Suppose God tells Moses, among other things, that Jeanie will make a cup of tea tomorrow. Suppose Jeanie will decide tomorrow to make a cup of tea at 4:00 pm. Some have argued, however, that if it is even possible for God to tell Moses (or anyone else for that matter) what Jeanie will do, then we have a version of the same compatibility problem we would have if we held that God is in time and foreknows her tea making. It justifies, to Christians, the ability to believe in things that cannot be witnessed, or even those that are contradicted by evidence. The distinctions between the Sunnis and other groups regarding the holding of spiritual and political authority remained firm even after the caliphate ceased to exist as an effective political institution in the 13th century. If the possible prophet problem is serious enough to show that God’s timeless knowledge of future acts (future, that is, from our present vantage point) is incompatible with those acts being free, then holding God to be timeless does not solve the problem of foreknowledge. One advantage Leftow thinks his view affords is that it can meet Fitzgerald’s challenges while holding to the doctrine of divine simplicity.

He allegedly sexually assaulted her in the late 1990s. While she didn’t press charges, they reportedly settled out of court. While the proposal that God is timeless seems to offer a good strategy, at least one significant problem remains. The most prominent argument for divine timelessness is that this position offers a solution to the problem of God’s foreknowledge of free actions. First, it is only in the case of a temporal God foreknowing Jeanie’s making tea that she needs to have counterfactual power over the past, Second, if God knew a hundred years ago that she was going to make tea, there is a sense in which she can “get in between” God’s knowledge and the event. In a recent essay, he defends the idea that such features can be shared without rendering God temporal (Leftow 2002). He distinguishes between those properties that make something temporal and those that are typically temporal.

Leftow notes that nearly everyone who argues that God is timeless also holds that God’s life has at least some TTPs. If the points or moments or positions in the duration of the life of God are not to count as parts of that life, they must be of zero finite length. There can be the sort of duration that allows discrete moments to be individuated by location in the life of a metaphysically simple, timeless God. His life does contain points that are ordered sequentially, however. He insists that these points are not parts in the life of God. If the duration of God’s life was made up of discrete parts, God could not be a metaphysically simple being. Fitzgerald had criticized Stump and Kretzmann’s notion of timeless duration by insisting that any duration must be made up of distinct positions. If it is, then these points must correspond in some way to the points on the temporal line (called “T”).

Either he must argue for a principled distinction between there being moments in God’s life and his experiencing these moments (such that the moments can exist sequentially but be experienced all at once) or he must grant that earlier and later moments of God’s life can also be simultaneous. Therefore God is not a being whose life contains distinct parts. This feature of Special Relativity makes the analogy of the relations between a timeless being and a temporal event on the one hand and the relations between events in different reference frames quite weak. You will need to do your research into the current prices that are being set at the distributors and the current price per pair of jeans. Prioritizing when you might need the book will allow you to keep unread books at the forefront of your collection, as well as books you reach for frequently, such as reference books or favorite novels. Although there is no official religion in the US, religion plays an important part in public life and churches are centres of social events and business activities as well as places of worship. In this way the life of God is stretched out, so to speak, alongside temporal reality.