Faith and Philosophy 30 (3):286-301 (2013)
In this paper we critically evaluate Trenton Merricks’s recent attempt to provide a “new” way of defending compatibilism about divine foreknowledge and human freedom.
Based in Edinburgh, Scotland, Patrick is a faculty member, as a Chancellor's Fellow, at the University of Edinburgh. He completed his PhD in philosophy (December 2011) at the University of California, Riverside. He is interested in metaphysics, ethics, free will and moral responsibility, and philosophy of religion.
All in Divine Omniscience
In this paper we critically evaluate Trenton Merricks’s recent attempt to provide a “new” way of defending compatibilism about divine foreknowledge and human freedom.
The plane was going to crash, but it didn't. Johnny was going to bleed to death, but he didn't. Geach sees here a changing future. In this paper, I develop Geach's primary argument for the (almost universally rejected) thesis that the future is mutable (an argument from the nature of prevention), respond to the most serious objections such a view faces, and consider how Geach's view bears on traditional debates concerning divine foreknowledge and human freedom.