Freedom, Omniscience and the Contingent A Priori.

This article critically examines theological fatalism—the claim that divine omniscience is incompatible with free will—by presenting new arguments that challenge its strongest formulations. It introduces the Master Argument for Theological Fatalism, which relies on the assumption that God's infallible foreknowledge of future human actions negates free will, and then develops parallel arguments based on divine knowledge of contingent a priori truths and ordinary human knowledge of such truths. These latter arguments, notably the A Priori Belief Argument and the A Priori Knowledge Argument, suggest that even trivial, logically necessary truths known in the past can undermine free will, leading to seemingly absurd conclusions that challenge both theists and non-theists. The article argues that the core issue lies in the acceptance of a closure principle—that "no choice about" is closed under entailment—and proposes that rejecting this principle offers a more promising response to theological fatalism than limiting divine omniscience or disputing future contingents.