God. For if we consider our lives spread over time, we cannot but note that we possess
only one part of our temporal lives at a time. As Boethius (480–524) put it, “For whatever
lives in time lives in the present, proceeding from past
end p.28
to future, and nothing is so constituted in time that it can embrace the whole span of its
life at once. It has not yet arrived at tomorrow, and it has already lost yesterday; even the
life of this day is lived only in each moving, passing moment” (1962, The Consolation of
Philosophy, prose VI).
In contrast to beings in time, the medievals in question viewed God as having his infinite,
endless life wholly present to himself, all at once. Thus, they held that God exists outside
of time and comprehends each event in time in a way similar to our comprehension of our
experiences at the moment they are happening to us. On this view of God there is no such
thing, strictly speaking, as divine foreknowledge, and, therefore, it may seem, no problem
about how, given God's knowledge of our future acts, we can be free in the future to do
something other than what God has always known we would do. For, so the argument
goes, since God is not a temporal being his knowledge of events is not temporally prior
to their occurrence.
However, a number of contemporary philosophers of religion are doubtful that it is
coherent to think that God fully comprehends what is going on now if he exists outside of
time. Moreover, it is difficult to comprehend how God can act in the world unless he
exists in time. He would have to will eternally that a certain event occur at a particular
time, even though when that time comes he does not at that time bring that event about—
for he could at that time bring it about only if he existed at that time. So, the view that
God is not in time has significant implications for how one understands God's actions and
his knowledge of the events that happen in time. But we will here regard the eternalist's
view as a minority report on the nature of God's knowledge, and continue to examine the
problem of God's knowledge on the more generally accepted position that God is eternal
in the sense of being everlasting, existing at every moment from a beginningless past to
an unending future.
Because God's knowledge of the past, present, and future is both complete and infallible,
God unerringly knew before we were born everything we will do. But how does God
acquire his knowledge of future events? One way would be for God to simply ordain or
predetermine the events that take place in the future. As the Westminster Confession
states, “God from all eternity didfreely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to
pass.” Clearly, if God has determined in advance everything that will occur in the future,
then by knowing his own determining decrees he thereby knows all the events that will
transpire in the future. But although such a view may express the majesty and power of
God over all that he has created, it makes it difficult to understand how our future lives
may in some significant ways be up to us. How can we be free in the future to do this or
that if before the world began God determined everything that will come to pass? Indeed,
the authors of the Westminster Confession seemed to have recognized the difficulty, for
its next line reads, “Yetthereby is no violence offered to the will of the creatures.” But
few nowadays think that it is possible
end p.29