Ockham on the Puzzle of Prophecy and Future Contingency

abstract: Are these claims compatible: the future is contingent, and yet prophecies reveal the future? William of Ockham argues that they are in Tractatus de praedestinatione (q.1, d.8) and in the Fourth Quodlibet (q.4). But his two solutions to the puzzle of how prophecy and future contingency can be reconciled face significant objections that seem to undermine Ockham’s theory of future contingents. In this paper, I argue that the relevant objections lose their force once Ockham’s views on prophecy are properly understood. In the first part of the paper, I closely examine the puzzle as well as Ockham’s solutions and the objections raised against him. In the second part, I counter the objections while offering an original interpretation of Ockham’s semantics of what I call “prophecies of choice.”