Omniscience, Free Will, and Religious Belief

In this paper, I examine a standard foreknowledge argument and some interesting ways of handling it, along with some criticisms. I argue that there are philosophically interesting notions of free will that are compatible with determinism. These are the notions of free will that matter to ordinary life, and I argue that these generate a way for a philosophically interesting understanding of free will to be compatible with belief in God’s infallible foreknowledge. I discuss two key questions—the empirical question and the divine interference question—that are often neglected in the contemporary debate on foreknowledge and free will. Finally, I provide some answers to these questions that I hope can advance the debate.