Sarah Hogarth Rossiter

Thomas Bradwardine (d. 1349) was an English philosopher, logician, and theologian of some note; but though recent scholarship has revived an interest in much of his work, little attention has been paid to an early treatise he wrote on the topic of future contingents, entitled De futuris contingentibus. In this thesis I aim to address this deficit, arguing in particular that the treatise makes original use of the divine power distinction to resolve the apparent conflict between God’s foreknowledge on the one hand, and human free will on the other. Bradwardine argues that God’s foreknowledge operates in accord with God’s ordained power, and so relative to God’s ordained power, our actions are indeed compelled; however, because of Bradwardine’s appeal to the distinction in power, he is able to maintain that our actions remain free relative to God’s absolute power, and are thus free, absolutely speaking. This solution is, I argue, unique to Bradwardine, although it seems to be abandoned in his later writing. Bradwardine’s approach to the problem is heavily influenced by three figures in particular — Boethius, Anselm of Canterbury, and John Duns Scotus — each of whose solutions I discuss in some detail. Furthermore, Bradwardine explicitly places his own solution in opposition to that of William Ockham, and so I give substantial attention to examining Ockham’s position. But while I agree with Bradwardine’s assessment that Ockham’s position undermines God’s foreknowledge in ways that should be untenable to someone of 14th-century Christian commitments, I argue that Bradwardine’s solution amounts to an equally untenable determinism. An appendix contains excerpts from my own English translation of the De futuris contingentibus (the first into any modern language), in parallel with the original Latin.

Thomas Bradwardine is a figure who, for much of the twentieth century, tended only to be discussed by historians of Reformation thought. Less frequently, passing references may have been made to his pioneering work in physics and mathematics, as one of the famed “Merton Calculators.” More recently, some scholars have become interested in more explicitly philosophical and logical aspects of Bradwardine's writing, including his remarkably original solution to the Liar Paradox and his views of modality, particularly contingency. The revival of interest in Bradwardine as a philosopher in the last twenty to thirty years is due at least partly to a particular interest in his philosophy of time, prompted largely by the analysis of Edith Wilks Dolnikowski. In this chapter, I will introduce readers to the life and work Bradwardine, and explain how his thought represents a significant strand in the thread of Augustinianism running through the early fourteenth century. I will begin with a brief biography of his eventful life and historical context. I will then explain why an examination of this figure may be of particular relevance in a volume on time in the Augustinian tradition, which will include an explanation of what I take to be characteristic of Augustinian views on the subject of time. As we eventually turn to the examination of Bradwardine’s own account of time, it will be important to consider first a prominent non-Augustinian view to which he is responding, namely, that of William Ockham. As we come to the summary and assessment of Bradwardine’s own view of time, outlining its inherently Augustinian elements, I will argue, pace Dolnikowski, that it is indeed appropriate to view Bradwardine’s philosophy as fundamentally reactionary in nature, against what he perceives to be heretical pelagianism in the thinking of Ockham. In my concluding remarks, I will speak briefly of the reception of Bradwardine’s views of time in the decades and centuries that followed.