Faith and Philosophy

Volume 17, Issue 2, April 2000

William Lane Craig
Pages 225-241

Omniscience, Tensed Facts, and Divine Eternity

A difficulty for a view of divine eternity as timelessness is that if time is tensed, then God, in virtue of His omniscience, must know tensed facts. But tensed facts, such as It is now t, can only be known by a temporally located being. Defenders of divine atemporality may attempt to escape the force of this argument by contending either that a timeless being can know tensed facts or else that ignorance of tensed facts is compatible with divine omniscience. Kvanvig, Wierenga, and Leftow adopt both of these strategies in their various defenses of divine timelessness. Their respective solutions are analyzed in detail and shown to be untenable. Thus, if the theist holds to a tensed view of time, he should construe divine eternity in terms of omnitemporality.