Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Zeit - Ewigkeit; Thomas: Gott kennt keine Ereignisse als zukünftig

Kurzinhalt: common-sense notion of eternity and its relation to time; 'If God knows this, this must be,' the 'this' of the apodosis must be taken in the same sense as the 'this' of the protasis

Textausschnitt: 32/8 Against the theorem of divine transcendence the following objection might be raised (DES: 124-25; cf. DSAVD:12). Consider the proposition, 'From eternity God knows and wills this thing to exist at a particular time.' God's knowing and willing are eternal, but the effect, the finite reality without which the statement is false, is temporal. Now either there is divine knowledge and volition of the effect before it actually occurs, or there is not. If there is, then for the time prior to the effect's occurrence one can affirm God's knowing and willing of the effect without thereby affirming the effect's actuality; in other words, those acts are predicated of God by intrinsic, not extrinsic, denomination, so that the whole argument for the possibility of contingent divine effects crumbles. On the other hand, if God does not know and will the effect before it occurs, then the possibility of contingence is saved, but the effect's occurrence eludes divine governance. This objection - which might better be said to overlook than to attack Lonergan's position, since it ignores the contradiction involved in claiming that any contingent reality can be intrinsic to God - derives its plausibility chiefly from a common-sense notion of eternity and its relation to time. Eternity is thought of as everlasting duration, which can be represented by a time-line extending endlessly into the past and endlessly into the future; on this view, there is no essential difference between eternity and the created time of the universe, except that the former has neither beginning nor end; during the time that the created universe exists, eternity and created time are seen as contemporaneous (DES: 124). Within this imaginative framework, God's eternal knowing and willing of the created order are conceived as temporally prior to the actual existence of that order, as if God knew and willed the finite universe as a future reality before it actually came into existence. Hence, the apparent reasonableness of the objection: if God infallibly knows and irresistibly wills the finite universe from eternity, and so knows and wills it precisely as future, then the finite universe can admit no contingence; everything that is to exist or occur - including the activity of created wills - must turn out exactly as God has preordained. (263f; Fs) (notabene)

33/8 But this position, however appealing to common sense, is untenable, because it presumes that God is a temporal being: (264; Fs)

If the future is known with certainty, then necessarily it must come to be; and what necessarily must come to be, is not contingent but necessary. But St Thomas denies that God knows events as future. He is not in time but [in] an eternal 'now' to which everything is present. Hence when you say, 'If God knows this, this must be,' the 'this' of the apodosis must be taken in the same sense as the 'this' of the protasis. But the 'this' of the protasis is present; therefore, the 'this' of the apodosis is present; it follows that 'this must be' is not absolute but hypothetical necessity: 'Necesse est Socratem currere dum currit' [It is necessary that Socrates is running while he is running]. (notabene)

34/8 In other words, God's activity and created reality are simultaneous - not in the sense that can be represented in our imagination by the juxtaposition of parallel time-lines, but in the sense that for God, who is not in time at all, past, present, and future are identical. To grasp this fact requires that we correct our spontaneous way of conceiving the relation of time to being: (264; Fs)

[A]ccording to the commonplace estimate, time contains beings, so that beings can be simultaneous [only] to the extent that they exist at the same time. But according to philosophical judgment, being contains time as one of its parts, namely, the category 'when'; for this reason, beings are simultaneous to the extent that they are beings, unless a limitation of time impedes [this simultaneity]. (DSAVD:10)

35/8 Hence, Lonergan can argue that the proposition, 'From eternity God knows and wills this thing to exist at a certain time and with a certain duration,' does not involve any contradiction: (264; Fs)

The truth of this proposition is not obtained by way of entities [ea] which are found entitatively in God, since nothing in God is contingent, since nothing which is able not to be is in God entitatively. Hence an external term [terminus ad extra, that is, an extrinsic denominator] is required so that there may be the correspondence of truth between the proposition and reality. But just what external term is required? Must it be eternal? Most certainly not, since in that case the proposition asserting that the external term exists not eternally, but at a certain time and with a certain duration, would prove to be false.

36/8 The denial of contingence on the grounds that God's knowing, willing, or causing is temporally prior to what is known, willed, or caused is based on the assumption that one's childhood images of the relation between time and eternity are disclosive of reality. Here again, what first presents itself as a speculative difficulty is resolved with relative ease by the shift from a common-sense to an explanatory perspective. (265; Fs)