Free Will, Divine Foreknowledge, and Thomas Aquinas

[JamesCaruso]

For time to actually exist we do not have to be able to traverse one way or the other, it simply means it is an actually existing component of the universe.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

It’s wiki, but it seems fairly accurate.

I’m not sure why you’re having problems with this, as God created time (hence being unconditioned by time) does it not follow that time is an actually existing component of our universe?

Also please look up the definition of ‘strawman’ as I never made an argument for time travel (I believe the mere conception of it is incoherent). What I did make an argument for is that God is unconditioned by time and is not limited to our restricted view of past, present, and future which we experience of recurring moments of the ‘present’.

The Divine foreknowledge follows from this: God doesn’t ‘experience’ (I know this term is deficient, I can’t think of anything better at the moment) past, present, and future like us finite beings in a conditioned existence. It isn’t a form of hard determinism, or a violation of free will, it is simply a point of reference. We shouldn’t place any restriction onto God that are of our existence, such as time.

Time is the measure of movement. God doesn’t move. I am who am is always the same. That does not mean that God cannot observe movement. I pray. He hears. I walk. He sees. I am the one involved in movement; I am the one involved in time. But just because God is not subject to time, does not mean he is present to something I have never done, that is, my future actions. It is so simple it almost defies explanation: if I have not done it, God can not be present to it. He may foresee it, but he cannot be present to what does not exist.

I keep hearing people talk about time as if it were a ball or an apple. God did not create time per se, but he created a universe which moves, and the way we measure that movement is called time. Tick, tock, tick, tock… the clock hands move, the pendulum swings… time is the measurement of movement. It is not a “thing” in the sense of a ball, which I can easily see that God can be all around, front and back and inside at the same time, since God is everywhere. But time is not a place, or an object… it is only a measurement. How that fits into Einstein’s mathematics, I don’t think matters… time is not a physical thing, it’s a measurement of the movement of physical things. God cannot be in the (our) future because we have not moved there yet. We move, time stays in the present. Time measures the movement between what was, and what is, and it can measure the movement between what is and what will be, from present, to present, to present. Time doesn’t move… things do. Even with Einstein’s theory of relativity, if you ask any observer what time it is, the response will always be the same, “It is the present.” Consciousness is always in the present.

 

[JamesCaruso]

For time to actually exist we do not have to be able to traverse one way or the other, it simply means it is an actually existing component of the universe.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

It’s wiki, but it seems fairly accurate.

I’m not sure why you’re having problems with this, as God created time (hence being unconditioned by time) does it not follow that time is an actually existing component of our universe?

Also please look up the definition of ‘strawman’ as I never made an argument for time travel (I believe the mere conception of it is incoherent). What I did make an argument for is that God is unconditioned by time and is not limited to our restricted view of past, present, and future which we experience of recurring moments of the ‘present’.

The Divine foreknowledge follows from this: God doesn’t ‘experience’ (I know this term is deficient, I can’t think of anything better at the moment) past, present, and future like us finite beings in a conditioned existence. It isn’t a form of hard determinism, or a violation of free will, it is simply a point of reference. We shouldn’t place any restriction onto God that are of our existence, such as time.

Regarding Strawman: Sorry if I brought something into the discussion that you had not mentioned. It was only in an effort to make myself clear.

 

[frobert]

I’ve recently done some reading on divine foreknowledge and human free will. The argument goes that if God knows infallibly what we will choose to do in the future, then that future is set in stone and we really don’t have free will. I doubt the soundness of this argument but the books I’ve been reading seem to think it is a serious issue. Not being terribly skilled in philosophy, I am not sure what to make of it. I am especially interested in what Thomas Aquinas had to say about the issue of free will and divine foreknowledge. Is there a way to reconcile both of this concepts without contradiction or relying on mystery as an explanation?

You are thinking within a time and space continuum which includes a past, present and future. God is eternal, meaning timeless with no beginning and no end I saw a good analogy, perhaps on here, it’s as if God is looking down at an endless table where all of time, our past, present and future is laid out before him.

 

[Skeptic92]

Time is the measure of movement. God doesn’t move. I am who am is always the same. That does not mean that God cannot observe movement. I pray. He hears. I walk. He sees. I am the one involved in movement; I am the one involved in time. But just because God is not subject to time, does not mean he is present to something I have never done, that is, my future actions. It is so simple it almost defies explanation: if I have not done it, God can not be present to it. He may foresee it, but he cannot be present to what does not exist.

I’m sorry, but no you are wrong. Time is an actually existing component of our universe (spacetime manifold/continuum) which God created ‘in the beginning’. The notion that time is simply the measurement of change/movement is an old Aristotelian/Medieval concept that has since been refuted by advancements in Physics and the Philosophy of time. I’m not sure why you are resisting this conclusion of Physicists and Philosophers as it actually adds strength to one of the Arguments for the Existence of God (the Kalam Cosmological Argument) as if time is contingent (and is one of the integral dimensions of our universe) then it requires a transcendental cause that is not itself conditioned by time.

You are applying temporal conditioning to the Divine Nature which is not proper. Remember one of the arguments for God as eternal comes from negation; God is not temporally restricted, therefore God is eternal.

 

[Skeptic92]

To expand on how time as an actually existing component lends support to the Kalam Cosmological Argument. First an actually existing infinite made up of aggregate parts is completely incoherent, therefore as time is an actually existing component of the universe Time can not go into the infinite past and must have a beginning in the finite past. This has been argued by numerous Philosophers of Time and Physicists (Vilenkin is the Physicist that I watched a lecture by on his proof of the impossibility of an infinite past time), and time as an actually existing component of the Universe has universal acceptance within the scientific community.

Aquinas rejected the Kalam Cosmological Argument due to his own deficient definition of time (a measurement of change/motion), through which he couldn’t prove that the universe was finite (nor could it be proven that it was infinite); this however has shown to be due to his own deficient knowledge regarding the nature of time.