Dr Greg Bahnsen - Philosophy of Christianity: Foreknowledge and Freedom (Part 16)

Okay, then we're back into this question.

Of whether if God knows all things in advance, we have any freedom to.

Do what we do. And we've been looking at the premise.

Whatever God knows must necessarily happen. In our last class, period, I pointed.

Out that Roe sees two basic interpretations.

Of this premise on the board.

Whatever God knows must necessarily happen.

The first interpretation is that the necessity here applies to the statement, the conditional.

Statement, if God knows something, then it is true.

Or if God foreknows P, P will happen.

Okay?

It's a necessary truth that if God foreknows P, then P will happen. I can't recall if I told you.

But I will tell you now that.

The word God or the name God can be taken out of that sentence. And it's true for anything you substitute in there that has the ability to know things.

I mean, if I foreknow that P, if I genuinely foreknow that P, then.

P will happen, because knowledge must be of the truth.

People can't know that which is erroneous, and consequently it's a necessary truth.

And if God foreknows P, P will happen. The second interpretation of the necessity mentioned in this premise is that the event itself is necessary. That if God foreknows P, P will happen. Necessarily. The mode under which it occurs is.

That of necessity rather than freedom or contingency or what have you. Okay?

Now, Aquinas agrees with this double interpretation of the premise. In his first rejoinder to the critic who says we do not have freedom because God foreknows all things, Aquinas says that this type of statement can be interpreted in terms of the mental act. Now, you may have been misled because the translation you have in your text says an act of the soul.

And you may have been thinking of.

Something having to do with sanctification or some very religious type of activity because of the word soul there. But the word soul and mind in terms of medieval philosophy would almost be interchangeable, and certainly so in Aquinas. And so an act of the soul is what we now call a mental act, okay? The necessity applies to, as Rowe put it, the statement itself, that if God.

Knows something, then it must be true, it must happen.

However, Aquinas says it could also apply to. The thing itself. The necessity can apply to the thing itself, not to the saying. He also says at one point the necessity applies to the saying, and sometimes it applies to the event or the thing itself. And that means if God knows that P that the professor will be late for class on Tuesday, then The very.

Thing itself, the professor's being late on Tuesday, the very event being being mentioned.

Will happen of necessity, the thing itself or the event is necessary.

Okay, then there's another way in which.

This distinction is explained. If you read in Kinney's article. The first portion of the article deals.

With Aquinas approach to foreknowledge, and he interprets this kind of statement, whatever is known by God must be, must necessarily happen.

De dicto or de re. Okay? And as you can see from my.

Previous two discussions that this is exactly the same thing. De dicto of the statement, de re of the thing. Okay, now there Kenny discusses the distinction in terms of necessary truth. If you interpret the statement in terms of a necessary truth, de dicto, you get the proposition whatever is known by God is true. Whatever is known by God is true. If you interpret it de re, you get whatever proposition. Now, I'm going to get this right, okay? You get the idea that.

The question.

Is, what is the necessary truth? Is it the proposition that is necessary, or is it a necessary truth about everything? Okay? If the proposition is a necessary truth, it amounts to whatever is known by God is true. And if it's everything that becomes necessary, then whatever is known by God is a necessary truth.

Let me put it to you this way.

Just the way I have in my notes.

Now, whatever is known by God is true. That's one proposition. Whatever is known by God is true. Okay? If you interpret this statement up here in terms of a dedicto necessity, then what you're saying is that this one proposition is necessarily true. However, if you interpret it as a de re necessity, then what you're saying is that whatever proposition is known by.

God.

Is a necessary truth.

Do you have a feeling for the difference between those two things?

This is saying that every statement known by God is a necessary truth. That's the de re interpretation. The de dicto interpretation is saying only this one proposition is a necessary truth. The one proposition that whatever is known by God is true. You can see that there's a difference here. Because to say that this one truth is a necessary truth, that whatever is known by God is true, doesn't amount to any problem because you can't know falsehood. So if it's known, then it must be true. That's a necessary truth. But it is not the case that whatever proposition is known by God is a necessary truth. God knew there'd be a volleyball game on the lawn at the seminary today, but that there is a volleyball game on the lawn at the seminary today is not a necessary truth. It could have been otherwise. It could have rained today. You could have played baseball on the lawn.

You could have played another day.

You could have played on the cement.

I mean, you could have done any.

Number of things differently. There's no necessity to there being a volleyball game on the lawn. And so the fact that God knew that statement doesn't make the statement a necessary truth, but this is a necessary truth. So that's one way of explaining that you can interpret the necessity involved in this premise. Whatever God knows must necessarily happen in two different ways. And I'm getting tired of talking about.

This particular approach to the subject because it doesn't really amount to a whole lot, except that many people who argue for the idea that God necessarily. Well, excuse me, that what God decrees necessarily happens or what God knows necessarily happens fall into this ambiguity. They equivocate between the two interpretations. So it's important to observe it, but I don't think we need much more than just that. Do you have any questions for understanding it, however? Okay, where did we get this statement? Can somebody remind me who started out with this?

What?

That's right. Evodius. Okay. And then Augustine had his way of dealing with it, right? Turned out that Augustine equivocated in his answer. Aquinas has his way of dealing with it, distinguishing two different interpretations. Roe agrees with that. Kenny agrees with that.

That'll help you organize your reading. So where people are standing on the issue, then, fine. But now we're going to get into a much more difficult aspect of this discussion of whether foreknowledge deprives us of the freedom of our actions.

And Aquinas deals with this in his writings as well. He comes to what is called objection or objector 7 in his writings on foreknowledge. And the objection that Thomas wants to deal with is summarized very nicely by Kinney on pages 407 on one paragraph and then 409, I'll use the summary on page 409 because it's briefer. At the very bottom of 409, that last paragraph, second sentence, the objection ran thus. You should always be underlining those sorts of things in your book. Whenever you get one of these guys to summarize for you, then you say, I may not have understood up to this point, but he's going to put it all together now, and here's the way it goes. What is implied by a necessary proposition is itself necessarily true.

Okay? So if you will, first thing, we.

Need to observe is that what necessarily.

Follows from a necessary truth is itself a necessary truth.

Okay, then we go on. But from the statement it has come to God's knowledge that such and such will be the case. It follows that such and such will be the case.

So we're going to take a statement that I'm going to, when I'm writing.

On the board, always abbreviate with this asterisk. The statement is, if it has come.

To God's knowledge that X will happen, Emphasize has. If it has already come to God's knowledge that some event called X will.

Happen.

Then X will happen.

What you have here amounts to two.

Statements conjoined with the conditional. You have the statement it has come to God's knowledge that X will happen. You have another statement, x will happen. And they're being joined by this if then combination. If it has come to God's knowledge that actually will happen, then X will happen.

We continue.

But it has come to.

God's knowledge that such and such will be the case is necessarily true. Therefore, such and such will be the case is necessarily true.

Why is it said that this statement it has come to God's knowledge that actually happened is necessarily true?

It's necessarily true, it turns out, because it's in the past tense.

And so we have to add to this first premise up here.

The premise that whatever is passed is necessary. Whatever is passed is necessary because it cannot now be changed.

It is now unpreventable. We cannot now do anything about the Watergate affair, okay?

It cannot be changed. It's part of history. There's nothing we can do now to change it. It's now unpreventable.

It does seem this is a very reasonable premise. This, in modal logic, is an unquestionable premise. Whatever necessarily follows from an assumption is itself a necessity. And no philosopher I know is going to question that. Now. The occamites of the 15th century, Peter de Revo and certain other philosophers today, will talk about special kinds of necessary truths and all that. But as a matter of fact, if you grant that something is pure and simply a necessary truth, then whatever follows from it must itself be necessary. So here we have an indisputable question of modal logic. The premise in modal logic, whatever necessarily follows from a necessary truth is itself necessary truth. We also have a very reasonable premise that whatever is passed is necessary and that it's now unpreventable. So now, when we come to this asterisk statement on the board that if it has come to God's knowledge That X, Y happen. The first thing you notice is this is put in the past tense.

In the past, God already knew that X will happen. You see, back in 1950, God already knew that you'd be playing volleyball on the lawn today. It was in the past. True that God will know that X will happen.

Since it is in the past, this then seems to be a necessary truth. Now up here it says that whatever necessarily follows from a necessary truth is itself a necessary truth.

Okay?

So if it's a necessary truth that it has come to God's knowledge that X will happen, and it necessarily follows from that that X will happen, then it turns out that X will happen is a necessary truth.

Now if X will happen as a necessary truth, then it does seem that we have been deprived of any contingency in that matter. And if it's a human act, we've been deprived of any freedom in the act itself. So the conclusion of this line of thought. Let me go through it very quickly. Again the objection runs. This is not Thomas speaking, this is the objector himself. What necessarily follows from a necessary truth is itself necessary and whatever passed is a necessary truth. So if it has come to God's knowledge that X will happen means then X will happen necessarily X will happen as a necessary truth. And therefore God has not known non necessary truths. You all see how that negative statement comes from this. God has not known not non necessary truths.

Now a non necessary truth is the same thing as a contingent truth. If God the very fact that God knows something makes it a necessary truth.

Then whatever God knows is a necessary truth and not a contingent truth. God does not know contingent contingent truths. God knows only necessary truths.

So the conclusion is whatever proposition is known by God.

Is a necessary truth.

Now when you see this corollary to the argument that's already up on the board, that will help you understand what an Prior's article is all about. Rather difficult reading I would estimate for most of you. But this is what he's getting at, that whatever God knows must be a necessary truth. And Prior's whole point is going to.

Be that all truths are necessary truths in a rather unique way.

Any questions so far?

This is an objection that Thomas has to answer. The objection can be found in Diodorus the Megarian, an ancient philosopher, Peter Derivo the Antioch. You can find it analogous form of argument in Aristotle. And you can find it, it turns out, in Jonathan Edwards, in the reading of Jonathan Edwards. And Dr. Pryor makes the very perceptive observation on page 421 of his article that Jonathan Edwards used a similar kind of argument not to prove that God couldn't foreknow everything because everything in the future is contingent and God doesn't know any contingent truths. That's what Aquinas was driven to say, that God doesn't foreknow contingent truths. Jonathan Edwards uses this argument to say that since God foreknows everything, everything God knows will necessarily happen. That is, he uses this argument to prove that no event can be purely contingent. Okay, page 421. At the very bottom of the page again he says, I take this point from Jonathan Edwards, who reproduced this objection 7 in the 18th century for a different purpose. Not to show that God cannot know future contingencies, the point of Aquinas, but to show that just because God does know all the future, none of it can be contingent. Because God knows the future, none of the future can be contingent. We'll be coming back to that point later on when you get to my own discussion of the issue. Now, as I pointed out to you, an prior is when to use this form of argumentation to prove that all truths are necessary truths. There's no such thing as a contingent truth in a very unusual sense. And before we get to the solution Thomas for this and problems with Thomas solution, perhaps we should look at three attempts that are made to surmount the.

Line of argumentation on the board. Aquinas himself looked at three attempts to dismiss this reasoning and found all three of them wanting as unacceptable.

And therefore he proposed his own approach to the matter. The first attempt to surmount this argument is that the antecedent in the asterisk statement on the board has a reference to the future. Making it. Making this kind of reference to the. This kind of reference to the past.

A contingent statement, okay, since it has come to God's knowledge. That's past tense. Yes, but this kind of reference to the past is still contingent because it involves a reference to the future X will happen. And the argument seems to have been this. Well, sometimes we say the following is going to happen tonight, and it's very.

True that it's going to happen. It's on its way to happening. Everything is pointing in that direction. However, some new factor enters the picture before tonight. And what we said truly was going to happen if all, all the things remained as they are doesn't end up happening.

And so this is a contingent statement because to say that in the past God saw that things were on their.

Way to happening doesn't mean necessarily they must happen. Well, I think you can all see here, there's an equivocation in what we're getting at when we say X will happen. That is, the objector is assuming that.

God knows things will happen in the same way that we say we know that there'll be ice rocks ready for the party tonight, because after all, we put water in the tray and the refrigerator is working, and we put the tray in the ice cube, we put the tray in the freezer and there's.

Plenty of time, and consequently, there will be ice cubes tonight. Okay? So it's on its way to happening, but God doesn't know that things are on their way to happening in that way. Aquinas says, and even if he did, it would still be a necessary truth.

That in that sense, if it has come to God's knowledge that things are on their way to happening, then necessarily things are on their way to happening. Okay?

So Aquinas says, the necessity is preserved as long as you don't equivocate on what you're getting at when you say X will happen. A very poor argument if you don't understand it. Don't worry about it. Okay, Now a second way of approaching.

This issue says that the antecedent in this asterisk statement is contingent. The first line of argument was this is a contingent statement because its reference to the future amounts to things are on their way to happening. Okay? Quinas dismisses that, but somebody else comes along and he says, well, that is.

A contingent statement because it has a contingent element in. Has a contingent element in it that X will happen. That's contingent. The X itself is contingent. Therefore, if it makes mention of a contingent thing, the whole statement must be contingent. Now Thomas answers that the modality. Am I making sense if I speak of modality? The modality of a statement might be its contingency or its necessity or its possibility. Okay, A contingent statement. Well, some statements have the modality of contingency or necessity. For our discussion, Thomas says the modality of the whole statement does not depend on the modality of its parts, but depends rather on the modality of the main line. I'm sorry, not the main line. I can't even read my own notes.

The main link in the statement, okay, it has come to God's knowledge that now that's the main link. Now you get a subordinate statement that X will happen. The fact that X will happen is contingent, doesn't affect the modality of the main link in the statement, and consequently.

This objection is wrong. The modality of the whole doesn't Depend on the modality of the parts. When you're reading Prior, you will see him correcting Aquinas modal logic.

There are statements where the modality is part of the whole does depend upon.

The modality of the parts. Now, Aquinas happened to pick a nice one to make his mistake on though.

Because in statements of this sort where you have a main clause and a subordinate clause, the modality does not depend.

Upon the subordinate clause. We're just cleaning up Aquinas homework his modal logic. What he said is fine when it.

Comes to this kind of statement, but.

He states it as a general idea that modality doesn't depend upon the modality of the parts of a sentence. But usually modality does depend upon the parts of a statement. So if I say a necessary truth and a contingent truth, the whole statement, the combined statement is then contingent. It's been contingentized by that one part. But in a subordinate clause, it does not mean contingent. And so anyway, Aquinas argument was will hold, is the fence will hold.

Yeah, just a couple of comments on defining modality. I thought I was clearer than turned out to be. That's my question. Modality of whole and parts. What does modality mean in a sentence like that?

Well, I get a statement.

A is A. What's the modality of that statement? Statement necessity. The truth of this is a necessary truth. Okay, so its truth has the mode of necessity.

Manner of truth commits. Okay, that's a paraphrase.

That's fine. Okay, now if somebody says A is B, then if that's true, it's only contingently true. Okay, so its modality is that a contingency? Okay, A dog is a dog and a dog can bite. Okay, now just taken by itself, that is the modality of necessity. Taken by itself, this is the modality of contingency. But what about a sentence that is a, A conjunctive sentence that has the A? Well, I'm not going to use A and B. Now, if I say P and Q, okay, this whole. Now this sentence. If I say a dog is a.

Dog and a dog can bite that whole sentence that I gave you, what's its modality? Well, it's contingent. That's right.

It is, as I said, contingentized by the contingency of this one. So Aquinas was wrong. The modality of the whole does depend upon the modality of the parts when it's this kind of statement where you have a conjunction between two.

But the modality of the whole does not depend upon the modality of the.

Parts when you're dealing with the subordinate.

Part within the whole.

So this subordinate part may be contingent.

But that doesn't make the whole contingent.

Because it's a VAT clause.

Depending on because it's subordinate, it does.

Not take away anything from the main link.

What is contingent about A is B. Explain contingent to me as you did. Modality.

There's nothing necessary about the fact that dogs could bite. Some dogs can't bite in the first place. And it may be that in another possible world dogs are of such a nature that they don't bite. But no matter what possible world you're in, a dog must be a dog. Dog can't be a cat.

The cat slotology is necessary. A is A.

That's right.

A is B.

It's not necessary contingent. It's true in this world, but in another world or of other dogs it.

Can in some sense be qualified.

Doesn't have to be true.

Doesn't have to be true. Okay, the second question is where can we find a list of the modalities? How many are there?

Three.

Three. That's it.

Contingency, necessity and possibility.

That's it.

Somewhat include probability in there.

Okay, then give us the third one. We're all done with modalities. What would be an example of a third?

There is no way that I want to give you the impression that I've given you a course in modal logic. We haven't. Even you would have to know this from your elementary philosophy before you'd even be admitted to a course in modal logic. Modal logic is terribly difficult. The fact there's only three basic categories is misleading. In fact, there's only three. If you want to see a few formulas in modal logic, it'll scare you away from logic altogether.

Yeah, so I don't.

So I'm not even going to get into what is that something is possibly true. Okay, but if you want one real.

Quick, X will be Y. X will.

Be Y is possibly true.

X will be viable.

Any other questions about the objection that the antecedent here is contingent because it has a contingent part in it? You might be interested in Prior's further remark that the occamist of the 15th century said that an element of futurity even in subordinate clauses made truths in the past tense essentially future. What I'm saying is that if you were a follower of Occam, you would not have accepted this approach to modal logic. If you would have said we represent another school of modal lodge and we aren't just going to give up that easily.

As a matter of fact, if a subordinate clause makes reference to a future event, then although the grammatical form of the sentence as a whole may be.

Passed, essentially this is a future proposition. It's a proposition about a future matter. Of course, if you take that approach with the alchemist, then you have to say that God's foreknowledge is contingent, because you're saying essentially what God has known in the past about the future is contingent. It's a future matter itself. So that's a rather big implication to swallow as a theologian. But nevertheless, I want you to know that there were some theologians who were willing to argue that way. Okay, I'm going to go on to the third objection, unless you have questions about the second one. There are some who say that a necessary antecedent can have a contingent consequent. There were some who attempted to argue.

In the Middle Ages that this first premise up here doesn't have to be accepted. Whatever necessarily follows from a necessary truth is itself necessary. They'd say. No, in some cases, what necessarily follows from a necessary truth is itself contingent nonetheless.

Okay, if the sun is shining, then the flowers will grow. Okay, it's necessary that the sun shine. On the assumption that was a natural law, that the sun would shine. Since it's necessary that the sun will shine, it should be a necessary truth that the flowers will grow. We know very well that if something happens, if somebody poisons the flowers, or if somebody lets their horse loose in the flower patch, they won't necessarily grow. Consequently, it's still a contingent truth. That's a very poor line of argument. And Aquinas does a good job of lancing it. He says, only where there is no possibility of frustrating the antecedent, no possibility of frustrating the link between the antecedent and the consequent. Is the antecedent genuinely is the whole. I'm going to say this right. I'm going to start again. Only where there is no possibility of frustrating the connection between the antecedent and the consequent, is the conditional statement, conditional statement, strictly true. If somebody says, if the sun will shine, the flowers will grow. And then he argues, but the flowers may not grow because the sun shining also has to have the following conditions. Horses don't run through the patch, and so forth and so on. Then it turns out that that's not a true statement. Aquinas says, well, you see, you go on the assumption that's a necessary truth.

And then you back off and it's.

Not True, given your interpretation. It's not true, given your interpretation. And.

Sir, isn't Thomas setting himself up, though, for being back in the corner on a whiter than necessary truth?

You mean Kenny's approach to him?

Yeah, I guess. I thought it was fire.

No, it's Kenny who wants to ask what a necessary truth is. I can't see that he is, in answering this question that way. I mean, it's true that his opponent is equivocating. His opponent is taking, you know, the idea, this statement, if the sunshine suppliers will grow as true and necessarily true, and then he points out that, well, then the flowers will grow. This necessary connection may not be true. You can't have it both ways.

Exactly. And of course, the coin is answered properly. If it wasn't necessary truth, of course it would come.

That's right.

Necessarily. And since it isn't. It isn't.

That's right. It's amazing. Some opponents miss the obvious, though, isn't it?

That makes that a tautology. But then what will.

No, no, it's not a tautology. If the sun shines, then necessarily the flowers will grow. It's not a tautology. If it's a necessary truth. It means the flowers will grow, though, provided the sun shining is necessary. Everybody's assuming that. But then, you see, the opponent says, oh, but what if the horses run through the patch? Then of course the flowers won't grow even though the sun is shining. And Aquinas says, well, then what you're saying is you don't believe it's necessarily true that if the sun shines, the flowers will grow. You see, you start on one assumption and you end up not holding that assumption. And so he just dismisses that as an equivocation.

Now, notice, my friends, that Thomas finds the argument on the board inescapable. Thomas, after looking at different ways of.

Trying to get around it, says there's no way around it. I have to accept that that is the case.

Prior finds the argument inescapable in force.

So Thomas and Prior, Peter De Revo, Diodorus, the Megarian, Aristotle, Jonathan Edwards, a long list of very distinguished thinkers, find this argument irrefutable. Okay, now I guess we can just go on then. What we've shown here is that whatever.

God foreknows necessarily happens. That's a necessary truth. What's going to happen?

So if we say we're going to.

Be playing volleyball on the lawn, it's.

Necessarily true that we will be playing volleyball on the lawn on Friday afternoon. But Thomas doesn't Like that. He says, I can't escape the argument. But I don't like the implication that what we do, we don't do freely. So how does he get around it? Well, he follows a line of approach that has been very popular in Christian theology. Its popularity can hardly be overestimated. You find it very early in Boethius, you find it popularized in Anselm. Peter Derivo takes this approach, Thomas takes this approach. And over and over and over again in very popular approaches to evangelical theology, you get this approach too, and that's that God knows everything in the eternality of the present. Sounds great. God exists in eternity.

We exist in time. What God knows, He knows as present, even though we don't know it as present. Therefore, the fact that God knows things as necessarily true can be explained by the fact that God knows things as happening, as present to Him. He lives in the eternal present, whereas they are future to us.

And so as they are to us. They are contingent, but as they are to God, they are necessary. Okay, Thomas says this is an inescapable conclusion. But the conclusion is not incompatible with contingent events. Whatever is known by God is a necessary truth. But that can still be a contingent event. For what is known to God is unalterable. What is known to God is a necessary truth in the form in which God knows it. Or to put it very simply, as known by God.

He is not future, but present. As God knows things, he knows them as present.

It's as though the necessity of things arises from God presently knowing them. Just like it is necessary that we are in this room, the fact that it is now true makes it necessarily the case. Because what is presently true can't be changed, just like what is past cannot be changed. So if God knows things as present, if he sees them directly, if you will, as being in his presence, then they are necessarily true. However, it's only as he knows them, he doesn't know them as future. So God does not see the future contingencies as future. He sees what we call future contingencies as present to him. And as present, they are necessary. This kind of necessity that is a necessity when things are happening. The necessity of when things are happening does not destroy contingency, as though what is happening was totally determined by its causes. God sees things as presently happening. That makes them necessary. But that kind of necessity, seeing them presently happening, does not prove that what is happening has been totally determined by antecedent causes. And so it can be contingent. The event can be contingent. The playing volleyball on the lawn is a contingent event, although it's a necessary truth that we will be playing volleyball on the lawn or that we are playing volleyball on the lawn because God sees it, even though 10 years ago God sees it in his eternal presence. This will not be hard for you to understand because I find it hard to believe that you haven't run across this explanation of predestination. Sometimes it's as though we watch the whole film. We have to see it from beginning to end. But God sees every, if you will, little splice of the film instantaneously. God sees the whole film at once. We see it, you know, piece by piece by piece. Therefore, predestination amounts to God seeing it as present to him, even though we're waiting for it to happen. Still very popular in evangelical circles to talk this way. And it comes from Aquinas. Okay, where are we getting Right here.

There's a whole thing.

I don't see how that's deism.

I mean, I. I wrestle this myself, you know, here it is. It's your ball game, and it's not going to change. It's the way it is.

Well, I mean, I think you can turn that around. You can say it's just the opposite of deism because it makes God very intimate and present to every moment of our existence. My future is very remote to me. What I'm going to be doing 20 years from now is just, I mean, very impersonal, very remote. But to God, it's very personal because.

It'S present to him.

And so it's just the opposite of deism.

Rather than putting God further from creation, it brings him right up to every moment of our existence.

When of Thomas or anyone else. A part of this reasoning is making the assumption that God does indeed perceive times in this way, in the present. Is there any evidence that would refute that?

Or even.

Is there even Christian presuppositionalism that would back or refute this statement that God sees in the eternal presence?

Yes. And just to make moment, I'm going to offer to you 6 what I think are irrefutable arguments against this. I think it's nonsense.

Well, I don't see. Not a question of what do I agree with. But I don't understand Aquinas's argument. Even though he sees it at once, it's still contingent. I don't understand that, okay?

What God is seeing is not an event that has been totally determined by its causes. Therefore it's contingent. It could be other than it is.

What he sees must be. But it doesn't for him.

For him it must be because he's seeing it as present. He's seeing it as actually happening. But whether we'll go over time in this class hour or not is something we're all waiting to find out, some of us a little more anxiously than others. Okay, but God sees right this very minute, according to Aquinas, in his own eternal presence, just exactly what we'll be doing when the class should be dismissed. Okay, so as he sees that it's necessary, as we see it, it's contingent. And it is both. Because from the standpoint of eternity, it is necessary. From the standpoint of our temporal existence, it's contingent. Yes.

Does he see more than what it turns out to be, that this is the options.

We may see the one thing, I.

Mean, maybe the positiveness of it.

But does God see the options?

Yes. Medieval theology said that God saw all the possibilities instantaneously too. However he saw them as possibilities. God also sees which of the possibilities will be actual at the very same moment that he sees in a flash all the possibilities. So we aren't going to get any escape that way. Yeah. It turns out to be a peripheral truth of medieval theology that God knows all the possibilities in an eternal presence too. But what he knows are all the possibilities, ramifications and so forth and so on instantaneously. But he also knows what actually taking place. He is seeing what is actually taking place on Mars 200 years from now because he's eternal. And we have to wait.

Can we say that God can know possibilities?

Yes, sure. God can know possibilities. God can know this possibility that if there are fairy. That if there are fairy giraffes on Mars 200 years from now, then they are fairy giraffes on Mars 200 years from now. That's a necessary truth. Doesn't tell you anything about fairy giraffes and Mars, though. Just happens to tell you that A is a. Yeah.

Seems to maybe getting back to this question, it seems to limit God's activity.

Yep, it does. We're not to the criticism yet, so let me hold off on that. I want to make sure everybody understands what Aquinas is saying.

What this might not fit in here, but what I'm thinking about, what does this do then with like the prophets that go, and they say now if you don't repent, then this is going.

To happen, which is sort of like conditioned by God.

And this is sort of like saying God already knows this, that's going to happen. But yet God saying if you don't repent, this is going to happen.

Yes. Yes. Criticism number three in my notes on Aquinas approach is that it makes prophetic prediction inexplicable. So you're absolutely right. Let me just finish this exposition of Aquinas then. Does God know future contingents? Aquinas says God knows contingents simultaneously. He knows all the contingent events of history simultaneously, not successively. God doesn't wait from one moment to another to find out about various contingent truths. He knows all the contingent truths of history, all the contingent events of history simultaneously. All things in time to us. All things which are temporal events in time to us are present to God from all of eternity. And as Aquinas says, it almost comes right out of popular evangelical literature. God's glance covers all things as present. God. God's glance from eternity to eternity covers all things as present and thus as divinely seen. As present tense events, all things are infallibly known by God. And as such, all things as they are, are unalterable and necessary. As divinely seen as present, all things are unalterable. And yet in relation to their causes in time, in relation to each other, as events in the successive moments of time, these events are future contingents. God does not know future contingents because he doesn't see anything as future, and therefore he doesn't see anything as contingent. He sees all things as necessary because he sees all things as present. We see them because we are in this process of successive moments of time as future and contingent. But what we see as a future contingency God sees as a present necessity. I'm going to take one more approach to this. You can put it this way. If X is known certainly, then X is not contingent. A knowledge of the future based on causes cannot be certain. I mean, if I were to try to tell you on the basis of all the causal factors that I know what will happen this evening in my life, I could not tell you certainly what will happen. Okay. First of all, if X is known certainly, then it cannot be contingent. And a knowledge of a future based on causes cannot be certain. So X is contingent as future and not known certainly. The event is contingent as a future event and not known certainly to me, even though as present to God, X is known certainly and is a necessary truth, not a contingent truth. So then God does not know the future when it is not already determined by causal necessity. Thus, God does not foreknow the future free actions of men. God does not see future contingencies. Now, I have six criticisms of this idea. Of the eternal knowledge of God, making all things present to him, knowing everything as present, as simultaneous. And therefore we can get around the.

Idea that if he foreknows something, that it's necessary.

These arguments are all taken from the text. I'll give you page numbers, so to help you do some reviewing. The first criticism will be found on pages 408, 422, and 427. And that is simply that hereby, that is, by means of Aquinas explanation. God does not know things qua future. God does not know things as future. And if you stop and think about it for a moment, this is almost as obvious as his answer to the other critics. If God doesn't know things as future, then strictly speaking, God has no foreknowledge. God is no foreknowledge of contingent events. As he knows things, they are not still future, they are already present. And to know something is so when it is so is surely not for knowledge. Let me repeat that. To know something is so when it is so is surely not for knowledge.

That's almost saying he can't tell time. Right?

That's right. Second criticism. Consequently, God is not omniscient either. Pages 409, 415, 16. Pages 409, 415, 16. Consequently, God is not omniscient either. If God's knowing is outside of time.

God's knowing is outside of time. This is a popular expression to try.

To deal with these difficulties philosophically. If his knowing is outside of time, then no temporal qualifications can be attached to his knowledge. Let me translate that for you. The sentence God knows P is a.

Tense sentence.

Knows the verb knows. When we say God knows, the following must always be a tenseless knowing. It's not present tense knowing. It's not past tense knowing, and it's not future tense knowing it is tenseless timeless. His knowledge would be restricted, therefore, to what kind of truths timeless truths he could not know. Let me give you a very easy statement, God on Orphinas view. God could not know that last year's final exams are now over. He could not know that last year's final exams are now over. Because it cannot be timelessly true that last year's final exams are not are now over. Two years ago it was not true that last year's final exams are now over. Or if you want to. So it's very clear, the 1979 final exams are now over was not true in 1978. So it's not a timeless truth that the 79 exams are now over. And if it's not timelessly true, it cannot be timelessly known. And that is to say, God doesn't know that last year's final exams are now over. And you say, but God does know that the final exams will be over in 1979. And 1979 is before 80 and after 78. He knows all the temporal relations. The difficulty is that if I tell you the 79 exams are now over, I am relieved by the fact that they are now over. I'm not relieved by the fact that 79 is going to come before 80 and after 78. It's not knowing the temporal relation of 79 to all the rest of history. It's knowing that it's now T2 and at T1 the exams were over. But God cannot know that it is now T2, and at T1 the exams will be over. And so what does God know right now? What does God know now? The answer? Nothing. What did God know yesterday? Nothing. What does God know in the future? Nothing. And as Prior says, that is a very strange way to explicate the omniscience of God. Okay, any questions? I thought I saw a hand begin to go up. Okay, third criticism, page 409. We've already gone over it. Prophetic prediction becomes inexplicable in this approach. I mean, how could God prophesy things if he doesn't know things except as present? If God did not know at T2. Excuse me. If God did not know about T2, at T1, if God did not know about T2', at T1, we know. We can't say that he knows at T1, because God's knowing is timeless. It's tenseless. Then how could he say at T1 what he said about T2.

If at.

The earlier moment God did not know about the later moment? How could he say at the earlier moment what he said about the later moment? See, Aquinas, if he believes in prophecy, has a real problem here. It becomes almost as though prophecy is a sham. It appears to be a miracle. But there's no miracle at all. There's no foreknowledge. There's no predicting of the future. Okay, criticism number four, pages 408, 426, 427. How could God know a state of affairs to be present until it is present? Now, we're not saying how could God know our present state of affairs unless he was in our present. What we're saying is, how could God know a state of affairs to be present unless it is present to See X as present when it is not is erroneous. Not knowledge. I'll give you an illustration. On Aquinas basis, we would have to say not that God knows that a man will land on Mars in the year 2010. It would not be true to say God knows that a man will land on Mars in the year 2010. We'd have to say that as God knows that man is landing on Mars. But since the statement that a man is landing on Mars is strictly speaking false, is it cannot be a matter of knowledge. Yes.

Then you're saying in order for God to be omniscient, he would have to know that a man will be landing on Mars, that he is landing on Mars, and that he landed on Mars for God to have all knowledge.

Me or Aquinas?

If you're.

I'm arguing against Aquinas. So are you talking about my position in terms of the criticism?

I think I'm talking about your position.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I happen to think that from all eternity God knew that at such and such a time it would be true that man will land on Mars at such and such a time that a man is landing on Mars. And at such and such a time man did land on Mars. However, I don't happen to think that God knew all those things as present, that man is now landing on Mars from all eternity. He knew the three temporal relations. But that isn't to say that all of them were reduced to his present. And that's the problem in Aquinas, that he has everything being present in God. And if you want to see this criticism, number five puts it very nicely. Page 409. The notion of an eternal presence or timeless eternity is incoherent because Aquinas says everything is simultaneous with God's eternal knowledge.

And you can see the incoherence of this if you recognize that simultaneity is a transitive notion. A transitive notion.

Okay.

Transitive in the sense that if event E takes place at the same time as P, and if event F takes place at the same time as P, then necessarily event E takes place at the same time as F. There's this transitive, okay, Relationship.

The relationship of simultaneity is a transitive one. So that if you go to sleep at the very moment that the Laker game begins and I'm opening the refrigerator at the very moment the Laker game begins, then necessarily I open the refrigerator at the very moment you fall asleep. Okay? Because the simultaneity is a transitive notion. Now, once you notice that Aquinas says that everything that happens, every event, is simultaneous with the knowledge of God.

That is to say, that event E that takes place at T1, the volleyball game on the lawn this afternoon, is simultaneous with the eternal knowledge of God. It turns out that the eternal knowledge of God is also simultaneous with the Laker game tomorrow afternoon at T2.

And consequently, on Aquinas notion, we would have to say that the volleyball game on the lawn this afternoon is taking place at the same time as the Laker game tomorrow afternoon. And that's just incoherent from God's perspective. No, no, from our perspective, this is E at T1.

There's no T1 for God, but that.

Happens to be simultaneous with God's eternal knowledge.

And this is F at T2 for us, but happens to be simultaneous with God.

Now, we haven't mixed our two metaphysical categories. Aquinas is the one who says that this one is simultaneous with things in history. How can it be simultaneous with things in history if it's tenseless? There's another way to put this criticism. Aquinas contradicted himself by using the notion of simultaneity, which is necessarily a tensed notion. When he said that God's knowledge is simultaneous, but that every event of history he was really saying that God's knowledge is not outside of time. I thought that was the more difficult way to explain the criticism. So I put it this way, as a reductio out absurdum. Given what Aquinas says, he can only escape this by admitting he contradicted himself. Simultaneity cannot be outside of time. I recognize that we're over time, but if you'll give me a minute and a half, we can finish this thing, and then on Monday we can get on to bigger and better matters, like trying to resolve this. The sixth criticism on page 426 is simply that the presentness, pastness, or futurity of any state of affairs cannot be relative to a knower. Cannot be relative to a knower, because the presentness, pastness, or futurity of a state of affairs is an objective relation. An event either has futurity or it does not have futurity, regardless of the person who knows the event. Now, it may be true that I know the Laker game is yet in the future, and somebody who pays no attention to the basketball season doesn't know that. The knowledge may be relative to different people, but the futurity of the event cannot be relative to me whether I know it or not, because it either is or it is not future. And so when Aquinas says that the futurity or the pastness of an event is relative to who is knowing the event, then he is in fact not speaking. Well, he's not making good sense. Because pastness, presentness and futurity are objective affairs. They are objective relations. They hold for no matter who you're talking about. These are not person relative relations.

Read your first sentence again on November 6th.

The presentness, pastness, or futurity of any state of affairs cannot be relative to its knower. To make this criticism clear, knowledge is relevant to people, not relevant relative to people. Knowledge is relative. You know some things that I don't know. Therefore what you know is relative. It's person relative. So knowledge may be relative to people, but the objective state of affairs, presentness, pastness, or futurity, is not person relative. It's not relative to who happens to know about its futurity. It either is or is not. Some people may be ignorant of it, but it's still future even for them. If somebody says, oh no, it's person relative, then it would. If you argue that this can be a person relative relation, then necessarily you would have to say that. That you could make good sense out of the idea that if a man thinks that the cure for cancer is now present, even though we know it is yet future, he can be cured of cancer. But it's not relative to an individual. It's future even for somebody who hopes that the cure has been found. And so since futurity is not person relative, then Aquinas is not making real good sense when he says it's relative to whether it's a divine or a human person. It may be true that God is eternal in the sense that everything is present to him, but that isn't to say that his knowledge can be of future things as present, because that makes nonsense. Okay, so we've seen how Augustine tries to escape and how he has failed to do so, at least in one of his arguments.

How Aquinas has dealt with this argument.

On the board, but has not done a real good job of escaping its implications. I encourage you to read Jonathan Edwards. Edwards is about the best reading in the whole list of selections, although it's the poorest reading in terms of its elegance. Nevertheless, what he points out, I think is something we're going to have to come to grips with. If God knows things in advance, how could it be that they are contingent? And I'll see you on Monday.