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Two ancient (and modern) motivations for ascribing exhaustively definite foreknowledge to God: a historic overview and critical assessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2009

GREGORY A. BOYD
GREGORY A. BOYD*
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e-mail: gboyd@whchurch.org
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Abstract

The traditional Christian view that God foreknows the future exclusively in terms of what will and will not come to pass is partially rooted in two ancient Hellenistic philosophical assumptions. Hellenistic philosophers universally assumed that propositions asserting ‘x will occur’ contradict propositions asserting ‘x will not occur’ and generally assumed that the gods lose significant providential advantage if they know the future partly as a domain of possibilities rather than exclusively in terms of what will and will not occur. Both assumptions continue to influence people in the direction of the traditional understanding of God's knowledge of the future. In this essay I argue that the first assumption is unnecessary and the second largely misguided.

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Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 41 - 59
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

Notes

1. By exhaustively definite foreknowledge (EDF) I refer to the traditional view that, whatever else God knows, He knows the future exhaustively as a domain of what will or will not come to pass, rather than a domain that includes what may and may not come to pass. The view that God's knowledge of the future includes what may and may not come to pass is today commonly labelled ‘open theism’ or (my preference) ‘the open view of the future’.

2. The first motivation has been extensively covered. For works defending the open view of the future on exegetical and other grounds, see e.g. C. Pinnock Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness (Grand Rapids MI: Baker, 2001); C. Pinnock et al. The Openness of God (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994); R. Rice God's Foreknowledge and Man's Free Will (Minneapolis MN: Bethany, 1985); J. Sanders The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998); G. Boyd God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids MI: Baker, 2000); idem Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Warfare Theology (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001). For works defending EDF on exegetical and other grounds, see S.Roy How Much Does God Foreknow? (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006); B. Ware God's Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2001); M. J. Erickson God the Father Almighty: A Contemporary Exploration of the Divine Attributes (Grand Rapids MI: Baker, 1998); W. L. Craig The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Grand Rapids MI: Baker, 1987); J. Frame No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg NJ: P&R, 2001); N. Geisler & H. W. House The Battle for God: Responding to the Challenge of Neotheism (Grand Rapids MI: Kregel, 2001). For a listing of more technical philosophical works on issues surrounding EDF, see n. 24.

3. This essay is in essence a report on one aspect of an ongoing research project to be published as a two-volume work entitled The Myth of the Blueprint (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, forthcoming).

4. Bivalence is the principle that stipulates that a proposition is either true or false (Tp or Fp). It is now customary to distinguish bivalence from the closely related law of the excluded middle that stipulates that either a proposition or its contradiction is true (Tp or –Tp). Ancients did not consistently distinguish between these two principles, but as it concerns the truth value of PFC's it seems to me they most often had bivalence in mind. Either it is true that ‘x will occur’ or it is false that ‘x will occur’ which, they (mistakenly, I shall argue) uniformly take to entail that, at every point prior to t, either x will or will not occur at t.

5. For discussions, see M. Ressor ‘Necessity and fate in Stoic philosophy’, in J. M. Rist (ed.) The Stoics (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1978), 187–202; J. M. Rist Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), ch. 7; R. W. Sharples (tr. and comm.) Cicero: On Fate (De Fato) & Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy iv.507, V (Philosophiae Consolationis), (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1991), 12–15.

6. As is commonly noted, early discussions concerning fate and moral responsibility centred on the meaning of affirming that actions are ‘up to us’, not on the idea that humans possess a distinct ‘will’ that is, or is not, free. There is no consensus, however, on when exactly the concept of ‘free will’ arose. For several competing views, see Bobzien, S. ‘The inadvertent conception and late birth of the free-will problem’, Phronesis, 43 (1998), 133–175CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hurby, P. ‘The first discovery of the free will problem’, Philosophy, 43 (1967), 353–362Google Scholar; C. Kahn ‘Discovering the will: from Aristotle to Augustine’, in J. M. Dillon & A. A. Long (eds) The Question of ‘Eclecticism’: Studies in Later Greek Philosophy (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1988), 234–259; R. Sorabji ‘The concept of the will from Plato to Maximus the Confessor’, in T. Pink & M. W. F. Stone (eds) The Will and Human Action: From Antiquity to the Present Day (New York NY: Routledge, 2004), 6–23; and especially A. Dihle,The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1982).

7. On the Epicurean view of PFCs, see Cicero On Fate IX.18.9; X.21; XVI.37; idem Academics, II.97; idem On the Nature of the Gods, I.25, 70. This view was espoused not only by the Epicureans but arguably by Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias (and other Peripatetics), Calcidius, Nicrostatus, and, if Proclus is to be trusted, by Porphyry (Comm.in Timaeius 1.352.12). See M. Mignucci ‘Ammonius on future contingent propositions’, in M. Frede & G. Striker (eds) Rationality in Greek Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 305–306; R. Sorabji Necessity, Cause and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle's Theory (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 93, 124; Sharples, R. W. ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Fato, Some Parallels’, Classical Quarterly, 28 (1978), 243–266CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 260–263; idem Cicero & Boethius, 25. In contemporary times most (but not all) theologians who deny that God possesses EDF have done so along Epicurean lines.

8. For discussions on the atomic swerve and free will, see Gulley, N. ‘Lucretius on free will’, Symbolae Osioenses, 65 (1990), 37–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 46–51; Purinton, J. ‘Epicurus on free volition and the atomic swerve’, Phronesis, 44 (1999), 293–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. On Carneades' view, see Cicero On Fate, XVII–XX, XXVII. For discussions, see A. A. Long Hellenistic Philosophy, 2nd edn (London: Duckworth, 1986), 102–103; R. W. Sharples (tr. and comm.) Alexander of Aprophdisias On Fate (London: Duckworth, 2003 [1983]), 11. It should be noted that Carneades and Cicero both denied the gods possess EDF, but unlike the Epicureans, Alexander of Aphrodisias and (apparently) Calcidius, this was not because they denied that bivalence applies to PFCs, but because they did not think the truth of PFCs was knowable. This view is defended by William Hasker in God, Time and Knowledge (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).

10. The crucial passage is On Interpretation, IX.19a36–38. The literature discussing Aristotle's On Interpretation, IX is massive. Several of the discussions I have found most helpful are R. Sorabji Necessity, Cause and Blame, ch. 5; W. L. Craig The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle To Suarez (Leiden: Brill, 1988), ch. 1; McKim, V. R. ‘Fatalism and the future: Aristotle's way out’, Review of Metaphysics, 25 (1972), 80–111Google Scholar; Anscombe, G. ‘Aristotle and the sea battle’, Mind, 64 (1956), 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strang, C. ‘Aristotle and the sea battle’, Mind, 69 (1960), 447–465CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fine, G. ‘Truth and necessity in De Interpretatione 9’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 1 (1984), 23–47Google Scholar; van Eck, J., ‘Another interpretation of Aristotle's De Interpretatione IX: a support for the so-called second oldest or “Mediaeval” interpretation’, Vivarium, 26 (1988), 19–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Mignucci ‘Ammonius’, esp. 302–303.

11. On the dominant ancient interpretation, see Sharples Alexander On Fate, 11–12; idem ‘Some parallels’, 263–264; idem Cicero & Boethius, 29; Gaskin, R. ‘Alexander's sea battle: a discussion of Alexander of Aphrodisias De Fato 10’, Phronesis, 38 (1993), 75–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 76. Sharples makes a strong case that the first to make use of the distinction between ‘definite’ and ‘indefinite’ truth was Alexander of Aphrodisias (Quaestiones, I. 4 12.13ff.), though he seems to have understood ‘indefinite’ to entail a denial of bivalence. See R. W. Sharples (tr.) Alexander of Aphrodisias: Quaestiones 1.1–2.15 (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 35, cf. 32. See also Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame, 111–113, 124. There is much debate about whether Quaestiones I.4 actually goes back to Alexander or is the writing of one of his disciples, but the point need not concern us presently.

12. In Interpretatione, 130.20.6, cited in Mignucci, ‘Ammonius’, 281. On this, see Bobzien ‘Inadvertent conception’, 155. For an English translation (with original Greek text) of Ammonius' commentary on Aristotle's On Interpretation 9, see G. Seel Ammonius and the Seabattle: Texts, Commentary and Essays (New York NY: de Gruyter, 2000).

13. See In Interpretatione, 130.23–33.

14. So Mignucci ‘Ammonius’, 298. Dorothea Frede argues against this, however, in ‘The sea-battle reconsidered: a defence of the traditional interpretation’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 3 (1983), 43–45.

15. Mignucci ‘Ammonius’, 302.

16. Ibid., 297.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., 288–289.

19. On the issue of who originated this view, why it was developed, and how it was modified by various parties, see the excellent article by Mignucci, M. ‘Logic and omniscience: Alexander of Aphrodisias and Proclus’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 3 (1985), 219–246.Google Scholar See also P. Huber Die Vereinbarkeit von göttlicher Vorsehung und Menschlicher Freiheit in der Consolatio Philosophiae des Boethius (Zurich: Juris, 1976), 20–59; Patch, H. R. ‘Necessity in Boethius and the Neoplatonists’, Speculum, 10 (1935), 399CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. Courcelle La Consolation de Philosophie dans la tradition littéraire (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1967), 216–221; Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame, 124; and Sharples Cicero & Boethius, 26–27. On the concern for reconciling the immutable knowledge of the gods with transient reality, see e.g. Proclus Elements of Platonic Theology, I.15, 21, and the discussion in Mignucci ‘Omniscience’, 237–239.

20. See Plato Sophist, 248–249 and Timaeus, 45d. The view is also reflected in Alcinous Didaskalikos, XVIII.1, and Gellius Noctes Atticae, V.16.4. This understanding of vision is arguably behind Jesus' reference to the eye as ‘the lamp of the body’ (Matthew, 6.22; Luke, 11.34).

21. On the close association of perception and knowledge, see Aristotle On the Soul, 429a, and Maximus Philosophical Oration, VI.1 and XI.8–9.

22. See Mignucci ‘Ammonius’, 245; Sharples Alexander on Fate, 28–29.

23. Thus, evangelical critics of the open view continue to publish books with titles like (Roy) How Much Does God Foreknow? and (Erickson) What Does God Know and When Does He Know it? despite the uniform repeated insistence on the part of openness theologians that they unequivocally affirm that God always knows everything.

24. For several helpful collections of essays on these issues, see T. Morris (ed.) The Concept of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); J. M. Fischer (ed.) God, Foreknowledge and Freedom (Ithaca NY & London: Cornell University Press, 1989), and especially G. Ganssle & D. Woodruff (eds) God and Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). On issues surrounding divine eternity, see P. Helm Eternal God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); B. Leftow Time and Eternity (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); A. Padgett God, Eternity and the Nature of Time (New York NY: St Martin's Press, 1992); N. Wolterstorff ‘God everlasting’, in C. J. Orlebeke & L. Smedes (eds) God and the Good (Grand Rapids MI: Eedmans, 1975); and Kretzmann, N. ‘Eternity’, The Journal of Philosophy, 78 (1981), 429–458.Google Scholar On issues surrounding omniscience and libertarian free will, see Prior, A. ‘The formalities of omniscience’, Philosophy, 37 (1962), 114–129CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pike, N. ‘Divine omniscience and voluntary actions’, The Philosophical Review, 74 (1965), 27–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stump, E. ‘Prophecy, past truth and eternity’, Philosophical Perspectives, 1 (1991), 395–324CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hasker God, Time, and Knowledge; idem ‘A philosophical perspective,’ in Pinnock et al. The Openness of God, 126–154; A. Rhoda, G. Boyd, & Belt, T. ‘Open theism, omniscience, and the nature of the future’, Faith and Philosophy, 23 (2006), 432–459Google Scholar; L. Zagzebski The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), and most recently, K. Rogers Anselm on Freedom (Oxford and New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), 146–184. It should also be acknowledged that issues surrounding divine simplicity, immutability and impassibility also factor strongly into these discussions. For a sampling of helpful works on these issues, see Stump, E. and Kretzmann, N. ‘Absolute simplicity’, Faith and Philosophy, 2 (1985), 353–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. M. Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God: An Investigation in Aquinas' Philosophical Theology (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); Morris, T., ‘Properties, modalities, and God’, The Philosophical Review, 93 (1984), 35–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. Swinburne The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); R. Creed Divine Impassibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), and N. Wolterstorff ‘Suffering love’, in T. Morris (ed.) Philosophy and the Christian Faith (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 196–237.

25. Cicero (On Fate, XVI) illustrates clearly the universally shared assumption when he writes, ‘it is necessary in the case of two opposed things [contrariis duabus] – and by ‘opposed’ [contraria] here I mean those one of which asserts something and the other denies it – it is necessary, against Epicurus' wishes, that one of these be true, the other false, as “Philoctetes will be wounded” was true for all ages beforehand, “he will not be wounded” false … .'

26. On the Stoic use of divination to support their view of providence, see esp. Cicero On Divination, I.38; I.82. On the Stoic argument for determinism based on the universality of causality, see citations and discussion in Long Hellenistic Philosophy, 163–164; Dragona-Monachou, M. ‘Providence and fate in Stoicism and Prae-Neoplatonism’, Philosophia, 3 (1973), 262–300Google Scholar, 262–267; Ressor ‘Necessity’, 200.

27. I'm thinking here, for example, of arguments for EDF based on biblical prophecy or other data from scripture or arguments based on the perfection of God's being. On the first set of arguments, see n. 2. On the second set, see n. 24. One difficulty associated with the second set of arguments is that they often assume that the future is exhaustively defined by ‘will’ and ‘will-not’ type propositions. Hence arguments that a perfect being must possess EDF because of the perfection of his knowledge often end up being circular.

28. My reflections in this section have been formed in dialogue with Alan Rhoda and Thomas Belt who share the credit for whatever merit the argument has. For a further development of this theme, see Rhoda, Boyd & Belt, ‘Open theism’, 432–459, and G. Boyd, A. Rhoda and T. Belt, ‘The hexagon of opposition: thinking outside the Aristotelian box’ (unpublished mss). The analysis of ‘will,’ ‘will-not’, and ‘might and might-not’ propositions being proposed here was (to the best of my knowledge) first articulated by Charles Hartshorne in ‘The meaning of “is going to be”’, Mind, 74/293 (1965), 46–58; cf. idem, Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1983), 45. It was in some respects also anticipated by Colin Strang in ‘Aristotle and the sea battle’, Mind, 69/276 (1960), 447–465.

29. In Interpretatione, 131.204, cited in Mignucci ‘Ammonius’, 281.

30. In Interpretatione, 139.15–17, cited in Mignucci ‘Ammonius’, 282 (emphasis added). See also In Interpretatione, 139.32–140.4; 140.11–13. Frede attempts to argue that Ammonius' concept of ‘indefinite truth’ was actually just a rather diplomatic way of denying bivalence (‘Sea-battle reconsidered’, 43). Given the logic of his system (as well as that of Alconius, Proclus, and Boetheius), I grant that this is what Ammonius should have held – given the universally shared assumption that ‘will’ and ‘will not’ are contradictories rather than contraries. But passages such as In Interpretatione, 139.15–17 as well as the fact that Ammonius clearly ascribes EDF to the gods (136.1–7, cf. 133.20) make Frede's interpretation of Ammonius unlikely.

31. As Hartshorne notes, ‘will’ and ‘will-not’ type propositions can only change from false to true while ‘might’ and ‘might-not’ type propositions can only change from true to false. If propositions are temporally indexed, however, there is no change in truth values; Hartshorne ‘The meaning of “is going to be”’, 49–50.

32. Martin, L. H. ‘Fate, futurity and historical consciousness in Western antiquity’, Historical Reflections, 17 (1991), 151–169Google Scholar, 164.

33. Ibid., 168. This essay does a splendid job of contrasting the typical, divination-influenced Greek view of the future as exhaustively settled with the Hebraic view that understood time to flow from a settled past toward a somewhat open future. For several helpful orienting studies on divination in the ancient Graeco-Roman world, see W. R. Halliday Greek Divination: A Study of its Methods and Principles (London: Macmillan, 1913); Collins, D. ‘Nature, cause, and agency in Greek magic’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 133 (2003), 17–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also the comment of C. W. Fornara The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1983), 77. The best single source for the widespread practice of divination in the Graeco-Roman world is, of course, Cicero's On Divination.

34. On the nearly universal acceptance of divination among philosophers, see Cicero On Divination, I.3–4, 6. On divination expressing the gods' providential concern for humans, see I.6, 15–16, 35, 38, 41, 56. For Cicero's critical assessment of this connection, see II.8, 48–50.

35. See e.g. Cicero On Divination, I.82–84. For other discussions, see Mignucci ‘Logic and omniscience’, 225; M. Colish The Stoic Tradition From Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 31–33; S. Sambursky Physics of the Stoics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959), 65–71; D. Amand Fatalisme et Liberté dans Antiquité Grecque (Louvain: Bibliotheque de l‘Université, 1945), 571–86; J. B. Gould The Philosophy of Chrysippus (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 144–145; A. A. Long & D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), I, Translations, 343, and Sharples ‘Some parallels,’ 245–249. It is worth noting that Chrysippus wrote two books on divination as well as three works on fate, all of which are unfortunately lost.

36. Mignucci (‘Ammonius’, 299 [emphasis added]) illustrates the point when he writes: ‘Ammonius and the late Neoplatonic philosophers had a strong theological reason for admitting predictions. The gods are provident and they must know the world on which they exert their beneficial influence in such detail that nothing escapes their attention. Therefore even future contingent events must be known to them, and Ammonius does not waver in maintaining that the gods know future contingent events and that predictions are possible.’

37. Calcidius insightfully argues that, far from undermining prophecies, they are given more practical value if interpreted as conditional predictions that will come to pass if things do not change; see J. Den Boeft Calcidius On Fate: His Doctrine and Sources (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 34–35. This sort of reasoning is found at a number of points in Alexander of Aphrodisias. See e.g. On Fate, e.g. VI.171.7; XVII.188.11; XXXI.202.28; and Massima 179.16; 182.28; 185.33; 186.8. Cicero and Carneades make much of the argument that if prophecies tell us what will certainly come to pass, they are useless, at best, if not positively harmful. ‘For the prediction of an evil is only beneficial when we can point out some means of avoiding it or mitigating it’; On Divination, II.25, cf. II.8. On the importance of accounting for divination and oracles in the ancient world (because of their widespread acceptance), see W. C. Greene Moira: Fate, Good, and Evil in Greek Thought (New York NY: Harper & Row, 1944), 375–376; Mignucci, ‘Omniscience’, 229–230, 235. This was a one of the central driving forces behind those who wanted to interpret Aristotle's On Interpretation, IX in a way that avoided denying bivalence (see Mignucci ‘Ammonius’, 299–300).

38. In sharp contrast to the Hellenistic understanding of prophecy, prognostication played a minor role in Hebrew prophecy which was mostly concerned not with forecasting an inevitable future but with warning people about a possible future that would come to pass if people did not change their ways. See, e.g. Jeremiah, 18.1–10. Nor is prognostication implied in most of the Gospel passages that present Jesus as ‘fulfilling’ various Old Testament passages. Even a cursory examination of the Old Testament passages appealed to in the Gospels reveal that in most cases there is nothing predictive about them. As Paul Eddy and I have argued elsewhere, when Gospel authors claim Jesus ‘fulfilled’ an Old Testament passage, they usually (but not always) mean simply that Jesus illustrates the point or principle of the passage in a superlative way. See P. R. Eddy & G. A. Boyd The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Grand Rapids MI: Baker, 2007), 345–346.

39. Ware God's Lesser Glory, 216.

40. Ibid., 20–21.

41. Space does not allow for a discussion of the different sorts of foreknowledge various thinkers ascribe to God (e.g. whether or not God knows counterfactual conditionals of creaturely freedom). Nor would such distinctions affect the thrust of my present argument.

42. Tom Morris argued along these lines when he maintained that God can possess immutable intentions that are conditioned upon possible future human free decisions, though Morris did not apply his argument to the issue of divine providence. See Morris ‘Properties, modalities, and God’, 46–49.

43. In this respect the disagreement between open theists and free-will theists who affirm EDF is similar to the long-standing debate between Arminians who espouse simple foreknowledge and Molinists who also affirm God's knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. For representatives of this debate, see the essays by W. L. Craig and D. Hunt in J. Bielby & P. Eddy (eds) Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001). I should also note that, for the purposes of this essay, I am overlooking issues surrounding the logical coherence of the conception of God responding to eternally settled facts in order to bring about a more desirable future (which, of course, must also have been eternally settled). On this see Sanders, J. ‘Why simple foreknowledge offers no more providential control than the openness of God’, Faith and Philosophy, 14 (1997), 26–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hasker God, Time and Knowledge, 55–58.

44. Ware God's Lesser Glory, 216, cf. 20–21.