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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
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    42
    God's not knowing in advance how we will exercise our fre... — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    God's not knowing in advance how we will exercise our freedom is not a mark against his omniscience.

    Divine Attributes
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.If I have free will, there are no conditions presently in place that determine whether I will make a given future decision.
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    • 2.If there are no conditions presently in place that determine a future free decision, then the proposition describing that decision is neither true nor false.
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    • 3.It is logically impossible to know of a proposition that it is true or that it is false if it is neither true nor false.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Middle knowledge (Molinism) holds that God knows counterfactuals of creaturely freedom as true prior to any creative act, grounding foreknowledge without determinism.
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    • 2.If such 'would' conditionals have determinate truth values independent of temporal conditions, P2 of the supporting argument fails and the logical gap Swinburne exploits closes.
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    • 3.A God lacking middle knowledge would be less cognitively perfect than a Molinist God who knows all true conditionals, making ignorance of free choices a genuine omniscience deficit.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Boethius and Aquinas argue God's eternity places him outside time, so foreknowledge is not prediction but direct eternal presence to all temporal events including free acts.
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    • 2.If God timelessly perceives future free choices as a simultaneous whole, the bivalence failure in P2 applies only to temporal knowers, not to an atemporal being whose knowledge has no 'in advance'.
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    • 3.Swinburne's argument succeeds only by presupposing divine temporality, which is itself a contested theological position, making the defense of omniscience contingent on a separate metaphysical commitment.
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    Topics

    Divine Attributes

    Related

    A God lacking middle knowledge would be less cognitively perfect than a Molinist...Boethius and Aquinas argue God's eternity places him outside time, so foreknowle...If God timelessly perceives future free choices as a simultaneous whole, the biv...If I have free will, there are no conditions presently in place that determine w...
    +6 moreShow less
    If such 'would' conditionals have determinate truth values independent of tempor...If there are no conditions presently in place that determine a future free decis...Inability to know what logically cannot be known does not harm God's omniscience...It is logically impossible to know of a proposition that it is true or that it i...Middle knowledge (Molinism) holds that God knows counterfactuals of creaturely f...Swinburne's argument succeeds only by presupposing divine temporality, which is ...

    Similar

    Inability to know what logically cannot be known does not harm God's o...78%God's freedom is not limited by the eternal truths or immutable essenc...75%A being who could not possibly fail to be omniscient could not possibl...75%God's inability to choose to do wrong does not undermine God's freedom...75%

    Source

    AI-extracted3/3 agreementValid
    SEP: providence-divine
    Swinburne 1993, 180–81
    View source passageHide passage
    One tactic for preserving omniscience even while accepting the basic open theist view just described is to hold that God cannot be faulted for not knowing in advance how we will exercise our freedom, since until we do there is simply nothing to know. According to views of this kind, not all propositions about the future have a truth value. Some do, of course: it is a necessary truth that 2 + 2 = 4, and this proposition has as much bearing on the future as it does on the present and past. Similarly, a proposition concerning the future may have a truth value when its truth is causally determined...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The premises form a valid chain of reasoning—from free will implying no determining conditions, to no determining conditions implying no truth value, to no truth value implying logical impossibility of knowledge, to logical impossibility not counting against omniscience—and this argument is explicitly articulated in the source passage.

    Confidence: Clearly laid out argument in the text.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit