Friday, January 12, 2018

Open theism and "never" facts

Suppose a version of open theism on which facts about future free choices have non-trivial truth values which God doesn’t know. Then here is a disquieting feature of this open theism, given eternal life. It implies that there are truths that God never finds out.

For instance, even in an infinite future, there are free actions that I will never do, but which I will have an opportunity to do on infinitely many days. For instance, perhaps I will never sing Amazing Grace three minutes to midnight on a Tuesday, or drink wine at 7:12 am of a prime-numbered day (numbering, say, from the first day of eternal life), even though both of these are possible. Likely, I will never recite all of War and Peace in French, though I would be free to do so. But such “never” facts facts will always depend on future free actions. Thus, on the variety of open theism under discussion, God will never know these facts. He will always just know an increasing number of “never-yet” facts: Alex has never yet recited War and Peace in French, but maybe he will.

It seems harder to reconcile the existence of facts that God will never know with omniscience than the existence of facts that God does not yet know. If there are facts that God will never know, then there is an aspect of reality that is closed to God. That can’t be right.

It’s worse than that. On this version of open theism, not only are there truths that God never comes to know, but there are truths that God never comes to know but that he can know. Here is an example: Either today I don’t write a blog post or I never recite War and Peace in French (assuming that I won’t recite it). Since God will always know that I do write a blog post today, he won’t know this disjunction, or else he’d be able to figure out from it that I will never recite War and Peace in French. (Cf. this paper.)

This is an uncomfortable position.

2 comments:

  1. This reminds me of the pebble that God promises never to lift.
    Such discomfort seems like a small price to pay for genuine freedom.

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  2. Dr Pruss

    "even in an infinite future, there are free actions that I will never do, but which I will have an opportunity to do on infinitely many days."
    Are you sure this is true?
    Assuming that an infinite future will consist of infinitely many days, then what would be the reason why you wouldn't do all the things you are capable of?
    Why is it likely that you will never recite all of War and Peace" in French? Is there something in your nature that makes it likely? If so, is it still really a free choice?

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