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This paper examines how open theism can respond to arguments regarding divine foreknowledge and free will.

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January 27, 2026

Open Theism and the Contingent A Priori

Key Points

This paper examines how open theism can respond to arguments regarding divine foreknowledge and free will.
Analysis of theological arguments about divine omniscience and free will.
Examination of Fabio Lampert's variant of the fatalist argument.
Comparison of open theism's perspectives on indeterminacy and necessity.
Open theists argue that past indeterminacy allows for genuine free choices.
The paper articulates how some necessities can be viewed as contingent on human decisions.
The discussions contribute to the understanding of the logic of actuality in the context of fatalism.

Abstract

Abstract Theological fatalists hold that divine omniscience is incompatible with free will. The most prominent argument for fatalism involves the premiss that in the remote past, god already knew what you would do today. In a recent paper in this journal, Fabio Lampert proposes a variant of this argument that only requires that god knew a contingent a priori logical truth. The open theist holds that in the remote past, it was indeterminate what you would do. This helps the open theist to respond to the original argument. I show that the indeterminacy acknowledged by the open theist also provides them with resources to respond to Lampert’s variant. They can motivate that some necessities are up to us and still accept that the theorems of the logic of actuality relevant to Lampert’s argument are determinately true.

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