SOURCE: Craig, William Lane. “John Duns Scotus on God's Foreknowledge and Future Contingents.” Franciscan Studies 47, no. 25 (1987): 98-122.

In the following essay, Craig explicates Scotus's view of the infallibility of divine foreknowledge, together with his proposition that such foreknowledge does not imply total determinism or a lack of future contingency.

John Duns Scotus's best treatment of God's foreknowledge and future contingents is found in distinctions 38.2-39 of book one of his Opus Oxoniense, or Ordinatio, in which he discusses whether God has determinate, certain and infallible, immutable, and necessary cognition of existents and whether such knowledge is compatible with contingency in things.¹ We may leave aside the question of the immutability of God's knowledge, but the other questions are important for an understanding of Scotus's view on God's knowledge of future contingents and the problem of theological fatalism. Although Scotus presents a string of objections to be dealt with...