1. First attempt at synthesizing classical culture (Greek and Roman worldviews) with Christianity.

2. Salvation by grace (as opposed to human works and merit, as held by Pelagius).

3. Assimilation of Platonist notion of "separation" (God and creation separated because of sin, intelligible world of forms in God’s mind and the created order of temporal truths which reflect the eternal truth of God).

4. Concept of God as immaterial, timeless, and unchanging

5. Broad range of metaphysical and epistemological speculations within the Christian context (nature of time, how we learn and gain knowledge, philosophy of history)

1. A Theological Paradox: What was God doing before He Created the World? (Confessions 11.10-13)

Since God is immutable nothing can belong to his substance at any time which did not already belong to his substance. God’s will belongs to his substance. If God wills something X at any time which he did not previously will, then God is not immutable, for then something would have changed in his substance (he would have went from not willing X to willing X - an accidental change). The world exists and was created by God, but it is not eternal (i.e., has not always existed). Either God has always willed the existence of the world or he has not. If he has not always willed the existence of the world, then he is not immutable, for then there would have been a time when he first chose to create to the world. If God has always willed the existence of the world, then the world would be eternal just as God’s own will is eternal (without beginning). Either the world is eternal or God is mutable.

Augustine says that before creation God did nothing, and there is a difficulty in answering the question beyond that (Confessions 11.12). However, if we imagine that God sat idly by while centuries passed we are mistaken. Since God created time when he created the universe, there was no time "before" God created the world, and so truth about God’s not willing to create and then willing to create.

According to Augustine the theological paradox presupposes that God is a temporal being, but God "surpasses all times" since he occupies "an ever present eternity" (Confessions 11.13).

"You have made all times, and you are before all times, and not at any time was there no time" (11.13). So we must recognize that is senseless to ask "What was God doing before he created the world?" since at no time did God do anything, for God has made time itself (11.14)

2. The unreality of the future and past (11.18-20)

At any moment in time, what is past and what is future do not exist. The past did exist, but no longer exists. The future does not yet exist. We have "epistemic" access to the past and the future through things which are present to us (for all knowledge is a "seeing" and you cannot see what does not exist). With respect to the past, images stored in memory are present to us (11.18.23). With respect to the future causes or signs of things to come are present to us, and so we may predict or foresee the future (11.18.24). Although it is not wholly correct to speak of three times (past, present, and future) in existence, there are three times which we can isolate: present of things past, present of things future, and present of things present.

3. Unpacking Time (Confessions 11.21-27)

Time itself is constituted by the motions of the heavenly bodies, for time seems to continue even if these bodies stand still. Time is not a movement of body. We measure time through the mind, for in memory things which "have been" leave impressions which mark the boundaries of intervals - the passing of time.

There is a distinction between the topology of time and metric of time, roughly put, a distinction between there being

(I) a truth about one event e1 being before another e2.

(ii) a truth about how long one event e1 is before another event e2.

Metrical time, of course, presupposes the existence of a cosmic clock, and so something like the laws of nature. Topological time does not require this. In some passages Augustine seems to be targeting the metric of time, while in others mere topological time seems to be the target. Augustine’s question, what is time?, requires this distinction, though it is not explicitly made by him. The theological paradox might be resolved by employing this distinction. Compare comments made in reference to Plato’s Timaeus.

1. Preliminary Distinction

There is a problem of whether human actions can be free if God predestinates or predetermines what humans will do. Here the problem is that God’s willing what people will do seems to conflict with human actions being free. There is a second problem of human freedom, though, which is generated by God’s merely knowing what people will do in the future. This is the problem of foreknowledge and free will. Here the idea is that God’s knowing something beforehand imposes a necessity or determination on what is known, thereby ruling out human freedom. Like the problem of freedom and predestination, there is a causal question involved in the problem of foreknowledge and free action, but the causal issue arises from the simple fact of God’s knowing the future, not his willing it by an act of predestination.

2. Augustine’s Argument

It seems that the following two propositions are logically incompatible:

(a) is a consequence of divine omniscience, where omniscience is defined as:

(b) is thought to be essential to human responsibility and thus moral culpability. If a person is morally blameworthy for doing action A, then their action must have freely performed. Thus if God justly punishes people for their sins, sinful actions must have been freely performed.

1. If God foreknows that some person S will sin, then it is necessary that S sin.

2. If it is necessary that S sin, then S does not sin freely.

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3. If God foreknows that some person S will sin, then S does not sin freely.

1* If God foreknows that some person S will do action A, then it is necessary that S do action A.

2* If it is necessary that S do action A, then S does not do action A freely.

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3* If God foreknows that some person S will do action A, then S does not do action A freely.

Augustine certainly wants to deny the conclusion (in each argument), for he believes that God’s foreknowing an action is compatible with the action being free (in some sense).

As for premise 1 (in both arguments), Augustine wants to assert that if God foreknows what will happen, then what will happen is CERTAIN to happen, and so in that sense the future is necessary. So he does not appear to want to reject the first premise. Nor does he think that the argument is invalid. So he is led to reject the second premise of the argument. The necessity of sinning does not entail that such an act is not free. Augustine is able to say this because he understands "free" to mean "not done by compulsion." It is certainly not clear that the necessity of an action entails that the person performs the action by compulsion, but it might be doubted whether freedom from compulsion is an adequate account of freedom. A person might not be able to refrain from doing something (because it is their nature to do it), even though their doing it is not a matter of compulsion. It might be thought that freedom from refraining is necessary for the kind of freedom which is involved in moral responsibility.

1* If God foreknows that some person S will do action A, then it is necessary that S do action A.

2* If it is necessary that S do action A, then S does not do action A freely.

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3* If God foreknows that some person S will do action A, then S does not do action A freely.

As for as Boethius’ interpretation of the argument against the compatibility of God’s foreknowledge and human free actions, he believes that the problem is generated from the pastness of God’s knowledge (as is clear from his eventual compatibilist proposal). Note also his comment in Prose 3 (p. 106) that "the outcome of something known in advance must necessarily take place." There are different ways of spelling out how it is that past knowledge of some future action rules out the possibility of the action being free. One such explanation (see Nelson Pike’s version of Boethius’ argument on separate handout) draws attention to the fact that God’s knowledge of anything is essential knowledge; all of God’s beliefs are necessarily true beliefs. He cannot be wrong about anything without ceasing to be God. All ascriptions of "free" actions, though, involve a person having the power to refrain from doing the action question. But the power to refrain from doing an action (which God believes a person will do) carries with it certain impossible consequences for the God and his cognitive life. Roughly, it entails that someone will have it within their power to make it true that God held a false belief about someone’s actions. But this is not possible.

Boethius rejects the idea that "things do not happen because providence foresees that they will happen, but, on the contrary, that Providence foresees what is to come because it will happen." Boethius is here rejecting a very common way in which people think of God’s foreknowledge. God looks down the avenue of time and sees what people will do, such that their doing it is the ground of his believing it. If they had acted otherwise, then God would have known otherwise.

Boethius is not impressed with this argument, as he does not see how it will circumvent the problem of human freedom and foreknowledge. For he says: "Nevertheless, it is necessary either that things which are going to happen by foreseen by God, or that what God foresees will in fact happen; and either way the freedom of the human will is destroyed" (Prose 3, p. 106). Th idea here is that even if what is going to happen is the cause of God’s past knowledge, the fact remains that there is something which is going to happen. And therein is the problem. It does not matter whether God foreknows something because he causes it, or it causes his knowledge, or whether it is knowledge in the past which makes the future action inevitable. On all these construals, we are still left with talking about the way things are going to happen.

Also, it is in this section in which Boethius argues that "knowledge never deceives" and whatever is known cannot be otherwise than it is. If future actions of humans, as the cause of God’s foreknowledge, are uncertain, such that they could act differently, God could not be said to have knowledge. Nelson Pike seems to draw his argument from much of Prose 3. See also Boethius’ comments in Prose 6 (p. 119).

Prose 4 and 5 distinguish between human and divine knowledge. In Prose 6 Boethius distinguishes between simple and conditional necessity.

Simple Necessity:

NEC(Steve throws the football to Jerry) => simple necessity

Conditional Necessity:

[(If Steve throws the football to Jerry, then NEC (Steve throws the football to Jerry)]

The idea here is that something may be freely chosen at t1 although while it is being it done at t2 it is necessarily true that it is being done at t2. Anyone who knows it

If there is a conditional necessity, then all we have to do is explain how God’s knowledge of things is not before they happen, but as they are happening, and so carry with them the harmless conditional necessity. According to Boethius we have such an explanation when we examine how God knows. God knows according to his eternity. "Eternity is the whole, perfect, and simultaneous possession of endless life." But then eternity is an ever present now, in which all human history is present to God at once. God, then, has a knowledge of things in their presentiality, whether they be freely performed or from (simple) necessity.

God’s vision of things is compared with human vision. God is said to see all things in an eternal present in a way similar to a human’s seeing something in a temporal present. When a person sees another person walking down the street and the sun shining, both are seen at once, though in the case of the former what is seen is the result of a free action and in the latter case it is the result of what is necessary. As things are happening they are necessarily happening, and so in both the case of the man walking down the street and the sun shining there is a necessity present. But in the case of the sun shining there was also a necessity prior to the event (determined by laws of nature, etc.). God, though, sees everything as it happens (or will happen from the human perspective), neither what he sees nor his act of seeing imposes necessity on the thing anymore than a person’s seeing a man walk down the street imposes necessity on the action in question.

There is no problem of reconciling divine foreknowledge and human freedom once we realize that God’s knowledge is not a knowledge at t1 of what S will do at some later time t2, but it is a knowledge of what everyone does in their respective times, though he sees everything in an eternal NOW.

Remaining problem. Does this analogy not undercut Boethius’s earlier argument against the outcome of things being the cause of God’s past knowledge? At the end of Prose 6, h says that it would be unworthy of God if our future acts were said to be the cause of divine knowledge." Divine knowledge is not said to depend on things which happen later. But in the analogy, the human knower’s knowledge is dependent on what is happening at present. Similarly it would seem that God’s present knowledge must depend on what is present to him in the eternal present. Making God timeless does not let God escape having his knowledge based on things as they are happening, though it does free those things from having to happen out of simple necessity. And if God’s knowledge is based on things, and is a knowledge of vision (seeing the future as present), we must ask whether God can in fact have such knowledge without the future already existing. Moreover, if we suppose that God’s knowledge is a timeless gaze directed toward the whole of human history present to God at once, it will be too late for God to act on his knowledge. What he knows is every thing and only those things which people will freely do, what happens out of necessity, and what God already (in some sense) chose to do, for he sees all of human history at once, and that includes God seeing His own actions. There is no sense to speaking of God doing anything.

Aquinas and others (including many Reformed theologians) will eventually argue that God knows what is future to us by knowing the contents of his own (timeless) will. This is not a knowledge of vision, and thus avoids God being affected by anything or his knowledge being based on things as they will happen (committing one to the existence of the future in the present). It might be thought to be defective since it is not a knowledge of vision. Is God’s knowledge of what he will infallibly do the same as the knowledge he would have of those things in their actuality? Nevertheless, it does provide a very strong conception of divine providence. On this account, it clearly reintroduces the problem of human freedom and divine knowledge at the level of how God can determine or cause something and that something be free. The route here is simply to exploit the sui generis character of all divine causality. God is so powerful that he can bring it about that some things happen necessarily and others freely. We might also examine the meaning of "freedom" and emphasize a free act as one which is done according to one’s desires or inclinations or nature (and so not by compulsion) - so-called compatibilist free will, as opposed to power of contrary choice (so-called libertarian free will).

© Michael Sudduth 1996