Yesterday I summarised the argument that God is temporal (at least since creation). Yet based on comments from Alan, it is apparent that I failed to explain what I meant by 'tensed facts exist'. So let me try and clarify things here.

What are tensed facts?

Tensed sentences are sentences that state a fact that require knowledge of a relative date and time for them to make sense. Tensed facts are such sentences that are true.

The following is an example of a tensed fact: "I am writing a new blog entry now". This is a tensed sentence, as it requires knowledge of "now" to know whether or not it is true. If you did not know what "now" I was referring to, it is impossible to know if that statement is true or not.

What are tenseless facts?

A tenseless sentence is a sentence that does not require knowledge of a relative date and time. The following is an example of a tenseless fact: "I am writing a new blog entry at 3:20pm on 23 October 2006".

This is a tenseless sentence as it requires no knowledge of the date and time at which it was uttered to determine if it is true or not.

Translating tensed facts to tenseless facts

It seems like tensed sentences can easily to translated to their tenseless equivalents. Consider those two example sentence again:

• I am writing a new blog entry now
• I am writing a new blog entry at 3:20pm on 23 October 2006

These two sentences appear to present exactly the same factual information. So if God was outside of time, he could know the tenseless version and not the tensed version, yet still be considered omniscient.

Can all tensed facts be translated to tenseless facts?

This is where it gets interesting. If there were a tensed fact that could not be translated to a tenseless fact without losing meaning, then a timeless God could not know that fact. If such a fact existed, either God is temporal (so he can know it), or God is not omniscient (and so doesn't need to know it), or we can somehow disregard that fact as trivial, so God can be omniscient without knowing it.

When I said "tensed facts exist", I actually meant: are there any tensed facts that cannot be translated to tenseless facts without any loss of meaning. If such tensd facts can be found, then God may be temporal (assuming the other premises are affirmed). If no such tensed facts exist, then there is no problem, and God can be assumed to be timeless.

So, let me restate the argument, hopefully in a clearer manner.

1) If God is omniscient, then either:
    a) There are no tensed facts that cannot be translated into tenseless facts without any loss of meaning.
    b) Or God knows all tensed facts.
2) God is omniscient.
3) Tensed facts that cannot be translated into tenseless facts without any loss of meaning exist.
4) Therefore, God knows all tensed facts.
5) If God knows tensed facts that cannot be translated into tenseless facts without any loss of meaning, then he must be temporal (inside time).
6) Therefore, God is temporal.

Posted by Dave Bryant at 2:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)