The Mechanics of Divine Foreknowledge and Providence: A Time-Ordering Account

Description

How exactly could God achieve infallible foreknowledge of every future event, including the free actions of human persons? How could God exercise careful providence over these same events? Byerly offers a novel response to these important questions by contending that God exercises providence and achieves foreknowledge by ordering the times. The first part of the book defends the importance of the above questions. After characterizing the contemporary freedom-foreknowledge debate, Byerly argues that it has focused too narrowly on a certain argument for theological fatalism, which attempts to show that the existence of infallible divine foreknowledge poses a unique threat to the existence of creaturely libertarian freedom. Byerly contends, however, that bare existence of infallible divine foreknowledge cannot threaten freedom in this way; at most, the mechanics whereby this foreknowledge is achieved might so threaten human freedom. In the second part of the book, Byerly develops a model for understanding the mechanics whereby infallible foreknowledge is achieved that would not threaten creaturely libertarian freedom. According to the model, God infallibly foreknows every future event because God has placed the times that constitute the history of the world in primitive earlier-than relations to one another. After defending the consistency of this model of the mechanics of divine foreknowledge with creaturely libertarian freedom, the author applies it to divine providence more generally. A novel defense of concurrentism is the result. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part One: From the Existence of Divine Foreknowledge to Its Mechanics 1 The Foreknowledge Argument 1. The foreknowledge argument 2. The foreknowledge argument and the arguments for logical and causal fatalism 3. Responses to the foreknowledge argument 4. Conclusion 2 Foreknowledge and Explaining the Absence of Freedom 1. Explaining the absence of freedom through the mental and truth components of divine foreknowledge 2. Causal determinism and the foreknowledge argument 3. Conclusion 3 Foreknowledge and Causal Determinism 1. Skepticism about ways of knowing 2. Conciliatory stories 3. Extant conciliatory stories 4. Conclusion Part Two: A Time-ordering Account of Foreknowledge and Providence 4 Time-ordering and Foreknowledge 1. Foreknowledge through time-ordering 2. Time-ordering and causal determinism 3. Conclusion 5 Time-ordering and Providence 1. Time-ordering and stochastic phenomena 2. Time-ordering and concurrentism 3. Conclusion 6 The Value and Future of the Time-ordering Story 1. Time-ordering and the success conditions 2. Alternative, simpler strategies 3. Objections, responses, and future opportunities for the time-ordering story 4. Conclusion Bibliography Index