Abstract
In the last chapter we saw that the objective reality of tense and temporal becoming would present an insuperable obstacle to a timeless deity’s being active in the world. But even if God were not really related to the temporal world, the reality of tense and becoming would still seem to be problematic for the doctrine of divine atemporality. For if a tensed theory of time is correct, there exist tensed facts, of which God, as an omniscient being, cannot be ignorant. But since tensed facts can only be known by a temporal being, God must therefore be temporal. Moreover, since tensed facts are in constant flux, so must be God’s beliefs or cognitive state, which entails that God is temporal.
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References
Norman Kretzmann, “Omniscience and Immutability,” Journal of Philosophy 63 (1966): 409–421.
Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981): 456–457.
Hector-Neri Castafieda, “Omniscience and Indexical Reference,” Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967): 203–210.
See the critique of Quentin Smith, Language and Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 58–60. Castafieda’s argument also depends upon the principle that if a sentence of the form “X knows that a person Y knows that...” formulates a true statement, then the person X knows the statement formulated by the clause filling the “... ”, a principle which he later recognized with some embarrassment to be false (Robert Adams and Hector-Neri Castarleda, “Knowledge and Self: A Correspondence between Robert Adams and Hector-Neri Castafieda,” in Agent, Language, and the Structure of the World,ed. James E. Tomberlin [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1983], pp. 293–308). Stump and Kretzmann do not endorse this principle, which makes it even more obvious that on their account God does not know what time it is in knowing what events are simultaneous with a temporal entity’s experience of presentness.
Interestingly, Castaüeda reported to Gale in personal correspondence that his intention was to refute the timeless version of the omniscience-immutability argument (Richard M. Gale, “Omniscience-Immutability Arguments,” American Philosophical Quarterly 23 [ 1986 ]: 335 ).
Stump and Kretzmann, “Eternity,” p. 457. See, e.g.,Arthur N. Prior, “The Formalities of Omniscience,” in Papers on Time and Tense (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), p. 29, who argues against restricting God’s knowledge to timeless truths because on such an account God could not know, for example, that the 1960 final examinations are now over. All that could be known timelessly is that the finishing date of the 1960 final examinations is earlier than a certain date or event—and this is not what we know when we know that the exams are over: “...what we know when we know that the 1960 final examinations are over can’t be just a relation between dates because this isn’t the thing we’re pleased about when we’re pleased that the examinations are over.” See also Delmas Lewis, “Eternity Again: A Reply to Stump and Kretzmann,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 15 (1984): 78–79, who charges that on a tensed theory of time God suffers from a sort of “actuality-blindness” if He is atemporal and that Stump and Kretzmann’s analysis of temporal presentness is deficient.
Stump and Kretzmann, “Eternity,” p. 457.
Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness, Studies in Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Schocken Books, 1970 ), pp. 92–93.
See D. H. Mellor, Real Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 40–46; Michelle Beer, “Temporal hndexicals and the Passage of Time,” Philosophical Quarterly 38 (1988): 158–164.
See my The Tensed Theory of Time: a Critical Examination,Synthèse Library (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000).
Hugh J. McCann, “The God beyond Time,” in Philosophy of Religion, ed. Louis Pojman (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993 ), p. 242.
Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Possibility of an All-Knowing God ( New York: St. Martin’s, 1986 ), pp. 66–70.
Ibid., p. 154. Kvanvig erroneously assimilates all tensed expressions to temporal indexical expressions. A proposition which can be expressed without employing temporal indexicals but not without employing tensed verbs should still count as an essentially temporal proposition. It is also not clear what Kvanvig intends by “implying.” Verbally tensed expressions need not imply temporal indexical expressions; e.g.,the proposition that No sentient creatures exist can be expressed by the relevant present-tense sentence without implying the sentence “No sentient creatures now exist.” Kvanvig should substitute “employing” for “implying” and “tensed expressions” for “temporal indexicals.”
Kvanvig also erred (as he now acknowledges) in claiming that the linguistic meaning of indexical expressions serves to distinguish direct from indirect grasping of the propositional content. For discussion see my Tensed Theory of Time,chap. 4.
Edward R. Wierenga, The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes, Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989 ), pp. 179–185.
Wierenga’s notion of grasping a proposition is very obscure. On the one hand, he claims that present-time propositions do not change their truth values over time. This seems to imply that the propositional content of a sentence like “The 1960 exams are over” is the tenseless information that the 1960 exams are over by t,, But Wierenga seems to preclude such an interpretation in his insistence that we cannot grasp a present-time proposition before or after its time. The above tenseless information can be grasped at any time. The propositional content expressed by “The 1960 exams are over” includes not only the noted tenseless information, but also the haecceity of t,,. This seems to be the factor precluding our premature or tardy grasping of the present-time proposition. But why can we not grasp a proposition involving a temporal haecceity too soon or too late? Granted, if we do so, the proposition will be false; but we will have grasped the same propositional content as we do when it is true. The only answer I can think of is that the haecceity includes the property of presentness. Thus, the propositional content of “The 1960 exams are over” involves the moment having presentness and the property being such that the 1960 exams are over by then. I cannot grasp this proposition too soon or too late because the moment having presentness will be different if I utter “The 1960 exams are over” too soon or too late. On this analysis, non-simultaneous utterances of “The 1960 exams are over” express different propositions. Thus, one can grasp the proposition only at the time the utterance is made, since at different times other propositions are expressed. But would this not contradict Wierenga’s claim that propositions do not change their truth values? Not necessarily; for on an ontology of presentism, just as moments come to and cease to exist, so, Wierenga might maintain, propositions involving such moments also come to and cease to exist. Thus, they do not change their truth value, but only have truth value while the respective moments which they include are present; if the moments do not exist, neither do the propositions involving them. This makes it even more perspicuous why present-time propositions cannot be grasped before their time: they do not then yet exist. But such a strategy would backfire for Wierenga, since then God could only know such propositions while they existed, which entails God’s temporality. Wierenga needs timeless or at least omnitemporal truth bearers in order for God to know their changeless truth timelessly; but then I cannot make sense of his strictures concerning our grasping of present-time propositions.
See Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974 ), p. 61.
Plantinga, who holds that one can grasp the individual essence or haecceity of another person, does not take a haecceity to be or include the property of being me,but takes it to be just an individual essence (Alvin Plantinga, “De Essentia,” in Essays on the Philosophy of Roderick M. Chisholm,ed. Ernest Sosa, Grazer philosophische Studien 7/8 [Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1979], pp. 101–106). By siding with Chisholm (Roderick M. Chisholm, “Objects and Persons: Revision and Replies,” in Philosophy of Chisholm,p. 320) in taking a haecceity to be a special individual essence which involves the property of being me,Wierenga has forfeited the right to public graspability of a haecceity.
Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity, Cornell Studies in Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991 ), p. 333.
Cf. Leftow’s explanation: “From any reference frame, one can extrapolate what judgments of simultaneity would be correct in other reference frames.... So... for every temporal now, God knows what is happening now (i.e., simultaneous with that now)...” (Ibid., p. 235). God cannot know with respect to any reference frame which simultaneity class of events has presentness. It occurs to me that Leftow may, like Stump and Kretzmann, being speaking metaphorically of times as reference frames and thus saying that for every present moment in time, God knows the events occurring at that time. In this case, the rejoinder remains basically the same: God cannot know which one of all the times in the world is present. For an effective illustration of the impossibility of extrinsic knowledge of internal temporal determinations, see Herbert J. Nelson, “Time(s), Eternity, and Duration,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 22 (1987): 4–8. In Ian (sic) Leftow, “Timelessness and Divine Experience,” Sophia 30 (1991): 43–53, Leftow fails to see that the problem is not the immediacy of God’s knowledge, but the temporalizing character of knowledge of tensed facts.
Leftow, Time and Eternity, pp. 335–336. Leftow’s view was anticipated by Murray MacBeath, “Omniscience and Eternity I,” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 63 (1989): 65–66.
Nelson, for example, brushes aside the problem of God’s knowing what time it is now as a “pseudo-question” because God is timeless (Nelson, “Time(s), Eternity, and Duration,” p. 18); cf. William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge,Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 159, who, despite his adherence to tensed facts, dismisses the question of God’s knowing what time it is because there `just is no fact“ about the temporal relation between a timeless being and temporal beings.
Cf. Ernest Sosa, “Propositions and Indexical Attitudes,” in On Believing: Epistemological and Semiotic Approaches,ed. Herman Parret, Foundations of Communication (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1983), pp. 316–332; Richard Feldman, “Saying Different Things,” Philosophical Studies 38 (1980): 7984. The doctrine that propositions are true at personal perspectives has bizarre consequences, e.g.,we should be forced to say that when two people each say `9 was insulted“ they are asserting the same proposition.
Wierenga, Nature of God,p. 189.
Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God ( Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983 ), p. 37.
Assuming that there are no timelessly true propositions. If there are, then codicils have to be added to O’ and O“ alike to ensure that God knows these, too.
Leftow, Time and Eternity,pp. 321–323.
For a brief discussion, see William Lane Craig, Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom, Studies in Intellectual History 19 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990), pp. 10–11 and the references there; see additionally William Hasker, “Yes, God Has Beliefs!” Religious Studies 24 (1988): 385–394.
This would be a controversial, assum tion as Leftow, Time and Eternity, ty,p. 318, notes, since there seem to be facts which are non-propositional in nature, e.g.,that I am William Craig. If tensed facts are non-propositional in nature, then God’s knowledge’s being non-propositional does not undercut the necessary truth of (4). For an omniscient, non-propositional knower must know tensed facts.
See discussion in my Tensed Theory of Time,chap. 4.
See brief discussion in Craig, Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom,pp. 7–8, 71–72, 230–232 and therein cited literature.
So also the judgement of Richard M. Gale, “Omniscience-Immutability Arguments,” p. 332; cf. idem, On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 90–91. In response to Gale, Yates argues that a temporal God could not conceivably be omniscient in view of future contingents and that Relativity Theory would require Him to know a multiplicity of temporal now’s, which is impossible (John C. Yates, Timelessness of God,[Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990], pp. 231–232). I have refuted the first of these allegations in my Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom. As for the second, a temporal God would plausibly possess a privileged reference frame in which a privileged present exists (see my The Tenseless Theory of Time: a Critical Examination,Synthèse Library [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000], sec. 1).
Kvanvig, Possibility of an All-Knowing God,p. 159.
Leftow, Time and Eternity,pp. 323–326.
Leftow, Time and Eternity,p. 322.
See discussion in my Tensed Theory of Time,chap. 1.
On those objections see Kvanvig, Possibility of an All-Knowing God,pp. 48–56.
As Geach wrote, “To say that God sees future events as they are in themselves, in their presentness, and not as future, is to ascribe to God either misperception or a patently self-contradictory feat. Misperception is involved if God is supposed to perceive what really is future not as future but as present; flat self-contradiction, if what God sees is both future and simultaneously (since in itself it is just as God sees it) also present” (Peter Geach, Providence and Evil [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977], p. 57).
Kvanvig more or less admits that this solution is ad hoc,making a bland appeal to divine omnipotence as its rationale. Ultimately, however, the solution is incoherent, since on his view tense arises precisely from direct grasping, not being part of a time’s essence. If God directly grasps events as present and yet they are not really present, He does not in fact directly grasp them.
MacBeath, “Omniscience and Eternity,” p. 61.
Murray MacBeath, “God’s Spacelessness and Timelessness,” Sophia 22 (1983): 31. Though a partisan of tenseless time, MacBeath seems to reject divine timelessness on the grounds that God could not use temporal indexicals and so could not know which is my present asking of the question nor share our feelings of relief when a dreadful episode is over (idem, “Omniscience and Eternity,” pp. 67–70). The first difficulty is unproblematic for a tenseless time theorist, since there is no objective present and so God, knowing the unique configuration of particles in the universe at the time of the asking, can answer whatever question is simultaneous with any given configuration. The second difficulty concerns, not so much omniscience, but God’s religious availability. As Leftow points out, there will be innumerable cases of how something feels which God cannot have, even if He is temporal. The question here is whether God is greater if He shares our feelings of anticipation and relief or not.
Paul Helm, “Omniscience and Eternity II,” Aristotelian Supplementary Volume 63 (1989): 77.
Paul Helm, Eternal God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 25; cf. pp. 78–80.
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Craig, W.L. (2001). Timelessness and Divine Knowledge. In: God, Time, and Eternity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1715-1_4
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