Argument One:
If from x’s point of view there is an objective fact about what time it presently is, then x is in time.
If x knows an objective fact about something, then from x’s point of view there is an objective fact about it.
If the A-theory of time is true, then there is an objective fact about what time it presently is.
God knows all objective facts.
So, if the A-theory of time is true, then God knows an objective fact about what time it presently is. (3 and 4)
So, if the A-theory of time is true, from God’s point of view there is an objective fact about time it presently is. (2 and 5)
So, if the A-theory of time is true, God is in time. (1 and 6)
Note that no claim is made that if the A-theory of time is true, God changes.
Argument Two:
God is actual.
Everything actual is in the actual world.
If the A-theory of time is true, the actual world is a temporally-centered world (one where there is a fact as to what time is present).
Anything that is in a temporally-centered world is in time.
So, if the A-theory of time is true, God is in time.
Many will dispute 3, but if we think of worlds as ways for everything to be, then I think it is hard to dispute 3.
I wonder if a classical theist who is an A-theorist might be able to respond that, yes, God is in time but God is not a temporal being. Compare that by doctrine of omnipresence, God is in space, but God is not a spatial being. Still, I think there is a difference. For as the above arguments show, the claim that God is in time is more limiting than the claim that God is spatially omnipresent—it is a claim that God is at the one objectively present point of time (he was and will be at others, of course).
2 comments:
I am a Classical Theist and affirm A theory, and I have affirmed that God is in time for a while now. My view is that God is in time but does not undergo intrinsic change. So yeah, it is a thing. I am also an open theist.
Classical Theism is, in fact, more broad than many seem to think.
But I don't agree with your last claim ("For as the above arguments show, the claim that God is in time is more limiting than the claim that God is spatially omnipresent—it is a claim that God is at the one objectively present point of time"). If Presentism is true (and Presentism is the most popular version of A Theory), then it really isn't anymore limiting: nothing is in fact in the past or in the future. God is just purely actual, and is in that sense present with every passage of change among creatures.
Suppose time has a beginning and God is in time. Then it seems that God has a beginning. That feels limiting. But maybe you think time has no beginning, in which case there is the problem Augustine discusses--why did God wait an infinite amount of time before creating?
An alternative would be to say that God is in time AND out of time. That would avoid the above problem.
Another disanalogy between omnipresent and omnitemporality is that usually when people talk of God being omnipresent, they think of God as omnipresent not quite literally, but only by power and knowledge.
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