Since I have been gone from the message boards all day, I want to come back in and respond toa  few things. I'll number my points.

(1) I am not arguing that there is a conflict between omniscience and foreknowledge. I'm just raising some questions about it. 

(2) I pick on the barometer analogy because it makes an important point about future predictions. The future can only be known with infallible certainty (for a temporal observer like a barometer--and by temporal observer I also wish to leave aside prophecy or time travelers) on account of some cause in the present which necessitates its effect. There is no disjunct between this and anything else, it is the only way. The reason I included "luck" was because one could in theory predict the future correctly by making educated guesses, but of course, God's foreknoweldge isn't like this. So we should discard luck. Again: for temporal observers, the future is known by knowing present causes and can only be known with certainty when those present causes necessitate their effects.

(3) Now, as the Boethian solution would have it, God is outside of time. So He need not know the future by knowing present causes which necessitate future effects. God can simply observe the future. Fair enough, but as Boehtius himself states (a few paragraphs after he discusses divine eternity) this alone does not solve the problem. Because...

(4) It would mean that God's knowledge  of a future free-choice is caused by the choice or in some sense dependent on it. In other words, if God knows are free choice because we choose it, then God's knowledge is in a sense passive. Boethius does not like this, neither did Augustine before him or Aquinas after him. So Boethius says, God's knowledge is the cause of our choices albeit, He causes them to remain free. This is essentially Aquinas's solution as I understand it, and as many others since him have understood it. Regardless of whether or not this interpretation is correct, it is a live option in the philosophical debate about freedom and foreknoweldge. 

(5) This raises an issue however: If God is the cause of our choices, then can they really be free? Of course, a compatibilist would say yes. But this is why I made the OP a discussion about compatibilism and libertarianism in the context of classical theism. A libertarian should say NO! God cannot cause our choices. So the libertarian has reject what Boethius says and argue that our choices are the cause of God's knowledge. In other words, there are two potential solutions:

Compatibilist (Augustine, Boethius, arguably Aquinas): God is the cause of our choices. Therefore, He knows our choices because He causes them to be. 

Libertarian (arguably Anselm): God's knowledge of our choices is caused by our choices. Therefore, He knows what our choices are because we make them. 

The compatibilist solution has the distinct philosohical problems associated with compatibilism and the theological problem of reconciling this with God's universal desire to save and the teaching of the Church that God does not positively reprobate the damned. The libertarian solution has the problem that it makes God's knowledge passive rather than causal. It also entails a B-theory of time because there must be a contingent future existing for God to observe in His eternity. Some may see this as an issue, I do not as I accept the B-theory of time. Either way, there is the dilemma. I'm not saying either the compatibilist or libertarian solution fails. I just want to discuss it further. In fact, I think the libertarian solution is correct, but it does face the issue I just mentioned. 

John West wrote:

Okay, and the answer that's been presented (and largely ignored) is that they can if God contingently causes our choices.

And just to be crystal clear here: what I mean in presenting this solution is not just that the "primary" causal process by which God causes us, our choices, and everything else is contingent (as of course it is in the most important sense; God is under no necessity to create), but that He's perfectly capable of being the primary cause of a contingent process of secondary causation.

This was Aquinas's own solution, at least according to Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (with whom I agree). It's a matter of some dispute whether Aquinas counts as a "libertarian" or a "compatibilist" (especially since he didn't pose the question in those terms), but at the very least your Point (5) isn't simply a done deal: if there's any sense of "libertarian" for which Aquinas qualifies, then it's not true that a libertarian must answer "no" to the question whether our choices can be free even when they're caused by God. They're free in the only order of causation -- the secondary -- in which "freedom" makes any sense. There's a clear sense in which I could have chosen otherwise even though I didn't, and my choice is "made" not merely by antecedent or circumstantial factors but by me -- specifically, my exercise of my own power of volition.

In the end, wanting "freedom" even from primary causes strikes me as trying to jump off one's own shadow. If that's really what libertarianism requires, I'm inclined to say, so much the worse for libertarianism.

Last edited by Scott (7/08/2015 5:07 pm)

John West wrote:

TomD did write . . .

True, and fair enough; I wasn't thinking of that post when I wrote and submitted my own. At any rate, though, I wasn't trying to disagree with TomD about that.

I might quibble over the use of the word "future" in "future free actions," because to God they're not "future"; He eternally causes the entire cosmic process "all at once" in one act of creation. But they're "future" to us, so that quibble would really be nothing more than a clarification.

Last edited by Scott (7/08/2015 5:29 pm)

I'll have to save the third question until I have more time. (The short answer, I would say offhand, is that God doesn't "cause" acts of sin in the way you seem to be thinking, but merely concurs in their occurrence in order to bring greater good from them. But a longer answer is required in order to reconcile that statement with what I've already said. Again, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange dealt with the matter better than I'll probably manage here, and perhaps someone else will tackle it before I get around to it.)

But I think I can give short responses to the first two:

TomD wrote:

1. How do we reconcile this view with a sincere desire for God to save all men?
2. How can an act be free if it has a cause, EVEN IF that cause is in the primary rather than secondary order.

1. I don't see that compatibilism has any more of an issue here than libertarianism does. If my "freedom of will" and divine primary causation are compatible, then they're compatible. It's not as though on this view "my" actions somehow all become exclusively God's doing. If "compatibilism" means that I can rob a bank and then turn around and say it was God's fault, where did the compatibility go?

In that case "free will" is something of a red herring. The underlying question is really, "If God desires that all men be saved, and yet they're not, then why aren't they?" This seems to be a special case of the so-called problem of evil, and Brian Davies (to whom John West has already referred) is excellent on that subject. (To his recommendation I would add this and perhaps this.)

2. The very freest of acts has a secondary cause too (namely the agent), and that doesn't make it any less free. What specific issue is raised by the introduction of primary causation?

Last edited by Scott (7/08/2015 6:16 pm)