OCR ↗︎
Philosophy ↗︎
Question preparation ↓

AO1: God as timeless (eternal)

• God as timeless is the view that God is atemporal, existing outside of time.
• Philosophers like Anselm argue this follows from God’s status as the greatest conceivable being, or simply from his omnipotence.
• To exist within time would limit or confine God to being within time.
• A perfect being would be unchanging, yet temporal beings are subject to change.
• Timelessness is also thought to follow from God as creator of time. If God created time, God cannot himself exist within it.
• An eternal God would not perceive time unfolding moment by moment like temporal beings do.
• Instead, God apprehends all of time at once, in the ‘eternal present’.
• This is expressed through the distinction between temporal (T-) and eternal (E-) simultaneity. 
• Events may be temporally successive, but all events are eternally simultaneous with God. 
• Thus, God is E-simultaneous with every event, even if those events are not simultaneous within time.

AO1: God as within time (everlasting)

• Everlasting is the view that God is a temporal being, existing within time.
• Unlike other temporal beings, however, God is sempiturnal: God has no beginning or end, but exists at every moment in time. 
• God is therefore necessary in existence, but not timeless.
• Swinburne argues that this view better explains God’s interaction with the world. 
• If God exists in time, it is easier to understand how God can respond to prayers, perform miracles, and act within temporal sequences.
• It also allows God to have knowledge of tensed propositions, such as what is happening ‘now’, which a timeless being may struggle to account for.
• An everlasting God experiences time as a succession of moments, with changing relations to events as they occur.

AO1: God as omnipotent

• Voluntarism is the view that things depend on God’s will rather than any separate order. Descartes extends this even to logical and mathematical truths. 
• He therefore understands omnipotence as the power to do everything, even apparent ‘non-things’ such as the logically impossible. 
• Descartes illustrates this by claiming that God could have made it false that 4+4=8. 
• Such truths still appear absolutely necessary to human reason, since we cannot conceive them otherwise. 
• This has been interpreted in two ways: either logical truths are contingent on God’s will, or they remain necessary for human reason while still being grounded in God in a way that exceeds human understanding.

   

• Aquinas represents the mainstream view, that omnipotence is the power to bring about any logically possible state of affairs.
• He illustrates that God cannot create something which both exists and does not exist.
• Aquinas insists this is not a limitation or defect in God’s power. 
• Logically impossible “things”, such as four-sided triangles, are not real possibilities at all, but lack the nature of a ‘feasible thing’.

   

• The self-limitation view agrees that God can only do the logically possible, and that God refrains from acts injurious to his plan for humanity (those that would destroy human free will or the physical order of the universe).
• It diverges from Aquinas regarding the mechanism involved in God’s non-exercise of power in such cases.
• For Aquinas, it’s an atemporal necessary expression of God’s perfect nature.
• Self-limitation theorists typically reject Aquinas’ account of God’s will as atemporal and necessary, holding instead that God is everlasting (Polkinghorne), or fully temporal (Moltmann).
• God’s non-exercise of power cannot then be regarded as a necessity from eternity, but a temporal and contingent decision of restraint.

AO2: The in/coherence of Voluntarism about omnipotence

• Descartes’ argument for voluntarism about omnipotence is that God created everything, including logic.
• Nothing can exist which does not depend on God, because of God’s “immensity”.
• Logical impossibility is a limitation for humans and the universe, but not for God.
• Logical impossibilities are inconceivable, but we should not assume our imagination marks the limit of God’s power.

Counter

• Descartes is criticised for misunderstanding logic as a created thing which could be otherwise.
• Logical laws are not contingent features of creation, like natural beings or physical laws.
• They are necessary truths; if they could be otherwise, they would cease to be what they are.
• So, to claim that God can make the logically impossible possible is self-defeating, because it dissolves the very distinction the claim depends on.

Evaluation

• Descartes begins from a powerful premise, yet the conclusion he draws from it is paradoxical.
• He’s right that separating logical necessity from God’s will implies God is not the source of all.
• However, Aquinas’ proposal absorbs this premise while also avoiding Descartes’ paradoxical conclusion.
• He proposes that logical truths are necessary features of God’s eternal intellect, the source of all being and intelligibility.
• This synthesis allows logic to be uncreated, but not independent of God.
• It avoids both the paradox of treating logical necessity as contingent on God’s will, as though necessary truths could have been otherwise, and the opposite paradox of treating logic as independent of God, as though it lay beyond his intellect and control.
• Logical truths cannot be otherwise, since God is perfect and unchangeable. 
• God cannot change logic, but that’s because he cannot change himself.
• That’s no more a limitation than God’s inability to cease to be necessary. 
• This shows that logic can depend on God without being created and changeable, avoiding paradox and the resort to the pseudo-explanation of divine mystery.

AO2: The validity of Aquinas’ ‘perfection’ grounding

• Aquinas argues that God’s attributes must be understood as a function of God’s perfection.
• He follows Augustinian privatio boni, claiming that imperfect actions reflect an absence of power.
• They are symptoms of defects rather than positive abilities.
• E.g., sin is an absence of self-control which implies weakness, not strength.
• Once we understand omnipotence as the power of a perfect being, it’s coherent that God cannot do those actions which reflect imperfection and thus weakness.

Counter

• Mackie counters that evil can be a positive expression of agency, not merely defect. 
• Choosing evil isn’t always giving in to temptation; it can involve positive intentional traits like courage.
• When evil is premeditated, it can involve intelligence, creativity and strategy.
• On this view, God cannot be restricted only to rational and good actions without incoherently casting divine autonomy as less than human autonomy.

Evaluation

• However, we can defend Aquinas.
• Positive abilities like intelligence are only instrumentally engaged in the execution of an evil action once the will has already been distorted by privation.
• Privation remains the foundational root of the action.
• This is where Mackie’s account becomes superficial. 
• Mackie measures power by the range of actions a person can perform, but this overlooks whether those actions arise from self-control or from temptation and weakness.
• This points us to the deeper question of the relation between power and agency.
• Power to do what one wants is not complete unless it includes power over one’s wants, i.e., over oneself.
• So, power is only complete where agency is complete, i.e. where there is rational self-government.
• Since sinful action reflects defective self-control, it is not an ability or an ‘extra power’ at all.
• Divine inability to sin is therefore not a lack of power, but the absence of defect in the divine will, and so is not just compatible with but defining of omnipotence.

AO2: Self-limitation, Time & Theistic Personalism

• Classical theists reject divine self-limitation.
• They follow Aristotle: perfection is pure actuality, with no unrealised potential.
• This entails immutability and atemporality, since time measures change.
• God’s actions eternally express God’s unchanging nature.
• This prohibits contingent changes in divine will involved in self-limitation.

Counter

• However, Aristotelian immutability risks making God like the prime mover: too static and detached for loving relationship.
• Aquinas’ God is metaphysically pure, shielded from influence by imperfect creation.
• But asymmetric causality prohibits genuine interaction, risking confllict with omnibenevolence: God incarnate accepted suffering and death through self-giving love.
• Swinburne concludes perfection in love requires responsiveness, so God self-limits by relating to creation sempiternally.
• God then temporally decides not to overpower creaturely freedom or natural laws.
• This restraint is not an eternal necessity of divine nature as classically supposed, but a contingent choice of self-limitation.

Evaluation

• However, we can defend the classical view: 
• Humans change in relation to an eternal God through prayer, repentance, sin, and grace.
• This is not superficial change merely in human minds, with God unresponsive.
• God does respond; but eternally:
• Creation is providentially ordered so human actions like prayer genuinely cause divinely intended effects.
• Prayer does not change God’s will, but secures what God eternally willed to give through prayer.
• Likewise, obedience and repentance are not merely subjective changes: God eternally responds to them with real effects such as grace, forgiveness, or deeper union.
• Whereas sin disorders our relation to God through the defective exercise of free will.
• The same applies to the incarnation, as the temporal expression of God’s eternal self-giving love.
• So omnibenevolence does not require sempiternal self-limitation.
• God’s restraint to enable freedom and order therefore need not be contingent temporal self-limitation, but the eternal expression of wisdom.
• These goods can be preserved without God surrendering immutability or atemporality.
• So, the classical argument still stands.

AO2: The paradox of the stone

• Mackie’s omnipotence paradox asks whether God can create a stone so heavy that God cannot lift it.
• If God can create the stone, then there is something he cannot do, namely lift it. If he cannot create it, then there is something he cannot do, namely create it. Either way, there seems to be at least one thing God cannot do. 
• The idea of an omnipotent being as one able to do absolutely anything therefore seems nonsensical.

Counter

• However, Christian philosophers usually refine the concept of omnipotence beyond the crude claim that God can do literally anything.
• Descartes’ definition does not face the problem, because if God can do the logically impossible then God can both create the stone and lift it. 
• Aquinas’ definition is defended by Mavrodes, who argues that the stone is not a genuine possible object. 
• It is not merely a very heavy stone, but a stone too heavy for an omnipotent being to lift, which is contradictory because such a being could lift any stone.. 
• So Aquinas can say that God cannot create it for the same reason that God cannot create a square circle. 
• Self-limitation views can also reject the paradox, since they share Aquinas’ premise that contradictions are not genuine tasks.

Evaluation

• Mavrodes is sometimes criticised for begging the question, since he seems to assume an Aquinas-style definition of omnipotence in order to dismiss the stone as impossible. 
• However, this objection is limited. 
• He need not prove Aquinas’ definition true from scratch, only show that Mackie has failed to make it paradoxical on its own terms. 
• More broadly, Mackie’s paradox is not decisive against omnipotence as such, because the main accounts can all survive it in different ways: Descartes accepts the contradiction, while Aquinas and self-limitation views deny that the task is genuinely possible. 
• So the stone paradox does not refute any of the more sophisticated accounts of omnipotence.

AO1: God as omniscient

• Omniscience means all-knowing. 
• Philosophically, truth is generally considered a necessary condition of knowledge. 
• So we can define omniscience like so:
• S is omniscient if for every true proposition p, if p is true then S knows p.
• Omniscience also involves the impossibility of being mistaken. So, God knows all true propositions infallibly
• Aquinas’ analogy: God has direct awareness of everything, analogous to the way we have direct awareness of our perceptions. He calls this God’s ‘knowledge of vision’. This is just meant to be an analogy, ultimately omniscience is beyond our comprehension.
• Aquinas thinks God knows propositions and concepts, but only because he knows all things by knowing himself as their cause.
• I.e., God perfectly knows the essence of our power of intelligence, such that God knows every thought, concept or proposition that could possibly be formed by it.
• God’s knowledge is therefore non-discursive and immediate, rather than dependent on inference from propositions as in human knowledge.
• God’s knowledge functions through infallible direct awareness.

AO1: Boethius

• Boethius identifies an apparent conflict between divine omniscience and human free will.
• If God knows everything, that seems to include future human actions.
• Since God cannot be wrong, then we cannot do anything other than what God knows us to do, which destroys free will.
• This also creates a problem for divine justice and omnibenevolence: if humans lack free will, it seems unfair for God to punish sin.
• Boethius’ solution appeals to divine eternity.
• He defines eternity as the “simultaneously whole and perfect possession of interminable life.”
• God is outside time and does not experience events unfolding moment by moment as we do.
• Instead, God sees all of time at once in one eternal present as if from a ‘lofty peak’.
• So God does not “foresee” future choices before they occur; he eternally apprehends them as present.
• This allows the solution that God eternally knows the results of our free choices, without forcing or determining them.
• This shapes Boethius’ account of divine action.
• God does not move in and out of time, making new decisions or interventions.
• What appears to us as a new divine action, such as answering prayer or performing a miracle, is the temporal effect of God’s eternal will.
• God acts eternally, while we experience the results of that action within time.
• So God’s knowledge and action are eternal, but human choices and divine effects are experienced temporally.

AO2: Whether divine eternity coherently resolves foreknowledge

• The appeal to divine eternity to explain foreknowledge is criticised as paradoxical. 
• Even if God’s eternal apprehension does not determine our actions, it still seems to make them necessary:
• If God cannot be wrong and knows I choose X, I cannot be free to choose Y. 
• So, eternal knowledge of future free choices appears incoherent, since they could not be otherwise nor therefore free.

Counter

• Boethius responds that foreknowledge entails a special type of necessity which doesn’t undermine free will but depends on it.
• ‘Conditional’ necessity is when something is made necessary by free choice.
• He illustrates by imagining seeing someone walking.
• It’s necessary that they are walking, but they could have chosen not to walk, in which case it would not have become necessary.
• Anselm refines this with the notion of ‘following from’ necessity; actions are necessary because they happen, they don’t happen because they are necessary.

Evaluation

• This defence works by exploiting an underdevelopment in the criticism.
• The critic admits that God’s omniscience does not force our action, but insists it still entails that our action is set in stone.
• This leaves something unexplained: what sets it in stone?
• Boethius and Anselm answer by distinguishing the source of conditional necessity from an event’s source
• Presentness grants conditional necessity to events occurring in it (e.g., someone walking), since what is happening must be happening while it happens.
• This applies whether an event arises in the temporal present or is eternally present to God.
• Yet what explains why events occur depends wholly on their cause.
• For free actions, that explanation is the agent’s free will.
• God’s knowledge does entail that our future actions are set in stone, but it is not what sets them in stone.
• Their necessity is not externally imposed but follows from the agent’s free exercise of will.

AO1: Anselm’s four dimensionalism

• Anselm develops Boethius’ view of divine eternity to explain more clearly how an eternal God can know and act upon temporal events.
• Boethius’ image of God viewing all time from outside can suggest distance from time.
• Anselm avoids this while still denying that God is inside time, since a temporal God would be confined by succession and therefore limited.
• So Anselm concludes that God is not in time; rather, all of time is in God.
• This can be understood through four-dimensionalism: the view that objects and events extend through time as well as space.
• Just as physical objects occupy three-dimensional space, their lives and movements extend through the fourth dimension of time.
• Anselm then treats divine eternity as a still higher reality.
• All three-dimensional space is contained within moments of four-dimensional time, and all moments of time are contained within the one eternal present of God.
• This means God does not merely observe time from a distance.
• God is eternally present with every temporal event because all of time exists within divine eternity.
• So God knows future actions not by prediction, but by being eternally present with them.
• It also explains divine action: God’s eternal power can operate on particular moments because those moments exist within God’s eternal present.
• Anselm therefore strengthens Boethius by making eternity not merely a perspective on time, but the higher reality within which time is contained.

AO2: The coherence of an eternal present

• Kenny argues that the eternal view of God is incoherent because temporal events are not all happening in one moment.
• Some events necessarily happen before others, e.g., my parents’ births before mine.
• So if God sees all events in one eternal present, he seems to see them incorrectly which threatens omniscience.

Counter

• However, Kenny’s objection bites hardest against the crude Boethian picture where God just ‘looks down’ on all times, seeing everything as if simultaneous.
• Anselm refines this by recasting eternity from mere divine viewpoint into an ontologically distinct dimension where everything really is eternally simultaneous.
• Katherine Rogers interprets Anselm as thinking eternity is “a kind of 5th dimension”.
• All three-dimensional space is contained in four-dimensional moments of time, and all those moments are contained within one moment in eternity.
• Within time, my birth and my parents’ births are temporally non-simultaneous.
• Yet those same events always happen at once in eternity (e-simultaneity).
• This grounds e-simultaneity in reality rather than merely in God’s perspective.
• God is not seeing events incorrectly, because all temporal events do in fact happen at once within the higher dimension of eternity.

Evaluation

• So, Anselm’s use of dimensions gives him the resources to answer Kenny.
• Critics might still press that my birth and my parents’ births cannot both be simultaneous and non-simultaneous.
• However, this assumes the same relation is being predicated in the same respect.
• The same event can have different relational properties depending on which dimension we consider it from.
• Within the fourth dimension of time, my birth is after my parents’ births.
• Within eternity, those same events are all present together.
• So the contradiction dissolves: t-non-simultaneity and e-simultaneity are not contradictory, but different relations applying in different frames of reality.
• This is because within time events begin and end, while in eternity those same events, and all events, always happen.

AO1: Swinburne

• Swinburne rejects the timeless view of God, arguing that an eternal God would be too static and “lifeless” for genuine loving relationship.
• Relationships require two-way interaction, response, and communication, so God must be everlasting: existing through all time without beginning or end.
• This also explains divine action in time.
• Unlike Boethius or Anselm, Swinburne thinks God can act through temporal sequence, responding to prayer, performing miracles, and making contingent decisions as history unfolds.
• This makes God’s relationship with humans more personal, because God actively engages with creatures within time rather than eternally willing all events from outside time.
• To preserve free will, Swinburne argues that God accepts cognitive self-limitation.
• God knows all past and present events, and any future events that are physically determined.
• This is cognitive in outcome, since it limits foreknowledge.
• However, it is metaphysical in basis, since the world God chose to create is one where future free choices are not yet settled facts, and therefore cannot be infallibly known.
• So God’s knowledge of future free actions is limited to probabilistic prediction rather than certainty.
• This does not undermine omniscience, because omniscience means knowing everything logically possible to know.

AO2: eternal vs everlasting on the bible and foreknowledge

• The Bible seems to support the eternal view because God and Jesus know future human actions with certainty:
• Jesus’ knowledge that Judas would betray him and that Peter would deny him three times before the cockerel crowed. 

Counter

• Swinburne rejects this and argues that God is everlasting rather than eternal. 
• On his view, genuine free choices cannot be known with infallible certainty before they occur, because that would destroy freedom.
• He draws the analogy that God knows us as a parent knows a child, allowing probabilistic judgement but not certainty.
• So God’s knowledge of future free choices is self-limited to inductive prediction rather than infallible awareness.

Evaluation

• Swinburne’s account struggles because biblical foreknowledge is presented as certain, not probabilistic.
• He thinks we are forced into this interpretation because infallible foreknowledge would undermine free will if it functioned as prediction prior to the action.
• However, Boethius and Anselm show there is another way to preserve certainty, avoiding both Swinburne’s philosophical critique and his strained biblical interpretation.
• For them, God’s knowledge is not ‘prior’ to future actions but eternally present with them, so it is technically not ‘fore’-knowledge at all.
• Crucially, this makes God’s knowledge logically dependent on our free choices:
• God knows what we will do only because, in eternity, he apprehends what we always do.
• Interestingly, both views concede that creating free creatures requires some concession in how omniscience is understood.
• Boethius and Anselm preserve certainty by making God’s knowledge logically dependent on those choices.
• Swinburne’s account is less convincing because it makes the larger concession by limiting God’s certainty about future free choices.
• A perfect God would not gratuitously surrender more omniscience than the good of freedom requires.

AO1: God as supremely good (omnibenevolent)

• Omnibenevolence is the idea that God is perfectly good.
• One aspect is metaphysical, that goodness is identified with perfection.
• So, to say God is omnibenevolent is to say something about God’s metaphysical status; that God is a supremely perfect being.
• Another aspect is moral, where perfectly good means that the will (intention) is always in alignment with what is morally good.
• Plato & Augustine connect these two senses of goodness. 
• They argue evil, or immorality has no ‘positive’ existence in itself, it is simply a lack of goodness ‘privatio boni’. Augustine illustrated with blindness which is not a thing, but simply the absence of sight.
• God’s moral perfection is bound up with his metaphysically perfect status: 
• God’s will always aligns with what’s good (God is perfectly moral) because God is metaphysically perfect.
• Christian theology typically holds that God’s omnibenevolence means God is both the source of and standard for moral value and rightness.

AO2: The Euthyphro dilemma vs Divine command theory

• Omnibenevolence defines God as the source of perfect moral goodness.
• The Euthyphro dilemma challenges this by asking: is what God commands good because it is already good, or is it good because God commands it?
• The first horn implies that goodness is independent of God, so God is not its ultimate source.
• The second implies morality is arbitrary, since God could in principle command murder or cruelty and thereby make them good.

Counter

• Some thinkers, such as W. L. Craig, are willing to accept the second horn, arguing that if God commanded something like genocide, it would be right because God commanded it.
• However, a stronger response is to argue that the dilemma is false, because it misses a third option: what God commands is good because it reflects God’s omnibenevolent nature.
• This avoids both arbitrariness and goodness being external to God.
• It avoids reducing goodness to whatever God happens to command, which risks making “God is good” collapse into empty tautology.

Evaluation

• We can press the Euthyphro as a deeper challenge about what could finally ground goodness at all.
• Appealing to God’s nature may only relocate the danger of explanatory emptiness, so the question just becomes what makes God’s nature good?
• However, thomistic metaphysics can answer this:
• For Aquinas, being and goodness are convertible, so whatever has being is good insofar as it has actuality and perfection rather than defect or privation. 
• Since God is pure actuality, lacking all defect or unrealised potential, God’s nature is the fullest possible being and can therefore function as the explanatory terminus of goodness.
• Since the Euthyphro aims to show that omnibenevolence is incoherent, the logical possibility of Aquinas’ account is sufficient to defeat it: God’s nature could function as the explanatory terminus of goodness through his wider metaphysics of being and perfection.

Logical problem of evil paragraph – relevant to general questions, omnibenevolence questions (and technically omnipotence too).

Question preparation

Revision paragraphs:

AO1: God as timeless (eternal)
AO1: God as within time (everlasting)
AO1: God as omnipotent
AO2: The in/coherence of Voluntarism about omnipotence
AO2: The validity of Aquinas’ ‘perfection’ grounding
AO2: Self-limitation, Time & Theistic Personalism
AO2: The paradox of the stone
AO1: God as omniscient
AO1: Boethius
AO2: Whether divine eternity coherently resolves foreknowledge
AO1: Anselm’s four dimensionalism
AO2: The coherence of an eternal present
AO1: Swinburne
AO2: eternal vs everlasting on the bible and foreknowledge
AO1: God as supremely good (omnibenevolent)
AO2: The Euthyphro dilemma vs Divine command theory
AO2: The logical problem of evil (vs Augustine or Hick)

Question types:

Questions on God’s relationship to time:

Evaluate whether God is best understood as atemporal (eternal) [40]

• AO1: God as timeless (eternal)
• AO1: Anselm’s four dimensionalism
• AO2: The coherence of an eternal present
• AO1: Swinburne
• AO2: eternal vs everlasting on the bible and foreknowledge
• AO2: Self-limitation, Time & Theistic Personalism

Omnipotence questions, whether it is:

• Logically coherent
• Defined as the ability to do the logically impossible (Descartes’ view)
• Defined by self-limitation 
• Subject to the limits of logical possibility

“God’s power is not subject to the limits of logical possibility” – Discuss [40]
Focused question: on Descartes’ view of omnipotence

• AO1: God as omnipotent (focused on Descartes’ view)
• AO2: The paradox of the stone
  
  • This features Descartes, though ultimately concludes other definitions can resolve the paradox just as well as he can.
• AO2: The in/coherence of Voluntarism about omnipotence
  
  • This attacks Descartes directly
• Either:
• AO2: The validity of Aquinas’ ‘perfection’ grounding
  
  • This would work best, because you can frame it as Aquinas’ view that omnipotence must be understood through perfection rather than through voluntarism – which sets him against Descartes, enabling question focus.
• Or:
• AO2: Self-limitation, Time & Theistic Personalism
  
  • This paragraph debates the self-limitation view vs Aquinas’ view – but you can frame both as ideas Descartes would reject. But since we’ve shown Descartes wrong, the question is which alternative succeeds where he fails and shows where he went wrong.

Omnibenevolence questions:

Can God coherently be omnibenevolent? [40]
Focused Q: AO is for explaining omnibenevolence

• AO1: God as supremely good (omnibenevolent) (Full AO1).
  • These sections are relevant to omnibenevolence:
• AO2: The Euthyphro dilemma vs Divine command theory
  • This explicitly targets omnibenevolence
• AO1: Boethius (minimal AO1 – just to explain the link to the issue for omnibenevolence/justice of God’s punishing us in an afterlife if omniscience has undermined free will – and briefly his solution that God is eternal)
• AO2: Self-limitation, Time & Theistic Personalism
  • This involves Swinburne’s argument that God’s omnibenevolence (esp. loving relationship) can be shown coherent – but only through an everlasting temporal God. Then the classical view of Anselm and Aquinas would object that the coherence of omnibenevolence can be secured by an eternal God.
• Then either:
• AO2: Whether divine eternity coherently resolves foreknowledge
  • This serves to evaluate whether Boethius and Anselm’s approach secured the coherence of omnibenevolence by resolving the free will / omniscience issue.
  • This can work, but the link to omnibenevolence has to be sustained which is a challenge.
• Or:
• AO2: The logical problem of evil (vs Augustine or Hick)
  • This would be slightly better – since it focuses on omnibenevolence more explicitly.

Omniscience questions:

“An omniscient God cannot exist” – Discuss [40]

• AO1: God as omniscient (full AO1)
• AO1: Boethius (moderate AO1)
  • Setting up the foreknowledge issue and Boethius’ resolution to it
• AO2: Whether divine eternity coherently resolves foreknowledge
  • Evaluating Boethius’ & Anselm’s resolution
• AO2: The coherence of an eternal present
  • Evaluating Boethius & Anselm’s resolution further
• AO1: Swinburne (minimal AO1).
  • Highlighting his alterate resolution to defend omniscience through self-limitation
• AO2: eternal vs everlasting on the bible and foreknowledge
  • Debating the theological coherence of Swinburne vs the Boethian defense of omniscience.

Scholar focused questions could be on:

• Boethius 
• Anselm
• Swinburne

Note that these scholars are debating, and could therefore have questions focused on, and be used to answer any more general question on, the following:

• The problems of: 
• Divine knowledge.
• Benevolence.
• Justice.
• eternity.
• human free will.

“Does Anselm solve the problem of divine justice” [40]
Focused Q: on Anselm’s solution to the foreknowledge & justice issue

• AO1: Boethius (minimal AO1)
  • Explain that Boethius identified the problem – that omniscience conflicts with free will, and lack of free will conflicts with omnibenevolence and divine justice if God punishes us in an afterlife when we had no free will to do otherwise than what we did.
• AO1: Anselm’s four dimensionalism (moderate AO1 – focusing on his improvement on Boethius’ theory)
• AO2: Whether divine eternity coherently resolves foreknowledge
  
  • Boethius and Anselm’s defense of their solution to the problem of omniscience and divine justice feature here.
• AO2: The coherence of an eternal present
  
  • Here Kenny attacks the coherence of the eternal view of God – which Anselm’s solution to the problem of divine justice and omniscience depends on
• AO1: Swinburne (minimal AO1 – just to explain how he would reject Anselm and take a contrary view to how the problem should be resolved.
• AO2: eternal vs everlasting on the bible and foreknowledge
  
  • This is Swinburne vs Boethius/Anselm on this issue

Critically assess Swinburne’s account of human free will [40]
Focused Q: on Swinburne’s account of human free will

• AO1: Swinburne (full AO1)
• AO2: Self-limitation, Time & Theistic Personalism
  • Debates Swinburne’s view that free will requires God’s self-limitation of omniscience and becoming temporal – everlasting.
• AO2: eternal vs everlasting on the bible and foreknowledge
  • At this point you could use one of the paragraphs which evaluates the coherence of the opposing view – that human free will is comparable with God’s foreknowledge due to God’s eternity:
• Either:
• AO2: Whether divine eternity coherently resolves foreknowledge
  • Swinburne would make this criticism of the eternal view – though arguably conditional / following from necessity solves it
• Or:
• AO2: The coherence of an eternal present
  • Kenny makes this criticism – and it backs up Swinburne’s account.

Does Anselm’s four-dimensionalist approach adequately explain divine action in time? [40]
Focused question – on Anselm’s four-dimensionalist explanation of divine action in time

• AO1: Boethius (minimal AO1)
  • Intro sentence: Anselm’s four-dimensionalist approach is a development of Boethius’ theory of God’s eternity, which sought to explain the relationship between God and time in a way that avoided conflict with free will.
• AO1: Anselm’s four dimensionalism (full AO1)
• AO2: Whether divine eternity coherently resolves foreknowledge
  
  • Evaluation of Boethius and Anselm’s development feature in this paragraph.
• AO2: The coherence of an eternal present
  
  • Here Kenny attacks the coherence of the eternal view of God – which Anselm’s four-dimensionalism depends on for its account of divine action in time.
• AO2: Self-limitation, Time & Theistic Personalism
  
  • Here Swinburne argues God’s action in time should be understood as self-limitation through being everlasting, not eternal, to best fit with omnibenevolence. Then Aquinas defends the eternal view Anselm relies on (Aquinas ultimately develops Anselm’s view of God’s eternity).

“Swinburne best resolves the issue of divine foreknowledge” – Discuss [40]
Focused question: on Swinburne’s solution to the omniscience vs free will issue

• AO1: Swinburne (full AO1)
• AO2: eternal vs everlasting on the bible and foreknowledge
• AO1: Boethius (minimal AO1)
• AO2: Whether divine eternity coherently resolves foreknowledge
• AO2: The coherence of an eternal present

Weirdly worded questions:

Is it possible to resolve inconsistencies between the divine attributes? [40]
General question

• The only trap with this question is that you can’t use issues which only attack one attribute. E.g. you can’t use the paradox of the stone, since that only attacks omnipotence – it doesn’t raise a potential inconsistencies ‘between’ divine attributes.
• This includes:
• AO1: Boethius – the issue he raises (and tries to solve) is that omniscience and omnibenevolence/justice conflict over free will.
• Then you could do the debate between Boethius, Anselm and Swinburne – to see who (if any of them) resolve that supposed conflict best.
• You could do a whole essay on that – but to be more comprehensive you could instead add one or both of the following:
• AO2: The logical problem of evil (vs Augustine or Hick)
  
  • This clearly involves multiple attributes
• AO2: Self-limitation, Time & Theistic Personalism
  
  • This involves Swinburne’s argument that omnibenevolence is best preserved by accepting a self-limitation view of omniscience – to avoid conflict regarding God’s potential for a loving relationship with us.

Is it necessary to resolve the apparent inconsistencies between the divine attributes? [40]
General question

It’s odd to think who might not think apparent inconsistencies in God’s attributes need resolving. I think one option would be proponents of sceptical theism: that God cannot be understood, and therefore we should expect God to appear incoherent to our minds. But this is because of the limitations in our mental ability, not a limitation in God. I touch on this a bit in the problem of evil – since theologians sometimes reach for the mysteriousness of God to address evil. 

Karl Barth could be relevant too, since he would think our theological doctrines, including God’s nature, ought only be informed by faith; fallen human reason being a dangerously unreliable source. Aquinas’ natural theology could be made relevant as a counter-point here.

The trinity could be an interesting analogy to draw on, since it seem paradoxical but theologians like Augustine and Barth insist that this reflects our limited intellect rather than a limitation in God.

Ultimately though, the simple way to take this question would just be to say that yes it’s necessary to resolve apparent inconstencies – otherwise, God’s coherence is threatened, which if unresolved would justify atheism. Then you can just include the normal content. 

The challenge is: you can’t just focus on evaluating the success of the various resolutions to inconsistencies. The question is whether it’s necessary to resolve them, not whether we can.

But what you can do is point out how: the competing resolutions each claim various elements of God will be or not be preserved/maintained without their approach.

E.g.:

• AO1: Boethius
  
  • Boethius thinks the inconsistency between omniscience, free will and omnibenevolence needs resolving, and attempt to do so.
  • He thinks without his approach, we won’t maintain omniscience and free will.
• AO1: Anselm’s four dimensionalism
  
  • Anselm agrees with Boethius – but thinks he needs upgrading with four-dimensionalism – otherwise the eternal God resolution of the foreknowledge paradox will not preserve God’s action in time.
• AO1: Swinburne
  
  • Swinburne agrees about the need to solve the foreknowledge problem – but disagrees with the eternal God solution of Boethius and Anselm – arguing it fails to preserve God’s loving nature
• AO2: eternal vs everlasting on the bible and foreknowledge
  
  • This evaluates Boethius, Anselm and Swinburne regarding the biblical evidence, showing how philosophical explanation can also preserve biblical coherence to present a theologically full resolution to the foreknowledge problem.
• AO2: Self-limitation, Time & Theistic Personalism
  
  • But: Swinburne isn’t done – he also has the issue of God being in loving relationship with us, and action in the world (including maintaining a plan for the world, including allowing free will and a natural order – and prayers/miracles).
  • Swinburne thinks only his self-limitation everlasting view of god can account for all these – which he thinks presents the true full theological account necessary to Christian understanding and faith.
• AO2: The logical problem of evil (vs Augustine or Hick)
  
  • Mackie claims if the inconsistencies are not resolved, God does not exist.
  • Proponents of theodicies clearly think it necesary to resolve the problem of evil.

Is omniscience subject to self-limitation? [40]
Split focused question – on omniscience and the self-limitation view of omniscience

• AO1: God as omniscient (moderate AO1)
• AO1: Boethius (minor AO1 – just to set up the foreknowledge issue)
• AO1: Swinburne (moderate AO1)
• AO2: Self-limitation, Time & Theistic Personalism
  • Philosophically evaluates the coherence of self-limitation.
• AO2: eternal vs everlasting on the bible and foreknowledge
  • Theologically evaluates the coherence of self-limitation.
• AO2: Whether divine eternity coherently resolves foreknowledge
  • Evaluates whether Boethius has a legitimate alternative to Swinburne’s solution to the issue of foreknowledge.

Does free will conflict with omnipotence? [40]
Focused question: on omnipotence and whether it conflicts with free will

I would take this question as asking you to evaluate the 3 different definitions of omnipotence – and using free will as a hinge on which to assess their validity.

• AO1: God as omnipotent
  • The varieties of omnipotence would each claim their definition is the best and that it does not conflict with free will.
• AO2: Self-limitation, Time & Theistic Personalism
  • This evaluates the self-limitation view, that self-limiting omnipotence is necessary to account for the maintenance of human free will.
• AO2: The in/coherence of Voluntarism about omnipotence
  • Descartes would say God’s omnipotence can’t have any contradiction with anything, including free will because it’s ultimately beyond logic. But if Descartes’ definition of omnipotence fails – then it cannot be the basis to secure the coherence of omnipotence and free will.
• AO2: The logical problem of evil (vs Augustine or Hick)
  • Mackie believes in a kind of free will (compatibilist) which destroys theodicies – meaning evil conflicts with omnipotence (and/or omniscience).