Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom

The ancient problem of fatalism, more particularly theological fatalism, has resurfaced with surprising vigour in the second half of the twentieth century. Two questions predominate in the debate: (1) Is divine foreknowledge compatible with human freedom and (2) How can God foreknow future free acts?Having surveyed the historical background of this debate in The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez (Brill: 1988), William Lane Craig now attempts to address these issues critically. His wide-ranging discussion brings together a thought- provoking array of related topics such as logical fatalism, multivalent logic, backward causation, precognition, time travel, counterfactual logic, temporal necessity, Newcomb's Problem, middle knowledge, and relativity theory.The present work serves both as a useful survey of the extensive literature on theological fatalism and related fields and as a stimulating assessment of the possibility of divine foreknowledge of future free acts.

"...the most sustained, scholarly treatment of the divine attribute of omniscience since the Middle Ages." Alan G. Padgett, The Evangelical Quarterly.

William Lane Craig is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California. Publications: Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus (1989); 'No Other Name': A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation through Christ (1989) and Middle Knowledge: A Calvinist-Arminian Rapprochement? in The Grace of God, the Will of Man (1989)The book surveys and critically assesses the contemporary debate over the possibility of divine foreknowledge of future human free acts, drawing upon related discussions of a wide variety of topics such as logical fatalism, multivalent logic, backward causation, precognition, time travel, relativity theory, Newcomb's Problem, and middle knowledge.