Continuing on, option three above asserts that God knows the future events that will most certainly happen, but He also knows all the counterfactuals of all those events, even though He also knows that they will certainly never happen. This option also claims that those counterfactuals had existence prior to God’s decree of the events to which they are counter. If this is true, then I see two possible conclusions:
1. Those counterfactuals or “potential” realities must find their source in some being or some force greater than or equal to God Himself. Perhaps those beings or forces are the ones having to choose between those counterfactuals.
2. They are self-existent.
If we assume that these realities are not generated in the mind of God, there are several problems with this idea we can see immediately. It is impossible that they would exist as an idea if the reality they shadow only exists potentially. In order for the substance of a future (that is, its cause and effect events and the beings within said future who will be making choices) to exist prior to its occurrence in time, and in order for it to be known or perceived pre-temporally, it must necessarily be a certain and not just potential future event or choice. Its pre-temporal existence is the knowledge of its future certainty as an event; in fact it is God’s knowledge of it that establishes the “gist” of its existence. And its existence as a knowable item causes it to occur at some future, temporal point. Thus there were or are now no “realities” that merely had the potential for future occurrence, only realities that possessed the certitude of future occurrence can exist as knowable futures—and even then, they are really only knowable to God unless He reveals them to His creatures in a glimpse at it were. The supposed “potential reality” can’t exist if its pre-temporal representation does not necessarily cause its existence in the future. In order for a future event to be foreseen it cannot simply be a possibility. The thing foreseen pre-temporally is not so disjointed from its future occurrence in time. They do not exist as completely dislocated thought and reality, but the thought must be causal in relation to the reality it preconceives. It is like an object and its reflection, if you remove the object the reflection can not exist. So in that way the event foreseen is like the reflection and the event that occurs in time is the object being reflected—take away the event in time and you must also remove its reflection to be foreseen. So the reflections do not exist theoretically from which to be chosen, they reflect a real future object, thus the reflections exist because they necessarily will occur, as they are reflecting real future objects. If they can be foreseen then they will certainly occur. Similar to the way we view the past, events that have already occurred are static just as are event that will happen in the future, and this I believe to be the orthodox Christian view. This view could therefore be referred to as “Static Pre-Temporalism”, a view that is contrasted with the Middle Knowledge or Molinistic view of real counterfactuals, which could be referred to as “Dynamic Pre-Temporalism”.
I know that Static Pre-Temporalism perhaps does not make for as good a background for entertaining science fiction as Dynamic Pre-Temporalism does, but it is the truth. I wonder if those who would reject Static Pre-Temporalism are those most influenced by a post-modern Western culture which, over the past 50 or 60 years, has been subjected to an influx of false Eastern mystical thoughts regarding time and space and reality. A ground fertilized with naturalism and primed for receiving the seeds of relativism was all too eager for the views of time, space and reality that would be popularized through shows like “Star Trek” in the 1960’s. Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoy science fiction but it is just that…fiction tainted, some might say, by the occasional fact. It is true what they say, that truth is stranger than fiction, however, fiction is much easier to conform to our individualistic and relativistic ideals regarding reality: history and the future. We have seen this much more recently with Dan Browne’s treatment of history—most people want a history they can conform to their own ideas about how things should have been. Maybe many theologians today have contracted what I call the “Rodenberry Syndrome” (inspired by the name of the creator of “Star Trek”—Gene Rodenberry), an obsession with novelty; and the insatiable desire to “go where no man has gone before”. This is a highly dangerous activity in the realm of theology, but we can observe it in the Molinistic concept of real counterfactuals; that the future is relative to each individual’s choices.
No comments:
Post a Comment