 God, according to almost every late ancient and medieval philosopher, whether pagan, Jew, Christian, or Muslim, is omniscient, and so, they believed, he knows the  future.[27]  But if he already knows my future volitions and actions, how can they be free, since it would seem that I cannot will or act otherwise than as he knows I shall? There are ways of formulating this Problem of Prescience in which it becomes a pseudo-problem, based on failing to see that the wide scope necessity that necessarily (if God—or anyone—knows that p, then p) does not entail the necessity of p. Peter Abelard thought that, by pointing out this fallacious reasoning, he had solved the problem. His solution was influential, but it misses what Boethius had noticed, six centuries previously in his Consolation, Book V (Marenbon 2005: 55–116). There is a genuine problem, because God does not just know, but foreknows. Boethius sees the argument as follows (see entry  Boethius, §6).  Future contingent events are ones that may turn out one way or the other, but to be known—rather than opined or guessed about—the future must be fixed. For God to know the future, as he does, it must therefore be fixed, and so there are no contingent events. But this, he believes, removes the foundation for morality and the value of prayer. Boethius rejects this unwelcome conclusion by appealing to the principle that