Abstract

On Friday God knew everything, including f, a proposition about what Jones would do on Monday; we can write the time-indexed proposition that on Friday God believed f as Bgf. If Jones does not do the thing that makes f true, then the resulting state of affairs will be ∼f. So on Monday, before a certain time – ‘ t time’ – Jones has it in his power to bring it about that ∼f. It seems to follow that on Monday Jones has it in his power to bring it about that on Friday God believed something false. Yet this is impossible, as Bgp ⊃ p . But if f is false – if Jones makes it so on Monday – then so is Bgf, and God is not infallible. So either Jones cannot not do the thing that makes f true, and he has no freewill, or God is not infallible. The traditional responses to this dilemma are subtle, time-honoured and, as I see it, almost completely unconvincing. According to Linda Zagzebski , there are five of them: the Ockhamist response that God’s Friday belief is a so-called ‘soft’ fact, itself a problematic notion; the confused Molinist claim that on Friday God has something called ‘middle knowledge’ , so that God knows what Jones would do, but does not will it or know what Jones would do if … ); and the more sensible but still perplexing solution of Boethius’s that God’s knowing is not in time, so that the time-indexed proposition Bgf is not true. (How does it help to move the knowing that is said to determine our actions from the past to the timeless? It seems to …