Abstract

A study of the medieval foreknowledge problem: an apparent conflict between God's universal infallibility and human freedom. To say that God is universally infallible is to say that for every proposition, God's believing that proposition implies that it is true. Let's say that the belief implies its object. So God's belief yesterday that Jones will murder her neighbor today implies that she will murder him. Furthermore, the past is fixed, rendering propositions about the past true or false is impossible, so it is too late today for Jones to do anything about God's yesterday-belief. So Jones, it seems, can do nothing about the murder. ;The flaw in the argument is that universal infallibility contradicts the fixity of the past. To see this, begin by asking: How is it that God's belief implies its object? I reject two initially promising attempts to account for this implication, and I endorse a third. This third account involves the claim that the essence of God requires that God have a belief only if it is true. Thus God's belief implies its object, and the object could be about the world outside God's mind. But saying that God's infallibility results from God's essence gives rise to the question of what prevents essential change in a thing. I argue that in God's case the only answer is God. This results in the claim that God renders the objects of God's beliefs true. Since some of God's beliefs are about the past, the past cannot be fixed. Of course, there are independent arguments for the fixity of the past, so I also refute the three such arguments that I take to be central. ;Given the above, the foreknowledge problem fails. One who accepts God's universal infallibility has already had to reject the fixity of the past. So there is no reason to worry that it is too late for an agent do anything about God's past beliefs or the present actions they imply