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The Eternity Solution to the Problem of Human Freedom and Divine Foreknowledge

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The Eternity Solution to the Problem of Human Freedom and Divine Foreknowledge 165 THE ETERNITY SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN FREEDOM AND DIVINE FOREKNOWLEDGE MICHAEL ROTA University of St Th omas Abstract. In this paper I defend the eternity solution to the problem of human freedom and divine foreknowledge. Aft er motivating the problem, I sketch the basic contours of the eternity solution. I then consider several objections which contend that the eternity solution falsely implies that we have various powers (e.g. to change God’s beliefs, or to aff ect the past) which, according to the objec- tor, we do not in fact have. I. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? Say that a human being H is free in the libertarian sense iff at least some- times, (i) there are multiple possible alternatives for H’s action, and (ii) it is up to H which alternative gets realized.1 Th ere are some good reasons, I think, to believe that human beings are free in the libertarian sense. My main task in this paper, however, is not to defend the view that humans have libertarian freedom, but to discuss a problem for theists who be- lieve that humans have libertarian freedom. Regardless of your actual beliefs, suppose for a moment that you do believe that humans have libertarian freedom. And imagine that a friend of yours in the archaeology department asks you if you would be willing to help in an archaeological dig near Rome. You agree, and spend several weeks digging up artifacts in what was once a monastery in the seventh century A.D. You fi nd various artifacts that have not seen the light of day for 1300 years. And then you fi nd something exceptionally unusual. You 1 I take this approach from Peter Unger, “Free Will and Scientiphicalism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2002): 1-25. EUROPEAN JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 1 (2010), PP. 165–186 166 MICHAEL ROTA yourself uncover a box containing a well-preserved Latin manuscript, buried all these long centuries. Being a well-trained Latinist, you begin to read the manuscript, and, to your astonishment, fi nd that the manu- script contains a narrative of your entire life thus far. It names and de- scribes your parents, identifi es the day of your birth, and describes the subsequent course of your life – what career you have chosen, your pro- fessional accomplishments, and whom you have married. You would no doubt initially think that this was an elaborate joke concocted by your archaeologist colleague. But suppose that you had convincing evidence that this was not so – suppose that you somehow had convincing evidence that the manuscript had really been there, bur- ied in the dirt for 1300 years. Now, if you were indeed convinced that the manuscript was real, what would you think about your own freedom? How could you have been in control of your life, when the whole course of your life, including your most personal decisions, was laid out long before you were born? In such a situation, your belief that you had been in control of your life would be shaken, I should think. Such a scenario would seem to pro- vide good evidence that you did not have libertarian freedom. Th e traditional Christian theist has a very similar problem. According to traditional Christian theism, God has perfect knowledge of events that are future with respect to us. On the traditional Christian view, before I was even born it was true that God knew the whole course of my life. Although there is no manuscript describing my life buried somewhere in the ground, there is something else which might seem even more probl- ematic. A much more detailed, infallibly accurate account of my future life has been contained, as it were, in the mind of God, since long before I was born. How then, can any of my actions really be up to me? II. THE ETERNITY SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM AND FOREKNOWLEDGE In this section I’ll attempt to sketch a model according to which God can know all of our future actions, including our actions that are free in the libertarian sense. THE ETERNITY SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM 167 Suppose, with Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas, that God is timelessly eternal. God is not located in the fl ow of time. He is outside time. Yet the events of all times are equally present to Him. Th e events of the temporal present are present to Him. But so are the events of last year, and the events of next year. Th ey are all eternally present to Him. If that’s right, then we can tell a coherent story about how God could know what you will do tomorrow without taking away your freedom. Suppose that you will freely choose to answer the phone tomorrow at 9am. Th en God knows (eternally) that you will choose to answer the phone tomorrow at 9am simply because He sees you doing it. And God does not see you choosing to answer the phone before you actually do so. Rather, for God in eternity your action is a present event, not a future event. In Aquinas’s words: “…all things which are in time are present to God from eternity…because His glance is cast over all things from eter- nity, as those things exist in their own presentness”.2 So, you freely choose to answer the phone at 9am tomorrow. Because you choose this then, God knows that you choose this then. But just as my knowledge in the temporal present of what you are doing does not take away your freedom, so too God’s knowledge in the eternal present of what you are doing does not take away your freedom. God has perfect knowledge of all events that are future with respect to us simply because He sees them occur. Th e four key elements of the eternity solution, as I conceive it, are as follows: (1) God is timelessly eternal. Proposition (1) implies, among other things, that no part of God’s life is before or aft er any other part of God’s life. God’s entire life is present all at once in eternity. (2) For any time (including all times that are past with respect to us and all times that are future with respect to us, as well as the 2 Summa Th eologiae I.14.13c. Translations of Aquinas are my own. I use the text available at the Corpus Th omisticum website, http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/ iopera.html. 168 MICHAEL ROTA temporally present time), and for any event or substance tempo- rally located at such a time, that event or substance is present to God. (3) For any time (including all times that are past with respect to us and all times that are future with respect to us, as well as the temporally present time), and for any event or substance tem- porally located at such a time, God has immediate knowledge of that event or substance. (4) God knows events that occur in time because they occur, and not the other way around. (It is not the case that they occur be- cause God knows that they occur). Let’s call this set of four propositions the Basic Divine Eternity Model, or, for short, the Basic Model.3 III. OBJECTIONS RELATING TO POWERS I now turn to a group of related objections – each makes the contention that the Basic Model implies that we have powers that we do not, accord- ing to the objector, in fact have. 3.1. Counterfactual power over God’s eternal beliefs Suppose that an agent S performs an act A (say, makes a choice) at a time T1, but that at an earlier time T0, S had the power not to do A at T1. If God is eternal, then God eternally sees S doing A at T1, and so God eter- nally believes that S does A at T1. Now focus on that earlier time, T0. At T0, S had the power not to do A at T1. But if S had exercised that power, and not done A at T1, then either God would have had a false belief or God would never have eternally believed that S does A at T1 in the fi rst place. It is impossible that God have a false belief. So, if S had not done A at T1, then God would not have eternally believed something that He 3 I call this the Basic Model because it can be developed in diff erent ways, according to one’s view about the nature of time. THE ETERNITY SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM 169 in fact does eternally believe. Th us, the eternity model (together with the claim that at T0 S has the power not to do A at T1) implies that, at T0, (5) S has the power to do something4 such that if S did it, God would not eternally believe something that He does in fact eternally believe. Note that proposition (5) does not imply that S has the power to change or alter God’s eternal beliefs, at least not in the normal sense of the word ‘change’. Changing God’s beliefs would involve making it such that God once had one belief, and then later did not have that belief (or making it such that God once did not have some belief, and then later did have that belief). But there’s no question of that sort of thing here. If (fi rst situation) S does do A at T1, then God eternally believes that S does A at T1.
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