Swinburne affirms the doctrine of the Trinity, the claim that God is three persons; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Swinburne believes that God is omnipotent in that He succeeds in whatever he chooses to do. God cannot do what is logically impossible. Swinburne places limits on divine omniscience. God knows everything that happened in the past and knows everything that is happening at any given moment in time. God does not possess foreknowledge otherwise He would have no freedom to act in the future. God is perfectly good and acts in a manner consistent with His goodness.
St Thomas Aquinas suggested that God has knowledge because it is not physical; although humans acquire knowledge through their bodies and sense experience, the knowledge itself is not a physical thing. Knowledge being non-physical is important as it means that God, who is immaterial, can still have knowledge. Aquinas suggested that what God knows is 'self-knowledge'. God is the creator and God knows by self-knowledge what He creates and thus He knows about creation. God's knowledge on this view is not like human knowledge, as it is not gained by using the body's senses. If an everlasting view of God is taken then God can acquire new knowledge as time passes for Him. So, if the future has not yet happened, there is no future to be known; God's omniscience is not limited because it is impossible to have knowledge of what does not exist or has not yet existed. God is omniscient as He has perfect knowledge of what has occurred and is occurring.
Boethius was worried about the problem of God's omniscience. He believed that if God knows the future, then He is wrong to reward and punish. However, he recognised that he was wrong to say this because God can see things in a different way from the way which we see them. Humans live in time; our pasts are fixed and unchanging, while out futures remain unknown and uncertain, this means we have genuine freedom. God does not have the same constraints in time, like us, so does not have a past, present or future. God's knowledge 'transcends all temporal change and abides in the immediacy of His presence.' God can see us in our past, present and in our future and has perfect knowledge of what we will freely choose to do. He does not know what moral choices we will make in advance, as there is no such thing as 'in advance' for God; all events occur simultaneously to God in His eternal presence. As God does not know things in advance of them happening it makes no sense to talk of what God should have known in the past or what God will know in the future. God does not know what we will do in the future, because He has no future; therefore, we have genuine free will and can be rewarded and punished with justice.
Augustine argues that God sees events but does not influence them, meaning that free will is not affected, and neither is God's benevolence. He only sees what is already certain to happen. Augustine argues that God only knows truths- what is certain to happen. This is the classical view of God. Therefore, his knowledge must change as propositions become truthful. So, God cannot be immutable. This point was argued by Kretzmann and Bretano in the 1970s.The issue that arises here is that omniscience and immutability are both essential characteristics of the classical God. It may be said that Boethius resolves this issue with his view of God as he sees God as knowing everything simultaneously- he would have always known what was going to become true, as he sees the past, present, and future simultaneously. This is supported by Aquinas' view of God's knowledge as not "discursive"
Problems raised for our moral freedom are that if God creates each of us individually then does He know all of our decisions and actions before we even make them. If God knows the future and what we would choose at every point in our lives, then maybe God can be held responsible for all kinds of evil, including so-called moral evil. Furthermore, God might know who will have faith and people's religious choices; if this is the case, then maybe He already knows who will go to heaven and hell, so there is nothing we can do about it.
by
lanorton2 (student)
