Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:12:33.216Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Divine Omniscience, Immutability, Aseity and Human Free Will

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Robert F. Brown
Robert F. Brown
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

If classical Western theism is correct that God's timeless omniscience is compatible with human free will, then it is incoherent to hold that this God can in any strict sense be immutable and a se as well as omniscient. That is my thesis. ‘Classical theism’ shall refer here to the tradition of philosophical theology centring on such mainstream authors as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. ‘Divine omniscience’ shall mean that the eternal God knows all events as a timeless observer of them. ‘Human free will’ shall mean that human beings are, at least sometimes, self-determining agents who make choices not decisively caused to be what they are by external or internal factors other than the free willing itself – choices that these agents have the capacity and the freedom to make differently than they do. Except where stipulated otherwise, ‘divine immutability’ shall ‘mean that God is neither subject to, nor capable of, change in being, knowing, or willing, since God is immune to external influences, and without internal needs, of the sorts that might give rise to such change. Finally, ‘aseity’ shall be used to underline the divine immunity to external influences, since a being that is wholly a se or self-caused (is ‘pure act’ in the Thomistic sense), cannot be open to such influences, cannot be made to be what or how it is by anything other than itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 1991 , pp. 285 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The issues raised here are not limited to Christian thinkers. Maimonides, for example, affirms divine immutability and aseity (The Guide for the Perplexed I, 55 and 57)Google Scholar, whereas the Rabbinic thinkers generally do not. All the main Islamic philosophers and theologians, from al-Kindi and al-Ashari to Ibn Rushd, do as well.

2 Some restrict ‘immutability’ to ‘inability to change oneself’, and use ‘impassibility’ for the other kind of changelessness, i.e. ‘immunity to influence from something else’. I prefer, however, to let ‘immutability’ span both meanings, at least when referring to ‘strict immutability’; the two meanings are interconnected in classical theism, and expounders of divine immutability often clearly intend both. Then ‘impassibility’ functions either as one aspect of ‘immutability’, or as a synonym for it when used to mean ‘immunity to influence’. Creel, Richard E., in chapter one of his Divine Impassibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, identifies eight overlapping meanings of ‘impassibility’. His fifth meaning (‘incapable of being acted upon’) embraces all of the others except the eighth (‘cannot be affected by an outside force or changed by oneself’), which is inclusive of it. Actually, the eighth is a definition of ‘immutability’ in the strict sense (see below). Thus his schema fits well with my treatment of divine impassibility as one aspect of strict immutability. Such impassibility (or ‘immutability’) Creel says can be predicated of God's nature, will, knowledge, or feelings. When I speak of immutability in the ‘strict sense’ I have in mind its connection with aseity or unqualified self-determination.

3 Augustine, , On Free Will, Book III (ii, 4–iv, II).Google Scholar See also: Boethius, , The Consolation of Philosophy, Book IV, chs. 3–6;Google ScholarAnselm, , On the Harmony of the Foreknowledge, the Predestination, and the Grace of God with Free Choice, chs. 1–7;Google ScholarAquinas, , Summa Theologiae I, Q14, A13Google Scholar, and Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I, chs. 67–8.

4 See, for example: Rowe, William L., ‘Augustine on Foreknowledge and Free Will’, Review of Meta-physics, XVIII (1964), 356–67;Google ScholarPike, Nelson, ‘Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action’, Philosophical Review, LXXIV (1965), 27–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Divine Foreknowledge, Human Freedom and Possible Worlds’, Philosophical Review, LXXXVI (1977), 209–16;Google ScholarKenny, Anthony, ‘Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom’, in Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Kenny, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 255–70;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDavis, Stephen, ‘Divine Omniscience and Human Freedom’, Religious Studies, XV (1979), 303–16;CrossRefGoogle ScholarZagzebski, Linda, ‘Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will’, Religious Studies, XXI (1985), 279–98;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHasker, William, ‘Foreknowledge and Necessity’, Faith and Philosophy, II (1985), 121–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Defenders (in one way or another) of the compatibility of divine omniscience and human freedom include Rowe, Kenny, Davis, and Zagzebski; the critics include Pike, Hasker, and Creel. See also Hasker's, fuller arguments in his God, Time, and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, and the collection of essays, God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom, ed. by Fischer, John Martin (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

5 An alternative view of God as ‘temporally eternal’ amounts to a rejection of the classical Augustinian view. Since I wish to expose an internal conflict within classical theology, it is necessary to work within the traditional assumptions rather than rejecting them from the outset. Pike, , in ‘Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action’Google Scholar (see the preceding note), presents what to me is a convincing argument that the Molinist attempt to conjoin ‘temporal eternity’ with foreknowledge is incoherent.

6 Theological determinism gets around this difficulty at the price of undercutting human freedom. I do not find intelligible the contention of Calvin that although God's omnipotence and providence actually govern all specific events, including the acts of individual human beings, we still wi11 freely (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, chs. 16, 18), or the contention of Jonathan Edwards that God's foreknowledge confers a ‘necessity of consequence’ on contingent human acts of will that God foreknows, without thereby abridging the freedom of those acts (Freedom of the Will, Part Two, sect. 12).

7 Plato, , Republic 380d–38Ic, 509.Google ScholarAristotle, , Metaphysics, Book 12, ch. 7 (1072a19–1073a12).Google Scholar

8 The Trinity, Book 5, ch. I, translation by McKenna, Stephen, C.SS.R., in The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 45 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1963), p. 175.Google Scholar See also: The City of God, Book 8, ch. 6; Anselm, , Monologion, ch. 25;Google ScholarAquinas, , Summa Theologiae I, Q9.Google Scholar Strictly speaking, the passages from On the Trinity and Monologion deny that God's essence has any accidents. In place of accidents (which creaturely being has), one speaks of God's relations – to creatures. These thinkers, however, make it clear that these relations are one-way; in them creatures are affected by God, but God's being – and knowing – are unaffected by the creatures to which God is related.

9 It might be objected that ‘incapacity’ is a negative expression (and perhaps ‘immunity’ as well), suggesting a deficiency rather than a state of self-sufficient perfection that sets God clearly apart from the realm of mutable being. Immutability is certainly not a defect to the classical thinkers. If we keep that firmly in mind, ‘incapacity’ should pose no problem in understanding. Some such term is requisite in any event, since the perfect classical deity is not only ‘without need of changing’, but also (and more importantly for our discussion) ‘unable to change (itself)’.

10 See, for example, my article, ‘Schelling and Dorner on Divine Immutability’, journal of the American Academy of Religion LIII (1985), 237–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Creel (see note 2) allows for such a possibility (p. II): ‘An immutable being, i.e. a being that is unchangeable simpliciter, is certainly a being that is impassible, i.e. not subject to change or influence by external factors; but an impassible being is not necessarily immutable – it might change itself. Conversely, a passible being could not be immutable, but a mutable being might be impassible.’

11 See Hartshorne, , The Divine Relativity (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1948), chapter one.Google Scholar

12 To say this is to hold that a property of this sort is actual only when it is manifest in the relevant activity. Furthermore, as actus purus, the God of classical theism cannot have essential properties that are merely potential. What then of ‘creating’, something God perhaps need not do? We can say, with Aquinas, that God is eternally Creator even though the created effects emerge only at that specific time (with reference to the world) for which God wills them; so God freely (albeit eternally) acquires a property (that of Creator) that God need not have. But can we say analogously that God is freely (albeit eternally) Atoner, even though God would not be Atoner if creatures did not freely choose to sin? Not without a damaging qualification – since a necessary part of the impetus to be Atoner comes to God from without, from the sinful creatures. ‘To create or not to create’ may be God's option with respect to each possible world. ‘To atone or not to atone’ is not a comparable option unless each possible world contains freely-willed sin. And the burden of showing that – unlike in Plantinga's famous ‘Free Will Defence’ – falls squarely upon the defender of the classical view, not on the objector to it.