A being who is eternal, Boethius argues, knows all things—past, present and future—in the same way as we, who live in time and not eternity, know what is present.
Philosophy then goes on to show why, so long as God knows future events by their being present to him, this knowledge is compatible with the events’ not being determined. There are, Boethius explains, two sorts of necessity: simple and conditional. Simple necessities are what would now be called physical or nomic necessities: that the sun rises, or that a man will sometime die. By contrast, it is conditionally necessary that, for instance, I am walking, when I am walking (or when someone sees that I am walking); but from this conditional necessity it does not follow that it is simply necessary that I am walking.
So you can understand why God is omniscient and why events can not being meanwhile utterly determined...
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