McHugh's Expectations Dashed

Drange's article examines Christopher McHugh's attempt to resolve the paradox of divine foreknowledge and human free will through a novel understanding of temporal indexicals. McHugh proposes that when God knows future contingent propositions about human actions, divine knowledge takes a fundamentally different form than human knowledge of the same propositions. According to McHugh, God's omniscient perspective allows knowledge of future events without the temporal restrictions that bind human cognition, thereby preserving both divine foreknowledge and human freedom.

Drange systematically dismantles this solution by demonstrating that McHugh's argument rests on an equivocation between two incompatible interpretations of how God knows the future. The first interpretation suggests God knows future events directly, without temporal mediation—knowing not merely that something will happen, but experiencing it as present reality from an eternal standpoint. The second interpretation maintains that God knows propositions about the future while remaining temporally situated. Drange argues these interpretations cannot be reconciled within McHugh's framework.

The critique focuses particularly on McHugh's handling of indexical expressions like "tomorrow" and "will happen." Drange contends that if God's knowledge truly transcends temporal categories as McHugh suggests, then God cannot know propositions containing such indexicals in the way McHugh requires for his solution to work. Conversely, if God can know such temporally indexed propositions, then divine knowledge remains bound by temporal relations in ways that resurrect the original paradox.

This analysis contributes to broader debates about divine attributes by exposing the linguistic and conceptual difficulties inherent in reconciling classical theism's commitment to divine omniscience with libertarian free will. Drange's methodology combines careful logical analysis with attention to the semantics of temporal language, revealing how seemingly technical philosophical distinctions about indexicals have profound implications for fundamental theological questions.

The article's significance lies not merely in its specific refutation of McHugh but in its broader demonstration of how attempts to preserve both absolute divine foreknowledge and genuine human freedom often founder on deep conceptual tensions. Drange's work suggests these tensions may be irresolvable within traditional theistic frameworks, thereby lending indirect support to either modified concepts of divine knowledge or incompatibilist positions. His analysis exemplifies the rigor required when examining proposed solutions to classical philosophical-theological paradoxes.