I have a recent paper that I've just posted on my website, available here, that I'd welcome any feedback on. The paper takes as its starting point the traditional view that God is necessarily eternal. There are a number of philosophical objections to the doctrine of divine eternality. Some philosophers argue that the idea of an eternal God is incoherent. Others argue that it leads to absurdities, that the doctrine isn't biblical, or that an eternal God couldn't act in time. Still others object that eternity rules out all contingency in the world. The objection that I'm concerned with here, however, is that divine eternity would rule out God having foreknowledge of libertarian free human actions insofar as simplicity and eternality are incompatible with God's knowledge being causally dependent on those actions. According to this objection, either (a) God must causally determine the free actions of human agents (thus leading to a theological version of compatibilism) or (b) God cannot know, and thus cannot respond to, the free actions of human agents. In the present paper, I argue that one can consistently maintain that God is not causally dependent on anything, even for His knowledge, without being committed to either (a) or (b), by paying careful attention to the metaphysics of truthmaking as it applies to the objects of God's knowledge. The free actions of created agents can be the truthmakers for the objects of God's knowledge without causing a change in God or His knowledge. In other words, the objection considered fails to show that divine eternality is incompatible with God having knowledge of actions brought about via the exercise of libertarian freedom.
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Kevin - thanks for an interesting paper, but I'm afraid I'm not convinced.
I agree that the relationship between a truth and its truth-makers is one of non-causal dependency. I agree that, if we could say God's knowledge of my free actions depends upon, but is not caused by my free action, it would solve the problem you are concerned with. But I do not think that the relationship between God's knowledge and my action is the same as that between truths and truth-makers. This might just be a blind-spot on my part, but if so, you will need to find a way to help me (and, I suspect, other readers) to overcome this blindness.
There needs to be some factor that distinguishes knowledge from a lucky guess. Causality is one such factor. If you take that away, something else has to replace it as the factor that differentiates a lucky guess from knowledge. I think that this can be done - I don't hold as a general principle that knowledge is always caused by the objects of knowledge - but what's needed is some account of what this extra factor, differentiating knowledge from a lucky guess is.
(Of course, 'justification' and 'warrant' are often advanced as names of this factor, but we want something more than a name. Also, when we try to explain what 'warrant' or 'justification' is, we are usually trying to explain the factors that, in the case of human beings, differentiate our knowledge from our lucky guesses: we will not want to tell the same story about God's knowledge as we will about ours).
Now, my lucky guesses are truths. Their truth depends non-causally on their truth-makers. But they are not known by me. So non-causal dependence on a truth-maker does not seem to be sufficient to distinguish knowledge from a lucky guess. Indeed, if the truth-maker theory is correct,then it seems that to say of some proposition that the relationship of non-causal dependence between it and its truth-makers holds seems way of saying that the proposition is true. If we are distinguishing knowledge from a mere lucky guess, of course we need something more than truth, because truth is precisely the factor that knowledge and lucky guesses have in common.
Kevin,
An enjoyable and interesting read, especially since I'm interested in truthmaker accounts. I haven't fully digested everything you said but I do have a small comment. In your conclusion you say that on your view we'll have to give up on impassibility and then go on to say "...hard to see how God could have such knowledge while being absolutely immutable". I've always understood impassibility as an external relation while immutability is an internal one. However it seems that you are running the two together. If the two are separable then it may be that you have to give up on viewing God as not being subject to external affects (impassibility), but it doesn't follow that he is subject to internal changes (immutability).
Ben and Matthew,
Thanks for the comments. I'm in the middle of grading and end of term exams, but I hope to have a chance to respond to the two of you sometime this coming week.
Kevin
Ben and Matthew,
I finally have a few minutes to respond to your postings. So here goes. Thanks for your patience and your comments.
I'm glad that you agree that "the relationship between a truth and its truth-makers is one of non-causal dependency." But I'm not saying that "the relationship between God's knowledge and my action is the same as that between truths and truth-makers." Rather, I think that what God knows are certain truths, and those truths have my actions as their truthmakers. And I agree with you that "there needs to be some factor that distinguishes knowledge from a lucky guess." In the case of a lucky guess, it is only a contingent matter that the guesser gets it right. But it's not a contingent truth that God's beliefs are true; rather, insofar as God as traditionally understood is essentially omniscient (in the way defined in the paper), it is a necessary truth that "if God believes X, X is true."
Matthew,
In my discussion at the end of the paper, I do mistakenly jump from 'impassability' to 'immutability'. I should have only claimed that the account of God's nature that I give here requires one to give up impassability, not immutability (insofar as I'm trying to provide a partial defense of simplicity, and simplicity entails eternity and eternity, so far as I can tell, entails immutability, I sure how that my account is consistent with immutability!). So you're correct in this.