Atemporalism and dependence

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87 (2):149-164 (2020)
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Abstract

It is widely thought that Atemporalism—the view that, because God is “outside” of time, he does not foreknow anything —constitutes a unique solution to the problem of freedom and foreknowledge. However, as I argue here, in order for Atemporalism to escape certain worries, the view must appeal to the dependence of God’s timeless knowledge on our actions. I then argue that, because it must appeal to such dependence, Atemporalism is crucially similar to the recent sempiternalist accounts proposed by Trenton Merricks, Philip Swenson, and Jonathan Westphal, and I conclude by briefly sketching some implications of this result.

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Author's Profile

Taylor W. Cyr
Samford University

Citations of this work

Dependence and the Freedom to Do Otherwise.Taylor Cyr - forthcoming - Faith and Philosophy.
Foreknowledge and Free Will.Linda Zagzebski - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:online.

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References found in this work

The Coherence of Theism (revised edition).Richard Swinburne - 1977 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Eternity.Eleonore Stump & Norman Kretzmann - 1981 - Journal of Philosophy 78 (8):429-458.
The Metaphysics of Free Will: an Essay on Control.John Martin Fischer - 1997 - Philosophical Quarterly 47 (188):373-381.
Divine omniscience and voluntary action.Nelson Pike - 1965 - Philosophical Review 74 (1):27-46.
Ability, Foreknowledge, and Explanatory Dependence.Philip Swenson - 2016 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (4):658-671.

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