Do God's Beliefs about the Future Depend on the Future?

Abstract

Trenton Merricks, among others, has recently championed in a series of papers what he takes to be a novel and simple solution to an age-old problem concerning the compatibility of divine omniscience and human freedom. The solution crucially involves the thesis that God’s beliefs about the future actions of human persons asymmetrically depend on the future actions of those persons. I show that Merricks’s defense of this thesis is inadequate and that the prospects for improving his defense of it would require him to enter the fray of articulating and defending a view about the mechanics whereby divine foreknowledge is achieved—something he and other advocates of the strategy he advances had hoped to avoid.