Debates about freedom and omniscience typically focus on whether God's knowledge of the future is compatible with libertarian freedom. However, even freewill theists who deny God's knowledge of the future usually grant God's knowledge of the past. But does that follow? How would God automatically be cognizant of what all free agents chose in the past?
If God can't know future choices before they happen, how do they suddenly become known after they happen? On libertarian grounds, I can see how past free choices would be knowable in a way that future free choices are not, but how would their passing into the past make them known? Is there something that causes God to know a free choice the instant it becomes a past fact? What would that be?
I think this is why the A-theory of time best comports with freewill theism.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to be a problem about presentism and not about free will. If there are settled facts about the past, it's hard to see how they have truthmakers with presentism. But on a growing block view, there are settled facts about the past but not about contingent matters in the future. In eternalism, you get facts about both. I'm not sure why you couldn't hold to a libertarian view on any of these views of time. Is this is an issue of how God has access to times that God is not at? Then it's a problem with a temporal God, not with free will. I'm not sure why you think any of this is about libertarianism.
ReplyDeleteSettled facts about the past are a necessary rather than sufficient condition of knowing the past. To say the past is knowable is not to say the past is known.
DeleteIn particular, past libertarian choices. If (a la open theism) God can't know these in advance, how does their eventuation automatically make them known? Does their eventuation somehow cause God to know them?
But that's bringing in open theism. This problem doesn't arise if you don't think libertarianism requires open theism. Also, some open theists think the future isn't settled but the past is, and they think this is written in the metaphysics. That's the growing block view of time. So all of the past and present are settled fact, and God has immediate access to all of it but not to the non-existent future. I'm not sure the view is ultimately stable, since it allows for the reality of times that aren't present, which gives us no reason to rule out the future being real. But that view allows for open theism while allowing God to be able to access the past.
DeleteJeremy said: That's the growing block view of time.
DeleteI wonder if that's the same thing as "possibilism" which agrees with eternalism that the past is as real as the present, but denies the reality of the future (i.e. it is not yet real or settled).
Jeremy Pierce
Delete"But that's bringing in open theism. This problem doesn't arise if you don't think libertarianism requires open theism."
That libertarianism requires open theism has been my contention all along.
"So all of the past and present are settled fact, and God has immediate access to all of it but not to the non-existent future."
On freewill theism (whether open or not), what grants God immediate access to past and present facts?
To take a comparison, in Calvinism, God has immediate access to past and present (as well as future) facts because they mirror God's decree. God knows his plan for the world, as well as the providential means by which God implements his plan. God knows history because he caused it–by a chain reaction of second causes which he initiates. And that includes human volitions.
But that won't work for freewill theism. Somehow, God must be on the receiving end of the noetic process.
To the extent that God knows the past, his access would be mediate rather than immediate. It would be mediated by the historical process. Indeed, nowadays, most freewill theists reject a timeless God for a temporal God. On that view, God has a quasi-sensory perception of time's passage.
That's the one thing timelessness can give them. It doesn't resolve the compatibility issue, but it does provide a means of immediate awareness, since every time is immediately accessible for God.
DeleteYou can say that if God is timeless, God doesn't have to wait for the outcome to know the outcome (although contemporary freewill theists generally reject divine timelessness).
DeleteBut that fails to explain how the libertarian God acquires knowledge of past human volitions. What is the process by which he'd be aware of those past volitional events?
To take a comparison, how does God know the past (i.e. past human volitions) in Calvinism? He knows the past by planning the past and by causing the past through a chain reaction he initiates. He knows the past the same way he knows the future. He knows human volitions because he planned them and he brings them about.
Obviously, that explanation isn't available to the freewill theist. So the freewill theist must reverse the transaction. The past itself somehow causes God to know the past.
But what does that mean? What's the causal process by which a past human volition informs God? Even in freewill theism, God doesn't learn about the past through sensory perception.
Why can't God remember them the same way we do, just infallibly? He knew them as an omniscient being about the present, when they were present. Then he just doesn't forget them once he moves forward in time to a later moment in time.
DeleteHe has to know it before he can remember it. To say he "knew them as an omniscient being about the present" begs the question of how or whether the freewill theist God knows present human volitions.
DeleteWhy can't he observe it as it happens the same way he knows any other occurrence is taking place? I'm really not getting this objection.
DeleteJeremy Pierce
Delete"Why can't he observe it as it happens the same way he knows any other occurrence is taking place? I'm really not getting this objection."
Your question assumes that God knows what happens by observation. But that's a very anthropomorphic characterization. To say God "observes" it as it happens is just a picturesque metaphor unless you can explain what you mean by that.
Most people call it the growing block view, but that sounds like the same view. Usually possibilism refers either to the view that being is broader than existence (found in one interpretation of Anselm and Meinong) or David Lewis' modal realism.
ReplyDeleteMichael Sudduth had an article several years ago arguing that timelessness doesn't solve the foreknowledge problem. I can't remember the name right now or the details of the argument, but if his old we page is still up you can probably still find it.
ReplyDeleteFrom their perspective I would think they'd say that God knows past choices as opposed to future ones because past choices are now true whereas future creaturely choices that are purely contingent would not yet be true.
ReplyDeleteI've addressed that distinction. By itself, that's inadequate to account for the libertarian God's knowledge of the past.
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