Anselm versus Fischer on Solving the Dilemma of Human Freedom and Divine Foreknowledge
Anselm versus Fischer on Solving the Dilemma of Human Freedom and Divine Foreknowledge
Katherin Rogers
ABSTRACT
If God knows what you will choose tomorrow, you cannot possibly choose otherwise than as God knows you will choose. How, then, can you choose freely? John Martin Fischer, in his chapter, “Engaging with Pike: God, Freedom,and Time” (with Patrick Todd and Neal A. Tognazzini – I shall refer to the three as “Fischer”) in Our Fate: Essays on God and Free Will, briefly mentions a solution which is somewhat similar to the one I take to be the most successful way of dealing with the dilemma of human freedom and divine foreknowledge. He presents the solution as Ockhamism plus “eternalism” and dismisses it quickly in that it requires an “eminently contestable metaphysical picture about the nature of time”.1 I will defend Anselm’s more systematically worked out version of this solution. (My interpretation of Anselm is not universally accepted, but here I am more concerned with the philosophical plausibility of the proposed solution.2) I will explain why the Anselmian does not find Pike’s version of the “Basic Argument” for the incompatibilism of divine foreknowledg
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December 2017
Vol. 4, Sp. Iss. 2 Pages 1-101
