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The necessity of the present and Anselm's eternalist response to the problem of theological fatalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2007

KATHERIN A. ROGERS
KATHERIN A. ROGERS
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716
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Abstract

It is often argued that the eternalist solution to the freedom/foreknowledge dilemma fails. If God's knowledge of your choices is eternally fixed, your choices are necessary and cannot be free. Anselm of Canterbury proposes an eternalist view which entails that all of time is equally real and truly present to God. God's knowledge of your choices entails only a ‘consequent’ necessity which does not conflict with libertarian freedom. I argue this by showing that if consequent necessity does conflict with libertarian freedom then God's knowledge in the present would conflict with the freedom of a present choice. Absurd.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 2007 , pp. 25 - 47
Copyright
2007 Cambridge University Press

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