The Problem of Gods Prescience - Essay Example

? The Problem of God’s Prescience Introduction The manner in which the Problem of God’s Prescienceis addressed by philosophers is engulfed in an air of astringency. Prescience, which relates to the ability of one to foretell events before they have unfolded, when taken in a divine context leads to a few intricacies conflicting with the existence of free will. This when compounded with God’s interminable knowledge then becomes the crux of the problem. The whole concept of the Problem of God’s Prescience is shrouded with principles surrounding the divinity of God. Thus, at the very beginning, the omniscience of God plays a pivotal role in the definition of this concept, for He in His infinite wisdom is taken to know everything about everything, whether it be information about an object or person, or an occurrence in time, past, present or future. This only serves to pronounces the clash with freewill. The Problem of God’s Prescience The conflict hence forms the basic premise of the Problem. God as the master of all things tangible and intangible is assumed to know incomprehensible details about human life and the course it will take. As such, His knowledge about a particular event precedes the event itself, thereby exemplifying his unique ability of knowing the future. This belief in God’s ubiquitousness forms one of the core foundations of his Divinity across the board of religions, whether the one in question is Christianity, Judaism or Islam. The Bible, Torah, and the Quran all repeatedly assert His pervasiveness carefully contrasting it with His limitless power. The masses of religions preach the notion that God is to be found everywhere at all times and no thought or eventuality escapes His gaze. Superficially, this ideology is readily admissible but when theologians venture to expound their gifts of insight onto the subject, striving to explain the Divine Knowledge, the one immediate problem they tend to notice is the apparent conflict with freewill. This is because the concept of freewill indicates that every human is capable of altering the course of his life as he deems fit by exercising discretionary powers of judgment. If God is to possess all knowledge of all time, this discretion may not in actuality exist, since God would already know the direction a particular individual would be expected to take. If the individual’s future is already preconceived in God’s eternal knowledge, the individual’s course of action could simply be labeled predetermined, even though he in his own right may be employing the gift of freewill. This notion forms what has come to be known as the Problem of God’s Prescience. Boethius’s ideologies Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy sought to answer the very questions that formed the crux of the Problem. Firstly, it must be elucidated that incidents are historically conceived by philosophers to be of two kinds, necessary and contingent. God’s omniscience pertains to all knowledge that exists in the world, including the murkiest of thoughts that originate in a person’s mind. Hence, any thought, if formulated by a conscious course of judgment in a person’s mind, should be deemed contingent. It is contingent because it is not necessary for a person to think a certain thought, as his freewill allows him to develop a unique mindset, but if God already knows what his mindset would be, that contingent thought could become a necessary course of action for the person to take, as not taking that course of action would render God’s knowledge flawed. If it is assumed that God already knows the thought that is about to transpire, its contingency is made redundant. This, in essence, negates freewill and converts seemingly contingent occurrences into necessary occurrences since God already knows of their presence. As such, Boethius’ twin-prong ideologies regarding the problem emerge. His first limb identifies that God’s omniscience and perfection go hand in hand and can never be rebutted, signifying that whatever He foresees must necessarily happen. His second limb pertains to the possibility of a different course of action than the one already envisaged, for if it were to be true, then, there will be no such thing as certain foreknowledge and all forseeability would be reduced to merely uncertain opinion. In order to find harmony between God’s prescience and freewill, Boethius believed that both the aforementioned ideologies needed to be rejected in order to fall in sync with pre-set dogmas of religion and beliefs. According to him, following the above two would not only upset those dogmas, which promulgate God’s perfection in foreknowledge, but also remove any consequences of freewill that individuals could exercise and base their actions upon. Moreover, since any act if foreseen becomes necessary, an individual is likely not to associate any ethics with it. It would deem the regular traits associated with God needless and unfruitful, such as prayers and devotion to Him and fear of His reprisal. Before proposing a solution, Boethius was adamant in suggesting that the Problem of God’s Prescience does not only eradicate discretion of the individual but also hints at ensuing chaos. The Solution by Boethius Boethius set forth to solve the conflicts between three philosophies; “Only what is necessary is certain, Future contingent events are not certain, If someone knows something, he thereby knows it as something certain” (Boethius). Hence, God should not know contingent occurrences of the future, as knowing them and the fundamental philosophy of future contingent events are not certain contradict each other. Saying that God’s faultless foreknowledge makes the events certain would again be a fallacy. How may this be so? Boethius proposes a possible link between the differing cognitions of knowers. What Boethius suggests is that there are various levels of cognition, and the same differs vastly between humans and God. Where our perception falls short is in comprehending that limitations do not apply to other entities or perceivers, especially not those with divine characteristics. As such, cognition is entirely dependant upon the knower, and as expansive the knowledge of the knower, the more the difference in cognition. It follows that the determination of events as necessary and conditional would be based more so on the perceiver than the individual partaking in the event. Thus, all perceptive sensors come into play to form each cognizer’s own object regarding the perception. Similar to how other types of cognition, such as senses and imagination, have their own central object (bodily things and images respectively), every cognizer had an associated object. God’s object of perception was different to that of humans, who were subjected to limitations. His prowess as the master of eternity did not just mark the expansiveness of his regime but also hinted at his divine object, seems as His knowledge completely transcends time and reaches the corner most realms of the past, present and the future. Thus, what is being argued here is that we, the human perceivers tend to reduce God’s knowledge to that of our own since the natural knowledge of the perceiver is what drives him to conceive an object. Those events which we deem as necessary are certain to happen in the present, but since God’s omniscience allows Him to perceive the entire length of time as present, including the future, to Him the future becomes a necessary event. Thus, all contingent events of the future are allowed to be that way even though in God’s divine knowledge, He knows of their occurrence. They become both necessary because of God’s divine foreknowledge of them and discretionary because of the element of freewill at the same time. Boethius’s solution therefore divides the necessary occurrences into two further sub-entities, simple and conditional. Simple necessities pertain to those events which are virtually unalterable in the future, such as the earth’s rotation about its axis. Conditional necessities are those that are not simply necessary. An example is that of Sandra walking to work on Tuesday, which becomes necessary if Sandra is walking to work on Tuesday, or if someone observes her doing so, but is not a simply necessary occurrence in itself. Boethius has presented this duality of necessary eventualities as the solution of the Problem of God’s Prescience, an ideology that stems from Aristotelian times. Aristotle simply philosophized that what is present has to be necessary but two simultaneous synchronic possibilities may not co-exist. Hence, It is noon and I am drinking milk cannot also be rephrased as It is noon and I might be drinking tea as that forges an alternative synchronic possibility, which is disallowed by Aristotelian philosophy. The present is simply necessary which renders it irreplaceable by any other possibility for that point in time. Following on, in God’s divine cognizance, the future is also present, and thus forms a conditional necessity in so much as God’s prescience makes it necessary where as human input renders it conditional. This solution allows free will to operate just as proficiently as designed by the Creator. Analysis and Conclusion The principle of cognition used by Boethius to embellish his philosophy provides a good answer to the Problem. The paradigm of necessity seemed unequivocally constrained in explaining the application of freewill against God’s divine knowledge and had to be further explicated with cognitive elements in order to reject the original two limbs of philosophy; of God’s limpid perfection of Foreknowledge and how His foreknowledge could not be different to what actually happens, thereby rendering his Foreknowledge a fallacy. The two had to be rejected in order to reconcile the divinity of God with His imposed tenet of freewill, and it was convincingly done by exacerbating the cognitive differences of all perceivers. The reason Boethius chose this line of argument, I believe, is in the expansiveness of its scope in terms of tendering viable justifications to the theologians. One example of an application of his solution could be in the field of perceived psychology. Psychiatrists often differ wildly in their versions of psychoanalysis even though their primary cognizance is based on the same course. It is their altered cognition of a particular symptom that generates varying outcomes in terms of therapeutic medications. Philosophy is no different. It bases its existence on differences of thought, delving into the realms of the unknown with as much cognitive variances as their respective thinkers could muster. If such a degree of variation exists in cognizance amongst worldly entities, it is readily admissible that our Creator in all His divinity possesses cognitive traits on an entirely different scale. Boethius is therefore highly plausible in his theories, since he carefully circumvented all that was inexplicable about the problem and by appealing to cognition, highlighting the obvious disparity in perception between divine and non divine entities, was able to consolidate the principles of free will in line with the sovereignty of God. The most immediate objection to this philosophy rears itself in the shape of uncertainty in thought, as it breaks down an existing phenomenon of necessary events into further branches in order to satisfy the notion of God’s Prescience, which may otherwise not have any explanation. However, the answer to that is well illustrated by the philosophy itself, seems as the cognitive elements between divine perceivers and non divine perceivers would necessarily differ. The philosophy specifically mentions that each perceiver has its own object according to the knowledge it possesses, and it is only pertinent to say that humans fall vastly short in accumulated knowledge than that of the Creator, and hence have to devise new avenues of interpretations. Read More