Sometime ago I started a series looking at God's relationship with time, based on William Lane Craig's book called Time and Eternity. The traditional view of God and Time has been that God is outside of time entirely, and so all times are present to him at once.
This view is challenged with the following argument:
1) If God is omniscient, then either:
a) No tensed facts exist.
b) Or God knows tensed facts.
2) God is omniscient.
3) Tensed facts exist.
4) Therefore, God knows tensed facts.
5) If God knows tensed facts, then he must be temporal (inside time).
6) Therefore, God is temporal.
The logic involved in this argument is very simple, and so if all the premises (1, 2, 3, and 5) are true, then the conclusion must be true. So, if we are to prove that God must be timeless, one of these must be denied.
Denial of (1) is to redefine omniscience so that God can still be omniscient without knowing any tensed facts. Denying (2) simply denies that God is omniscient in the first place, thus avoiding the problem entirely. Denying (3) involves either adopting a static view of time (where tensed facts cannot exist by definition, or adopting the dynamic view of time, but denying that tensed facts exist). Denial of (5) admits tensed facts, but states that God can know them while still being outside of time.
Premise (2) has not really been denied by any mainstream theologian. That is, unless you include Open Theism as mainstream, but holding to Open Theism requires God to be in time in any case, so is not really relevant here. Unless there are any major objections, I intend to take this premise as affirmed, and not address it any further.
Premise (1) can be denied by admitting that tensed facts exist, but claiming that God does not know them, yet is still considered to be omniscient. It effectively says that there are tensed facts, but it does matter that God doesn't know them. I will talk about this further in the near future.
Premise (3) can be denied by either denying the dynamic view of time, or by stating that there are no tensed facts in the dynamic view of time. So far, I have presented two arguments for the dynamic view of time. The first is called The Presentness of Experience and essentially argues that we all experience the flow of time, and so this should be treated as fact unless there is a good reason to deny it. The burden of proof is on those arguing for a static view of time.
The second argument is The Ineliminability of Tense and argues that sentences containing tense actually describe tensed facts, and if tensed facts exist, the dynamic view of time is true. Consequently, it argues against both ways of denying premise (3).
While I have provided arguments for a dynamic view of time, there are still arguments against it, and arguments for and against a static view of time that need to be considered before this premise can be affirmed.
Premise (5) is fairly easy to affirm. If tensed facts exist, there truthfulness or falsehood is changing over time. For example, the tensed statement "It is now 1:03pm" is true at 1:03pm, and false at all other times. So if God knows this tensed fact, his knowledge must be changing constantly as he knows when certain statements become true and false. But if God is outside of time, he cannot change at all, as a change requires time. Consequently, God cannot know tensed facts and remain outside of time. The only comeback from this is to claim that God knows tenseless versions of these tensed facts, but this then becomes a denial of either premise (1) or premise (3) instead. So premise (5) is affirmed.
Next, we will consider premise (1) and see if it is possible to admit tensed facts, claim God is omniscient, yet still deny that God knows these tensed facts.
Comments
Why is it that God must give up his transcendance of time in order to have temporal knowledge? He transcends space, but we wouldn't say he does not have spatial knowledge.
Let me extend on my example above a bit further. I am assuming here that tensed facts exist, as if they don't exist, this problem doesn't arise (because if there are no tensed facts for God to know, he doesn't need to be in time).
Consider the tensed sentence "It is now 1:03pm". This statement is true if and only if it actually is 1:03pm right now. The statement is false at 1:02pm, true at 1:03pm, and then false again at 1:04pm.
So if God is to know this tensed fact his knowledge must be changing over time. At 1:02pm he knows that the statement is false. At 1:03pm he knows that the statement is true, and then at 1:04pm he again knows that it is false.
So if God knows different facts at different points in time, his knowledge is changing over time. Therefore he must be in time (at least since creation). It does not make sense to say that God is outside of time (and hence unchanging), yet his knowledge is changing in time.
The only escape route for this is to declare that tensed facts do not exist, or to put it another way, any statement representing a tensed fact can be changed into a tenseless statement without any loss of meaning. God could then timelessly know that tenseless fact, and so wouldn't need to be in time.
Consequently, I am of the view that if tensed facts exist, God must be in time since creation.
But if God is not bound by time, and relates to beings within time from an eternal standpoint, then he knows every tensed fact all at once.
If that is the case, then those facts can no longer be tensed. A tensed fact includes some concept of 'now' - for example, "it is now 1:03pm". But if God is outside of time, he cannot know what time 'now' is - if he did, his knowledge would be in constant flux and so he would actually be in time.
So the only escape route is to claim that God knows all tensed facts timelessly. This means, as I was trying to explain before, that those tensed facts must be able to be translated into timeless facts without any loss of meaning.
For example, take the tensed fact "Dave is writing a comment on his blog now". If God is outside of time and is to know this fact, he must know a timeless version of it (as 'now' doesn't make sense once you remove time from the equation). So instead God knows the timeless fact "Dave is writing a comment on his blog on 23 October 2006 at 10:05am."
This tenseless fact appears to convey exactly the same information as the linked tensed fact. If God is outside of time, he cannot know the tensed version, but he does know the tenseless version.
The question then is, are there any tensed facts that cannot be translated into tenseless facts without any loss of meaning?
If we find one such tensed fact, then either God must be in time to know it, or his is not omniscient (as he no longer knows everything).
I'm still not convinced.
Why can't God experience every "now" at one time?
Just because God is outside of time doesn't mean he can't also be in time. Surely he is both. So he knows and experiences every tensed fact at once without having to conceptualise it as a tenseless fact.
I'm sure my parallel of the issue with spatial knowledge is valid. God transcends space, however he still knows that David Bryant works in Auckland despite the fact you are also a spiritual being who is raised with Christ to Heavenly places.
Who are we to set some sort of ruling that a person who transcends time cannot also experience time while transcending it?
The thing is, "I am writing a new blog entry at 3:20pm on 23 October 2006" is not even a fact. It is completely relative to how we as human beings have decided to quantify time.
Perhaps the better way to think about it is that God knows the chronological order in which things happen, and observes this from eternity. Thus to say "I am writing a new blog entry at 3:20pm on 23 October 2006" is irrelevant to God because it is a relative statement, not a truth statement. He knows that you perceived the time at which you wrote that entry to be 20 minutes, 17 hours, 23 days, 10 months and 2006 years since the supposed birth of Christ, but a day to The Lord is as 1000 years.
You've raised a number of issues here which I'll try and answer.
Why can't God experience every 'now' at one time?
I think that this is a contradiction. If God experiences every "now" at once, how can he know which "now" is actually present right at this moment. How can he know the difference between past, present, and future, if he experiences them all at once? It sounds to me that this is effectively just saying that God is really timeless and so sees everything all at once.
Otherwise we are saying that God is in time, but he doesn't experience any of the flow of time. This would seem to be wrong by definition. The concept of the 'eternal now' (formed by Augustine) is a concept of a timeless God.
Parallel with spatial knowledge
I think your analogy here is wrong. There is no relative concept such as 'now' to deal with here so the analogy just doesn't make any sense.
Transcendence of Time
In effect you are asking here if God can transend time (and hence not be in time), yet still experience the flow of time. This appears to be contradictory to me, and not make sense. While of course God may somehow transcend this in a way I don't understand - that is always a possibility of course - I am not going to attribute apparent contradiction to God without biblical support.
The bible is silent on this, leaving understanding of God's relationship to time in the realm of philosophical theology and physics. Consequently, this contradiction leads me to assert that God cannot be both timeless, and experience the flow of time. Since creation, God must either be timeless, or temporal - timeless while still experiencing time's flow does not make sense.
Quantifying Time
I disagree with your claim that the statement "I am writing a new blog entry at 3:20pm on 23 October 2006" is not a fact. Sure it uses a human measure of time, but that does not make the measure relative. There is a difference between time itself, and our measures of it. If necessary, the statement could be extended to qualify exactly what the measure of time meant, but this is implied.
Taking your claim to its logical conclusion, there could be no real study of history - all the dates and times would be irrelevant.
God's Knowledge of Events
Your finally point is that the better way to look at things is that God knows the chronological order in which things happen, and observes them from eternity. This is the view that God is timeless.
Even if God is timeless that does not mean he doesn't know the timespan between events (as well as knowing their chronological order). The verse that a day to the Lord is as 1000 years, does not mean that God does not understand timespans. It means that his timing is not the same as ours. What is 'soon' to us is not the same to God. However, that does not mean he doesn't understand the difference betweeen a day and a thousand years.
So maybe I'm adopting a static view of time. There is no is. Or something to that effect.
Man, who would have thought the study of time could be so trippy!