Austin Farrer
(1873-1962)
Austin Farrer was a theologian, biblical scholar, and philosopher who gave the Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh in 1957. He adapted his lectures as an article in
Arthur Lovejoy's
Dictionary of the History of Ideas entitled "Free Will in Theology."
Farrer was an Anglican but deeply indebted to the Roman Catholic
Thomas Aquinas, whose style and methods of scholarship he followed.
Like Aquinas, Farrer believed that an omnipotent and omniscient God knows in advance all human actions, yet both claim that this
foreknowledge does not pre-destine nor
pre-determine those actions.
The idea of God as an omniscient and omnipotent being has an
internal logical contradiction that is rarely discussed by theologians like Farrer.
If such a being had perfect knowledge of the future, like
Laplace’s demon, who knows the positions, velocities, and forces
for all the particles, such a God would be perfectly impotent,
because the future is already completely determined. That is, if God had the
power to change even one thing about the future, his presumed
perfect knowledge would have been imperfect. . Prayer
is useless.
References
The Freedom of the Will: The Gifford Lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh, 1957.
"Free Will in Theology,"
Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Philip Wiener (ed), vol II, p.242.
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