Faith and Philosophy

Volume 17, Issue 2, April 2000

Freedom and Foreknowledge

In her book, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, Linda Zagzebski suggests that among the strongest ways of supporting the thesis that libertarian free will is incompatible with divine foreknowledge is what she refers to as the Accidental Necessity argument. Zagzebski contends, however, that at least three satisfactory responses to that argument are available. I argue that two of the proposed solutions are open to strong objections, and that the third, although it may very well handle the specific versions of the Accidental Necessity argument that Zagzebski considers, fails when confronted with a stronger version of the Accidental Necessity line of argument.