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Author: Ciro De Florio Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 303031300X Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
This book deals with an old conundrum: if God knows what we will choose tomorrow, how can we be free to choose otherwise? If all our choices are already written, is our freedom simply an illusion? This book provides a precise analysis of this dilemma using the tools of modern metaphysics and logic of time. With a focus on three intertwined concepts - God’s nature, the formal structure of time, and the metaphysics time, including the relationship between temporal entities and a timeless God - the chapters analyse various solutions to the problem of foreknowledge and freedom, revealing the advantages and drawbacks of each. Building on this analysis, the authors advance constructive solutions, showing under what conditions an entity can be omniscient in the presence of free agents, and whether an eternal entity can know the tensed futures of the world. The metaphysics of time, its topology and the semantics of future tensed sentences are shown to be invaluable topics in dealing with this issue. Combining investigations into the metaphysics of time with the discipline of temporal logic this monograph brings about important advancements in the philosophical understanding of an ancient and fascinating problem. The answer, if any, is hidden in the folds of time, in the elusive nature of this feature of reality and in the infinite branching of our lives.
Author: Ciro De Florio Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 303031300X Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
This book deals with an old conundrum: if God knows what we will choose tomorrow, how can we be free to choose otherwise? If all our choices are already written, is our freedom simply an illusion? This book provides a precise analysis of this dilemma using the tools of modern metaphysics and logic of time. With a focus on three intertwined concepts - God’s nature, the formal structure of time, and the metaphysics time, including the relationship between temporal entities and a timeless God - the chapters analyse various solutions to the problem of foreknowledge and freedom, revealing the advantages and drawbacks of each. Building on this analysis, the authors advance constructive solutions, showing under what conditions an entity can be omniscient in the presence of free agents, and whether an eternal entity can know the tensed futures of the world. The metaphysics of time, its topology and the semantics of future tensed sentences are shown to be invaluable topics in dealing with this issue. Combining investigations into the metaphysics of time with the discipline of temporal logic this monograph brings about important advancements in the philosophical understanding of an ancient and fascinating problem. The answer, if any, is hidden in the folds of time, in the elusive nature of this feature of reality and in the infinite branching of our lives.
Author: William Lane Craig Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9789004092501 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 390
Book Description
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.
Author: Graham C. Floyd Publisher: ISBN: 9781948048118 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 172
Book Description
If God foreknows the future, then he also foreknows his own future actions. How then is God a free and responsible agent? Four attempts at resolving the problem of human freedom in light of divine foreknowledge are applied to the problem of God's freedom in light of his foreknowledge.
Author: William L. Craig Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers ISBN: 1498276636 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 157
Book Description
Does God know our actions before we do them? And if so, do human beings truly have free will? Dr. Craig contends that both of these notions are compatible, showing how the Bible teaches divine foreknowledge of human free acts, and reveals two ways of "reconciling divine omniscience with human freedom".
Author: David Basinger Publisher: InterVarsity Press ISBN: 9780830876594 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 180
Book Description
If God is in control, are people really free? This question has bothered Christians for centuries. And answers have covered a wide spectrum. Today Christians still disagree. Those who emphasize human freedom view it as a reflection of God's self-limited power. Others look at human freedom in the order of God's overall control. David and Randall Basinger have put this age-old question to four scholars trained in theology and philosophy. John Feinberg of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Norman Geisler of Dallas Theological Seminary focus on God's specific sovereignty. Bruce Reichenbach of Augsburg College and Clark Pinnock of McMaster Divinity College insist that God must limit his control to ensure our freedom. Each writer argues for his perspective and applies his theory to two practical case studies. Then the other writers respond to each of the major essays, exposing what they see as fallacies and hidden assumptions. A lively and provocative volume.
Author: Tina Talsma Publisher: ISBN: Category : Metaphysics Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
ABSTRACT: A traditionally difficult problem in the Philosophy of Religion is the one that divine omniscience, particularly divine foreknowledge, poses for free will. If God knows in advance how we will act, it looks as if we cannot act freely because we cannot act other than in accordance with God's foreknowledge. Thus, it looks like God's full omniscience and free will are incompatible. But this is problematic precisely because both God's full omniscience and human and divine free will are very important in Christian theology. In this dissertation, I discuss this dilemma and attempt to find the best solution available to the Christian theist. In Chapter 1, I introduce and discuss the problem, which I refer to as "the foreknowledge dilemma." I then consider and ultimately reject three of the most commonly offered solutions. These solutions are the Boethian solution, which attempts to solve the foreknowledge dilemma by arguing that God does not exist within the temporal order and so cannot have knowledge prior to our actions, the Ockhamist solution, which argues that God's past beliefs are soft facts about the past and so rely upon the future in a way that many past facts do not, and the Molinist solution, which posits middle knowledge to explain the way God can know facts about human free actions. I conclude the first chapter by arguing that God's omniscience and free will, as traditionally defined, are incompatible and so the best solution will be to redefine (though not give up entirely) one of these two concepts. In the next three chapters, I discuss the suggestion made by source incompatibilists that we redefine free will in such a way that it does not require alternative possibilities (though still remains incompatible with causal determinism). In Chapter 2, I discuss the reasons (independent of the foreknowledge dilemma) that have driven some in the secular free will debate to adopt this understanding of free will. In Chapter 3, I point out that in order to be a successful solution to the foreknowledge dilemma, the source incompatibilist's version of free will cannot rely at all on the presence of alternative possibilities, for God's foreknowledge rules out any and all alternatives. I then reject such a characterization of human free will. And in Chapter 4, I ask if source incompatibilism is required to save God's freedom in light of His essentially perfect nature. I conclude that it is not. Finally, in Chapter 5 I gesture in the direction I take to be the most promising for the Christian theist. The best solution, I argue, is not to redefine free will but to redefine God's omniscience such that it does not include exhaustive foreknowledge. This Open Theist solution argues that it is logically impossible for God to know in advance how a free agent will act and so this lack of knowledge is not a diminishment of God's perfection.
Author: Saint Augustine (of Hippo) Publisher: ISBN: Category : Fathers of the church Languages : en Pages : 310
Book Description
One of Augustine's most important works, written between 388 and 395, this dialogue has as its objective not so much to discuss free will for its own sake as to discuss the problem of evil in reference to the existence of God, who is almighty and all-good.
Author: Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0195355407 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
This original analysis examines the three leading traditional solutions to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human free will--those arising from Boethius, from Ockham, and from Molina. Though all three solutions are rejected in their best-known forms, three new solutions are proposed, and Zagzebski concludes that divine foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom. The discussion includes the relation between the foreknowledge dilemma and problems about the nature of time and the causal relation; the logic of counterfactual conditionals; and the differences between divine and human knowing states. An appendix introduces a new foreknowledge dilemma that purports to show that omniscient foreknowledge conflicts with deep intuitions about temporal asymmetry, quite apart from considerations of free will. Zagzebski shows that only a narrow range of solutions can handle this new dilemma. A compelling contribution to the field, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge will appeal to students and scholars of theistic philosophy and the philosophy of religion.
Author: Gregory E. Ganssle Publisher: InterVarsity Press ISBN: 9780830815517 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
Editor Gregory Ganssle calls on four Christian philosophers to present and defend their views on the place of God in a time-bound universe. The positions taken up here include divine timeless eternity, eternity as relative timelessness, timelessness and omnitemporality, and unqualified divine temporality.
Author: Ciro De Florio
Author: Ciro De Florio
Author: William Lane Craig
Author: 
Author: Graham C. Floyd
Author: William L. Craig
Author: David Basinger
Author: Tina Talsma
Author: Saint Augustine (of Hippo)
Author: Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Author: Gregory E. Ganssle