 The three problems that will be discussed now in more detail—the eternity of the world; divine omniscience and human freedom; the soul and immortality—have been chosen for three reasons. They were each considered very important in all the traditions of medieval philosophy. They are, in the form discussed, specifically medieval (given the long and broad understanding of the Middle Ages advocated here), although closely linked to philosophical issues discussed before and since. Moreover—and it is for this reason above all that these three topics and not others were selected—they each cast a light on how religious concerns interacted with reasoning and on the different ways in which this took place within the spheres of each of the different religious traditions, and between these spheres.