-begging, for that consensus has emerged only against the backdrop of an assumption that there is no necessarily existent omniscient being.

Warfield (1997, 2000) argues that divine foreknowledge and human freedom are compatible. He assumes for conditional proof that there is a necessarilyexistent omniscient being. He also assumes that it is possible for there to be a person who both does something and could have avoided doing it. As supportfor this latter premise he points to the fact that nearly every participant to the debate accepts the falsity of logical fatalism. Appealing to this consensus, however, renders the argument question-begging, for that consensus has emerged only against the backdrop of an assumption that there is no necessarily existent omniscient being.

William Hasker and Anthony Brueckner have critically discussed my argument for the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. I reply to their commentaries.

One answer to the perennial question of how to reconcile divine foreknowledge with human freedom is the “Eternity Solution” (espoused by Thomas Aquinas): God is outside of time, and therefore it is incorrect to say he has foreknowledge. However, in the case of prophecy, God’s knowledge seems to be inserted into the temporal order and thereby transformed into foreknowledge. The eternalist might address this problem in a few ways, but the best answer appears to be that inevitable actions can be free in some sense. At the same time, this answer seems to either (a) ironically lead to the abandonment of the Eternity Solution in favor of other solutions to the foreknowledge/ freedom problem or (b) call for a coherent explanation of the idea that freedom is relatively limited in instances of prophecy and for a revision (or at least clarification) of Aquinas’s views on human freedom and divine non-passivity.

Christian theism has traditionally claimed that God knows the future. But why is divine foreknowledge important? In this essay, I argue that divine foreknowledge is valuable to Christian theism and that a hefty theological price must be paid if it is rejected. I also attempt to show that the range of knowledge available to God in theological models that deny divine foreknowledge is significantly less than claimed by proponents of these views. In particular, I argue that the God of such models could not know future physical necessities, physical probabilities, divinely intended future free acts, or future events required by the divine nature.

One problem facing those who attempt to reconcile divine foreknowledge with human freedom is to explain how a temporal God can have knowledge of the future, if the future does not exist. In her recent book, "The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge," Linda Zagzebski attempts to provide an explanation by making use of a four-dimensional model in which the past, present and future exist. In this note I argue that the model Zagzebski offers to support the coplausibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom is inconsistent with the A-theory of time she propounds.

I argue that the simple foreknowledge view, according to which God knows at some time t 1 what an agent S will do at t 2 , is incompatible with human free will. I criticize two arguments in favor of the thesis that the simple foreknowledge view is consistent with human freedom, and conclude that, even if divine foreknowledge does not causally compel human action, foreknowledge is nevertheless relevantly similar to other cases in which human freedom is undermined. These cases include those in which certain human actions are logically, rather than causally, foreclosed.