Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:53:48.013Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716

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
Copyright
2007 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)