Boethius also initially rejects the idea that God might only have foreknowledge of uncertain events, events that might or might not occur. He rejects this idea because saying that God might only know that an event might or might not occur puts His knowledge on a level with human knowledge and fails to recognize His exalted status. Thus Boethius initially concludes that what God knows is necessary and certain. He says, “Therefore, there can be no freedom in human decisions and actions, since the divine mind, foreseeing everything without possibility of error, determines and forces the outcome of everything that is to happen” (107).
Boethius proceeds to trace a number of undesirable consequences from the apparent incompatibility of foreknowledge and free will (107). First, if no human acts are free, then rewards for the good and punishments for the bad are not deserved. It becomes unfair to punish one person and reward another if neither one has control over what he/she does but is predetermined to do it. Thus rewards and punishments lose their basis. Also, if neither praise nor blame is deserved, the applicability of the ideas of virtue and vice is called into question. Moreover, if the order of events depends entirely on God’s providence and not at all on human choices, then God becomes the author of what we regard as the evil we do. Finally, if the future is unalterably fixed, there is no point in hope and prayer, thus undermining a key uniting bond between God and man.