
HoP 112 - Help Wanted - Augustine on Freedom
History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
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Augustine's Problem of Divine Foreknowledge
Augustine's answer is simple. God gives us free will so that we can use it to be good. When we sin, we are misusing this power and should know more conclude that the will itself is bad than our eyes or hands. Even if it was not a mistake for God to give us free will, how was it possible for him to do so? After all, God knows everything we will do before we do it. How then can we be free? If Augustine himself could have seen the future, he would have known that this so-called problem of divine foreknowledge would be discussed again and again by philosophers down through medieval times and into early modernity.
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