Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom: Auriol, Pomponazzi, and Luther on “Scholastic Subtleties”

Abstract

In general the medievalist must avoid seeing the Early Modem period through medieval glasses, much as historians of the Scientific Revolution have sometimes seen the Middle Ages through Copernican, Galilean, and Newtonian prisms. Ad propositum, one has to ask whether it is fair to pursue into Early Modern times the very pressing medieval philosophical and theological problem of divine foreknowledge and future contingents, or of determinism and human freedom. Indeed, perhaps the scholastics’ quest for solutions exhausted the issue, leaving nothing new under the sun. As it turns out, the problem of foreknowledge and freedom did in fact concern Early Modern minds as much as it had later-medieval ones, although their thoughts were expressed with different window-dressings. Thus the medievalist is in a good position to answer the question whether later-medieval thinkers left anything untouched for the post-medieval figures.

I thank William Duba, Russell Friedman, James Halverson, John Monfasani, Lauge Nielsen, and Jacob Schmutz for materials and advice; the University of Cyprus for funding a research trip; and the ILL staff at Iowa State University.