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Sunday School Student and Theological Fatalism

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Abstract

I will briefly argue that theological fatalism is not a genuine ‘theological’ problem, for it can be reduced to another alleged incompatibility that arises independently of the existence or non-existence of God. I will conclude that the way of arguing against the existence of God or His omniscience by appealing to theological fatalism is blocked for libertarian atheists.

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Notes

  1. Plantinga (1986: 235).

  2. For a recent survey on the modern solutions to the problem of theological fatalism, see Fischer (1992) and Fischer et al. (2009).

  3. It does not mean that necessary propositions make themselves true; they may not need truth-makers.

  4. More precisely, E is a token of an event type in which its tokens bring it about that P is true. See Hasker (1989), especially p. 42.

  5. If we replace this premise by ‘the existence of true contingent propositions about future’ (not only about ‘our future actions’) then we can conclude determinism (not only fatalism) by a sea-battle-like argument. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this point.

  6. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this objection.

  7. My above argument shows that they are sufficient. On the other hand, they are necessary because denying each of them makes the fatalistic argument invalid. By denying the necessity of the past, it will be possible for S in t 2 to change the truth value of P in t 1 . Then her refraining from doing A in t 2 raises no incompatibility. Moreover, by denying the existence of true contingent propositions about our future actions, we have in fact denied God’s foreknowledge of our future actions but not his omniscience because God’s omniscience is the capacity of knowing everything that can be known and it is not possible for a not-true proposition to be known.

  8. Since if God knows that ‘S will do A freely in t 2 ’ then this is true that ‘S will do A freely in t 2 .’ It should be mentioned that God knows such propositions because they are true, but not vice versa. If the theological fatalist presupposes that this is God’s foreknowledge that makes those propositions true then he has begged the question of theological fatalism.

  9. I am grateful to Kaave Lajevardi for his comments on an earlier version of this paper.

References

  • Fischer, J. M. (1992). Recent work on God and freedom. American Philosophical Quarterly, 29, 91–109.

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  • Fischer, J. M., Todd, P., & Tognazzini, N. (2009). Engaging with Pike: God, freedom and time. Philosophical Papers, 38, 247–270.

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  • Hasker, W. (1989). God, Time, and Knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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  • Plantinga, A. (1986). On Ockham’s way out. Faith and Philosophy, 3, 235–269.

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Correspondence to Mohammad Saleh Zarepour.

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Zarepour, M.S. Sunday School Student and Theological Fatalism. SOPHIA 52, 553–555 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0347-8

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