Dr Greg Bahnsen - Philosophy of Christianity: Foreknowledge and Free Will (Part 17)

Okay, we're still working on this difficult question of whether foreknowledge is compatible with the free action of men. And we got to the point finally of St. Thomas Aquinas solution to the difficulty that if God has already known what will take place, then what will take place takes place necessarily. Remember, we had the statement that. Let me get it exactly right now, whatever. If it has come to God's knowledge that X will happen, then X will happen. All right, now we have up in the board the statement that we're dealing with. This is past tense remark that it has come to God's knowledge. But what has come to God's knowledge is about a future matter. It has come to his knowledge in the past that X will happen in the future. It seems to follow from that that X will happen. And the problem is that if it has come to knowledge that God's knowledge that X will happen is a necessary statement, if it's a necessary truth, then what follows necessarily from a necessary truth is necessary. And that would make the statement X will happen necessary. Now, if X will happen is necessary, then X cannot be a free action. And therefore, if God knows ahead of time the actions of men, their actions cannot be free. Now, Thomas Aquinas dealt with that by speaking of the timelessness of God's knowledge that everything God knows, he knows outside of time, he knows eternally. So everything is simultaneous with the knowledge of God. And I critique that at the very end of our time together. And so this is where the discussion has left off, and I'd like now to take up with the other approach, another approach to the difficulty, and then finally get into a more general discussion for us as Christians of what we make of this whole matter. Anthony Kenney writes an article dealing with the ptolemistic approach to this matter. And he says that the key to this difficulty is in realizing that the statement it has come to God's knowledge that P, that is, it has come to God's knowledge that X will happen, is not a necessary truth. Is not a necessary truth. Okay? So Kenny's solution is to deny that the antecedent here of this conditional statement, if then he's denying the antecedent as a necessary truth. Okay? And Kenny says when it is said that a proposition in the past tense is necessary, there is a significant change in the sense of necessity that we're dealing with. Okay? We have said that anything that is a necessary truth, anything that follows necessarily from a necessary truth is itself a necessary truth. So. So if it follows from this necessary truth that this, then this must be a necessary truth. However, Kinney points out what we mean by calling this a necessary truth and what we mean by speaking of anything following from a necessary truth. Being a necessary truth are different senses of necessary truth. You all got that? Here's the rule. Anything that follows from a necessary truth is a necessary truth. Somebody says, and it's a necessary truth that if it has come to God's knowledge that it is a necessary truth, that it has come to God's knowledge that X will happen because it's in the past tense. But now what Kenny's trying to point out is that what we mean by necessary truth when we look at the rule than anything following from a necessary truth is necessary and what we mean by calling this statement that it has come to God's knowledge that X will happen a necessary truth or necessary are two different things. To put it another way, we are equivocating on what we mean by necessary truth. Here we mean necessary truth in the sense of a logical truth, a truth of logic. Here we mean it is necessary because it is now unpreventable. A matter that is unpreventable can be called necessary too. But to say that something is unpreventable and something is a logical truth are two different matters altogether. So he says there's a significant change in the sense of necessity. Previously we mean it is a logical truth that. However, truths in the past tense are not logical truths. Truths in the past tense are not logical truths. Here's a truth in the past tense. The Lakers lost yesterday's game. However, the statement the Lakers lost the game is not a necessary truth. There's nothing necessary about that. Unless, of course, you believe the rest were paid off like I do. We'll talk about basketball later. The illustration stands. You see what I'm getting at? Something being in the past tense doesn't become a logical truth. It doesn't become logically true that the Lakers lost yesterday. It is still a matter of contingent history that they lost. Although now that it's passed, it's unpreventable. Nobody can change the past in the sense of making it the case that the Lakers won even though they actually lost and should have won. Okay, Kenny goes on to say, the necessity of past propositions is not, in the nature of the case, incompatible with freedom. Is is now necessary that Brutus was a bad person. It is now necessary that Brutus was a bad person does not imply that at birth it was necessary that Brutus would be a bad person. Okay, Brutus was A bad person. Since that's a past tense thing, it's necessary, can't change it. It's now necessary that Brutus was a bad person. However, the fact that it is now necessary because of its past, that Brutus was bad doesn't mean that at the time of his birth, Brutus had to become a bad person. And so the fact that past propositions are necessary doesn't show that what they're dealing with cannot be a free act. He says thirdly. Well, he asked this question thirdly. Do past or present tensed statements. We're talking about the tense of a statement. Do past or present tensed statements have a necessity which is not shared by future tensed statements? He's trying to find a unique sense in which past or present tense statements have a necessity of that future ones do not. Okay, so he tries, as I see it here, four alternatives. Perhaps these are four ways in which perhaps a past tense statement has a necessity that a future tense statement does not share. Okay? A kind of necessity not shared by future tense statements. First of all, he says, perhaps a necessary truth is one that is always true. A truth that is always true is a necessary truth. He proposes that understanding of necessary truth always true. Okay, now, do half tense statements, maybe if we get some illustrations on the board, that will help us. We want to ask with the past tense statements have that kind of necessity, and future tense statements do not. If that's the case, then we found a distinction. Here's a past tense statement, the Lakers lost on Sunday. Here's a future tense statement, the Lakers will lose, heresy though it be on Wednesday. Okay? And it's understood here that we're speaking on Monday. All right, so you know the time frame here. On Monday, the Lakers lost on Sunday. It's true on Monday that the Lakers lost on Sunday, and it's who knows true or false on Monday that the Lakers will lose on Wednesday. Now, now, is there a necessity to this past tense statement that the future tense statement doesn't hold? If you understand by necessary truth something that is always true, then we have to ask ourselves, was it always true that the Lakers lost on Sunday? Was it true on Saturday that the Lakers lost on Sunday? No. And so it turns out that a past tense statement, even though it's true, is not always true. Is was not true on Saturday that the Lakers lost on Sunday, and therefore this past tense statement is not a necessary truth on that definition of necessary truth. So we throw that one out. Let's try another definition of necessary truth or another way of distinguishing between the necessity of past and the necessity of future. 10 Hence, true propositions. Somebody suggests we can change the future in a way that we cannot change the past. That makes sense, doesn't it? Seems prima facie plausible. We can change the future in a way that we cannot change the past. However, Kenny points out very properly, that's not true at all. Not true at all. We cannot change the past in. We cannot change the future any more than we can change the past. What we can change is our plans, but we can't change the future. The future is that which takes place after all the changes in our plan. Consequently, the future has never changed. It just is what it is. And therefore we don't really change the future. We change the apparent future. That is to say, it appears that things are going this way and we'll change them by making some kind of drastic alteration in our plans. Somebody then alters. I'm going to go to a third sense in which you might distinguish future tense truths from past tense truths. Somebody says, well, we can change the truth value of a future tense statement, but we can't change the truth value of a past tense statement. Here we have a past tense statement. It now has a truth value. What is the truth value of this statement? Is it true or false? It's true. Okay. Is there anything I can do to change that? Can I change the truth value of that proposition? No, I cannot. What's that? No, it's done. Now I can't change the truth value of it. Can I change the truth value of this statement? The Lakers will lose on Wednesday. Yeah, perhaps I could offer the referees a better bribe than whoever's bribing them. Now, in other words, if I got the referees to throw the game in the Lakers direction as well as they've been throwing it in the direction of Philadelphia, then perhaps I could change the truth value of the statement. The Lakers will lose on Wednesday. Now, that has a truth value. And I can change the truth value of that statement. If, you know, perhaps I'm Magic, maybe Magic Johnson could change the truth value of that statement, okay? If he just start hitting from outside, then perhaps the Lakers will lose on Wednesday, will become a false statement rather than apparently a true statement. But you see, we can change past tense statements in the same way that we can change future tense statements, at least some of them. The answer to this approach is no. There is a way we can change the truth value of past tense statements. Let's take the past tense statement that the Lakers have won the championship series, okay? That's a past tense statement. Yeah, I've got this right. The Lakers have won or won the championship series past tense statement. Now, was that statement true? And let me make it very clear. The Lakers have won the 1980 championship series past tense. Was that statement true 10 years ago? No, they hadn't at that Time won the 1980 championship series. Is it true today? No. So the truth value of that past tense statement is now false. What will happen after the Lakers win the next two games? It will then be true. The past tense statement is now false, but it will become true. Okay, we're not talking about the event pictured. We're talking about the statement that stands in a tense in the statement as tense. The Lakers have won the 1980 series is not now true. It's false. As a matter of fact. They haven't lost it. That's true. But it is still the case that the statement they have won is false. However, should they win in the future, then the statement will become true. And so it turns out that there are things we can do to change the truth value of even past tense statements, Kenney points out. Then he looks at one more attempt to distinguish between the necessity of past tense truths and the necessity of future tense truths. Somebody suggests that we can bring about the future but not the past. We can bring about the future, but we cannot bring about the past. We can have a causal effect on what the future will be. We cannot now have a causal effect upon the past, Kenny points out. However, present actions sometimes do affect the past by establishing new relations with past events. Present actions sometimes do affect the past by establishing new relations with past events. Let me give you an illustration. Let's say somebody's father dies before that person has children. You get married. Your father dies before you have children. It is a past truth that your father was not a grandfather and he's dead, and there's nothing that can be done about that now. But if you should happen to have children, you will make your dead father a grandfather. You won't make him an alive grandfather, but you will make him a grandfather. And so it turns out there are certain things we can do to change past relations. We can now make a father into a grandfather. We can also make someone's past belief about our future activities true. Let us say that my mother previously believed that I would grow up to be a theologian. Now, if I had become a lawyer or a doctor, I would have made that belief false. But if I happen to become a theologian or better instructor of theology, then I make the belief true. I establish a new relationship between what is the case and what was believed to become the case. And so all Kenny is pointing out is that if you're very strict in your reasoning, there doesn't seem to be any obvious sense in which we cannot affect the past in a way that we can affect the future. That is, the distinction between future necessity and past necessity doesn't seem to be obvious. And so he concludes, let me give you the conclusion that the past tense proposition, that it has come to God's knowledge that X will happen, this past tense proposition, it has come to God's knowledge that X will happen, that past tense proposition does not appear to be a necessary truth in virtue of its past tense. He concludes that that past tense proposition is not a necessary truth in virtue of its past tense. Okay, now there is one more move in his article that I have to take up, and that's this. He suggests that somebody might say it is a necessary truth for another reason. Then this statement that it has come to God's knowledge that actual happiness is a necessary truth. Not because it's in the past tense, however, but for another reason. And that reason is, if I can find it now, that this is the knowledge of a necessarily omniscient necessary being. That this is the knowledge of a necessarily omniscient necessary being. And for that reason it's necessarily true that it has come to God's knowledge that I, X will happen as omniscient because God is omniscient. The statement it has come to God's knowledge that P will always be true no matter what we substitute for P. If this statement will always be true no matter what we put. I'm changing here, what we put in the place of X, whatever we put in the place of X, since God is necessarily omniscient, this statement is going to be true. This statement is always true no matter what X is, no matter what the value of X is, whatever you substitute for X. And if that's the case, then it will always be true no matter what we substitute for it. So it has come to God's knowledge that X will happen is a necessary truth. But there's a real big problem with that, and it's obvious, and I won't take any more time than simply to mention it, God's omniscience does not imply that God knows any and all propositions. God's omniscience. What if we put in here for X, the Lakers won on Sunday. It has come to God's knowledge that the Lakers will win on Sunday, whatever yesterday's date was. Well, that would be false, wouldn't it? Omniscience does not mean that God knows anything and all propositions. It means he knows only the true ones. So we do not have a necessary truth that X will happen, has come to God's knowledge that's not a necessary truth. We only have the statement that if X will happen is true. It has come to God's knowledge that X will happen. And so Kenny concludes that a contingent proposition is by definition never a necessary truth. And if God foreknows a contingent proposition, for instance, predicting a free action, it does not become a necessary proposition, jeopardizing the freedom of the action mentioned. A contingent proposition is always. A contingent proposition is not a necessary truth. And so if God foreknows a contingent proposition, it does not become a necessary proposition. If God foreknows a proposition about a contingent event, okay, it has come to God's knowledge that the Lakers will lose on Wednesday. We'll use this future contingency. It has come to God's knowledge in the past that the Lakers will lose on Wednesday is a contingent proposition, a contingent truth. And the fact that God cannot be wrong does not make it a necessary truth that the Lakers will lose on Wednesday. Because by necessary truth we mean logical truth. It is not a truth of logic that the Lakers will lose on Wednesday, as though somebody were engaged in a contradiction in terms if he said the Lakers will win on Wednesday, as I have been saying all morning without contradicting myself. All right, any questions about Kenny's article? This is probably the easiest in a set, at least if you outline it right, if you understand what he's trying to get at, his explanations are very felicitous and clear. I think nobody has any questions. Then we'll move on to one that was quite a bit more difficult and that of an Priors. I thought in order to get prepared for today's lecture, it might do me some good to read in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy on future contingents in logic. And so I pulled out the Encyclopedia of Philosophy and read that shortly before I came to class. And as I was reading the short discussion on future contingencies, I said, you know, this is sounding remarkably familiar to something I've read before. And so I finished reading the article and lo and behold, the author of the article in the Encyclopedia was and prior. And so it's no wonder it sounded familiar because he was just explicating in the article there what he explicates in his article. That we have read.

What was the name of the article?

Many Valued Logic.

It's under M. Many Value.

No, it's under L. That's under Logic. Logic Many Valued. Okay. And the. We have that set here.

You used our set.

Right? Right. It is not now the case that the set which you have here was not there when I read it. I dig it. Okay. Oh, yes. Now, forgetting the Lakers and all the rest, let's try to dig into Prior very. Let's do it with diligence here for a minute and get rid of it. And then we'll go on to something more entertaining. Prior agrees with the objection that Aquinas has been dealing with that if it has come to God's knowledge that X will happen, then X will happen and consequently there is something necessary about that. He agrees with the objection, but he also agrees with Aquinas that there is some important distinction between our relation to the past and our relation to the future. That is, he's going to supply a distinction that Anthony Kinney did not supply. You all with me if you were following so far. Kinney was looking for a distinction between past and future that Prior is going to at least allegedly give to us. He's going to say we cannot alter the past in some sense, that we can alter the future. There's a sense in which we can alter the future, but we can't alter the past in that way. And so what he does is he distinguishes between the determinant. It will be not P. It will be not P. Okay, let's take as our proposition here. Lakers win on Wednesday. Okay? Now somebody says it will be not the case if the Lakers win on Wednesday. It will be not P. It will be that the Lakers don't win. That is different from saying it is not the case. Let me see. It will be not P is different from it is not the case that it will be P. Okay, now the not in this second statement is negating the entire statement. It is not the case that it will be that the Lakers win. It is not the case that it will be that the Lakers win. It is not true. That the Lakers will win is a different statement than it will be that the Lakers don't win. Now, I'm going to do something that I hope will not mislead you. I'm going to draw an analogy here, and it's only for the sake of showing the difference that it makes to a statement when you shift the placing of the negation in the statement. Okay? I'm not suggesting that future tense Logic has anything to do with epistemic logic or anything like that. But now notice this. Bob believes that not Pete. Bob believes that the Lakers won't win is different from saying it is not the case that Bob believes that the Lakers will win. Here you have the not covering the entire statement. Here. The knot's only covering the proposition believed. Okay. Bob believes that the Lakers won't win tells you that he has some determinate belief. He believes they're losers on Wednesday night. Okay? But it is not the case that Bob believes that they will win only tells you that he doesn't have a belief on the subject. Now, this is the interesting thing, and the reason so many people make logical mistakes in their epistemic inferences is that this leaves it open to be this. That it is not true that Bob believes the Lakers will win may be the case because Bob believes that they won't win. But this could also be true because Bob doesn't have a belief on the subject. Do I have to go over that again? Is that clear to everybody? This is congenial with this. This may be the reason why this is true. It is true that it. Okay. It is not the case that Bob believes the Lakers will win. And the reason it's not the case is because he happens to believe they're going to lose. But the fact that it's not true that he believes that they're going to win doesn't mean that he believes they're going to lose. He may not have a belief. And if he doesn't have a belief about whether the Lakers are going to win or lose, then he doesn't. Then it's not true that he believes that they will win. The statement that the Lakers will win is something that Bob doesn't believe. Does that mean that he doesn't have a belief, or does that mean that he doesn't have that particular belief? It can go either way. It only definitely excludes one one belief from all the set of beliefs that he had. When you say it is not the case that Bob believes that P, that that can be taken to mean that either he has no belief or he believes the opposite. That is to say, this can be interpreted to mean this, but this does not necessitate that. Okay, if that helps, I'll put it that way. Again, this is consistent with this, but this does not necessitate that. That it is not the case that Bob believes that P might mean that Bob believes not P, but it does not necessarily imply that Bob believes it not P. Or if you will this is the difference between atheism and agnosticism. All right, let's change the P. If P is God exists, Bob believes that God does not exist is different from. It is not the case that Bob believes that God exists. It is not the case that Bob believes that God exists doesn't mean he's an atheist. It may mean that he's an agnostic, that he doesn't believe one way or another. Now, it's a whole other subject of whether there are any such creatures as are genuine agnostics. I don't happen to believe there are any genuine agnostics, but we're just talking at the level of what people profess. Somebody says, look, I'm not saying God doesn't exist. I'm just not saying that he does. I'm agnostic on the subject. I don't know. Somebody else says, I know God doesn't exist, or I believe God doesn't exist. Bob believes that God doesn't exist. That different perspectives saying, it's not the case that Bob believes that God exists. Because this might be agnosticism or it might be atheism. This is definitely atheism. Now, that is only by way of analogy. You see what happens when you change the knot from negating some subordinate part of the sentence to negating the entire sentence. The change from this position to this changes the outlook on it all.

Can I just inject something here before you erase that?

Yeah.

Just a linguistic interest. I came to this many, many years ago because in the ancient hieroglyphic language, this is clearly drawn out not only by the position of the negative, but you'd use a totally different negative. They have two different negative words. Two different words for not in the first sentence, you're merely negating the predicate. You'd use a predicate negator. In the second one, you are negating the nexus between the subject and the predicate and you use the next obnegation and also change the position. So you use actually, and it's consistently used two different words.

Yes, as a matter of fact, Indian logic, which is another article you can look up on the encyclopedia that we had when I was reading it in the library. If you look up Indian logic, you'll find out that they have three different forms of negation so that the truths of logic are altered according to what negations you are using.

There are three in hieroglyphs too, but I don't know what the third one is. In India, the three in hieroglyphs are nexum, negation, which is the second one. I negate the nexus between subject and predicate. Or I can have predicate negation, which is your first one.

I think it's subject negation is what you would add to that.

And the third one would be word negation. They would have a separate one for word negation.

Well, maybe that's what this would be. Now notice Bob believes that not P.

Is negating the predicate.

Okay. Bob not believes that P. You're negating.

The nexus between the subject.

Yeah, that's what this amounts to.

What linguists call the second one, nexo.

In English, when we put the negative outside the entire statement, it's negating the verb. Right. It is not the case that Bob believes that P is to say Bob not believes that P. But you're breaking.

The truthfulness of subject and predicate there. The link between them when you need to observe your.

And then you can add a third one is what I'm getting at though. And you can say not Bob believes that P. That's word negation. What you're saying there is somebody other than Bob who believes that God exists.

Or as you say, subjective negation.

Okay, so anyway, all of this for those of you interested, just goes to show that mesa big difference where you put the negation and in some languages.

Which negation you use.

Well, some languages enable you to make that a little bit clearer than other languages. Yes, but now let's go back to what we're dealing with. It will be not P is then different than it is not the case that it will be P. This is a determinant statement. It will be not P. The Lakers will lose is what that says. This says it is not the case that the Lakers will win. And by saying that if somebody says it's not the case that the Lakers will win, he's simply saying it's undecided. Nobody can be so arrogant as to claim that the Lakers will win even if he teaches philosophy. Okay, this is somebody who says it is not the case that the Lakers will win. And somebody says, do you mean to say the Lakers are going to lose? No, I'm just saying that it's not the case that they will win. It's not now true that they'll win or lose. Now does everybody follow what we're getting at? Prior is saying that there is no truth. There is no present truth to future tensed statements. So. But putting the not at the front, all you're doing is what you just said, substituting it is not now true. It will Be beat. It is not now true that the Lakers will win. Say that again. It is not now true. It is not now true that the Lakers will win. It's different from saying the Lakers will not win. Okay, The Lakers will not win is different from saying it's not now true that the Lakers will win.

Terminology. You call the first one a determinate statement. Would you give a handle for the second one? Give a title to the second one.

An indeterminate.

An indeterminate.

Okay, okay. Somebody who makes this claim is saying that the truth of P is indeterminate. Somebody who makes this statement is saying the truth of P is determinant. Or better. The truth value of P is determined. And the truth value here happens to be falsity. Do you all know the saying that language of truth value? To say that something has a truth value is to say that it either is true or false. A truth value means that it has this evaluation true or. Now, the truth value of P here is determinant determined to be false. The truth value of P here is indeterminate. It is not now true that the Lakers will win. Now, this is Prior's own point of view on the subject. It can be that X or it can be that P, to use the same designation. It can be that P is logically equivalent to. Let me put it this way. We're going to talk about can and must for a minute here. It can be that P. Okay, now the statement that. It can be that P is equivalent to P when you're using past tense propositions. Let me fill in the P for you here. If P is a past tense proposition, it can be that the Lakers lost is equivalent to saying the Lakers lost. It can be that the Lakers lost is equivalent to the Lakers lost because the past can't be changed. The only thing that's possible about the past is what is actual about the past. Does it say it's happened, but I don't know what the outcome was? No, we're not talking about whether I know it or not. We're talking about what is possible. It can be that the Lakers lost means the Lakers lost. Are you speaking with reference to the truth value of the total statement? Yeah. As far as truth value, that the statement P controls the truth value of the whole statement. It can be that if it's in the past tense. If it's in the past tense. If it's in the past tense. You see, he's trying to draw a distinction between past and future. And that's what I'm driving Toward right now. It can be that the Lakers loss is equivalent or logically equivalent to something saying the Lakers lost because there are no possibilities about the past except that which is actual. What is possible and what is actual are the same when it comes to the past. That's just a real loose paraphrase of what Prior's getting at. But now it can be that P when P is in the future is not equivalent to P. It can be that the Lakers will lose. We're not saying the Lakers can lose. We're saying it can be the truth. That the Lakers will lose does not amount to saying the Lakers will lose. And so Pryor has shown in logic, intense logic, a difference between past and future when it comes to possibility. Okay, it can be that P is not equivalent to P when you're talking about future tense propositions. Okay? The P has to be in the future tense, but when it's in the past tense, then it is equal to P.

Alright?

So he has shown there's a difference here. Now he says, however, the difference between past tense and future tense propositions is not obtainable in any straightforward manner. In terms of necessity. In terms of necessity, if we change the sentence on the board so that instead of it can be that P, we have it must. It must be that P. Then this distinction between future and past tenses in P does not work out. There is no difference between future and past when it comes to necessity. When we examine, it must be that P is equivalent to P. It's not. You do not get a different truth value or a difference between past tense and future tense propositions when you examine them. Okay, All I've been saying thus far is that Prior has now suggested a sense for differentiating past and future with respect to possibilities, but not with respect to necessities. I'm going to go on now. I'm going to change gears, or so it will seem, and I'm going to discuss the rest of the article. I am not discussing the article necessarily in the order in which it is written. Okay. I'm discussing the article in a way that I think will make it clear to you what he's getting at. That is, if I were to tell you what pages I'm discussing as I went through this, you'd see that I'm going back and forth. And there's a good reason for that. Remember I told you the other day, after reading this many times, I'm not sure why he put it together the way he did, because you really have to put a lot of things on the shelf and keep in your mind what's going on and follow a lot of digressions to put the whole thing together. It's a very awkwardly written article.

Maybe he's not logical.

I wouldn't want to be in a position to have to say that to an Prior. I'm not talking about logic. I'm just talking about, if you will, pedagogy. The pedagogical way of presenting this I think is perhaps improved in my exposition. But the logical matters. He's way beyond us all, I think.

Is he one of the heavyweights?

He's one of the heavyweights. He's one of the leaders when it comes to tense logic and the discussion of it. That isn't to say everybody agrees with him. I'm just saying that he's one of the. He's one of the guys that is paid attention to anyway. Okay, let's talk about the rest of the article. I believe that what is at stake in Pryor's discussion, what he what is really informing this, the thrust of his article is his belief that the future is contingent and not yet decided. His unquestioned assumption is that the future is contingent and not yet decided. To put it another way, his belief is that what can be is not necessarily equal to what will be. He is saying that the future is not yet decided. Now then kind of just tuck that away for the time being. I've kind of taken you behind the scenes and I'm telling you is really driving it. The future is not yet decided. Okay, now let's discuss his article. He asked this question, Does God's omniscience entail foreknowledge? Does God's omniscience entail foreknowledge? That God knows everything? Does that mean that he knows what will take place in the future? When somebody says, well, obviously that's what omniscience means. And no prior suggests that maybe omniscience is rather that God knows that P is always in the present tense. God presently knows all there is to know. I'm going to distinguish between two views of omniscience. On one view of omniscience. On one view of omniscience, it includes foreknowledge. Just between us before we get there. Prior doesn't like that idea. Okay. He doesn't believe in foreknowledge. Now then, another view of omniscience is that God knows everything there is presently to know. God presently knows all there is to know. That includes the past. Includes the past. Well, Includes all there is to know. Now, notice somebody who holds this view could go on to argue that nobody can know the future. In the nature of the case, the future can't be known. Now, if in the nature of the case, future can't be known, then God presently knows all there is to know. Does not mean that he has foreknowledge. Simply means that presently he knows everything there is about the present and past.

We're not saying a number one, but he knows the future as present.

We're not saying no, we're talking about Him.

Number one is all people who believe in foreknowledge. Whether he knows it as present or knows it as future.

Well, I'm not going to get into that because Aquinas doesn't have a genuine sense of foreknowledge. Turns out, and Prior. See, this is part of the confusion of the article. Prior is pointing out that maybe, although Aquinas made these mistakes, this idea of simultaneity and everything, that if you explicate Aquinas, that this is what he was getting at, that God presently knows all there is to know. God presently knows all there is to know. But even God can't know what's going to happen in the future.

Aquinas would deny that right.

Aquinas would. But in terms of the logical thrust of what Aquinas was getting at by this simultaneous knowledge of all things, Prior suggesting this interpretation, okay, so he disagrees with Aquinas. And that's another confusing thing about the article. You never know whether Prior's on the side of Aquinas or not. It seems like he's criticizing. Then he turns right around and says, but I agree with Aquinas here. And what is usually happening is he says, I disagree with the way Aquinas tried to get around the problem. Disagree with this idea of eternal knowledge. Okay, everything is present to God, but he is correct in saying that everything is presently known by God. God knows. Everything is present means God presently knows everything there is to know. This view of omniscience might preclude foreknowledge. This view includes foreknowledge. Prior is saying they have to ask whether God's omniscience entails foreknowledge. Then you have two different views. And here's the crux issue. If you all get this, then you're going to be able to understand everything that follows. Has whatever is the case always been going to be the case? I'm going to write it down, but once you see it on the Board, I think you'll see how obvious this is in terms of our discussion. I'm hyphenating the N, so you take that as a unit. Okay. Okay, this is the proposition. And he's asking, is this true or not? Whatever is the case always has been going to be the case. Okay, let's take something that is now the case. It's raining on Monday. Okay, 80 years ago, we're asking, is it true that 80 years ago what is now the case was going to be the case? Now do you understand the sentence? Once you kind of get adjusted to this tense logic thing, you. You just have to understand where you are on the timeline. Whatever is presently the case always has in the past been going to be the case. Okay, so we have raining on what is the date today? I'm lost. May 12th. Okay, it's raining on May 12th, 1980. Was it true, let's say in 1960. Was it true in 1960 that it was going to be true that it's raining on May 12, 1980? Whatever is the case has in the past always going to be the case. Always has been going to be the future tense. Truth of what is the case has always in the past been the truth. Now Fryer's asking that question. That's the issue. And he's asking whether that's true or false. Has whatever is the case always been going to be the case? If it will be the case that P has always been true. I'm sorry, has not always been true. If it will be the case that P has not always been true, then then God could not always have known it. Okay, it's raining on May 12. Here's the statement. It will rain on May 12. Was that true on May 1? On May 1, was it true that it will rain on May 12? If somebody should say that it was not true on May 12. I'm sorry. That it was not true on May 1, that it will rain on May 12, then nobody could have known on May 1 that it will rain on May 12. Because knowledge is always of the truth. Everybody with me? What? Yeah. Well, I think what he is getting at is that even for a weather forecaster, it is not true on May 1, that it will rain on May 12. Although then we have to make. This is the difference that with respect to causal necessity, if we have grounds for seeing that something will take place tomorrow and that it's causally determined or very likely, that's another matter altogether. In terms of our discussion, we should always be using examples of future contingency Somebody might say the weather is determined by causal principles. And so instead of making this a matter of raining, let's say that it will be on May 12th that. Let me see that Kickosola skips class. Okay. It will be that Kickasola can't be skipped class on May 12th. Okay? Now that is a contingent event in the sense that allegedly Kickasua decides whether he's going to go or not. So nobody can say this is causally determined in the way that the rain might be. So I don't want to let it be confusing anymore. The question is, on May 1st, was it true that quote it will. That it will. It will be true. Or Kikasola will Skip class on May 12. Was it true on May 1? Now, our natural, I think, inclination intuitively saying, well, it was true or false. Yeah. And if it was really going to happen, then it was true. Prior is suggesting that it was neither true or false. There was no truth value for the statement on May 1st. He's suggesting that truth that anything that's indeterminate cannot have a truth value. Remember when we have the two statements on the board, the determinant one, it will be not P. That's determinant. But you can take that in another way indeterminately. It is not the case that it will be P. It is not the case that it will be such. And such is simply to say that it's indeterminate. It's not the case that anybody could say for sure. Okay? Prior suggesting that there was no truth on May 1 about May 12, when you're dealing with future contingencies anyway, like a man's decision to come to class or not. Okay. Statements about as yet undecided free actions are as yet neither true nor false. I'm going to say that again so you can write it down exactly. That is the heart of it all. Statements about as yet undecided free actions are as yet neither true nor false. Statements about as yet undecided free actions are as yet neither true nor false. One more time. Statements about as yet undecided free actions are as yet neither true nor false. Contingencies are matters for which it is not yet true that the the event will be the case or will not be the case. Contingencies, future contingencies are precisely matters for which it is not yet true that they will happen and it's not yet true that they won't happen. There's no truth about it as yet. And this is where at one point in the article, pages 4254426 prior says in an important sense there are no contingent truths. For if something attains the status of a truth, it is then unchangeable. Nothing can be said to be truly going to happen until it is so present in its causes as to be unpreventable. Nothing can be said to be truly going to happen until it is so present in its cause causes as to be unpreventable. Well, what's the upshot of it all? Okay, I could take you through some of the details of all this. The bottom line is that it's impossible to foreknow truths about future contingencies. Since there's no truth, there can be no knowledge about what will happen on May 12th. If you're considering this from the perspective of May 1st, nobody knows future contingencies literally when they are still future contingencies, when they are as yet future contingencies. Nobody could know them because when there is yet future, there is no truth or falsity about them. And he says nobody could know future contingencies literally when they are yet future because there is not then in the past any truth with respect to future contingency to be known. There is no truth to be known about the future. If it has always in the past been true, that P will be the case, then P will be the case. Could not always in the past have been known by God. I'm saying what I've said before. I'm not adding any new material, so don't let anybody get confused. Now I'm just summarizing the article. If it has not always in the past been true that P will be the case, then P will be the case. Could not always in the past have been known. If it wasn't always true, it couldn't always have been known and therefore God doesn't have foreknowledge. Nobody has foreknowledge. Future contingencies cannot be known that they can only be correctly guessed, says Prior, because there is no present ground for the correctness of the guess. There is no present ground or justification for saying that it will be in June or July or what have you that this is going to happen presently. There is no justification for saying that Kickasola will or will not be doing such and such in June. Presently there's no justification. There may be a correct guess about it, a well informed guess about what's likely, but there can be no justification, no knowledge for sure, for certain what he will be doing. Conclusion Then God's omniscience must be in the present tense. The conclusion is I've erased it. Now that we have to take this second view of omniscience, that if P, God knows P is always in the present tense. God knows what is happening, when it is happening, and thus there is no foreknowledge.

I would think it would be better to say God's omniscience must be limited to the present tense because then it distinguishes it from Aquinas.

No, it's not limited to the present tense because he is always in the past known too. It's not that right now God knows everything. He also knew everything yesterday, limited to past and present. I want to say no, but it's not. See, that's the point with all this tense logic that you can't do that. If it was that simple he wouldn't have had to write this long article. It's not that God only knows things about the present and the past. It's also that he always has known about the present and the past. It's always the case that God knows what is and what has been true. That's his view of omniscience. God has always known everything there is to know. God has always known everything there is to know. But nobody can know about the future, so God couldn't have known about the future. Omniscience does not include foreknowledge than on Priors view. Because God always knowing whatever there is to know doesn't include foreknowledge. Foreknowledge is never anything somebody can know. It seems that as much as Aquinas talked himself out of there being any real foreknowledge, I think Prior has talked himself into a long for foreknowledge. That is, if you know all the things that presently are which include not only the facts of existence but the processes of all reality, then you also know perfectly well those processes, to the extent you know where they're going. Well, not with respect to future contingencies you don't. Because in the nature of the case present causes do not determine future free decisions.

I may flippantly decide not to come to class.

See, he does not believe as I do not believe, and I don't believe any Christian believes that there's a causal nexus to the universe such that if you knew everything there was about the previous conditions yesterday, for instance, you could determine what Kicasola would have been doing this afternoon. Because free decision means precisely that you can go against all the current inclinations and influences. He could just flippantly decide to be Irrational today and not come to class. You mean rational. You mean rational. No, I meant irrational. There was no infelicity in my illustration. Okay, now before we get too terribly excited about this. We're not terribly. I would like you to see on page 426. On page 426, Prior makes an admission which I think covers the whole issue here as he's approaching it. One two, third line down, he says, this is of course a terminological difference rather than one of substance. And with that, it's the end of prior. Why is that the end of prior? He's saying, well, I'm just going to use my language and such. I'm going to use my epistemic vocabulary in the following way. There is no truth about the future, so nobody can know the future. Therefore, there's no foreknow that if he is choosing, it's not quite that same. He would give you longer arguments if we are in a philosophical dispute. But he recognizes he's choosing to use the word true in the following way. Nothing can be true unless it is determinate. Secondly, nothing is determinant about the future because he believes that the future is contingent. Okay, remember I told you a long time ago, tuck this away. We'll come back to it. Now turn back to it and read it one more time. The future is contingent, not yet decided. That is his belief. That is his fundamental metaphysical conviction that the future is not yet decided. Okay, because he thinks the future is contingent and not yet decided because he believes it's indeterminate. There can be no truth about the future. If there can't be any truth about the future, there can't be any knowledge of the future. He says, I'm using the word true in this way only for determinant issues that can be known. You can't know future contingencies because they are contingent. How would he handle the prophecies of the Scripture? Really don't think Ann Pryor would worry about that. I'm going to come back to it and we're going to worry about it because we're professing Christians and we're submit to the Bible. But you see, he doesn't have that restraint upon him. See, that's why I was hoping you would get the point that I slammed my book shut after I said, he said this terminological difference. What he's saying is I have a metaphysical point of view and I'm going to use the word true in the following way, since I don't believe that there's anything about the future that's determined, then I don't believe there's anything that can be known about the future. There's no truth about whether the Lakers will or will not lose on Wednesday night. There is no truth about it. It's indeterminate, and therefore it's not yet true. As yet undecided matters don't have a truth value. They don't have a truth value. They can't be known. If they can't be known, then there can't be any foreknowledge. And if there can't be any foreknowledge, then omniscience precludes foreknowledge. I mean, the article in one sense is extremely easy. I mean, it's got some very technical discussions and digressions and interpretation of Aquinas and all this argument back and forth. It's hard to interpret. But when you get down to the bottom line, all he's saying is that as far as he's concerned about tensed logic, future contingencies are neither true nor false. There's no truth to be known about future contingencies because the future is contingent. But as Christians, we can't buy the proposition that God doesn't know the future because we believe in prophecy. We believe in a lot of other things, but I mean, prophecy is one obvious illustration that God knows the future and he knows it. Certainly not just very likely. Okay, there's a go ahead. Are you saying that his preposition, metaphysical presupposition that shaped his ideas about epistemology? Exactly. And on that basis we could disagree. Exactly. But now before we say that, let me remind you that the Christian church has its own history of dispute about this matter. This is where the heavy part comes. Okay? I mean, all said and done, we can be kind to each other, we can be gracious, charitable, try to represent each other's views in the best possible way. But gentlemen, what I want to suggest to you is I don't see philosophically how you can escape Calvinism. And the reason for that is if you believe in God's foreknowledge, then you must believe that it's determined in advance. The only reason it was true in the days of Isaiah that the suffering servant would die is because it was determined in the days of Isaiah that the suffering servant would die. Of course, it was determined before the foundation of the world. World too. But the point is, in Isaiah's day, it could be prophesied that the suffering servant would die because it was a determined matter. Metaphysically determined that he would die. In fact, we read in the Book of Acts that God foreordained the death of his son, that God knew the death of his son because God had foreordained the death of his son. Now, if somebody says, I don't believe in predestination, I don't believe that God determines the future, well, then you got Prior facing you right there. He says, you don't think there's any determinant about the future? Well, then how could God know? And at that point, most Christians, most evangelicals, and I'm not saying this at all bitterly or at all sarcastically, but most Christians fall into. Into metaphors. He looks down the corridor of history and happens to see it. Well, is that getting back to Aquinas, God sees it as present even though it's not yet present. Does that mean that God is somehow like in a movie theater and it's all flashed on the screen at once and he sees it? We can get into all these interesting analogies and metaphors, but they don't help, do they? Philosophically, they don't change the issue. If, Oh, I was going to point out that Prior sees what's at stake here because he says at one point of Jonathan Edwards that Edwards and he are really getting at the same thing, except that he and Edwards have different conclusions. He says on page 421, at the very bottom, he says, I take this point from Jonathan Edwards, who reproduced this objection 7 in the 18th century for a different purpose. He says, what I'm saying is essentially what Edwards observed, but he observed it for a different reason, not to show that God cannot know future contingencies. That's what I'm trying to point out, that God cannot know future contingencies. There can't be foreknowledge. This objection we've been going through is I'm using it to show you that God can't have foreknowledge. No, Edwards used it for another reason. Not to show that God cannot know future contingencies, but to show that just because God does know all the future, none of it can be contingent. You see, Edwards reverses this. Edwards says, look, it doesn't bother me to say that the future is not contingent. What is the underlying thrust of Prior's outlook? Philosophically, the future must be contingency, contingent. What we must guard at all, all stakes, no matter what happens come hell or high water, is the freedom of man. We've got to guard the freedom of man. Now, man cannot be freely deciding this. If God knew it in advance, because if God knew it in advance, it was determined. Now, Edwards, therefore, Prior says omniscience doesn't include foreknowledge. God couldn't know the future. He couldn't know the future about the free acts of men. Edwards turns it around. He says, just because God knows the future, men's acts are not in some sense free. They are determined. Now, there's another step to the argument, one that Prior doesn't anticipate, one that he probably wouldn't like, and that's that what God knows his future, he knows to be free. He determines the free acts of men. Okay, yeah. If so, God cannot know, as the medical doctor would know, that the patient is going to die tomorrow, but he has not determined it. Wouldn't God know in that sense? No, he couldn't know in that sense. Not a free action. Because, you see, you're always talking, your weather illustration and your medical illustration conspicuously have about them that they are determined by causal factors. But there is no causal factor that has determined whether Kifasola would come to class or not. There may be a lot of causal factors that would incline him to come to class. It may be his habit. It may be that he gets up on Monday morning and says, oh, this is the day I go to class. And. Because he's just into there. But as a matter of fact, he could just decide not to. Because it's within his free power. He. He could decide not to do it. There is no causal factor that makes his coming to class inevitable. Like malaria makes death inevitable, as the formation of the clouds makes rain inevitable. You see, these causal factors do not determine what we will do. Let me play it out this way, okay? In terms of a dialogue, let's say we have a Calvinist talking to a Skinnerian behaviorist, okay? The Skinnerian behaviorist is just a port at the idea that God determines all of our actions in advance. He says, and let's say he's a Christian Skinnerian behaviorist of an Arminian stripe, okay? Now, the reason I'm setting this up this way is only for the sake of illustrating two points of view, okay? Not to talk about the truth, but value of either of them, okay? The person who says, I don't believe God predestines whatever happens, I think he only foreknows it, okay? And the Calvinist then brings out this line of criticism and says, now how could he foreknow it if he hadn't predetermined it? It has to be determined in advance. If God's going to know it. And if it's determined in advance, then as a matter of fact, men in some sense don't free freely do what they do in the sense that they can do contrary to the plan of God. Okay? And now the, the Arminian Skinnerian behaviorist says, oh no, no, he could have just known all the causes that were going into it. He could just know all the factors that were going into it. And so I'm going to guard the freedom of man by what, making man subject to created factors. That is to say, say I'm going to choose a different form of determinism. I'm going to choose psychological, biological, environmental determinism over against divine determinism. To escape divine determinism and salvage foreknowledge, you have to become a determinist of another stripe. And what I want to suggest is, with all my heart, we don't want that kind of determinism because whether you like Calvinism or not, no Calvinist who is sensitive to the scriptures believes that God's predestination takes away the free choice of men. Men will always do what God predetermines. But God predetermines that they do it freely, that they do it according to.

Their own wishes and not necessarily chemical determinism.

It's not chemical determinism. It's not logical determinism. It is in some mysterious sense, divine determinism. Now what I'm saying is if you're going to save foreknowledge by appealing to the fact that God knows all the causes that go into our decisions, then you're going to lose man's freedom and metaphysical determinism on the creaturely level that there are, if you will, environmental, biological, chemical, psychological, whatever you want, determinants that make our decisions what they are and there's nothing that can be done about it. And since God knows all those factors, he doesn't have to add now another divine determination to it. He just looks down the corridor of history, evaluates all the factors and comes out at the end of the computer. Kicasola will be in class. But you see, that is, that's a heavy, heavy price to pay for not wanting to believe in predestination. It is to say, I don't want to believe in divine determinism. And so I'd much rather have creaturely determinism. I'd rather have a subject to a universal machine than to say God is in charge of everything. Well, I'm saying, you know, in a real sense the harshness of God is kinder than men. That in this sense I'd much rather believe what the Bible says, that God determines whatever comes to pass, and for that reason knows whatever is going to come to pass. But he determines it as free. God determines in advance that I will freely decide to come to class today. You say, but how can it be a free decision if God has determined it? And why didn't anybody tell me that? I've gone eight minutes over. I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean to keep you like this. You're all imprisoned here. When we come back on Wednesday, I'll try to tell you how this Calvinist reconciles the idea that God determines the free actions of men. But at this point I simply want you to see that foreknowledge requires foreordination. It requires determinism of some sort. And you've got to choose whether it's a divine determinism or. Or a creaturely determinism. That is, there's creationly determinism. Some elements of creation determine what we'll do. Or some supernatural element determines what we'll do, but determines that we do it freely. Okay, on Wednesday we can finish up in about 15 minutes, I think, and we'll get on to the problem of evil. So do your reading on the problem of evil for Wednesday.