Abstract
Recently, there has been a considerable amount of discussion about the relationship between the doctrine of omniscience and other doctrines of classical theism. Kretzmann has argued that omniscience, in particular knowing what time it is, is incompatible with immutability; for if a being knows what time it is at one moment and knows what time it is at another moment, then that being has changed in some respect.1 Another central area of concern has been the doctrine of timelessness and its relation to the doctrine of omniscience. Several philosophers have argued that if God is outside time, He cannot know that it is now Friday, 1 June, for example.2
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Notes and References
Norman Kretzmann, ‘Omniscience and Immutability’, Journal of Philisophy, 63 (1966) pp. 409–21.
Cf. Arthur Prior, ‘The Formalities of Omniscience’, Philosophy 37 (1962); Nicholas Woltersdorff, ‘God Everlasting’, pp. 77–98 in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, edited by Steven Cahn and David Shatz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
Prior, ‘The Formalities of Omniscience’.
Wolterstorff, ‘God Everlasting’.
Anthony Kenny, ‘Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom’, in Kenny (ed.) Aquinas, A Collection of Critical Essays (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976) p. 264.
For a recent investigation and defence of this response to the simultaneity objection to the coherence of the timelessness doctrine, see Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, ‘Eternity’, The Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981) pp. 429–58.
William P. Alston, ‘Divine—Human Dialogue and the Nature of God’, Faith and Philosophy, 2 (1985) p. 13.
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© 1986 Jonathan L. Kvanvig
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Kvanvig, J.L. (1986). Omniscience, Omnipresence, Immutability and Timelessness. In: The Possibility of an All-Knowing God. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18437-8_5
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