foreknowledge and freedom, problem of
- foreknowledge and freedom, problem of
Either I'll stay in tomorrow or I'll go out tomorrow. Suppose that I shall stay in tomorrow. Then God, who has perfect knowledge, surely knows now that I shall stay in tomorrow. But then how can I be free to go out tomorrow, since if I were to go out I should undo the past by making God not have known that I'd stay in after all, which surely is impossible. This is the problem of freedom and foreknowledge. It depends on God's having infallible forebelief of free actions (not necessarily of humans: the problem also arises concerning his own free actions if he is in time). The notion of freedom employed here is that of libertarianism, which is usually glossed as having the power to the contrary, that is, having the power to perform the action in question and the power to refrain from performing it. Many solutions have been offered to this problem:
1. Denial that we have freedom on the libertarian conception. This is the strategy of theistic determinists, prominent among whom are those of a Calvinistic bent. This strategy by itself leaves the problem of God's foreknowledge of his own free actions untouched.
2. Denial that God is in time. This entails that God has no forebelief or foreknowledge, and so the problem does not get off the ground. This does not address the problem of prophets in time, however.
3. Denial that God has knowledge of future free actions. This is the strategy of the 'open theists', who variously claim, with regard to free actions, that there is no future to know, or that there is, but it is just plain impossible to foreknow it (Swinburne). This leaves prophecies of events requiring the performance of specific free actions looking fallible, however.
4. Affirmation that we have power over the past. This strategy claims that we can bring it about now that God knew something in the past. Most advocates of this position deny that we have causal power over the past, but claim we have counterfactual power over it.
5. Ockhamism. This is the view that God's foreknowledge and, indeed, forebelief, are 'soft facts' and so not accidentally necessary and so do not endanger the freedom of future actions.
6. Molinism. This is the view that God's foreknowledge is based on his knowledge of what free agents would do in various situations and of the situations they will in fact be in.
Further reading: Fischer 1989; Zagzebski 1991
Christian Philosophy .
Daniel J. Hill and Randal D. Rauser.
2015.
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