This paper embraces the view that we have substantial knowledge of the future and investigates how such knowledge fundamentally differs from knowledge of the past and present. I argue for a new source of context-sensitivity with respect to knowledge attributions arising from presuppositions about reliable belief-forming processes. This context sensitivity has important consequences for knowledge of the future, as well as the appropriateness of assertions about the future. I argue that not only is knowledge of future (...) events typically brought about by fundamentally different processes from those that bring about knowledge of past events, that this is the case is often presupposed in attributing knowledge. I argue that this new source of context sensitivity naturally extends to explaining the recent puzzle of `easy foreknowledge'. (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS ON GOD'S KNOWLEDGE OF FUTURE CONTINGENTS WILLIAM LANE CRAIG Oatholio University of Louvain Louvain, Belgium IF A THEOLOGICAL fatalist is someone who believes that God's foreknowledge of future events is incompatible with contingency and human freedom, then Thomas Aquinas was a theological fatalist. Unlike Augustine, Boethius, and Anselm, he did not believe that one could accept that God foreknows future events and yet adhere (...) to the contingency of the future states of affairs in question. The reason for this seems w have been that one version of the fatalistic argument, which did not confront his predecessors, namely, that version based on the una1tera;bility of God's knowledge in the past, seemed to Thomas to escape all previous refutations which tried to show the compatibility of genuine foreknowledge and future contingency. Accordingly, he had to find another way out of the fatalistic dilemma. God's Knowledge of Non-Existents Aquinas's pos~tion on God's knowledge of future contingents will be more understandable if we consider it within the context of God's knowledge of things that do not exist.1 Thomas maintains that God has knowledge, not only of all existents, hut also of all non-existents because in knowing His own essence He knows them as pl'oducib1e in His power. Since He 1 Thomas.Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q.2, a..8; Summa contra gen.tile.~, I. c.66; Summa theofogiae, I, q.14, aJI. 33 34 WILLIAM LANE CRAIG has complete knowledge of Himself and since He is the First Cause or ·ground of being for all thait ·exists, in knowing Himself as the First Cause God knows all His e:ffects.2 But since His power is infinite, it is not exhausted by what exists; the divine essence can be mirrored as the exemplar for innumeraible oreatures. Hence, in knowing His power and essence, God knows all rthe beings that could exist hut in fact do not. Thomas writes,... through His essence God knows things other than Himself in so far as His ess~ce is the likeness of the things that proceed from Him.... But since... the essence of God is of an infinite perfection,. whereas every other thing has a limited being and perfection, it is impossible that the universe of things other than God equal the perfection of the divine essence. Hence, its power of representation extends to many more things than to those that are. Therefore, if God knows completely the power and perfection of His essence, His knowledge extends not only to the things that are but also to the things that are not.8 There is, however, an important distinction to be made with regard to things that do not exist. For some beings do not exist simplic.iter, whereas other beings do not exist yet or any longer. Beings which existed in the past or will exist in the£uture do not now exist hut nevertheless have a share in existence which pure possibiles do not enjoy. Accordingly God's 2 Aquinas, De veritate q.2, a.3-5; Summa contra gentiles I, c.49; Summa theologiae, I, q.14, a.5. s.Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles I, c.66.4. (.All citations of this Summa will be from the Pegis translation.) "... deus cognoscit alia a se per suam essentiam inquantum est similitudo eorum quae ab eo procedunt... sed, cum essentia dei sit in:finitae perfectionis... quaelibet autem alia res habeat esse et perfectionem terminatam: impossibile est quod universitas rerum aliarum adaequet essentiae divinae perfectionem, extendit igitur se vis suae repraesentationis ad multo plura quam ad ea qua sunt. Si igitur deus totaliter virtutem et perfectionem essentiae suae cognoscit, extendit se eius cognitio non solum ad ea quae sunt, sed etiam ad ea qua non sunt.".All texts of Thomas's works other than the Summa theologiae are from S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia, 7 vols., ed. Robertus Busa (StuttgartBad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1980). GOD'S KNOWLEDGE OF FU'.I'URE CONTINGENTS 35 knowledge or these two classes of non-exi&tents differs, as Aquinas explains: Yet we have to take account of a difference among things not actually existent. Some of them, although... (shrink)

In this paper, we have analyzed a number of solutions to the antinomy between divine foreknowledge and human freedom. If we assume that God is temporal, then a sort of backwards causation of past divine beliefs by future human acts must be acknowledged. Since this solution runs into difficulties, we consider the prospects of the view according to which God is outside time. A timeless and omniscient God seems to imply a B-theory of time and, at least at (...) first glance, seems to jeopardize human freedom. Therefore, we have examined what happens when a non-standard A-theory of time like Fragmentalism is assumed. We demonstrate that in this case the prospects of a timeless view of God are much better: both human freedom and divine knowledge of the results of human choices are preserved if this metaphysics of time is adopted. The costs of this solution are, however, very high. From the logical point of view, it rejects bivalence; from the metaphysical point of view, the world is regarded as fragmentary and incoherent. However, if one is ready to accept these costs, this solution is one of the most successful in the search for a solution to the centuries-old problem of the conciliation between divine foreknowledge and human freedom. (shrink)

In The Consolation of Philosophy Boethius addresses two main problems posed by the problem of future contingents that shed important light on his conception of necessity and possibility: (1) a logical problem that alleges that if propositions about the future are true now then they are necessarily true, and (2) a theological problem that centers on a supposed incompatibility between divine foreknowledge and a contingent future. In contrast to established readings of the Consolation, I argue that (...) a proper understanding of Book V requires understanding the modal concepts employed there in atemporal terms. This interpretation requires revising our traditional understanding of the two problems present in the Consolation text, particularly in seeing how timeless knowledge or truth could be conceived as a threat to human freedom. It also stresses the importance of a strategy used by Boethius to disambiguate the scope of modal operators used in his opponent’s arguments and how that strategy unifies his discussion in Book V. (shrink)

The doctrine of inerrant divine “middle knowledge” of future contingent events, first developed by the sixteenth century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, has resurfaced as a prominent position within contemporary debates over divine foreknowledge, creaturely freedom, and the ontological status of possibilities. As yet, the only substantive response to the new Molinism from a process perspective has come in a brief section on “Hartshorne and the Challenge of Molinism,” in an essay on Hartshorne’s view of “The Logic of (...) Future Contingents” by George W. Shields and Donald W. Viney, in Shields’ edited anthology Process and Analysis.Shields and Viney offer an insightful critique of Molinism. However, their use of Hartshorne’s understanding of possibility presents problems for those, like me, who prefer Whitehead’s more robustly realist notion of eternal objects. Here, I defend Whitehead’s Platonism from the main lines of criticism leveled against itby Hartshorne, while demonstrating that a “thick” conception of the objective content of the possible within the context of the divine understanding need not crossover into a deterministic conception of God’s foreknowledge, à la Molina. (shrink)

In his discussion of how future contingents are known and revealed Thomas systematized what Augustine had developed in his disputes with the Stoics and Pelagians. Thomas shows how logical determinism concerning future contingents is avoided by Aristotelian logic, according to which future contingents have no determinate truth. Moreover, he explicitly unravels how our understanding of causal contingency and necessity is applicable only to created causes. Nevertheless, Augustine had explicitly done the same when he criticized the Stoics not (...) for their position that every event is ordered, but rather for not recognizing that this order must include God’s causal power. Moreover, Augustine’s discussion of God’s promise to Abraham stresses that only God can move the will without taking away its freedom. The truth of the promise is based on the truth of what God will do. Similarly, Thomas stresses that knowledge of future contingents can only be prophetic, since they are present only in God and have determinate truth only on account of his decision to cause them. Augustine did not go into detail concerning how future truths are usually known insofar as they are present in their causes, but Thomas’ position is compatible with that of Augustine and may go some way towards explaining its deeper philosophical implications. The similarity of Thomas and Augustine on the problem of prophecy and foreknowledge is an instance of how Thomas often agrees with Augustine on substance, even though he expresses his view in a more systematic and precise fashion. The most relevant texts of Augustine on this issue are polemical. There is even development in Augustine, as he moves from his relatively simple concerns about necessity in the De libero arbitrio to the more sophisticated treatments in the Ad Simplicianum, the De civitate dei and the anti-Pelagian writings. Thomas’ texts are scholastic. Consequently, he is able to discuss one topic at length and to use conceptual resources borrowed or developed from Aristotle. Nevertheless, there is no reason to conclude that Thomas’ development of these themes betrays Augustine any more than Augustine’s own development betrays his earlier writings. On this issue Thomas is truly Augustinian. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:506 BOOK REVIEWS Contingency and Freedom: Lectura I 39. By JOHN DUNS Scorus. Introduction, translation, and commentary by A. Vos, H. Veldhuis, A.H. Looman-Graaskamp, E. Dekker, and N. W. den Bok. Vol. 42 of The New Synthese Historical Library. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994. Pp. viii+ 205. $97.00 (cloth). In this volume, the John Duns Scotus Research Group under the direction of Professor Antonie Vos at Utrecht University has provided scholars (...) of medieval philosophy and theology with an accurate and readable English translation of John Duns Scotus's earliest treatment of divine foreknowledge and future contingents. Interweaving the Latin text of Scotus's Lectura with their translation, the translators provide a very useful commentary on Scotus's text on the facing pages. The Lectura, as the introduction to the volume rightly notes, is the written version of Scotus's first lectures at Oxford on Peter Lombard's Sentences and, despite its early date, it reveals the extent to which the central ideas of Scotus's thought were already in place. Furthermore, although many of the Subtle Doctor's characteristic doctrines are mentioned herein, pride of place is given, both in the introduction and in the commentary accompanying the text, to Scotus's outstanding contribution to the medieval discussion of divine foreknowledge: his substantial revision of the modal notions of necessity, possibility, and contingency. The text translated in this volume is the entirety of Scotus's commentary on distinction thirty-nine ofthe first book of the Lombard's Sentences, the customary place in medieval theological commentaries for raising questions about the reality of future contingents, their knowability, and the compatibility of future contingency with divine foreknowledge. In his commentary, Scotus raises five questions in connection with distinction thirty-nine: 1) whether God has determinate knowledge of things according to every aspect of their existence, including the future; 2) whether God has infallible knowledge of things according to every aspect of their existence; 3) whether God has immutable knowledge; 4) whether God necessarily knows every changeable aspect of things; and 5) whether the contingency of things is compatible with God's knowledge. Prompted by these questions, Scotus reviews traditional explanations of God's infallibility and immutability as well as contemporary accounts of how the future is knowable. Regarding the former, Scotus first introduces an explanation, similar in its outlines to that found in St. Bonaventure's Commentary on the Sentences and St. Thomas's Summa theologiae, of the infallibility of God's knowledge b,ased on the preeminence and lucidity of the Divine Ideas. According to this explanation, the Divine Ideas are so comprehensive and so distinctive that they allow any mind aware of them to perceive the most intimate and subtle connections between things as well as the things themselves; yet the things known through the Ideas need not be necessary since the mode of the cognition does not necessarily reflect the mode of the BOOK REVIEWS 507 things known through it. Scotus's main objection to this explanation is that it does not adequately account for how God could know contingent things since the truth of contingent things is not, by definition, contained in the notions of the simple terms, to which the Divine Ideas are often likened, composing a contingent proposition; indeed, if the truth of contingent things were contained in the notions of the simple terms composing the propositions that express them, the truth of contingent things would not be contingent but necessary. The failure of this explanation is traceable, in Scotus's view, to an insufficient appreciation for the role of the Divine Will in the production of created things. As to the matter of how the future is knowable, the Subtle Doctor reviews Aquinas's theory that God's eternity is present to all times. Scotus rejects this theory on the ground that, among other difficulties, God cannot cause something new in the future since the future, qua present, is already laid out before God as something that is caused. Hence, unless the theory can accommodate the possibility of God causing something twice, God's causal role in the future is nugatory. In other words, the notion of the past and the future being somehow... (shrink)

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)

I explore several issues raised in John Martin Fischer’s Our Fate: Essays on God and Free Will. First I discuss whether an approach to the problem of freedom and foreknowledge that appeals directly to the claim that God’s beliefs depend on the future is importantly different from Ockhamism. I suggest that this dependence approach has advantages over Ockhamism. I also argue that this approach gives us good reason to reject the claim that the past is fixed. Finally, I (...) discuss Fischer’s proposal regarding God’s knowledge of future contingents. I suggest that it may be able to secure comprehensive foreknowledge. (shrink)

I explore the motivation and logical consequences of the idea that we have some (limited) ability to know contingent facts about the future, even in presence of the assumption that the future is objectively unsettled or indeterminate. I start by formally characterizing skepticism about the future. This analysis nudges the anti-skeptic towards the idea that if some propositions about the future are objectively indeterminate, then it may be indeterminate whether a suitably positioned agent knows them. -/- (...) Philosophical Perspectives, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 50-69, December 2021. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:164 BOOK REVIEWS Thomas Buckingham and the Contingency of Futures-The Possibility of Human Freedom: A Study and Edition of Thomas Buckingham, De contingentia futurorum et arbitrii libertate. By BARTHOLOMEW R. DE LA TORRE, O.P. University of Notre Dame, The Medieval Institute Publications in Medieval Studies, Vol. XXV. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987. Pp. xii +394. In this volume, Fr. Batholomew de la Torre offers the (...) text and an extended study of Thomas Buckingham's De contingentia futurorum et arbitrii libertate, which is the first of six questions of this scholastic's Quaestiones theologicae, more properly entitled Ostensio meriti liberae actionis. The six questions are found in their entirety in two English manuscripts, namely Oxford New College 134 and Oxford Merton 143. The New CoUege (late fourteenth century) manuscript is earlier and superior to Merton (early fifteenth century), and accordingly the editor adopts it except in cases where the Merton reading makes better sense. The author, Thomas Buckingham, born in the early days of the fourteenth century, was an Oxford scholar at Merton, chancellor of Exeter, and died, very likely a victim of the Black Death, in 1348. The work edited here probably formed a part of Buckingham's exercise prescribed by University statute for those incepting as Masters of Theology. In the editor's view, this inception took place sometime between 1341 and 1346, when Thomas departed Oxford to take up duties at Exeter. There is some reason to believe that Buckingham may have been a student of Thomas Bradwardine (p. 7); irt is certain, however, that the present work "is a sustained attack on Bradwardine's notion that all future contingents come about by antecedent necessity relative to the first cause, God" (p. 103) • Bradwardine presented his view regarding how we must reconcile God's universal and immutable causality with human freedom in his magnum opus De causa Dei contra Pelagium. De la Torre describes Bradwardine's position this way: "For Bradwardine, God is the universal cause of all things, including future contingents. Future contingents are determined by divine antecedent necessity, for God's will concerning them is omnipotent and unimpedible. Such futures nevertheless remain contingent because only man as a secondary cause-and no other secondary cause-is responsible for his free choice. The theory that, once God has determined what a future shall be, He can still determine otherwise, is patently untenable BOOK REVIEWS 165 for Bradwardine because it predicates mutability of God and nullifies all inspired prophecy, including that of Christ" (p. 101). Bradwardine's exposition here outlined corresponds in its essentials with what Thomas Aquinas had taught in the previous century. The freedom or contingency in man's will act is to he understood in terms of its relationship to secondary or proximate causes. Unlike those events which are determined to come about by virtue of necessitating proximate causes, will acts in this respect remain totally undetermined. Along with this, says Aquinas, we must allow that God, because of His eternal knowledge, knows all futures-determined, as well as contingent -as present. His knowing future contingents, however, does not take away the condition of contingency, since the latter condition rests solely on their mode of occurrence as they relate to secondary or proximate causes. Thomas Buckingham finds this explanation inadequate. In order to safeguard future contingents or human freedom. Buckingham insists there must be a sense in which the ultimate cause, God, is casually contingent with respect to the human will act. Though his exposition is different in many details, Buckingham's fundamental direction is in accord with what certain predecessors, especially Scotus and Ockham, had argued regarding the problem of divine foreknowledge and future contingents. Indeed, in view of the way Buckingham cites Scotus, the editor considers it reasonable to suppose that he regarded himself a disciple of the Subtle Doctor (p. 132). There is at least one instance where Buckingham exhibits a markedly Scotistic and anti-Ockhamist analysis. This occurs in connection with the explanation as to how in one and the same instant, because of the different moments of natural priority and posteriority, the divine will can both will and not will the same thing. The... (shrink)

One of the major challenges in the philosophy of religion is theological fatalism—roughly, the claim that divine omniscience is incompatible with free will. In this article, I present new reasons to be skeptical of what I consider to be the strongest argument for theological fatalism. First, I argue that divine foreknowledge is not necessary for an argument against free will if we take into account divine knowledge of contingent a priori truths. Second, I show that this argument can be (...) generalized so that ordinary human knowledge of contingent a priori truths also leads to an argument against free will. This, I believe, results in an absurd conclusion that is unacceptable to both theists and non-theists. But if there is something wrong with this argument, there is something wrong, too, with the argument for theological fatalism. Although there is a range of possible responses, I suggest that the core issue in all cases is a closure principle—specifically, the principle that ‘no choice about’ is closed under entailment (or strict implication). (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 several recent publications, John Martin Fischer proposed a new solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge, which he dubbed the bootstrapping view. On this view, God can have limited knowledge of contingent future based on a combination of (a) God's knowledge of inconclusive evidence about the contingent world available to humans and (b) divine self‐knowledge and more specifically God's knowledge of His essential infallibility. On the basis of the former, God obtains knowledge about contingent future, and (...) by virtue of the latter, God bootstraps this knowledge to certainty. Fischer acknowledges that the mechanism of bootstrapping remains opaque to us, but maintains that his view offers a consistent model of God's limited foreknowledge of contingent future in an indeterministic world. The essay examines the bootstrapping view and some problems it gives rise to, as well as presents a related model of divine foreknowledge that is consistent and simpler and gives God comprehensive foreknowledge. (shrink)

Avicenna’s discussion of future contingent propositions is sometimes considered to entail metaphysical indeterminism. In this paper, I argue that his logical analysis of future contingent statements is best understood in terms of the epistemic modality of those statements, which has no consequences for modal metaphysics. This interpretation is corroborated by hitherto neglected material concerning the question of God’s knowledge of particulars. In the Taʿlīqāt, Avicenna argues that God knows particulars by knowing their complete causes, and when contrasted with (...) the human knowledge of particulars, this epistemically superior access shows that the contingency of statements about future particulars is not due to the modal properties of real particulars but to the nature of human access to them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 369 On Divine Foreknowledge. (Part IV of the Concordia). By Lms DE MOLINA. Trans. Alfred J. Freddoso. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Pp. xii +286. $34.95. The contents of the sixteenth century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina's famous work are specified in its title: Liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobatione concordia-" The Agreement of Free Choice with the Gifts of Grace, (...) Divine Foreknowledge, Providence, Predestination, and Reprobation." Part IV, which particularly concerns the Divine Fore· knowledge, is divided into seven " Disputations," 47-53 inclusive. These deal with contingency, the presence of all things to God in eternity, God's knowledge of future contingents (including the role of the Divine Ideas), and especially the reconciliation of freedom and contingency with absolutely certain Divine Foreknowledge and Predeterminations. It is Part IV, especially Disputation 52, which contains Molina's well known teaching about the scientia media, God's "middle knowledge," i.e., eternally between the natural knowledge He has of all things possible and the free or post-volitional (according to our way of conceiving it) knowledge He has of all things actual. More precisely, by middle knowledge God knows, before any exercise of His will, what a created free agent would do in various circumstances, both those which actually will obtain and those which, although possible, will never in fact exist. The objects of such knowledge are situated between what is merely possible and what will simply he at some moment of time. They are possible with a certain hypothetical (ex hypothesi) dependence on both Divine and human free causation. Thus, in comprehending them as they are, God's absolutely necessary and prior knowledge would seem in some way dependent upon what is contingent and even created. Molina's doctrine attempts to overcome the paradox in this. A competent admirer of Molina's position, University of Notre Dame Professor Freddoso is not just a master of the Jesuit's baroque Latin, with its sesquipedalian sentences bristling with spiny technical terms. He also shows himself to be a fine logician (earlier he translated portions of Ockham's Summa Logicae), with an excellent understanding of scholastic theology (in areas such as the Trinity, Christology, and the Eucharist), metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of human nature. To make the translated work even more accessible, he has in his introduction briefly treated prior parts of the Concordia as preparing the stage for Part IV, has related Molina's concerns to those of present day philosophers of religion, and has made clear the agreement as well 370 BOOK REVIEWS as the main difference between Molina and his " Banezian " opponents, whose position he summarizes from the 20th century theologian-philosopher, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. In addition, he has graced the translation with helpful footnotes. At times these identify persons mentioned by Molina, some of whom (e.g. Richard of Middleton, William Durandus, Gregory of Rimini, or Didacus de Deza [Hispalensis]) would be less than household names today for a non·medievalist. At other times, Freddoso's notes clearly and succinctly explain items of Catholic doctrine which Molina presupposes or to which he refers. Still again, they reproduce important texts of St. Thomas connected with points Molina is making. And something which I welcomed, Freddoso uses his notes frequently to recall and clarify premises of earlier arguments to which Molina later simply alludes without restatement. The translation itself is from the modern critical edition of the Concordia by Johannes Rabeneck, S.J. (Oniae et Matriti, 1953), which I would like to have seen reproduced on facing pages. Freddoso's version is accurate to the point of being literal. Despite that, however, it is amazingly readable. He does on occasion have difficulty with terms like complexio (which he specially notes on page 10) and ratio: whether to understand them subjectively or objectively-but then, doesn't everyone have the same problem? Again, while one might wonder about sentences as long as nineteen lines (e.g. page 178), they are in fact the legacy of Molina himself (cf. Disp. 52, n. 19, Rabeneck, p. 346, where the Latin runs 14 lines). Freddoso speaks of Molina's " lumbering " prose. But at the same... (shrink)

This paper addresses the question whether future contingents are knowable, that is, whether one can know that things will go a certain way even though it is possible that things will not go that way. First I will consider a long-established view that implies a negative answer, and draw attention to some endemic problems that affect its credibility. Then I will sketch an alternative line of thought that prompts a positive answer: future contingents are knowable, although our epistemic (...) access of them is limited in some important respects. (shrink)

At least since Aristotle’s famous 'sea-battle' passages in On Interpretation 9, some substantial minority of philosophers has been attracted to the doctrine of the open future--the doctrine that future contingent statements are not true. But, prima facie, such views seem inconsistent with the following intuition: if something has happened, then (looking back) it was the case that it would happen. How can it be that, looking forwards, it isn’t true that there will be a sea battle, while also (...) being true that, looking backwards, it was the case that there would be a sea battle? This tension forms, in large part, what might be called the problem of future contingents. A dominant trend in temporal logic and semantic theorizing about future contingents seeks to validate both intuitions. Theorists in this tradition--including some interpretations of Aristotle, but paradigmatically, Thomason (1970), as well as more recent developments in Belnap, et. al (2001) and MacFarlane (2003, 2014)--have argued that the apparent tension between the intuitions is in fact merely apparent. In short, such theorists seek to maintain both of the following two theses: (i) the open future: Future contingents are not true, and (ii) retro-closure: From the fact that something is true, it follows that it was the case that it would be true. It is well-known that reflection on the problem of future contingents has in many ways been inspired by importantly parallel issues regarding divine foreknowledge and indeterminism. In this paper, we take up this perspective, and ask what accepting both the open future and retro-closure predicts about omniscience. When we theorize about a perfect knower, we are theorizing about what an ideal agent ought to believe. Our contention is that there isn’t an acceptable view of ideally rational belief given the assumptions of the open future and retro-closure, and thus this casts doubt on the conjunction of those assumptions. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION OCKHAM'S LIFE AND THE DATE OF THE TREATISE William Ockham, a highly influential philosopher of the fourteenth century and one of the most ...

This paper argues that we know the future by applying a recent solution of the problem of future contingents to knowledge attributions about the future. MacFarlane has put forward a version of assessment-context relativism that enables us to assign a truth value 'true' (or 'false') to future contingents such as There Will Be A Sea Battle Tomorrow. Here I argue that the same solution can be applied to knowledge attributions about the future by dismissing three (...) disanalogies between the case of future contingents and the case of knowledge attributions about the future. Therefore none of the traditional conditions for knowledge can be utilized to deny that we know the future, as I argue in the last section. (shrink)

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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:GOD'S KNOWLEDGE OF FUTURE CONTINGENTS: A REPLY TO WILLIAM LANE CRAIG DAVID B. BURRELL, c.s.c. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana IT IS FORTUNATE that other duties kept me from responding to William Lane Craig's "Aquinas on God's Knowledge of Future Contingents" when it came out (Thomist 54 [1990]: 33-79), for my initial perusal found me at once impressed and dismayed, and quite unable to disentangle (...) the two responses. A more careful subsequent reading allows me, I believe, to pinpoint where he goes wrong in reaching the conclusion which he does, yet to do so in such a way as to send readers back to an essay which is otherwise quite remarkable in the way it learns from Aquinas and offers us useful ways to read him on these perplexing issues. In doing so, he corrects many a misreading, and amasses sufficient textual and conceptual clarifications as almost to correct his own misreading. And best of all, I can hope that my rejoinder will send readers back to Aquinas above all. Indeed, one cannot but feel that the current climate of controversy regarding the proper understanding of his nuanced synthesis in philosophical theology would please Aquinas far more than attempts earlier in this century to distill it all into a " doctrine." Craig's conclusion reads: In maintaining that God's knowledge is the cause of everything God knows, Thomas transforms the universe into a nexus which, though freely chosen by God, is causally determined from above, thus eliminating human freedom (79). I shall claim that he reaches this conclusion only because ( 1) he presumes God's knowledge to be propositional knowing (52-53), 317 318 DAVID B. BURRELL, C.S.C. even though he asserts that it is not (60, n.61); and (2) that such a presumption leads him to overlook the vast difference between scientia visionis and scientia simplicis intelligentiae, though he insists on the difference and formulates it nicely in parallel with practical and speculative knowing in God (40). Such presumptions about divine knowing are not uncommon, of course, and what they lead to is one's overlooking what Josef Pieper called the "hidden element in the philosophy of St. Thomas "-creation. Indeed, my critique could begin there, remarking how Craig's careful delineation of Aquinas on God's eternal knowing of contingent things proceeds oblivious of the central fact that God's knowing in such cases is that of a creator (" In summary, then, Thomas has appealed e%clusively to the tradition of God's timelessness in order to defuse the threat of fatalism" [61, emphasis mine]). The simple observation that the God in question is always the free creator of all-that-is would have allowed him to see that Aquinas does not make the relation of God to contingents turn solely on that of an eternal knower of temporal things, but that the eternity/time relation subserves that of creator/creature. (This ordering is the more crucial, we shall see, for its power to correct the endemic tendency to equate " eternal " with " timeless," which Craig manifests throughout.) And despite Pieper's reminder that creation is largely hidden, it remains sufficiently present to a careful reader that Craig must indeed confront it at the end. Yet by the time he does so, his earlier presumptions have led him to complain that Aquinas's insistence that "God's knowledge is the causa essendi of the things that are going to happen... seems nearly unintelligible " (73). Indeed what I shall offer as the key to resolving his crucial dilemmas, and so overturning his stated conclusion, Craig introduces as a " final issue [which] threatens to undermine Thomas's attempt to preserve contingency in the face of divine knowledge, [viz.] his doctrine that God's knowledge is the cause of its objects rather than the objects' being the cause of God's knowledge" (70-71). The theologian in me would prefer to begin right here, with the radical eruption into an Aristotelian world of a free creator, GOD'S KNOWELDGE OF FUTURE CONTINGENTS 319 whose relation to the universe is indeed such as to turn our sense of knowing inside-out.1... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:GOD'S KNOWLEDGE OF FUTURE CONTINGENT SINGULARS: A REPLY THEODORE J. KoNDOLEON Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania I N A RECENT article in The Thomist William Lane Craig has discussed certain aspects of Saint Thomas's teaching on God's knowledge of creatures. While for Craig Saint Thomas's concept of God's knowledge of vision (scientia visionis) is not fatalistic, his concept of God's knowledge of approbation (i.e., God's causal knowledge) is.1 Craig (...) believes that this latter type of divine knowledge implies fatalism since, on his reading, its causality determines everything that takes place in this universe. In developing his argument Craig makes a number of statements (and arguments) which are not only at variance with Saint Thomas's expressed thought but which, I believe, are also clearly mistaken. Some of his errors are of a trivial sort and may in part be due to the fact that he occasionally misspeaks himself. One can single out in this regard his statement, on page 78, that "God's knowledge does not necessitate an effect because an effect may be impeded by its secondary cause," and also his observation, on page 79, that "God's knowledge is the cause of everything God knows." 2 However, there are a number of more 1 See William Lane Craig, "Aquinas on God's Knowledge of Future Contingents," The Thomist, 54 (January 1990): 33-79. For his discussion of Thomas's teaching on God's knowledge of vision see particularly pp. 32-67; on Aquinas's teaching on God's causal knowledge, pp. 68-79. 2 Contrary to Craig's way of stating this, Aquinas never speaks about an effect being impeded by its secondary cause. Rather, a contingent cause may be impeded from producing its effect by the intervention of another secondary cause. Examples would be frost preventing the production or development of the fruit of certain plants, or a drug preventing the development of a normal embryo. For Aquinas's discussion of a contingent cause see De veritate, q. 2, a. 12, c. and also Summa contra Gentiles, Book I, chap. 67. Concerning 117 118 THEODORE J. KONDOLEON serious errors to be found in his discussion of God's knowledge of creatures, and it is to these that I would like to address this reply. I. In discussing the topic of God's knowledge of future contingent singulars, Craig considers Saint Thomas's explanation as to how it is possible for God to know what is future and contingent (i.e., something which, from the standpoint of its proximate cause, can either come to be or not come to be). As generally known, his explanation points out that while what is future and contingent with respect to its proximate cause(s)-and thus also from our vantage point-is something indeterminate in being and therefore in truth and knowability, as falling within the scope of God's eternal knowledge it is something already present (and thus determined to one of two opposites) and, consequently, can be known with certitude.3 In this Thomistic view, then, there is no past or future in God's knowledge of created things; everything is known at once and as present. At this point in his discussion, when he has yet to consider Saint Thomas's position that God's knowledge of things is also a causal knowledge (i.e., a knowledge which involves God's will as First Cause of His creatures and their actions), Craig claims that Saint Thomas employs the Boethian notion of God's eternity, and thus of His timeless knowledge, in order to " defuse the threat of fatalism." ' He holds this view because, he argues, otherwise, i.e., if God's knowledge were something past with respect to a future contingent singular (so that God could be said to " foreknow " it), that future would be something which would necessarily come to be-either that or else God could be mistaken-and therefore not truly Craig's second observation, it is not true to say, even of God's causal knowledge, that God's knowledge is the cause of everything God knows since God knows many things He will never cause... (shrink)

According to David Lewis’s contextualist analysis of knowledge, there can be contexts in which a subject counts as knowing a proposition just because every possibility that this proposition might be false is irrelevant in those contexts. In this paper I argue that, in some cases at least, Lewis’ analysis results in granting people non-evidentially based knowledge of ordinary contingent truths which, intuitively, cannot be known but on the basis of appropriate evidence.

Despite Russell’s protestations to the contrary, it has become evident that Leibniz had more than a passing interest in a number of the problems plaguing seventeenth century philosophical theology. In published work, correspondence, and private notes, Leibniz spends significant energy sorting through numerous solutions to the standard problems. Not least among these was the perennial problem of how to reconcile divine foreknowledge and providence and human freedom. In this essay I discuss how Leibniz understands this problem against the background (...) of the scholastic tradition up to his own day, how he rejects these solutions, and how he constructs an alternative which he believes will be acceptable to the various scholastic partisans while resolving the difficulties with each alternative. I then discuss the lessons that can be learned about Leibniz’s own view of freedom in light of what he says about these matters. (shrink)

The antinomy of future contingents is here understood as a trilemma whose horns are (a) the thesis of the closed past, (b) the thesis of the open future, and (c) the thesis that all events can be represented at any time. The latter thesis can take different forms, like the principle of bivalence or the thesis of divine foreknowledge. Different versions of (c) lead to different versions of the antinomy itself. The antinomy has been formalized. It hasbeen (...) proven that the theses (a), (b), and (c) make up an inconsistent set but are consistent with each other. Possible solutions have been considered. It has been argued that there are only two global solutions to the antinomy: radical determinism (fatalism) and retroactive causality. The latter solution has been recommended and developed. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the kind of evidence that might be adduced in support of relativist semantics of a kind that have recently been proposed for predicates of personal taste, for epistemic modals, for knowledge attributions and for other cases. I shall concentrate on the case of taste predicates, but what I have to say is easily transposed to the other cases just mentioned. I shall begin by considering in general the question of what kind of (...) evidence can be offered in favour of some semantic theory or framework of semantic theorizing. In other words, I shall begin with the difficult question of the empirical significance of semantic theorizing. In Sect. 2, I outline a relativist semantic theory, and in Sect. 3, I review four types of evidence that might be offered in favour of a relativistic framework. I show that the evidence is not conclusive because a sophisticated form of contextualism can stand up to the evidence. However, the evidence can be taken to support the view that either relativism or the sophisticated form of contextualism is correct. (shrink)

In his philosophy, William of Ockham (1285-1347) offered an important and detailed response to the classical argument from the truth of a statement regarding the future to the necessity (unpreventability) of the statement. In this paper, Ockham’s solution and the possible formalisation of it are discussed in terms of modern tense and modal logic. In particular, the famous branching time formalisation suggested by A.N. Prior (1914-19) is discussed. Weaknesses and problems with this suggestion are pointed out, and an alternative (...) formalisation of Ockham’s solution without the use of branching time is presented. (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)

Molinism is an attempt to do equal justice to divine foreknowledge and human freedom. For Molinists, human freedom fits in this universe for the future is open or unsettled. However, God’s middle knowledge — God’s contingent knowledge of what agents would freely do in this or that circumstance — underwrites God’s omniscience in the midst of this openness. In this paper I rehearse Nuel Belnap and Mitchell Green’s argument in “Indeterminism and the Thin Red Line ” against the (...) reality of a distinguished single future in the context of branching time [2], and show that it applies applies equally against Molinism + branching time. In the process, we show how contemporary work in the logic of temporal notions in the context of branching time can illuminate discussions in the metaphysics of freedom and divine knowledge. (shrink)

This paper discusses the main lines of medieval Latin approaches to future contingents with some remarks on Marcin Tkaczyk’s paper “The antinomy of future contingent events.” Tkaczyk’s theory shows some similarity with the general frame of the views of Ockham and Scotus, the difference being that while medieval authors argued for the temporal necessity of the past, Tkaczyk is sceptical of the general validity of this necessity. Ockham’s theological view was that God eternally has an intuitive and immutable (...) knowledge of all possibilities as well as whether they are ever actualized or not (PANACCIO & PICHÉ 2010). The content of God’s past knowledge attitude remains contingent before the free choice takes place because God’s knowledge could be different similarly as the truth-value of the proposition. While Ockham held that no past or present thing follows from future things as an effect follows from its cause, this causal link is defended by Tkaczyk. Later thinkers thought that the doctrine of the scientia media sheds light on this question; perhaps it is easier to understand than the retroactive model which is not contradictory but difficult to imagine, as Tkaczyk concludes his paper. (shrink)

In this essay I will try to show that there are what would appear to be some unnoticed consequences of the doctrine of divine foreknowledge. For the purposes of this discussion I will simply assume that future events are possible objects of knowledge and, hence, that foreknowledge is possible. Accordingly, I will not be concerned with discussing such questions as the status of truth-values for future contingent propositions or whether knowledge is justified true belief. Furthermore, I (...) will not be concerned with the issues involved in the claim that the doctrine of divine foreknowledge conflicts with doctrines concerning the properties of created beings, e.g., the doctrine of voluntary human action. (shrink)

"Without any doubt" : Gersonides on method and knowledge -- The opinions that produce the aporias in The wars of the Lord -- The solutions of the aporias in The wars of the Lord -- Dialectic in Gersonides' commentary on Proverbs -- The Alexandrian prologue paradigm in Gersonides' writings -- The introductions to the Bible commentaries -- Gersonides as commentator on Averroes -- Determinism, contingency, free choice, and foreknowledge in Gersonides -- Gersonides on the mode of communicating knowledge of (...) the future to the dreamer and clairvoyant. (shrink)

Over the past four decades, the question of the relationship between divine omniscience and human freedom has led analytic philosophy of religion to analyze medieval thought on foreknowledge. To avoid fatalism, many of them have been inspired by Luis de Molina’s doctrine of middle knowledge. Created to provide a libertarian account of how God knows future contingents, the Molinist solution has divided contemporary interpreters into two camps: those who argue that Molinism implies determinism and those who have developed (...) new analytical strategies to support Molina’s thesis. This study provides a map for moving through the debate. (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 new collection of philosophically rigorous essays critiques the interpretation of divine omniscience known as open theism, focusing primarily on philosophically motivated open theism and positing arguments that reject divine knowledge of future contingents in the face of the dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge. The sixteen new essays in this collection, written by some of the most renowned philosophers on the topic of divine providence, represent a philosophical attempt to seriously consider open theism. They cover a wide variety (...) of issues, including: the ontology of time, systematic metaphysics, perfect being theology, the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, the problem of evil, and the nature of divine knowledge in general. _Philosophical Essays Against Open Theism _advances the discussion by wrestling against the assertions of open theism, and will be of interest to both proponents and opponents of this controversial issue. (shrink)

A leading figure in sixteenth-century Iberian scholasticism, Molina was one of the most controversial thinkers in the history of Catholic thought. In keeping with the strongly libertarian account of human free choice that marked the early Jesuit theologians, Molina held that God's causal influence on free human acts does not by its intrinsic nature uniquely determine what those acts will be or whether they will be good or evil. Because of this, Molina asserted against his Dominican rivals that God's comprehensive (...) providential plan for the created world and infallible foreknowledge of future contingents do not derive just from the combination of his antecedent "natural" knowledge of metaphysically necessary truths and his "free" knowledge of the causal influence - both natural (general concurrence) and supernatural (grace) - by which he wills to cooperate with free human acts. Rather, in addition to God's natural knowledge, Molina posited a distinct kind of antecedent divine knowledge, dubbed "middle" knowledge, by which God knows pre-volitionally, i.e., prior to any free decree of his own will regarding contingent beings, how any possible rational creature would in fact freely choose to act in any possible circumstances in which it had the power to act freely. And on this basis Molina proceeded to forge his controversial reconciliation of free choice with the Catholic doctrines of grace, divine foreknowledge, providence, and predestination. In addition to his work in dogmatic theology, Molina was also an accomplished moral and political philosopher who wrote extensive and empirically well-informed tracts on political authority, slavery, war, and economics. (shrink)

Peter de Rivo (b. ca. 1420), argues for the existence of human freedom despite its alleged incompatibility with the truth of future contingent propositions. Rivo’s solution doesn’t follow the common medieval attempt to dissolve the alleged incompatibility, but claims that future contingent propositions aren’t determinately true. This approach troubled Rivo’s contemporaries, who thought it was incompatible with biblical infallibility, particularly the veracity of prophetic statements. Rivo tries to reconcile his solution with orthodox Christianity by grounding authentic prophetic statements (...) in God’s cognition of future events. In the end, Rivo’s attempted reconciliation fails because grounding the truth of prophetic statements in God cognition is incompatible either with his theological assumptions or his conception of free action. (shrink)

Ancient commentators like Ammonius and Boethius tried to solve Aristotle's “sea battle argument” in On Interpretation 9 by saying that statements about future contingents are “indefinitely” true or false. They were followed by al-Fārābī in his commentary on On Interpretation. The article sets out two possible interpretations of what “indefinitely” means here, and shows that al-Fārābī actually has both conceptions: one applied in his interpretation of Aristotle, and another that he is forced into by the problem of divine (...) class='Hi'>foreknowledge. It also explains the relevance of al-Fārābī's remarks as a link between the non-statistical modal theories of Philo and Avicenna. (shrink)