This is Swinburne’s effort to show that it does not detract from the idea of God that He does not know the future in cases where He has created freedom in others to determine that future. God is himself responsible for there being limits to his knowledge of how we will act and he can take away our free will and so these limits to his knowledge of the future, whenever he chooses. But since God is omnipotent, it is only because he permits this that we have free will…. Reading Swinburne is a delight to all those who enjoy a sustained and lucid examination of why Christian doctrine is exactly what any rational persons ought to expect to be true.Īnd yet for some reason Richard Swinburne does not seem to have grasped what it means for God to be outside of time.Ĭruising along very enjoyably in Was Jesus God?, the reader suddenly stumbles over Swinburne’s conclusion about God’s foreknowledge: t looks as if it is not logically possible for God to know infallibly beforehand what a free agent will do…. At least two of his books are available in paperbacks of modest length and price, designed for readers with no prior philosophical background: Is There a God? and Was Jesus God?. The former Nolloth Professor at Oxford has developed a comprehensive natural theology in both scholarly and popular works covering the existence of God, faith and reason, revelation, providence and the problem of evil, responsibility and atonement, and the Resurrection.

Swinburne is there a god