"This Rock" on contingency

[Linusthe2nd]

I really don’t think the Fourth Lateran Council was intending to take a philosophical position on the nature of time. It is also not necessary to interpret the word deinde in a temporal sense. It could easily have an ontological sense (man is ontologically inferior to the angels). In fact, I think we have to interpret it that way, because the council is saying that God creates everything simultaneously.

Here is the text in question:

So, it affirms that God “by his omnipotent power” creates all creatures simultaneously “from (or since) the beginning of time.” So far I think we are in agreement. God creates in a single act, and there is in reality no difference, so far as God is concerned, between bringing something into being for the first time and maintaining it in being.

Here I would like to make a slight modification of my earlier position. I said yesterday that time is posterior to change. The more I think about it, I think that is not exactly correct, at least not without making an important clarification.

Actually, I think that time is identical with change, but it is considered in a different way. I have to think about this one, but I think that time is still gnoseologically posterior (i.e., we know and understand change before we know and understand time). However, there is in reality no difference between the changes undergone and experienced by a given subject and the time that has transpired.

I am sure that you know this, but just for completeness’ sake, I mention that there are three major kinds of changes:

• accidental changes (changes that don’t generate or destroy individual beings, like changes in color or temperature)
• substantial changes (changes that generate a new being or destroy one, like death or conception, or something like that)
• creation (which is not exactly a “change” because changes technically have to modify something that pre-exists, which is not the case in creation).

A creature that undergoes any of these kinds of changes will experience the passage of time. If he experiences only discrete changes (like an angel), his experience of time will be discreet. If he is material (like us) he will experience time as a continuous movement (because the accidental changes we experience are, for the most part, gradual and continuous).

Since angels have no spatial relationship to our world (except insofar as they deliberately interact with it), I think it follows that they do not have a strict temporal relationship either (except in that respect).

So, you see, I am not challenging the dogma that things are created in time. (In fact, creation is by definition the beginning of time.) Nor am I challenging the reality of time (like Kant). (Far from it; this position is as Aristotelian as you can get .) I am just trying to steer away from considering time as a sort of container in which different moments are placed (which is a very common idea; its most famous promoter was Isaac Newton). That would, if you think about it, make time a sort of super-creature that is prior to the reality of creatures. But there is no need for this.

Of course I agree that man and Angels experience time differently, I was only insisting that Angels began to exist with time, which somehow is a condition of creation. The only thing I would change in what you said here is that ’ creation ’ should not be categorized as a ’ change, ’ even analogously. Thomas would not accept that and I am fairly certain, on my reading of Physics and Metaphysics, that Aristotle would not accept that either. But at least I think we can say that our reading of the meaning of the Dogma is the same. How creatures experience time is not a part of the Dogma and is open to discussion.

Pax

Linus2nd ( from a cold Kansas City! )

 

[thinkandmull]

How did this conversation turn to angels? I am wondering what the difference is between the First and Third Way, and how it can be prove there is a God if time is eternal

The cosmological argument is the First Way Linus.

 

[lmelahn]

How did this conversation turn to angels? I am wondering what the difference is between the First and Third Way, and how it can be prove there is a God if time is eternal

The cosmological argument is the First Way Linus.

Sorry about the angels.

My purpose was only to make sure that our understanding of time is correct.

Time is, in reality, identical with the changes (the “motus” of the First Way) that take place in creatures. (At least, that is Aristotle’s and Aquinas’ view–and I think also St. Augustine’s view–and I agree with them.)

Thus, all creatures experience at a minimum the first “moment” of time, which is their creation. But creation is a very different phenomenon from other kinds of changes. For one thing, the very same act of creating brings something into existence and maintains it in existence.

The Third Way is frankly Aquinas’ weakest argument, because it presupposes his Aristotelian cosmology. He borrows it from the Persian philosopher Ibn-Sīnā (Avicenna), and the so-called “necessary beings” correspond to the angels (pure spirits that cannot be corrupted) as well as the heavenly bodies (according to his cosmology, bodies that are incorruptible because they are composed of the quintessence). The “contingent beings” correspond to the sub-lunar bodies that are subject to generation and corruption.

The basic idea is that there must be incorruptible creatures (heavenly bodies and angels), because otherwise the corruptible sub-lunar sphere would eventually disintegrate into nothingness. (For Aquinas, it is the circular motion of the planets and other heavenly bodies that causes the elements, basically, to mix back together; otherwise, they would fly apart into their natural places.)

The First Way does not have this limitation, because it simply looks at the chain of accidental changes (in all creatures, including incorruptible ones) and generation-and-corruption (in material creatures).

(Basically, the refinement that I propose for the Five Ways is to eliminate the need for incorruptible heavenly bodies and the outdated four-element theory of matter. It seems to me that there is essentially no need for the Third Way, since in that case it reduces to the Second Way.)

 

[lmelahn]

Of course I agree that man and Angels experience time differently, I was only insisting that Angels began to exist with time, which somehow is a condition of creation. The only thing I would change in what you said here is that ’ creation ’ should not be categorized as a ’ change, ’ even analogously. Thomas would not accept that and I am fairly certain, on my reading of Physics and Metaphysics, that Aristotle would not accept that either. But at least I think we can say that our reading of the meaning of the Dogma is the same. How creatures experience time is not a part of the Dogma and is open to discussion.

Pax

Linus2nd ( from a cold Kansas City! )

Not that creation couldn’t be characterized as a change, only that it is not a change in the strict sense of that word. A change should have a terminus a quo (a starting point) and a terminus ad quem (an endpoint), in the very subject undergoing the change. Creation lacks a terminus a quo; otherwise it would not be ex nihilo.

(I won’t tell you what temperature it is here in Rome, let you feel jealous.)