Faith and Philosophy

Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2000

On an Attempt to Demonstrate the Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom

Ted A. Warfield seeks to establish the compatibility in question by getting the incompatibilist to reject an unpersuasive argument from fatalism to the conclusion that a given action is not freely done. He maintains that such a rejection requires the the incompatibilist to hold that there is a possible world in which the fatalist’s premise is true and in which the conclusion is false (and so the given action is freely done). If a foreknowing God exists in that world, then incompatibilism must be rejected. I criticize this reasoning on the ground that one can reject a bad argument from true premises without countenancing a possible world in which the premises are true and yet the conclusion false.