... or engenders a tradition of philosophical reflection, questions will arise about the relation between divine knowledge and power and human freedom. ...

In my paper, I defend a view that many would regard as self-evidently false: the view that God’s freedom, his power to act, is in no way limited by his essential properties. I divide the paper into five sections. In section i, I call attention to a special class of non-contingent propositions and try to identify an important feature of these propositions; in section ii, I provide some initial reasons. based in part upon the unique features of these special propositions, (...) for thinking that God does have the power to perform actions which his essential properties entail he will never perform; in section iii, I call into question the assumption that a person has the power to do something only if it is logically possible that he will exercise that power; and, finally, in sections iv and v, I try to specify a sense in which divine freedom and the kind of human freedom required by the Free will Defense are in fact the same kind of freedom. (shrink)