There is a longstanding argument that purports to show that divine foreknowledge is inconsistent with human freedom to do otherwise. Proponents of this argument, however, have for some time been met with the following reply: the argument posits what would have to be a mysterious non-causal constraint on freedom. In this paper, I argue that this objection is misguided – not because after all there can indeed be non-causal constraints on freedom (as in Pike, Fischer, and Hunt), but because the (...) success of the incompatibilist's argument does not require the real possibility of non-causal constraints on freedom. I contend that the incompatibilist's argument is best seen as showing that, given divine foreknowledge, something makes one unfree – and that this something is most plausibly identified, not with the foreknowledge itself, but with the causally deterministic factors that would have to be in place in order for there to be infallible foreknowledge in the first place. (shrink)

. In this essay, we move to further advance the work done on God and emotions by RT Mullins, exploring the role exhaustive divine foreknowledge plays as it relates to God’s emotional life. Given our preliminary investigation at the intersection of divine foreknowledge and divine emotions, and focusing specifically on the neoclassical theistic conception of God, we argue that in light of God’s foreknowledge, his emotional life is dissimilar when compared to that of his creation. That said, our primary aim (...) is one of exploration: Should divine foreknowledge play a role in how we understand God’s emotional life? Given our analysis, we answer in the affirmative. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Frankfurt-style Counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities have been controversial. I sketch some of the major moves in the debates surrounding the FSCs, and I seek to provide an answer to a big challenge: the indeterministic horn of the ‘dilemma defense’. Given indeterminism, it is unclear how Black can know with certainty what Jones will choose and do in the future; this leaves at least some open alternatives for Jones. I adopt the strategy of positing God in (...) Black’s place. The challenge now is to explain how God can have knowledge with certainty of future free human behavior in an indeterministic context, insofar as there is no entailing evidence in available in advance in such a situation. I present the Bootstrapping View of God’s knowledge to solve this problem. If we replace Black with God, we have an indeterministic case in which an agent acts freely, and yet cannot do otherwise. My account of God’s knowledge provides an interpretation of Luis de Molina’s notoriously obscure notion of Supercomprehension. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a sketch of an overall theology that dispenses with “alternative-possibilities” freedom in favor of “actual-sequence” freedom. I hold that acting freely does not require freedom to do otherwise, and that acting freely is the freedom component of moral responsibility. Employing this analytical apparatus, I show how we can offer various important elements of a theology that employs only the notion of acting freely. I distinguish my approach from the important development of Open Theism by William (...) Hasker. My view about God’s foreknowledge is in-between comprehensive foreknowledge and no foreknowledge. (shrink)

A family of objections to theism aims to show that certain key theological doctrines, when held in conjunction, are incompatible. The longstanding problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom represents one such objection. In this essay, we provide the theist an epistemic approach to the problem that allows for the rational affirmation of both divine foreknowledge and human freedom despite their prima facie incompatibility. Specifically, we apply James Anderson’s Rational Affirmation of Paradox Theology model to the problem, arguing that the (...) theist can stave off defeat that arises from a belief in the conjunction of both doctrines by appealing to paradox. In order to establish this thesis, we first define key terms as well as lay out the theological fatalist argument. Next, we explicate Anderson’s model and apply it to the foreknowledge and freedom problem. We conclude by addressing the objection that an appeal to paradox is simply special pleading for the theist, arguing that the naturalist can be found in a similar epistemic position. (shrink)

The recent work of logician Jc Beall marks a paradigm shift within the fields of analytic theology and philosophy of religion. Thanks to Beall’s work, the long held (and generally unquestioned) assumption that theology is governed by (or closed under) the classical account of logic, is no longer free for the assumption. More importantly, by dropping this unquestioned commitment to the classical account, Beall’s work has uncovered natural and well-motivated solutions to some of monotheistic theologies’ most difficult and longstanding problems. (...) That said, much of Beall’s work (and the work of others who have followed his lead) has been paraconsistent, utilizing glut-theoretic (contradictory) models to solve theologies problems. In this essay, my plan is to go paracomplete, with the aim of exploring a yet to be explored solution to the infamous foreknowledge and freedom problem. My solution finds its roots in the recent work Jc Beall and Aaron Cotnoir (‘God of the Gaps’, Analysis, 2017). Specifically, in this essay I will explore a gap-theoretic solution to the foreknowledge and freedom problem; one in which it is neither true nor false that God has foreknowledge. By utilizing Beall’s and Cotnoir’s model — which sees limit claims on God’s omni-properties as either just false or gappy — a natural and well-motivated solution to the foreknowledge and freedom problem emerges. Moreover, by utilizing the Beall-Cotnoir gap-theoretic model, not only is the foreknowledge and freedom problem circumvented, but an interesting and novel account of divine omniscience emerges. (shrink)

Trenton Merricks, among others, has recently championed in a series of papers what he takes to be a novel and simple solution to an age-old problem concerning the compatibility of divine omniscience and human freedom. The solution crucially involves the thesis that God’s beliefs about the future actions of human persons asymmetrically depend on the future actions of those persons. I show that Merricks’s defense of this thesis is inadequate and that the prospects for improving his defense of it would (...) require him to enter the fray of articulating and defending a view about the mechanics whereby divine foreknowledge is achieved—something he and other advocates of the strategy he advances had hoped to avoid. (shrink)