Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen

Institut für Philosophie

Seminar: Paradoxes in the Philosophy of Religion
Dr. Gregory Sax
WS 2016/17

Jonas Loidold
Am Sturzkopf 42
35578 Wetzlar
Jonas.Loidold@lehramt.uni-giessen.de
4048285

15.07.2018
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Necessity and Contingency 1
3. God's Properties 3
4. Free Acts 4
5. Free Acts and Moral Goodness 5
6. Free Acts and Omnipotence 7
7. Conclusion 8
 1. Introduction
Among the contentious properties ascribed to the Abrahamic God, His divine
foreknowledge (which follows from His omniscience) and the resulting necessitation
of all events at all points in time are in conflict with the notion of free will. While
usually, it is more prominently discussed what the implications of this circumstance
are for humans, they may also create conflicts between God's omniscience and other
properties ascribed to Him. Since God has to act at some points in time in order to
create the world and interact with humans, He must foreknow all of His own actions.
Therefore, if divine foreknowledge necessitates what is foreknown, and if this means
that no human has the power to refrain from acting in the way foreknown, God as
well must be unable to act in any other way than foreknown by Himself. What
follows from this may be that God is not able to act freely, that He is therefore unable
to be absolutely good (as opposed to performing only good deeds), and lastly, that He
possibly is not omnipotent.
This paper will examine these possible contradictions. For this purpose, the
differences between necessity and contingency will be examined, as well as the
requirements of divine foreknowledge. Furthermore, the requirements of being a
morally good being as opposed to performing good acts, as well as the properties of
omnipotence in the context of free action will be analyzed. These clarifications shall
then be used to answer the following questions: Can an omniscient being be
omnipotent, can it act freely, and is it able to be morally good?

2. Necessity and Contingency

Firstly, the difference between contingency and necessity in the context of
knowledge and belief should be clarified. Propositions are contingent if they are
neither true nor false, but will under certain circumstances be either one. However,
whichever truth-value the proposition has depends on the state of the world, meaning
that in every possible world a contingent can be true or false independent from its
truth-value in any other possible world. The ability to make a contingent proposition
results from observation of facts or the holding of beliefs at the point of making the
proposition. This point must be before the event that is described by the proposition

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occurs, as by that point in time, the contingent will stop being one. Instead, the
proposition will turn out to be a true or false statement. In contrast to this, a
necessary truth or falsehood is either true or false in every possible world. A
statement is necessarily true, if its content cannot be otherwise, not even partially.
Knowledge, therefore, must be necessarily true in the sense that it not being true is
opposed to it being knowledge as opposed to other states of mind. Equally,
foreknowledge, cannot be anything but true. Foreknowledge, as opposed to
contingent belief of future events which can turn out to be false, must therefore also
be necessarily true, and therefore infallible. Wherever foreknowledge of an event
exists, there are no more contingents involved in said future events, as their existence
implies the possibility of their truth-values being anything but true, as is determined
by the circumstance of knowledge of that event existing. By itself, foreknowledge
does not necessitate the truth-value of the future event, as it may result from gaining
the required knowledge of the future after it has already been causally determined
that the future cannot be otherwise. For example, an object O that cannot alter its
own movement could be moving through space at a certain pace with no other
objects in sufficiently high distance (i.e. some magnitudes of light-years), so that
nothing can reach O within the proposed time-frame. It is now possible to make the
necessarily true statement that O will have moved a certain distance within a time-
frame that is determined by O's speed. Of course, this example depends on the
necessity of the Newtonian laws being true which is a matter of debate, but for the
sake of this example, these laws are assumed to be necessarily true. As a result,
necessarily true foreknowledge is gained from knowing that this event being about to
happen without the knowledge of it happening necessitating it.
The existence of divine (as opposed to limited) foreknowledge, as would be
the case with omniscience, is not intuitively compatible with the concept of free will.
If someone foreknew the entirety of history at the beginning of time, their knowledge
would have to entail all future events before they occur. Therefore, whatever
contingent beliefs of the future exist at any point in time actually are not contingent
to begin with, as the truth-values of their objects have been determined by the fact
that these values are already known beforehand. This means that the notion of free

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will is in question, as it implies the existence of choice. If the causal determinism of
divine foreknowledge exists, every event necessitates all events that directly follow
it, and is necessitated by every previous event. This does not seem to necessarily be
the case, though, as foreknowledge of all events can also be interpreted as being
foreknown, because the foreknower knows all possible contingencies, and which
ones will lead to which event. This interpretation makes the question of how the
knowledge is attained more apparent, though, as knowledge can only be attained by
contingent inference, though due to the nature of knowledge, it becomes questionable
whether the term “contingent inference” can be appropriately used here, as it
includes a possibility of error or incompleteness. Additionally, the interpretation is
not compatible with the notion of omniscience which is demanded here.
Omniscience entails the knowledge of all truth-values; therefore, at any point at
which someone is omniscient, they have to have knowledge of all events in time,
meaning that again, no contingency can exist, as all truth-values are predetermined
by the necessarily true belief of the foreknower. This holds true regardless of whether
the foreknower is necessarily infallible or not, as at least in this regard, they must be
for their knowledge to be definitely true.

3. God's Properties
While the goal of this paper is to demonstrate incompatibilities within some of God's
properties, referring to Him raises the question of the reach of the paper's results, as
there are numerous interpretations and orthodoxies concerning the Abrahamic God.
Instead, only a selection of (possibly) necessary properties of God will be
investigated. If they are a part of one of the orthodoxies, potential contradictions will
apply. However, instead of referring to any specific interpretation of God, the object
of investigation in this paper will be a being G that exhibits certain properties that
can be ascribed to God, but is further left to be unspecific. Whatever G's necessary
properties entail must also be true in the case of God whenever the belief is held that
God has the same properties. It should be noted here, that it is irrelevant for this
paper whether one assumes that God does in fact exist, as what is investigated here
serves the purpose of clarifying what properties a being like God could theoretically

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exhibit rather than an attempt at proving or disproving His existence based on
possible inconsistencies within various religious orthodoxies.
The pivotal properties of G in this case are its divine foreknowledge,
infallibility, and a temporal and spacial existence. Omniscience, being the object of
investigation here, must be assumed in every argument, as possible contradictions
between it and other properties are to be discovered. Infallibility must follow from
omniscience, because divine foreknowledge cannot necessitate all events if there is a
margin of error, and if there is an error in knowledge, it cannot be considered to be
true, and therefore knowledge. Furthermore, if G is fallible, it can be argued that its
alleged omniscience is in fact the result of chance, as it could be that G incidentally
has accurate contingent beliefs of all things that can be known. In this case, its
omniscience would not be a necessary property, as a world can be imagined in which
the contingent beliefs are wrong instead. Lastly, G must exist in time and space, as
otherwise, G is not able to perform actions without being a part of causality, which is
required to exhibit any of the properties in question. There exists the interpretation of
God as being eternal and therefore outside of time, but this raises the question of how
God could then be a creator who created the world within a certain time-frame. As
G's involvement with causality is investigated here, G cannot be atemporal, and
therefore, atemporal interpretations of God are irrelevant in this case. The other
properties that are possibly exhibited by G are omnipotence, all-goodness, and free
will, but these can only be considered G's properties if they are compatible with its
omniscience and infallibility.

4. Free Acts
For an act to be free, it must be willed by its agent, and there must exist a possibility
of refraining from that act. This assumption is in opposition to causal determinism
that follows from the existence of divine foreknowledge, as an action that is
necessitated to be performed in a certain way cannot be performed in any other way.
Seeing as the conflict between free action and divine foreknowledge originates from
the lack of contingency, the aspect of will in this matter is of lesser concern,
especially since it is possible to want something without deliberately deciding to

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enter the state of mind of wanting something.

5. Free Acts and Moral Goodness

If G is to be morally good, G must be able to act freely, as the moral goodness of a
being is directly linked to its responsibility for its own actions. In order to measure
the moral goodness of an act in reference to the morality of the performer of the act,
the value of the act itself cannot alone be taken into consideration, as it would entail
that actions with different intend, but the same outcome, have to be considered of
equal value. This point is supported by the possibility of describing beings in terms
that refer back to their intentions when performing moral acts. In literary terms, an
antihero, for instance, is referred to as such, because despite the good moral value of
their actions, it is not their intention to be good. Their motivations may be opposed to
what is established as being morally good. This, in turn, cannot be considered
morally good, as otherwise, the alleged antihero would have to have been a hero to
begin with, as he would have willingly adhered to moral standards as opposed to his
own. This example sheds some light on the issue of moral relativism, since whether
someone can be the hero is dependent on the moral standards one has to adhere to
which are set by some figure of moral authority (society or family, for instance) or a
moral example (in Christian orthodoxy, it is God). However, seeing as G is supposed
to be absolutely morally good, the arguments of moral relativism seemingly cannot
be entertained. Otherwise, the question of whether an omniscient being can be
morally absolutely good can only be answered by “no” due to relativism's rejection
of this notion. Alternatively, a less demanding position would be to accept moral
relativism in so far as to assume that only within a group that shares moral values a
being may be perceived to exhibit absolute moral goodness.
Morality entails the existence of some forms of reward and punishment for
being good or evil. This is tied to the assumption that reward and punishment are
deserved. The terms “reward” and “punishment” in this case refer to a generic form
of positive or negative feedback respectively that can be exemplified in any form; the
reward for a good action can be as little as the felt satisfaction of believing that one's
actions are good. Both terms imply a connection between the intent of the being and

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its actions in relation to its understanding of what is good or evil and outside sources
of feedback of moral value (for example laws, or principles one adheres to). A being
can only perceive a reward for an action as deserved if it both holds the belief that
the act is in line with its own understanding of moral goodness, as well as its
perception of what the origin of the reward or punishment deems to be morally good;
both these sources of feedback may be identical. The important part of this relation is
that the desire to act in a way that can be morally evaluated stems from the
assumption that there are courses of action that hold different moral values. In order
for these other courses of action to exist, there must be future contingents that can be
referred to in order to understand what alternatives to the original course of action
exist. If that is not the case, there is no moral value to the act. Equally, reward and
punishment for an act can only be given if there is a possibility of abstention from
acting in only one predetermined way. Otherwise, the very notion of reward and
punishment is meaningless, as both create sets of realizable requirements that must
be fulfilled to warrant a respective result. If there is no possible alternative to acting
in exactly one way, these requirements are meaningless, as at most only one unique
set of requirements may be fulfilled at any given time. From this follows that without
the ability to refrain from acting in a certain way, a being cannot be a moral one.
Because of this, the possible objection that intent does not matter for the
identification of a moral being, as its morality is measured by its deeds fails to
provide a standard of moral goodness. Without referring to intention, actions can
have multiple different moral values independent from one another depending on
who interprets them. In that case, there can be no single answer to the question
whether something is morally good or evil, and it becomes impossible for a being to
be absolutely good save by chance that all interpretations of its actions happen to
judge its actions in the same way.
G must be able to act freely in order to be morally good. Without free will G's
goodness can only exist through good acts which is the closest G can get to moral
goodness, if it possesses divine foreknowledge. This means that if G's divine
foreknowledge is not compatible with human free acts, it is equally incompatible
with its own free acts. Without the ability to act freely, G can only perform good acts,

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but not be morally good. Additionally, if a divinely foreknown act cannot be
refrained from, there can be not justification to reward or punish that act. This means
that any instance which does reward or punish an act that could not be refrained from
does not act in accordance with any moral standards. Therefore, if G was free and
rewarded or punished humans for performing good or evil acts unfreely, G 's doing
so would be unjust.

6. Free Acts and Omnipotence

Omnipotence can be described as the ability to perform any task at any time. This
excludes self-contradictory ones such as drawing a triangle with eleven sides or
lifting a rock that necessarily cannot be lifted. One type of tasks G should therefore
be able to perform is bringing about a state of affairs in which a person A performs a
free action b that A otherwise would not have chosen to do. If A is free, only A can
decide to bring about a state of the world in which b is performed by A or refrain
from doing so. In this case, bringing about a state of the world in which b is
performed by A is a possible task meaning that the omnipotent being G must also be
able to bring about that state of the world as well. However, if G does so, A's act no
longer is b, as A is unfreely made to perform an act of only mostly identical qualities,
but not all of b's qualities. Therefore, the task of making A perform b cannot be a
possible task, as otherwise, G must be able to perform it. However, as A is in fact
able to perform b, G's omnipotence is not compatible with A's power to perform a
free act.
However, this is not sufficient to make G's own free will incompatible with
G's omnipotence, as G can make G freely bring about any state of the world in which
G performs some action. Instead, in order to demonstrate the contradiction between
G's omnipotence and G's divine foreknowledge, G has to be rendered non-
omnipotent by virtue of having divine foreknowledge. G can only act freely if there
are future contingencies to act upon. However, if G's divine foreknowledge is
infallible, it eliminates all but one contingency in order to be accurate. This means
that G cannot but act in accordance with its foreknowledge, and therefore is not able
to refrain from acting in the way G foreknew G would. To alter the future

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contingency upon which G acts would mean to render G's foreknowledge fallible, but
due to G's nature, that would be a contradiction.

7. Conclusion
xds

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