4. Creatio ex Nihilo
HAVING EXAMINED THE principal arguments for and against a dynamic view of time, we now turn to a similar examination of the static conception. Although it may seem foreign to the common man, the static understanding of time is accepted almost unquestioningly by many physicists and by a good many reflective philosophers as well.
EXPOSITION
Without a doubt the paramount consideration leading people to embrace a static conception of time is Relativity Theory. It will be remembered from our earlier discussion1 that when Albert Einstein originally formulated his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905, he presupposed a dynamic conception of time. Space and time were conceived to be separate realities—three-dimensional space enduring through the one dimension of time. But in 1908 a German mathematician by the name of Hermann Minkowski proposed that STR be understood instead in terms of a four-dimensional geometrical structure called space-time. The name “space-time” derives from the fact that three dimensions of this geometrical structure are taken to represent space and the fourth dimension represents time. The four dimensions of space-time do not differ structurally, except that the square of distances along one of the dimensions, usually taken to represent time, is negative, whereas the square of distances along the other three is positive. This is due to the fact that the four-dimensional geometry is not Euclidean. Since we are three-dimensional beings (or at least we only apprehend three dimensions), we cannot visualize what a four-dimensional object looks like. But geometers can describe such an object mathematically, even if they cannot picture it. By treating space and time as a four-dimensional structure, mathematicians can display with great clarity the mathematical equations at the heart of STR. Such a representation reveals that while space measurements and time measurements when taken separately are relative, space-time measurements are absolute. The space-time position of events and the space-time interval between them are the same for all observers and never change.
It may seem strange to conceive of space and time as united in space-time. After all, they are so different that trying to combine them may seem like mixing oil and water. We may be inclined to think of space-time non-realistically, as a mathematical fiction which is useful in the way that diagrams and graphs are—not as realistic representations of the world, but as conceptual aids. But Minkowski was a metaphysician as well as a mathematician, and he interpreted his space-time realistically. Space-time was not merely a representation of the world of space and time; it was the world. Minkowski called the space-time points designated by three spatial coordinates and one temporal coordinate “world points” and the collection of all such points he christened “the world.”2 He announced a “metamorphosis of our concept of nature,” and concluded with the famous words, “Henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”3
Minkowski’s words proved to be prophetic. His space-time approach to relativity, especially after Einstein’s formulation of his General Theory of Relativity (GTR), became the dominant mode of presentation of relativity. Einstein himself became an ardent space-time realist. He remarked, “Even in the relativity theory we can still use the dynamic picture if we prefer it. But we must remember that this division into time and space has no objective meaning since time is no longer ‘absolute’.”4 Thus, Relativity Theory was “distinctly in favor of the static picture and found in this representation of motion as something existing in time-space a more convenient and more objective picture of reality.”5 Abandoning his original view, Einstein concluded, “It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four-dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three-dimensional existence.”6
Construing space-time realistically implies, as Einstein’s words indicate, a static conception of time. For space-time itself never changes. Change takes place in time, that is, along the dimension of the structure which represents time. But there is no change of the structure as a whole. Changes in time are like the changes in scenery from east to west. Every event in time is permanently fixed at its location. Indeed, it can be said that while space-time is intrinsically temporal (that is, one of its dimensions is time), it is extrinsically timeless (that is, it does not exist in some embedding hyper-time). Space-time neither changes nor becomes; it just is (tenselessly).
We thus have before us two radically different interpretations of Relativity Theory, one compatible with a dynamic view of time (the original Einstein interpretation) and one implying a static view of time (the Minkowski interpretation). Graham Nerlich, a prominent Australian philosopher of space and time, has called these “the relativity interpretation” and “the space-time interpretation” respectively.7 These two understandings of Relativity Theory are very often confused, but it is crucial for our purposes that they be kept distinct. If the space-time interpretation of Minkowski is adopted, then tense and temporal becoming are squeezed out of the world as objective realities. On the other hand, while the original Einstein relativity interpretation would require us to relativize tense and temporal becoming to inertial frames (most plausibly by taking the standard simultaneity relation defined in STR8 to pick out all events present at that time relative to that frame), such an interpretation is nonetheless compatible with a dynamic theory of time. The question is: Are there good reasons for preferring one of these interpretations over the other?
It seems that there are. The space-time interpretation is arguably superior to the relativity interpretation for three reasons. First, no plausible relation of co-existence can be defined within the context of the relativity interpretation of Einstein.9 For any two co-existent objects A and B, A exists with B if and only if B exists with A. That is just part of the meaning of co-existence. Now given the reality of tense, two objects are co-existent if and only if they are co-present. That is because present entities are the only temporal entities which exist, given a tensed theory of time. But then how shall we understand co-existence within the context of the relativity interpretation?
Let us suppose that A and B are some distance apart and in relative motion, and let us imagine that an event occurs at A’s location (call this event Ae) and another event occurs at B’s location (call it Be). Due to the relativity of simultaneity, in A’s inertial frame Be may be simultaneous with Ae and thus present for A at the time of Ae. But in B’s inertial frame Ae will not be simultaneous with Be and so will be past or future for B at the time of Be. Thus, Ae and Be cannot be co-present. B is present to A, but A is not present to B. But if A and B cannot be co-present, neither can they be co-existent. Suppose we try to remedy this defect by stipulating that in order for A and B to co-exist, events in the lives of A and B must be co-present in the sense that if Be is present to Ae, then Ae must be present to Be. A and B would then be co-present and, hence, co-existent. The only problem is, on this definition no object ever co-exists with a moving object! The only objects which co-exist are objects at rest relative to each other. But this seems crazy, since virtually everything is in motion relative to myself, with the result that scarcely anything co-exists with me.
By contrast, on Minkowski’s space-time interpretation, the co-existence relation can be plausibly defined because it is unconnected to the fictitious co-presence relation. Since all events in space-time are equally real, two objects A and B can be said to co-exist just in case there are events in the life of A and B which are sufficiently far apart that they cannot be connected by a light signal. If these events cannot be connected by a light signal (that is, a light signal leaving A at the time of Ae cannot get to B until after Be occurs), then that implies that in some inertial frame Ae and Be are reckoned to be simultaneous. So co-existent events will be those which can be simultaneous in some inertial frame. And A and B co-exist just in case their life-histories include such events. This account of co-existence cannot work for the relativity interpretation because only present events exist on a tensed theory of time.
Second, the relativity interpretation results in a fantastic fragmentation of reality. On the relativity interpretation, there is no unified, common world inhabited by all observers, but rather a plurality of spaces and times each associated with a different inertial frame. STR requires that even if we are merely passing each other in automobiles, our classes of simultaneous events do not coincide, and at sufficient distances various events occur and things exist in relation to me which may be future and thus literally unreal for you. But if we decelerate and come to relative rest, then we come to share the same reality; events and things which were once present and real for me are now future and unreal. Reality is relative to reference frames. One can change one’s reality just by changing one’s relative motion. If the relative motion between two events is great, the distance between the events need not be huge in order for the fragmentation of reality to become evident. For example, any event on the planet Neptune within a space of about eight hours can be reckoned according to STR to be occurring now by some earth observer. For one earthling Neptune could have been completely destroyed in a cosmic collision, while for another relatively moving earthling Neptune could exist perfectly well. For other observers, events on Neptune’s surface literally occur in reverse order. Even at the distance of the earth’s diameter, anything occurring within about one-tenth of a second could be real for us at this moment. For relatively moving observers, the Chinese president Jiang Zemin could be literally dead or alive, depending on the observers’ motion. This is not a mere matter of which events are calculated to be present relative to an inertial frame. Rather reality quite literally falls apart, and there is no one way the world is.
By contrast, on the space-time interpretation, all events in space-time are equally real, and things do not pop into or out of existence as I switch reference frames. When I determine a certain class of events to be simultaneous with me-now, I am simply designating a certain slice or cross-section of space-time. A relatively moving observer using STR’s method of determining simultaneous events will slice space-time at a different angle and so come up with a different class of simultaneous events than I do. There is an objective, unified world which is the same for all observers, namely, the four-dimensional space-time itself. Since reality is not tied to simultaneity, the relativity of simultaneity does not imply that reality is relative, in contrast to the relativity interpretation.
Third, the relativity interpretation is explanatorily deficient with regard to relativistic phenomena. On the relativity interpretation, physical objects are three-dimensional entities enduring through time. Yet they are said to have no intrinsic properties such as length, shape, mass, and duration. These are said to be merely relational properties—for example, having a certain length relative to a certain inertial frame. But there is no explanation or foundation for why this is so. It needs to be appreciated that, on the relativity interpretation, relativistic phenomena such as the shrinking of an object in motion or the slowing down of a moving clock are every bit as real, physical effects as they are under Lorentz’s theory.10 This seems incredible, since such effects are reciprocal: For two relatively moving clocks A and B, A runs slow relative to B and B runs slow relative to A. But Einstein understood right from the start that such relativistic phenomena were not a matter of mere appearance, but were literal, measurable effects.11 This is especially evident in the familiar Twin Paradox, according to which absolute effects such as differential aging ensue as a result of merely relative motion.12
But the relativity interpretation neither provides nor permits any causal explanation of these real, physical distortions of three-dimensional objects. These phenomena simply follow as deductions from the postulates of STR. As one commentator has remarked, “The principle of relativity of . . . Lorentz, and Poincaré resulted from careful study of a large number of experiments, and it was on the basis of a theory in which empirical data could be explained to have been caused by electrons interacting with an ether. Einstein’s principle of relativity excluded the ether of electromagnetic theory and did not explain anything.”13 STR does not permit causal explanations of relativistic phenomena because these result from merely relative motion, and thus no room is left for intrinsic causal forces.
By contrast, on the space-time interpretation, three-dimensional objects do not shrink up or slow down for the simple reason that three-dimensional objects do not exist! Reality is four-dimensional, and the supposed distortion of physical objects is just a matter of looking at four-dimensional objects from different angles.14 Just as a three-dimensional object looks foreshortened when we gaze along its length in the direction of sight, so four-dimensional objects are calculated to have different shapes depending on how they are viewed in space-time. Length contraction is just the result of applying different coordinate measures to the same, unchanging, four-dimensional object. Clocks do not literally slow down; rather the same spatio-temporal intervals are measured with different coordinate systems. Moreover, in Minkowski space-time, a curved path through space-time is actually the shortest, so that the clock of an observer following such a path will record less time than a clock following a straight path. So, for example, in the Twin Paradox, the path of the traveling twin through space-time is actually shorter than the space-time path of the twin who stays at home. Thus, it is not surprising that the traveling twin records less time and so is younger when he and his brother meet again. On the space-time interpretation, then, relativistic phenomena are not inexplicable, brute facts, but have a perspicuous foundation.
For these three reasons the space-time interpretation of STR is superior to the relativity interpretation. But if that is the case, then, as Einstein came to believe, tense and temporal becoming are illusions of human consciousness. Reality is tenseless, and the static theory of time is correct.
We can formulate this argument in favor of a static theory of time as follows:
1. Either the Einsteinian, relativity interpretation or the Minkow-skian, space-time interpretation of STR is correct.
2. If the Minkowskian, space-time interpretation of STR is correct, then a static theory of time is correct.
3. The Einsteinian, relativity interpretation of STR is not correct.
4. Therefore, a static theory of time is correct.
CRITIQUE
I am persuaded that the arguments given above against the relativity interpretation are cogent and that therefore premise (3) is true. But the reader who has followed our argument thus far will realize that I consider premise (1) to be false. For that premise presents us with a false dilemma. There is a third interpretation of relativity, usually overlooked in discussions of this sort, which is empirically equivalent to the Einsteinian and Minkowskian interpretations and is fully compatible with a dynamic theory of time, namely, Lorentzian relativity.
On a Lorentzian view, there do exist absolute simultaneity and absolute length, and length contraction and clock retardation are the causal effects of absolute motion. Such an interpretation is immune to the problems afflicting the relativity interpretation. First, co-existence and co-presence are defined in terms of the absolute simultaneity of events occurring in the privileged reference frame. Everything existing at the same time in that frame is real. Second, because relations of absolute simultaneity exist, things do not pop into or out of existence as one changes inertial frames. Observers in motion who use Einstein’s procedure for synchronizing clocks will calculate different distant events to be simultaneous with themselves, but the discrepancy exists only in their measurements, not in reality. Third, relativistic phenomena have real, intrinsic causes, since they result from an object’s motion relative to the privileged reference frame. Clocks in motion relative to the privileged frame run slow, and measuring rods in motion shrink up.
A Lorentzian theory of relativity is wholly compatible with the reality of tense and temporal becoming, since these are characteristics of absolute time. Hypothetical observers using Einstein’s conventions for synchronizing clocks may calculate that some distant event is present, past, or future depending upon their relative motion, but these judgments are not to be taken literally, since the measuring devices used by such observers are distorted in virtue of their motion relative to the privileged reference frame, and therefore their judgments are skewed. Only an observer at rest in the privileged frame can use Einstein’s procedure for synchronizing clocks in order to determine what events are really present.
So long as a Lorentzian interpretation of relativity is as equally plausible as the space-time interpretation, the defender of a dynamic theory of time need not be in the least disturbed by the deficiencies in the relativity interpretation. On the contrary, he will probably see those deficiencies as quite debilitating for the relativity interpretation.
In fact, the Lorentzian may see his view as superior to the space-time interpretation precisely in view of these same considerations. First, on a Lorentzian view, absolutely simultaneous events constitute at any time a unique class of events which are co-present and co-existent. But the co- existence relation defined under the space-time interpretation is implausible. It requires us to say that two events which cannot be connected by a light signal are co-existent for some observer even if, relative to that observer, one event is in the future and the other is in the past! Remember, we are not talking about co-existence in the tenseless sense in which all events (even though connectable by a light signal) can be said to exist on the space-time interpretation. We are trying to delineate a special class of events which stand in a relation of co-existence. But it is just a misuse of words to say that, for example, I co-exist with the decay of a distant star which will not take place for another 3 billion years. Second, on a Lorentzian view things do not come to exist or cease to exist as one changes inertial frames, since things either exist or do not exist in absolute time. The space-time interpretation avoids this unwelcome consequence of the relativity interpretation only by denying that things come into being or pass away at all. This extraordinary metaphysical hypothesis not only contradicts experience but is subject to further objections which will be examined below.15 Third, on a Lorentzian interpretation three-dimensional objects are distorted due to their absolute motion. The space-time explanation of length contraction and clock retardation requires us to hold that what seem to be three-dimensional objects are in reality but parts of four-dimensional objects, a view which is open to powerful objections.16 Thus, the very respects in which the space-time interpretation is superior to the relativity interpretation are also those in which the Lorentzian interpretation is superior to the space-time interpretation.
If the static time theorist is to prove on the basis of STR that a tenseless theory of time is true, then he must show that the space-time interpretation of STR is superior to a Lorentzian perspective. So the question is, why should we prefer a space-time interpretation to a Lorentzian interpretation?
It is often said that Lorentzian relativity is less simple than Einsteinian or Minkowskian relativity and therefore the latter are to be preferred. But as is well-known, one cannot make a naive equation between a theory’s simplicity and its truth. This is especially the case if simplicity is bought at too high a price (for example, sacrificing explanatory power or making extraordinary metaphysical commitments such as realism about space-time). In any case, it is simply false that Lorentzian theory is less simple. Although Lorentz’s original theory was more complicated than Einstein’s, the famous physicist H. E. Ives was able to derive the Lorentzian equations (which constitute the mathematical core of STR) from the laws of conservation of energy and momentum and from the laws of transmission of radiant energy. Ives, who was a Lorentzian, concluded, “The space and time concepts of Newton and Maxwell are retained without alteration. . . . It is the dimensions of the material instruments for measuring space and time that change, not space and time that are distorted.”17 On Ives’s accomplishment, Martin Ruderfer observes that Ives made the same number of basic assumptions as did Einstein, so that his theory has the same “beauty,” thereby elevating Lorentz’s theory to the same level as Einstein’s.18 Thus, it is incorrect that simplicity favors Einsteinian-Minkowskian relativity over Lorentzian relativity.
I suspect that at the root of many physicists’ aversion to Lorentzian relativity is the conviction which comes to expression in Einstein’s aphorism: “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.”19 That is to say, if there exists in nature a fundamental asymmetry, then nature will not conspire to conceal it from us. But Lorentzian relativity requires us to believe that although absolute simultaneity and length exist in the world, nature conceals these from us by slowing down our clocks and shrinking our measuring rods when we try to detect them. D’Abro voices his objection to such a conspiracy of nature:
If Nature was blind, by what marvelous coincidence had all things been so adjusted as to conceal a velocity through the ether? And if Nature was wise, she had surely other things to attend to, more worthy of her consideration, and would scarcely be interested in hampering our feeble attempts to philosophize. In Lorentz’s theory, Nature, when we read into her system all these extra-ordinary adjustments ad hoc, is made to appear mischievous; it was exceedingly difficult to reconcile one’s self to finding such human traits in the universal plan.20
It must first be said that d’Abro greatly exaggerates the extent of the alleged conspiracy. After all, STR is a restricted theory: It is only uniform motion relative to the privileged reference frame which is concealed from us. But acceleration and rotation are absolute motions which nature does nothing to conceal. Moreover, as we have seen, modern equivalents of the classical aether do exist and serve to pick out a privileged reference frame; and recent experiments concerning Bell’s Theorem plausibly require the existence of relations of absolute simultaneity.21 When non-Lorentzians complain that nature is conspiring to conceal a privileged frame and absolute simultaneity from us, one wonders what evidence it would take to convince them. The harder it is for nature to provide such evidence, the less compelling the charge that she is conspiring to conceal the truth from us.
But even apart from these considerations, one must surely question the presupposition that if fundamental asymmetries exist, nature must disclose these to us. As Martin Carrier writes,
Science would be an easy matter if the fundamental states of nature expressed themselves candidly and frankly in experience. In that case we could simply collect the truths lying ready before our eyes. In fact, however, nature is more reserved and shy, and its fundamental states often appear in masquerade. Put less metaphorically, there is no straightforward one-to-one correspondence between a theoretical and an empirical state. One of the reasons for the lack of such a tight connection is that distortions may enter into the relation between theory and evidence, and these distortions may alter the empirical manifestation of a theoretical state. As a result, it is in general a nontrivial task to excavate the underlying state from distorted evidence.22
Each sentence of Carrier’s statement deserves pondering. What he says about the distortion of a theoretical state in its empirical manifestation is literally true in the case of Lorentzian relativity. If in general it is difficult to excavate the underlying state of nature from distorted evidence, if nature’s fundamental states often appear in masquerade, then why is the Lorentzian account of relativistic phenomena unacceptable? Tim Maudlin, a philosopher of science who has specialized in the implications of Bell’s Theorem, after surveying all the attempts to integrate the EPR results with Relativity Theory, concludes, “One way or another God has played us a nasty trick.”23 He maintains that the Lorentzian solution cannot be rejected on the grounds that it would be deceptive of nature, for the partisans of all the solutions say the same thing about the others. In the end, he muses, “the real challenge falls to the theologians of physics, who must justify the ways of a Deity who is, if not evil, at least extremely mischievous.”24
As for d’Abro’s complaint about finding “human traits in the universal plan,” the Lorentzian might in response appeal to the so-called Anthropic Principle.25 According to that principle, features of the universe can be seen in the correct perspective only if we keep in mind that certain features of the universe are necessary if observers like us are to exist. If the universe were not to have those features, then we would not be here to observe the ones it has. Now our very existence depends upon the maintenance of certain states of equilibrium within us. But length contraction and clock retardation are, on the Lorentzian view, the result precisely of material systems’ maintaining their equilibrium states while being in motion.26 Thus, if nature lacked this compensating behavior, we would not be here to observe the fact! Given that we could not exist without it, why should we be surprised at observing nature’s “conspiracy”?
But why is nature structured in such a way? Given the theistic perspective from which we approach these questions, we should hardly be surprised at discovering that the universe is designed in such a way as to support our existence. We should expect that God will have chosen laws of nature which will maintain the equilibrium states essential to our existence. Even if, as d’Abro puts it, Nature is blind, God is not; and if Nature is not wise, God is. It is not Nature, then, who is concerned with our feeble selves, who deems us worthy subjects to attend to, but the Creator and Sustainer of the universe who is mindful of man (Ps. 8:3-8). Subtle is the Lord, merciful He is also.
A final ostensible advantage of the space-time interpretation comes from the General Theory of Relativity. In GTR gravity is understood not as a force but in terms of the curvature of space-time. Matter is conceived to warp space-time, just as a heavy object placed on a taut rubber sheet causes a depression in the sheet. If a ball bearing is rolled across the sheet, its path will be deflected by the depression, perhaps enough that the ball bearing circles around the object and finally collides with it. In a similar way, a planet orbiting the sun is conceived to do so not because of any gravitational attraction that the sun is exerting on the planet but because the planet is, so to speak, “coasting downhill” in the curved space-time warped by the sun’s mass.
Now the question raised by this geometrical approach to gravitation in GTR is whether it is to be understood realistically or merely instrumentally (that is, as a convenient tool without implications for reality). For what it is worth, most physicists are apparently content to take the theory instrumentally. Curved space-time is just a geometrical model of the force of gravity. According to the noted philosopher of science Arthur Fine, few working, knowledgeable scientists give credence to the realist construal of GTR. Rather GTR is seen as “a magnificent organizing tool” for dealing with gravitational problems: “most who actually use it think of the theory as a powerful instrument, rather than as expressing a ‘big truth’.”27 It can be safely said that no scientific disadvantage arises from treating the geometrical approach to gravity as merely instrumental.
Indeed, on the contrary, it can be argued that a realist understanding of space-time actually obscures our understanding of nature by substituting geometry for a physical gravitational force, thus impeding progress in connecting the theory of gravity to the theory of particles. In his Gravitation and Cosmology, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg reflects,
In learning general relativity, and then in teaching it to classes at Berkeley and M.I.T., I became dissatisfied with what seemed to be the usual approach to the subject. I found that in most textbooks geometric ideas were given a starring role. . . .
Of course, this was Einstein’s point of view, and his preeminent genius necessarily shapes our understanding of the theory he created. However, I believe that the geometrical approach has driven a wedge between general relativity and the theory of elementary particles. As long as it could be hoped, as Einstein did hope, that matter would eventually be understood in geometrical terms, it made sense to give Riemannian geometry a primary role in describing the theory of gravitation. But now the passage of time has taught us not to expect that the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions can be understood in geometrical terms, and too great an emphasis on geometry can only obscure the deep connections between gravitation and the rest of physics.28
Weinberg contends that taking gravity to be a real force is “a crucial link” between GTR and particle physics, since there must then be a particle of gravitational radiation, the so-called graviton.29 The whole search for a unified theory of the forces of nature, such as is sought in so-called super-string theory and M-theory, presupposes such a link. The geometrical approach of space-time realism is thus a positive impediment to our gaining a more integrated understanding of physics. Geometrical space-time, in Weinberg’s view, should be understood “only as a mathematical tool” and “not as a fundamental basis for the theory of gravitation.”30
In summary, while the space-time interpretation of STR is in some respects superior to the relativity interpretation, there do not seem to be comparably good reasons for preferring it to a Lorentzian approach to Relativity Theory. On the contrary, if our arguments for divine temporality are correct, then a Lorentzian theory of relativity must be true, since the frame coinciding with God’s “now” will be privileged.
Indeed, on the basis of what we have already discovered,31 I think we have very substantive reasons to reject space-time realism. For inherent to the concept of space-time is the indissoluble unification of space and time into a four-dimensional continuum. But we have seen that time can exist independently of space. For if God, existing alone without creation, were to experience a sequence of mental events in the contents of consciousness, time would exist wholly in the absence of space. I take this simple consideration to be a knock-down argument against the view that time and space are indissolubly united in space-time. Thus, my sympathies lie with the French physicist Henri Arzeliès when he states, “The four-dimensional continuum should therefore be regarded as a useful tool, and not as a physical ‘reality’.”32
In conclusion, the superiority of the Minkowskian space-time interpretation to the original Einsteinian relativity interpretation of STR does not serve to justify the static theory of time, for this overlooks a Lorentzian approach to Relativity Theory, an approach which is at least empirically equivalent to the rival views, is no less plausible than the space-time interpretation, and yet is compatible with a dynamic theory of time. Reacting to the claim that a space-time approach to Relativity Theory shows tense and temporal becoming to be unreal, the philosopher of science Max Black is forthright:
This picture of a “block universe,” composed of a timeless web of “world-lines” in a four-dimensional space, however strongly suggested by the theory of relativity, is a piece of gratuitous metaphysics. . . . Here, as so often in the philosophy of science, a useful limitation in the form of representation is mistaken for a deficiency in the universe.33
So long as a Lorentzian approach to Relativity Theory is no less plausible than its competitors, the present argument for the static theory of time is unsuccessful.
EXPOSITION
Apart from the support allegedly lent to the static conception of time by Relativity Theory, there are precious few arguments of a positive nature for a static theory of time. But in his oft-reprinted case for the mind-dependence of temporal becoming, philosopher of science Adolf Grünbaum does present briefly three such arguments. They may serve us as the focal point for this section.
On Grünbaum’s view, being experienced is essential to any event’s occurring now and, hence, to temporal becoming. He asserts, “independently of being perceived, physical events themselves qualify at no time as occurring now and hence as such do not become.”34 “Becoming,” he says, “is mind-dependent because it is not an attribute of physical events per se, but requires the occurrence of states of conceptualized awareness.”35
What reasons are there to think that temporal becoming does not characterize events themselves but is a subjective phenomenon? It is at this point that Grünbaum presents his three arguments.
1. The triviality of objective now-ness. Grünbaum invites us to consider a statement such as “It is now 3 p.m.” Such a statement is clearly informative. But if the word “now” does not refer to the content of some subjective awareness, then there seems to be nothing for it to refer to other than 3 p.m. itself. Thus the informative statement “It is now 3 p.m.” becomes the trivial statement “It is 3 p.m. at 3 p.m.,” which is evidently wrong-headed.
If the defender of tensed time says that “now” refers to a primitive property of now-ness or presentness, Grünbaum remains unconvinced: “I am totally at a loss to see that anything non-trivial can possibly be asserted by the claim that at 3 p.m. nowness (presentness) inheres in the events of 3 p.m. For all I am able to discern here is that the events of 3 p.m. are indeed those of 3 p.m. on the day in question!”36
Grünbaum’s argument can be formulated in the following way:
1. “It is now 3 p.m.” is an informative statement.
2. If presentness is not mind-dependent, then “It is now 3 p.m.” is not an informative statement.
3. Therefore, presentness is mind-dependent.
And, of course, if presentness is mind-dependent, then it is not an objective feature of reality, as the partisans of tensed time affirm.
2. The absence of becoming from physical time. Grünbaum considers this his most important argument. Physics knows nothing of temporal becoming. But if becoming were an objective feature of the world, then physical theories could not afford to ignore it without doing detriment to their explanatory success. Since such theories are quite successful, temporal becoming must be purely subjective.
We can formulate this argument as follows:
1. Current theories of physics take no cognizance of temporal becoming.
2. If temporal becoming is an objective feature of the world, then, if current theories of physics are explanatorily successful, they must take cognizance of temporal becoming.
3. Current theories of physics are explanatorily successful.
4. Therefore, temporal becoming is not an objective feature of the world.
But if there is no objective temporal becoming, then a static theory of time is correct.
3. Why is it now? Grünbaum’s third argument is that a tenseless theory of time does not involve an important perplexity which besets the tensed theory of time, namely, why do the events which are now happening in 2001 become present in 2001 rather than at some other time? This is not, Grünbaum emphasizes, the same question as why the events happen in 2001. One could give a causal history leading up to the events in order to explain why the events occur in 2001. But what Grünbaum wants to know is why the events of the year 2001 become present in the year 2001 rather than sooner or later. On his view they are now in 2001 because there is some subjective awareness in the year 2001 which is apprehending the occurrence of these events at the same time as the awareness itself. But the defender of tensed time has no non-trivial answer to the question.
The argument seems to go as follows:
1. If now-ness is an objective feature of events, then there must be distinct explanations for why an event occurs in the year 2001 and why events of the year 2001 have now-ness in 2001.
2. There cannot be distinct explanations for these facts.
3. Therefore, now-ness is not an objective feature of events.
On the basis of these three arguments Grünbaum believes himself to have proved that temporal becoming is mind-dependent and, therefore, that the static theory of time is correct.
CRITIQUE
Let us consider each of Grünbaum’s arguments in turn.
1. The triviality of objective now-ness. The defender of tensed time will want to maintain that presentness is not mind-dependent and that therefore the second premise of Grünbaum’s first argument is false. “It is now 3 p.m.” is an informative statement on a tensed theory of time. Indeed, it will be recalled that it was John Perry’s work on “the essential indexical” which convinced philosophers that such a statement does not have the same meaning as a tenseless statement.37 On Grünbaum’s view this sentence means something like, “It is 3 p.m. simultaneous with a certain conceptualized awareness.” But, as Perry showed, this is a tenseless truth which will not inform me as to whether I should leave for the meeting starting at 3 p.m. Thus, it is Grünbaum’s construal of “now” which is crucially uninformative.
By contrast, in telling us that 3 p.m. is now or has presentness, as the tensed theory affirms, the statement is vitally informative. Grünbaum’s mistake was that he confused being present with being present at 3 p.m. To say that 3 p.m. is present at 3 p.m. is trivial, but to say that 3 p.m. is present is informative. To say that it is now 3 p.m. is to say that of all possible times only 3 p.m. has actuality.
Thus, Grünbaum’s first argument is based on a confusion and has been overtaken by subsequent developments in the philosophy of language.
2. The absence of becoming from physical time. A number of thinkers have challenged the first premise of Grünbaum’s argument, that current theories of physics take no cognizance of temporal becoming. It is certainly true that now-ness plays a vital role in certain sciences such as meteorology or geology. For example, in forecasting weather or volcanic eruptions, scientists do not want to know simply the probability of a hurricane’s striking Galveston or Montserrat’s exploding at a certain time and date. They want to know if such events will take place next week. In other words, they want to know tensed facts about these events, which seems to contradict Grünbaum’s first premise.
But perhaps Grünbaum would say that such concerns belong to applied science, not to the theories of physics themselves. If temporal becoming is real, it must appear in physical theory, which it does not. If this is his claim, then it is ironic that more recent advocates of tenseless time have blasted contemporary physics precisely because it is so thoroughly infected with the presumption of temporal becoming. In his book Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point, Huw Price issues a ringing call for a wholesale reform of physical theory to make it truly tenseless by achieving what he calls an Archimedean perspective. According to Price, “the ordinary temporal perspective is so familiar, and so deeply imbedded, that we need to be suspicious of many of the concepts used in contemporary physics.”38 Even our regarding the Big Bang as the beginning, rather than the end, of the universe is to betray the assumption of a tensed perspective. Still more fundamentally, Price complains, “The conceptual apparatus of physics seems to be loaded with the asymmetric temporality of the ordinary world view. Notions such as degree of freedom, potential, and even disposition itself, for example, seem to embody the conception of an open future, for which present systems are variously prepared.”39 In Price’s view we have only begun to imagine what physics would look like if it were thoroughly de-tensed. Grünbaum might protest that Price’s concern is not with temporal becoming (which Grünbaum denies), but with temporal anisotropy (which Grünbaum affirms). But Price’s point is that apart from the reality of temporal becoming, it simply becomes gratuitous to affirm the anisotropy of time, as contemporary physics does. Insofar as physical theory presupposes temporal anisotropy—which according to Price is “so very, very far”40—it also presupposes the objectivity of temporal becoming.
In any case we should surely call into question premise (2). Unapplied theories need take no cognizance of tense in order to be explanatorily successful. In fact, as Max Black explains, it is precisely the universal character of scientific statements that should lead us to expect that they would be stated in non-indexical, tenseless terms:
It is easy to understand why theoretical physics should express its formal results in a language that is independent of context, using formulas or sentences, from which the occasion words are absent. This procedure has the great advantage of no reconstruction of the original context being required on the part of any reader. . . . If a scientist were to say, “I then saw a green flash at the edge of the sun’s disk,” anyone who was absent at the time of the original observation would need to know who spoke, and where and when, in order to obtain the intended information. No such supplementary information is needed in order to understand Boyle’s law or any other freely repeatable scientific statement.41
This universalizing feature of scientific theories, their abstraction from the here and now, militates against capturing presentness in a scientific theory. But by making scientific theories tenseless, one need not thereby undermine their explanatory adequacy; on the contrary, one makes them applicable to all times.
The de-tensing of scientific theories has an important implication, however. It serves to underline Newton’s distinction between time itself and our empirical measures thereof. Time in physics is an abstraction from what is arguably a richer metaphysical reality. For that reason all reductionistic views of time, which equate time with physical time, are bound to be inadequate. For the same reason philosophers and especially theologians cannot look to scientists to tell them about the nature of time, much less divine eternity, since physics does not even work with a full-orbed conception of time. As the philosopher Mary Cleugh has warned,
The “t” of physics is improperly called time. . . . It is an abstraction from lived time, and in the process all that is distinctively temporal has been eliminated. Past, present, and future have gone: in their stead remains only the logical relation of before and after, expressed in terms of numbers. . . .42
Moreover, since t represents a number, mathematical operations can be carried out on it which make no sense with respect to time itself. For example, t can be assigned negative or even imaginary values! As Cleugh says, “What is the wildest absurdity of dreams is merely altering the sign for the physicist.”43 If the metaphysician can find no intelligible interpretation of such operations, he will justifiably regard them as mere mathematical tricks with no implication for reality. In a fascinating review of the time concept in various fields of physics alone, Carlo Rovelli has emphasized how unlike the intuitive notion of time physical time concepts are, and how diverse they are when compared among themselves.44 He lists eight characteristics commonly associated with time:
1. One-dimensional: Time can be thought of as a collection of instants which can be arranged in a one-dimensional line.
2. Metric: Time intervals can be measured such that two intervals can be said to have equal duration.
3. Temporally global: The real variable t which we use to denote the measure of time goes through every real value from –infinity to +infinity.
4. Spatially global: The time variable t can be uniquely defined at all space points.
5. External: The flow of time is independent of the specific dynamics of the objects moving in time.
6. Unique: There are not many times, but just the time.
7. Directional: It is possible to distinguish the past from the future direction of the time-line.
8. Present: There always exists a preferred instant of time, the Now.
Rovelli then provides the following chart to illustrate the diversity of the physical time concept (Fig. 5.1). Even if one is disposed to dispute some of the specifics, there is, I think, no gainsaying Rovelli’s point that physical time is very different from our ordinary notion of time and, moreover, that because time is differently defined in different fields of physics, there is no unitary notion of physical time. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that all of these operationally defined “times” are not really time at all but just various measures of time suitable for their respective fields of inquiry. Sklar has protested that
If what we mean by “time” when we talk of the time order of events of the physical world has nothing to do with the meaning of “time” as meant when we talk about order in time of our experiences, why call it time at all? Why not give it an absurd name, deliberately chosen to be meaningless (like “strangeness”) and so avoid the mistake of thinking that we know what we are talking about when we talk about the time order of events in the physical world?45
The gap between the ordinary conception of time and the physicist’s “t” is so great that Black in fact did advise scientists to stop talking about “time” and to refer to their own concept simply as “t”!46 This is no doubt asking too much; but it is surely not too much to ask scientists—and philosophers as well—to quit drawing metaphysical conclusions based on the pale abstraction of time that plays a role in physics.
Fig. 5.1: The concept of time in various fields of physics in comparison with the customary concept.
3. Why is it “now”? Grünbaum wants to know why an event which becomes present in 2001 becomes present in 2001 rather than at some other date. But this appears to be asking why a tautology is true. Perhaps we can interpret Grünbaum to be asking of some event why it becomes present in 2001, period—which is not a trivial question. But then why think that the explanation for why the event becomes present in 2001 must be any different from the explanation for why the event tenselessly occurs in 2001? If the causal history leading up to an event suffices to explain why the event occurs in 2001, then the same causal history seems to explain why it becomes present in 2001. After all, on a tensed view of time, if an event occurs at t, then it must have presentness at t. When else could it possibly have presentness?
Grünbaum thinks that it trivializes the mind-independence of becoming to say that “by definition an event occurring at a certain clock time t has the unanalyzable attribute of nowness at time t.”47 But the defender of tensed time is not saying that this is a matter of definition. He is claiming that, necessarily, an event has presentness only when that event occurs. But if this is true—and how could it not be true?—then any explanation of why an event occurs at a certain time will explain as well why it becomes present at that time. Thus, Grünbaum’s query is itself a trivial question. Any explanation of why an event occurs at t will also suffice to explain why that event haspresentness at t.
In short, Grünbaum’s arguments for the mind-dependence of becoming are not convincing. Given as well the failure of the appeal to STR, we have seen no good reason to think that a static conception of time is correct.
We now turn our attention to arguments against a static conception of time. Four objections stand out as particularly significant.
EXPOSITION
Proponents of a dynamic theory of time have long accused static time theorists of “spatializing” time. Milic Capek, for example, complains that “From Zeno to Russell and some contemporary misinterpretations of relativity, the fallacy of ‘spatialization of time’ is one of the most persistent features of our intellectual tradition.”48 Now this allegation should not be understood as the charge that the static theory of time literally turns time into a fourth dimension of space. After all, static time theorists affirm that time is ordered by the relations of earlier than and later than, which are uniquely temporal relations. Rather the charge of “spatializing” time is a metaphorical way of alleging that the static conception of time, by de-tensing time, has essentially robbed the temporal dimension of what makes it time, so that there is no justification for calling its ordering relations “earlier than” and “later than,” with the result that this tenseless dimension can no longer justifiably be called “time.” The Dutch philosopher of science Peter Kroes states the objection clearly: “it is not clear at all that the occurrence of events in the tenseless sense can generate a real temporal ordering. This tenseless occurrence of events only leads to a formal ordering relation between the physical events, not to a temporal ordering.”49
In effect, then, the advocate of dynamic time is charging that the static theory of time is incoherent. For on the one hand it affirms the reality of time and temporal relations, but on the other hand it denies the reality of tense, which is foundational to time and temporal relations. We can formulate the objection:
1. If tense is not objectively real, temporal relations are not objectively real.
2. If temporal relations are not objectively real, time is not objectively real.
3. Time is objectively real.
4. Therefore, tense is objectively real.
All parties agree on premise (3). The issue depends upon what justification the dynamic time theorist can give for premises (1) and (2).
CRITIQUE
Some tenseless time theorists, such as Horwich and Price, would dispute the truth of premise (2). On their view, events in space-time are not ordered by relations of earlier than and later than. But as we have seen, that dimension called “time” in their theories is so unlike the ordinary conception of time that we are surely justified in doubting that time actually exists in their theories. Most philosophers, whether in the tenseless camp or in the tensed camp, agree that the relations earlier than/later than are essential to the nature of time.
So it comes down to premise (1). The challenge in justifying premise (1) is overcoming the static time theorist’s view that temporal relations are just unanalyzable givens. Every theory has its given assumptions. So why is the defender of static time not entitled simply to assume that temporal relations are real?
To meet this challenge, the dynamic time theorist must show how a reductive analysis of temporal relations can be given in terms of a tensed theory of time. The point goes all the way back to McTaggart. He maintained that the temporal relation earlier than is analyzable in terms of tenses: “The term P is earlier than the term Q, if it is ever past while Q is present orpresent while Q is future.”50 Remarkably, the static time theorist D. H. Mellor seems to agree.51 Mellor actually offers three different ways of defining “earlier than” and “later than” in terms of tensed time:
def.
to be more past or less future than
def.
to be more future or less past than
e
e*
def.
e
e*
e*
e
e
e*
e
e*
e
e*
def.
e*
e
e
e*
e*
e
e*
e
e
e*
def.
e
e*
e
e*
e
e*
def.
e*
e
e*
e
Michael Tooley, though himself a defender of dynamic time, contends that all such attempts to analyze temporal relations in terms of tensed concepts are viciously circular and therefore fail.52 We therefore need to examine Mellor’s three definitions more closely.
Definition 1 appears to give a wonderfully simple and straightforward analysis of the earlier than and later than relations in terms of tensed concepts. Nevertheless, Richard Gale has objected to a reductive analysis in terms of more/less past and more/less future because these are not “pure” tenses.53 Gale’s misgivings seem quite groundless, however. For tensed time does not consist simply of past, present, and future. There are all sorts of other tenses as well, such as the pluperfect and future perfect. And any temporal location relative to the present is a tensed time, such as “two years ago,” “next Saturday,” “for the last forty years,” and so forth. So long as predicates such as “more past” are ascribed to an event absolutely, rather than relative to a tenseless date, they are pure tenses.
Tooley also objects to any analysis in terms of more past or more future.54 He claims that these cannot be taken as primitive (or undefined) concepts of a tensed theory of time. But any attempt to analyze them, he continues, will involve the relations earlier than/later than, so that the analysis ultimately becomes circular.
But why, we may ask, can the defender of tensed time not regard tenses such as more past as being unanalyzable terms in his theory? The only reason Tooley gives is that more past is analogous to more future, and the concept more future cannot be a primitive concept because the concept future is not primitive. But why think that the simple tensed concept future cannot be taken as a primitive concept? Tooley’s reasons for denying that future can be a primitive concept are based upon empiricist assumptions which he does not even attempt to justify. Deny those assumptions, as I think we should, and there is no reason why the theorist of tensed time should not take more future and more past as primitive concepts of his theory.
But suppose Tooley were right, that more past and more future cannot be primitive concepts. Why can we not analyze them in terms of other tensed concepts? For example, more past could be analyzed as longer ago, and more future could be analyzed as further hence. Or we could analyze them in terms of the present, a distance scale, and the orientation of time. Something is more future, for example, if it is at a greater distance from the present in the forward direction of time. Thus, our analysis of more past and more future need not appeal to relations of earlier than/later than and is, therefore, not circular.
In short, Mellor’s Definition 1 provides an admirable reductive analysis of the temporal relations earlier than and later than in tensed terms.
What about Definition 2? This definition does not ascribe tenses to events absolutely, but relative to a time. Event e* is future when e is present, and so forth. Both Gale and Tooley have objected that this analysis is viciously circular.55 For to say that e* is future at t or that e is past at t just means e* is later than t or e is earlier than t. Thus, one is defining earlier than/later than in terms of earlier than/later than.
Now Gale and Tooley are correct that all the statements in Definition 2 are tenseless statements. But that does not automatically imply that they do not ascribe real tenses to events. In order to make such ascriptions clear, we may simply substitute different expressions which clearly do affirm the reality of tense. For example:
e
e*
def.
t
t
e
e
e
e*
def.
t
t
e
e*
Definition 2’ still consists of tenseless statements and provides an analysis relative to a time, but it clearly ascribes tenses to events. Gale and Tooley’s mistake may have been the erroneous assumption that tenselessly true statements cannot be used to ascribe tenses. So far as I can see, then, Mellor’s second definition also succeeds in showing how a reductive analysis of temporal relations can be provided by the advocate of tensed time.
Definition 3 differs from the other two in analyzing temporal relations in terms of temporal becoming. It seems to me that it can be considerably simplified:
e
e*
def.
e
e*
e
e*
def.
e*
e
Someone might suspect that the terms “first” and “second” are synonyms for “earlier” and “later,” so that the analysis is viciously circular. But a moment’s reflection shows that this is not the case. “First” and “second” are ordinal numbers which can be ascribed to spatial points or even abstract objects such as numbers and so are not inherently temporal. Given the order in which events become present, the temporal ordering of the events as earlier and later necessarily follows.
Thus, it seems that Mellor is quite right that if the tensed theory of time is true, then one can found temporal relations on the reality of tense or temporal becoming.
So far so good! The question that now arises is: Why think that temporal relations will still exist between events once the temporal dimension has been stripped of all tenses? It is universally admitted that no reverse reductive analysis of tenses in terms of tenseless temporal relations can be given. So why think that such relations would exist independently of tense? Again the point is McTaggart’s. He held that once the temporal series of events is robbed of all tenses, it would still exist as a series, but not as a temporal series. It would be an atemporal series, like the natural numbers series or the letters of the alphabet. He wrote,
it does not follow that, if we subtract the [tense] determinations from time, we shall have no series left at all. There is a series—a series of permanent relations to one another of those realities which in time are events—and it is the combination of this series with the [tense] determinations which gives time. But this other series . . . is not temporal, for it involves no change, but only an order. Events have an order. They are, let us say, in the order M, N, O, P. And they are therefore not in the order M, O, N, P, or O, N, M, P, or in any other possible order. But that they have this order no more implies that there is any change than the order of the letters of the alphabet, or of the Peers on the Parliament roll, implies any change. . . . It is only when change and time come in that the relations of this . . . series become relations of earlier and later, and so it becomes a [temporal] series.56
This tenseless series will include every entity which is a member of the temporal series, and all the members will be in the same order as they are in the temporal series. What, then, is the difference between them? Just this: The ordering relations of the temporal series are earlier than and later than, whereas the ordering relations of the atemporal series are not. What relations do order the atemporal series? McTaggart did not think of them as spatial relations. Rather he made the ingenious suggestion:
They are the relations “included in” and “inclusive of.” Of any two terms in the [temporal] series, one is earlier than the other, which is later than the first, and by means of these relations all the terms can be arranged in one definite order. And of any two terms in the [atemporal] series, one is included in the other, which includes the first, and by means of these relations all the terms can be arranged in one definite order. And it seems to me possible . . . that it is the relations of “included in” and “inclusive of” which appear as the relations of “earlier than” and “later than”. . . .57
On McTaggart’s view, such an atemporal series when infused with tense yields a temporal series; but remove tense from time and what is left over is not a temporal series at all.
Now at this point we might imagine the protagonist of a tensed theory of time turning to the defender of static time and saying, “I have a foundation in my view of time for affirming the existence of the temporal relations earlier than and later than. But what entitles you, having stripped time of all tense, to assume that what remains is really time? Why should we regard those relations existing among members of your tenseless series as earlier than and later than rather than as some atemporal relations akin to the ordering relations less than/greater than which exist among members of the natural number series? Indeed, why think that any such relations exist at all? On my theory, tense entails the existence of temporal relations, and temporal relations entail the existence of tense. So why, if there really is no past, present, and future, as you claim, should we think that earlier and later still exist?”
Now what is the de-tenser to say at this point? One typical response is to deny steadfastly that there is any problem here at all. Thus Oaklander asks,
What distinguishes greater than among numbers from later than among events? . . . the answer is not to be found in anything other than the relation itself. The temporal relation of succession is a simple and unanalyzable relation. . . . We can understand the difference between later than in time and “later than” (or greater than) in a number series because we can perceive the difference between the two relations. There is no further basis for the difference. . . .58
Now Oaklander is certainly right that we understand the difference between these two relations. But that does nothing to answer the question why we should think that in the absence of tense there would be any earlier than relation among events. Oaklander has little more to say than, “That’s just the way it is!” But such a response would be acceptable only if the tensed time theorist could not provide a reductive analysis of temporal relations in terms of tensed concepts, or else the static time theorist could provide a reductive analysis of tensed concepts in terms of tenseless temporal relations. But the situation is not symmetric. The tensed time theorist can analyze temporal relations in terms of tense, and it is universally recognized that the reverse is not possible for the tenseless time theorist. Thus, the assumption by defenders of tenseless time that earlier and later can exist without tense appears to be gratuitous. As Mellor says, “Their ‘block’ universes have no more real time in them than McTaggart’s does—the difference being that McTaggart sees this and they, by and large, do not.”59
Mellor himself attempts to differentiate between earlier and later on the basis of perception and causation. He thinks that we perceive before and after among events just because our perceptions themselves are ordered as before and after. I have one perception after another; therefore, I perceive one event to follow another. Mellor believes that this rule holds for “not human senses only, but any sense able to perceive [temporal] precedence.”60 What determines the order in which we perceive events? Mellor answers that it is the causal order between my perceptions. He then claims that any causally connected pair of events can be perceived as standing in a relation of before and after. Thus, the direction of time is the direction of causation.
Mellor’s account of temporal relations, however, is inadequate. Consider his basic claim that one cannot perceive the temporal order of events unless one’s perceptions are similarly ordered. If a static theory of time is correct, as Mellor maintains, and God is timeless, then He perceives the temporal order among events without having perceptions which are also temporally ordered. Of course, God’s perception of events is not based on physical signals (such as light beams), but Mellor himself says that
any kind of event could be a perception. It is not being of some special kind—e.g. electrical or chemical or organic—that makes an event a perception. Perception is simply a causal process of acquiring belief, a process from which no kind of event can be excluded a priori. . . . I am not interested only in human perception. My proposal is to apply to all perceptions of precedence, by all conceivable perceivers, among all sorts of events, things and dates, and it must be defensible as such.61
God cannot therefore be excluded as a perceiver of relations of temporal precedence. Yet obviously a timeless God would not have a temporally ordered series of perceptions. As Paul Helm puts it, God “knows (timelessly) the whole temporal series in rather the way in which for us certain things are known at a glance.”62 This counter-example undermines Mellor’s whole account, for it shows that relations of before and after have no inherent connection to the temporal order of perceptions.
Moreover, it is far from obvious that even for temporal creatures the perception of temporal order has to do with the order of their perceptions. On a static theory of time, according to which all events in time are equally real, there seems to be no reason why causal influences cannot proceed backwards as well as forwards in time. God might know that our perception of event e1 precedes our perception of event e2. But if our perception of e2 has a backward causal influence on our perception of e1, then on Mellor’s account our perception of e2 is temporally prior to our perception of e1—which, as God knows, is not the case.
Finally, even if we agree that causal influences all proceed in the same direction, Mellor’s account falls short. For he still faces the same problem as those who try to base the arrow of time on physical processes: It is wholly arbitrary which direction one calls “earlier” and which “later.” Who is to say that on the static theory of time, the direction of causation is not from later to earlier? Even more fundamentally, why think that on a static theory of time earlier and later even exist at all? The fact that all causes run in the same direction is no reason to think that this founds a temporal relation. It is hard to see how Mellor gives us anything more than a tenseless order of causation devoid of any real time.
In conclusion, I do not know of any successful attempt to prove that once time has been de-tensed, genuine temporal relations of earlier than/later than would still exist. Most tenseless time defenders seem content merely to stipulate that temporal relations exist on their theory. But such a stipulation is drawn into question by the dynamic time theorist’s successful reduction of temporal relations to tensed facts. Given that there are many other atemporal relations that are analogous to the earlier than/later than relations, it seems incumbent upon the defender of static time to provide some justification for thinking that the relations he posits between events are truly temporal relations. In the absence of any such justification, the theorist of tenseless time does seem to stand convicted of “spatializing” time.
We have already seen that the static time theorist’s arguments that temporal becoming is merely subjective, or mind-dependent, are not sound.63 Now we may push our inquiry a notch further by asking whether the claim that temporal becoming is mind-dependent is even coherent.
EXPOSITION
When the defender of a static conception of time says that temporal becoming is “mind-dependent,” it is not altogether clear precisely what he means. But one thing is clear: Such a claim implies that in the absence of conscious beings there would be no such thing as temporal becoming. If there were no minds, there would be no past, present, and future, things would not come into and go out of existence, the whole space-time continuum would just exist as a four-dimensional block, and change would be reduced to things’ tenselessly possessing different properties at different space-time locations. This much is clear. What remains unclear, however, is how the presence of conscious minds serves to introduce temporal becoming into this static picture.
Are we to understand that there actually exists in the mental realm a temporal becoming which is absent from the physical realm? Is there a real temporal becoming of the contents of consciousness? Or are we rather to understand that temporal becoming is just as unreal in the mental realm as in the physical realm? Do mental events exist just as tenselessly as physical events?
Proponents of static time have not been very forthcoming in addressing such questions. But the advocate of dynamic time may argue that, whichever interpretation you choose, the doctrine of the mind-dependence of becoming turns out to be incoherent. His argument goes something like this:
1. The temporal becoming of mental events is either mind-dependent or it is not.
2. If it is not, then temporal becoming is objective.
3. If it is, then temporal becoming is objective.
4. Therefore, temporal becoming is objective.
Premise (1) takes for granted that we do experience the temporal becoming of the contents of consciousness. This is a datum of the phenomenology of temporal consciousness, as we have seen.64 The question thus arises, is the temporal becoming of our experiences, such as the temporal becoming of physical events, mind-dependent or not? Now in one sense, the temporal becoming of mental events is obviously mind-dependent: Namely, without minds there would be no mental events at all! That is non-controversial. But we are asking whether the becoming of mental events is mind-dependent in the sense of “non-objective” or “illusory.” The dynamic time theorist argues that however one answers, temporal becoming will turn out to be objective.
CRITIQUE
Consider first premise (2). Suppose the static time theorist says that the temporal becoming of our mental experiences is not mind-dependent. It immediately follows that temporal becoming is objective. For mental events, at least, come to be and pass away.
Perhaps the defender of static time will attempt to save the day by adopting a hybrid view: that there is no becoming in the physical world, but that there is real becoming in the mental realm of experience. Mental events do become, but physical events do not.
It is easy to show, however, that such a view leads to what Milic Capek calls an “absurd dualism” of “two altogether disparate realms whose correlation becomes completely unintelligible.”65 For example, why do I have the “now-awareness” of time t1 instead of t2? All the physical brain states at t1 and t2 never change, yet my now-awareness does change and is uniquely located. Why is there one privileged now-awareness? The defender of dynamic time has a ready answer: because only the physical states at t1 actually exist. But for the static time theorist it is inexplicable why one now-awareness exists. Then there is the problem of temporal order. On a static view of time there is no reason why now-awarenesses should proceed in a particular order. There is no reason why my now-awareness should not leap about willy-nilly among all the times at which I exist. Or consider the problem of the direction of time. Why does temporal becoming in the mental realm proceed in one direction only, rather than in the opposite direction or in both? Or the problem of inter-subjectivity: Why do we all experience the series of physical events in the same order and direction? Indeed, why do we share the same now? All of these questions become unanswerable on the view that mental events become while physical events do not. But such questions vanish (or are easily answered) if mental and physical events become together.
In any case, it will be of no use to the defender of divine timelessness to adopt such a hybrid view. For there will still be tensed facts and temporal becoming with respect to the mental realm, and thus the arguments for divine temporality based on the reality of tensed facts and temporal becoming go through successfully.66
So now consider premise (3). Suppose the static time theorist says that the becoming of mental events is itself mind-dependent. On this view mental events themselves are strung out in a temporal series and are all equally real. My now-awareness of yesterday and tomorrow is just as real as my now-awareness of today. The experience of the successive becoming of experiences is illusory. Experiences do not really come to be and pass away.
One problem of this view is that it flies in the face of the phenomenology of time consciousness. It denies that we experience the becoming of our experiences. For if we do have such an experience, then we must ask all over again whether that experience is mind-dependent or not, and so on. To halt a vicious infinite regress, the static time theorist must deny that we do experience the becoming of experiences. But such a phenomenology is patently inaccurate. As we have seen,67 the so-called presentness of experience is a fundamental datum which the advocate of static time must account for.
Even more fundamentally, however, the position that mental becoming is illusory is incoherent. Bluntly put, even the illusion of becoming implies becoming. Becoming cannot be mere illusion or appearance because an illusion or appearance of becoming involves becoming. An idealist philosopher can consistently hold space to be illusory, for an illusion of space is not itself spatial. But an illusion of time is itself a temporal experience. A person who has a supposedly illusory experience of becoming is experiencing the becoming of his experiences, and this experiencing is itself a flux of experience. Change cannot be wholly illusory, for the illusion of change is a changing illusion. Thus, the idea that temporal becoming is wholly illusory and unreal is self-refuting.
The static conception of time requires the mind-dependence of becoming in order to explain away our experience of time as past, present, and future and as continually becoming. Since physical reality itself neither becomes nor is tensed on such a view, becoming and tense must be purely subjective. They do not exist independently of minds. But the thesis of the mind-dependence of becoming is now seen to be deeply incoherent, since our mental lives involve becoming in the contents of consciousness. This becoming in the mental realm must be regarded as wholly illusory by the defender of static time, lest he admit the objective reality of tense and becoming and find himself saddled with an untenable dualism. But the position that becoming is wholly illusory is self-refuting, since such an illusion itself involves becoming. Thus, the static conception of time must be fatally flawed.
EXPOSITION
In our discussion of McTaggart’s Paradox, we briefly touched on the problem of intrinsic change.68 The problem posed by intrinsic change, it will be recalled, is how something can remain self-identical if it has different properties at different times.
The solution of the proponent of dynamic time is to take tense seriously and deny that any object has (present tense) different properties at different times. Since only the present time exists, an object only has those properties it presently has, and one can always make the time referred to by “the present time” short enough that the object will not experience any change of intrinsic properties during that time. On the presentist view, things exist wholly at a time and endure through time to later times. This solution to the problem of intrinsic change is known as endurantism.
The solution of the advocate of static time is typically to deny that things exist wholly at a time and to affirm instead that the three-dimensional objects that appear to us are in reality four-dimensional objects extended in time as well as space. The three-dimensional object we see is just a slice or part of a greater four-dimensional object. Things thus have three-dimensional spatio-temporal parts. For example, the Jimmy Carter we see is really just a part of the four-dimensional Jimmy Carter. Intrinsic change is understood as a four-dimensional object’s having three-dimensional parts with different properties. Thus, Jimmy Carter today is not the same man who once was president. For both of them are parts of the four-dimensional Carter, and they obviously are not the same part. Thus, the spatio-temporal parts of a four-dimensional object are not identical, since they are different parts, and so they can have different properties. But the overall four-dimensional object never undergoes intrinsic change. It just has parts with different properties. Just as a three-dimensional object can be round at one end and flat at another end, so a four-dimensional object can have parts which differ in their properties. Thus, neither four-dimensional objects nor their parts endure through time, since time is one of their dimensions. In order to characterize the way in which four-dimensional objects are extended in time, philosophers have said that such objects “perdure.” Accordingly, this solution to intrinsic change is called perdurantism.
Perdurantism obviously presupposes a static view of time. But must a defender of static time be a perdurantist? Could he embrace space-time realism and yet conceive of objects as enduring through time, having spatial, but not spatio-temporal, parts?
It seems that endurantism is not an option for the static time theorist.69 For if he embraces endurantism, he is left without any viable solution to the problem of intrinsic change. He can no longer hold that intrinsic change is an object’s different spatio-temporal parts’ possessing different properties, for endurantism denies that objects have spatio-temporal parts. An object existing at t1 and t2 is the same object, not two parts of a greater, extended super-object. But how can it be the identical object at t1 and t2 if it has different properties at t1 and t2? For two objects to be identical, they must have all the same properties. The dynamic time theorist escapes the problem because he denies that t1 and t2 both exist. If t1 is present, then the only object which exists is the object at t1. But the static time theorist is stuck with the equal reality of both t1 and t2 and hence with the objects existing at those times. Since the objects at those respective times are not identical, it follows that things do not endure after all but only exist for an instant; change is an illusion. Thus, the static time theorist, if he is to affirm the reality of intrinsic change, must embrace perdurantism.70
Perdurantism is, however, a controversial doctrine beset with difficulties. Thus, the dynamic time theorist may argue:
1. If a static conception of time is correct, then the doctrine of perdurantism is true.
2. The doctrine of perdurantism is not true.
3. Therefore, the static conception of time is not correct.
We have already seen the justification for premise (1). It remains to be seen what objections can be raised to the doctrine of perdurantism.
CRITIQUE
Some philosophers doubt whether the doctrine of perdurantism can even be coherently formulated. There is a real danger of circularity: A perduring object is defined as a collection of spatio-temporal parts; but a spatio- temporal part is then defined as a piece of a perduring object. Because these definitions are circular, they give us no understanding of what a perduring object or a spatio-temporal part really is. This problem has driven some perdurantists to rather desperate lengths. Mark Heller, a leading perdurantist who teaches at Southern Methodist University, for example, defines a physical object as simply the material content of a region of space-time.71 But this is a bizarre view of physical objects, for it entails that the material content of the region of space-time occupied by some of my left arm and shirt sleeve, some of my desktop, and a quantity of the adjacent air constitutes a physical object! If we say that the boundaries of a four-dimensional object are fixed by the spatial boundaries of its three-dimensional parts, then we face the difficult question of which three-dimensional objects go to comprise the four-dimensional whole. Remember that, on perdurantism, we are not dealing with the same three-dimensional object which is enduring through time; rather we are collecting together into a four-dimensional whole entirely distinct and diverse objects—but then how do we know which ones combine to form a perduring whole? Since all the three-dimensional objects are non-identical, it seems to become arbitrary. This situation has led some perdurantists such as Michael Jubien to advocate the even more radical doctrine of object conventionalism: the view that no physical objects at all objectively exist. According to Jubien, there really are no things—there is just “stuff” spread around in space-time, and we carve it up according to human conventions into different objects.72 Heller, too, came to embrace conventionalism, even affirming that the objects we call “people” are merely conventional.73
Conventionalism is an extraordinarily high price to pay for perdurantism. Heller himself confesses to being somewhat embarrassed by the “jokes people cannot help making when they are confronted with someone who claims that there are no people.”74 Even worse, conventionalism seems to be incoherent. For, according to Heller, conventionalism affirms that (i) conventions are made by people, (ii) people are themselves conventional, and (iii) conventional objects do not really exist!75 Heller tries to elude this incoherence by admitting that many of his own statements are, strictly speaking, false; but he does nothing, so far as I can see, to modify statements (i)-(iii) or to remove the incoherence. Thus conventionalism seems a counsel of despair.
Perhaps these problems of formulating a coherent doctrine of perdurantism can be overcome. We may leave that task to the perdurantists. For perdurantism faces formidable objections on quite other grounds.
1. Perdurantism’s account of intrinsic change is implausible. Perdurantism is the static time theorist’s solution to the problem of intrinsic change. But it is evident that according to perdurantism there just is no intrinsic change. The spatio-temporal parts of an object never change, nor does the hyper-object itself change. Change is just different parts’ having different properties. Since these parts are themselves distinct objects, no thing ever changes. Thus change is really an illusion.
This is a strange doctrine, to say the least. It implies that when an object appears to change, what we are really seeing is a succession of quite distinct and different objects one after another. One critic has reacted to this by saying,
this seems to me a crazy metaphysic. . . . if I have had exactly one bit of chalk in my hand for the last hour, then there is something in my hand . . . which was not in my hand three minutes ago, and indeed, [is] such that no part of it was in my hand three minutes ago. As I hold the bit of chalk in my hand, new stuff, new chalk keeps constantly coming into existence ex nihilo. That strikes me as obviously false.76
Heller tries to mitigate the apparent craziness of perdurantism by denying that the new chalk comes into being ex nihilo (out of nothing).77 On Heller’s view, the whole space-time region occupied by the chalk exists, and we just experience portions of it successively. This response helps, I think, to allay the charge of ex nihilo creation. But it does nothing to qualify the conclusion that what I hold in my hand is a wholly different object than what I was holding a second ago. The shorter piece of chalk I now hold is not the remainder of a longer piece I held before; they are utterly discrete objects. This certainly seems implausible.
Heller also attempts to turn the tables on the endurantist. He takes as his springboard Notre Dame philosopher Peter van Inwagen’s critique of the so-called Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts.78 This doctrine states that if a region of space is occupied by a material object, then the material content of any sub-region of that space also constitutes a material object. This doctrine would imply that the matter comprising my big toe, my right side, and a strip in between is a material object (just what Heller thinks, as we have seen!). Van Inwagen presents an ingenious argumen t against the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts. He says the doctrine must be false because it necessarily implies that it is impossible for any material object to lose one of its parts, which is obviously false. He argues as follows: Imagine some object which has a part not vital to its continued existence (for example, me and one of my kidneys). According to the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts, there exists in this case another object in addition to myself which is comprised of me minus my kidney. Now the whole object is obviously not identical to the supposed object which is the whole object minus the part. For the whole object and this diminished object lacking the part do not have exactly the same size or constituents. Suppose, then, that the whole object actually loses the part (I donate one kidney for transplantation). Since the part is not essential to the object’s continued existence, the object still exists after losing the part (I survive the operation). Now the original object is identical to the diminished object. But this scenario violates the Principle of the Transitivity of Identity: If x=y=z, then x=z. The best way out of this muddle, van Inwagen advises, is to deny the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts. Before the object loses its part, there just is no such object as the diminished object. There is the whole object, and the alleged diminished object is a figment of the imagination.
Heller thinks van Inwagen’s solution to the problem is implausible. Instead he maintains that once an object has lost its part, it is no longer identical to the original object. There are two objects—the whole object and the diminished object—and the whole object just ceases to exist. Heller’s solution just is a rejection of endurance. On his view I do not survive the kidney transplant operation. There is no intrinsic change of objects. Since he regards the endurantist denial of the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts as implausible, he takes this as evidence for perdurantism.
But Heller’s reasoning is surely perverse! It seems far more obvious that one can (and does) survive a kidney transplant operation than that arbitrary undetached parts exist. Heller’s perdurantism entails the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts. Such a view not only denies the reality of intrinsic change but also results in the existence of all sorts of pseudo-objects, as we have seen. Thus, in my mind, far from making perdurantism more plausible, the warranting of such pseudo-objects makes it all the more incredible. At the very least, the endurantist denial of the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts hardly counts against endurantism, as Heller thinks.
Thus, it seems to me that in denying the reality of intrinsic change, perdurantism presents us with an implausible view of change.
2. Perdurantism flies in the face of the phenomenology of personal consciousness. One of the strangest features of perdurantism is its account of persons and personal identity. On the perdurantist view, persons are not what we normally think them to be: self-conscious individuals who act and react with other things in space and time. Such individuals are, on the perdurantist view, just spatio-temporal parts or stages of persons, which are really four-dimensional objects. As such, persons are not self-conscious and have no intelligence, no volition, no emotions, no interactions, no agency, no moral responsibility, no aesthetic appreciation, indeed, virtually none of the properties we normally associate with persons. Persons, on this view, are four-dimensional objects which are changeless, non-conscious entities.
But surely such a view is absurd. I cannot imagine any sane individual who would say, if asked, that he or she is not a person. In the phenomenon of self-consciousness we immediately know ourselves as persons. Why would anyone want to embrace so outlandish a solution to the problem of intrinsic change as one that forces me to deny that I, as a self-conscious individual, am a person?
Now perhaps the perdurantist could revise his view such that we are in fact persons, and the four-dimensional object is a hyper-person or a meta-person or what have you. But such a revision would cause intractable problems for personal identity. Since spatio-temporal parts are themselves distinct objects, it follows that a meta-person is composed of a series of distinct persons! But am I seriously to believe that I at this second am not the same person as the one who was here a second ago, that my memories are really recalling some other person’s experiences, that my consciousness of personal continuity from one moment to the next is an illusion? It would seem crazy to believe such things.
Consider once more the problem of intrinsic change. Perdurantism denies that any object goes through intrinsic change. But I have every reason to believe that there is at least one thing which endures through intrinsic change, namely, I myself. I existed a second ago, and despite the myriad changes which have taken place in me I still exist now. Endurantism, by taking tense seriously, permits the preservation of personal identity over time. But perdurantism forces us to say that I did not exist one second ago, nor shall I endure for another moment.
3. Perdurantism is incompatible with moral responsibility, praise, and blame. Since a person is conceived to be a non-conscious, four-dimensional object, it becomes nonsensical to treat such an object as a moral agent. The perdurantist might try to avoid this unwelcome conclusion by insisting that the spatio-temporal parts or stages of persons are moral agents. But then it becomes impossible to hold one person-stage responsible for what another person-stage has done. How can one person-stage be blamed and punished for what an entirely distinct, different person-stage did? Why should I be punished for his crimes? By the same token, how can moral praise be given to a person-stage for what some other, no longer existent person-stage did? Why should I, who have done nothing, get the credit for the heroism of some other person-stage?
Since moral responsibility is incompatible with perdurantism and we have more reason for affirming the former than the latter, we ought to reject perdurantism. This argument should carry special weight for the theist, for he affirms not only that people are responsible moral agents but also that God is just in holding them responsible and is Himself a virtuous agent who is to be praised for His gracious deeds.
4. Perdurantism implies an implausible view of essential properties. Again the ingenious van Inwagen has developed a powerful argument against perdurantism which is analogous to his objection to the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts.79 He invites us to consider the French philosopher Descartes as a four-dimensional object which perdured from 1596 to 1650. Descartes’s temporal extent is not essential to him: He might have died younger or lived longer. In that case Descartes would have been composed of a different set of temporal parts, a set formed by subtracting or adding some parts from or to the set of parts he did have. Let us call the temporal part of Descartes which is all of him except for the last year of his life “Diminished-Descartes.” On the perdurantist view Descartes and Diminished-Descartes are not identical. After all, they have different temporal extents and different spatio-temporal parts. Now Descartes could have died a year earlier than he did and thus could have lacked the temporal part which is the last year of his life. But if Descartes had died one year earlier than he did, then Descartes and Diminished-Descartes would have been identical. But if Descartes and Diminished-Descartes could have been identical, then there exist two non-identical things which could have been the same thing. But this violates both the Principle of the Transitivity of Identity, as well as the Principle of the Necessity of Identity (if x=y, then necessarily x=y). Hence, Descartes is not a perduring object composed of temporal parts.
A simpler way of proving the same point is to consider the largest temporal part of Descartes, which just is the whole four-dimensional object called Descartes. Temporal parts have their extents essentially (an hour, for example, could not be any shorter or longer and still be an hour). So Descartes had his temporal extent essentially. But that implies that Descartes could not have lived any longer or shorter than he did—which is obviously false.
What can the perdurantist say in response to this argument? Heller’s reaction has been inconsistent. At first he bit the bullet and affirmed that because spatio-temporal objects have their boundaries essentially, Descartes could not have died one year before he did.80 This seems wildly implausible, but Heller insists that we have no choice, since endurantism is demonstrably wrong. His argument against endurantism is that it is uniquely vulnerable to the ancient Greek paradoxes known as sorites. These were puzzles typically dealing with relations between a whole and its parts. For example, how many bits of an object may be removed before it ceases to be that object? Heller maintains that endurantism can give no good answer to such sorites paradoxes.
The problem with this response by Heller is that the same sorites paradoxes can be applied to a four-dimensional object as to a three-dimensional object. How many spatio-temporal bits could be removed from a four-dimensional object before it would cease to be that object? The way Heller avoids that problem is by affirming that four-dimensional objects have their spatio-temporal boundaries essentially. But the three-dimensionalist could with equal justification say that three-dimensional objects have their spatial boundaries essentially. Thus, it is not perdurantism which does the work for Heller in avoiding the sorites paradoxes, but a quite distinct doctrine which is independent of the number and kind of dimensions a thing has.81 In any case, there are also available less radical endurantist solutions to the sorites paradoxes.82
In a later response, Heller denies that according to perdurantism a thing has its spatio-temporal boundaries essentially.83 He now maintains that a thing’s identity can be fixed, not by its boundaries but by some individuating principle of unity. Thus a thing could have different spatio-temporal boundaries and remain the same thing. The idea is that Descartes could have had a different temporal extent than he has and yet still be Descartes.
On this revised view, a temporal part is not identified by its extent but by some other principle. For example, if Philip has been drunk, then we may speak of his drunken spatio-temporal part. If he had drunk less, his drunken part would have been shorter. That does not mean that the hours during which he was drunk would have contracted down to, say, only thirty minutes each. Rather it means, on Heller’s view, that Philip’s drunken spatio-temporal part could have been shorter because its identity is determined by its drunkenness, not by its length.
The problem for Heller’s view becomes evident when we consider a statement such as, “If Philip had drunk less, then his drunken part would not have been drunk.” This statement seems to be true. The spatio-temporal part of Philip which is drunk could have not been drunk. But on Heller’s view that statement must be false, for drunkenness is one of the identity conditions of Philip’s drunken part and thus essential to it. So Heller has to say that if Philip had drunk less, his drunken part would not have existed. But that seems bizarre. Is it not more plausible that his drunken part would have been sober? Compare a spatial analogy. Suppose we say, “If Philip had worn a hat, his sunburned face would not have been sunburned.” We naturally take this to mean that his sunburned part might lack the property of being sunburned. But it seems crazy to say that this means that if he had worn a hat, Philip would have lacked one of his spatial parts, namely, his face. That would be to affirm that Philip’s face cannot be either pale or sunburned. Being pale or sunburned is doubtless an accidental, not an essential, property of Philip’s face. In the same way, drunkenness is not an essential property of Philip’s spatio-temporal parts and so does not belong to their identity conditions but is rather an accidental property of them. In short, temporal parts are to be identified by their extents, which fix their boundaries. But then we are stuck with the implausible view that Descartes could not have lived any longer or shorter than he did.
Jubien’s response to van Inwagen is even more desperate. As an object conventionalist, he would escape the argument by denying that there is any such thing referred to by the name “Descartes.”84 On Jubien’s view, to say that something is Descartes is not to make an identity statement at all. Rather it is to assert that some “stuff” in a certain region of space-time has the property being Descartes. The fact that Descartes could have lived longer or shorter is interpreted to mean that other amounts of stuff could have had the property being Descartes. Thus, there is no object denoted by “Descartes” at all; there is merely some stuff with the property being Descartes, and some other quantity of stuff might have had that property instead.
Such a view of reference and identity will hardly commend itself to most philosophers as more plausible than the premises of van Inwagen’s argument. It requires us to say that Descartes as such does not exist. Not even the four-dimensional chunk of stuff which has the property being Descartes is Descartes. But that seems crazy. How could something have the property of being Descartes without being Descartes? Moreover, this view requires us to hold that identity statements are really disguised ascriptions of properties. But identity statements are necessary, whereas Jubien’s property ascriptions are not. Furthermore, it requires us to say that anything could have had the property of being Descartes. But is this possible? Could I have actually been Descartes? Could my cat Muff? How could anyone possibly possess the property of being Descartes unless he is Descartes? But then such property ascriptions presuppose identity statements.
The fact that perdurantists are driven to such desperate expedients to avoid van Inwagen’s argument merely testifies to its soundness and the plausibility of its conclusion. Objects do not perdure.
For all these reasons, perdurantism is an extremely implausible doctrine—certainly, at least, less plausible than its competitor, endurantism. But since a static theory of time implies the doctrine of perdurantism, the static conception of time is therefore as equally implausible, wholly apart from its other problems.
EXPOSITION
Christian thinkers must assess any position not only philosophically and scientifically but also theologically. A position which is philosophically and scientifically tenable but which is theologically incompatible with Christian doctrine is thereby exposed as false. Thus theological objections to metaphysical worldviews must be taken very seriously.
The static conception of time does seem to be theologically problematic in that it significantly compromises the biblical doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). Accordingly, the proponent of a dynamic conception of time may argue:
1. If the static conception of time is correct, a robust doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not true.
2. A robust doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is true.
3. Therefore, the static conception of time is not correct.
CRITIQUE
The Christian theist is committed to a robust doctrine of creatio ex nihilo and so accepts premise (2). The Bible begins with the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Thus with majestic simplicity the author of the opening chapter of Genesis differentiated his viewpoint not only from that of the ancient creation myths of Israel’s neighbors but also effectively from pantheism, panentheism, and polytheism. For the author of Genesis 1, no pre-existent material seems to be assumed, no warring gods or primordial dragons are present—only God, who is said to “create” (bara’, a word used only with God as its subject and which does not presuppose a material substratum) “the heavens and the earth” (ēṯhaššamayim we ēṯ ha ’ares, a Hebrew expression for the totality of the world or, more simply, the universe). Moreover, this act of creation took place “in the beginning” (berēšîṯ, used here as in Isa. 46:10 to indicate an absolute beginning). The author thereby gives us to understand that the universe had a temporal origin and thus implies creatio ex nihilo in the temporal sense that God brought the universe into being without a material cause at some point in the finite past.85
Later biblical authors so understood the Genesis account of creation.86 The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is also implied in various places in early extra-biblical Jewish literature.87 And the Church Fathers, while heavily influenced by Greek thought, dug in their heels concerning the doctrine of creation, sturdily insisting, with few exceptions, on the temporal creation of the universe ex nihilo in opposition to the eternity of matter.88 A tradition of robust argumentation against the past eternity of the world and in favor of creatio ex nihilo, issuing from the Alexandrian Christian theologian John Philoponus, continued for centuries in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought.89 In 1215, the Catholic Church promulgated temporal creatio ex nihilo as official church doctrine at the Fourth Lateran Council, declaring God to be “Creator of all things, visible and invisible, . . . who, by His almighty power, from the beginning of time has created both orders in the same way out of nothing.” This remarkable declaration not only affirms that God created everything extra se without any material cause, but even that time itself had a beginning. The doctrine of creation is thus inherently bound up with temporal considerations and entails that God brought the universe into being at some point in the past without any antecedent or contemporaneous material cause.
Unfortunately, many contemporary theologians evince an unseemly timorousness concerning the biblical affirmation of creatio ex nihilo. Claiming that “creation is concerned with ontological origin, not temporal beginning,”90 John Polkinghorne states, “The doctrine of creation is not an assertion about what God did in the past to set things going; it is an assertion of what he is doing in the present to maintain the universe in being.”91 In fact, however, nearly the opposite is the case, biblically speaking. Creation in the Bible virtually always involves the notion of a temporal beginning (as is evident simply from the ubiquitous past-tense, rather than present-tense, verbs with respect to God’s creating), and one will have to search hard for passages supporting the notion of the ongoing ontological dependence of the universe upon God’s sustaining will. Those passages are there to be found (Heb. 1:3); but we are everywhere confronted with the idea that at some point in the past God created the world. After surveying the data, George Hendry concludes that “Creation in the language of the Bible unquestionably connotes origination . . . , the bringing into existence of something that did not previously exist.”92 A robust doctrine of creation therefore involves both the affirmation that God brought the universe into being out of nothing at some moment in the finite past and the affirmation that He thereafter sustains it in being moment by moment.93
Now the static time theorist can ingenuously make only the second affirmation. For him creatio ex nihilo means only that the world depends immediately upon God for its existence at every moment. The static time theorist’s affirmation that God brought the universe into being out of nothing at some moment in the finite past can at best mean that there is (tenselessly) a moment which is separated from any other moment by a finite interval of time and before which no moment of comparable duration exists and that whatever exists at any moment, including the moments themselves, is tenselessly sustained in being immediately by God. All this adds to the doctrine of ontological dependence is that the tenselessly existing block universe has a front edge. It has a beginning only in the sense that a yardstick has a beginning. There is in the actual world no state of affairs of God existing alone without the space-time universe. God never really brings the universe into being; as a whole it co-exists timelessly with Him.
Leftow, whose theory of divine eternity entails a static theory of time, admits as much. He writes,
So if God is timeless and a world or time exists, there is no phase of His life during which He is without a world or time or has not yet decided to create them, even if the world or time had a beginning.
. . . God need not begin to do anything, then, in order to create a world with a beginning. That action that from temporal perspectives is God’s beginning time and the universe is in eternity just the timeless obtaining of a causal dependence or sustaining relation between God and a world whose time has a first moment.
. . . in eternity, God is changelessly the Lord: He timelessly coexists with His creatures.94
Leftow never addresses the theological objection that such an emasculated doctrine of creatio ex nihilo does not do justice to the biblical data, which give us clearly to understand that God and the universe do not timelessly co-exist, but that the actual world includes a state of affairs which is God’s existing alone without the universe. Typically such a state is described in the ordinary language of the biblical authors as obtaining “before” the world began (John 17:24; Eph. 1:4; 1 Pet. 1:20; cf. Matt. 13:35; 24:21; 25:34; Luke 11:50; Heb. 9:26; Rev. 13:8; 17:8). To quote again the Psalmist’s words: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (Ps. 90:2, kjv). Jude’s doxology is especially interesting: “to the only God . . . be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and for ever” (Jude 25, emphasis added). How these ordinary language expressions are to be formulated philosophically—the Bible is not, as Paul Helm reminds us, a philosophy book from which a doctrine of divine eternity may simply be read off the surface—will be addressed in chapter 6; but their intent is clear and they must be taken seriously.95 The notion that God and the universe timelessly co-exist in an asymmetrical relation of ontological dependence is not only foreign to but actually incompatible with the biblical writers’ conception of creatio ex nihilo, of God’s existing alone and bringing the world into being out of nothing.
Not only so, but the idea that God and creation tenselessly co-exist seems to negate God’s triumph over evil. On the static theory of time, evil is never really vanquished from the world: It exists just as sturdily as ever at its various locations in space-time, even if those locations are all earlier than some point in cosmic time (for example, Judgment Day). Creation is never really purged of evil on this view; at most it can be said that evil only infects those parts of creation which are earlier than certain other events. But the stain is indelible. What this implies for events such as the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ is very troubling. In a sense Christ hangs permanently on the cross, for the dreadful events of a.d. 30 never fade away or transpire. The victory of the resurrection becomes a hollow triumph, for the spatio-temporal parts of Jesus that were crucified and buried remain dying and dead and are never raised to new life. It is unclear how we can say with Paul, “Death is swallowed up in victory!” (1 Cor. 15:54) when, on a static theory of time, death is never really done away with.
A robust doctrine of creation, then, involves more than just the tenseless ontological dependence of the world on God. It involves the affirmation that God brings it about that the world comes into being at some time t. Something comes into being at a time t if and only if the following three conditions are met: (i) The thing exists at t, (ii) t is the first time at which the thing exists, and (iii) the thing’s existing at t is a tensed fact.96 The static time theorist cannot affirm that the world came into being at the first moment of its existence and therefore cannot affirm that God created the world in the full sense of the word “create.” It seems to me, therefore, that a static conception of time is theologically unacceptable. A robust doctrine of creation requires a dynamic theory of time.
In conclusion, the static conception of time has little to commend it, being based primarily on a Minkowskian, space-time interpretation of Relativity Theory, an interpretation which we are under no constraint to adopt. On the other hand, the static conception of time faces philosophical and theological difficulties that are truly formidable: It “spatializes” time; it gives an incoherent account of the experience of becoming; its analysis of intrinsic change implies the bizarre and multiply flawed doctrine of perdurantism; and it emasculates the biblical doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.
Weighing the arguments for and against the dynamic or static conception of time respectively, we seem to have good grounds for believing what people have intuitively always believed: that time is tensed and temporal becoming is real. The dynamic conception of time is correct.
Recommended Reading
INTERPRETATIONS OF RELATIVITY THEORY
Balashov, Yuri. “Enduring and Perduring Objects in Minkowski Space-Time.” Philosophical Studies 99 (2000): 129-166.
Builder, Geoffrey. “Ether and Relativity.” Australian Journal of Physics 11 (1958): 279-297, reprinted in Speculations in Science and Technology 2 (1979): 230-242.
________. “The Constancy of the Velocity of Light.” Australian Journal of Physics 11 (1958): 457-480, reprinted in Speculations in Science and Technology 2 (1971): 421-437.
Nerlich, Graham. What Spacetime Explains. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
________. “Time as Spacetime.” In Questions of Time and Tense, pp. 119-134.Edited by Robin Le Poidevin. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.
Prokhovnik, Simon J. Light in Einstein’s Universe. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1985.
Taylor, Edwin F., and John Archibald Wheeler. Spacetime Physics. San Francisco:W. H. Freeman, 1966.
THE MIND-DEPENDENCE OF BECOMING
Black, Max. Review of The Natural Philosophy of Time, by G. J. Whitrow. Scientific American 206 (April 1962), pp. 179-184.
Cleugh, Mary F. Time and Its Importance in Modern Thought. With a foreword byL. Susan Stebbing. London: Methuen, 1937.
Kroes, Peter. Time: Its Structure and Role in Physical Theories. Synthese Library 179. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985.
McGilvray, James A. “A Defense of Physical Becoming.” Erkenntnis 14 (1979): 275-299.
Geach, Peter. “Some Problems about Time.” In Logic Matters, pp. 302-318. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
“SPATIALIZING” TIME
Gale, Richard M. The Language of Time, pp. 27-28, 86-100. International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968.
McTaggart, J. Ellis. “The Unreality of Time.” Mind 17 (1908): 457-474.
Mellor, D. H. Real Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Craig, William Lane. “Tense and Temporal Relations.” American Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming).
THE PROBLEM OF INTRINSIC CHANGE
Carter, William R. and Scott Hestevold. “On Passage and Persistence.” American Philosophical Quarterly 31 (1994): 269-283.
Hoy, Ronald C. “Becoming and Persons.” Philosophical Studies 34 (1978): 269-280.
Lewis, David. On the Plurality of Worlds, pp. 199-204. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
Lewis, Delmas. “Persons, Morality, and Tenselessness.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (1986): 305-309.
Merricks, Trenton. “Endurance and Indiscernibility.” Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994): 165-184.
Van Inwagen, Peter. “The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 62 (1981): 123-137.
________. “Four-Dimensional Objects.” Noûs 24 (1990): 245-255.
CREATIO EX NIHILO
Westermann, Claus. Genesis 1–11. Translated John J. Scullion. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984.
Copan, Paul, “Is Creatio ex nihilo a Post-biblical Invention?” Trinity Journal 17 (1996): 77-93.
Craig, William Lane. “Creation and Conservation Once More.” Religious Studies 34 (1998): 177-188.
1 See chapter 2, pages 32-66.
2 H. Minkowski, “Space and Time,” in The Principle of Relativity, by A. Einstein, et al., trans. W. Perrett and G. B. Jeffery (New York: Dover Publications, 1952), 76.
3 Ibid., 75, 76.
4 Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Evolution of Physics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1938), 220.
5 Ibid., 217.
6 Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, 15th ed. (New York: Crown, 1961), 150.
7 Graham Nerlich, What Spacetime Explains (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 33.
8 Recall our account in chapter 2, pages 39-40.
9 See Yuri Balashov, “Enduring and Perduring Objects in Minkowski Space-Time,” Philosophical Studies 99 (2000): 129-166.
10 See John A. Winnie, “The Twin-Rod Thought Experiment,” American Journal of Physics 40 (1972): 1091-1094; M. F. Podlaha, “Length Contraction and Time Dilation in the Special Theory of Relativity—Real or Apparent Phenomena?” Indian Journal of Theoretical Physics 25 (1975): 74-75; Dieter Lorenz, “Über die Realität der FitzGerald-Lorentz Kontraction,” Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 13/2 (1982): 308-312.
11 A. Einstein, “Zum Ehrenfestschen Paradoxen,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 12 (1911): 509-510.
12 In the Twin Paradox, one twin stays at home on earth while his brother goes on a high-speed journey into outer space and back. When they meet again, relativity theory predicts that the traveling twin will have lived through a shorter time and so be younger than his stay-at-home brother. Although the story so told involves absolute motion of the traveling twin, it can be reformulated in terms of three brothers, involving only relative motion.
13 Arthur I. Miller, “On Some Other Approaches to Electrodynamics in 1905,” in Some Strangeness in the Proportion, ed. Harry Woolf (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1980), 85.
14 See account given by Edwin F. Taylor and John Archibald Wheeler, Spacetime Physics (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1966), 1-4.
15 See pages 188-215.
16 See pages 203-209.
17 Herbert E. Ives, “Derivation of the Lorentz Transformations,” Philosophical Magazine 36 (1945): 392-401; reprinted in Speculations in Science and Technology 2 (1979): 247, 255.
18 Martin Ruderfer, “Introduction to Ives’ ‘Derivation of the Lorentz Transformations’,” Speculations in Science and Technology 2 (1979): 243.
19 A remark of Albert Einstein during a visit to Princeton, upon being informed that D. C. Miller had claimed to have detected the earth’s motion through the aether (cited in Abraham Pais, “Subtle Is the Lord . . .”: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982], 113-114).
20 A. d’Abro, The Evolution of Scientific Thought, 2d rev. ed. (1927; rep. ed.: n.p.: Dover Publications, 1950), 138.
21 See chapter 2, pages 54-57.
22 Martin Carrier, “Physical Force or Geometrical Curvature?” in Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External Worlds, ed. John Earman, Allen I. Janis, Gerald J. Massey, and Nicholas Rescher (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 3.
23 Tim Maudlin, Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity, Aristotelian Society Series 13 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 241.
24 Ibid., 242.
25 I owe this insight to Robin Collins. For a brief explication of the Anthropic Principle, see The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition: An Encyclopedia, ed. G. B. Ferngren, E. J. Larson, and D. W. Amundsen (New York: Garland, 2000), s.v. “Anthropic Principle,” by William Lane Craig.
26 S. J. Prokhovnik, Light in Einstein’s Universe (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1985), 84-85.
27 Arthur Fine, The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and the Quantum Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 123.
28 Steven Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Explications of the General Theory of Relativity (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1972), vii; cf. 147. Riemannian geometry is the geometry of a positively curved surface, such as the surface of a sphere.
29 Ibid., 251.
30 Ibid., viii.
31 See chapter 2, page 66.
32 Henri Arzeliès, Relativistic Kinematics, rev. ed. (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1966), 258.
33 Max Black, review of The Natural Philosophy of Time by G. J. Whitrow, Scientific American 206 (April 1962), 181-182.
34 Adolf Grünbaum, “The Status of Temporal Becoming,” in Modern Science and Zeno’s Paradoxes (Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), 19.
35 Ibid., 8.
36 Ibid., 20.
37 See chapter 4, page 118.
38 Huw Price, Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 234.
39 Ibid., 260.
40 Ibid., 259.
41 Black, review of Natural Philosophy of Time, 181. By “occasion words” Black means indexical terms.
42 Mary F. Cleugh, Time and Its Importance in Modern Thought, with a foreword by L. Susan Stebbing (London: Methuen, 1937), 46-47.
43 Ibid., 46.
44 Carlo Rovelli, “What Does Present Days [sic] Physics Tell Us about Time and Space?” Lecture presented at the Annual Series Lectures of the Center for Philosophy of Science of the University of Pittsburgh, 17 September 1993.
45 Lawrence Sklar, “Time in Experience and in Theoretical Description of the World,” in Time’s Arrow Today, ed. Steven S. Savitt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 226.
46 Black, review of Natural Philosophy of Time, 182.
47 Grünbaum, “Status of Temporal Becoming,” 27.
48 Milic Capek, The Concepts of Space and Time, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 22 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1976), XXVI.
49 Peter Kroes, Time: Its Structure and Role in Physical Theories, Synthese Library 179 (Dordrecht:D. Reidel, 1985), 210.
50 J. M. E. McTaggart, The Nature of Existence, 2 vols., ed. C. D. Broad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927; rep. ed.: 1968), 2:271.
51 D. H. Mellor, Real Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 140.
52 Michael Tooley, Time, Tense, and Causation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), chapter 6.
53 Richard M. Gale, The Language of Time, International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), 93.
54 Tooley, Time, Tense, and Causation, 163, 179-180; cf. 98-99.
55 Gale, Language of Time, 90-91; Tooley, Time, Tense, and Causation, 161.
56 J. Ellis McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time,” Mind 17 (1908): 461-462. McTaggart called the series of tensed times the A-series, the series of tenseless dates the B-series, and the de-tensed, atemporal series the C-series. I have substituted the bracketed words for clarity’s sake.
57 McTaggart, Nature of Existence, 2:240.
58 Nathan Oaklander, Temporal Relations and Temporal Becoming (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984), 17.
59 D. H. Mellor, “McTaggart, Fixity, and Coming True,” in Reduction, Time, and Reality, ed. Richard Healey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 80.
60 Mellor, Real Time, 145.
61 Ibid., 153.
62 Paul Helm, Eternal God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 26.
63 See above, 180-188.
64 See chapter 4, pages 129-143.
65 Capek, Concepts of Space and Time, XLVII. The misdirected objections of Frederick Ferré, “Grünbaum on Temporal Becoming: A Critique,” International Philosophical Quarterly 12 (1972): 426-445, become sound when directed against this dualistic view.
66 See chapter 3, pages 88-109.
67 See chapter 4, pages 133-136.
68 See chapter 4, pages 148-149; cf. page 87.
69 For a good discussion see William R. Carter and Scott Hestevold, “On Passage and Persistence,” American Philosophical Quarterly 31 (1994): 269-283.
70 Some static time theorists have attempted to find an alternative in what is called adverbialism. For an effective critique of this doctrine, see Trenton Merricks, “Endurance and Indiscernibility,” Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994): 165-184.
71 Mark Heller, “Temporal Parts of Four-Dimensional Objects,” Philosophical Studies 46 (1984): 325.
72 Michael Jubien, Ontology, Modality, and the Fallacy of Reference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1.
73 Mark Heller, The Ontology of Physical Objects: Four-Dimensional Hunks of Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 23.
74 Ibid., 111.
75 Ibid., 66.
76 Judith Jarvis Thomsen, “Parthood and Identity over Time,” Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983): 213.
77 Heller, “Temporal Parts,” 332.
78 See Peter van Inwagen, “The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 62 (1981): 123-126.
79 Ibid., 133-137; idem, “Four-Dimensional Objects,” Noûs 24 (1990): 252-254.
80 Heller, Ontology of Physical Objects, 28.
81 The name of this doctrine is mereological essentialism.
82 See David S. Oderberg, The Metaphysics of Identity over Time (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 166-173; Peter van Inwagen, Material Beings (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 91-105, 228-229.
83 Mark Heller, “Varieties of Four-Dimensionalism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 71 (1993): 50-51.
84 Jubien, Ontology, 35-36.
85 On Genesis 1:1 as an independent clause which is not a mere chapter title, see Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11, trans. John Scullion (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 97; John Sailhamer, Genesis, Expositor’s Bible Commentary 2, ed. Frank Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1990), 21.
86 See, e.g., Prov. 8:27-29; cf. Ps. 104:5-9; also Isa. 44:24; 45:18, 24; Ps. 33:9; 90:2; John 1:1-3; Rom. 4:17; 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16, 17; Heb. 1:2-3; 11:3; Rev. 4:11.
87 E.g., 2 Maccabees 7:28; 1QS 3:15; Joseph and Aseneth 12:1-3; 2 Enoch 25:1ff; 26:1; Odes of Solomon 16:18-19; 2 Baruch 21:4. For discussion, see Paul Copan, “Is Creatio ex nihilo a Post-biblical Invention?: An Examination of Gerhard May’s Proposal,” Trinity Journal 17 (1996): 77-93.
88 Creatio ex nihilo is affirmed in the Shepherd of Hermas 1.6; 26.1 and the Apostolic Constitutions 8.12.6, 8; and by Tatian Oratio ad graecos 5.3; cf.4.1ff; 12.1; Theophilus Ad Autolycum 1.4; 2.4, 10, 13; and Irenaeus Adversus haeresis 3.10.3. For discussion, see Gerhard May, Creatio ex nihilo: The Doctrine of “Creation Out of Nothing” in Early Christian Thought, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994); cf. Copan’s review article in note 87, above.
89 See Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), 193-252; H. A. Wolfson, “Patristic Arguments against the Eternity of the World,” Harvard Theological Review 59 (1966): 354-367; idem, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976); H. A. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation, and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Richard C. Dales, Medieval Discussions of the Eternity of the World, Studies in Intellectual History 18 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990).
90 John Polkinghorne, critical notice of Cosmos as Creation, ed. Ted Peters, Expository Times 101 (1990): 317. According to Polkinghorne, “To speak of God as Creator is not to attempt an answer to the question Who lit the blue touch paper of the Big Bang? To talk in that way belongs to deism and not to Christian
theology” (John Polkinghorne, “Cosmology and Creation,” address at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, undated photocopy). “There is general agreement that the Big Bang is nothing special from a theological point of view. . . . The idea of creatio ex nihilo asserts the total dependence of the universe upon the sustaining will of its Creator” (Polkinghorne, critical notice of Cosmos as Creation, 317). Whether the Big Bang represents the moment of creation is, however, irrelevant to the conceptual content of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. The biblical doctrine, like deism, affirms a temporal beginning of the universe; moreover, deists did not in fact deny God’s conservation of the world in being but rather His supernatural action in the world.
91 Polkinghorne, “Cosmology and Creation.” So also Langdon Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1959); Ian Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 384; Arthur Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 78-79. This watered-down doctrine of creation is the legacy of the father of modern theology F. D. E. Schleiermacher. See his The Christian Faith, 2d ed., ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928), sec. 36-41. While acknowledging that the biblical conception of creation involves a temporal beginning (sec. 36.2), Schleiermacher held that this component of the doctrine could be safely suppressed in favor of the absolute dependence of the creation on God (sec. 41). See remarks by Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness, Studies in Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Schocken, 1970), 107-110.
92 George S. Hendry, “Eclipse of Creation,” Theology Today 28 (1972): 420. So also Copan, “Is Creatio ex nihilo a Post-biblical Invention?” 77-93.
93 For more on this distinction, see William Lane Craig, “Creation and Conservation Once More,” Religious Studies 34 (1998): 177-188.
94 Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity, Cornell Studies in Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 290-291, 310, cf. 322, where he affirms that God is eternally incarnate in Christ. Cf. also 239, where he affirms that in eternity events are “frozen” in an array of tenseless temporal positions. See also Yates’s chapter on timeless creation in John C. Yates, The Timelessness of God (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990), 131-163.
95 Consideration of creatio ex nihilo raises a nest of intriguing and difficult questions: Did God exist in time before the creation of the universe? Does creatio ex nihilo imply the creation of time itself? Can God’s priority to time be understood in some way other than chronological? I shall try to address these questions in the next chapter. For now it is enough to realize that the biblical writers’ expressions about God’s existing and planning “before” creation clearly mean to affirm that in some sense God was alone and then brought the world into being out of nothing.
96 If God can re-create things, then we would have to add to condition (ii) “or t is preceded by a time at which the thing did not exist.”