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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
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    42
    The problem of divine foreknowledge and human free will d... — Carmelics
    Home/Afterlife & Death
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The problem of divine foreknowledge and human free will dissolves.

    Afterlife & Death
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.God does not know anything beforehand but has an immediate, atemporal knowledge of all things.
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    • 2.If God's knowledge is not foreknowledge but atemporal knowledge, then the worry that God knows 'beforehand' what we will do does not arise.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Atemporal knowledge of a future contingent act entails the necessity of that act just as much as foreknowledge does.
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    • 2.If God atemporally knows that agent S will do A, then S cannot do otherwise, regardless of whether 'before' applies.
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    • 3.Merely relocating divine knowledge outside time does not dissolve the incompatibilist entailment between infallible knowledge and necessity.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Boethius's solution requires that atemporal 'simultaneous' knowledge of temporal events is coherent, but this simultaneity relation is philosophically incoherent.
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    • 2.For two events to be simultaneous, they must share a temporal framework; an atemporal being cannot stand in genuine simultaneity with temporal events.
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    • 3.Without coherent simultaneity between God's atemporal perspective and our temporal acts, the Boethian dissolution loses its explanatory foundation.
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    Topics

    Afterlife & Death

    Key Terms

    knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.)
    Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.

    Related

    Atemporal knowledge of a future contingent act entails the necessity of that act...Boethius's solution requires that atemporal 'simultaneous' knowledge of temporal...For two events to be simultaneous, they must share a temporal framework; an atem...God does not know anything beforehand but has an immediate, atemporal knowledge ...
    +4 moreShow less
    If God atemporally knows that agent S will do A, then S cannot do otherwise, reg...If God's knowledge is not foreknowledge but atemporal knowledge, then the worry ...Merely relocating divine knowledge outside time does not dissolve the incompatib...Without coherent simultaneity between God's atemporal perspective and our tempor...

    Similar

    You are not freely reading this section today (theological fatalism: d...76%The Arminian explanation of salvation in terms of human free will is f...73%The reality of free will introduces an element that lies outside of Go...72%A freely chosen eternal destiny apart from God is metaphysically impos...70%

    Source

    AI-extracted3/3 agreementValid
    SEP: eternity
    View source passageHide passage
    Boethius uses his view of eternity to address the problem of divine foreknowledge (see section 6.2). If God knows beforehand what we will do then how can we act freely? His answer is that this problem dissolves in the face of the fact that God does not know anything beforehand but has an immediate, atemporal knowledge of all things.
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The passage explicitly states that the problem dissolves because God does not know anything beforehand but has atemporal knowledge, and the extracted argument faithfully captures this reasoning with an added bridging premise that is clearly entailed by the passage's logic.

    Confidence: The argument is clearly presented: Boethius resolves the problem by denying the 'beforehand' premise through his view of divine eternity.

    Details

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