Treatise on Predestination, Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents

Major late-medieval-scholastic treatise on the foreknowledge-freedom problem.

"That God knows future contingents with certainty, and that future contingents nonetheless retain genuine contingency — both of these must be affirmed; the philosophical work is to show how." (Treatise on Predestination)

Foundational text for the modern analytic-philosophical work on foreknowledge and freedom.

"The Ockhamist position — that God's past knowledge of future contingents is 'soft fact' compatible with the contingency of what is known — has been a major resource for modern analytic philosophy of religion." (Standard modern scholarly account)

Continued late-medieval-nominalist framework — sparser ontological commitments yield more flexible solutions to the foreknowledge-problem.

"The proper nominalist account of divine knowledge — knowledge of individuals as such, not of universals — is what makes the compatibilist solution available." (Treatise on Predestination)

Sustained engagement with — and substantial revision of — Thomistic positions on the foreknowledge-problem.

"The Thomistic solution via timeless-eternal divine knowledge faces difficulties the Ockhamist alternative addresses." (Treatise on Predestination)

Strong critical-philosophical sensibility — what philosophical-theological inquiry can and cannot establish.

"That God knows future contingents is an article of faith; how God knows them is the proper subject of philosophical inquiry." (Treatise on Predestination)

Sustained engagement with the Aristotelian framework on contingency and necessity.

"Aristotle's sea-battle argument (De Interpretatione 9) is the classical philosophical setting of the problem; Ockham's treatise develops within and against that setting." (Standard scholarly account)

Nominalist tradition.