Concept

A-Theory vs B-Theory of Time and Divine Foreknowledge

Intro

Is the future out there already, just hidden from us? Or does it not exist yet, waiting to be made one moment at a time?

Philosophers have two main answers. The A-theory, also called presentism, says only the present moment is real. The past is gone, the future has not happened yet, and the now is constantly moving forward. The B-theory, also called eternalism, says past, present, and future are all equally real, like points on a map. From inside the world, you experience them as flowing, but from a higher vantage point they are all simply there.

The choice matters for how we think about God. If the B-theory is right, then God can look at the whole map of history at once. He sees Caesar crossing the Rubicon, you reading this sentence, and the last sunset of the universe in a single eternal glance. This is the classical view of divine eternity held by Boethius and Aquinas. God's knowledge of the future is direct sight, not prediction.

If the A-theory is right, the future is not yet real for anyone, even God, because there is nothing there to see. God then knows the future in some other way, perhaps through perfect knowledge of every cause and tendency in the world, or through his own decree of what will happen. William Lane Craig and Alan Padgett take this route. They reject divine timelessness and say God exists "everlastingly," moving with time but never overtaken by it.

Both positions are held by serious Christian thinkers and neither one is heretical. The split shapes downstream debates about how human free will fits with God's foreknowledge, what divine eternity means, and how the Trinity relates to time.

This page maps the two theories, the major Christian thinkers on each side, and the implications for foreknowledge, prayer, prophecy, and the doctrine of God.

In full

The philosophy-of-time dispute between the A-theory (or tensed theory; presentism) and the B-theory (or tenseless theory; eternalism), and the theological implications for how God knows the future and relates to the temporal order. The dispute matters for Christian theology because the two positions yield substantially different accounts of divine foreknowledge, divine omniscience, the compatibility of foreknowledge with creaturely freedom, and the metaphysics of divine eternity.

The codex holds both positions as held by orthodox Christians; the dispute is intra-philosophical-theology, not credal. The codex's leading classical-theist resources tend toward the B-theory + divine eternal-now combination (Boethius, Aquinas, the contemporary Stump-Kretzmann ET-simultaneity framework); contemporary analytic philosophers of religion are more split, with substantial A-theorist Christian voices (William Lane Craig, Alan Padgett) holding omnitemporal divine eternity rather than atemporal.

This hub is the meta-orientation for the philosophy-of-time / divine-foreknowledge cluster. See Eternity (Divine) for the broader divine-eternity treatment, Counterfactuals of Freedom for the Molinist apparatus, and Calvinism vs Arminianism vs Molinism vs Open Theism for the multi-position soteriological comparison.

The two theories of time

A-theory (tensed; presentism)

Core claim: Only the present is real. The past was real but no longer exists; the future is not yet real and does not yet exist. Temporal becoming is an objective feature of reality, the "now" genuinely moves forward, and the universe is constantly becoming.

Variants:

• Presentism (Prior, Bigelow, Crisp): only the present exists; past and future are mere abstracta
• Growing-block theory (Tooley, Forrest, Broad): the past and present are real; the future is not yet real and is added as time advances
• Moving-spotlight theory (Cameron, Skow): all moments of time exist but only one is "present", the spotlight moves

Foundational defender: A. N. Prior (tense logic in mid-20th-c. analytic philosophy)

B-theory (tenseless; eternalism)

Core claim: All times, past, present, and future, are equally real. The "block universe" of all events exists as a four-dimensional manifold; tensed language ("is now", "was", "will be") describes the position of an event relative to a perspective but does not pick out an objective metaphysical "now." Temporal becoming is an illusion (or at most a phenomenological feature, not a metaphysical one).

Strongly supported by: the special theory of relativity (Einstein 1905). On relativity, simultaneity is frame-relative; there is no objective universal "now"; events at spacelike separation cannot be put into a single objective temporal order. The relativistic four-dimensional spacetime manifold is naturally read as a B-theoretic block.

Foundational defender: J. M. E. McTaggart (the original A-series / B-series distinction in The Unreality of Time, 1908); contemporary B-theorists include D. H. Mellor, Hugh Price.

The classical-theist position, atemporal eternity (Boethius / Aquinas / Stump-Kretzmann)

The dominant Christian-historical position is divine atemporal eternity, God exists outside time entirely, not at any temporal moment, with all of temporal history present to Him eternally-simultaneously in a single non-temporal "moment" of His mode of existence.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy V.6 (c. 524 AD), gives the classical definition: "Aeternitas igitur est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio", "Eternity is the complete, simultaneous, perfect possession of unending life." God's mode of existence is the tota simul ("all-at-once") possession of His own life, not a sequence-of-moments.

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.10 (c. 1265-1273), develops this: divine eternity is not the same as endless temporal duration (sempiternity); it is a categorically different mode of existence outside time altogether.

Stump and Kretzmann, "Eternity" (Journal of Philosophy 78, 1981), develop the contemporary articulation in terms of ET-simultaneity, the eternal-temporal simultaneity relation between God's atemporal "moment" and each temporal moment of creation. On this view, God is "simultaneous with" every temporal moment in His mode of existence, but does not Himself occupy any temporal moment.

This position pairs naturally with B-theory of time: if the entire temporal-block of history is equally real, God can be "atemporally simultaneous with" all of it without contradiction.

Foreknowledge implications

On this view, God knows the future not by foreseeing it (foreknowledge in a temporal sense) but by eternally seeing it. God's knowledge of what we call "future" events is just His seeing the entire temporal block from outside time. The classical position thus dissolves the apparent paradox of foreknowledge-and-freedom: God doesn't fore-know your free choices (which would suggest causal determination from a prior temporal moment); He eternally knows them as actual events in the block.

The temporal / omnitemporal position, Craig, Padgett, Wolterstorff

A significant minority of contemporary Christian philosophers reject divine atemporal eternity in favor of divine omnitemporality, God exists in time, but His temporal existence is unending (no beginning, no end) and He is in His own time, ontologically related to but distinct from creation's time.

William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity (Crossway, 2001), defends the position from the A-theorist side: if A-theory is true (and Craig argues it is), then divine atemporal eternity is problematic, God either is in some kind of temporal "now" (in which case He is in time, however attenuated) or He cannot have knowledge of the temporal "now" of creatures (in which case His omniscience is compromised).

Alan Padgett, God, Eternity, and the Nature of Time (St. Martin's, 1992), develops a related position: God is relatively timeless (not within physical time) but engaged with the temporal order through what Padgett calls metaphysical time.

Foreknowledge implications

On Craig's view, God's foreknowledge of future free actions is best explained via Molinism (the doctrine of middle knowledge, God's knowledge of what every free creature would do under every possible circumstance, prior to His creative decision). The Molinist apparatus allows God genuine prior-temporal foreknowledge of free creaturely actions without compromising libertarian freedom.

See Calvinism vs Arminianism vs Molinism vs Open Theism for the soteriological-comparative deployment.

The open-theist alternative

Open theism (Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, Greg Boyd, William Hasker, The Openness of God, IVP 1994) is the most radical contemporary alternative: God exists in time, knows everything that can be known, but the future free actions of creatures cannot be known with certainty (because they don't yet exist to be known), so divine omniscience does not include detailed knowledge of contingent future free actions.

Open theism is held by a minority within evangelical Christianity and is rejected by most Reformed, classical-theist, and Molinist Christians as too radical a revision of the traditional doctrine of divine omniscience. See Open Theism for the dedicated treatment.

Why the dispute matters apologetically

1. Divine foreknowledge and human freedom

The atheist objection: "if God knows the future, the future is fixed; if the future is fixed, human freedom is illusory; if human freedom is illusory, moral responsibility is incoherent." The classical-theist response (atemporal eternity + B-theory): God doesn't fore-know your choices, He eternally knows them as actual; the eternal-knowing does not causally determine the temporal happening. The Craig-Molinist response: God knows what you would freely do via middle knowledge; His knowledge does not determine, it tracks.

2. Prayer and providence

If A-theory + temporal God: prayer can causally affect the future (which has not yet been determined). If B-theory + atemporal God: prayer is part of the block-causal-structure God eternally knows and incorporates into His providential ordering. Both views can sustain meaningful prayer; the metaphysics differs.

3. The Christological question

Christ's incarnation involves the eternal Son entering time. If B-theory + atemporal eternity: the Son who is atemporally eternal also has a temporally-located human nature; the relation between the two requires Christological clarification (cf. Hypostatic Union; Council of Chalcedon). If A-theory + temporal God: the Son is temporal from creation; the incarnation is metaphysically less paradoxical but the pre-creation eternity becomes more complicated.

4. The general-relativity / quantum-mechanics interface

Contemporary physics (special and general relativity) substantially favors B-theory at the mathematical level; the success of these theories is an apologetic-relevant consideration for Christian philosophers in the philosophy-of-time debate. Craig and other A-theorists respond by distinguishing the physics of relativity (well-supported) from the metaphysical interpretation (B-theoretic-block is one option but not entailed by the physics).

The position-spread at a glance

The codex's posture: present the classical-theist + Molinist positions as the dominant orthodox options; treat open theism as held by a minority within evangelicalism but generally rejected; treat process theism as outside orthodox Christianity (denies divine perfection, immutability, omnipotence in the classical sense).

See also

• Eternity (Divine), the divine-eternity attribute hub
• Divine Foreknowledge (if/when built), the omniscience-temporal cluster
• Counterfactuals of Freedom, the Molinist apparatus
• Molinism, the position deploying middle knowledge
• Open Theism, the alternative position
• Calvinism vs Arminianism vs Molinism vs Open Theism, multi-position soteriology
• Classical Theism vs Theistic Personalism, adjacent metaphysics-of-God dispute
• Classical Theism, the meta-position underlying atemporal-eternity views
• Doctrine, parent category
• Divine Simplicity / Divine Immutability / Divine Impassibility, sister classical-attribute hubs
• Hypostatic Union, Christological implications
• William Lane Craig, A-theorist Christian advocate
• Alvin Plantinga, adjacent position
• Thomas Aquinas, classical-position founder