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Eternity, knowledge, and freedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2012

JOSEPH DIEKEMPER
JOSEPH DIEKEMPER*
Affiliation:
School of Politics, International Studies, and Philosophy, Queen's University Belfast, BT7 1PA, UK e-mail: j.diekemper@qub.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article addresses the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom by developing a modified version of Boethius' solution to the problem – one that is meant to cohere with a dynamic theory of time and a conception of God as temporal. I begin the article by discussing the traditional Boethian solution, and a defence of it due to Kretzmann and Stump. After canvassing a few of the objections to this view, I then go on to offer my own modified Boethian solution, according to which temporal reality is fundamentally dynamic, but truth is not. My claim is that there are eternally existing, tenseless propositions, with determinate truth values, but that these are made true by events that come into existence, and are not themselves eternal.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 45 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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