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Time, Tense, and Eternity | Aalborg, Denmark - 2019

In March of 2019, Dr. Craig visited Denmark for a series of lectures and presentations. Here, as the honored keynote speaker at a conference sponsored by Aalborg University on The Metaphysics of Time, he shares his first lecture, entitled “Time, Tense, and Eternity."


I want to thank Peter Øhrstrøm for the honor of addressing this year's Philosophy of Time Conference. I’ll be reading this morning my paper “Time, Tense, and Eternity.”

"God," declares the prophet Isaiah, "is the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity" (Is. 57.15). But being a prophet and not a philosophical theologian, Isaiah did not pause to reflect upon the nature of divine eternity. Minimally, to be eternal is to exist without beginning and end. To say that God is eternal means minimally that He never began to exist and will never cease to exist. To exist eternally is to exist permanently.[1]

There are, however, at least two ways in which something could exist eternally. One way would be to exist omnitemporally throughout infinite time. In this case God would have an immemorial and everlasting temporal duration. The other way in which a being could exist eternally would be by existing timelessly. In this case God would completely transcend time, having neither temporal location nor temporal extension.

Philosophical theologians have been sharply divided with respect to God's relationship to time. What are the principal arguments which they have offered for divine timelessness and temporality respectively?

Let’s look together first at arguments for divine timelessness.

The first argument we’ll consider is the argument from simplicity or immutability. Traditionally Christian theologians like Thomas Aquinas argued for God's timelessness on the basis of His absolute simplicity and immutability (Summa theologiae 1a. 10. 3). The argument can be simply formulated. As a first premise, we assume either:

1. God is simple

or

1′. God is immutable.

Then we add

2. If God is simple or immutable, then He is not temporal,

from which it follows that

3. Therefore, God is not temporal.

Since temporality and timelessness are contradictories, it follows that

4. Therefore, God is timeless.

I agree that God's timelessness can be deduced from either his simplicity or immutability. Is this a good reason for thinking that God is timeless? That depends on whether we have any good reason to affirm (1) or (1’). Here we run into severe difficulties. For doctrines of divine simplicity and immutability which are sufficiently strong to support divine timelessness are even more controverted than the doctrine of divine timelessness itself. Philosophically there seem to be no good reasons to embrace these doctrines and weighty objections lodged against them.[2] Time does not permit a discussion of these arguments this morning. The point is that (1) and (1′) are even more difficult to prove than (4), so that they do not constitute good grounds for believing (4).

Turn now to the argument from divine knowledge of future contingents. Many thinkers have argued that God's knowledge of future contingent events, for example, future human free decisions, implies divine timelessness. The reasoning seems to go as follows:

5. A temporal being cannot know future contingent events.

6. God knows future contingent events.

7. Therefore, God is not a temporal being.

Again, if God is not a temporal being, it follows that God is timeless.

Despite the denial of (6) on the part of a wide range of contemporary thinkers from process theologians to so-called "open" theists, a biblical doctrine of divine omniscience makes (6) incumbent upon an orthodox theologian.[3] The argument hinges, therefore, on the truth of (5). On behalf of (5) it is usually claimed that contingent events, not being deducible from present causes, can be known only insofar as they are real or existent. Given (6), it follows that future contingent events are real or existent for God. Defenders of divine timelessness such as Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas thus typically maintained that all events in time are real to God and therefore can be known by him via his scientia visionis (knowledge of vision).

How can we make sense of this claim? The most plausible move for the defender of divine timelessness to make will be to hold that the four-dimensional space-time manifold exists tenselessly and that God transcends that manifold. A good many physicists and philosophers of time and space embrace such a tenseless view of time (also known as spacetime realism). Such a view makes sense of the traditional claim that all events in time are present to God and therefore known to him via his scientia visionis.

But is spacetime realism a necessary condition of God’s knowledge of future contingents? I think not. In assessing the question of how God knows truths about temporal events, we may distinguish two models of divine cognition: the perceptualist model and the conceptualist model. The perceptualist model construes divine knowledge on the analogy of sense perception: God looks and sees what is there. Such a model patently underlies the classic doctrine of scientia visionis. Absent a tenseless theory or time, the perceptualist model of divine cognition does encounter real difficulty concerning God's knowledge of future contingents, for, if future events do not exist, there is nothing there to perceive.[4]

By contrast on a conceptualist model of divine knowledge, God does not acquire His knowledge of the world by anything like perception. His knowledge of the future is not based on His "looking" ahead and "seeing" what lies in the future (a terribly anthropomorphic notion in any case). Rather God's knowledge is more like a mind's knowledge of innate ideas. It is therefore inappropriate to speak of God's acquiring knowledge at all. Rather as an omniscient being, God has essentially the property of knowing all truths; there are truths about future events; ergo, God knows all truths concerning future events. So long as we are not seduced into thinking of divine foreknowledge on the model of perception, it is no longer evident why knowledge of future contingents should be impossible.

We can go further, however. For the doctrine of middle knowledge (scientia media) is a version of the conceptualist model which allows us to say considerably more about the basis of God's foreknowledge of future contingents. Divine foreknowledge is based on (i) God's middle knowledge of what every creature would freely do under any circumstances and (ii) His knowledge of the divine decree to create certain sets of circumstances and to place certain creatures in them. Given middle knowledge and knowledge of the divine decree, foreknowledge follows automatically as a result without any perception of the created world. This complex and interesting doctrine must be pursued, however, at another time.

In sum, the argument from God's knowledge of future contingents is inconclusive since a conceptualist model of divine cognition remains a viable alternative to perceptualist accounts.

Next, the argument from Special Relativity. A third argument for divine timelessness arises from the concept of time in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (STR). According to Einstein's theory, there is no unique, universal time and so no unique, worldwide "now." Each inertial frame has its own time and its own present moment, and there is no overarching, absolute time in which all these diverse times are integrated into one. So if God is in time, then the obvious question raised by STR is: Whose time is he in?

The defenders of divine timelessness maintain that there is no acceptable answer to this question.

We can summarize this reasoning as follows:

8. STR is correct in its description of time.

9. If STR is correct in its description of time, then if God is temporal, He exists in either the time associated with a single inertial frame or the times associated with a plurality of inertial frames.

10. Therefore, if God is temporal, He exists in either the time associated with a single inertial frame or the times associated with a plurality of inertial frames.

11. God does not exist in either the time associated with a single inertial frame or the times associated with a plurality of inertial frames.

12. Therefore, God is not temporal.

What can be said in response to this argument? Although it may come as something of a shock to many, the most dubious premise of this argument is (8). For STR's concept of time rests upon decrepit epistemological foundations. Einstein's re-definition of simultaneity in terms of clock synchronization by light signals simply assumes that the time which light takes to travel between two relatively stationary observers A and B is the same from A to B as from B to A in a round-trip journey. That assumption presupposes that A and B, while at relative rest, are not both in absolute motion, so that A and B while at relative rest are actually moving relative to the absolute space or privileged inertial frame. What justification did Einstein have for so radical a presupposition? The answer, in a word, is verificationism. It is empirically impossible to distinguish uniform motion from rest relative to such a frame, and Einstein believed that if absolute space and absolute motion or rest are undetectable empirically, they therefore do not exist (and may even be said to be meaningless). Historians of science have shown that at the philosophical roots of Einstein's theory lies a verificationist epistemology, mediated to the young physicist chiefly through the influence of Ernst Mach, which comes to expression in Einstein's analysis of the concepts of time and space.[5]

The untenability of verificationism is so universally acknowledged that it will not be necessary to rehearse the objections against it here.[6] Verificationism provides no justification for thinking that Isaac Newton erred, for example, in holding that absolute time, grounded in God's sempiternal duration, exists independently of our physical measures of it and may or may not be accurately measured by them. With the demise of verificationism, the philosophical underpinnings of STR have collapsed. In short, there is no reason to think that (8) is true.

Moreover, contrary to (9), it does not follow from the correctness of STR that if God is in time, then He is in the time of one or more inertial frames. Because according to general relativistic cosmological models, space itself is expanding, there is no universal inertial frame with which God can be associated, even though there does exist a preferred foliation of spacetime and so a cosmic time in which God can be conceived to exist.[7] Based on a cosmological rather than a local perspective, cosmic time serves to restore the classical notion of universal time and absolute simultaneity which STR denied.

The argument from the incompleteness of temporal life. Brian Leftow, as well as Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, argues that the fleeting nature of temporal life is incompatible with the life of a most perfect being like God. A temporal being is unable to enjoy what is past or future for it, possessing only the fleeting present. The passage of time thus renders it impossible for any temporal being, even God, to possess all its life at once. By contrast a timeless God lives all His life at once because He literally has no past or future and so suffers no loss. Therefore, since God is the most perfect being, He is timeless.

We can formulate this argument as follows:

13. God is the most perfect being.

14. The most perfect being has the most perfect mode of existence.

15. Therefore, God has the most perfect mode of existence.

16. Temporal existence is a less perfect mode of existence than timeless existence.

17. Therefore, God has a timeless mode of existence.

The key premise here is (16), which rests on very powerful intuitions about the irretrievable loss that arises through the experience of temporal passage, a loss which intuitively should not characterize the experience of a most perfect being. Some philosophers of time might try to avert the force of this consideration by adopting a tenseless view of time according to which things and events do not in fact come to be or pass away. The difference between past, present, and future is a subjective illusion of consciousness. On this view of time no temporal being ever really loses its past or has not yet acquired its future; it (or its temporal parts) just exists tenselessly at its various temporal locations. A temporal God would exist at all temporal locations without beginning or end and so would not lose or acquire portions of His life.

The problem with this escape route is that it fails to appreciate that the argument is based on the experience of temporal passage, rather than on the objective reality of temporal passage itself. Even if the future never becomes and the past is never really lost, the fact remains that for a temporal person the past is lost to him and the future is not accessible to him. For this reason, it would be futile to try to elude the force of this argument by postulating a temporal deity in a tenseless time.

Perhaps, however, the realization that the argument is essentially experiential in character opens the door for a temporalist alternative. When we recall that God is perfectly omniscient and so forgets nothing of the past and knows everything about the future, then time's passage is not so tragic for Him. His past experiences do not fade as ours do, and He has perfect prescience of what the future holds. So it is far from obvious that the experience of temporal passage is so melancholy an affair for an omniscient God as it is for us. Moreover, the life of a perfect person may have to be characterized by the incompleteness which would in other contexts be considered an imperfection. Timelessness may not be the most perfect mode of existence of a perfect person. All this goes to call into question (16). Still, I think this argument, like the argument from divine foreknowledge, does have some force and so needs to be weighed against whatever arguments can be offered on behalf of divine temporality.

Let’s turn then to arguments for divine temporality.

First is the argument from the impossibility of atemporal personhood. One argument frequently raised in the literature is that timelessness and personhood are incompatible. Some philosophers have denied that a timeless God can be a self-conscious, rational being because He could not exhibit certain forms of consciousness which we normally associate with personal beings (namely, ourselves). For example, Robert Coburn has written,

Surely it is a necessary condition of anything's being a person that it should be capable (logically) of, among other things, doing at least some of the following: remembering, anticipating, reflecting, deliberating, deciding, intending, and acting intentionally. . . . But now an eternal being would necessarily lack all of these capacities in as much as their exercise by a being clearly requires that the being exist in time. . . . Hence, no eternal being, it would seem, could be a person.[8]

Since God is essentially personal, He therefore cannot be timeless.

We can formulate this argument as follows (using x, y, z to represent certain properties allegedly essential to personhood):

18. Necessarily, if God is timeless, He does not have the properties x, y, z.

19. Necessarily, if God does not have the properties x, y, z, then God is not personal.

20. Necessarily, God is personal.

21. Therefore, necessarily, God is not timeless.

The defender of divine timelessness may attempt to turn back this argument either by challenging the claim that the properties in question are necessary conditions of personhood or by showing that a timeless God could possess the relevant properties after all. With respect to the second strategy, even if Coburn were correct that a personal being must be capable of exhibiting the forms of consciousness he lists, it does not follow that a timeless God cannot be personal. For God could be capable of exhibiting such forms of consciousness but be timeless just in case He does not in fact exhibit any of them. In other words, the hidden assumption behind Coburn's reasoning is that God's being timeless or temporal is an essential property of God. But that assumption seems dubious. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that God is in fact temporal. Is it logically impossible that God could have been timeless instead? Since God's decision to create a world is free, we can conceive of a possible world in which God alone exists. If He is unchanging in such a world, then on any relational view of time God would be timeless. But then it seems that there are possible worlds in which God exists temporally and possible worlds in which He exists timelessly. God's temporal status is thus plausibly a contingent rather than essential property.

So if timelessness is a merely contingent property of God, He could be entirely capable of remembering, anticipating, reflecting, and so on; only were He to do so, then He would not be timeless. So long as He freely refrains from such activities He is timeless, even though He has the capacity to engage in those activities. Thus, by Coburn's own lights God must be regarded as personal.

At a more fundamental level, it is in any case pretty widely recognized that most of the forms of consciousness mentioned by Coburn are not essential to personhood or could be exemplified timelessly. Take deciding, intending, and acting intentionally, for example. All of these forms of consciousness are exhibited by a timeless God. With respect to deciding, omniscience alone precludes God's deciding in the sense of making up His mind after a period of indecision. Even a temporal God does not decide in that sense. But God does decide in the sense that His will inclines toward one alternative rather than another and does so freely. Because God is omniscient, His free decisions are either sempiternal or timeless rather than preceded by a period of ignorance or indecision.

As for acting intentionally, there is no reason to think that intentions are necessarily future-directed. One can direct one's intentions at one's present state. God, as the Good, can timelessly desire and will His own infinite goodness. Such a changeless intention can be as timeless as God's knowing His own essence. Moreover, in the empty world we have envisioned, God may timelessly will and intend to refrain from creating a universe. Hence, it seems that God can timelessly intend, will, and choose what He does.

In short, the argument for divine temporality based on God's personhood cannot be deemed a success.

The argument from divine action in the world. In our thought experiment above, we abstracted from the actual existence of the temporal world and considered God existing alone without creation and asked whether He could exist timelessly. But, of course, the temporal world does exist. The question therefore arises whether God can stand in relation to a temporal world and yet remain timeless. It is very difficult to see how He can. Imagine once more God existing changelessly alone without creation, but with a changeless determination of His will to create a temporal world with a beginning. Since God is omnipotent, His will is done, and a temporal world comes into existence. Can God remain untouched by the world's temporality? It seems not. For at the first moment of time, God stands in a new relation in which He did not stand before (indeed, there was no "before"). Even if in creating the world God undergoes no intrinsic change, He at least undergoes an extrinsic change. For at the moment of creation, God comes into the relation of sustaining the universe or at the very least, of co-existing with the universe, relations in which He did not stand before. Since He is free to refrain from creation, God could have never stood in those relations, had He so willed. But in virtue of His creating a temporal world, God comes into a relation with that world the moment it springs into being. Thus, even if it is not the case that God is temporal prior to His creation of the world, He nonetheless undergoes an extrinsic change at the moment of creation which draws Him into time in virtue of His real relation to the world. So even if God is timeless without creation, His free decision to create a temporal world also constitutes a free decision on His part to exist temporally.

The argument can be summarized as follows:

22. God is creatively active in the temporal world.

23. If God is creatively active in the temporal world, God is really related to the temporal world.

24. If God is really related to the temporal world, God is temporal.

25. Therefore, God is temporal.

This argument, if successful, does not prove that God is essentially temporal, but that if He is a Creator of a temporal world—as He in fact is—, then He is temporal.

One way to escape this argument is to deny (23). This might not appear to be a very promising strategy, since it seems obvious that God is related to His creatures insofar as He sustains them, knows them, and loves them. Remarkably, however, it was precisely this premise that medieval theologians like Aquinas denied. Thomas agrees with (24). On his view, relational properties involving God and creatures, like God's being Lord, first begin to exist at the moment at which the creatures come into being (Summa theologiae 1a. 13. 7). Hence, if God stands in real relations to His creatures, He acquires those relational properties de novo at the moment of creation and thus undergoes change. And anything that changes, even extrinsically, must be in time. Thomas escapes the conclusion that God is therefore temporal by denying that God stands in any real relations to the world. Since God is absolutely simple, He stands in no relations to anything, for relations would introduce complexity into God's being. Aquinas holds, paradoxically, that while creatures are really related to God, God is not really related to creatures. The relation of God to creatures exists only in our minds, not in reality. On Aquinas' view, therefore, God undergoes no extrinsic change in creating the world. He just exists, and creation is creatures’ coming into existence with a real relation to God of being caused by God.

This is certainly an extraordinary doctrine. Wholly apart from its reliance on divine simplicity, the doctrine of no real relations is very problematic. God's sustaining the world is a causal relation rooted in the active power and intrinsic properties of God as First Cause. Thus, to say the world is really related to God by the relation “is sustained by”, but that God is not really related to the world by the relation “is sustaining” seems unintelligible. It is to say that one can have real effects without a real cause—which seems contradictory or incomprehensible.

Moreover, God is surely really related to His creatures in the following sense: in different possible worlds, God's will, knowledge, and love are different than they actually are. For example, if God had chosen not to create a universe at all, He would surely have a different will than that which He has (for He would not will to create the universe); He would know different truths than the ones He knows (for example, He would not know The universe exists); He would not love the same creatures He actually loves (since no creatures would exist). It is the implication of Aquinas' view, however, that God is perfectly similar in every possible world: He never wills differently, He never acts differently, He never knows differently, He never loves differently. Whether the world is empty or chock-full of creatures of every sort, there is no difference in God. But then it becomes unintelligible why this universe or any universe exists rather than just nothing. The reason cannot be in God, for He is perfectly similar in all possible worlds. Nor can the reason lie in creatures, for we are asking for some explanation of their existence. Thus, on Thomas' view there just is no reason for why this universe or any universe at all exists. Therefore, Thomas's attempt to evade the present argument by denying (23) is implausible.

Recent defenders of divine timeless eternity have turned their guns on (24) instead. Brian Leftow, as well as Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, have tried to craft theories of divine eternity which would permit God to be really related to the temporal world and yet to exist timelessly. I do not have the time to discuss these theories now. Suffice it to say that the general consensus is that they have failed to make good on their promises.

In summary, it seems that we have here a powerful argument for divine temporality from God’s relation to the world.

Next, the argument from divine knowledge of tensed facts. Defenders of divine temporality have argued that a timeless God cannot know certain tensed facts about the world—for example, what is happening now—and therefore, since God is omniscient, He must be temporal.

We can formulate the argument as follows:

26. A temporal world exists.

27. God is omniscient.

28. If a temporal world exists, then if God is omniscient, God knows tensed facts.

29. If God is timeless, He does not know tensed facts.

30. Therefore, God is not timeless.

Again, this argument does not prove that God is essentially temporal, but, if successful, it does show that if a temporal world exists then God is temporal.

Defenders of divine timelessness have attempted to refute this argument either by arguing that a timeless God can know tensed facts or by arguing that God may still qualify as omniscient even if He is ignorant of tensed facts.

Let us look first at the plausibility of denying (29). Can a timeless God know tensed facts? Although Jonathan Kvanvig, Edward Wierenga, and Brian Leftow have all argued that God can know the facts expressed by tensed sentences, an analysis of their respective positions reveals that in the end they all embrace the view that the factual content expressed by tensed sentences is tenseless.[9] Despite first appearances to the contrary, they all accept the truth of (29). Kvanvig, Wierenga, and Leftow's accounts are the most sophisticated attempts to explain how a timeless God can know the facts expressed by tensed sentences, yet they all finally deny that God knows tensed facts. Hence, (29) seems secure.

The defender of divine timelessness has no recourse, then, but to deny (28). He must deny that omniscience entails a knowledge of tensed facts. He can do this either by revising the traditional definition of omniscience or else by maintaining that tense, though an objective feature of time, does not strictly belong to the factual content expressed by tensed sentences. Let us examine each strategy in turn.

Leftow entertains the idea of revising the definition of omniscience in such a way that omniscience does not entail knowledge of all truths. He argues, in effect, that there are many sorts of truths which God cannot know, so there is no harm in admitting one more class of truths (namely, tensed truths) of which God is ignorant. The problem is that such a consideration should not affect the definition of "omniscience" as such. You cannot cook the definition of omniscience to make it accord with your theory of divine eternity. In any case, does Leftow succeed in showing that there are truths which God cannot know? It seems not. His examples of things God cannot know include how it feels to be oneself a failure or a sinner. But Leftow has confused knowing how with knowing that. Knowing how does not take truths as its object. God can know such truths as “Being a failure feels lousy,” “Sinners feel guilty and hopeless,” and so on. God's not knowing how it feels to be Himself a failure or a sinner is not an example of truths He fails to know and so does not constitute a restriction on His omniscience. Leftow furnishes no example of any truth which might be conjoined with "knows that" such that we cannot say, "God knows that ____," where the blank is filled by the truth in question. Therefore, he has not adequately motivated denying that knowledge of tensed truths properly belongs to omniscience.

The traditional definition of omniscience requires it, and we have no grounds which do not involve special pleading for revising the usual definition.

So what about the second strategy for denying (28), namely, maintaining that tense does not, strictly speaking, belong to the factual content expressed by tensed sentences, even though tense is an objective feature of the world? Tense might be analyzed as a feature of the mode in which the factual content is presented to someone expressing it, or of the way in which a person grasps the factual content, or of the context of someone's believing the factual content. On such analyses, an omniscient being could be timeless because omniscience is traditionally defined in terms of factual knowledge and tense is not part of the factual content of tensed sentences. Tense is an objective feature of the world, but since it does not belong to the factual content of a sentence, a being who knew only tenseless facts could on the traditional definition count as omniscient.

Even though such analyses are plausible and attractive, they do not ultimately save the day for the defender of divine timelessness. For as the greatest conceivable being, God is not merely factually omniscient, but also maximally excellent cognitively.

Just as it is a cognitive perfection to have first-person knowledge (de se), it is a cognitive perfection to know what time it is, what is actually happening in the universe. A being whose knowledge is composed exclusively of tenseless facts is less excellent cognitively than a being who also knows what has occurred, what is occurring, and what will occur in the world. This latter person knows infinitely more than the former and is involved in no cognitive defect in so knowing. On the analogy of knowledge de se, we can refer to such knowledge as knowledge de praesenti (knowledge of the present). A being which lacks such knowledge is more ignorant and less excellent cognitively than a being which possesses it. Accordingly, if we adopt views according to which tense is extraneous to the factual content expressed by a tensed sentence, we should simply revise premiss (28) to read

28´. If a temporal world exists, then if God is maximally excellent cognitively, then God has knowledge de praesenti

and, with appropriate revisions, the argument goes through as before.

Concluding remarks.

On the basis of our foregoing discussion, we have seen comparatively weak grounds for affirming divine timelessness but two powerful arguments in favor of divine temporality. It would seem, then, that we should conclude that God is temporal. But such a conclusion would be premature. For there does remain one way of escape still open to defenders of divine timelessness. The argument based on God's action in the world assumed the objective reality of temporal becoming, and the argument based on God's knowledge of the temporal world assumed the objective reality of tensed facts. If one denies the objective reality of temporal becoming and tensed facts, then the arguments are undercut. For in that case, nothing to which God is related ever comes into or passes out of being, and all facts are tenseless, so that God can be the immutable, omniscient Sustainer and Knower of all things and, hence, exist timelessly.

In short, the defender of divine timelessness can escape the arguments for divine temporality by embracing the tenseless theory of time. It is noteworthy, however, that almost no defender of divine timelessness has taken this route. Virtually the only proponent of divine timeless eternity to embrace consciously the tenseless theory of time in defending God's timelessness is Paul Helm.[10]

It seems, then, that in order to adjudicate the question of the nature of divine eternity and God's relationship to time, philosophical theologians have no choice but to grapple with a further question, one of the most profound and controverted questions of metaphysics: Is time tensed or tenseless? This is difficult and mysterious territory. But we have no choice: if we are to understand eternity, we must first understand time.

QUESTION: Back to premise 24. One can give an objection to this premise by giving an . . . argument about space. One could say: if God is creatively active in the spatial world, God is really related to the spatial world. . . .

DR. CRAIG: I have considered this objection. I think it's inconclusive because the act of creating is not itself a spatial act. It doesn't involve something like pushing or pulling which would be spatial acts that would imply the existence of space. But bringing the universe into being is not itself a spatial act. But I think it is a temporal act because it involves this extrinsic change in God's relations to the world. But I don't think that a comparable argument can be run for saying that therefore God has to be spatial.

QUESTION: I was thinking that you have a problem with Molinism and of God's creation of the world because it would seem that God knows the world, he knows all possible worlds prior to creation. Is that a tensed knowledge? The world right now is tensed, and what he knew prior to creating the world is that choosing to create the world in which this is taking place, and what is taking place is tensed. What was the nature of that knowledge prior to creation?

DR. CRAIG: I think that God's knowledge of tensed truths would belong on a Molinist scheme to God’s so-called free knowledge which is explanatorily posterior to the divine decree. Prior to the divine decree, he simply knows all necessary truths, and then these counterfactuals of freedom concerning what creatures would do if they were in certain circumstances. But at that point no decree has been made to create a temporal world or any world at all. So there wouldn't be any tensed truths that would be known to God at that time. He would simply have knowledge of necessary truths and of these counterfactual truths.

QUESTION: On premise 24. Isn’t that an instance of the fallacy of . . . because how does it follow from the case that God is really related to the world that God is also temporal?

DR. CRAIG: Because it involves an extrinsic change in God. An extrinsic change doesn't involve any change in a thing’s inherent properties. But, nevertheless, in order to undergo extrinsic change, something has to be in time. An analogy I like to use is my relationship to my son. At one time, I stood in the relationship to my son of “being taller than.” Now I stand in the relationship of “being shorter than.” Even though I have undergone no change in my height, he has changed, and so now I have undergone extrinsic change in relation to him. In order for me to do that I have to be in time. So if God does undergo an extrinsic change in creating the world by coming into these new relations like “being Lord” or “sustaining the universe” it would follow, as Aquinas admits, that God has to be temporal.

QUESTION: In your response to the argument from God's knowledge is that you should not think about this knowledge as to . . . like the knowledge of mind of innate ideas.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, this conceptualist model.

QUESTION: But you were talking about future knowledge in this context. The content of the future only makes sense in relation to the present. So future knowledge is not just knowledge at a time point t2. It is the concept of future only makes sense . . . but if he has this innate knowledge, and if God also . . . I mean, what puts the future in the future knowledge then if the knowledge is like innate ideas?

DR. CRAIG: Clearly, there can't be any future tensed truths if there is no time. So if God is existing alone changelessly without creation and is therefore timeless, there are no future tensed truths and therefore no divine foreknowledge of the future. But if God chooses to create a world then with the beginning of the universe and the first moment of time all of those future tensed propositions flip over from being false to being true. So you have this whole infinite multitude now of future tensed truths that God must know in virtue of being omniscient. And, as I say, this involves an intrinsic change in God because it's not just that he would change extrinsically, he now acquires a whole new batch of knowledge as a result of these propositions suddenly becoming true at the first moment of time.

QUESTION: I had a question on the philosophical underpinnings of Special Theory of Relativity. Tim Maudlin has written a book called Space and Time where he says when physics abandoned absolute time it was because they found it to be a superfluous structure that they didn't have a need for. So instead of saying that it is based on verificationism or positivism which has been abandoned, he would say it's based on Ockham's Razor. . . . How would you respond to this?

DR. CRAIG: Maudlin is actually very sympathetic to the idea of a preferred reference frame and a kind of neo-Lorentzian interpretation of relativity. He is actually one of those philosophers of physics who is very sympathetic to the point of view that I'm defending. But I think the argument from superfluity is inadequate. When you look at the classical concept of time expressed by Newton in his great Principia (particularly in the General Scholium that he added to the Principia) it is very clear that the foundation for Newton's belief in absolute time and space is God! It is because God exists that there is an eternal duration which is absolute time. And our physical clocks are simply our human attempts to measure (more or less accessibly) the lapse of God's time. The argument from superfluity says absolutely nothing about those metaphysical foundations of the classical concept of time. If you are, as I am, a theist like Newton, you have metaphysical reasons for thinking that such a time exists, and you’re little troubled by the fact that this concept isn't necessary in special relativity.

QUESTION: This is a followup on 24. Let’s say the number 2 exists timelessly. In what relation does that stand to my age? At some point the number 2 was greater than my age. Then I grew, and at some point the number 2 was lesser than my age. So I had undergone a temporal change; though, I would like to maintain that the number 2 is still something existing timelessly, right? So a change in the external relations of the number 2 – I don't think that implies that the number 2 must exist temporally.

DR. CRAIG: I hear you, and that does seem right. One wouldn't think that the number 2 would be affected by its coming to be my age or, say, my favorite number. It acquires this property of now being my favorite number. But it seems to me either that that intuition could be overridden and, in fact, the number 2 would undergo extrinsic relational change in virtue of becoming my favorite number (as bizarre as that sounds), or I think one could say plausibly, too, that since the number 2 doesn't stand in any causal relation to me that that might provide some basis for thinking it would be unaffected. But in God’s case, you have this real causal relation to the world of God sustaining the world in being. And that, plausibly it seems to me, makes it very different than the number 2 undergoing such a change.

QUESTION: So the number 2 is not causing anything.

DR. CRAIG: Right. The number 2, it's generally agreed, is an abstract object that doesn't stand in causal relations. I don't think the number 2 exists at all so that wouldn't be troublesome for me, but still it is a good hypothetical question.

QUESTION: In this case, there’s another argument. The argument that you used to answer the other question is about the causation of God into the real world. So it is not about the change of God. In my opinion, it is a shifting of the argument.

DR. CRAIG: I'm attempting to strengthen my argument as opposed to the counterexample of this abstract object – a number. My first response was to say you might just have to bite the bullet and say that the number does undergo an extrinsic relational change. Although there, well, again, it would be more plausible to say that the number isn't really related to the temporal world, but with God that's not plausible because of the causal relation he maintains to the world. So there seems to be a complete difference between God's relation to the world and the relation between a number and the world.

QUESTION: Could we move from 24 to 25? There seems to be a recurrent place in many of the arguments . . . you have bivalence on temporality . . . Has no one defended the view that it is both temporal and not temporal?

DR. CRAIG: Not that I'm aware of. I find that this is a typical response from laypeople. They say God is both timeless and temporal. But once you define the terms clearly, these are contradictories. To be timeless is to be atemporal. It is to have no temporal location or extension.

FOLLOWUP: Surely it is a contradiction, but some philosophers do defend true contradictions.

DR. CRAIG: Oh. Well. [laughter] That would take us into an entirely different realm. Yes, I am assuming that contradictions cannot be true.

QUESTION: One of the most famous papers on God’s formalities - well, I would say; maybe it is not strictly true, I have not measured it – but Prior’s paper The Formalities of Omniscience is of course a crucial paper to this discussion. Prior sort of strove to be fair to his opponents, and in fact I think that with his Ockhamist system (which he did not favor himself but) he did present a consistent solution to a belief in free will and God's foreknowledge of future contingents. Nevertheless, in The Formalities of Omniscience, he himself arrived at the conclusion that there were decisions by free agents that God could not know because if they were known to God they were not free. That probably corresponds to a very widespread intuition. I suppose if you ask laypeople in the streets, “You are free, but God knows what you're going to do tomorrow” they would have this sensation . . .

DR. CRAIG: In the longer version of this paper I do present that as another argument for divine timelessness based on foreknowledge, but it had to be omitted because of time constraints. As I read The Formalities of Omniscience though, I think that Prior comes to a quite different conclusion. As I read that paper, at the end of the day he says, “I can make sense of the Ockhamist conclusion that if I were to choose freely to do differently then God would have had a different knowledge or belief in the past, and that this is sufficient to maintain the coherence of the truth value of future contingent propositions and human freedom.” At the end of the day, it seemed to me that he acknowledges the viability of an Ockhamist solution to the threat of theological fatalism. But what he says then is, “But I don't think that they could be known.” They could be true. It's consistent with human freedom, but it would just be guessing, like placing bets at the horse races. If your horse wins then it turns out that you believed truly that that horse would win, but you didn't really know it. It was a true belief but you didn't really know it. That does connect here with the argument that I presented. I think on a conceptualist model, there's no reason at all to think that if there are future contingent truths that these can be known by God. We must not be seduced by thinking of God's knowledge on the model of perception. If we reject that perceptionalist model then I think, given the Ockhamist solution (which I accept) there's no further problem with thinking that God knows the truth value of these propositions rather than simply truly believes them.

 

[1] For an analysis of what it means to be permanent, see Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity, Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 133; cf Quentin Smith, "A New Typology of Temporal and Atemporal Permanence," Noûs 23 (1989): 307-30. According to Leftow an entity is permanent if and only if it exists and has no first or last finite period of existence, and there are no moments before or after it exists.

[2] See discussion in Thomas V. Morris, Anselmian Explorations (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), pp. 98-123; Christopher Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God, Cornell Studies in Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989).

[3] I take for granted that there are contingent events such as human free acts; see my The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Bookhouse, 1987).

[4] Notice, however, that if we think of statements or facts as with in God's perceptual purview, then even on a perceptualist model, God must know the future, so long as the Principle of Bivalence holds for future-tense statements. For He perceives which future-tense statements presently have the property of truth inhering in them or which future-tense facts presently exist. Thus, by means of His perception of presently existing realities He knows the truth about the future.

[5] See especially Gerald J. Holton, "Mach, Einstein and the Search for Reality," in Ernst Mach: Physicist and Philosopher, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 6 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1970), pp. 165-99: idem, "Where Is Reality? The Answers of Einstein," in Science and Synthesis, ed. UNESCO (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1971), pp. 45-69; and the essays collected together in idem, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought. See also Lawrence Sklar, "Time, Reality, and Relativity," in Reduction, Time and Reality, ed. Richard Healey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 141.

[6] Verificationism proposed a criterion of meaning that was so restrictive that it would consign vast tracts of apparently perfectly intelligible discourse to the trash heap of nonsense; moreover, the criterion seemed to be self-refuting. See the excellent discussion in Frederick Suppe, "The Search for Philosophical Understanding of Scientific Theories," in The Structure of Scientific Theories, 2d ed., ed. F. Suppe (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1977), pp. 3-118.

[7] Cosmic time is related to the local times of a special group of observers called "fundamental observers." These are hypothetical observers, associated with the galaxies, who are at rest with respect to the expansion of space itself. As the expansion of space proceeds, each fundamental observer remains in the same place, though his spatial separation from fellow fundamental observers increases. Cosmic time relates to these observers in that their local times all coincide with cosmic time in their vicinity. Because of their mutual recession, the class of fundamental observers do not serve to define a global inertial frame, technically speaking, even though all of them are at rest. But since each fundamental observer is at rest with respect to space, the events which he calculates to be simultaneous will coincide locally with the events which are simultaneous in cosmic time. One could say that God exists in the time of the inertial frame of every fundamental observer; but then there is no problem, since all their local times fuse into one cosmic time.

[8] Robert C. Coburn, "Professor Malcolm on God," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 41 (1963): 155.

[9] Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Possibility of an All-Knowing God (New York: St. Martin's, 1986), pp. 150-65; Edward R. Wierenga, The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes, Cornell Studies in Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 179-85; Leftow, Time and Eternity, pp. 312-37 See also Jonathan L. Kvanvig, "Omniscience and Eternity: A Reply to Craig," Faith and Philosophy 18 (2003): 369-76; Edward R. Wierenga, Omniscience and Time, One More Time: A Reply to Craig," Faith and Philosophy 21 (2004): 90-7.

[10] Paul Helm, "Eternal Creation: The Doctrine of the Two Standpoints," in The Doctrine of Creation, ed. Colin Gunton (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), pp. 42-3; Helm, Eternal God, pp. 25-7, 44, 47, 52, 79.