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. (shrink)

Suppose it were known, by someone else, what you are going to choose to do tomorrow. Wouldn't that entail that tomorrow you must do what it was known in advance that you would do? In spite of your deliberating and planning, in the end, all is futile: you must choose exactly as it was earlier known that you would. The supposed exercise of your free will is ultimately an illusion. Historically, the tension between foreknowledge and the exercise of free (...) will was addressed in a religious context. According to orthodox views in the West, God was claimed to be omniscient (and hence in possession of perfect foreknowledge) and yet God was supposed to have given humankind free will. Attempts to solve the apparent contradiction often involved attributing to God special properties, e.g. being 'outside' of time. However, the trouble with such solutions is that they are generally unsatisfactory on their own terms. Even more serious is the fact that they leave untouched the problem posed not by God's foreknowledge but that of any human being. Do human beings have foreknowledge? Certainly, of at least some events and behaviors. Thus we have a secular counterpart of the original problem. A human being's foreknowledge, exactly as would God's, of another's choices would seem to preclude the exercise of human free will. Various ways of trying to solve the problem – e.g. by putting constraints on the truth-conditions for statements, or by 'tightening' the conditions necessary for knowledge – are examined and shown not to work. Ultimately the alleged incompatibility of foreknowledge and free will is shown to rest on a subtle logical error. When the error, a modal fallacy, is recognized, and remedied, the problem evaporates. (shrink)

Suppose we believe that God created the world. Then surely we want it to be the case that he intended, in some sense at least, to create THIS world. Moreover, most theists want to hold that God didn't just guess or hope that the world would take one course or another; rather, he KNEW precisely what was going to take place in the world he planned to create. In particular, of each person P, God knew that P was to exist. (...) Call this the "standard" conception. Most theists find the standard conception appealing. Unfortunately, the view seems to conflict with the equally appealing idea — call it "temporal actualism" — that there are no "future" individuals beyond those that already exist in the present moment. For, on this view, for any historical person P, prior to creation, there was no such person as P and hence nothing about P for God to know. Hence, in particular, God couldn't have known that P was to exist. This is of course not a new problem. But past solutions to it are highly problematic. In this paper, after canvassing previous approaches, I will propose a solution that seems to preserve both temporal actualism and a suitably robust form of the standard conception while avoiding the pitfalls of the past. (shrink)

This book addresses two questions: "How is genuine future contingency compatible with divine foreknowledge?" and "How is foreknowledge possible?" Craig attempts to reconcile future contingency within the constraints of a Biblically informed conception of God. This volume, a companion to Craig's historical survey The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez, is in contrast to that study, is a synoptic and critical survey of the recent literature on theological fatalism. It discusses such (...) intriguing related topics as logical fatalism, multivalent logic, backward causation, time travel, counterfactuals, Newcomb's problem, and middle knowledge. (shrink)

In the last book of The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius develops his solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and free choice. Interpreters standardly hold that this problem and his solution to it presuppose causal indeterminism. In this paper, I argue that Boethius, following a Neoplatonist view found in Proclus, is a causal determinist and compatibilist and maintains that God’s providential knowledge ensures the occurrence of all the events he knows. This alternative interpretation offers a better fit with Boethius’s (...) text and its historical antecedents and provides resources to address the main criticisms of his solution. (shrink)

This book offers a historical introduction to fundamental questions in the philosophy of religion. It is divided into twenty-five chapters. The first chapter discusses the nature of piety drawing on Plato's Euthyphro. The next three chapters discuss the nature of evil, free will, foreknowledge, and sin in the context of Augustine's On Free Choice of Will. Chapter Five discusses Anslem's "ontological" argument for the existence of God. Chapter Six explores Ibn Sina's account of the nature of the soul (...) and immortality. The next two chapters explore the foundations of religious belief and mysticism in the company of al-Ghazali's The Rescuer from Error. Chapters nine through eleven discuss Aquinas's arguments for the existence of God as well as his account of God's impersonal and personal attributes. The twelfth chapter explores Marguerite Porete's account of mystical ascent as well as the doctrines of heaven and hell. Chapter Thirteen discusses Pascal's pragmatic argument for belief in the existence of God. Chapters Fourteen through Sixteen discuss Spinoza's understanding of God, our relationship to God, and the foundations of morality. Chapters Seventeen through Nineteen explore the argument from design, the existence of God, deism, and the problem of evil. Chapter Twenty investigates Mary Shepherd's defense of belief in miracles, while Chapter Twenty-One explores Mill's views on the utility of religion. Finally, chapters Twenty-Three through Twenty-Five explore the origins of modern morality and the relationship between religion and nihilism in the company of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality. (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto’s Analytical Philosophy of History has a Kantian ambition: to state the conditions that make historical knowledge possible and to show “the unhappy destiny” that attends attempts to extend modes of representation beyond these conditions. Even though Danto’s book fails to achieve this ambition, it succeeds in making a number of important—if neglected—suggestions in the course of its attempt. One concerns the significance of the progressive tense for our thinking about human agency. Another concerns the way agency (...) can impact negatively on the possibility of foreknowledge. (shrink)

The identity of the historical Jesus has been object of a constant study and investigation. Throughout history new discoveries and statements have been made, some to cooperate and assist with the Christian faith, which profess Jesus as Lord and Savior; others, however, in order to extricate the Christ of faith presented by the Gospels, from the historical Jesus. This issue is so old that takes theologians and scholars to deeply dig in search for information, having as one of (...) the references, the Apostle Paul, author of many letters compiled to the New Testament. The apostle is notorious, being recognized, among other things, through his writings, as one of the most outstanding works on the interpretation of Jesus' life; but they are scarce about mentioning the Historical Jesus. This fact is explained by some theologians by the foreknowledge that Pauline recipients had about Jesus. So Paul is not interested in explore this question, since there were already other works making references on the subject, as the gospels, and their goals are different, although some elements are highlighted in Paul, as the passion, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. This article briefly discusses the problem of the Historical Jesus and highlights the elements that make reference to this matter, through the Apostle Paul, highlighting the second letter to the Corinthians. (shrink)

The historical context of the philosophical work of St. Thomas Aquinas, by D. Knowles.--Form and existence, by P. Geach.--Categories, by H. McCabe.--Analogy as a rule of meaning for religious language, by J. F. Ross.--Nominalism, by P. Geach.--St. Thomas' doctrine of necessary being, by P. Brown.--The proof ex motu for the existence of God; logical analysis of St. Thomas' arguments, by J. Salamucha.--Infinite causal regression, by P. Brown.--St. Thomas Aquinas and the language of total dependence, by J. N. Deck.--Divine (...) class='Hi'>foreknowledge and human freedom, by A. Kenny.--Intellect and imagination in Aquinas, by A. Kenny.--The immortality of the soul, by H. McCabe.--Aquinas on intentionality, by P. Sheehan.--The scholastic theory of moral law in the modern world, by A. Donagan.--The first principle of practical reason, by G. G. Grisez. (shrink)

The historical context of the philosophical work of St. Thomas Aquinas, by D. Knowles.--Form and existence, by P. Geach.--Categories, by H. McCabe.--Analogy as a rule of meaning for religious language, by J. F. Ross.--Nominalism, by P. Geach.--St. Thomas' doctrine of necessary being, by P. Brown.--The proof ex motu for the existence of God; logical analysis of St. Thomas' arguments, by J. Salamucha.--Infinite causal regression, by P. Brown.--St. Thomas Aquinas and the language of total dependence, by J. N. Deck.--Divine (...) class='Hi'>foreknowledge and human freedom, by A. Kenny.--Intellect and imagination in Aquinas, by A. Kenny.--The immortality of the soul, by H. McCabe.--Aquinas on intentionality, by P. Sheehan.--The scholastic theory of moral law in the modern world, by A. Donagan.--The first principle of practical reason, by G. G. Grisez. (shrink)

I evaluate four historically precedented tests for what makes a life worth living: (1) The Suicide Test (Camus), (2) The Recurrence Test (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche), (3) The Extra Life Test (Cicero and Hume), and (4) The Preferring Not to Have Been Test (Job and Williams). I argue that all four fail and tentatively defend the heuristic value of a fifth, The Pre-Existence Test for what makes a life worth living: (5) A life worth living is one that a benevolent caretaker (...) with foreknowledge would allow. A life worth avoiding is one that a benevolent caretaker would disallow. This test usefully tracks the general extension of the concept of what makes a life worth living. I consider three objections and note that there appears to be an indeterminate middle category of lives worth neither. Ultimately, I argue that any plausible test will risk circularity or will require a theory of worth to be viable. (shrink)

Knowles, D. The historical context of the philosophical work of St. Thomas Aquinas.--Logic and metaphysics: Geach, P. Form and existence. McCabe, H. Categories. Ross, J. F. Analogy as a rule of meaning for religious language. Geach, P. Nominalism.--Natural theology: Brown, P. St. Thomas' doctrine of necessary being. Salamucha, J. The proof ex motu for the existence of God. Brown, P. Infinite causal regression. Deck, J. N. St. Thomas Aquinas and the language of total dependence. Kenny, A. Divine foreknowledge (...) and human freedom.--Philosophy of mind: Kenny, A. Intellect and imagination in Aquinas. McCabe, H. The immortality of the soul. Sheehan, P. Aquinas on intentionality.--Moral philosophy: Donagan, A. The scholastic theory of moral law in the modern world. Grisez, G. G. The first principle of practical reason. (shrink)

Open theists argue that God's relationship to time, as conceived in classical theism, is erroneous. They explain that it is contradictory for an atemporal being to act in a temporal universe, including experiencing its temporal successions. Contrary to the atemporalists, redemptive history has shown that God interacts with humans in time. This relational nature of God nullifies the classical notion of God as timelessly eternal. Therefore, it lacks a philosophical and theological basis. Because God is in time, He does not (...) know all future contingencies and, therefore, changes. This study examines open theism's appropriation of the A and B theories of time to the divine-human relationship. The study argues that divine temporality does not solve the tension of divine-human relationships, especially in relation to the future. Further, historical divine temporality does not negate the fact of divine atemporality. It mainly stems from God's choice to create temporal creatures and His relationship with them. Furthermore, if it is not logically and metaphysically contradictory for an omnipresent being to act in space, then it follows that an atemporal being can act in time. Whether time is understood from the metric or psychological point of view, it does not transcend God, and therefore, the limitation it places on human creatures with respect to the future does not apply to God. Lastly, although a few philosophers reject the notion of eternity as timelessly eternal, the doctrine has a philosophical and theological basis in the Scripture. (shrink)

Introduction -- Anselm's classical theism -- The Augustinian legacy -- The purpose, definition, and structure of free choice -- Alternative possibilities and primary agency -- The causes of sin and the intelligibility problem -- Creaturely freedom and God as Creator Omnium -- Grace and free will -- Foreknowledge, freedom, and eternity : part I, the problem and historical background -- Foreknowledge, freedom, and eternity : part II, Anselm's solution -- The freedom of God.

Aquinas’ theory of being has received a growing amount of attention from contemporary scholars, both from a historic and a philosophical point of view. An important source of this attention is Geach’s seminal Form and Existence. In it, Geach argues that Aquinas subscribes to a tensed notion of existence and a theory of time according to which past and future entities do not exist in act. Subsequent commentators, such as Kenny in his Aquinas on Being, have agreed with Geach on (...) both points. In this paper, I argue that in several passages of his corpus, most notably those in which he is concerned with God’s knowledge of future contingents, Aquinas implicitly subscribes to a theory of being and time according to which: past and future entities are attributed existence in act, there is theoretical need for introducing a tenseless notion of existence. (shrink)

Elaborating on the substantial parallels between Molina’s and Kant’s attempts to reconcile human freedom with divine foreknowledge and natural causal determinism respectively, my aim is to establish a proper historical connection as well. Leibniz is shown to be the crucial mediator in two respects: (i) Kant knew Molina’s account of divine knowledge in general in its Leibnizian version through Baumgarten’s Metaphysica. In this work, scientia media plays no role in the explication as to how God knows absolute future (...) contingents. (ii) In the Critique of Practical Reason Kant resorted to doctrines similar to Molina’s in his criticism of Leibniz’s alternative explication which drew on complete concepts of monads. (shrink)

_TABLE OF CONTENTS:_ Foreword to the Second Edition. I. THE MAN AND HIS WRITINGS: How Augustine Came to the Episcopacy ; Augustine Chooses Eraclius as His Successor ; Augustine on His Own Writings. II. FAITH AND REASON: Belief is Volitional Consent ; To Believe Is to Think with Assent ; Believing and Understanding ; Authority and Reason ; Two Ways to Knowledge ; Reason and Authority in Manicheism ; The Relation of Authority to Reason ; If I Am Deceived, I (...) Am Alive ; I Know that I Am Alive ; Knowledge and Wisdom ; Error and Ignorance. III. THREE LEVELS OF REALITY: Creator, Human Soul, Body ; Natures on Three Levels ; Soul, Ruled by God, Rules Its Body ; Soul: Above the Sensible, Below God ; God, Mutable Spirits, and Bodies ; Divine, Psychic and Bodily Nature ; Causality: Divine, Psychic and Bodily ; Divine Ideas as Prototypes ; God Set Spiritual Creation Above the Corporeal ; Evil: the Privation of the Good. IV. MAN’S SOUL: Existence, Life, Sense and Reason ; Sensation as an Activity of the Soul ; Memory, Understanding and Will ; The Wonders of Memory ; Three Levels of Vision. V. THE WORLD OF BODIES: All Bodily Natures Are Good ; Invisible Seeds in the Elements ; The Elements Contain Seminal Reasons ; Measure, Number, and Weight ; Concerning Formless Matter ; Place, Time and the Physical World ; The Wonders of Nature ; God Works Throughout Nature ; Man’s Natural Endowments ; The Physical World and the Christian. VI. APPROACHING GOD THROUGH UNDERSTANDING: Creation is a Great Book ; The Journey of the Soul to God ; The Soul’s Ascent to God ; The Whole World Proclaims Its Maker ; Ascending to the Supreme Truth ; Plato’s View of God ; How to Think About God ; The Problem of Speaking About God ; God Is the Selfsame ; A Divine Invocation ; Late Have I Loved Thee. VII. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE: All Men Desire Happiness ; Man’s Greatest Good ; Good Love and Bad Love ; Moral Evil Stems from Bad Will ; Two Precepts of Love ; On Diversities of Local Customs ; Doing Good to Body and Soul ; The Evil of Telling a Lie ; Lying and Concealing the Truth ; Faith, Hope and Charity ; No Virtues Apart from God ; Our Reward Is Not in This Life. VIII. DIMENSIONS OF GRACE: What the Grace of God Is ; Augustine Was Never a Pelagian ; What True Grace Is ; The Work of Grace ; How Freedom Is Restored by Grace ; God’s Foreknowledge and Human Willing ; Grace Before and After the Fall ; Grace and Good Works ; Prevenient Grace ; Grace and Human Miseries ; The Beatific Vision. IX. THE TWO CITIES: Augustine’s Analysis of the City of God ; How the Two Cities Differ ; Two Loves Make Two Cities ; Two Cities Formed by Two Loves ; The Unimportance of Externals ; Relation of the Heavenly and Earthly Cities ; Jerusalem and Babylon ; Summary of the Two Cities ; All Nations Are in the City of God ; The Church and the City of God ; The Foundation of the Holy City ; Religion and Human Destiny ; The Meaning of a People ; Peace: the Tranquility of Order ; Two Kingdoms After the Resurrection. X. PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Belief and Historical Events ; The Universality of Providence ; Meaning in History ; Six Ages in Biblical History ; Symbolic Meaning of Jewish History ; Christ in History ; The Two Cities in History ; What Is Time? ; Critique of Cyclicism. APENDIXES: I. Selected, Annotated Bibliography. II. Alphabetical List of Augustine’s Writings. III. Glossary of Terms. INDEX. (shrink)

Prophecies and fate are heavily thematized throughout the God of War video game series. In the original trilogy, prophecies are given to Kratos, Zeus, Kronos, and others by a range of beings with purported foreknowledge including the Fates and Oracles In the Norse duology, the Norns, Giants, and others also provide prophecies. In line with the common trope of Greek tragedies, Kratos, Zeus, and Kronos’ actions, in trying to avoid their fates, created the very conditions by which those fates (...) came to pass. In the duology set within Norse mythology, the themes of prophecy and fate are also thematized. However, in these games, it is shown that prophecy can be overcome, and that fate is flexible. This chapter considers some of the historical solutions to the problem of prophecy within classical theism and evaluates their applicability in the God of War series. It will also be argued that the two sets of God of War games present different accounts for the way in which prophecy operates. More specifically, it will be shown that the Greek Trilogy uses prophecy to maintain a deterministic understanding of the universe. In contrast, the Norse Duology uses prophecy to maintain an indeterministic account of the universe. (shrink)

Among those who study medieval philosophy there is a divide between historians and philosophers. Sometimes the historians chide the philosophers for failing to appreciate the historical factors at work in understanding a text, a philosopher, a school, or a system. But sometimes the philosopher may justly criticize the historian for failing to engage the past philosopher adequately as a philosopher. Here I defend a philosophically charitable methodology and offer two examples, taken from John Marenbon’s book Boethius, as instances where (...) exercising more philosophical charity would likely have resulted in more adequate or complete interpretations. The examples are taken from Marenbon’s analyses of the conclusion of Boethius’s discussion of freedom and divine foreknowledge and ofBoethius’s argument against Euthyche’s understanding of the Incarnation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 587-589 [Access article in PDF] Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen and Paul J. J. M. Bakker, editors. Philosophie und Theologie des ausgehenden Mittelalters: Marsilius von Inghen und das Denken seiner Zeit. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Pp. x + 322. Cloth, $98.00. Albert of Saxony, Nicholas Oresme, and Marsilius of Inghen were among the fourteenth-century Parisian masters of arts who were influenced by (...) Buridan's philosophy and, while continuing as master of arts, simultaneously pursued a degree in theology. Marsilius, born around 1340, was a very popular master in Paris from 1362. In 1366 he began the study of theology. He did not finish his theological studies in Paris, but later at the new university of Heidelberg (1393-4), where he held a chair of theology until his death in 1396.Marsilius wrote a number of treatises on logic, commentaries on Aristotle's works, commentaries on the Bible, a commentary on the Sentences and some tracts on ecclesiastical politics. His works were widely read and he was regarded as a representative of the via moderna and nominalist philosophy in the fifteenth century. Several scholars are currently studying and editing Marsilius's works. The collection of essays Philosophy and Theology in late Middle Ages, edited by Hoenen and Bakker, is a report on this ongoing work. It has been preceded by two similar research reports, Marsilius of Inghen, edited by H. Braakhuis and M. Hoenen (1992), and Marsilius von Inghen, Werk und Wirkung, edited by S. Wielgus (1993). Most of the articles in the present volume deal with special historical and doxographical questions. In this sense the title of the book is somewhat misleading, though the contributions themselves are of high scholarly quality and contain lots of interesting historical details and new research results.The first part involves four papers on late medieval conceptions of the relationship between philosophy and theology. Hoenen describes the increasing separation of theology from logic and philosophy as the context of Marsilius's theological work, using as examples his treatment of the doctrines of divine foreknowledge and creation from nothing. Sigrid Müller argues that those fourteenth-century theologians who were called representatives of nominalistic theology in the fifteenth century, such as William [End Page 587] of Ockham, Gregory of Rimini, and Marsilius Inghen, had a similar view of the relationship between language and reality, though their theological sources and solutions to particular questions varied. Manfred Schulze sheds light on Marsilius's theology by comparing his views on predestination, grace, and the freedom of the will with those of Gregory of Rimini and Gabriel Biel. These papers are preceded by William Courtenay's historically illuminating study of the teachers of theology in Paris during 1362-77.The papers on the relationship between philosophy and theology are learned and useful but somewhat general. What does it mean that philosophy and theology were increasingly separated by authors who after all were keen to make logical and semantic distinctions? Further light might have been shed on this question by concentrating more on the widely discussed controversies about logic and the Trinity which have recently been considered by many scholars. One position was to criticize the special logic of faith and to show that the alleged logical problems in theological doctrines are mainly based on incorrect interpretations of revealed truths. Showing this demanded discussions of logic and semantics in theology, as can also be seen in question nine of the first book of Marsilius of Inghen's Questions on the Sentences.The second part involves papers on specific themes in the works of Marsilius and attempts to identify some anonymous works. Henk Braakhuis deals with Marsilius's view on the question of the different senses of a proposition, which was mentioned in the famous prohibition statute of the Faculty of Arts in Paris in 1340 and was found interesting in many contexts, one of them being Aristotle's theory of sophistic refutations. Braakhuis's paper, which is a valuable contribution to the history of logic, contains... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The De Auxiliis Controversy, Molinism, and Physical Premotion:The Christological Implications*Pachomius Walker O.P.From 1582 until 1607, the de Auxiliis controversy consumed much of the attention of Dominicans, Jesuits, and the Papacy.1 The controversy began in 1582 at Salamanca when a Scholastic debate entertained the question of [End Page 607] how Christ's sacrifice was both free and meritorious.2 The Jesuit, Prudencio de Montemayor, claimed that if Christ had been commanded to (...) lay down his life and be crucified, then his action was not free and, therefore, not meritorious.3 The Dominicans, on the other hand, resolved the question of Christ's merit and freedom using what would later come to be known as physical premotion.4 In a word, the de Auxiliis controversy has Christological roots. Even though the controversy quickly engaged other, related questions, a successful adjudication of these conflicting positions must have reference to the Christological truths implicated in the controversy.5 [End Page 608] The goal of this present study, therefore, is to exposit the Christological implications of the de Auxiliis controversy in an effort to reexamine the conflicting proposals about grace.Historically, in order to resolve the confusion about the God-man, the partisans of the debate needed to clarify their differing principles regarding God and man generally. As was soon apparent, however, the parties of the debate had contradictory understandings of basic philosophical principles.6 The participants in the controversy engaged other topics such as man's freedom, God's foreknowledge of future contingents, and predestination.7 It is understandable, therefore, that when Domingo Báñez († 1604), one of Montemayor's principal interlocutors, submitted his list of theses that summarized Montemayor's position, many of them dealt with questions other than those of Christ's merit.8Eventually, the controversy centered upon Luis de Molina's Concordia after its publication in 1588.9 The Concordia became the focus and [End Page 609] touch-point for the debate, since various parties aligned themselves based on their support for or condemnation of the work. The papal Congregation de Auxiliis (1594–1607), initially convoked by Pope Clement VIII, analyzed Molina's work and the positions contained therein. This, again, helped specify the debate. To keep the relevant parties focused and to make clear the lineaments of the controversy, it was helpful to have a standard text to which all parties had reference. Questions about God's grace and man's freedom were concretized through specific questions about Molina's approach to grace, God's knowledge, and predestination and whether his positions agreed with Thomas, Augustine, the Fathers of the Church, and Church councils. Hence, the Controversy de Auxiliis, which began by dealing with questions of Christology, resulted in a debate about the Molinist position as described in the Concordia.The subsequent years of the controversy have retained much of the same breadth: grace, freedom, God's foreknowledge, and predestination.10 The original impetus for the debate—Christology—can many times be overlooked or seen as a historical curiosity11 On one level, passing over the [End Page 610] Christological issues is reasonable: Molina's Concordia was first published after the lines of the debate had already been formed, and thus it is not a work of Christology. In fact, it was only in response to certain objections from Francisco Zumel that Molina included a more explicit treatment of Christ in his second edition.12 While those involved in the debate understood the details of Christ's merit to be a related and important issue, Molina's theological position was no longer seen primarily in terms of Christology.13 Even so, since the action of God in the human soul is nowhere clearer and nowhere more powerful than in the soul of Christ, any attempt to resolve these questions must take the original arena of Christology into account.14 [End Page 611]What follows is an attempt to reexamine the two proposals on grace—that of Molina and that of the Thomists on physical premotion—in Christological terms.15 The main Christological tenets at play are: (1) the fact that the hypostatic union is not of persons, but in the person; (2) that Christ... (shrink)

This article considers three medieval approaches to the problem of future contingent propositions in chapter 9 of Aristotle's _De interpretatione_. While Boethius assumed that God's atemporal knowledge infallibly pertains to historical events, he was inclined to believe that Aristotle correctly taught that future contingent propositions are not antecedently true or false, even though they may be characterized as true-or-false. Aquinas also tried to combine the allegedly Aristotelian view of the disjunctive truth-value of future contingent propositions with the conception of (...) all things being timelessly present to God's knowledge. The second approach was formulated by Peter Abelard who argued that in Aristotle's view future contingent propositions are true or false, not merely true-or-false, and that the antecedent truth of future propositions does not necessitate things in the world. After Duns Scotus, many late medieval thinkers thought like Abelard, particularly because of their new interpretation of contingency, but they did not believe, with the exception of John Buridan, that this was an Aristotelian view. (shrink)

Among those who study medieval philosophy there is a divide between historians and philosophers. Sometimes the historians chide the philosophers for failing to appreciate the historical factors at work in understanding a text, a philosopher, a school, or a system. But sometimes the philosopher may justly criticize the historian for failing to engage the past philosopher adequately as a philosopher. Here I defend a philosophically charitable methodology and offer two examples, taken from John Marenbon’s book Boethius, as instances where (...) exercising more philosophical charity would likely have resulted in more adequate or complete interpretations. The examples are taken from Marenbon’s analyses of the conclusion of Boethius’s discussion of freedom and divine foreknowledge and ofBoethius’s argument against Euthyche’s understanding of the Incarnation. (shrink)

Arthur Norman Prior (1914-69) was a logician and philosopher from New Zealand who contributed crucially to the development of ‘non-standard’ logics, especially of the modal variety. His greatest achievement was the invention of modern temporal logic, worked out in close connection with modal logic. However, his work in logic had a much broader scope. He was also the founder of hybrid logic, and he made important contributions to deontic logic, modal logic, the theory of quantification, the nature of propositions and (...) the history of logic. In addition, he discussed questions of ethics, free will, and general theology. Prior’s philosophical works comprise about 200 titles. His earliest articles center on philosophical theology and historical studies of Scottish Reformed Theology. This led on to the publication of his first influential work on ethics: Logic and The Basis of Ethics (1949). With the invention of tense-logic in the early 1950s, his focus shifted to investigations into the syntax of tempo-modal logic leading to his seminal Time and Modality (1957), a volume derived from his John Locke Lectures in Oxford in 1956. Furthermore Prior, together with the Irish mathematician and logician C.A. Meredith (1904-76), made important early contributions to the semantics of possible worlds. Prior’s tense-logic provided a strong conceptual framework for problems pertaining to the philosophy of time. In Time and Modality, Prior discussed the philosophical implications of Ruth Barcan’s famous formulae for tense-logic, and in the 1960s he worked on the notion of the present. The most persistent problem running through Prior’s work is his study of the questions surrounding human freedom and divine foreknowledge, and more general philosophical problems emerging from this classical theological question. His thorough analysis of this problem, with the conceptual tools of tense-logic, received a crucial impetus from his correspondence with the young Saul Kripke, when the latter suggested the semantic tool of branching time to Prior. Prior’s development of two solutions based on branching time for the problem of future contingency, the Peircean and the Ockham solution, was most thoroughly developed in Past, Present and Future (1967), the most important work published by Prior. Characteristically for Prior’s methodological approach, the development of these two solutions were at the same time a development of two new systems of tense logic, and vice versa. One of Prior’s significant contributions to logic was his work on world propositions and instant propositions. In the course of developing these notions he also made one of the earliest formulations of hybrid logic. In Papers on Time and Tense (1968), he presented this idea in a more detailed manner in the context of his four grades of tense-logical involvement. (shrink)

Since the mid-90’s the figure of Peter Lombard and his Book of Sentences has regained the importance in scholarly world and been studied from both historical-theological and historical-philosophical perspectives. But some aspects of his thinking, encapsulated in the written form, which was to become the material basis for the thirteenth- through the fifteenth-century theological projects, remained somewhat insufficiently researched. Therefore this article analyzes the select parts of the Book of Sentences with the purpose of looking at how Peter (...) Lombard handled the issue of God’s knowledge. The article shows that for Peter Lombard God’s knowledge is God’s awareness of everything knowable. It has no causal power which belongs to the divine will. Nevertheless, this knowledge is able to function in two different modes: it can be either a purely cognitive act as awareness alone, or a double cognitive and voluntary act as awareness and simultaneous volition in the form of approbation. Hence, God’s knowledge in general is not causative, but God’s knowledge of the good must be causative because he simultaneously knows and wills what is good. The article reasonably suggests that Lombard’s logic implies the compatibility of God’s (fore)knowledge and voluntary activity, on the one hand, and the contingency of the created order and the rational creatures’ free will, on the other hand. But the details of this conception remain unrevealed as Lombard’s presentation of the problem is to be declared underdeveloped. (shrink)

The purpose of Lawrence’s study is "to examine certain problems concerning ‘intention', ‘motive', and related concepts." He begins by stating that "one’s pre-theoretical conception of human motives, plans, purposes, and the like is not that of present states of the individual." Using historical sources and philosophical positions which run counter to his thoughts on human action, Lawrence clearly illustrates that concepts of human action do not have to fit into ill-conceived theories, rather he looks at them phenomenologically, i.e., in (...) the way these concepts reveal themselves in various modes of communication. Much of his discussion centers on the concept of intention which he believes is a kind of action that is not to be thought as a desirous foreknowledge. This book is polemical in parts, but it makes for interesting reading for analysts and phenomenologists.—G. D. (shrink)

The purpose of Lawrence’s study is "to examine certain problems concerning ‘intention', ‘motive', and related concepts." He begins by stating that "one’s pre-theoretical conception of human motives, plans, purposes, and the like is not that of present states of the individual." Using historical sources and philosophical positions which run counter to his thoughts on human action, Lawrence clearly illustrates that concepts of human action do not have to fit into ill-conceived theories, rather he looks at them phenomenologically, i.e., in (...) the way these concepts reveal themselves in various modes of communication. Much of his discussion centers on the concept of intention which he believes is a kind of action that is not to be thought as a desirous foreknowledge. This book is polemical in parts, but it makes for interesting reading for analysts and phenomenologists.—G. D. (shrink)

This Festschrift in Professor Kristeller’s honor consists of contributions by scholars who have had some connection with Columbia University, his "intellectual home in the United States for three decades." It also includes a Tabula Gratulatoria listing many other friends from the United States and Europe. The editor’s opening essay provides an interesting and informative account of this scholar’s academic career, and should be read together with the complete annotated bibliography of his publications through 1974. The latter lists 149 "major publications" (...) and 220 "minor publications." Kristeller’s contributions to the history of Renaissance philosophy are well known to historians of philosophy, and deservedly so. Here reference should be made to his groundbreaking studies on Marsilio Ficino and Pomponazzi, and on others such as Pico della Mirandola and Petrarch, as well as on Renaissance Platonism, Aristotelianism in the Renaissance, Thomism in the Renaissance, Paduan Averroism, and Alexandrism. But he has also contributed greatly to the fields of medieval and Renaissance history, and especially to our understanding of Renaissance humanism, Renaissance music, and Renaissance art. He is universally recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on manuscript research, as is witnessed, for example, by the cooperative project, Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, which he founded, and by his Iter ltalicum. In all of these enterprises he has set an enviable example for other scholars by the exacting standards and the breadth of his expertise. It is only fitting, then, that the many essays in this Festschrift should reflect the breadth and depth of the scholarship so evident in the man to whom they are dedicated. Limitations of space will only permit us to list them here, with a few remarks reserved for those of more special interest to philosophers and historians of philosophy: Eugene F. Rice, Jr., "The De magia naturali of Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples" ; Donald R. Kelley, "Louis Le Caron Philosophe", on Le Caron’s effort to bring together jurisprudence and classical, especially Platonic, philosophy; Richard H. Popkin, "The Pre-Adamite Theory in the Renaissance", with fascinating material about theories concerning men before Adam in La Peyrère and widely scattered earlier sources; Richard Lemay, "The Fly against the Elephant: Flandinus against Pomponazzi on Fate", on an unedited attack by an Augustinian Bishop against Pomponazzi’s espousal of the Stoic doctrine of fate; Martin Pine, "Pietro Pomponazzi and the Medieval Tradition of God’s Foreknowledge", on Pomponazzi’s solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom inlight of his familiarity with earlier discussions by Boethius, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham; F. Edward Cranz, "Editions of the Latin Aristotle Accompanied by the Commentaries of Averroes", helpful to all who wish to consult late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century versions of the Latin Aristotle and especially the Latin Averroes; Josef Soudek, "A Fifteenth-Century Humanistic Bestseller: The Manuscript Diffusion of Leonardo Bruni’s Annotated Latin Version of the Aristotelian Economics" ; Edward P. Mahoney, "Nicoletto Vernia on the Soul and Immortality", which details a radical shift on Vernia’s part from an earlier Averroistic reading of Aristotle; Joan Kelly-Gadol, "Tommaso Campanella: The Agony of Political Theory in the Counter-Reformation", which attempts to account for some of the shifts and inconsistencies in Campanella’s political writings by placing them within the troubled personal and political circumstances of his life; Charles Trinkaus, "Protagoras in the Renaissance: An Exploration" ; Maristella de Panizza Lorch, "Voluptas, molle quoddam et non invidiosum nomen: Lorenzo Valla’s Defense of voluptas in the Preface to his De voluptate" ; Neal W. Gilbert, "Richard de Bury and the ‘Quires of Yesterday’s Sophisms"’, with much interesting material on the medieval tradition of sophismata, especially at Oxford; Malcolm Brown, "A Pre-Aristotelian Mathematician on Deductive Order" ; John H. Randall, Jr., "Paduan Aristotelianism Reconsidered", on evidence for influence of the Italian Aristotelian tradition on Galileo; William F. Edwards, "Niccoló Leoniceno and the Origins of Humanist Discussion of Method" ; C. Doris Hellman, "A Poem on the Occasion of the Nova of 1572" ; Edward Rosen, "Kepler’s Mastery of Greek" ; W. T. H. Jackson, "The Politics of a Poet: The Archipoeta as Revealed by his Imagery" ; John Charles Nelson, "Love and Sex in the Decameron" ; George B. Parks, "Pico della Mirandola in Tudor Translation" ; Richard Harrier, "Invention in Tudor Literature: Historical Perspectives" ; Helene Wieruszowski, "Jacob Burckhardt and Vespasiano da Bisticci " ; Morimichi Watanabe, "Gregor Heimburg and Early Humanism in Germany" ; Raymond de Roover, "Cardinal Cajetan on ‘Cambium’ or Exchange Dealings" ; and a series of text editions with introductions including Julius Kirshner, "Conscience and Public Finance: A Questio disputata of John of Legnano on the Public Debt of Genoa" ; John Mundy, "The Origins of the College of Saint-Raymond at the University of Toulouse" ; Charles B. Schmitt, "Girolamo Borro’s Multae sunt nostrarum ignorantionum causae " ; Guido Kisch, "An Unpublished Consiliumof Johannes Sichardus" ; Patricia H. Labalme, "The Last Will of a Venetian Patrician " ; Felix Gilbert, "The Last Will of a Venetian Grand Chancellor" ; Herbert S. Matsen, "Giovanni Garzoni to Alessandro Achillini : An Unpublished Letter and Defense" ; Theodore E. James, "A Fragment of An Exposition of the First Letter of Seneca to Lucilius Attributed to Peter of Mantua". The editor, his collaborators, and the contributors are all to be commended for the high quality of this volume.—J.F.W. (shrink)

This is a useful edition of Augustine's classic, De Libero Arbitro, which stood at the beginning and guided so much of the subsequent medieval scholastic thought on the problems of evil, free will, and God's foreknowledge and contingency. Hackstaff's introduction performs the task of filling in the historical background to Augustine's thought quite commendably.—E. A. R.

Foreknowledge arguments attempt to show that infallible and exhaustive foreknowledge is incompatible with creaturely freedom. One particularly powerful foreknowledge argument employs the concept of accidental necessity. But an opponent of this argument might challenge it precisely because it employs the concept of accidental necessity. Indeed, Merricks (Philos Rev 118:29–57, 2009, Philos Rev 120:567–586, 2011a) and Zagzebski (Faith Philos 19(4):503–519, 2002, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011) have each written favorably of such a response. In this paper, I aim (...) to show that responding to the accidental necessity version of the foreknowledge argument by disputing the concept of accidental necessity, including doing so in the ways these authors do, does not constitute a successful response to the foreknowledge argument. This is because there is an only slightly modified but still well-motivated version of the foreknowledge argument which employs the notion of uncausability rather than accidental necessity; and this argument is not threatened by objections to the concept of accidental necessity, including those objections offered by Zagzebski and Merricks. As recent literature on the foreknowledge argument has emphasized, when a response to a foreknowledge argument fails to threaten an only slightly modified but still well-motivated version of that argument, the response in question is not successful. So the responses to the accidental necessity version of the foreknowledge argument I have mentioned are not successful. Moreover, those working on foreknowledge arguments more generally should take seriously the uncausability version of the foreknowledge argument articulated here, as it may well be that still more responses to the foreknowledge argument will not threaten it, either. (shrink)

The bulk of the essay “Truth and Freedom” (Philosophical Review 118 [2009]: 29–57) opposes fatalism, which is the claim that if there is a true proposition to the effect that an action A will occur, then A will not be free. But that essay also offers a new way to reconcile divine foreknowledge and human freedom. In “The Truth about Freedom: A Reply to Merricks” (Philosophical Review 120 [2011]: 97–115), John Martin Fischer and Patrick Todd raise a number of (...) objections to “Truth and Freedom,” most of which are objections to its treatment of foreknowledge. Their central complaint seems to be that that treatment is, despite its claims to the contrary, merely a form of Ockhamism—and a poorly developed form of Ockhamism at that. This essay replies to Fischer and Todd's specific objections. But, more importantly, it further clarifies the fundamental differences between the way it reconciles divine foreknowledge and human freedom and the Ockhamist's way. In particular, this essay further demonstrates that when it comes to divine foreknowledge's compatibility with human freedom, the fundamental question is not the Ockhamist's question of whether God's beliefs about what an agent will do in the future are “hard facts.” Rather, the fundamental question is whether God's beliefs about what an agent will do in the future depend on what that agent will do in the future. (shrink)

Many philosophers maintain that the ability to do otherwise is compatible with comprehensive divine foreknowledge but incompatible with the truth of causal determinism. But the Fixity of the Past principle underlying the rejection of compatibilism about the ability to do otherwise and determinism appears to generate an argument also for the incompatibility of the ability to do otherwise and divine foreknowledge. By developing an account of ability that appeals to the notion of explanatory dependence, we can replace the (...) Fixity of the Past with a principle that does not generate this difficulty. I develop such an account and defend it from objections. I also explore some of the account's implications, including whether the account is consistent with presentism. (shrink)