A Study of John Martin Fischer’s View Regarding Divine Foreknowledge and Man’s Moral Responsibility

This paper seeks to explain and study a new approach by Fischer in solving the possible conflict between God’s fore and infallible knowledge with the moral responsibility of the agent. Even though, on one hand, Fischer considers attributes such as knowledge to be essential and infallible Divine characteristics and also attributes temporal non-Thomistic eternity to God within the temporal framework of material existents and ultimately accepts the Fixity of the Past Principle and man’s lack of control over temporally expired events and at first glance is faced with the conflict between such foreknowledge with man’s free will in his actions; however, his type of view regarding the essence of man’s free will frees him from this challenge. In Fischer’s Frankfurter explanation, free will is not a factor preceded by man’s ability to attempt an alternative act in the opposite course and therefore, even if Divine knowledge is synonymous with the one-sidedness of action, such a consequence would not be equal to man’s loss of volition and free will. In this article, after presenting a short explanation for Fischer’s view regarding Divine foreknowledge and addressing the Fixity of the Past Principle and the possibilities of alternatives and Fischer’s Frankfurter approach in encountering that, we will assess Fischer’s solution and observe that, anyway, envisioning the existence of an alternative for actions to actualize the free will of the agent is unavoidable.