This section contains 878 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |
Since Kneale wrote his article, many writers have argued against divine timelessness by claiming that it is inconsistent with divine omniscience. If God knows everything, they reason, he knows what time it is now. But the token of "now" in (say) "it is noon now" refers to the time at which the speaker speaks. So if one knows that it is noon now, and one knows this only if one is able to assert it truly, one exists now (see Stump and Kretzmann 1981). A variant has it that if God is always omniscient, at noon he believes that it is noon and not 1 PM, and at 1 PM that it is 1 PM and not noon. Plausibly, what a person believes is an intrinsic fact about that person. But a timeless being cannot change intrinsically: What changes intrinsically has an intrinsic property at one time that it lacks...
This section contains 878 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |