god, time, and eternity || timelessness and divine action

CHAPTER3

TIMELESSNESS AND DIVINE ACTION

I n our discussion of the personalist objection to divine timelessness, we deliberately restricted ourselves to a consideration of that state of affairs-which

according to Christian theology is metaphysically possible-of God's existing alone sans creation, and we saw no reason to think that in such astate God could not be both timeless and personal. We had to resist the natural impulse to press the question of God' s timelessness with regard to astate of affairs of the co-existence of God and a temporal world. But now we want to address that question squarely.

THE OBJECTION TO DIVINE, TIMELESS ACTION

Many who press the personalist objection maintain that a timeless God cannot be personal because a personal agent must be capable of interacting with a temporal world, which is impossible for a timeless being. That contention is, however, false, as we have seen, since God, existing timelessly alone, would still be capable of interacting with a temporal world, even if, were He to create one, He would in such a case not be timeless. 1 Nevertheless, the question does remain as to whether God's acting in a temporal world is broadly logically compatible with God's being timeless. A great many contemporary thinkers would agree with Pike's judgement that "A timeless individual could not produce, create, or bring about an object, circumstance or state of affairs," since so doing would temporally locate the agent's action.2 To be plausible, Pike's claim must be taken in what medieval thinkers called "the composite sense," namely, that what is impossible is a timeless being's producing an object; and the objects and circumstances in question must be temporal, since it is easy to conceive of a world in which a timeless being produces (tenselessly) timeless objects. So understood, Pike's claim does seem to raise a significant problem for the contention that it may be truly asserted that God is timeless. For it is essential to Christian theism that any reality extra Deum is the product of God's creative activity. So if some temporal object 0 begins to exist at a time t, that event is the result of God's action of creating 0 at t. Prima facie the phrase "at t" qualifies the gerund "creating," thus dating God's creative action. But

This is the failing of Pike's argument, inspired by Schleiermacher, that timelessness is incompatible with omnipotence (Nelson Pike, God and Time/essness, Studies in Ethics and the Philosophy ofReligion [New York: Schocken Books, 1970], p. 11 0; cf. p. 173). A timeless God has the ability to create a temporal world, even if, were He to do so, He would be temporal. Pike gratuitously assumes that God's (a)temporal status is an essential rather than contingent attribute. 2 Pike, God and Time/essness, p. liD; Pike's influence is evident on Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature ofGod (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983), p. 13; Grace M. Jantzen, God's World, God's Body, with a Foreword by John MacQuarrie (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1984), p. 50.

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W. L. Craig, God, Time, and Eternity© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2001

TIMELESSNESS AND DrvINE ACTION 57

if there is a time at which God acted to create 0, then God's act has a temporal location. So unless there is some strange way in which one's acts can be divorced from one's being, it therefore follows that God has a temporallocation, that is to say, He is temporal.

Opponents of divine timelessness can therefore be understood as claiming that

1. God is timeless.

and

2. God is creatively active in the temporal world.

are broadly logically incompatible, on the basis ofthe necessary truth of

and

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

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

Since (2) is essential to Christian theism, (I) must be abandoned. Why think that (3) and (4) are necessarily true? With respect to (3), it seems

inconceivable that God's causal relation to the world and the events/things in it could be regarded as anything other than a real relation. Indeed, God's being related to the world as cause to effect seems to be a paradigm example of a real relation. As for (4), its intuitive basis is the inconceivability of divorcing an agent's being from his actions or his actions from their effects in such a way that the effects could be temporal but the agent timeless. In virtue of the real relation between a cause and its effect, the temporality of the effect entails the temporality of the cause as weIl.

In his recent book God, Eternity and the Nature 0/ Time, Alan Padgett presses forcefully the objection under consideration. He points out that all causes and their immediate or direct effects are what he calls "zero time related.,,3 Two events are zero-time related iff no duration occurs between them. With regard to two temporal events, such a relation entails their simultaneity, or occurrence at the same time. The simultaneity of temporal causes with their immediate effects is evident from the fact that the mere passage of time is not causally efficacious. That is to say, if all the sufficient conditions for an effect are present at t, there is no reason why the effect would be delayed until t*>t.4 Ifthe event fails to occur, there is nothing in the

Alan Padgett, God, Etemity and the Nature ofTime (New York: St. Martin's, 1992), pp. 21-22. This claim will need qualification if quantum indeterminacy is ontic. F or then the causal conditions

of some quantum event, say, the decay of an elementary particle, might be present at t and be sufficient for the occurrence of the event in the sense that no other conditions are necessary and yet the event not occur at t because the conditions do not deterministically produce the effect. But given sufficient time and some finite probability of the event' s occurrence, the event will eventually happen. In such a case, we must either say that the cause is not zero time related to the effect or else that the passage of time is part of the causal conditions of the effect in each particular case, so that the passage of time is causally efficacious or else that the event in question is simply uncaused. This qualification does not affect Padgett's point about divine intentions being zero time related to their effects, however, since there cannot be any duration between God's timeless volitions and their temporal effects. Even in the case of a

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mere passage of time which will produce the immediate effect later at t*. The lesson Padgett draws from the above is that future events cannot be caused in the present; rather the temporal causes of future events will be future, simultaneous causes.

Zero time relatedness is broader than simultaneity, however. For in the case of an atemporal cause and a temporal effect (and, we might add, in the case of an atemporal cause and an atemporal effect), there can be no duration between cause and effect. This is because the category of duration does not even apply to cases in which the cause is timeless. Since the cause lacks a temporal location, it is meaningless to speak of a duration between the cause and its effect. Thus, the zero time relation is said to hold not only between events which are simultaneous, inc1uding all temporal causes and their immediate effects, but also between entities which are not temporally related at all, such as an atemporal cause and its (temporal) effects. It is perhaps unfortunate that Padgett has chosen to call the relation between a timeless cause and its effect a "zero time" relation, since this nomenc1ature suggests that the time or duration between them has the measure zero, when in fact the category of duration is not even applicable in such a case. Perhaps "nondurationally related" would have been a less misleading characterization of things/events which are either simultaneous or such that one is timeless.

Padgett now invites us to consider the case of two events Band C which are such that C is present and B lies in C's absolute past (that is, in or on C's past-directed light cone), and B and C occur at the respective times of 14 and 15 on the world-line of some hypothetical observer at rest relative to some reference frame. 5 Padgett asks,

Can the same divine, etemal, immutable act sustain both B and C? Since 14 is not, B no longer exists, and so is not being sustained, either in our time or in etemity, by any act of God. Since God's sustaining of Cis direct, he cannot (logically cannot) sustain C by an act whose effect is dated at I., and by some causal chain indirectly sustains C-at-15. Furthermore, the present effect of God's etemal act at 15 is Zero Time Related with the etemal intention of God; but this same etemal intention and act cannot also be Zero Time Related to B, since B and C are not themselves Zero Time Related. By a single, timeless act God can sustain C and any episode Zero Time Related to C. But since the divine sustaining is a direct act which must be Zero Time Related to its effect, the same

temporal deity, divine causation is significantly disanalogous to indeterministic quantum causal conditions. God's volitions are deterministic oftheir effects, not indeterministic, since He is omnipotent. Even if they were not, the indeterministic quantum causal conditions have to be continuously present in order for the effect to eventually occur, so that God could not cease to will an effect before it appears. In that case, we would either inciude the passage oftime as part of the causal conditions, so that the cause is zero time related to the effect after a11, or, if we want God's volitions to be the total cause, include the duration as part of the effect willed by God, so that God' s causation is simultaneous with the effect. In any case, deterministic interpretations of quantum theory are viable (e.g., Brody's interpretation of quantum theory as applying to ensembles of particies (Thomas Brody, The Philosophy behind Physics, ed. L. de la Pena and P. E. Hodgson [Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1993]). 5 Padgett does not speIl out the situation this clearly; but this is what he means, on the pain of positing locations of B and C in absolute space and time. The past lightcone 'is aspacetime structure at a spacetime point comprised of a11 events which can causally influence the event at that point. For a discussion see my Time and Ihe Metaphysics 01 Relalivity (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), chap. 5.


divine act cannot sustain both C and B. At the present time (/5) B is not real, and so a different act (different, that is, than the act which sustained B) is now called for if God is to sustain C .... Thus God's direct action upon the present time cannot sustain an episode at another past or future time, disjunct from the present. Thus God must change over time, and the traditional doctrine of eternity must be false. 6

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Here Padgett asserts that if God is zero time (or non-durationally) related to C, He cannot be similarly related to B. Why not? The relation of absolute simultaneity which obtains between all temporal causes and their immediate effects may be transitive, but why think that the broader zero time relatedness is a transitive relation? Why cannot C be zero time related to the atemporal God and God zero time related to B and yet C be later than B? If God were temporal this would be impossible, since God would be absolutely simultaneous with C and, hence, not with B. But if God is timeless, why is this impossible? Padgett's answer depends, as he recognizes, on the reality of tensed facts and the objectivity of temporal becoming. Only the present episode of a temporal entity is real; the past and future do not exist. Thus, B "is not real" and "is not being sustained" (present tense) by any act of God. But if B was once being sustained by God (at (4) and now no longer is, if God was once (at (4) not sustaining C and now He is, then God is doing different things at different times and so is changing. Padgett agrees that God can have a timeless and immutable design to sustain Bat 14 and C at 15' but such a design is not sufficient to produce B in being when 14 arrives? Rather there must be a specific act of divine intentionality or voIition, in a word, an action on God's part to produce B once 14 is present. The act of power whereby God produced B is not the same act of power by which He is producing C, for at 14 C was not being produced. Since God is sustaining C and no longer sustaining B, therefore, He has changed. But anything that changes is temporal; hence, God is in time.

Our exposition of Padgett's argument reveals that the notion of zero time relatedness is really incidental window-dressing for his argument. It plays no essential role in the final analysis. Moreover, Padgett appears to have two quite distinct arguments against divine timelessness going here. One is the argument from change: B was once being sustained by God, but now no longer is; therefore, God has changed, and change entails temporality. But there is also a simpler argument based directly on the reality of tense: it is an objective present-tense fact about reality that C is being sustained by God; therefore, God is sustaining C; hence, God exists in the temporal present.

Both of these strike me as powerful arguments; but since the argument from change is sound only if the argument from tense is cogent, we mayas weIl restrict our attention in this chapter to the latter. Given the reality oftense and God's causal relation to the world, it is, indeed, very difficult to conceive how God could remain untouched by the world's temporality. Imagine once again God existing changelessly alone without creation, with a changeless and etemal determination to create a temporal world. Since God is omnipotent, His will is done, and a temporal

Padgett, God, Elernity and Ihe Nature ofTime, pp. 72-73. By an "episode," Padgett means aphase of a temporal entity's duration. 7 Ibid., pp. 63-66, 73.

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world begins to exist. (We may lay aside for now the question whether this beginning of a temporal creation would require some additional act of intentionality or exercise of power other than God's timeless determination.) Now in such a case, either God existed temporally prior to creation or He did not. If He did exist alone temporally prior to creation, then God is not timeless, but temporal, and the question is settled. Suppose, then, that God did not exist temporally prior to creation. In that case He exists timelessly sans creation. But once time begins at the moment of creation, God either becomes temporal in virtue of His real, causal relation to time and the world or else He exists as timelessly with creation as He does sans creation. But this second alternative seems quite impossible. At the first moment of time, God stands in a new relation in which He did not stand before (since there was no before ). We need not characterize this as a change in God (perhaps change entails a "before" and "after" for an enduring subject), but this is areal, causal relation which is at that moment new to God and which He does not have in the state of existing sans creation. Even if the beginning of the temporal world is the result of a timeless volition of God, the fact that the world is not sempiternal but began to exist out of nothing demonstrates that God acquires a new relation at the moment of creation. At the moment of creation, God comes into the relation of sustaining the universe or at the very least that of co-existing with the universe, relations which He did not before have. Since He is free to refrain from creation, God could have never stood in those relations; but in virtue of His decision to create a temporal universe God comes into a relation with the temporal world the moment the temporal world springs into being. As God successively sustains each subsequent moment or event in being, He experiences the flow of time and acquires a growing past, as each moment elapses. Hence, even if God remains intrinsically changeless in creating the world, He nonetheless undergoes an extrinsic, or relational, change, which, if He is not already temporal prior to the moment of creation, draws Him into time at that very moment in virtue ofHis real relation to the temporal, changing universe.

So even if God is timeless sans creation, His free decision to create a temporal world also constitutes a free decision on His part to enter into time and to experience the reality of tense and temporal becoming.

It does no good simply to appeal to non-explanatory spatial analogies in order to justify God's timeless sustenance of a temporal world, as William Hasker is wont to do: "Just as the non-spatial God can act outside of space so as to produce effects at every point in space, so the timeless God can act outside oftime, that is, in eternity, so as to produce effects at every point in time.,,8 The analogy breaks down precisely because space is not tensed. Hence, God can create spatial things without entering into spatial relations with them (He does not have to be here to create things here); but some explanation is required for how God can create temporal things without entering into temporal relations with them (how He sustains things now without existing now).9 Let us therefore examine three substantive accounts of how a

William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge, Comell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (lthaca, N. Y.: Comell University Press, 1989), p. 154. 9 For this reason there is no substance to Leftow's attempt to circumvent the present argument by maintaining that whether or not time exists, the proposition expressed by "God exists" is tirne1ess1y true

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timeless God can, without sacrificing His timelessness, causally create and sustain a temporal world.

AQUINAS'S DENIAL OF GOD'S REAL RELATION TO THE WORLD

Tbe classic Thomistic response to the above argument against divine timelessness is, remarkably, to deny

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

Aquinas tacitly agrees that if God were really related to the temporal world, then He would be temporal, as (4) affinns. As Liske points out, in Tbomas's view relations between God and creatures, like God' s being Lord, first begin to exist at that moment of time at which creatures come into being.1o In the coming to be of creatures, then, certain relations accrue to God anew and thus, if these relations be real for God, He must be temporal in light of His undergoing extrinsic change, wholly apart from the question of whether God undergoes intrinsic change in creating the world. Contemporary philosophers have tended to overlook this fact, focusing the debate on Thomas's contention that God timelessly wills not merely His effects but also the times at which those effects appear in the temporal series. 11

(Brian Leftow, Time and Eternily, Comell Studies in the Philosophy ofReligion [Ithaea, N. Y.: Comell University Press, 19911, p. 52). Leftow ignores the issue of whether God ean exist timelessly and be really related to the world. His appeal to the timeless existence of numbers (pp. 40-48) is vitiated precisely by the fact that numbers, unlike God, have no causal relation to the universe. Moreover, advocates of timeless truth hold that there are timelessly true propositions about temporal entities, so that the timeless truth of God exists does not imply that God exists timelessly. 10 Michael-Thomas Liske, "Kann Gott reale Beziehungen zu den Geschöpfen haben?" Theologie und Philosophie 68 (1993): 224. According to Liske, the reason Thomas resisted recognizing God's real relation to the world is that "Obviously he feared that the mere temporal obtaining of a relation ftom God, if it is real, requires that God Hirnself must be temporal" (lbid., p. 218). II Thomas Aquinas Summa contra gentiles 2. 35. 3-5. Liske unfortunately conflates the question of God's undergoing relational change in creating with the question ofHis intrinsieally changing in creating when he writes,

"According to Thomas relational statements which either primarily signify or merely connote an aetual relation of God to creatures first hold of God ftom that point of time at which there are creatures (S.t. la. 13. 7 ad 1). It is natural to suppose that these relations therefore first begin to hold ftom a certain point of time because the absolute reality which grounds them, God's creatorial activity, frrst then begins to work .... Since creatures ... are fllst brought into being by God's aetivity, it seems impossible that God is already changelessly exercising His creatorial activity, but that the relation to creatures first comes to be at a certain point of time.. .. But should we suppose that God actualizes His creatorial activity temporally? But now this surely implies a change in Hirn" (Liske, "Reale Beziehungen," pp. 224-225).

Focusing on the question of whether the act of creating involves intrinsic change in God's will or activity to the neglect of Thomas's position on God's real relation to the world are Davis. Logic and the Nature 0/ God, pp. 12-13, and Edward R. Wierenga, The Nature 0/ God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes, Comell Studies in the Philosophy ofReligion (Ithaca, N. Y.: Comell University Press, 1989), p. 198. Because he softens Aquinas's doctrine of no real divine relations to the world to mean merely that God immutably causes the world, Yates is also forced to recur to this theme, yet without explaining how God's timelessness could be preserved in the face of His real relations with achanging, temporal

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But an examination ofthe context of Aquinas's remarks on this head reveals that his concem there is to explain how God can immutably will a temporal world without that world's always existing, that is, without its having an infinite past. 12 Thomas's discussion of philosophical arguments for ''the eternity of the world" presupposes a construal of "eternity" as only sempiternity, and thus he speaks of God's eternity even in terms that smack of temporality: ''Nothing, therefore, prevents our saying that God's action existed from all eternity, whereas its effect was not present from eternity, but existed at that time when, from all eternity, He ordained it.,,13 Even if successful, Thomas's argument at best shows that God's efficacious will remains changeless as the world comes to be and as events successively occur and pass away. He says nothing in this context (nor was that bis intention) to show how the origin and unfolding of a temporal world would not taint the etemal God with temporality in virtue of His real relation to the temporal sequence of events changelessly willed by Him.

Thomas 's View ofGod's Relation to the World

Aquinas's solution to the problem at hand is quite different: he denies that God has any real relation to the world. Tbis prima facie incredible position is rooted in Thomas's doctrine of divine simplicity, which is in turn based upon Aquinas's Wlderstanding of God as ipsum esse subsistens, the unrestricted act of being. In Aquinas' s Wlderstanding, God does not have any nature or essence distinct from His act of existing. 14 For if a thing has an essence distinct from its being, it must have an existential cause wbich sustains it in existence. But God, as the Uncaused First Cause, cannot have a cause, and therefore His nature must be identical with His existence. Similarly, any thing having an essence distinct from its existing has by that fact the potentiality for existence. But since God, as the Unmoved First Mover, has no potentiality, His essence cannot be other than His existence. Now as the pure act of being, not defined by any essence, God is absolutely simple. 15 From God's simplicity and the utter absence in Him of any potentiality, God's immutability follows,16 and it is on the basis of God's immutability that Thomas infers God's timeless eternity: "The idea of eternity follows immutability, as the idea of time follows movement.... Hence, as God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs

world (John C. Yates, The Timelessness of God [Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990), pp. 142, 159-160). Incredibly, Harris thinks that "Aquinas chose to ignore the whole problem" (James F. Harris, "God, Etemality, and the View from Nowhere," in Logic, God, and Metaphysics, Studies in Philosophy and Religion 15 [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), p. 74)! Similarly oblivious to Aquinas's solution is Richard R. LaCroix, "Aquinas on God's Omnipresence and Timelessness," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 42 (1982): 391-399. 12 Aquinas Summa contra gentiles 2. 32-38. 13 Ibid., 2. 35. 3. Cf. 2. 35. 5: "the effect of God's will was not delayed, although having been always willed, the effect was not itself always existent.. .. the creature began to exist at that time which God appointed from all etemity." 14 Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae la. 3. 4. 15 Ibid., la. 3. 1-7. 16 Ibid., 1a. 9. 1.


to Him to be etemal. Nor is He eternal only, but ... as He is His own essence, so He is His own eternity.,,17 It is at this point that our objection arises: even if God immutably wiUs the creation of the temporal world, would not the origin of that world, in virtue ofGod's relation to it, bring God into time?

Thomas has already implicitly invalidated such a question in his doctrine of divine simplicity. For God's being simple entails, in particular, that God transcends the Aristotelian metaphysical distinction between a substance and its accidents. For Aquinas accidents are properties which a thing, or substance, may possess either contingently or necessarily, but which do not enter into the definition of what the thing is, or its essence. Thomas bases his denial of accidents in God squarelyon his conception of God as being itself or pure actuality:

... accidents cannot exist in God. First, because accidents realize some potentialities of their subject, an accident

being a mode in which the subject achieves actuality. But we have already seen that potentiality is to be altogether mied out from God.

Secondly, because God is his own existence and .. . you cannot add to existence itself. ...

Thirdly, because what exists by nature is prior to what exists by accident, so that if God is to be the absolutely prime existent, nothing can exist in him by accident. Nor can there be accidents in hirn by nature, as asense of humor exists in man by nature; for such accidents are derivative from the essential nature of the subject. In God however there is nothing derivative, but all derivation starts from him. We are left to conclude that God contains no accidents. 11

The importance of the absence of accidents in God becomes evident when we recall that one of the nine categories of accident listed by Aristotle was relation (7tpo<; n).19 According to Thomas's peculiarly Aristotelian metaphysics relations are actually monadic predicates or properties inhering in one or both of the relata. Though a relation might be grammatically or logically predicated of both relata, the ontological accident of relation might not inhere in both terms of that relation. Aquinas distinguished three possibilities in this regard: (1) the relation may exist merely in thought, not in the things themselves, as is the case with the relation of self-identity; (2) the relation may exist in both things, as in relations of quantity; (3) the relation may exist in one relatum only, being purely ideal for the other, as in the case of a knower and the object known.20 In this third case, the relational predicate signifies something real (res naturae) in the one relatum, but only something

17 Ibid., la. 10. 2. Cf. Aquinas Summa contra gentiles 1. 15: "Those beings alone are measured by time that are moved. For time ... is 'the nurnber of motion.' But God ... is absolutely without motion, and is consequently not measured by time. There is, therefore, no be/ore and after in Him; ... nor can any succession be found in His being. F or none of these characteristics can be understood without time. God, therefore, is without beginning and end, having His whole being at once. In this consists the nature of eternity ...

18 Aquinas Summa theologiae la. 3. 6. 19 Aristotle Categories 4. 1"25-284. Moreover, others of the categories listed involved relations, specifically time and place. Certain relations, too, might not be confined to a certain category or predicament but characterize all of them and so are called transcendental relations. 20 Aquinas Summa theologiae la. 13. 7.

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conceptual (res rationis) for the other. A knower K has the real property of knowing object 0, but 0 itself does not possess any real property of being known by K, as is evident from the fact that 0 would be intrinsically the same if K were non-existent, whereas K would be intrinsically different were 0 not to exist.

Now since God is simple and lacks all accidents, He cannot possess any relations to creatures. Therefore, according to Aquinas, while the temporal world does have the real relation of being sustained by God, God does not have a real relation of sustaining the temporal world. This latter relation, while predicated of God, in fact signifies only a conceptual relation. Startling as it may sound, God does not have any relations of Creator to creature, cause to effect, Savior to saved, and so forth. Aquinas writes,

Whenever two things are related to each other in such a way that one depends upon the other but the other does not depend upon it, there is a real relation in the dependent member, but in the independent member the relation is merely one of reason-simply because one thing cannot be understood as being related to it. The notion of such a relation becomes clear if we consider knowledge, which depends on what is known, although the latter does not depend on it.

Consequently, since a11 creatures depend on God, but He does not depend on them, there are real relations in creatures, referring them to God. The opposite relations in God to creatures, however, are merely conceptual relations; but, because names are signs of concepts, certain names we use for God imply a relation to creatures, even though, as we have said, this relation is merely conceptual.21

The fact that relations between God and creatures inhere only in the latter enables Aquinas to avert the objection to divine timelessness based on God's relation to the temporal world. He explains,

whatever receives something anew must be changed, either essentially or accidentally. Now certain relations are predicated of God anew; for example, that He is Lord or governor of this thing which begins to exist anew. Hence, if a relation were predicated of God as really existing in Hirn, it would follow that something accrues to God anew, and thus that He is changed either essentially or accidentally; the contrary of this having been proved .... 22

Since God is immutable, the new relations predicated of Him at the moment of creation are just in our minds; in reality the temporal world itself is created with a relation inhering in it of dependence on God. Hence, God's timelessness is not jeopardized by His creation of a temporal world.

This unusual doctrine of creation becomes even stranger when we reflect on the fact that creating a temporal universe is an act of God and that action, like relation, is one of the nine Aristotelian categories. It would seem to follow that God has no real actions and therefore cannot properly be said to have created the world (though the world could have under the category ofpassivity or passion the accident ofbeing created by God). Aquinas escapes this conclusion, however, by identifying God's

21 Thomas Aquinas De veritate 4. 5. Cf. Summa theologiae la. 13. 7; Summa contra gentiles 2. 11-14; De potentia Dei 3. 3. 22 Aquinas Summa contra gentiles 2. 12. 5. Precisely the same solution is offered by Aquinas to the question of how the timeless, immutable God can become incarnate in Jesus Christ (idem Summa theologiae 3ae. 2. 7).


action with His power and, hence, with His essence.23 God's act of being is His power and His act of creating. Thus, in creating the world God does not perfonn some act extrinsic to His nature; rather the creature (which undergoes no change but sirnply begins to exist) begins to be with a relation to God of being created by God:

raken actively, [creation] denotes the act of God, which is his essence, together with a relation to the creature: and this is not areal but only a logical relation. But taken passively, since ... it is not properly speaking a change, it must be said to belong, not to the genus of passion, but to that of relation.... Creation taken actively denotes the divine action to which the mind attaches a certain relation ... :but taken passively, ... it is a real relation signified after the manner of a change on account of the newness or beginning that it implies. 24

According to this doctrine, then, God in freely creating the universe does not really do anything different than He would have, had He refrained from creating; the only difference is to be found in the universe itself: instead of God existing alone saus the universe we have instead a universe springing into being at the first moment oftime possessing the property being sustained by God, even though God, for His part, bears no real reciprocal relation to the universe made by Hirn.

Assessment ofThomas 's Position

Implausibility ofthe No Real Relation Doctrine

By way of assessment, I think it hardly needs to be said that Thomas's solution, despite its daring and ingenuity, is extraordinarily implausible. Wholly apart from the very problematic notions of God's essence being identical with His act of being and of God's simplicity, we have this very difficult tenet that while creatures are really related to God, God is not really related to creatures. How are we to make sense of this idea? For Aquinas a real relation is one that obtains objectively in the real world; amental or conceptual relation is one posited by the mind, but having no counterpart in reality. Analogously, the distinction between God's will and His existence is not real, but conceptual; or again, we can imagine God prior to the moment of creation, but really there was no such prior time.25 Now a real relation is for Aquinas a property inhering in a substance. This understanding may seem strange to us, since we nonnally conceive of relations as being polyadically, not monadically, predicated. As we conceive relations, it would seem impossible for a real relation to obtain between two things without that relation being real for both of them. Nonetheless, Aquinas does seem to be on to something important in distinguishing real from conceptual relations. In certain cases, the foundation of a relation between two things is constituted by the intrinsic properties of only one of the relata. For example, ifI resent my boss, then I stand in a resentfol ofrelation to

2J Ibid., 2. 9. 5. 24 Aquinas De potentia Dei 3. 3. Cf. his comment, "Consequently creation is really nothing but a relation of the creature to the Creator together with a beginning of existence." 25 Aquinas Summa theologiae la. 19. 2; idem De potentia Dei 3. 1, 2.

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him, and he stands in aresented by relation to me. But the foundation of these reciprocal relations lies in my intrinsic properties, not in those of my boss. This is not to say that my boss has done nothing to cause or merit my resentment; it is simply to say that the relation itself obtains who11y because of intrinsic properties I possess, regardless of the source of those feelings. So in asense, a relation can be said to be asymmetrica11y real if it is founded on intrinsic properties of only one of its relata. Perhaps in such a case we could say that the relatum on whose intrinsic properties the relation is founded has areal, intrinsic, relational property, for example, resenting Jones, but that the other relatum possesses no real, intrinsic relational property like resented by Smith. Such a elaim seems justified particularly in view of the fact that if Smith were to die, Jones might go on possessing the intrinsic property of resenting Smith, whereas if Jones were to die, it would be impossible for Smith to possess the property resented by Jones. But if Smith fails to possess that property merely because of Jones's death, which for Smith is an extrinsic change only, then resented by Jones is not an intrinsic property possessed by Smith after a11. Hence, it makes sense to say that among certain relata, not all rea11y possess intrinsic, relational properties, though all stand in real relations to one another. Such monadica11y predicated properties would come elose to what Aquinas understood by relations as accidents inhering in a substance.

The question then is whether our predicating of God at the moment of creation the relational property of sustaining the wor/d is merely conceptual or ascribes areal property to Him. "Sustaining" clearly describes a relation which is founded on something's intrinsic properties concerning its causal activity, and therefore sustaining the wor/d ought to be regarded as areal property acquired by God at the moment of creation. I must confess that I find Aquinas's position, that this property is not rea11y possessed by God, but that the relevant real, relational property is being sustained by God, which is possessed by the world, to be quite incredible. If at the moment of creation the world begins to exist with the relational property being sustained by God, then how could God fail to acquire at that very moment the relational property sustaining the wor/d? Aquinas's own examples seem to betray him here. In the cases of knowledge and perception and their objects, the real relation is said to inhere in the person knowing and perceiving, not in the objects known and perceived. But surely God, as the Creator and Sustainer of the cosmos, is more analogous to the person knowing and perceiving than to the objects of bis knowledge and perception. One need not be a process theologian to fmd considerable resonance with the sentiments of Charles Hartshome when he writes,

If, then, God is wholly absolute, a tenn but never a subject of relations, it follows that God does not know or love or will us, his creatures. At most we can say only that we are known, loved, and willed by hirn. Here a11 analogy fails uso 'I am loved by you, but it is untrue that you love me'-does this strange combination ofwords mean anything, even if we suppose them addressed to deity? All our experience supports the view that the cognitive relation, still more obviously, if possible, a relation such as love, is


genuinely constitutive of the knower or the lover, rather than of the known or the loved. 26

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Similarly, with respect to Peter Geach's example of envious of and envied by as indicating real and unreal relations respectively,27 God as an active agent is much more like the jealous person than like the unwitting object of jealousy. What such examples seem to forget is that God's relation to the world is a causal relation, and it seems fantastic to think that the relation between a cause and its effect is analogous to relations like envied by or known by.28 The universe's dependence upon God rather than vice versa seems as little reason for denying to God the real relational property of sustaining the cosmos as the dependence of imagined scenes in the mind's eye ofthe artist or daydreamer would be for denying that such persons have a real relation to the products of their imagination. If the relation of some cause to its effect is unreal, then the cause has in particular no causal relation to its effect; that is to say, the cause is not a cause, which is self-contradictory. All we can say in such a case is that the effect is really related to another object or event as the effect of said object or event. In truth there is no real cause in such a case, only a real effect. But it seems unintelligible, if not contradictory, to say that one can have real effects without real causes. Yet this is precisely what Aquinas affrrms with

26 Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), pp. 16-17. Hili points out that in this discussion the concepts of divine causality, knowledge, and love are entirely analogical (William J. Hili, "Does the World Make a Difference to God?" Thomist 38 [1974]: 155). It seems to me, however, that it is the causal relation between God and creatures which most clearly requires divine temporality. For alueid critique of Hartshome's extravagant inferences from the reality of divine relations to the world, see Merold WestphaI, "Temporality and Finitism in Hartshome's Theism," Review of Metaphysics 19 (1966): 550-564. Westphal shows that God's knowing and willing a contingent world do not entail that God is subject to change and dependence; nevertheless, he admits that they do entail that God is in some sense contingent (Ibid., p. 551), and this suffices to refute the view that God has no real relation to the world. Westphal states that according to Aquinas God possesses in addition to etemal and necessary properties eternal and contingent ones, these latter involving His relation to the world. He comrnents, "There is no difficulty in harmonizing this with Thomas's assertion ofthe divine simplicity and his denial of divine accidents, for we can and should take these latter to be restricted to God in hirnself (God abstract and unrelated), whereas the contingent and multiple properties of relation belong to the divine being in relation (God concrete)" (Ibid., p. 563). In denying that God is really related to creatures, opines WestphaI, Thomas is only saying that God is related to creatures in such a way as to render invalid any inference of dependence in hirn (Ibid., p. 564). But this is manifestly untrue, since relations are accidents and God, being simple, has no accidents. The doctrine of divine simplicity permits no such distinction within God as God abstract and God conerete, except as a conceptual distinction only. As the pure act of being, God has no such relations as Westphal imagines, these being extrinsic denominations with no ontologieal correlates. For a discussion of the Auseinandersetzung between Hartshorne and Westphal, see Gene Reeves and Delwin Brown, "The Development of Process Philosophy," in Process Philosophy and Christian Thought, ed. Delwin Brown, Ralph E. James, Jr., and Gene Reeves (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), p. 45. 21 Peter Geach, "God's Relation to the World," Sophia 8/2 (1969): 4, rep. in Peter Geach, Logie Matters (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1972), p. 321; cf. idem, "Causality and Creation," Sophia 1 (1962): 1-8. 28 See remarks of C. 1. F. Williams, "Is God Really Related to His Creatures?" Sophia 8/3 (1969): 1-10. Williarns ' s view that senten ces Iike "God created the world" are not relational at all only serves to reinforce the point that God must be different in worlds in which He does not create, sinee He then lacks an intrinsie property He has in the actual world. The relation of co-existenee also remains to be aecounted foT.

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respect to God and the world. W ords like "First Cause" and "Creator" are only extrinsic denominations applied to God, that is, predicates which do not correspond to any real property but which are appropriate in virtue of real properties in creatures. Even if we adopt the Thomist view that causation takes place entirely in the effect, not in the cause/9 that only underscores the reality of God's causal relation to the world, since the world is admitted to be really related to God as effect to cause, to be really caused by God, which is all that there is to causality; nothing more needs to be added ex parte Dei for Hirn to be the cause of the world. Yet Thomism denies that God is literally the cause of the world, though the world is the effect of God-which seems contradictory or meaningless.30

The fact that we are dealing with a causal relationship between God and the world makes the present objection to divine timelessness much more powerful than similar arguments by W olterstorff or Smith for the temporal existence of God or abstract objects on the basis of changing reference to them by temporal agents.31

For clearly, relational properties like worshiped by Jones or referred to by Smith are much more akin to relations like envied by or known by than are relational properties like sustaining the world and are therefore more plausibly regarded as merely conceptual, not real. Therefore, against Wolterstorff and Smith it might be plausibly maintained that God or abstract objects do not really gain and lose relational properties of the sort mentioned, that the only real, relational properties involved belong to temporal agents, and that therefore the acquisition and loss of such properties by such agents do not suffice bring God or abstract objects into time. True, such timeless entities do change in their relations to temporal things, but it

29 William 1. Hili explains, "For God to become a cause is quite simply for an effect to begin to be .... The realness of the transaction lies entirely on the side of the effect, serving as the basis for extrinsically denominating God as really causing. Thus for God to really cause is for the effect to really come to be" (Hili, "World Make a Difference to God," pp. 156-157). What is not intelligible is why on this account the denomination of God as cause is only extrinsic, were this view not imposed apriori by divine simplicity. 30 Hence, 1 find myself constrained to agree with Schubert Ogden when he writes,

"Recognizing that the God of Holy Scripture is undeniably a God who is related to his creatures, theologians have generally aIlowed that relational concepts may be predicated of deity, provided that they are understood analogicaIly instead of literaIly. The difficulty, however, is that, on conventional metaphysicaI premisses, to say that God is not literally related to the world could only mean that he is literaIly not related to it; and so the c1assical analogia entis, Iike traditionaI theism in general, has been continually caught in incoherence and self-contradiction" (Schubert Ogden, The Reality 0/ God [New York: Harper & Row, 1963], p. 151).

Ogden errs in contrasting anaIogicai use of terms to Iiteral use; the contrast to analogical use is univocal use and to literaI use metaphoricaI use. Still he is correct that on Thomistic metaphysics God's being Creator, Lord, etc. are only extrinsic denominations because God is not related to the world. 31 Nicholas Wo1terstorff, "God Everlasting," in God and the Good, ed. C. Or1ebeke and 1. Smedes (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 186-187; Quentin Smith, Language and Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 204-214; er. Roderick M. Chisholm and Dean W. Zirnrnerrnan, "Theology and Tense," Noüs 31 (1997): 264. For a critique of such arguments, see Char1es J. Kelly, "Why God Is Not Really Re1ated to the Wor1d," Philosophy Research Archives 14 (1988-89): 476. See also Hugh J. McCann, "The God beyond Time," in Philosophy 0/ Religion, ed. Louis Pojman (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), p. 237, who, however, fails to justify his denying that extrinsic, but real, change would be temporaIizing.


might be plausibly maintained that since such change is purely extrinsic it fails to temporalize such entities. By contrast, even if God in creating the world does not change in His will or in the exercise ofHis power, He does acquire at the moment of creation a new relational property such as sustaining the universe, in virtue of the universe's being newly effected by Him at that moment.32 Therefore, God must be in time, at least since the moment of creation.

Thomistic Back-Pedaling

In response to considerations such as the above, many contemporary interpreters of st. Thomas have sought to recast Aquinas's doctrine that God has no real relation to the world in such a way as to allow that God does have such relations, yet without sacrificing His perfection. We need not dispute the claim that God's possessing real relations with the world does not entail any increase in His perfection; but it seems to me that such re-interpretations of Aquinas completely gut Thomism and in particular undermine the doctrine of divine timelessness. Consider, for example, the construal of Aquinas's doctrine advocated by W. Norris Clarke in response to what Hartshorne has called "the divine relativity," that is, the idea that God is really related to the world in His relations of willing, knowing, and loving creatures. Adopting Aquinas's distinction between natural being (esse in re), that is to say, objective existence in the world, and intentional being (esse intentionale), that is to say, existence in consciousness as an object of knowledge, Clarke wants to say that God is truly related to the world through His intentional consciousness but that this makes no difference to His "real heing." He affrrms,

because of His free decision to create this possible world rather than that, to respond lovingly to this person in this way rather than that, God's fjeld of intentional consciousness must be determinately and contingently other than it would and could have been had He decided in some other way. For free decisions are by definition contingent, could have been otherwise, and we should not have the least reluctance to

32 We thereby circumvent the issues raised by John Yates in his interesting discussion of timeless causation and creation (Yates, Timelessness ofGod, chap. 5; cf. McCann, "God beyond Time," pp. 238-239). Basica\1y Yates argues that causation involves no transition from potency to act in the cause, so that changeless causing is possible. I should go further and say that causation need not involve any temporal transition from potency to act in the effect as we\1, so that both cause and effect could be timeless. Thus we may agree with McCann that causation is not inherently temporal or atemporal. But McCann fails to explain why God's willing or causing new effects would not be changes in Him, even though the results of His creative activity are not. When it comes to timeless creation of a temporal world, McCann and Yates at best show that God's act of creating need not be an intrinsic change in Hirn, but only an extrinsic change. They fail to show that an extrinsic change in God would not suffice to temporalize God. Yates's point that creation takes no time only shows that creating lacks temporal extension, not temporallocation. What Yates (like McCann) needs is a robust doctrine ofno real relation of God to the world, but he waftles on this (Ibid., p. 183). Similarly Liske feels driven to posit real relations of God to the world but claims that the beginning or ceasing to be of a real relation need not temporalize its subject. He says that fatherhood, for example, is a real relation based on intrinsic properties of a man but that this relation can cease to exist when the man's only child dies (Liske, "Reale Beziehungen," pp. 223-224). But at best this example only shows that God could acquire or lose real relations without any intrinsic change on His part, which I am conceding for the sake of argument.

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affinn that in its creaturely intentional objects or tenns the divine consciousness is contingently and detenninately differentiated. 33

Again, "His consciousness, in its intentional content, is distinctly, determinately, and contingently differentiated or other with respect to creatures because He has freely chosen this world, than it would and could have been had He chosen a different world or none at all. ,,34 Clarke thus concedes that God has a relation of personal consciousness (relatio conscientiae personalis) to the world, yet he insists that because this is a relation only in the intentional order, it does not affect God's ''real being" and so cannot strictly be called a real relation. Remarkably, Clarke thinks that he faithfully represents Thomas's thinking on this matter since

in his strict tenninology and theoretical framework such relations cannot be called 'real relations,' since all 'real' relations for hirn require as their foundation some change or difference in the real intrinsic ('absolute') being of the subject related-which would not be compatible with the divine infmity, allowing, as it does, no increase or diminution of its intrinsic plenitude of real perfection. Thus, for St. Thomas, the difference in the divine consciousness as intentionally related to creatures does not thereby entail any change in the divine consciousness, let alone the intrinsic real being ofGod.3'

Clarke's position on how God's relation to time is affected by His relation of personal consciousness to the world is nebulous. On the one hand, Clarke seems to affirm divine atemporal consciousness, writing,

these relations are not first absent at one moment of time and later present at another, but simply present without change in the eternal Now of God present to all points of time. This etemal Now is itself outside the flow of our motion-dependent time, but present in its own unique time-transcending way to all points of time without intemal succession in God. Difference (this rather than that) does not logically imply change (this after that).36

33 W. Norris Clarke, "A New Look at the hnmutability of God," in God Knowable and Unknowable, ed. Robert 1. Roth (New York: Fordham University Press, 1973), p. 55. Cf. William J. Hili, "Does God Know the Future? Aquinas and Some Modems," Theological Studies 36 (1975): 14.

"In this sphere of intentionality, God detennines Hirnself to be the sort of God He is by choosing to create this existing universe rather than any of an infinite number of other worlds possible to Hirn. This makes no difference to God's nature, not to His activity of loving and knowing, but it obviously makes a difference regarding what He knows and loves. Had God chosen not to create or to create a different cosmos than the one we have, He would in this sense be a different God than He in fact is."

See also William E. Mann, "Simplicity and hnmutability in God," Intemational Philosophical Quarterly 23 (1983): 273-275, who claims that the contenl of God's knowledge could be different from what it is, but that the content of God's omniscience is not identical to His essence; similarly, not the content of what God wills, but God's willing power or activity is His essence. 34 Clarke, "New Look at hnmutability," p. 56. 3' W. Norris Clarke, The Philosophical Approach 10 God (Winston-Salem, N. Car.: Wake Forest University, 1979), p. 90, summarizing his earlier article. In this second piece, Clarke appears prepared to jettison the doctrine of God's having no real relation to the world, but this is appearance only, since the older doctrine he still holds to be true; it is just that the meaning of ''real relation" has changed. We shall see that it is Clarke who changes the meaning of "real relation" so as to make the traditional doctrine more credible; but in doing so he undercuts not only the classic doctrine, but the core Thomistic conception of God. 36 Clarke, Philosophical Approach 10 God' p. 90.

TIMELESSNESS AND DIVlNE ACTION 71

On the other hand, Clarke seems to allow tensed change in God's consciousness, entertaining a model according to which the "divine field of intentional consciousness is constantly expanding to match the ongoing evolution of temporal history, in exact contemporaneity with the latter's ongoing 'now.",37 Yet because this becoming occurs only in consciousness, God's "intrinsic real being" is said to remain immutable. In a later piece, Clarke shows himself even more open to this latter model, positing a sort of divine time, distinct from our physically based time, which is founded on ''the pure succession of contents of consciousness, of 'intentional being, , ... without any 'moving around' or physical motion inside His own intrinsic being.,,38 In the unity of God's consciousness there is a unique mode of temporal succession somehow correlated with ours. But God's intrinsic being remains immutable and incapable of increased perfection.

It seems to me painfully apparent that far from faithfully representing the teaching of Aquinas, Clarke has grossly misconstrued and contradicted it, leaving himself defenseless against the current objection to divine timelessness. Clarke's distinguishing between God's consciousness and God's intrinsic, real being is either spurious or incompatible with divine simplicity. I am inclined to say that the distinction is just spurious, based upon Clarke's confusion ofthe reality of an object of consciousness with the reality of consciousness of an object. The intentional object itselfhas no objective, independent reality, but certainly God's consciousness is areal and objective aspect of His being. Hence, it is futile to try to allow God's consciousness to be different in various possible worlds without allowing that God is different in different possible worlds. But then God has contingent properties with which He is not identical, so that divine simplicity is destroyed.39 If we insist on His simplicity, then God will have the same properties in every world with respect to willing, knowing, and loving as He does, so that the price of maintaining divine simplicity is destroying divine freedom.40 Indeed, given God's necessary existence, there would be only one logically possible world. Since that is absurd, God must have different properties across worlds. As Alston points out in his

J7 Clarke, "New Look at Immutability," p. 65. So also Hili, who writes, "God becomes what He was not-not in Hirnself but in the world and in history. It is not simply the case that what is other than God changes, but rather that God changesnot in Hirnself but in the other and by way of the other. God changes not absolutely but relationally, i.e., in terms ofthose dispositions ofknowing and loving that He chooses to adopt toward a universe of creatures that in a finite and temporal way determine themselves" (Hili, "God Know the Future," p. 15).

I take it that Hili means that God undergoes no intrinsic change in His activities, but that as a consequence of extrinsic change in Hirn due to His relations with temporal creatures God is temporal. Being temporal will entail intrinsic change in God, in that He has achanging present, but that change is explanatorily posterior to the extrinsic change that brings Hirn into time. 38 Clarke, Philosophical Approach to God, p. 94; cf p. 96. 39 A point made by A1vin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980), pp. 39-40. Plantinga errs, however, in equating contingently possessed properties with accidental properties. See also lohn Lamont, "Aquinas on Divine Simplicity," Monisl 8 (1977): 521-538, who explains that for Aquinas there is in God no distinction between esse intentionale and esse nalurale. 40 As Hartshorne protested, "It simply cannot be that everything in God is necessary, including his knowledge that this world exists, unless the world is in the same sense necessary and there is no contingency whatever" (Hartshorne, Divine Relalivity, p. 14). Cf Ogden, Reality ofGod, p. 17.

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analysis of Hartshome and Aquinas on this score, if we say that God's perfect knowledge would have been different had He created some other world, in that He would then have had knowledge of that world rather than this, then divine cognitive relations to creatures are partially constitutive of GOd.41 And that entails that God is really related to the world.

On the other hand, ifwe do drive a wedge between God's consciousness and His immutable nature, then God is not simple. In particular God's knowledge and will are not His essence, since these are different from world to world.42 But if God is not simple, then the ground is removed for any claim that God does not have real relations to the world, for that claim was anchored, as we saw, in the divine simplicity.43 Clarke asserts that divine simplicity only means that there are no really distinct ontological parts making up the absolute divine being and that this does not exclude a multiplicity of relations;44 but this assertion is manifestly untrue, since relations are accidents and God, in virtue of His simplicity, is explicitly said to have no accidents. Clarke's reinterpretation thus strikes at the very heart ofthe Thomistic conception of God as the unmodified act of being itself. In the end Clarke hirnself admits that his distinction between God's relational being and intrinsic being is artificial and that God's inner being is affected by His relations with the world; Clarke would only insist that these bring no improvement to God. We need not

41 William P. Alston, "Hartshome and Aquinas: A Via Media," in Existence and Actuality, ed. John B. Cobb, Jr. and Franklin I. Gamwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 83-84. 42 One cannot save the situation by distinguishing with Mann God's power or activity of willing and knowing rrom what He wills and knows, for power and activity are not identical. Everyone agrees that God has the same power across worlds, but this is not to say that God has the same activity across worlds, since activity involves the exercising of some power. In worlds in which God does not create, He retains the power to create and love creatures, but in such a world He is not exercising that power. Hence, God's activity of creating and sustaining the universe is not identical with the power to do so, and His activity of loving creatures is not identical with his disposition to love them should He create them. Thus, in worlds in which God rerrains rrom creating, He is c1early different than He is in the actual world. Hence, God is not simple. 43 This is especially c1ear in Aquinas's exposition in Summa contra gentiles 2. 12.2, where he argues that relations which refer to God's effects cannot exist in Hirn as accidents, since He is simple, nor can they (like God's action) be identical with His essence because as relational terms they would make God's very being relative to something else; "Therefore, such relations do not really exist in God." See also A. J. Kelly, "God: How Near a Relation?" Thomist 34 (1970): 216, who affirms that

"c1assical theism, and Thomism in particular, sees no possibility at all in there being any other relation between God and the world than that of reason alone. The pitch of the argument lies in the absolute Is-ness of God, the sheerly existent One. God cannot be said to acquire a new real relationship to anyone or anything without truly denying the ontic absoluteness of the divinity."

44 Clarke, Philosophical Approach 10 God, p. 101. Of course, ifClarke's claim were true, then there is no bar to real relations accruing to the partless God. Cf. Wright' s claim that God has only a relation of reason to creatures because "He gains nothing rrom them by causing them, no increase in goodness, perfection, or reality" (John H. Wright, "Divine Knowledge and Human Freedom," Theological Sludies 38 [1977]: 456) and Westphal's interpretation than in denying God a real relation to creatures, Thomas is only saying that God is related to them in such a way as to ren der invalid any inference of dependence on them (Westphal, "Temporality and Finitism," p. 564). Such watered-down reinterpretations of Aquinas's position are a dagger in the heart of Thomism because they contradict God's simplicity, in that He has real relations and so is not being itself subsisting.


dispute this last claim; but now no grounds remain for denying God's real relation to the temporal world.

Secondly, a word should be added about Clarke's characterization of real relations, since a number of contemporary thinkers have sought to defend the Thomistic solution to the objection under consideration by claiming, as Clarke does, that a necessary condition of a real relation is some intrinsic change in the subject having that relation. Since the world's beginning to exist is said to be immutably and tirnelessly willed by God, its coming to be involves no intrinsic change in God and hence no real relation on God's part to the world. Thus, Peter Geach asserts that the denial that God is really related to the world is traditionally bound up with the denial that God undergoes change. Contrasting real change to pseudo-change, or what he facetiously calls "Cambridge change,,,45 Geach takes God's becoming Creator to be merely a "Cambridge change" for Hirn.46 Geach has no criterion for discerning real change, and the examples of Cambridge change which he offers are instances of relational changes in objects undergoing no change of intrinsic, nonrelational properties. Presumably, then, God at most changes extrinsically in creating a temporal world and so is not really related to the world.

Such reasoning is predicated on an incorrect understanding of real relations. Intrinsic change in a thing's properties is neither sufficient nor necessary for that thing's relation to something else being rea1.47 Thomas's paradigm example of an

4S Peter Geach, God and the Soul, Studies in Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion (London: Routledge, Kegan & Paut, 1969), pp. 71-72. The Cambridge criterion for change was: a thing x has changed if we have "F(x) at time t" true and then "F(x) at time t( false. On this account Socrates would change by becoming shorter than Theaetetus. 46 Geach, "God's Relation to the World," pp. 322-323; see also idem, God and the Soul, chap. 6. Cf. Yates's claim that the denial ofa relation in God means only that God is not changed by creation and that in creation only a "Cambridge change" is involved (Yates, Timelessness ofGod, pp. 183, 141). A1though Geach thinks thus to have solved the problem of God's causal relation to the world, he does admit to "severe difficulties" with respect to God's knowledge and will. For in this case there is no real change in the object; so how can the objects of God's knowledge and will be really related to Him and how can He fail to be really related to them? Geach attempts to solve this problem by construing God's knowledge as practical, rather than observational, and so, like His will, unchangeable. But even if successful, this move only shows God's knowledge and will to be changeless, not unrelated really to the world. Au contraire, the knowledge and will by which God governs the world would have to be related to the world, it seems, in order to be efficacious. 47 See Liske, "Reale Beziehungen," pp. 211-212. James F. Ross adopts Geach's terminology in characterizing changes and relations, but he recognizes that calling a relation merely a "Cambridge relation" from the viewpoint of a certain thing does not imply that the things are so related only in thought, but not in reality; it only implies that from the viewpoint of a given relatum that relatum did not change as a condition of that relation's holding (James F. Ross, "Creation," Journal of Philosophy 77 [1980]: 625). Nonetheless, Ross misleads in stating that a relation is real from the standpoint of a given relatum just in case that relatum 's undergoing a real change is either logically necessary or was logically sufficient for that relation's obtaining. There is no reason to think that "real" relations could not obtain between two timeless, immutable entities, e.g., the logical equivalence of two tenseless propositions. Thus, when Ross asserts, "The relation 'x creates y' is real from the standpoint ofthe creatures that begin to be, instead of not being at a11, but is merely a Cambridge relation from the standpoint of the Creator (whose creation is a constant force)" (lbid., p. 626), he falsely opposes "real relation" to "Cambridge relation." Not only does the beginning to be of creatures fail to satisfy his (mistaken) definition of "real relation" (since beginning to exist is not a change), but there are no grounds for contrasting a real relation

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asymmetric real relation, a knower's relation to the object of knowledge, not only implies no intrinsic change, but no extrinsic change either; indeed, it could be a timeless and immutable relation. On the other hand, if the object of knowledge did undergo intrinsic change, that would do nothing to rnake its relation to the knower real. Similarly, creation itself is not, in Thornas's lights, any change in the thing created, but a sheer beginning to exist with a real relation of dependence on God. If intrinsic change were a necessary condition of real relations, then God and the event of creation do not stand in any real relation at all, whether frorn the side of the creature or of God, which is absurd.

The immutability of God's will, knowledge, and love in relation to creatures is thus wholly beside the point with respect to the question of God's real relation to the world.48 The issue is not intrinsic change, but intrinsic (counterfactual) difference: if a world of other creatures were actual, would God's will, knowledge, and love relationships be different? If we affmn this, then God has different intrinsic properties frorn world to world and so real relations with the creatures willed, known, and loved by Hirn.

As Hill admits,

somehow or other God with a creation and God without it are not entirely the same thing, and it appears overly facile to dismiss this as exclusively on the side of the creature. There remains the possibility of intrinsic differences in God's knowing and loving, differences which need not bespeak any transrnutation of his being. No entitative transition from not-knowing to knowing or from not-Ioving to loving is implied. 49

To be sure, God's being different in will, knowledge, and love across various possible worlds is ultimately due to His own free decree as to what sort of creatures to create. But the dependence upon God of what creatures are actual only shows

with a Cambridge relation anyway, since the latter may be just as much a part of objective reality as the former, even though one relalum did not change. 48 The confusion of impassibility with immutability also besets Richard Creel's treatment of these problems in Richard E. Creel, Divine impassibilily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). For example, Creel admits that God's knowledge is conditioned by whatever world is actual, but he denies that this implies passibility in God because passibility is vulnerability to change induced by something distinct from that in which the change takes place (Ibid., p. 82). This is a wholly different conception of what it is to be impassible than as he defined it on p. 11: imperviousness to causal influence from extemal factors or incapacity to be affected by an outside force (N.B.: even these disjuncts are not equivalent!) There is no reason to think that "being causally influenced" entails "being vulnerable to change" or, better that "being conditioned" entails "being vulnerable to change." If God's knowledge consists wholly of tenselessly true beliefs about the world, then it could be immutable and yet passible in that it is conditioned by wh ich world is actual. Similarly, if, as Creel suggests, what God wills is tenseless and time-indexed, then it can be immutable (Ibid., p. 19); but, pace Creel, it is still conditioned in the sense that God wills an event e at /2 in the actual world, but not in W*, because in the actual world some earlier event e' occurs at I" whereas e' does not occur at /, in W*. Thus, Creel is wrong when he asserts that "a passible being could not be immutable" (Ibid., p. 11). 49 Hill, "World Make a Difference to God," p. 157. Cf. Liske, "Reale Beziehungen," p. 227, who trembles on the verge of admitting that the world makes a counterfactual difference to God but pulls back because he believes that this would sacrifice God's absoluteness and make God a part ofthe universe-a pity he did not know WestphaI, "Temporality and Finitism," pp. 550-564.


that God's relation to creatures is freely chosen by Hirn, not that that relation is unreal. Again Hill makes the point:

God does freely detennine himself to know and love this actual world rather than any of the other infinite number of possible worlds.... Ultimately, God is choosing, in unqualified freedom, to so specity himself. But the point is that there occurs a detennination within God as knowing and loving, on which basis he is other, relatively speaking, than he would be had he detennined himself in some other way. so

Wholly apart from the question of intrinsic change on God's part, then, the admission that God is intrinsically different in different possible worlds, in that what He knows, wills, and loves is diverse across worlds, demonstrates that His relation with creatures is not merely conceptual, all the diversity residing in the creatures alone, but real because it is founded in intrinsic properties of God Hirnself. But if God has real relations with the temporal universe, no reason remains for denying God's temporality, even if His becoming Creator is a "Cambridge change." For even extrinsic change can be sufficient for real relations. In Geach's example of Socrates's becoming shorter than Theaetetus due to the latter's growth, only Theaetetus undergoes intrinsic change, but Socrates's being shorter than Theaetetus as a result of that change is still a real relation. With respect to creation, we have conceded for argument's sake that God's creating the world is not the consequence of an intrinsic change on His part. Accordingly, His becoming Creator could be construed as a "Cambridge change," resulting from the universe's springing into being. But it does not follow that the relation which accrues to God as a result is therefore unreal, since intrinsic change is not a necessary condition of a real relation. Even if God is conceived to be timeless sans creation, so that He cannot properly be said to change (even extrinsically) in virtue of the new relation He acquires at the first moment of tirne, still the newness of that relation suffices to bring Hirn into time.

Would-be defenders ofThomism who seek to soften Aquinas's position so as to allow God real relations to the world under the condition that God's perfection and causal independence be maintained actually destroy Thomism, for they thereby sacrifice God's sirnplicity, the identity of His essence with His pure act of being, and divine atemporality.

Gad's Trans-War/d Similarity

Actually, Aquinas has a quite different way of eluding the dilemma of God's knowledge, will, and love's either being identical with His essence, thereby removing divine freedom and contingency, or else being accidental to Hirn, thereby destroying divine sirnplicity and His unrelatedness to the world. What Hartshome uncritically presupposed is that God knows, wills, and loves the world. But this is precisely what Aquinas's doctrine of no real relation of God to the world denies. Bizarre as it may sound, it is the implication of Aquinas's position that God is

50 Hili, "World Make a Difference to God," p. 157.

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perfectly similar across possible worlds, even the same in worlds in which He refrains from creation as in worlds in which He creates. As Zagzebski explains,

Since the primary object ofGod's knowledge is his own essence, and since his essence could not have been different, it follows that God's mental state of knowing is the same in a11 possible worlds. His knowing state would have been the same state even, in fact, ifhe had decided not to create a world at all. SI

For in none of these worlds does God have any relation to anything extra se. In all these worlds God never acts differently, He never cognizes differently, He never wills differently; He is just the simple, unrelated act of being.

Of course, in these various worlds different creatures have the accidents of being sustained, known, and loved by God. The entire difference between worlds is to be found there, on the side of creatures. 52 But that brings us back to Aquinas's doctrine of creation, which I previously characterized as unusually strange. In every world God exists in every respect the same. Even in worlds in which He does not create, His act of being, by which creation is produced, is no different in these otherwise empty worlds than in worlds chock-full of contingent beings of every order. The only difference is that in worlds in which God creates there is, from God's perspective, that relatio rationis to fInite thingS.53

SI Linda T. Zagzebski, The Dilemma 0/ Freedom and Foreknowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 88. By "knowing state" Zagzebski evidently means cognitive state, since she affirms that God's know1edge does vary across worlds; i.e., the same divine cognitive state is God's knowingp in one world and His knowing not-p in another. According to Zagzebski, "the single state of knowing his own essence that constitutes God's epistemic state in a11 possible worlds has the accidental property of secondarily knowing one set of contingent truths in one world and another set of contingent truths in another world" (Ibid., p. 89). Dependent as it is on the doctrine of divine simplicity, Thomas Flint dismisses this position as "Iess than promising" (Thomas P. Flint, critical notice of The Dilemma 0/ Freedom and Foreknowledge, by Linda Zagbebski, Faith and Philosophy 11 [1994]: 484); indeed, it seems to me that Zagzebski's position is self-contradictory. For as a simple being God cannot have the envisioned property, much less have it accidentally, since ex hypothesi God is the same across possible worlds. 52 One of the few consistent Thomists is thus Charles 1. Kelly, "Why God Is Not Really Related to the World," p. 472; cf. idem, "The Logic of Etemal Knowledge from the Standpoint of the Aristotelian Syllogistic," Modern Schoolman 66 (1988): 29-54. But Kelly is content merely to examine the logic of statements ostensibly predicating real relations of God and to re-state accurately Aquinas's position that nothing can be predicated of God other than an activity which belongs exclusively and necessarily to Hirn, so that all such relations really lodge in creatures. But Kelly does nothing to render this position credible. He does claim that propositions which are equivalent in the active and passive voices retain the same logical subject; so if "was created by God" expresses a real relation in the world, then "created the world" cannot express a real relation in God (idem, "Why God Is Not Really Related," p. 464). But this assertion is obviously false in the case of causal relations. In "lohn hit the ball" and "The ball was hit by lohn," there is no reason to take the logical subject as being the same or to infer that even if it were, only one term is really related to the other. For some discussion of Kelly's analysis of statements predicating real relations of God, see James E. Taylor, "Kellyon the Logic of Etemal Knowledge," Modern Schoolman 67 (1990): 141-147; Charles 1. Kelly, "On the Logic of Etemal Knowledge: A Rejoinder," Modern Schoolman 68 (1991): 163-169. 53 Yates expresses the doctrine straightforwardly:

"Creation ... actively considered is only a logical relation. The divine power is God hirnself. When God creates he does nothing else than to be God. The being of creating is not posited in God as though it were God plus something else. . . . That God creates, and conserves, makes an absolute difference to the creature and no difference to God.

TIMELESSNESS AND DrvINE ACTION 77

The notion that God is no different whether He creates or does not create and that the difference between these two alternatives lies wholly in the created being meshes nicely with the Thomistic understanding of efficient causality. Since the categories of action and passion (passivity) are taken to be identical in the real order and only conceptually distinct, causation is conceived to reside wholly in the effect produced, not in the cause. Clarke explains,

The action of the agent is shown to consist, not in any change or motion in the agent, but in the very production of the effect in the patient, or the effect itself as being produced. The productive action of the cause, therefore, takes place, properly speaking, not within the cause but within the patient: it is the emergence of the effect itself as from/or due to the cause. Hence, the action and the passion, the producing and the being produced, are strictly identical in the real order and ontologically located in the subject affected. They are distinguished conceptually, however, in terms of the relations involved. Action is the effect-being-produced considered as from/or due to the agent. Passion is the identical effect considered as received or residing in the patient. Causing and being caused are not, therefore, two events, one taking place in the agent and the other in the patient. They constitute a single ontological event. S4

Given such an understanding of causation, one can perhaps make sense of the view that the difference between God's causing or not causing the universe lies entirely in the universe itself and not in God. God's creating the universe just is the universe's beginning to be with the accidental property of being caused by God.

In the end, however, Thomas's doctrine of creation is just not credible. The Thomistic analysis of causation seems irnplausible in light of our own experience as causes. So long as we consider external causes, we can give Thomas's analysis a run for its money: the brick shattering the glass, for example, is in reality just the shattering of the glass by the brick. But once we consider ourselves introspectively as agent causes, the ontological identity of action and passion becomes irnplausible. Causing and being caused by are not just inert relations: causing is an activity, and as such lodges in the agent. When we act as causes, we experience action as something we do. That is not the case with the passive being caused. The reality of our experience of ourselves as causal agents belies the clairn that action and passion are only conceptually, not really, distinct. Since God is an agent, the action of creating must be something attributable to Hirn, not just to His effects as produced.

In any case, even if action and passion were identical in reality, it still does not make good sense to say that in any instance of causation one has passion without any action. That would be to say that the effect is produced by nothing, which is analytically false. But in the creation of the universe, that is exactly on Thomas's view the situation. Wehave a passion being produced but no action producing, a real effect but no real cause. It might be said that technically speaking in creation

This is not a mere corollary of the relationship of creation but its very essen ce" (Yates, Timelessness of God, p. 181).

Since God exists in every possible world it is inexplicable why creation does not take place in every world. Cf Ogden, Reality ofGod, p. 17. It is no wonder that Aiston cheers Hartshome for having helped to make the traditional doctrine of creation more attractive, plausible, and coherent than it was in the Thomistic framework! S4 W. Norris Clarke, "Causality and Time," in Experience, Existence, and the Good (Carbondale: Southem Illinois University Press, 1961), p. 146; cf idem, "New Look at Immutability," p. 51.

78 CHAPTER3

we have no passion either, since there is no subject to receive the act of being. But then it would follow that creation is not an instance of causation at all, which only serves to cast doubt on the deftnition of "causation" employed. Creation is enough like causation to warrant our demanding that if there is areal creature, then there is a real Creator.

Wholly apart from the analysis of causation, however, Thomas's doctrine of creation makes it unintelligible why the universe exists rather than nothing. The reason obviously cannot lie in God, either in His nature or His activity (which are only conceptually distinct anyway), for these are perfectly similar in every possible world. Nor can the reason He in the creatures themselves, in that they have areal relation to God of being freely willed by God. For their existing with that relation cannot be explanatorily prior to their existing with that relation. What is wanted is something posterior to God in the order of explanation but prior to the existence of creatures really related to God. But in Thomas's system there is an explanatory lacuna in that middle position.

Few contemporary interpreters of st. Thomas have faced this issue squarely. lohn Wright does, and he fmds himself forced to conclude that

we can't say that 'Creator' is whoUy and simply a matter of extrinsic denomination founded on the reality of an extrinsic denomination, that is, of creatures. It will not do because the reality of creatures and of their dependence presupposes, not merely 10gicaUy but ontologically, the activity of God as detennined to produce creatures and to produce these rather than some other possible creatures. We may call this detennination what we like, but we cannot reduce it merely to a posterior construction of the human mind. To do so would be to make the actual existence of the world either absurd or independent of God (since then there is objectively nothing in the divine activity, no reason at aU why creatures exist rather than not exist, or these creatures rather than some other possible ones) or else to make it the inevitable consequence of necessary divine activity. ss

Making the existence of the universe the inevitable consequence of divine activity results from saying that the reason the universe exists is due to the simple essence of God; making the existence of the universe independent of God results from saying that there is no reason why creatures exist rather than nothing; and making the existence of the universe absurd results from Thomism, saying that God has no real relation to the world, but the world has a real relation to God.

I conclude, then, that the escape from the present objection advocated by Thomists, namely, denying the truth of (3) ultimately leads to absurdity and so must be rejected.

SS Wright, "Divine Knowledge and Human Freedom," p. 457. Wright gives a half-hearted attempt to justify the denial of real relations in God by insisting that creatures are not the ultimate tenn of the relation; since they are relative to God, God regards them as such, so that He is the ultimate tenn of the relation. But this defense is meritless: the relation of sustaining which God has to the universe is asymmetric and so tenninates in creatures; another relation links them back to God. In the end Wright accepts real relations in God, only insisting that these do not affect the divine perfection (Ibid., pp. 460-461). Aquinas' s solution becomes especially fantastic when we recall that he also employs it to explain the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity as Jesus ofNazareth, for it is incredible to imagine that God in worlds in which He does not become incarnate is precisely the same as in worlds in which He does.


STUMP AND KRETZMANN'S ET-SlMULTANEITY

If, then, we agree that God is really related to the world in virtue of His creative activity in the temporal world, then we must deny the necessary truth of


in order to undercut the argument at issue for divine temporality. In 1981 Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann sparked a renewal of interest in the doctrine of divine timelessness by proposing a model of God's relationship to time which allegedly demonstrated the possibility of God's being atemporal and yet really related to the world.

The heart of the Stump-Kretzmann proposal lies in their conception of a new species of simultaneity, which they call "etemal-temporal simultaneity" (or "ETsimultaneity,,).56 They take the generic concept of simultaneity to be existence or occurrence at once (that is, together). "Temporal simultaneity" refers to a species of this generic concept and means existence or occurrence at one and the same time. Temporal simultaneity and simultaneity are not the same, since between two etemal entities or events there obtains another species of the generic concept of simultaneity called "etemal simultaneity," which is existence or occurrence at one and the same eternal present. Thus, the two species of simultaneity are distinguished by the specific content given to the general notion at on ce, or together. Simultaneity in general involves co-existence or co-occurrence but does not specif)r whether this coexistence or co-occurrence is at one and the same time or at one and the same etemal present.

Stump and Kretzmann 's Eternal Present

But what do Stump and Kretzmann understand by the expression "etemal present?" Although for Stump and Kretzmann etemality is not equivalent to atemporality-they have the peculiar view that whatever is etemal is alive, for example-, nonetheless they hold that etemality entails atemporality. Clearly, then, the etemal present is not the temporal present. Nevertheless they claim that this fact "does not rule out the attribution of presentness ... to the life ... of such an entity, nor should it. Insofar as an entity is or has life, completely or otherwise, it is appropriate to say it has present existence in some sense of 'present' .... ,,57 They clarif)r what sense that is when they comment, "no etemal entity has existed or will exist; it only exists. It is in this sense that an etemal entity is said to have present existence.,,58 The only way in which an entity could literally possess presentness and yet it never be true of that entity that it will exist or that it has existed would be if time were composed of a single instant at which that entity existed. Since an etemal entity is, however, atemporal, Stump and Kretzmann's characterization of

56 Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, "Eternity," Journal 0/ Philosophy 78 (1981): 434-440. 57 Ibid., p. 434. 58 Ibid.

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it's having present existence as only existing must imply that its existence is literally tenseless and only metaphorically present.

But here things begin to get complicated. Apparently misled by the metaphor of the "eternal present," Stump and Kretzmann feel compelled to deny that the eternal present-like the present of a time composed of a single instant-is an evanescent instant which elapses as soon as it occurs: "the eternal, pastless, futureless present is not instantaneous but extended, because eternity entails duration ... , The eternal present .. .is by definition an infinitely extended, pastless, futureless duration. ,,59

They are thus led to embrace the notorious notion of "atemporal duration. " According to Stump and Kretzmann "the life of an eternal entity is characterized by beginningless, endless, infinite duration. ,,60

Their advocacy of atemporal duration has brought down upon their view heaps of criticism. As Padgett complains, "atemporal duration" is just an oxymoron, since duration simply is the span of time through which an entity might endure.61

Temporality is thus inherent to the meaning of "duration." Stump and Kretzmann recognize that their combining duration with timelessness constitutes ''the most flagrant of the difficulties" with their view; but they seek to soften its impact by insisting that "atemporal duration" is ''technical terminology" which uses familiar words in unfamiliar ways and noting that technical uses of familiar terms-like "black hole" or "Big Bang"-are common and go unprotested in other theoretical disciplines.62 What is surprising about this defense is that expressions like "black hole" and "Big Bang" are precisely not technical terminology, but ordinary language expressions which every scientist recognizes as metaphorical. On this pattern we should take expressions like "eternal present" or "atemporal duration" as appropriate metaphors for God's mode of existence. But Stump and Kretzmann are committed to construing eternity as literally some sort of extension which is the paradigm of duration.63 According to them temporal duration is "only apparent duration," while atemporal, infinite duration is "genuine, paradigmatic duration. ,,64 By contrast, no scientist would take the Big Bang to be the paradigm for explosions or black holes to be the paradigm of holes. To contend that temporal duration is only apparently duration because it lacks the permanence of eternity is as ridiculous as saying that a bomb blast is not an explosion because it involves no expansion of space itself or

S9 Ibid., p. 435. 60 lbid., p. 433. 61 Padgett, God, Eternity and the Nature o/Time, p. 67: "Stump and Kretzmann have chosen the wrong word. The word 'duration' means an interval of time, namely, that interval of time through which something endures. The notion of an atemporal duration is, therefore, a contradiction in terms;" so also Davis, Logic and the Nature 0/ God, p. 19; Richard M. Gale, On the Nature and Existence 0/ God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 48; Katherin A. Rogers, "Eternity Has No Duration," Religious Studies 30 (1994): 7. For more on the concept of endurance, see my The Tenseless Theory 0/ Time: a Critical Examination, Synthese Library (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), chap. 9. 62 Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, "Etemity, Awareness, and Action," Faith and Philosophy 9 (1992): 464-465. 6] Stump and Kretzmann, "Etemity," pp. 444-445; idem, "Atemporal Duration: a Reply to Fitzgerald," Journal 0/ Philosophy 84 (1987): 216, 218. 04 Stump and Kretzmann, "Atemporal Duration," p. 218.


that a perforation is not a hole because it involves no gravitational self-collapse. The metaphors "black hole" and "Big Bang" are appropriate because the entities or events so referred to are reminiscent of genuine explosions and holes. If, then, temporal duration is, as seems undeniable, genuine duration, it follows that eternity is not a genuine duration.65 Because it does not elapse, an etemal state is reminiscent of something that endures, but the terminology of duration can only be used of it metaphorically.

Of course, one may move "beyond the terminological novelties," by dropping the terminology of duration altogether and speaking of eternity, as Stump and Kretzmann are wont to do, simply in terms of an atemporal extension.66 The idea of atemporal extension is c1ear, since the concept of space involves extension which is atemporal. Now if one does wish to conceive of eternity as an atemporal extension, one is obliged to explain the nature of this extension, its topological and geometrical properties.67 But Stump and Kretzmann admit that eternity has none of the properties normally associated with extension. Minimally, any extension must be such that it can be regarded as a manifold, that is to say, one can specify points within it which are non-identical. But according to Stump and Kretzmann eternity does not even fulfill this most minimal of conditions: it has no actual parts or phases and is not divisible even potentially or conceptually.68 The conc1usion is irresistible that thls "extension" is not topologically different from a single mathematical point. Not even the most primitive metric can be non-trivially defmed for eternity, since non-identical points cannot be specified within it, much less ordered by a relation of betweeness. Topologically and geometrically, then, eternity is no kind of extension, but a point.69

65 So Leftow, Time and Eternity, pp. 125-127. 66 Stump and Kretzmann, "Etemity, Awareness, and Action," pp. 465-466. 67 Pau1 Fitzgera1d, "Stump and Kretzmann on Time and Etemity," Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985): 260-269. 6. Stump and Kretzmann, "Etemity, Awareness, and Action," p. 46; cf. idem, "Atemporal Duration," p. 215: "Nothing that is incompatib1e with divine simp1icity can count as E-duration;" cf. pp. 218-219. Helm rightly complains that "atempora1 duration" becomes so qua1ified that nothing remains but the bare words (Paul Helm, Eternal God [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988], p. 35). Strange1y, on p. 216 of "Atemporal Duration" Stump and Kretzmann do seem to al10w conceptual divisibility of atemporal duration: continuous time, they explain, is not composed of actual or even potential parts, rather

"it is potentially divisible conceptually. And Fitzgerald provides no reason for thinking that the subphases of E-duration are to be treated otherwise than those of temporal duration ... since the potential divisibility of any duration is conceptual on1y, there is no discrepancy between any possible divisibility of E-duration and God's nature as pure actuality. "

Here they seem to countenance the idea that a duration as a who1e is logically prior to any intervals or points which can be specified in it and endorse the possibility of conceiving etemity in this way. Their mature view seems clearly to contradict such an endorsement. If we do conceive of etemity as a coneeptually divisible duration, then metrieal questions cannot be avoided. For example, for any two non-identical points a and b in etemity, is the distanee (a, b) > O? lf not, how is etemity different from a point? If so, how does God have possession of His life "at once"? Similarly, for any three points a, b, and c, if b is between a and c, is the distance (a, b) > distance (a, c)? The same two questions arise with respect to negative and affirmative answers to this question. 69 The best analogy for Stump-Kretzmann etemity which I can think of would be aseries of points having a light-like separation in Minkowski space-time. The metric of such a manifold requires that the

82 CHAPTER3

Stump and Kretzmann respond to this criticism, first, by asserting that it has not been shown that divisibility is essential to extension?O They note that on discrete theories oftime there exist extended but indivisible atoms (or chronons). Moreover, the specious present, though extended, is as such not divisible, even conceptually. The eternal present may be thought of as God's specious present which covers all of time. Moreover, even if space and time are continuous, one may not licitly generalize that all extensions are divisible. Secondly, Stump and Kretzmann attempt to provide some rationale for regarding eternity as an extension despite its indivisibility.71 Eternity must be thought of as extended because the alternative-that eternity belongs to the evanescent realm of becoming-is metaphysically impossible. Eternal extension or atemporal duration are predicated analogically of God, and although it is impossible to state what features are shared by temporal and atemporal extension, we can say that "eternal duration .. .is a measure of existence, indicating some degree of permanence of some sort on the part of something that persists-although, of course, divine existence, permanence, and persistence will be analogous to, not identical with, temporal existence, permanence, and duration.,,72

This two-fold response seems clearly unavailing. First, it belongs analytically to the concept of extension that a multiplicity of points can be, at least conceptually, specified within it. Indeed, for eternal duration to be "a measure of existence" some metric on this manifold must be specified, which is impossible without a multiplicity of ordered, specifiable points. The proffered counter-examples of chronons and the specious present are based on misunderstandings. For a moment oftime even to be a chronon one must be able to specitY instants which constitute its boundaries, or, at least, if its boundaries are fuzzy, which do not lie outside its span. If chronons endure for 10'23 second, we can conceptually, if not physically, divide it into lengths

intervaI, or space-time separation, between any two points Iying a10ng the path of a light ray in vacuo be zero. This is the case even for events which occur millions of years apart and light years away from each other: their space-time separation is zero. Lucas and Hodgson comment,

"Topology is concemed with 'neamess', points and sets of points that are elose together, that is those where the distance between them tends toward zero. In an ordinary space the distance between two points can be zero only if the two points are coincident, but in Minkowski space two points on the path of a light ray are not, according to our criterion, separated, even though they are, according to intuitive reckoning, a great distance apart. Hence whereas in an ordinary space two points are near only if the distance between them is tending toward zero, which can happen only when they are themselves actually coincident, in Minkowski space two points can be counted as being topologically near to each other without approximating in the least to be coincident" (J. R. Lucas and P. E. Hodgson, Spacetime and Electromagnetism [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990], pp. 34-35).

Perhaps Stump and Kretzmann could model divine etemity on the world-line of a light ray, conceding that it is, after all, made up of a multiplicity of points, but having a metric such that the separation of any two points is zero. Perhaps such a feature could be interpreted as God's possessing His Iife a1l at once. 10 Stump and Kretzmann, "Etemity, Awareness, and Action," pp. 466-468; idem, "Atemporal Duration," pp. 215-216. 11 Stump and Kretzmann, "Etemity, Awareness, and Action," pp. 468-469; idem, "Atemporal Duration," pp. 218-219. 12 Stump and Kretzmann, "Etemity, Awareness, and Action," p. 469.


of 10-33 second.73 As for the specious present, Stump and Kretzmann conflate the psychological present with the ontological present. The psychological present has for us a minimal duration, but whatever interval of time is actually present is conceptually divisible into smaller intervals. The etemal present, however, is not supposed to be God's psychological present, but the actual mode of His existence. The indivisibility of His psychological present does not imply the indivisibility of His mode of existence. If the mode of His existence is conceptually indivisible, then His eternity is topologically point-like, even ifHis psychological present necessarily takes in the whole extent oftime. Finally, the essential conceptual divisibility of an extension is not due to over-generalization from the cases of space and time. We can conceive, for example, of other sotts of extensions in logical space, such as a gradient recording temperature and pressure, and all these must be susceptible to specification of non-identical points along the extension, or one simply does not have an extension. An extension without conceptually specifiable points is as much a contradiction as atemporal duration.

When we examine Stump and Kretzmann's reasons for thinking of eternity as an extension, I think it is evident that they have been misled by the metaphor of the "etemal present." Since they conceive of eternity on the model ofthe tensed present rather than of a tenseless state, they are exercised to deny of eternity that "radically evanescent existence" which characterizes the temporal present and which "could not be the existence of an absolutely perfect being," which must be "permanent, utterly immutable actuality.,,74 Thus, they explicitly state their aim as attempting "to frame the notion of a mode of existence consisting wholly in a present that is limitless rather than instantaneous.,,75 This attempt to combine presentness with permanence forces them to the conclusion that the etemal present "is indivisible, like the temporal present, but it is atemporal in virtue of being limitless rather than instantaneous, and it is in that way infinitely enduring.,,76

The best sense that I can make of the Stump-Kretzmann notions of the etemal present and atemporal duration is that our time dimension is embedded in a hypertime in which God endures, such that at every moment of hyper-time the entire temporal series is present (Figure 3.1).

73 See G. 1. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy ofTime, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 201: "Acceptance of the ideas of spatial and temporal atomicity in physics does not, of course, preclude us from applying mathematical concepts of space and time involving numerical continuity in our calculations, but the infinite divisibility associated with these concepts will then be purely mathematical and will not correspond to anything physical."

Also relevant in this connection is Philip 1. Quinn, "On the Mereology of Boethian Etemity," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 32 (1992): 57. 74 Stump and Kretzmann, "Atemporal Duration," p. 218; cf idem, "Prophecy, Past Truth, and Etemity," in Philosophy of Religion, ed. Jas. Tomberlin, Philosophical Perspectives 5 (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeway Publishing, 1991), p. 396: "The existence of an absolutely perfect being must be an indivisibly persistent present actuality." 7S Stump and Kretzmann, "Atemporal Duration," p. 218. 76 Ibid.

84 CHAPTER3

universe

t4

t3

t2 God

t l

to

To TI T2 T3 T4

Figure 3.1. The horizontal T-axis represents hyper-time, in which God endures infinitely. The vertical t-axis represents time, in which our universe endures. When T 2 is present for God, the entire temporal series of events is present to Hirn.

On this view even though our temporal present is radically evanescent, for God in hyper-time, or eternity, a11 our presents are equally real in His hyper-present. By the same token, the hyper-present is permanent from the standpoint of any temporal observer and is in that sense etemal. The present instant of hyper-time encompasses the whole of time and, as an instant, is indivisible. In God's etemal present the whole temporal series of events is laid out before Him. He can survey the whole series of events in that single hyper-instant and act at any point in our temporal series without changing or waiting for events to elapse. God can be said to have atemporal duration in the sense that He does not endure throughout time, but does endure in hyper-time, or eternity. Thus, on this model the notions of the etemal present and atemporal duration turn out to be coherent. 77

Remarkably, several statements by Stump and Kretzmann suggest that they are struggling to express just such a view. For example, in response to Brian Leftow's allegation that since, on Stump and Kretzmann's view, eternity cannot contain distinct positions, "eternity is pointlike, not extension like,,,78 they assert, "this inference holds only if it exhausts the possibilities for any mode of existence to describe it either as linelike or as pointlike, and there is no good reason to think that modes of existence higher up the ladder of being or of more dimensions than our

77 Curiously, however, ET-Simultaneity may not survive in this re-interpretation, since in twodimensional time simultaneity becomes relativized to a dimension, as explained by Murray MacBeath, "Time's Square," in The Philosophy ofTime, ed. R. Le Poidevin and M. MacBeath, Oxford Readings in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 196. 78 Leftow, Time and Eternity, p. 128.

TIMELESSNESS AND DIVlNE ACTION 85

own are limited in that way.,,79 Here they explicitly appeal to higher dimensional reality in order to explain how what appears to us as a point is extended in a higher dimension. Again, they state, "On the doctrine of eternity, the eternal present persists, encompasses time, and is unbounded."so Here eternity is conceived as an infinite, embedding dimension in which time exists. Finally, Stump and Kretzmann attempt to illustrate their model by describing the attempts of a three-dimensional person to communicate his spatial location to one-dimensional creatures via spatial indexical expressions like "here."Sl This analogy suggests construing eternity as a hyper-time in which God attempts to communicate to creatures in time that all of them regardless of their temporallocation exist ''now.'' Thus, construing eternity as an embedding hyper-time not only renders coherent much of what Stump and Kretzmann say, but is even suggested by not a few of their own statements.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that they would not accept such a construal of their view. The chief difficulty lies in the fact that in hyper-time God would not have complete possession all at once of His interminable life. We could eliminate this problem by limiting hyper-time to a single hyper-instant in which the whole series of temporal events in the universe exists; but such a solution is hardly acceptable, since God would then have evanescent existence in hyper-time. If His life is extended in hyper-time, then the hyper-present is constantly shifting for God, and our whole universe passes Him by in a fleeting hyper-instant. We could solve this difficulty in part by having God sustain our time dimension across hyper-time, so that it does not instantly pass away (Figure 3.2).

79 Stump and Kretzmann, "Etemity, Awareness, and Action," p. 471. &0 Ibid., p. 466. "' Ibid., pp. 470-473. Unfortunately, the analogy is misconstructed due to a misuse of indexical expressions. In the one-dimensional world, the creatures are supposed to recognize an absolute here, which is the location of the creature which occupies the mid-point of the line segment which is their world. The aim of this analogy is c1early to construct a spatial tense on the analogy of "now." But the attempt misfires; for creatures elsewhere on the line segment the specified point cannot be truly regarded as here, but as there. It can only be truly regarded as here for the creature who occupies it. The customary view of spatial indexicals is that none of the points on the line is objectively here or there, these being person-dependent expressions of spatially tenseless facts. Objective spatial tenses would require us to say that in the postulated one-dimensional world there really are objective, personindependent facts like The end-point is here or The mid-point is up ahead. But it does not require the absurdity that only one point in space qualifies as being here. That would be like saying that only one point in time ever qualifies as now, when in fact objective tense requires merely that any time the expression "now" is correct1y used the time of usage be objectively present. In general, Stump and Kretzmann seem to have been misled by the world "absolute" with which they preface "here" and "present." Tbe upshot is that when the 3-0 person says to the 1-0 creature "We're all here together," the 1-0 creature will recognize that the expression "here" has a different referent than when he uses it, just as he recognizes that each of his fellow creatures would refer to his own place on the line segment as "here. " It is also significant to note that the 3-0 person does in fact share the same single dimension with the 1-0 creatures; he fails to be on the line only in virtue of being off it in the second and third dimensions, and co-ordinates can be assigned to him in that one shared dimension. Similarly, a hyper-temporal being causally connected to our temporal world have to share our temporal dimension at minimally one point where the dimensions intersect.

86 CHAPTER3

universe - -

t4

t3

t2

t1 God

(0

To TI T2 Tl T4

Figure 3.2. By sustaining time across moments of hyper-time, time acquires width as weil as length.

If God chose to create time from the infinite hyper-past and sustain it into the infinite hyper-future, nothing in time would ever pass away for God. Still, if hypertime is tensed, it remains the case that God would not possess His life all at once.

Perhaps we could avoid this problem by denying that hyper-time is tensed, so that God's life exists tenselessly as a B-series of events. But then God still has, at least, the experience of hyper-temporal becoming and so does not possess His life all at once in that sense. I have suggested in the previous chapter that this drawback is considerably reduced for an omniscient being, but Stump and Kretzmann would no doubt be unimpressed by such a rescue attempt ofGod's perfect life. Perhaps we could adopt their suggestion that God's specious present in tenseless hyper-time embraces the whole of hyper-time, so that nothing is lost or gained by Hirn experientially or metaphysically. But we have already seen the fatal flaws in such a view with respect to God's timely action in a tenseless time, and the same goes for hyper-time. God could not act to create or destroy time at a certain moment of hyper-time, since all moments ofhyper-time would appear to Him as equally "now." But perhaps a final gambit could be played: we could conceive of God's hyper-time as tenseless and composed of a single hyper-instant which is speciously present to God and in which our time dimension is embedded. On this view, etemity consists of a single, tenseless instant of hyper-time at which God creates our whole temporal series of events. This hyper-instant is not a duration, but neither is it evanescent, since it is tenseless. It appears as present to God, but there is no problem with timely action, since hyper-time, or etemity, consists of a single instant. Such a model comes startlingly elose to the elassical conception of etemity. The central difference consists in the fact that etemity was taken by its elassical defenders to be astate of timelessness, not an embedding hyper-temporal dimension. If we construe etemity as hyper-time, it follows that God must exist at minimally one instant of


time where His hyper-temporal world-line (even if only a point) and the world-line ofthe universe intersect.82 Thus, curiously, at some arbitrary point in time it would be true to say, "God now exists." Before that time it would be true to assert "God will exist" and thereafter "God did exist." Ironically, we were forced to such a model by attempting to provide a coherent interpretation of Stump and Kretzmann's notions of atemporal duration, etemal extension, and the eternal present; but all of these have now been sacrificed by the model suggested. Moreover, the model of hyper-temporal etemity depends for its metaphysical possibility on the tenseless theory of time, since God's hyper-time, if not our time, is conceived to be a tenseless time. But Stump and Kretzmann are eager to expound a model of etemity which is compatible with theories of time that are essentially tensed. Thus, the construal of eternity as a tenseless hyper-time would be doubly objectionable to them. Ultimately, then, I have been unable to find an acceptable, coherent model of Stump-Kretzmann eternity.

This negative conclusion requires us to regard such expressions as "eternal present" and "atemporal duration" as metaphors appropriate to God's mode of existence. Stump and Kretzmann practically admit as much in characterizing such expressions as wholly analogical. For analogical predication without some univocal, conceptual content cannot be regarded as anything more than metaphor.83

Such metaphors are apt for divine eternity because they convey to us that God's timeless state does not pass away like a temporal instant, that it is permanent. The opposite of evanescence is not duration or extension, but permanence. Permanence is really what Stump and Kretzmann are anxious to safeguard, and this property of eternity is guaranteed by God's tenseless existence and action on theories of divine timelessness, not by incoherent notions like atemporal duration or conceptually indivisible extension.84 Defenders of divine timelessness who conceive of etemity a& topologically point-like have not in the least thereby compromised God's permanence.

82 This would seem to be the hyper-time at which God acts causally to create time and the universe. Since this point of intersection is shared by time and hyper-time and could be at any time, it follows that God may have created the world in, say, 1898--or maybe He has not yet created the world! From God's perspective such mid-time creation would not involve backward causation, since God in hyper-time aets to create the whole time-Iine at one hyper-instant, but for us temporal creatures His action would seem to involve backward causation, since it also occurs at amoment of ordinary time. These sorts of difficulty might weil cause one to doubt the metaphysical possibility of higher temporal dimensions, in contrast to higher spatial dimensions. BJ See Williarn P. Alston, "Aquinas on Theological Predication: A Look Backward and a Look Forward," in Reasoned Faith, ed. Eleonore Stump (lthaca, N. Y.: Comell University Press, 1993), pp. 145-178. 14 For an analysis of pennanence, see Quentin Smith, "A New Typology of Temporal and Atemporal Permanence," Noüs 23 (1989): 307-330, and Leftow, Time and Eternity, pp. 132-133. I should add merely that Leftow conflates instants (which are durationless) with moments (which have arbitrarily short non-zero duration). Etemity is not like a single moment which is both a frrst and last moment; rather it is Iike an instant and so has no first or last finite period of existence.

88 CHAPTER3

ET-Simultaneity

This long excursus on the nature of the etemal present has been necessary, not only in order to clarify the new species of simultaneity introduced by Sturnp and Kretzmann, namely, eternal simultaneity, but also because the notion of the present-both the temporal present and the eternal present -features prominently in their definition of ET-simultaneity. If we take eternity to be a tenselessly existing state topologically like a point, then two eternal entities can both be located tenselessly at the same point which represents eternity. But what about the case in which one entity is etemal and the other temporal?

The problem seen by Sturnp and Kretzmann in relating an etemal entity to a temporal entity is that there is no single mode of existence shared by the two entities. Hence, one cannot draft a formulation of ET -simultaneity on the usual pattern "existence or occurrence at one and the same __ ." "What is temporal and what is etemal can co-exist, ... but not within the same mode of existence and there is no single mode of existence that can be referred to in filling in the blank in such a definition of ET -simultaneity. ,,85

At this point Sturnp and Kretzmann turn to the Special Theory of Relativity in order to provide an analogy to the type of simultaneity relation they will propose. In SR simultaneity is redefmed as existence or occurrence at the same time within the re/erence frame 0/ a given observer. This conception of simultaneity relative to a reference frame suggests a way to defme ET-simultaneity. Sturnp and Kretzmann propose that we construe a mode of existence as analogous to a reference frame and construct a definition in terms of two reference frames and two observers.

First attempt

Accordingly, Sturnp and Kretzmann formulate the following definition of ETsimultaneity:

For every x and for every y, x and y are ET -simultaneous iff (i) either x is etemal and y is temporal, or vice versa; and (ii) for some observer, A, in the unique etemal reference frame, x and y are both

present-i.e., either x is eternally present and y is observed as temporally present, or vice versa; and

(iii) for some observer, B, in one ofthe infinitely many temporal reference frames, x and y are both present-i.e., either x is observed as eternally present and y is temporally present, or vice versa.·6

The first thing to notice about this definition is that it is not really analogous to simultaneity in SR at all. In SR two simultaneous events both occur at one and the same time relative to a given reference frame. The analogy to this would be that two events (or entities), one eternal and one temporal, are simultaneous itIrelative to the etemal ''reference frame" both occur at one and the same etemal point and relative to the temporal ''reference frame" both occur at one and the same time. ET -

85 Stump and Kretzmann, "Etemity," p. 436. 86 Ibid., p. 439.


simultaneity as defmed by Stump and Kretzmann only remotely resembles relativistie simultaneity in that two ''referenee frames" are employed. But beyond that it is quite non-analogous to simultaneity as defmed in SR.

A further clarifieation of clause (iii) is in order. When the defmition refers to "the infinitely many temporal referenee frames," it might naturally be thought that physieal referenee frames in SR are being referred to. But tbis would eontradict Stump and Kretzmann's repeated statements that their aeeount presupposes no more than a Newtonian, absolute time, and that SR serves as merely an introduetory analogue to their defmition of ET -simultaneity. 87 Their defmition utilizes ''referenee frame" metaphorieally to refer on the one hand to God's atemporal mode of existenee and on the other hand to our temporal mode of existenee. Thus, the "infinitely many temporal referenee frames" refers to the different moments of time. A referenee frame is thus not strietly analogous to a mode of existenee, but rather to loeations on a geometrieal representation of a mode of existenee.

lt is noteworthy that in the proposed defmition simultaneity is not defmed in terms of a shared loeation, but in terms of a shared property. Relative to a loeation either in time or in eternity, both x and y are said to be present. Tbis is not a shared loeation (eontrast: "in the present"), sinee x and y are not both located in the "etemal present" nor in any temporal present. Such a procedure seems peculiar, sinee two entities' sharing a property relative to some loeation hardly suffices for simultaneity. Relative to the etemal reference frame, for example, God and Jones are both intelligent, but they are not therefore in any way simultaneous. But when it comes to the property of presentness, I think, we ean make sense of such a procedure. For example, we eould defme temporal simultaneity by stating that x and y are simultaneous iff relative to time t x and y are both present. The problem with the Stump-Kretzmann definition is that the word "present" in the definition refers to entirely different properties, namely, temporal presentness and etemal presentness, so that there is no shared property involved. The fact that the "etemal present" must be taken as metaphorical only underseores tbis eonclusion. We cannot circumvent tbis problem by giving tenseless, token-reflexive truth conditions relative to eternity or to moments of time for statements like ''y is present," since in eternity as well as at most moments of time there are no sueh tokens.88 Rather we must fmd some common property shared by God and temporal entities relative to either's "reference frame" wbich intuitively suffices to found a simultaneity relation. I think that the essence of the Stump-Kretzmann definition would be preserved if we state that relative to either frame "x and y are both real," one etemally real and the other observed as temporally real relative to the etemal "reference frame" or one temporally real and the other observed as etemally real relative to a moment of time.89 If Stump and Kretzmann insist on a shared property of literal presentness,

87 Ibid., pp. 437. 438. 88 For discussion of token-reflexive truth conditions of tensed sentences, see my The Tensed Theory of Time: a Critical Examination, Synthese Library (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), chap 3. 89 Not only does real seem to be the univocal element common to the etemal present and the temporal present, but, as we shall see, Stump and Kretzmann revise their definition of Er -simultaneity in such a

90 CHAPTER3

then I fear that the incoherence found in their notion of the etemal present will also bring down their deflnition ofET -simultaneity.

On the basis of their deflnition of ET -simultaneity, Stump and Kretzmann believe to have solved the problem of a timeless deity's being active in the world. In virtue oftheir ET-simultaneity God and events in time are co-existent:

... if anything exists etemally, its existence, although infinitely extended, is fully realized, a11 present at once. Thus the entire life of any etemal entity is co-existent with any temporal entity at any time at which that temporal entity exists. From a temporal standpoint, the present is ET -simultaneous with the whole infinite extent of an etemal entity's Iife. From the standpoint of etemity, every time is present, co-occurrent with the whole of infinite atemporal duration.90

As an illustration of this co-existence, Stump and Kretzmann invite us to imagine two infinite, parallel, horizontal strips, the upper one (representing etemity) being a strip of light (light representing the present) and the lower one (representing time) being dark except for a dot of light moving steadily along it. "For any instant of time as that instant is present, the whole of etemity is present at once; the infmitely enduring, indivisible etemal present is simultaneous with each temporal instant as it is the present instant. ,,91

Whatever one may think of their doctrine, tbis illustration is plainly confused, mixing as it does spatial and temporal imagery.92 From the standpoint of etemity, the etemal "present" is wholly simultaneous with each instant as it becomes present (illuminated). Thus, etemity is simultaneous with each moment of time in succession; otherwise, from the standpoint of etemity the lower strip would have to be wholly illuminated, like the upper strip. Given that the etemal "present" is successively simultaneous with one temporal present at a time, etemity is not atemporal at all but has been temporalized in virtue of its real relation to time. In other words, Stump and Kretzmann's illustration portrays vividly precisely the objection currently under consideration, which their account is supposed to resolve.

A more apt illustration of their view would have drawn upon the relativity of simultaneity: from the standpoint of any temporal present, the lower strip is a single dot of light at that point and the upper strip is observed as wholly illuminated, and from the standpoint of etemity, etemity is a single, indivisible point of light and the entire temporal strip is observed as illuminated. 93

way as to make it tenseless. Their use of the word "present" is confusing and, I fear, inconsistent. They even speak of spatiallocations as being present to a non-spatial God. 90 Stump and Kretzmann, "Etemity," p. 441. 91 Stump and Kretzmann, "Atemporal Duration," p. 219. 92 As noted by Herbert 1. Nelson, "Time(s), Etemity, and Duration," International Journal for Philosophy ofReligion 22 (1987): 12. 93 See their revised version of the illustration in Stump and Kretzmann, "Etemity, Awareness, and Action," p. 475. They still fai! to appreciate, however, the radical disanalogy between tensed time and space. For in response to Lewis's objection that in order to be ontologically (as opposed to merely epistemically) present or real to an atemporal God, a thing would have to be atemporal itself (Delmas Lewis, "Etemity, Time, and Timelessness," Faith and Philosophy 5 [1988): 72-86), Stump and Kretzmann retort that if spatial locations can be present to God without God's being spatial, then temporal moments can be present to God without God's being temporal (Stump and Kretzmann,


The upshot of the doctrine of ET -simultaneity is that all temporal events are observed as present (or, as I have suggested, real) by God. Stwnp and Kretzmann make it quite clear that by the expression "observed as present" they do not mean merely "epistemically present" to God, that is, "gathered into one specious present" by God. Rather all temporal events are ontologically real for God. Stwnp and Kretzmann emphasize that this doctrine does not imply that temporal events exist in eternity or that tense and temporal becoming are illusory; rather it implies a sort of ''metaphysical relativism.,,94 Reality is composed of two incommensurable modes of real existence, time and eternity, which cannot be brought together into a single frame of reference. God veridically experiences every temporal event as having presentness in relation to eternity.

Perhaps we can get a better understanding of Stwnp and Kretzmann's view by drawing once more upon Relativity Theory: just as at a single spacetime location different observers will observe different simultaneity classes of events depending upon each observer's velocity at that point and none of these can claim to be preferred as the uniquely correct simultaneity class, so at the point of eternity there is no unique, preferred class of temporally simultaneous events which are observed as real and so temporally present by God, but God observes different classes of temporally simultaneous events to be real in accordance with the ET -simultaneity relation. The disanalogy in the eternity/temporality case is, of course, that instead of a plurality of observers we have only one observer, God, and there is no ground, such as a physical observer's velocity and the constancy of light's speed, of this metaphysical relativity.

The unicity of the etemal observer, however, need not be taken as a serious drawback of the analogy. For in Relativity Theory the postuiated observers are merely hypothetical anyway, and a single ob server at aspacetime point can change his reference frame simply by changing his mind. Since there is no state, on the Einsteinian interpretation of SR, of absolute rest, any observer at aspacetime point can consider himself to be either at rest or in motion relative to some hypothetical rest frame. Thus, there is no dass of events absolutely simultaneous for him nor a reference frame in which he uniquely exists. Similarly, we could understand God in eternity to observe one or another dass of temporally simultaneous events to be simultaneous with Him depending on His chosen perspective. If temporal events are considered one way, Nixon's resignation is temporally present or real to Him; but if they are considered another way, Nixon's death is real to God. God considers events in all ways, and no class of temporal events is uniquely real for Him.

The second disanalogy mentioned above-the lack of any basis for such a metaphysical relativity-is a more serious drawback. It might be tempting to say that such relativity is rooted in the simple fact of the timelessness of God and the temporality of creatures. But such a ground is inadequate, since timelessness and temporality need not be related in any way. Indeed, the objection under

"Eternity, Awareness, and Action," p. 476). This response is based upon a clear conflation of time (which is tensed) with space (which is tenseless). 94 Stump and Kretzmann, "Etemity," pp. 442-443. They should have said "relativity," I think.

92 CHAPTER3

consideration is that they cannot be really related in the way the doctrine of creation demands. Metaphysical relativity must be taken simply as a brute fact about reality. But is this really so different from SR? In Einstein's understanding, the relativity of simultaneity is ultimately rooted in the non-existence of Newton's absolute space and time, that is to say, of an absolute rest frame such as the aether frame of nineteenth century physics and of unique, world-wide, successive dasses of events as present. The constancy of light's velocity and the relative motion of hypothetical observers are relevant only to providing a new definition or determination of simultaneity at a distance. The ultimate basis of the relativity of simultaneity lies in the absence of absolute time and space, and this is just a surd metaphysical fact postulated by the Einsteinian interpretation of SR. Similarly, the ET -simultaneity advocated by Stump and Kretzmann postulates a reality which lacks any absolute frame ofreference yielding a unique description ofwhat is real.

The radical metaphysical relativity postulated by ET -simultaneity implies that all events in time are present or real to God in eternity and therefore open to His timeless causal influence. "Even though His actions cannot be located in time, he can bring about ejJects in time .... ,,95 Every action ofGod is ET-simultaneous with any temporal effect ascribed to it, and "ET -simultaneity is a sufficient condition for the possibility of a causal connection in the case of God's bringing about the existence of a temporal entity .... ,,96 Thus, God's causal relation to the world is grounded in His being ET -simultaneous with every event in time.

Now in order to be ET -simultaneous with some temporal event y, x must be atemporally real and y be observed to be temporally real. But as many critics have pointed out, the language of observation in the defInition of ET -simultaneity is wholly obscure.97 In SR physical operations involving dock synchronization via light signals are stipulated in order to give physical meaning to simultaneity at a distance. When y is "observed" to be simultaneous with x according to SR, the word "observed" might more perspicuously be replaced with "calculated;" the determination of y's simultaneity with x is based not on physical observation of y, but on the solution to a mathematical equation. But in the defInition of ETsimultaneity no hint is given as to what is meant, for example, by x's being observed as eternally present relative to a time t. In the absence of any procedure for determining ET -simultaneity, the language of observation becomes vacuous. All that is meant is that relative to the ''reference frame" of eternity x is etemally present (or real) and y is temporally present (or real) and that relative to some temporal

9l Ibid., p. 448 (myemphasis). 96 Ibid., p. 451. 97 Davis, Logic and the Nature o/God, p. 20; Delmas Lewis, "Etemity Again: A Reply to Stump and Kretzmann," International Journal/or Philosophy 0/ Religion 15 (1984): 74-76; Helm, Eternal God, pp. 32-33; William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge, pp. 164-166; Yates, Timelessness o/God, pp. 128-130; Leftow, Time and Eternity, pp. 170-172. Unfortunately, many ofthese critics, misunderstanding the role of hypothetical observers in Relativity Theory, think that Stump and Kretzmann require that a temporal person somehow actua11y observe God as etemally present, which is impossible. But Stump and Kretzmann are clear that for them an observer is anything with respect to which a reference frame is deterrnined (Ibid., p. 438; idem, "Eternity, Awareness, and Action," p. 474). Actually Stump and Kretzmann concede too much, for a11 thai is required in Relativity Theory are hypothetical observers.


"reference frame" x is etemally present (or real) and y is temporall~ present (or real). It hardly needs to be said that such a definition clarifies nothing. 8 It only restates the fact that x is atemporal and y is temporal without explaining in what sense they are simultaneous.

Nor will an appeal to metaphysical relativity help to make sense of the definition. In the absence of operational definitions which serve to re-defme distant simultaneity in SR, there really are no simultaneous events at all at a distance. Absent these operational definitions, there just is no fact of the matter conceming the simultaneity of spatially separated events. Only events at the same spacetime point are simultaneous. Thus, if reality is bifurcated into two irreducible modes of existence, and there is no way of observing or determining what is ET -simultaneous with x or y, there just is no ET-simultaneity between them. Only events cooccurring at the same time or at the same etemal point are simultaneous, that is to say, only temporal and eternal simultaneity obtain. It follows that an atemporal God could not be causally related to the world.

Moreover, even if we grant metaphysical relativity on the analogy of temporal relativity, it will not yield ET-simultaneity. To say that y is observed by God as temporally present or real just means that relative to God y is temporally present or real. But if w < y < Z, then insofar as y is temporally present to God w is past and z is future. Of course, since, as McTaggart insisted, all events are eventually present, it follows that due to metaphysical relativity w is also temporally present relative to God in another metaphysical frame of reference, as is z in yet another metaphysical frame of reference. But insofar as we consider reality from the perspective in which God is etemal and y is temporally present relative to God, there are events earlier and later than y which are past and future respectively relative to God. But if y is temporally present relative to God, while w is past and z is future relative to God, then God and y are temporally simultaneous, not ET -simultaneous. Thus, the sort of simultaneity suggested by metaphysical relativity is not ET -simultaneity, but an extension of physical relativity of simultaneity into metaphysics, that is to say, God is temporally simultaneous with every temporal present. From our perspective, these temporal presents are evanescent, but from God's multitude of perspectives each present is simultaneous with Him in some perspective on reality. Such a view obviously fails to preserve God's timelessness.

No doubt stump and Kretzmann would cry foul at such a critique, in that I have pushed the analogy to Relativity Theory far beyond their intent. I concede the point; but then I simply cannot make sense out of the language of observation found in their definition nor of the metaphysical relativity appealed to in its explication. Stump and Kretzmann are not really metaphysical relativists but hold that God has a

98 So also Leftow, Time and Etemity, p. 174. Helm's harsh verdict seemsjustified: "The 'solution' to the problem is found simply by rewording the problem with the help of the device of ET-sirnultaneity. ET-simultaneity has no independent merit or use, nothing is illuminated or explained by it.... For the problem is, how can something which is an event in time be wholly present 'to an eternal entity'? Tbe answer given is that it is ET-wholly present. But this answer is wholly obscure" (Helm, Etemal God, p. 33).

94 CHAPTER3

unique perspective on the world according to which all events are in some unexplained way equally real to Him.

Given, then, that Stump and Kretzmann's definition of ET-simultaneity is merely a non-explanatory restatement of the doctrine that while God is timeless all things in time are temporally present or real to Hirn, it cannot do the explanatory work necessary to show why


is not necessarily true.

Second Attempt

Fortunately, Stump and Kretzmann have for theological reasons tried to free their definition from observation language, and perhaps this will give some explanatory content to the definition ofET -simultaneity. They now propose:

For every x and every y, x and y are ET -simultaneous if and only if (i) either x is etemal and y is temporal, or vice versa (for convenience, let x be etemal

and y temporal); and (ii) with respect to some A in the unique etemal reference frame, x and y are both

present-i.e., (a) x is in the etemal present with respect to A, (b) Y is in the temporal present, and (c) both x and y are situated with respect to A in such a way that A can enter into direct and immediate causal relations with each of them and (if capable of awareness) can be directly aware of each ofthem; and

(iii) with respect to some B in one of the infinitely many temporal reference frames, x and y are both present-i.e., (a) x is in the eternal present, (b) y is at the same time as B, and (c) both x and y are situated with respect to B in such a way that B can enter into direct and immediate causal relations with each of them and (if capable of awareness) can be directly aware of each ofthem. 99

This new definition is quite strange. Although the observation-words are absent, the two ob servers A and B remain. Since the role in the original definition of A and B was simply to specify ''reference frames," one might surmise that we could simply eliminate them altogether and just label the etemal "frame" "A" and the temporal "frame" "B", so that relative to the etemal "reference frame" A, x is in the etemal "present" and y is in the temporal present-but then we fmd that clause (ii. c) requires that A itself enter into causal relations, which a mere reference frame cannot do. A and B have in this re-definition become real, causally efficacious beings. Moreover, since God alone is etemal, A=x=God. It follows that according to (ii. c) God is so situated in respect to Hirnself that He can enter into causal relations with Himself. God must be in some sense self-caused. Furthermore unless Stump and Kretzmann are willing to countenance creatures in some way causally influencing God, (iii. c) must imply that the creature B can be merely a direct and immediate effect of God.

Another curious feature and serious drawback of tbis definition is that the only temporal events wbich are ET -simultaneous with God turn out to be present events.

99 Stump and Kretzmann, "Eternity, Awareness, and Action," pp. 477-478; idem, "Prophecy, Past Truth, and Eternity," p. 407.


For relative to etemity, (ii. b) stipulates that y must be in the temporal present, not just at some moment of time. Thus, from God's perspective only the temporal moment which now exists is ET-simultaneous with Him.100 Since (iii. b) is not parallel to (ii. b) in that, unlike the latter, it refers not to the temporal present, but to any moment in time, it rnight be thought that relative to any moment of time a temporal event at that time is ET -simultaneous with God. But if the verbs "can enter" and "can be" in (iii. c) are tensed, then again only present events are ETsimultaneous with God, since B can (presently) enter into causal relations only if B exists now.

God's being ET-simultaneous with only present events rnight appear at first blush to be acceptable to the partisan of a tensed theory of time, who holds to metaphysical presentism and regards past and future thingsIevents as non-existent. One cannot, after all, be simultaneous with non-existent entities, so perhaps God's being ET -simultaneous with present events alone is not so bad. Sturnp and Kretzrnann would probably not welcome the consequence that their theory is incompatible with the tenseless theory oftime, however. And a moment's reflection reveals that God's being ET-simultaneous with only present events leads to incoherence. For relative to God, the only events He is ET-simultaneous with are present events. But since which events are present is constantly changing, God acquires continually new relations of ET -simultaneity. Hence, He is changing and therefore temporal. Thus, if God is simultaneous only with present events, His relation to them is ordinary temporal simultaneity, not ET-simultaneity.

Hence, Sturnp and Kretzrnann's new definition needs to be read tenselessly throughout, including clause (iii. c), and (iL b) must be arnended to state 'y is at some point in time." So arnended, the definition successfully stipulates that God is ET -simultaneous with every temporal event, whether it be past, present, or future.

But now we come to what appears to be an irremediable problem with the new definition. Notice that although ET -simultaneity is still defined in terms of a shared property of presentness, presentness is now explicated in terrns of different locations and a shared property of being situated in a certain way. Thus, unlike the first definition, this re-definition does provide a univocal sense in which God and creatures are said to be present, narnely, that although they are differently located, in time and etemity, they can enter into direct and immediate causal relations and be directly aware of each other.

The problem with this new definition of ET -simultaneity, however, is that it makes Sturnp and Kretzrnann's account of divine etemity viciously circular. For ET -simultaneity was originally invoked in order to explain how a timeless deity could be causally active in time, but now ET -simultaneity is defined in terms of a timeless being's ability to be causally active in time. As Leftow states,

'00 Stump and Kretzmann want to say that God sustains relations of ET -simultaneity with a11 events only insofar as each has the property of temporal presentness (as opposed to pastness or futurity). But that is not what (ii. b) stipulates. The grarmnaticaI mies goveming indexicals require that ''the temporal present" in (ii. b) refer to now. Oddly, (iii. b) lacks any reference to y or B's having the property ofpresentness or being in the present. They could be past events, ifthe definition is read tenselessly. Thus, an event could be ET-simultaneous with God, not as present, but as past, which is incoherent.

96 CHAPTER3

... any definition of ET -simultaneity which invokes any form of ET -causality (or ... other causally implicated ET-knowledge) is implicitly circular. For to fully explain how ETcausation can occur, we must bring in the concept of ET-simultaneity. If we do, we cannot then defme ET-simultaneity by invoking ET-causation, for then the concept to be defined in effect recurs in the definition. 101

The new definition proffered by Stump and KretzInann (once [ii. b] is amended) simply takes it for granted that God and temporal events are so situated (whether with respect to God or to events) that God can be directlyand immediately causally related to them while remaining atemporal. But the objection which drives our present concern is precisely that a timeless God and temporal events cannot be so situated. How can God be really related to a present event without Himself being present? The answer is supposed to be that they are ET -simultaneous. But now ET -simultaneity is explicated in terms of God's ability to be causally related to temporal events while remaining atemporal. Such an account will remain viciously circular unless Stump and KretzInann provide an independent explanation of how the timeless God can be directly and immediately causally related to events in time.

In summary, it seems to me that Stump and KretzInann have failed to provide any coherent model which explains how God can be both atemporal and yet causally active in the world. The best sense I could make out of the prima facie selfcontradictory notion of atemporal duration is that God is hyper-temporal, not atemporal. Their first definition of so-called ET -simultaneity was explanatorily vacuous, a mere restatement of the fact that God is atemporal and temporal events are present. Their re-definition explicated ET -simultaneity in terms of causal and epistemic relations, which they had previously tried to explain in terms of ETsimultaneity, thus closing a vicious circle. In short, they have said nothing which would undercut the argument that in virtue of His real relation to the temporal world God is temporal.

LEFTOW'S DOCTRINE OF THE EXISTENCE OF ALL THINGS IN ETERNITY

The central difficulty and in the end fatal flaw of Stump and Kretzmann's attempt to enunciate an informative doctrine of ET -simultaneity is their inability to bring together temporal things and God into a common frame of reference. They never could explain how God and temporal creatures could be in any sense simultaneous so as to allow a causal relation to obtain between them. As we have seen, they eschew a consistent application of the analogy of the Special Theory of Relativity to time and eternity, which would have required that relative to God the entities/events at any time t exist at the eternal point, whereas relative to the entities/events at t God exists at t. Since they resist the idea that temporal entitieslevents somehow exist in or at eternity, Stump and KretzInann failed to bring together such entitieslevents and God into a coherent relationship, existing as they do in two utterly disparate modes ofbeing.

101 Leftow, Time and Eternity, p. 173.

TIMELESSNESS AND DrvlNE ACTION 97

Brian Leftow' s proposal is, in effect, to eliminate this defect by maintaining that temporal things really do exist in eternity, that is to say, from God's perspective all events do occur timelessly at the timeless point of eternity. Thus, God and temporal things do share a mode of existence and can be brought together within a single frame of reference, so that God and temporal entities are E-simultaneous and causally connected in that timeless state. Leftow will not allow the analogy with Relativity Theory to be applied symmetrically, however. 102 We have seen in Chapter 1 that he gives a whole array of arguments to prove that God is (absolutely) atemporal, and as a partisan of divine simplicity Leftow cannot countenance the notion that God's mode of existence should be relative to anything, much less temporal in relation to sometbing else.

God 's Asymmetrical Relativistic Reference Frame

Leftow is therefore obliged to support the asymmetrical relativity between God and temporal creatures by means of argument. Why think that relative to God temporal entities co-exist with God in eternity in such a way that relative to creatures God does not co-exist with them in time? Leftow bases bis defense of tbis asymmetry on what he calls the Zero Thesis: that the distance between God and every spatial being is zero. The argument for tbis thesis is simple: if God is not located in space, there can be no spatial distance between God and spatial beings; therefore, there is none. Leftow acknowledges that tbis argument seems to involve a category mistake:

... God is not the kind of thing of which we can affirm or deny distance: ... 'there can be no spatial distance between God and spatial creatures' is a category-negation rather than an ordinary negation, and so its semantics are such that it does not entail the Zero Thesis. . ... the Zero Thesis is actually ill-formed. For it arguably is equivalent to 'there is a distance between God and spatial creatures, and this distance is zero,' a conjunctive proposition whose first conjunct the doctrine of categories declares nonsensical. 103

One may not therefore validly infer from God's spacelessness that the distance between God and any spatial being is zero.

Leftow's misgivings are, I think, well-founded. The dispute between Lorentzian and Einsteinian Relativity provides arelevant example from the bistory of science of the crucial difference between a category-negation and the negation of a property. Nineteenth century aether theories originally posited as the medium of transmission

102 This occasions difficulty for Leftow's theory, for he affirms that while God is eternally Lord in the eternal "reference frame", nevertheless in time He is not Lord except at the appropriate time (Brian Leftow, "Aquinas on Time and Eternity," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64 [1990]: 396). That is to say that God's extrinsic properties do change in the temporal "reference frame" and, hence, God is temporal with respect to the temporal frame-and that even if relative to the eternal frame God is changeless. Thus, Leftow seems obliged to affirm with Aquinas that relative to the temporal frame, at least, God sustains no real relation to the world. The only way to prevent his solution from collapsing into the no real relations doctrine would therefore seem to be to deny the symmetry of the analogy to the simultaneity relation in Relativity Theory. 103 Brian Leftow, "Eternity and Simultaneity," Faith and Philosophy 8 (1991): 162; cf. idem, Time and Eternity, pp. 222-223.

98 CHAPTER3

of electromagnetic radiation an invisible, rigid liquid, like glass, which was nonetheless completely intangible and utterly at rest with respect to absolute space. With the publication of his SR paper in 1905, Einstein rejected the existence of the classical aether and along with it the privileged rest frame. But in 1916, at the prompting of Lorentz that the General Theory of Relativity (GR) admits the possibility of a stationary aether, Einstein introduced a new relativistic conception of the ether: the space-time itself as described by the metrical tensor gl'v. 104 When Einstein lectured at Lorentz's UniversityofLeiden in 1920, he drewa fundamental distinction between the classical aether and his new relativistic ether on the basis of the applicability ofthe category ofmotion to the aether frame:

As regards the mechanicaI nature of Lorentz's aether, one might say of it, with a touch of humor, that immobility was the only mechanical property which H. A. Lorentz left it. It may be added that the whole difference which the special theory of relativity made in our conception of the aether lay in this, that it divested the aether of its last mechanicaI quality, namely immobility ....

The most obvious viewpoint which could be taken ofthis matter appeared to be the following. Tbe aether does not exist at a11. ...

However, c10ser reflection shows that this denial ofthe aether is not demanded by the special principle of relativity. We can assume the existence of an aether; but we must abstain from ascribing a definitive state of motion to it, i.e., we must by abstraction divest it of the last mechanical characteristic which Lorentz had left it. ...

Generalizing, we must say that we can conceive of extended physical objects to which the concept of motion cannot be applied.... Tbe special principle of relativity forbids us to regard the aether as composed of particles, the movements of which can be followed out through time, but the aether hypothesis as such is not incompatible with the special theory of relativity. Only we must take care not to ascribe astate of motion to the aether. lOS

Privately Einstein confessed to Lorentz, "It would have been more right if I had limited myself, in my previously published papers, to lay emphasis only on the nonexistence of any velocity of the ether instead of the defense of the total nonexistence ofthe ether."I06

When Einstein denied a velocity or state of motion of the ether, he was emphatically not ascribing to it the property of immobility. For that would be to admit that the ether constitutes a reference frame, as Lorentz claimed, and therefore serves in virtue of its immobility as a privileged frame relative to which absolute motion, simultaneity, and length exist. Rather the relativistic ether is, as Kostro puts it,107 an ultra-referential reality to which the category of motion does not even apply.

When Leftow infers from God's spacelessness that the distance between God and spatial things is zero, he seetns to commit the same error as would someone who inferred from the ultra-referential status of the relativistic ether that its motion is

104 A. Einstein to H. A. Lorentz, June 17, 1916, item 16-453 in the Mudd Library, Princeton University, cited in Ludwik Kostro, "Einstein's New Conception of the Ether," proceedings of "Physical Interpretations of Relativity Tbeory," conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, Sept. 16-19, 1988, Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. lOS A. Einstein, ither und Relativitätstheorie (Berlin: Julius Springer Verlag, 1920), pp. 7-9. 106 A. Einstein to H. A. Lorentz, Nov. 15, 1919; item 16-494 in Mudd Library, Princeton University, cited in Kostro "Einstein's New Conception." 107 Kostro, "Einstein's New Conception."

TlMELESSNESS AND DIVINE ACTION 99

zero. Leftow defends bis inference by asking how, if the Zero Thesis and its equivalent "There is a distance between God and spatial creatures, and this distance is zero" are ill-fonned nonsense, we can understand them weIl enough to tell that they are equivalent. The answer is that we sufficiently understand analogous, wellfonned statements about spatially distant objects (and rest frames) to see what has gone wrong in these ill-fonned statements about a spaceless being or an ultrareferential reality. Leftow further defends bis inference by asserting that the equivalent mentioned is problematic only if a zero distance is a positive distance. By ''positive'' he does not mean positive in the numerical sense, for that would be not merely problematic but contradictory. Rather he means positive in the sense of ontological status. But if Leftow means to assert more than a category-negation, he must be ascribing positive, existential status to the zero distance between creatures and God. That is just as problematic as ascribing zero motion to the relativistic ether. Finally, Leftow defends his Thesis by claiming that it is an entailment of the true and intelligible statement that "Necessarily, there is no distance between God and any spatial thing." But this statement is true and intelligible only insofar as it is a category-negation, and as such it does not entail the Zero Thesis. The reductio ad absurdum of Leftow's Zero Thesis is that it entails a definition of spatial contiguity which forces one to accept that ''yellow, the number 3, and any other entity without a spatial loeation are s~atially contiguous with all spatial things," since the distance between them is zero. 1 8 This untoward result makes painfully evident that the Zero Thesis is just a category mistake.109

What is disquieting about this evident failure ofthe Zero Thesis is that Leftow's entire theory of divine eternity appears to balance like an inverted pyramid on this thesis, so that with the untenability of that thesis the whole theory threatens to toppie. Without the Zero Thesis, I do not know how to save Leftow's theory, for without it there is no "frame of reference" in which all things exist changelessly relative to GodllO-which fact should become clearer as we proceed.

101 Leftow, Time and Eternity, p. 225. 109 In Time and Eternity, p. 224, Leftow ascribes to the critic of the Zero Thesis the general claim "if x has spatial relations x has a spatial loeation," whieh Leftow regards as false, based on the counterexample of the spatial relation ia not located in. This general claim does not, pace Leftow, underlie the eritie's misgivings. Rather the critic maintains that in order for a distanee metric to be defmed with respeet to two entities (such that the distance between them ean be, say, zero), those entities must have locations in a shared space on which the metrie is defmed. This contention is unremarkable. Moreover, Leftow's counter-example, with respect to a spaceless being, is not a spatial relation, but onee again a category negation.

In a sort of last-ditch defense of the Zero Thesis, Leftow asserts, "The Zero Thesis lets one give literal meaning to the claim that a spaceless God is omnipresent. If one denies the Zero Thesis, is Iiteral omnipresenee at all possible for a spaceless God7" (lbid., p. 228). This piece de resistance fails because the Zero Thesis itself fails to provide any Iiteral eontent to divine omnipreSence over and above the traditional understanding of God's being eausally active and aware of everything happening at any point in space. What the Zero Thesis implies is really divine omni-absenee (if the traditional understanding inadequately eaptures omnipresence), for it implies that God does not exist at any point in space but is at best continuous with it. 110 As admitted by Graham Oddie and Roy W. Perrett, "Simultaneity and God's Timelessness," Sophia 31 (1992): 127, who, unlike Leftow, do not offer any theoretical justification for taking all events as simultaneous in relation God.

100 CHAPTER3

According to Leftow, the Zero Thesis has a startling consequence: since the distance between God and any creature is always the same (zero), there is no motion relative to God. Now, of course, in the sense of a category-negation there is no motion relative to God, since God is not a reference frame any more than is the relativistic ether. But Leftow takes this consequence to mean that God is or has a reference frame and that the motion of things in space relative to that frame is zero. He writes, "That there is no motion relative to God does not entail that there is no motion relative to other things. There is nothing problematic in the thought that an object at rest in one frame ofreference (e.g. God's) is in motion in other referenceframes.,,111 What is problematic, however, is the slide from speaking colloquially of God's "frame of reference" to treating this as a sort of reference frame related relativistically to other physical reference frames. Such a conception obviously cannot be applied to God in any literal sense; when Stump and Kretzmann spoke of God's reference frame they were using the terms metaphorically for God's mode of existence. It is simply inept to speak, as Leftow does, of objects at rest (zero motion) relative to God.

Leftow proceeds to broach the following thesis, which he characterizes as "eminently defensible,,:112

M. There is no change of any sort involving spatial, material entities unless there is also a change of place, i.e., a motion involving some material entity.

Tbis is a sweeping claim which would require for its defense some account of what constitutes a change (cf. Cambridge changes). But let that pass. I simply want to observe at this point that (M) is incompatible with a tensed theory of time. For according to that theory, the physical world undergoes objective changes in tense; indeed, this is the essence of temporal becoming. There are tensed facts, such as that I1 is presenlly I, that are constantly changing whether anything changes spatially or not. 1I3 Temporal change does not, plausibly, entail spatial change.1I4 Insofar as he endorses (M), therefore, Leftow is implicitly endorsing a tenseless theory of time. Tbis conclusion is important because Leftow avers that bis theory is compatible with a tensed theory of time and becoming.

Since there can be no spatial motion relative to God, (M) is said to imply that no spatial thing can change in any way in relation to God. Leftow then goes on to make the surprising assertion that "if there is any truth in contemporary physics," then even non-spatial entities such as changeable angels or disembodied souls do not exist. IIS He justifies this assertion by pointing out that time is one of the dimensions

111 Leftow, "Eternity and Simultaneity," p. 163; idem, Time and Eternity, p. 226. 112 Leftow, "Etemity and Simultaneity," p. 163; cf. idem, Time and Eternity, pp. 226-227. lJ3 See A. N. Prior, "Changes in Events and Changes in Things," in Papers on Time and Tense (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 1-14. 114 See Sydney Shoemaker, "Time without Change," Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 363-381; cf. W.H. Newton-Smith, The Structure of Time, International Library of Philosophy (London: Routledge, Kegan & Paul, 1980), chaps. 4, 10. m Leftow, "Eternity and Simultaneity," p. 163; cf. idem, Time and Eternity, p. 227.


in the four-dimensional space-time manifold and that whatever is located in one dimension is ipsa facta located in the others as weIl. Therefore, if it is correct to represent time as a dimension of the manifold, nothing can be in time unless it is also in space; only spatial things are temporal. Since only temporal things can change, it follows only spatial things can change.

We have already encountered Leftow's claim that if God is temporal, He is also spatial,116 and the deficiencies pointed out with that claim attend the argument here as weIl. The most important of these is that Leftow's understanding of time as constricted to the time of physics seems to be positivistic and reductionist, leading him in turn to deny the existence of non-spatial, temporal beings and thus evincing a scientistic attitude which even some positivists would consider too narrow. I am reminded in this connection of Alvin Plantinga's advice to Christian philosophers that they have their own agenda to pursue and should display more boldness and autonomy over against the concems which secular philosophy deerns legitimate. ll7

It would be ironic if a Christian philosopher like Leftow were, out of some misplaced deference to the "truth of contemporary physics," led to adopt a positivistic view of time and to deny, as a consequence, important Christi an doctrines pertinent to angelology/demonology and to the intermediate state of the soul after death.

Of course, Leftow's motivation for denying the existence of changeable angels/demons and disembodied souls is clear: if there are non-spatial, changing beings, then there will exist a metaphysical time and, hence, a "frame of reference" in which things are changing relative to God. But then it will be false that all things are timelessly present to God in eternity. Therefore Leftow is obliged to deny the existence of temporal, non-spatial beings. This he accomplishes by the positivistic constriction of time to physical time. There is not only a theological price to be paid for this reduction, however; since physical time seems to be a tenseless time only, Leftow's theory of the relationship of eternity to time may again be incompatible with the tensed theory, which fact he is anxious to deny.

On the basis of the Zero Thesis, (M), and the constriction of time to physical time, Leftow concludes that there is no change relative to God. Unfortunately, none of the supporting theses for this inference is plausibly true. All of the errors described thus far seem to come horne to roost in the following conclusion: "So if a frame of reference is a system of objects at rest relative to one another, then it appears that God and all spatial objects share a frame of reference, one in which nothing changes.,,118 This conclusion is analogous to the statement that spatial objects and space-time (the relativistic ether) are at rest relative to one another and therefore exist in a common reference frame-as though God or space-time could be said to constitute a reference frame and so be at rest with respect to spatial objects or to exist in the same reference frame as spatial objects!

116 See pp. 12-14. 117 A1vin Plantinga, "Advice to Christi an Philosophers," Faith and Philosophy 1 (1984): 253-271. Plantinga specifically blasts verificationism as a philosophical fashion which Christian thinkers ought to have rejected tout court. 118 Leftow, "Etemity and Simultaneity," p. 164; idem, Time and Eternity, p. 227.

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Since an event occurring in one reference frame occurs in all (albeit simultaneous with different groups of events), explains Leftow, all events which occur in other reference frames also occur in the frame at rest relative to God. All temporal events are therefore timelessly present to God. So in answer to the question of how a timeless entity can act on events in time, Leftow asserts that "an etemal entity acts on those temporal entities which are present with it in eternity, and these actions have consequences for temporal entities as they exist in time.,,119 The objection under consideration fails because ''the coming to be actual in time of the events which occur at t in no way entails a change in God or in his presence to creatures. For this coming to be actual exists as well in eternity; it is just that to which God is etemally present.,,120 By invoking Relativity Theory at this point in his argument, Leftow is able to stave off the Eleatic conclusion that because God is changeless and there is no change relative to God, therefore motion and change are mere illusions masking a static reality. By holding that change is real in physical reference frames and making all change relative change, Leftow is able to hold that while change is real relative to some frames it is non-existent relative to God's "frame."

But the difficulty with this account of how all temporal events can be timelessly existent relative to God's "frame of reference" is that there just does not seem to be any such "frame of reference" in which all events are simultaneous. Certainly there is no such physical reference frame, and the addition to these of God's "frame of reference" does not seem to change the picture, since the timelessness of events in the eternal frame depends upon the defective Zero Thesis, (M), and the reduction of time to physical time. Unless some more secure foundation can be found for the existence of such a frame, it will remain problematic how all temporal events can exist timelessly relative to God.

Timeless Existence 0/ All Things in Eternity

On the basis of his argument for the existence of temporal things in eternity Leftow claims that ''relative to God, the whole span of temporal events is always actually there, all at once. Thus in God's frame of reference, the correct judgment oflocal simultaneity is that all events are simultaneous.,,121 This is a dark saying. If we are to make sense of it, we must construe "always" to mean something like ''tenselessly,'' since God's frame of reference is timeless, not sempitemal. For the same reason, Leftow cannot mean by "simultaneous" "occurring at the same time," but something like "co-existent" or "coincident." The statement that God judges all events to be locally simultaneous is very obscure. Leftow cannot mean that all events exist in God's timeless frame of reference, but are tenselessly ordered by a "later than" relation such that no event occurs (tenselessly) later than any other, for that would be to affirm that there is only one time and all events occur at that

119 Leftow, "Aquinas on Time and Eternity," p. 399. 120 Ibid., p. 395. 121 Leftow, "Etemity and Simultaneity," p. 164; idem, Time and Eternity, p. 228.


moment of time. If we take literally Leftow's appeal to SR's doctrine of the relativity of simultaneity to reference frames, then we must say that just as a given set of causally unconnectable events will be calculated to sustain among themselves different relations of earlier than. simultaneous with, and later than in various reference frames, so in God's "frame of reference" no events are judged to be earlier or later than any other or even as occurring simultaneously. Rather in God's "frame" all events are judged to be timelessly coincident. In other words, in God's "frame of reference" the very topology of time is voided. It would be as though one took the series of real numbers and removed from it any ordering relation such as "greater than." The one-dimensional temporal continuum has been divested in God's "frame of reference" of those topological properties which make it isomorphous to a geometricalline, so that all that is left is an amorphous collection of points. Notice that in God's "frame" even causally connected events, such as one's birth, development, decline, and death, are judged to sustain no temporal relations among themselves; they are all just timelessly coincident. It might be objected that if God judges one's birth to be coincident with one's death rather than earlier than it, then He is surely deceived. But if we take relativity seriously, as Leftow wishes to do, that is not the case. There is no privileged frame. Hence, no observer can impugn the temporal ordering of events determined by any other observer in another reference frame. Of course, in all physical frames the temporal order of causally connectable events is invariant. But in the special case of God, if Leftow's argument for the existence of all things in eternity is correct, this invariance does not hold with respect to His "frame of reference." In fact, if anyone's frame is privileged, it will surely be God's, for the relativity of simultaneity arises only for events spatially distant from the observer; judgements of local simultaneity are neither conventional nor relative. But given Leftow's Zero Thesis, all events are in a sense local for God. Therefore, His judgement that all events are timelessly coincident should be absolute, and it is we who are deceived when we judge that they are temporally ordered. In fact, it is not dear to me that Leftow can avert also voiding space as well as time of any topological properties in God's "frame of reference." For in Relativity Theory, a difference in the value of the temporal coordinate of some event relative to two distinct reference frames requires a mathematically determinate difference in the spatial coordinates of the event as weIl. Doubtless, Leftow would not say that the Lorentz transformation equations hold relative to God's "frame of reference" as for physical frames. Nonetheless, since an event's spatial coordinates are partially dependent upon its temporal coordinates, events in God's "frame of reference," lacking any temporal coordinates, cannot be located in space either. To paraphrase Leftow: something is located in one dimension of a geometry if and only if it is located in all; so if it is correct to represent time as another dimension, it follows that whatever is not in time is not in space either: only temporal things are spatial. It therefore seems to follow that in God's "frame of reference" events not only occur timelessly but spacelessly as weIl. The topological structure of the four-dimensional space-time manifold has come completely unglued in the divine "frame of reference" so that all God is confronted with is a chaotic collection of points which are ordered neither spatially nor temporally.

104 CHAPTER3

Leftow, however, clearly does not interpret the "local simultaneity" of all events in God's "frame ofreference" in the above way. He states, "In eternity events are in effect frozen in an array of positions corresponding to their ordering in various Bseries.,,122 In defending his theory against the charge that temporal beings' existing in etemity makes them etemal beings, Leftow lists the following characteristics of a temporal being in the ''reference frame" of eternity, which serve to distinguish it from an etemal being:

a. its fourth-dimensional extension or duration would have parts. b. not a11 parts of its duration would occur at the same temporal present c. its duration's parts would be ordered as earlier and later. d. in most cases, its duration would have a beginning and an end e. if it had no duration, still it would stand in a sequence representing the earlier-later

relations obtaining between it and other events. 123

These characteristics make it evident that Leftow conceives of the existence of a temporal being in etemity as the tenseless existence of its four-dimensional world line. In Leftow's view the entire B-series of events occurs (tenselessly) in God's etemal now. In a footnote he explains that God does not see all events spread out in one B-series, since each reference frame generates its own unique B-series. There are thus a plurality of B-series and God must be aware of all of them. 124

Now this seems an eminently more reasonable account of the existence of temporal events in God's "frame of reference," but I do not see how this account concords with Leftow's proposed theory of timeless etemity. It needs to be understood that that account does not merely eliminate the tensed determinations of events (monadic predicates like past, present, and future) relative to the divine "frame of reference," for SR itself takes no cognizance of such predicates in handling temporal relations among events in physical reference frames. Rather Leftow's account must also eliminate the tenseless determinations of events as weil (dyadic predicates like earlier than, simultaneous with, and later than) relative to God's "frame of reference." For the relativity of simultaneity, which Leftow employs in order to stave off the Parmenidean conclusion that change is illusory and reality is a static whole, entails that events are classed relative to a reference frame as being either earlier than, simultaneous with, or later than any arbitrarily chosen point on the inertial trajectory of a hypothetical observer and that observers in

122 Leftow, "Etemity and Simultaneity," p. 170. Cf his defmition: " ... R is an etemal reference-frame iff within R, the relations earlier, and later, can hold only between locations in the atemporal analogues of a B-series ... " (Ibid., pp. 171-172). Cf idem, Time and Eternity, pp. 239-240. An A-series is, in McTaggart's terminology, the temporal series of events as ordered by post, present, andfoture. The Bseries, according to McTaggart, is the temporal series of events as ordered by earlier than, simultaneous with, and tater than. The former series is therefore a tensed time (an A-Theory oftime) and the latter a tenseless time (a B-Theory ofTime). For discussion see my Tensed Theory ofTime, chap. 6. l2l Leftow, Time and Eternity, p. 237. 124 Leftow, "Etemity and Simultaneity," p. 179; cf idem, Time and Eternity, p. 239; idem, "Aquinas on Time and Etemity," p. 393. Leftow also tries to defend his view by construing temporality as a modal notion: a being is temporal if it can be located in aseries of earlier and later events. Here I must side with Stump and Kretzmann against Leftow. As we have seen, God could exist timelessly alone and yet be capable of entering into temporal relations if He wished to do so. That mere capability does not remove His atemporality.


different frames will draw at any arbitrary point on their world-lines different lines of simultaneity connecting events detennined to be simultaneous with that point and dividing later from earlier events. Hence, relative to God's timeless "frame of reference," God must judge of any two events that one is neither earlier than the other, nor later, nor even strictly simultaneous; they are just timelessly coexistent relative to His frame. Therefore, Leftow's theory must void even tenseless relations relative to the divine "frame of reference." Of course, an omniscient God must also know the lines of simultaneity which would be drawn by hypothetical observers relative to any physical reference frame; but in His "frame" events are chaotically co-existent.

If the proponent of divine timelessness wants to preserve the tenseless relations among events, then it seems to me that his most plausible move will be to identify God's "frame of reference" with the four-dimensional space-time manifold itself, which God transcends, and hold that that manifold exists tenselessly. In short: the tenseless theory of time is correct. Leftow, however, denies that his theory of divine eternity entails the tenseless theory. He claims that "a defender of God's eternity can assert that (in a strictly limited sense) one and the same event is present and actual in eternity though it is not yet or no longer present or actual in time."12S He explicates this by saying, "That is, it can be true at a time t that an event dated at t+l has not yet occurred in time, and yet also correct at t to say that that very event exists in eternity. That all events occur at once in eternity does not entail that they all occur at once in time.,,126 Unfortunately, it is not apparent to me that this explication is anything but a statement ofthe tenseless theory. A theorist oftenseless time would be adamant that at t an event at t+l has not yet occurred in time (otherwise it would be earlier than t) and nonetheless this event exists tenselessly with as much actuality as the event at t; moreover, the tenseless theory does not assert the absurdity that all events occur at once in time, for then there would be only one moment of time! What Leftow needs to show is that his theory of the timeless existence of all things relative to God is compatible with the reality of tense, the objectivity of temporal becoming, the denial that all events exist tenselessly, and so forth.

It is at this point that the Einsteinian interpretation of SR takes center stage in Leftow's defense. He argues,

If simultaneity and presentness are relative to reference-frames, then if present events are actual in some way in which future events are not, this sort of actuaIity is itself relative to reference frames. Thus there is a (strictly limited) sense in which the relativity of simultaneity entails a relativity of actuaIity, if one restricts fuH actuaIity to present events. 127

12S Leftow, "Etemity and Simu1taneity," p. 165; cr. idem, Time and Etemity, p. 232. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid. Unfortunately, the way Leftow supports this conclusion is by means of a defective illustration from SR of the relativity of simultaneity. (Idem, Time and Etemity, pp. 232-233). All Leftow's illustration shows is that his event C is simultaneous with H in R, but simultaneous with G in R *, not that C is actual in R before C is actuaI in R *. One could with equal justification say that C becomes actuaI at the same time in R and R* and that G and H occur earlier in R* than in R! In fact none of these comparisons is licit without designating a third reference frame.

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This represents one way of integrating objective temporal becoming with SR, though it strikes me as enormously implausible. 128 However that may be, Leftow explains the result ofrelativizing actuality to reference frames:

If we take eternity as one more frame of reference, then, we can thus say that a temporal event's being present and actual in eternity does not entail that it is present and actual at any particular time in any temporal reference frame (though it does follow that this event is, was or will be actual in all temporal reference frames). 129

Again, one must protest that God's "frame of reference" is not literally a reference frame; there is no reference frame in which all events are present and actual, since there are in every frame space-time regions designated absolute future or absolute past as determined by the light-cone structure at any event. The only thing corresponding to God's "frame of reference" as described by Leftow, so far as I can see, is Einstein's relativistic ether, the space-time manifold itself. But since it is not a reference frame, the relativity of simultaneity relation does not obtain between it and Iocal frames. Thus, on Leftow's theory temporal becoming cannot be objective, for all events simply exist tenselessly in the four-dimensional manifoId. 130

When pressed, Leftow shows himselfprepared to fall back, ifnecessary, to a sort of Stump-Kretzmann model which does not appeal to the Zero Thesis but reHes exclusively on the reiativity of simultaneity in order to justify the claim that actuaHty is reference frame dependent and therefore events which are not actual with respect to various temporal reference frames may all be actual with respect to God's "frame.,,131 The problem with the naked appeal to analogy, however, is that

128 See Lawrence Sklar, "Time, Reality and Relativity," in Reduction, Time and Reality, ed. R. Healey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 138; see also my discussion in rny Time and the Metaphysics 0/ Relativity, chap. 5. 129 Leftow, "Eternity and Simultaneity," p. 167; idem, Time and Eternity, p. 234. 110 Suspicions that Leftow's theory really presupposes a tenseless theory of time are accentuated by his remarks on God's knowledge ofwhat is happening now:

"That in God' s frame of reference all events occur simultaneously does not entail that God does not know all the facts about simultaneity which obtain in temporal reference frames. God's being located in just the eternal frame of reference does not put a limit on what he knows. From any reference frame one can extrapolate what judgments of simultaneity would be correct in other reference frames. Presumably, then, an eternal God can have this knowledge in His own way. So ... for every temporal now, God knows what is happening now (i.e., simultaneous with that now) ... " (Leftow, "Eternity and Simultaneity." p. 168; cf. idem, Time and Eternity, p. 235.)

Notice the conflation ofthe indexical tensed determination "now" and the non-indexical tenseless relation "simultaneous with." God could know the appropriate simultaneity c1asses relative to every reference frame and still not have any idea which c1ass of events is occurring now with respect to any frame. This can be c1early seen by reflecting on the fact that appropriate lines of simultaneity can be drawn on a Minkowski diagram through any point on the inertial trajectory of a hypothetical observer connected to that frame. Leftow's theory of divine eternity will not result in an attenuation of divine omniscience only if he holds, with the tenseless time theorist, that there are no objective tensed facts and therefore divine knowledge of simultaneity relations is sufficient to grasp a11 that there is to be known with respect to the facts about what is happening now. III Brian Leftow, "Time, Actuality and Omniscience," Religious Studies 26 (1990): 303-321. "The claim that actuality is a function of a relation may seem bizarre, but if time is tensed and the special theory of relativity is true, this claim folIows .... one can hold ... that events really occur sequentially in


one then lacks any justification for denying the symmetry demanded by the relativity of simultaneity, namely, that relative to temporal beings God exists in time, just as temporal beings, relative to God, exist in eternity. Moreover, one lacks any grounds for eonstruing eternity and temporality on the analogy of reference frames, since, pace Leftow, such terminology is only metaphorical with reference to God. Finally, a deeper issue, unaddressed by either Stump and Kretzlnann or Leftow, is whether there is any reason to think that the relativity of simultaneity obtains at all. Leftow's appeal to SR to ground this relation, it seems to me, evinces a certain naivete concerning the philosophieal foundations of the received physical interpretation of Relativity Theory and an uncritieal acceptance of that interpretation, whieh is then (mis)applied to metaphysics.

There are, after all, other physieal interpretations of the Lorentz transformation equations that constitute the mathematieal core of SR which are empirically equivalent to the received interpretation and which, if correet, would lead to completely different conc1usions when applied metaphysically. On the Einsteinian view, there exists no preferred spatio-temporal order; rather space and time are relative to inertial frames, and no frame is privileged. According to the neoLorentzian view, absolute spaee and time exist, not necessarily in the substantival, as opposed to relational, sense of "absolute," but rather in the sense that there exists a spatio-temporal order which is privileged. We thus have two different interpretations of Relativity Theory which are radically different in their metaphysical foundations and yet which are, to date, experimentally indistinguishable and therefore insuseeptible to scientific adjudication. An examination of the philosophical foundations of Relativity Theory is therefore indispensable if we are to decide between these competing interpretations. If a neoLorentzian interpretation is philosophically preferable, then the rug is pulled from beneath the feet of theories of divine eternity appealing to SR in order to justify notions like ET -simultaneity or the presenee of all things to God in timeless eternity. It therefore seems to me that it is of the utmost moment that proponents of divine timeless eternity address themselves more c10sely to the scrutiny and justification of the interpretation of Relativity Theory whieh they prefer and on which their theories are predicated. \32

In conc1usion, it seems to me that Leftow has failed to save the doetrine of divine timelessness by means of his proposal that temporal entities exist not only in time, but also in eternity. His argument for this asymmetrleal relation between time and eternity commits a fatal eategory mistake, presupposes a reductionist view of time, and is incompatible with a tensed theory of time. His attempt to demonstrate the compatibility of objective tense and temporal becoming with the existence of all things in eternity rests on these same errors, never in fact advances beyond a tenseless theory of time, and depends upon an uneritical acceptance of the

time and also all at once for God, without it thereby being the case that they really do all occur at once" (Ibid., pp. 318, 320). \32 For a discussion of Relativity Theory and its interpretation, see my Time and the Metaphysics of Relativity.

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Einsteinian interpretation of SR. Leftow's theory therefore fails to show why God's real, causal relation to the temporal world would not involve Hirn in time itself.

A WA Y OUT FOR ADVOCATES OF DIVINE TIMELESSNESS?

The foregoing discussion does suggest a possible way of escape for defenders of divine timelessness: deny the objectivity of tense and temporal becoming and therefore also the (necessary) truth of


The argument I have given on behalf of (4) presupposes a tensed theory of time and, hence, the reality of temporal becoming and tensed facts. But if one embraces a tenseless theory of time, according to which there are no tensed facts and temporal becoming is merely a subjective feature of consciousness, then the argument is undercut. For in that case all events comprising the four-dimensional space-time manifold simply exist tenselessly, and God can be conceived to exist "outside" this manifold, spacelessly and timelessly. \33 Both God and what Einstein characterized as the relativistic etherl34 would be extrinsically timeless, in Leftow's terminology, while the four-dimensional ether is of the two alone intrinsically temporal. But this intrinsic temporality would not involve temporal becoming or tensed facts; all events are on an ontological par and no events are ever objectively present. The temporality of events consists solely in their standing in mutual relations of earlier than, simultaneous with, and later than, relations which are construed as being as tenseless as the relations less than, equal to, and greater than.

Thus, there is no objective matter of fact concerning any two events B and C that, for example, God was once sustaining B or that God is presently sustaining C. Advocates of a tenseless theory of language will argue that such tensed locutions are either reducible in meaning to tenseless expressions or have tenseless truth conditions, thus rendering the postulation of corresponding tensed facts otiose. Moreover, since B and C never really come into being or pass away, no change is required on God's part to produce B at t4 and C at 15' In the absence of temporal becoming, B and C, as weil as their respective moments, never change in their ontological status but simply exist tenselessly (though standing in the relations earlierllater than). Therefore, they are changelessly real in relation to God, who also exists tenselessly. By the same act of power, God can produce tenselessly B at

\33 As Denbigh puts it, "The B-series is as if the Deity could timelessly witness a11 events, laid out in order a10ng the time coordinate, as we can witness objects laid out in space" (K. G. Denbigh, An Inventive Universe [London: Hutchinson, 1975], pp. 30-31). Cf. Keith Seddon, Time: a Philosophical Treatment (London: Croon Helm, 1987), p. 135. 134 Einstein asserts,

"It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four-dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three-dimensional existence. This rigid four-dimensional space of the special theory of relativity is to some extent a fourdimensional analogue of H. A. Lorentz's rigid three-dimensional aether" (A. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory (New York: Crown, 1961], pp. 150-151).


t4 and C at t5•135 His single creative exercise ofpower is as timeless and unchanging as His intention to create, and the temporal products of His creative power exist as extrinsically timelessly as does He. The adoption of a tenseless theory of time thus gives a coherent sense to the notion that temporal events exist in eternity, and many of the statements of classical advocates of divine atemporality seem to presuppose just such a tenseless theory oftime.136 Finally, since God and the creation would coexist tenselessly, then-absent any embedding hyper-timt>-there is no state of affairs in the actual world which consists of God's existing alone sans the universe, nor does the universe come into being. It begins to exist only in the sense that a meter stick has a beginning: there is a front edge to the space-time manifold, that is to say, it is finite in the earlier than direction. But God never brought the fourdimensional world into being; it just co-exists tenselessly with Hirn in an asymmetrical relation of ontological dependence. Had He freely determined otherwise, God could have existed alone sans creation; but He has freely chosen to produce a temporal world instead. Whether He chooses to exist alone or to produce tenselessly a co-existing temporal creation, God exists timelessly. Given a tenseless theory of time, God either exists tenselessly without creation or co-exists tenselessly with creation, depending upon the free decree of His will, but no world includes both states of affairs. Thus, God, in creating the world, enters into no new relations whatsoever. He tenselessly stands in the relation of creating the Big Bang at to. The date to indicates, not the time of His acting, but the time of the effect. God does not come into the relation Creator ofwith the Big Bang singularity at to and then cease to stand in this relation to it at t\; rather He timelessly stands in the Creator· 0/ relation to all events at their respective times. By a single, timeless act God tenselessly produces events at to, t(, t2,. ... Thus, on the tenseless theory oftime, one can successfully divorce God's action from its effects in such a way that the action is tirneless and the effects temporal. By denying the reality of temporal becoming and tensed facts, the advocate of divine tirnelessness undercuts the arguments for the necessary truth of(4), therebyallowing one to maintain God's atemporality and His creative activity in the temporal world without denying God's real relation to that world.

One of the interesting features of Padgett's book is that he recognizes the viability of the doctrine of divine timelessness, despite his arguments for God's temporality, if one adopts a tenseless theory, or in his words, stasis theory, of time. He writes,

13S Objections to timeless causation are not impressive. For example, Le Poidevin's conclusion that causality entails time over-reaches his argument, which, even if sound, would only show that atemporal cause is chronologically prior to its effect (Robin Le Poidevin, Change, Cause and Contradiction: A Defense of the Tenseless Theory of Time, Macmillan Studies in Contemporary Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1991], pp. 88-94). 136 See William Lane Craig, "Was Thomas Aquinas a B-Theorist of Time?" New Scholasticism 59 (1985): 475-483; idem, "St. Anselm on Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingency," Laval theologique et philosophique 42 (1986): 93-104. See also Padgett, God, Etemity and the Nature ofTime, pp.56-81.

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... on the stasis theory of time, no particular episode or event is timeless, because they will have dates. But the totality of the world, considered from a four-dimensional perspective, is both timeless and changeless... God could tbus sustain the fourdimensional space-time universe .... For the fundamental ontological status ofthings is etemally the same. Changes in the sense of things having incompatible properties at different dates will still occur. But things and events will not change in tbeir fundamental ontological status. Things and events will exist at the time they exist, no matter when "now" is according to humans. It is this fundamental ontological change that is at issue when we consider the act of God sustaining the world. And it is this sort of fundamental ontological change that the stasis theory denies. Such a conception of how a timeless God can sustain the world including dates depends upon the stasis theory oftime ....

. . . Any model of absolute divine timelessness that wisbes to retain the important notion of God sustaining the world should also affirm the stasis theory of time. 137

Most advocates of divine timelessness, however, have been unwilling to pin their hopes on the tenseless theory of time. \38 Ihe notable exception is Paul Helm, who, more than any other contemporary pbilosopher or theologian, has understood the dependency of the doctrine of divine timelessness on the tenseless theory and has advocated the same. 139 He explicitly advocates construing the distinction between past, present, and future as analogous to "the spatial distinctions between here and there, and before and behind.,,140 Without an objective present, there is no real temporal becoming, and hence, in bis view, no need for any kind of EI -simultaneity such as is advocated by Stump and Kretzmann. "Do the times wbich are at present future to us exist, or not?" Helm asks; "Answer: they exist for God ... and they exist for those creatures contemporaneous with that future moment, for that moment is present for them, but it is not now present to US.,,141 In the same way, ''the past event ... belongs in its own time, and is therefore real, belonging to the ordered seris

137 Padgett, God, Eternity and the Nature ofTime, pp.61-76. 138 See, for example, Zagzebski, Freedom and Foreknowledge, pp. 175-178, who vainly struggles to preserve the A-series while inconsistently affirming four-dimensionalism, the perspectival nature of tensed facts, and God's perceiving things as present in the fourth dimension (while not transcending space-time)! See also L. Nathan Oaklander, "Time and Foreknowledge: A Critique of Zagzebski," Religious Studies 31 (\995): 101-103. 139 Helm was preceded by A. C. Ewing, who held that for God time exists as a B-series apprehended in one specious present. Ewing appealed to the argument from "Time's Tooth" to justify his view:

"It seems plain that a perfect being would not experience the world-process as an A series in the way we do. For he would then be incomplete in a way whicb is quite incompatible witb perfection. He would never be more than aminute fraction of his total being, and each such minute fraction would be lost for ever as it was succeeded by thenext."

By knowing the B-series, God is capable of responding to prayer at appropriate times and feeling sympathy when misfortune befalls us (A. C. Ewing, Value and Reality, Muirhead Library ofPhilosophy [London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973], pp. 281-283). Other atemporalists advocating a tenseless theory oftime as a basis for understanding divine timelessness include Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, s.v. "Etemity," by J. S. MacKenzie, p. 404 and 1. L. Tomkinson, "Divine Sempitemity and Atemporality," Religious Studies 18 (\982): 187; Seddon, Time, p. 135. See also the discussion by Yates, Timelessness ofGod, pp. 67-95, who rejects the tenseless theory, but recognizes how considerably easier it makes the reconciliation of etemity and time. 140 Helm, Eternal God, p. 47. 141 Paul Helm, "Etemal Creation: The Doctrine of the Two Standpoints," in The Doctrine ofCreation, ed. Colin Gunton (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), p. 42.


of times which comprise the creation and which are ... eternally present to God.,,142 Thus, "in creation God brings into being (timelessly) the whole temporal matrix," and "God knows al a glance the whole of his temporally ordered creation .... ,,143 Helm is thus the one prominent advocate of divine timelessness who has advocated a coherent doctrine of God's atemporality, predicated upon the tenseless theory of time.

The bottom line to our discussion of the objection to divine timelessness based on God's action in the world is therefore that this objection is cogent just in case a tensed theory of time is correct. If this conclusion is right, then significant advance of the discussion can only take place by tackling the difficult and multi-faceted problem ofthe tensed versus tenseless theory oftime.

142 Ibid., p. 43. 143 Helm, Eternal God, pp. 27,26. Cf. Paul Helm, "Gale on God," Religious Studies 29 (\993): 247. So also McCann, "God beyond Time," p. 239, who holds that God "in a single, unchanging, timeless act" creates "the entire universe ... through all of its history. "

god, time, and eternity || timelessness and divine action

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