A number of philosophers questioned Boethius’ understanding of an ‘eternal’ God, seeing past, present and future at the same time. Geach argued this was not consistent with the Bible, where God’s incarnation is linear in the New Testament, or where the prophecies in the Old Testament said that God would send a saviour in the future. Also, Anthony Kenny argued in ‘The God of Philosophers’ that the concept of God seeing the past, present and future at the same time does not make sense. Swinburne agreed with this view, and questioned Boethius’ understanding of omniscience. He felt that omniscience did not include knowledge of the impossible. He believed that one could only know what is logically possible to know. Thus, God cannot know the future as it has not happened yet- it is thus not logically possible to know it. However, these criticisms do not destroy Boethius’ argument- they in fact further support the view that omniscience and omnibenevolence are compatible. Swinburne has shown that humans have free will as God does not know the future, while preserving his omniscience. If this is the case, one can not argue that omniscience and omnibenevolence are incompatible, as God would therefore be justified in judging us, as we have free will. A criticism to this is that God’s nature is different to ours, so we should not limit God to a human level of understanding. However, this criticism has no solid evidence for it. One cannot assume God can do things we consider to be impossible when we have seen no signs of such occurrences happening in our universe- especially as the argument holds that God is everlasting and thus immanent. Thus it seems fair to conclude that there are two solutions to this philosophical problem that effectively show that omniscience and omnibenevolence are compatible. If a person considers God’s nature to be ‘eternal’, then Boethius’ argument preserves God’s omniscience while allowing for freewill. If a person considers God’s nature to be ‘everlasting’, then Swinburne’s argument does likewise.
An argument to suggest that omnibenevolence and omniscience are incompatible can be taken from the work of Descartes in his fourth meditation from ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’. As God is perfect, he would not want to deceive us. If God creates us, he is also responsible for our knowledge and judgement. If God does not want to deceive us, this judgement he gives us must be infallible. However, humans constantly make mistakes. Thus, either God is not omniscient so is not able to likewise give humans perfect judgement as he may not have it himself, or God is omniscient, but is not omnibenevolent because he has not granted us with the perfect judgement he possesses.
However, this argument is flawed. Descartes goes on to reject this, by arguing that God created humans as finite beings, allowing room for error. One could counter this by arguing that surely an omnibenevolent, perfect God would create perfect, omniscient beings that could never do wrong. However if this were the case, we would have no free will, which is not loving. If we could do no wrong, then we would simply become machines, or as Anthony Burgess describes it- ‘clockwork oranges’. The wrong option, and consequently flawed judgement, needs to exist for a person to have free will, and to be able to do right by rejecting the wrong. Thus, if God gave us perfect judgement, he would not be omnibenevolent. Aside from this, Descartes responded that God’s motives are incomprehensible to finite beings. We should accept that God works in mysterious ways. It may not seem loving, but Descartes argues this is only looking at one isolated part of the universe. God’s decision to not make us with perfect judgement may seem unloving when considered on its own, but this decision may play the appropriate part in the larger context of a perfect universe. Indeed, this line of thinking heavily influenced Hegel’s work, who built on this by arguing that every separate piece of reality is connected to the next piece, thus leading to a perfectly reconstructed universe. Although our reality may seem incomplete in the sense that it seems God cannot be omnibenevolent and omniscient as he has not given us perfect judgement, we are only looking at one part of the overall ‘Absolute Reality’. The complete universe is perfect, and as every piece of reality is connected to build this, we must accept God’s decision to not give us perfect judgement by looking at the wider context, thus preserving God’s omnibenevolence and omniscience.
Bertrand Russell criticises this view in ‘Problems of Philosophy’ by arguing that whatever has relations to things outside itself must contain a reference to these outside things in its own nature. There seems no reference to these outside things within the nature of our reality, suggesting Hegel’s argument is not true, which may therefore ask us to question why we should accept God’s decision not to give us perfect judgement, if it is not for the needs of the perfect universe. However, this is an unconvincing criticism because we do not know if our ‘piece of reality’ shows any reference to another, as we have no experience of what other realities are like, so we cannot know.
Thus it seems that God’s omniscience and omnibenevolence are compatible, as God is justified in not giving us perfect judgement for a number of reasons- to preserve free will, and as part of the bigger picture of which we cannot comprehend.
This leaves us with the problem of evil. If God was omniscient, and knew what evil was occurring in the world- why would he not do the loving thing by preventing it. Many philosophers have contemplated this issue. However, I feel the most convincing response to this has been mentioned above- free will. Originally formulated by Iranaeus in his theodicy, he effectively argues that it is most loving to allow humans free will by remaining at an epistemic distance from the Earth, by not interfering with it. Evil is necessary for humans to reject and thus be able to do good. It is also necessary for humans to be able to willingly choose to follow God or not. If God intervened and prevented evil, everyone would be aware of God’s existence, so their free will would be limited, which is not all loving. Thus, God can be omnibenevolent while being omniscient.
It seems clear to conclude that God’s omniscience and omnibenevolence are compatible. Every argument put forward to suggest the attributes were incompatible was effectively destroyed, and turned around to show that therefore the two attributes are compatible. Boethius and Swinburne put forward convincing arguments to show that God can be omniscient while humans have free will, thus meaning he is justified in judging us- preserving his omnibenevolence. Descartes and Hegel effectively showed that God can be omniscient and omnibenevolent, despite not giving us perfect judgement. Iranaeus’ point about free will also nullifies the problem of evil, showing that omnibenevolence and omniscience are compatible attributes. I therefore agree with the statement.