Boethius - Divine Knowledge, Free Will & Eternity
Religious Studies: OCR A Level, topic 1.8.3
Boethius on God's Knowledge, Free Will and Eternity
Boethius regarded God as a timeless being. In his book The Consolation of Philosophy Book V, he explains that God’s knowledge is different from human knowledge.
Quotations about God's knowledge
- God’s knowledge ‘encompasses the infinite sweep of past and future, and regards all things in its simple comprehension as if they were now taking place’ (116).
- Thus, God’s foreknowledge is not foreknowledge of things future to him, ‘but knowledge of a never-changing present’ (116).
Simple and conditional necessity
- Boethius makes a key distinction between two types of necessity:
- Simple necessity - happens because it has to, because of its nature it is this way.
- E.g. humans are mortal by our very nature; mortality is not a choice for us.
- Conditional necessity - happens because of choice.
- E.g. a human who takes their own life is making a choice. This event is not simple because it isn’t part of our nature to have to take our own life.
Example - man walking and sun
- Boethius gives the example of a man walking down the road and the sun shining in the sky.
- You see both these events at the same time. But only one is a voluntary action – the man walking. The man could have chosen to run, cycle, segway, skateboard etc.
Necessity and God's knowledge
- As such, when God views time in his atemporal way, he sees/knows that something is going to happen in our future. These things might not happen out of simple necessity but of conditional necessity (voluntarily).
- As such, God’s ‘foreknowledge’ of our life doesn’t mean we’re not free to make our own decisions. What God sees must happen. But the decisions we make are free when we are making them.
Boethius - strength
- It preserves God’s omniscient nature: God knows everything, but His knowledge doesn’t cause it.
- It preserves God’s immutable nature and simplicity.
Boethius - weaknesses
- Anthony Kenny argued that the notion of all time being simultaneously present to God is incoherent. It is not logical to say that all time is simultaneously present to God, for that would mean I am being born, reading this and dying all at the same moment. This could be said to be a reduction ad absurdum.
- Arguably, the theory does not get around the issue of petitionary prayer (telling God what we want/need) and its value in the life of a believer.
Test yourself on Boethius - Divine Knowledge, Free Will & Eternity
Which of these is NOT a strength of Boethius' argument about God?