“The omniscience and omnibenevolence of God are incompatible.” Discuss.
When considering the attributes of God, in this case omniscience – the notion that God is all seeing and all knowing – and omnibenevolence – the belief that God is all loving, the compatibility of attributes brings rise to great debate. In particular, on the subject of the compatibility between omniscience and omnibenevolence, scholars such as Boethius, Richard Swinburne and John Calvin have considered the eternal nature of God, whether it be the timeless or everlasting model and how this affects how God interacts with humanity. The relevance to the debate of compatibility therefore is that, given that God is omniscient; this would strongly suggest that he has the ability to see and know future events. Therefore, if God knows the future then presumably the future is already set and the fate of each individual is predestined, meaning that any evil which is done was not done on accord of our own freewill and it is therefore unjust for God to punish humans as no decision, right or is, is ever actually made. Some may argue however that God is described in the Bible as a ‘loving parent’ (with Israel as his “child”), and that just punishment is a part of being a loving carer and therefore an omnibenevolent entity. However this argument is invalid in this case as without freewill and human responsibility, the notion of justice is simply impossible.
In order to combat this issue, Boethius proposes a belief in an eternal God through the timeless model. In essence, this means a God that exists separate from and therefore outside of our space and time. A god that exists outside time and space has the capability for unlimited knowledge of the past, present and future. Boethius claims that for a timeless God there is no chronology, only a “simultaneous possession of unending life” or a continuous present. This supports the existence of free will God has no knowledge in the terms of chronology. Peter...