ABSTRACT
Considerations such as these raise a prima facie problem of fatalism for God. But the puzzle that has attracted the most attention concerns the implications of divine foreknowledge, not for God’s own agency, but for the agency of others. A classic statement of the problem can be found in Augustine:
How is it that these two propositions are not contradictory and inconsistent: (1) God has foreknowledge of everything in the future; and (2) We sin by the will, not by necessity? For . . . if God foreknows that someone is going to sin, then it is necessary that he sin. But if it is necessary, the will has no choice about whether to sin . . . [So:] either we draw the heretical conclusion that God does not foreknow everything in the future; or . . . we must admit that sin happens by necessity and not by will.
