{"id":1266,"date":"2024-04-26T14:27:39","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T19:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=1266"},"modified":"2024-04-28T12:44:52","modified_gmt":"2024-04-28T17:44:52","slug":"philosophical-essays-against-open-theism-ch-6-rogers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2024\/04\/philosophical-essays-against-open-theism-ch-6-rogers\/","title":{"rendered":"Philosophical Essays against Open Theism \u2013 ch. 6: Rogers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PhilosophicalThis is part six of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism<\/em><\/a> (Routledge, 2019).<\/p>\n

In this post I tackle chapter 6 by Katherin Rogers, “Foreknowledge, Freedom, and Vicious Circles: Anselm vs. Open Theism” (pp. 93\u2013109). Rogers is a well-respected philosopher of religion and a huge fan of Anselm. Most of her philosophical work centers around explaining and defending Anselm’s positions, or what she takes those positions to be.<\/p>\n

In what follows, I start with (1) some reflections on a previous exchange that I had with Rogers. I then dive into the current essay and discuss (2) her misunderstandings of open theism and of presentism, (3) her account of creaturely freedom (which I generally like), and (4) her “solution” to the freedom\/foreknowledge problem (which fails, IMO).<\/p>\n

1. Reflections on an earlier exchange with Rogers<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve interacted with Rogers before in print. My essay “Foreknowledge and Fatalism: Why Divine Timelessness Doesn’t Help”<\/a> engages and critiques Rogers’ 2008 book Anselm on Freedom<\/em><\/a> (Oxford). In her reply<\/a> to my essay, she admits that she didn’t really understand my criticisms and so she concludes that I misunderstood her<\/em> and that I begged the question against her position. Now, I’ll grant that my argument was not as clear as it could have been. In my recent Open Theism<\/em><\/a> book (Cambridge, 2024), I significantly expand and improve the argument. But her response pretty much ignores<\/em> the first two-thirds of my essay in which I develop the core argument. She focuses, instead, on the last third of the essay in which I apply<\/em> the lessons from first two-thirds and leverage them against divine timelessness. So, her charge that I beg the question against divine timelessness and “isotemporalism”\u2014her preferred term for a linear block ontology of time\u2014is, as I see it, off base. I did not assume<\/em> that those positions were false. I argued<\/em> against them. By essentially ignoring the constructive part of my argument, Rogers convinced herself that I had merely assumed what I was supposed to be proving.<\/p>\n

In any case, Rogers’ essay in the Arbour book, which was written after her exchange with me, doesn’t interact with my work at all, despite the fact that it would have provided a recent and relevant foil for her essay.<\/p>\n

2. Rogers’ misunderstandings of open theism and of presentism<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the reasons Rogers is gung-ho in championing isotemporalism is that she doesn’t see any viable alternative that preserves a robust libertarian view of creaturely freedom. She agrees with most open theists that God’s knowledge of future contingents must be grounded<\/em> in reality, specifically in actual<\/em> creaturely choices (p. 93). This rules out both the\u00a0simple foreknowledge<\/em> view and\u00a0Molinism<\/em>. According to the former, future events don’t yet exist and so aren’t yet available to ground any truths about the future. According to the latter, God’s knowledge of future contingents is derivable from God’s middle knowledge and creature decree,\u00a0independently<\/em> of actual creaturely choices. With those views out of the running, the metaphysical options for libertarian free-will theists reduce to open theism<\/em> and some kind of\u00a0timeless knowledge<\/em> view. Regarding the latter, the main candidate positions are those of Boethius and Anselm. The problem with Boethius’ version is that he affirmed ontological presentism<\/em>, and so cannot ground God’s timeless knowledge of the future in actual creaturely choices. So that leaves Anselm and open theism. I’ll say more about Rogers’ Anselmian position in section (4). For now, I want to look at why she rejects open theism.<\/p>\n

In her essay Rogers seems to have two main reasons for rejecting open theism: (a) it diminishes God and, thus, conflicts with Anselmian perfect being theology (PBT), and (b) it entails presentism, which she finds completely implausible as an ontology of time. As we will see, these two reasons are closely connected in Rogers’ mind. Roughly stated, she rejects open theism in large part because<\/em> she thinks it entails presentism, something she utterly rejects.<\/p>\n

Regarding (a), she says the following of open theism:<\/p>\n