Infallible Divine Foreknowledge cannot Uniquely Threaten Human Freedom, but its Mechanics Might

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (4):73-94 (2012)
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Abstract

It is not uncommon to think that the existence of exhaustive and infallible divine foreknowledge uniquely threatens the existence of human freedom. This paper shows that this cannot be so. For, to uniquely threaten human freedom, infallible divine foreknowledge would have to make an essential contribution to an explanation for why our actions are not up to us. And infallible divine foreknowledge cannot do this. There remains, however, an important question about the compatibility of freedom and foreknowledge. It is a question not about the existence of foreknowledge, but about its mechanics.

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T. Ryan Byerly
University of Sheffield

Citations of this work

Foreknowledge requires determinism.Patrick Todd - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (1):125-146.
Lessons from Grandfather.Andrew Law & Ryan Wasserman - 2022 - Philosophies 7 (1):11.

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Physicalism, or Something near Enough.Jaegwon Kim - 2006 - Philosophical Quarterly 56 (223):306-310.
Ordinary objects.Daniel Z. Korman & Jonathan Barker - 2025 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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