God's Knowledge and Tensed Facts - A Survey

 (Note, I haven't looked that deep into this specific debate in Phil of Religion, so don't expect some god-given analysis of this topic - I'm just trying to give a basic rundown for anyone Interested)

One of the most pressing objections against The "Doctrine" of Divine Timelessness is William Lane Craig's defense of the argument from Tensed Facts.

The Argument goes roughly as follows:
(i) For any true proposition P, God knows that proposition - and God's knowledge is meant to track the world in this context, and "see" whichever proposition comes out as true.
(ii) Presentism is true.
(iii) under Presentism, there are Tensed Propositions which change in truth-value.
(iiii) Therefore, which true propositions there are changes.
(iiiii) Therefore, God's Knowledge changes/is mutable.

For a few examples of Propositions which Change in Truth-Value, does God know:
"What time is it now?"
"There is something (as opposed to Nothing, pre-creation)"
"I am currently typing this sentence."
Without Changing?

The conclusion here is that since God's knowledge changes, and God's knowledge is intrinsic to God, then God changes. Obviously, God changing is incompatible with Divine Immutability/Divine Timelessness, if one were to understand Time as a measurement of Change.

So, what can be objected to here? I think most people would jump the gun and instantly object to (ii). I'd probably agree that Presentism is false, and I think most theists would agree here too (for example, it seems very hard to reconcile Foreknowledge with Presentism - If one were to commit themselves to Foreknowledge). Though for the sake of argument, I'm willing to grant Presentism.

Instead, I think, we should not grant that God's knowledge changes under Presentism. Here are a few solutions to this which don't work:

Non-propositional Knowledge: A few people have suggested the idea that God's knowledge regarding tensed propositions would surely change if God's knowledge were itself propositional. However, God's knowledge is non-propositional, to quote Alston:

"The basic point is that the intuitive conception represents the fullest and most perfect realization of the cognitive ideal. We reject the intuitive account for human knowledge, not because we suppose ourselves to have something better, but because it represents too high an aspiration for our condition. If we could be continuously directly aware of every fact of which we have knowledge, that would be splendid; but we must settle for something more modest. Immediate awareness of facts is the highest form of knowledge just because it is a direct and foolproof way of mirroring the reality to be known. There is no potentially distorting medium in the way, no possibly unreliable witnesses, no fallible signs or indications. The fact known is " bodily" present in the knowledge. The state of knowledge is constituted by the presence of the fact known. This is the ideal way of " registering" a fact and assimilating it into the subject's system of cognition and action guidance. Hence this is the best way to think of God's knowledge. Since God is absolutely perfect, cognitively as well as otherwise, His knowledge will be of this most perfect form"

According to the defenders, this sort of account of God's knowledge would mean that while Propositions do change in Truth-value, God's knowledge will not change with them - as God's knowledge is nonpropositional. (To make it clear, I haven't seen anyone explicitly describe it this way, but that's the exact issue).

I think the problem here is clear: How does this solve anything? God's non-propositional knowledge would seemingly still have to change in order to keep track of what Propositions are true. For example, God can't have the "belief" that - "There is Nothing", while Creation exists. However, he did "previously" have this belief pre-creation, so there's seemingly a change in Knowledge here. If the Nothing - Something example is uncomfortable for you, just use the 2 other examples mentioned above. Hence, even a Non-propositional God, regardless of his direct access to "Propositions" without any sort of "meditation", would still ultimately change. If not more-so than the "Propositional" God.


Deflationary Accounts of Truth: God's knowledge of which proposition is "true" isn't really what God's knowledge tracks, as truth is merely a semantic device and not some "real" property of Propositions. Hence, there isn't any real "truth-value" for God to track. Therefore, God's knowledge doesn't change.

I don't think it's hard to see why this response is just terrible. Craig himself is a deflationist about truth, for example. Clearly, there is still change in the world. God's knowledge is meant to track the world down to every minor detail/change, and hence God's knowledge still changes. This is also ignoring how this response crudely misrepresents deflationism, and really just misses the point for the most part.

There are two more accounts, trying to spell out how God knows tensed facts, which go as follows:

Kvanvig holds both to the objective reality of tensed facts and to God's timeless knowledge of all facts, which together imply that God has timeless knowledge of tensed facts. Kvanvig's defense of this position relies upon his analysis of propositions expressed by sentences containing personal indexicals. In lieu of positing privately accessible propositions, he analyzes belief in terms of a triadic relation between an intentional attitude, a proposition, and a particular manner of accessing, or grasping, the proposition. Personal indexicals express individual essences, which are part of the propositional content of the sentence containing such indexical words. But this propositional content is differently accessed by different persons. When Kvanvig says, "I'm Kvanvig," he expresses the same proposition as I do when I say to him, "You're Kvanvig," but this propositional content is directly grasped by Kvanvig and indirectly grasped by me. Kvanvig suggests that the proposition is grasped through the meanings of the sentences involved; since these are different, the propositional content is differently accessed by Kvanvig and me. Thus, an omniscient God has the same knowledge of the facts as we do with respect to the propositions we express through sentences containing personal indexicals, but we directly access those propositions involving our respective individual essences, while God accesses this same propositional content indirectly.

Kvanvig proposes an analogous solution for dealing with tensed facts expressed by sentences like "It is now 1 June 1984." He asserts that the demonstrative "now" expresses the individual essence of the time to which it refers. He maintains that "temporal demonstratives are just particular ways of referring to the essences of moments."  Such an interpretation of temporal indexicals permits us to hold that God grasps the same propositional content that we do when we use sentences like "It is now 1 June 1984." On Kvanvig's view the same proposition is expressed by the sentence "Today is 1 June 1984" uttered on that date as is expressed by the sentence "Yesterday was 1 June 1984" uttered on June 2. The difference in behavior resulting from these two beliefs is due to the meanings of the sentences through which the identical propositional content is accessed. A person grasps a proposition containing the essence of a time directly only if that person grasps the proposition at that time, which issues in a present–tense belief; otherwise the proposition is grasped indirectly, which in the case of temporal persons will yield beliefs involving other tenses. Hence, "one can affirm the doctrines of timelessness, immutability and omniscience by affirming that God indirectly grasps every temporal moment, and directly grasps none of them." 

And Wierenga's: 

"In order to explain why such knowledge does not involve God in temporality, Wierenga appeals, like Kvanvig, to the analogy of propositions expressed by sentences containing first–person pronouns. Adopting Plantinga's notion of an individual essence–a property which something can possess essentially and no other thing can possess at all–, Wierenga asserts that we should hold one of a person's essences to be special, namely, the one expressed by that person's use of the word "I." In my case this essence is the property of being me. Wierenga calls this special essence one's haecceity, and he claims that propositions expressed by sentences involving the first person pronoun entail the haecceity of the person using such expressions; such propositions he calls "first person propositions." Now Wierenga does not think that I am the only person who can grasp a proposition entailing my haecceity. Rather what is crucial is that I cannot believe such a proposition without having a de se belief, that is, a belief about me myself. A person S believes de se that he himself is F just in case there is a haecceity E such that S has E and S believes a proposition having E as a constituent and which attributes being F to whomever has E. Being omniscient, God also believes those propositions which have my haecceity as a constituent, but since the haecceity is mine, not God's, His believing them does not issue in de se beliefs for Him, as my believing them does for me.

On the analogy of personal haecceities, Wierenga asserts that moments of time also have special essences or haecceities. A proposition containing the haecceity of a time he calls a "present–time proposition." We temporal beings can only grasp present–time propositions at the time whose haecceity is contained in the proposition, not before or after. When a person believes a present–time proposition at its time, that person has a de praesenti belief. A person S believes de praesenti at a time t that it is then the case that p just in case there is a haecceity T such that t has T and at t S believes a proposition having T as a constituent and which attributes being such that p to whatever time has T. Wierenga analyzes the proposition expressed by A. N. Prior's "The 1960 exams are over" as a proposition entailing the conjunction of the haecceity of the time of Prior's belief and the property of being such that the 1960 exams have finished before then.

Now Wierenga contends that there is no reason why God cannot believe all true present–time propositions, just as He believes all true first–person propositions. Just as His belief in a first–person proposition does not give Him a belief de se unless it is a belief in His own first–person proposition, so a belief in a present–time proposition does not give Him belief de praesenti unless He believes that proposition at its time. Being timeless, God did not have to wait, as did Prior, until August 29, 1960, in order to grasp the proposition Prior expressed by saying, "The 1960 exams are over." He grasps and believes the relevant proposition timelessly and so forms no de praesenti belief in so doing. Thus, a timeless God knows all present–time propositions, and so there are no tensed facts unknown to Him."

Both views have been heavily critiqued by Craig, here, though I'd let the reader decide what he makes of this response.

A few reasonable solutions are:

Relational Knowledge: Another approach I've seen, namely brought up by "Al-Razi", is to take a relational account of Knowledge (in which there is a relation between the knower and the known), and use that to diffuse the objection in the following manner:

Consider a proposition, "I am typing now"
God knows the proposition "I am typing now" is true. 
I'm not typing now.
Therefore, God no longer knows the proposition "I am typing now" is true.

However, this is not a change in God's knowledge. God's knowledge should be thought of in this way:
"God knows (-) True Proposition", where "(-)" is meant to represent the relation between God's knowledge and what is known. When we say God's knowledge changes, what we mean is that God's knowledge, qua relation "(-)", is what changes. "God knows", and hence, God's knowledge, remains immutable. What does actually change is the relation between the knower and the known, not the Knower himself.

I think the only response here gets into a deeper problem with the notion of a Timeless God, but it goes as follows: A relational/cambridge change is still God changing. The arguments defending this while somewhat forceful, ultimately fail. I.e take Schmid's modified problem of temporary Intrinsics, but that deserves another post. So ultimately, this sort of response might have some promise to it.

Extrinsic Accounts of Divine Knowing: W. Matthews Grant's account of Extrinsic Knowing have been very popular recently, due to debates surrounding Divine Simplicity, but it's not hard to see how this would apply to God's knowledge of Tensed Facts aswell. Surely, God's knowledge changes. But that's all there is to it! God's knowledge is extrinsic to God himself, and hence God does not undergo any sort of Change on this view - Atleast given his Knowledge.

Here is one such Model, from here: 

"Suppose God’s intrinsic beliefs (or acts or states of knowing) have their content, not in themselves, but in virtue of relations to things extrinsic to God. A divine belief, for example, is an intrinsic state, and in the actual world God has a belief whose content is that Obama is president. This content is given by the way things stand in the actual world. Were McCain president, God’s same belief would have a different content, reflecting the different facts. Because the content of God’s beliefs is given by the way things are, his beliefs are true in every world. But, since it is the same beliefs whose contents vary across worlds, the fact that God believes different truths in different worlds does not entail any variation in God’s intrinsic states."

Hence, one could adopt such a model to avoid this worry. Another such Model, given by Alexander Pruss, goes as follows:

"his deals in a theory of mind that is almost surely false of humans, but that at least prima facie seems coherent, and so perhaps an analogue for God is coherent.  Take a naïve form of Descartes’ theory on which my mind’s eye contemplates phenomena (feels, touches, etc., as it were appearing on a screen in front of my mind’s eye), and my mind’s eye is wholly distinct from the phenomena it contemplates.  It is the difference in the phenomena that individuates the state of feeling hot and the state of feeling cold.  One state involves my mind’s eye standing in a relation of contemplation to a feeling of heat and the other involves its standing in that relation to a feeling of cold.  But now observe that the difference between these two states seems to be extrinsic to my mind’s eye: it consists in a difference between the feels, and I am not the feels. "

However, I haven't really said whether or these Models are plausible or not. I think they are for the most part, literally just nonsense, but again, that deserves another post. This is still an open option for the Theist.

Anselmian "Frame-Relative" Time: Another view one could adopt is that, while Presentism is true for us, God sort of percieves the world in an Eternalist/B-Theortic Manner. As defended and explained here.  In that case, to quote Leftow:
 "The reason a timeless God does not know the essentially tensed fact that (T) is that in His framework of reference, eternity, this is not a fact at all. (T), again, is the claim that a proper subset S of the set of temporal events, consisting of a, b, c, etc., now has present–actuality. In eternity this claim is false. In eternity all temporal events . . . have present–actuality at once".

Again - this same view was critiqued by Craig in the same paper I linked above, with to be fair, some very plausible objections. So there's really not much to say here.

In-conclusion, it seems like relational or extrinsic accounts of Divine Knowing are really the only way to avoid this problem. Besides adopting some B-theory, however, I am fully open to some Anselmian view being defended here. Of course, one can just jettison Divine Immutability and feel free, although I think this move certainly has it's consequences.

(Lowkey thought this post was gonna be longer but there really isn't much to say here)