Divine Foreknowledge and Necessity

Divine Foreknowledge and Necessity
Author: In-Kyu Song
Publisher:
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2002
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

The omniscience of God poses problems for the concept of free will that has occupied philosophers for centuries. Song (systematic theology, Hapdong Theological Seminary, South Korea) presents an argument for the presence of free will based on the distinction between hard and soft facts proposed by 14th century theologian and philosopher William of Ockham. He suggests that God's knowledge of any particular act is a soft fact that is dependent on the performance of that act itself. God's knowledge of an act only becomes true if that act is performed. This characteristic of God's knowledge as Ockhamist soft fact is what allows for human freedom of action. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom

Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom
Author: William Lane Craig
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 390
Release: 1991
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9789004092501

The ancient problem of fatalism, more particularly theological fatalism, has resurfaced with surprising vigour in the second half of the twentieth century. Two questions predominate in the debate: (1) Is divine foreknowledge compatible with human freedom and (2) How can God foreknow future free acts? Having surveyed the historical background of this debate in "The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge" and "Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez" (Brill: 1988), William Lane Craig now attempts to address these issues critically. His wide-ranging discussion brings together a thought- provoking array of related topics such as logical fatalism, multivalent logic, backward causation, precognition, time travel, counterfactual logic, temporal necessity, Newcomb's Problem, middle knowledge, and relativity theory. The present work serves both as a useful survey of the extensive literature on theological fatalism and related fields and as a stimulating assessment of the possibility of divine foreknowledge of future free acts.

Divine Foreknowledge and Necessity

Divine Foreknowledge and Necessity
Author: In-Kyu Song
Publisher:
Total Pages: 568
Release: 1996
Genre: Free will and determinism
ISBN:

The central aim of this dissertation is to defend the thesis that divine foreknowledge is compatible with (a full-blooded libertarian conception of) human freedom. I argue for such compatibility between the two by way of exploring what sort of necessity is involved in God's foreknowledge with regard to human freedom. Assuming that God is sempiternal and essentially omniscient, human beings do not seem to have the freedom to do otherwise since God has always foreknown what he knows in regard to human action in the future. I conduct the inquiry whether divine foreknowledge is subject to accidental necessity, the necessity of the past, with the result that God's knowledge is judged to be free from such necessity. I am not denying there is an element of pastness in divine foreknowledge in the sense that God held a certain belief at a past time. And yet, the content of such belief is alethically (truthfully) connected to the state of affairs which is to obtain in the future. This is the gist of what I call the alethic relation. In other words, truth is analytically connected to God's prior belief. It is not complete, however, for the foreknowledge compatibilist like me to affirm a compatibility with the alethic relation only. In order for libertarian free will to be asserted to be compatible with divine foreknowledge, counterfactual power over the past should also be available to the agent. My contention is that such power, which is distinct from any sort of retrocausal one, can be invoked on the part of the compatibilist without inconsistency. The grounds of such contention is related to the nature of knowledge (including God's knowledge) in that the knowledge does not cause anything whatsoever, but rather human action is the logical basis of divine foreknowledge. Therefore, the necessity constrained by God's foreknowledge has nothing to do with human freedom to the effect that a compatibility between the two can be consistently maintained.

The Problem of Free Choice

The Problem of Free Choice
Author: Saint Augustine (of Hippo)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 310
Release: 1955
Genre: Fathers of the church
ISBN:

One of Augustine's most important works, written between 388 and 395, this dialogue has as its objective not so much to discuss free will for its own sake as to discuss the problem of evil in reference to the existence of God, who is almighty and all-good.

The Mechanics of Divine Foreknowledge and Providence

The Mechanics of Divine Foreknowledge and Providence
Author: T. Ryan Byerly
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2014-08-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1623565596

How exactly could God achieve infallible foreknowledge of every future event, including the free actions of human persons? How could God exercise careful providence over these same events? Byerly offers a novel response to these important questions by contending that God exercises providence and achieves foreknowledge by ordering the times. The first part of the book defends the importance of the above questions. After characterizing the contemporary freedom-foreknowledge debate, Byerly argues that it has focused too narrowly on a certain argument for theological fatalism, which attempts to show that the existence of infallible divine foreknowledge poses a unique threat to the existence of creaturely libertarian freedom. Byerly contends, however, that bare existence of infallible divine foreknowledge cannot threaten freedom in this way; at most, the mechanics whereby this foreknowledge is achieved might so threaten human freedom. In the second part of the book, Byerly develops a model for understanding the mechanics whereby infallible foreknowledge is achieved that would not threaten creaturely libertarian freedom. According to the model, God infallibly foreknows every future event because God has placed the times that constitute the history of the world in primitive earlier-than relations to one another. After defending the consistency of this model of the mechanics of divine foreknowledge with creaturely libertarian freedom, the author applies it to divine providence more generally. A novel defense of concurrentism is the result.

Divine Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility

Divine Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility
Author: Richard H. Corrigan
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2007-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1847997562

Divine Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility is Richard Corrigan's insightful and accomplished exploration of whether the capacities essential to moral responsibility are compatible with perfect divine foreknowledge.