The Summit Study Hall

Fate or Free Will? (Boethius)


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“Each future thing is anticipated by the gaze of God which bends it back and recalls it to the presence of its own manner of knowledge; it does not change, as you think, with alternate knowledge of now this and now that, but with one glance anticipates and embraces your changes in its constancy. God receives those present mode of knowledge and vision of all things not from the issue of future things but from His own immediacy.”
-The Consolation of Philosophy, Book V, Ch. VI


“Take the case of those who believe that foreknowledge does not impose necessity upon the future, and that freedom of the will is not infringed by foreknowledge. I would like to know why you consider their reasoning ineffective. For the only source of your proof of the predestination of the future is your belief that what is foreknown cannot but happen. Therefore, if—as you were only just now saying—if foreknowledge does not impose any predestination on the future, why is it that acts of the will are forced to be predestined? But for the sake of argument, so that you may see what follows, let us say that there is no foreknowledge. In this case, actions of the will are not forced to be predestined, are they?...Again, let us say that there is foreknowledge, but that it does not impose any predestination on things; the same freedom of the will remains, I think, absolute and uninfringed.”
-The Consolation of Philosophy, Book V, Ch. IV

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The Summit Study HallBy Dre Carlan