Abstract

This work is motivated by the conviction that the position of Aquinas has been largely misconstrued and thus unfairly criticized by analytic philosophers of religion in contemporary discussions of the foreknowledge-freedom problem. There are two inter-connected sources of error: the tendency to conflate Aquinas with other medieval thinkers into a generic Boethian or eternalist position and the failure to interpret Aquinas's account of God's knowledge of future contingents against the background of his treatment of God's knowledge of the world and against his larger metaphysical understanding of the relationship between God and the world. In order to remedy such misinterpretations, I will offer an exposition and defence of Aquinas's position that is attentive to his texts and their literary, historical, and metaphysical contexts. This will reveal that the ultimate context and hidden hermeneutical key is Aquinas's understanding of creation. ;Chapter One outlines the major complaints against Aquinas in the contemporary literature. Chapter Two provides a chronological exposition of Aquinas's main treatments of divine eternity and a concluding comparison with the contemporary Boethian view; Aquinas's metaphysical treatment of eternity highlights its connection with the immutability that is the necessary condition for God's being the First Cause of the temporal world. Chapter Three focuses on how God knows material singulars and highlights Aquinas's indebtedness to the Neo-Platonic tradition of divine causal knowledge. Aquinas argues that scientia dei est causa rerum and gives a comprehensive account of omniscience, extending even to temporal facts and human actions, based on the devine causality of esse. Chapter Four shows how eternity and causal-practical knowledge come together in Aquinas so that God knows the future precisely as its eternal Creator. Chapter Five replies to the earlier objections by explaining how Aquinas's eternal Creator God can perform the intellectual and causal activities required of the Biblical God; is omniscient regarding temporally indexed facts and modes of knowing; and is consistent with the dynamic reality of time. Chapter Six explains how the transcendent character of God the Creator enables a causal account of divine knowledge to be compatible with human freedom