No Easy Way Out: A Response to WarfieldAuthor(s): William HaskerSource: Noûs, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Sep., 1998), pp. 361-363Published by: WileyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2671938 .

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NOUS 32:3 (1998) 361-363

No Easy Way Out: A Response to Warfield

WILLIAM HASKER

Huntington College

Ted A. Warfield has claimed to show that divine foreknowledge and human free- dom are compatible.1 His argument shows nothing of the sort. It does, however, establish a weaker conclusion that is of some interest, and may possibly have been confused with the one he claims to have proved.

Specifically, Warfield claims to show that

(1) God exists in all possible worlds and is omniscient in all possible worlds2

is logically consistent with humans possessing libertarian free will. He points out that nearly everyone now accepts that the problem of logical fatalism has been solved, so that

(2) Plantinga will freely climb Mount Rushmore in 2000 AD

is consistent with

(3) It was true in 50 AD that Plantinga will [freely] climb Mount Rushmore in 2000 AD.

But, Warfield points out, given (1), (3) is logically equivalent to

(5) God knew in 50 AD that Plantinga will [freely] climb Mount Rushmore in 2000 AD.

So if (as nearly everyone agrees) (2) and (3) are logically consistent, so are (2) and (5), and "This generalizes trivially to [the] claim that God's necessary exis- tence and necessary omniscience are compatible with human freedom" (p. 82).

Warfield' s argument, though fairly brief, is still more complex than it needs to be. In particular, his reference to the problem of logical fatalism is completely

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362 NOUS

superfluous. It is clear that Warfield assumes (1) to be true. (Otherwise he couldn't show the equivalence of (3) and (5) see pp. 83-84.) He also assumes that (2) is logically possible; otherwise it couldn't be consistent with (3). But now consider the following, which I will term Argument F:

(1) God exists in all possible worlds and is omniscient in all possible worlds. (9) It is logically possible that humans have libertarian freedom.

(10) Therefore, divine foreknowledge and human freedom are compatible.

Evidently, the argument is valid: what is true in some possible world must be compatible with what is true in every possible world. (In symbols, ([p & Oq) -<

O(p & q).) So Argument F does everything Warfield's original argument does, with somewhat greater economy.

Does Argument F establish that free will and foreknowledge are compatible? Certainly not. What it does establish is that they are compatible if (1) and (9) are both true. And this has a further interesting consequence: Anyone who believes the conjunction of (1) and (9) ought in consistency to believe (10) at least as strongly. This point may possess some modest explanatory value, over and above its intrinsic interest. It may help to explain, for instance, why a good many phi- losophers continue to be strongly convinced that (10) is true, even though they haven't (as I see it) produced any convincing answers to the arguments against it. It's possible, furthermore (but here I speak very tentatively), that Warfield may have confused this point, which his argument has in fact established, with the point he mistakenly claims to have established. That is: since he himself accepts both (1) and (9), he rightly concludes from this that he ought also to accept (10), and he may possibly have mistaken this for showing that (10) is true.

But Warfield has provided no support for either (1) or (9), so he hasn't estab- lished that (10) is true. Like other valid deductive arguments, this one can be run as modus tollens as well as modus ponens. And I believe that the arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and libertarian freedom, as pre- sented by Prior, Pike, Fischer, and me, do provide fairly strong reason for think- ing (10) false. Faced with such an argument, how might one respond? One possibility is to conclude that (1) is false, perhaps on the grounds that God pos- sesses this kind of foreknowledge in some possible worlds but not in others. (Maybe he has it only in worlds in which he has not created any persons with libertarian freedom.) Or, one might continue to affirm (1) but conclude that (9) is false; libertarian freedom is not metaphysically possible. This may seem surpris- ing, but the necessary existence of God means that quite a few things that seem otherwise possible become metaphysical impossibilities for example, the exis- tence of a universe containing overall more evil than good.3 (Because of this, arguments for the possibility of (9) that don't take account of (1) are, in this context, irrelevant.)

To be sure, one need not respond to the arguments like this. One might try to provide independent support for the premises of Argument F that would be strong

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363

enough to outweigh and defeat the arguments for theological incompatibilism. To do this, one would have to provide arguments for each of the following, with every one of these arguments being more forceful than the arguments for theo- logical incompatibilism:

a. God necessarily exists.4 b. God is essentially omniscient (in Warfield's sense). c. Human beings possess libertarian freedom.5

If this is Warfield's program, I wish him luck; he will need it! Or, of course, one could attempt to answer the arguments for theological

incompatibilism but that is just what Warfield wants to get us off from doing! Still, there are possibilities here: there is Ockham's Way Out, and Molina's Way Out, and Mavrodes' Way Out, and Zagzebski's Ways Out (several of them!), and doubtless others. And they all deserve to be considered carefully. But Warfield' s approach just won't work; there is no Easy Way Out.

Notes

1. Ted A. Warfield, "Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom Are Compatible," Nous 31:1 (1997), pp. 80-86. Page references in the text are to this article.

2. Warfield understands "God is omniscient" to mean that God knows all true propositions. I will accept this for the purposes of this discussion, but I don't think it is the right way to understand omniscience. Just as (by general consent) omnipotence should be understood as meaning that God can do anything it is logically possible for a perfect being to do, so omniscience should be understood as meaning that God knows everything it is logically possible for a perfect being to know.

3. This would not mean that those who have refuted logical fatalism were mistaken. Their achieve- ment consists in showing that one can't demonstrate an inconsistency between (2) and (3); the con- sistency of (2) with (1) is a different matter entirely.

4. Presumably this would require the creation of an ontological argument which is not only valid but effective (as Plantinga's version admittedly is not), in that we have compelling reasons for ac- cepting the truth of its premise(s).

5. But wouldn't it suffice to show that libertarian freedom is logically possible? In this context, no it wouldn't. Given (1), in order to show freedom is logically possible without showing it to be actual, one would have to establish that such freedom is compatible with God's necessary existence- which is precisely the point at issue. If however we could show that we actually possess free will, we could conclude that free will is possible without further ado.

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