TomD wrote:

I was interested in hearing what the Thomistic position on A and B theory of time is? Also, for eternalists, can Thomistic philosophers be perdurantists? For presentists, how can this square with God being outside of time?

As you surely know if you're familiar with the Thomist account of change, both the B theory and perdurantism are right out. According to Thomism, the passage of time is not a mere illusion (time is not "tenseless"), and substances themselves persist "through" time* rather than merely having "temporal parts."

That said, though, I doubt that Thomism can do entirely away with eternalism in all its forms. The entire "time series" is present to the divine intellect eternally and "all at once," as it were, so Thomism must surely deny mere presentism. Unsurprisingly, Aquinas is alive to the difficulty and does exactly that. (Note especially that Aquinas specifically says God eternally knows all things as they are in their presentiality.)

In other words, it's more complicated than just choosing between the A and B theories of time or between presentism and eternalism.

If you want to know more about what Thomism has to say on this subject, I'm sure other posters can recommend some good sources (and probably so can I).

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* The scare quotes around "through" are there because, of course, Thomism doesn't regard time as something we literally pass through. For Thomism, time is a measure of change, not the other way around -- which, when you come right down to it, is exactly why things don't have "temporal parts." I think this is yet another case in which a modern way of posing a question inadvertently rules out a Scholastic answer.

Last edited by Scott (7/11/2015 2:38 pm)