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Divine Judgment and the Nature of Time View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Asbury Theological Seminary Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers Volume 22 Issue 3 Article 5 7-1-2005 Divine Judgment and the Nature of Time Patrick Toner Follow this and additional works at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy Recommended Citation Toner, Patrick (2005) "Divine Judgment and the Nature of Time," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 22 : Iss. 3 , Article 5. Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol22/iss3/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers by an authorized editor of ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. DIVINE JUDGMENT AND THE NATURE OF TIME Patrick Toner Many Christians believe that persons who, at the moment of death, are in rebellion from God, are damned, while those in right relationship with God are saved. This is what, for instance, the Catholic teaching regarding the fate of those who die in mortal sin amounts to. In this paper, I argue that this “last moment view” is incompatible with a popular theory of time known as eter- nalism, according to which all times are equally real. If that’s right, then those who accept the last moment view are committed to an alternative theory of time known as presentism. Many Christians accept an account of the afterlife according to which the determining factor in the Divine judgment is the state of the person’s soul at death—I’ll call this account the “last moment view.” As far as I know, the clearest statement of the last moment view is in Catholic teaching, according to which, if a person dies in a state of mortal sin, then he is con- signed to the “eternal death of hell.”1 I will argue that the “eternalist” account of time is incompatible with the last moment view, and that, there- fore, those who accept the last moment view are committed to “presen- tism.” (I’ll sketch out the meaning of this terminology in the paper’s first section.) The main target of my arguments will be eternalism in combina- tion with the ontological view known as “perdurance,” but, as I’ll briefly show towards the close of the paper, “endurantist” eternalists shall fare no better (or no worse, as the case may be) against my arguments than eter- nalists of the perdurantist persuasion. I Eternalism—the claim that all times are ontologically on par; that the present is no more real than the past or the future—stands in contrast to presentism, according to which the past is no more, and the future is not yet; only the present exists.2 Thus, the dispute between eternalists and pre- sentists is a dispute about the ontological status of times other than the pre- sent. Presentists think that only the present exists, while eternalists think all times exist. Another way of putting the presentist thesis is that presen- tists believe that only those things that exist now, exist at all (and further, that objects exemplify only those properties they exemplify now). Dinosaurs did exist once, but they don’t exist now, so they don’t exist at all. FAITH AND PHILOSOPHY Vol. 22 No. 3 July 2005 316 All rights reserved DIVINE JUDGMENT AND THE NATURE OF TIME 317 Eternalists agree, of course, that dinosaurs don’t exist now (or, if they don’t agree, that’s not because they’re eternalists, but because they have some additional peculiarity), but they do believe that dinosaurs exist. They exist in the past, which is just as real as the future, which is just as real as the present. A helpful comparison is often drawn between presentism and actual- ism. Just as the presentist thinks that only those things that exist now exist (or that an object exemplifies only those properties that it exemplifies now), the actualist holds that only those things that exist in the actual world exist. One can, similarly, compare the eternalist with the possibilist. Just as the eternalist believes that objects that don’t exist now nevertheless exist, possi- bilists believe that objects that don’t exist here (i.e. in the actual world) nev- ertheless exist. We turn now to the persistence issue. Endurantists and perdurantists agree that (at least some) objects persist, or last, over time.3 (For example, I existed in 1975, and I exist now: I have persisted.) They disagree about how objects persist. Endurantists hold that persisting objects are wholly present at all times in which they exist. Perdurantists believe that persisting objects are, rather, spread out in time: they have temporal parts, and are not whol- ly present at any given moment of time. So assume that perdurantism is true: what accounts for my existing in both 1975 and 2002 is that I have a temporal part in 1975 and a temporal part in 2002; I am made up of all of my temporal parts. To understand what this means, just consider your spatial parts. What accounts for you being both in water and in air (at the same time) is that you have a part (your foot) in the water, and a part (your head) in the air. The perdurantist claims that temporal parts are just like spatial parts. Just as spatially extended objects have spatial parts in differ- ent places, temporally extended objects have temporal parts in different times. Many philosophers accept perdurantism because of various metaphysi- cal puzzles. One of the best known of these puzzles is the problem of tem- porary intrinsics, which David Lewis calls the “decisive objection against endurance.”4 Persisting things change their intrinsic properties. For instance shape: when I sit, I have a bent shape; when I stand, I have a straight- ened shape. Both shapes are temporary intrinsic properties; I have them only some of the time. How is such change possible? The trouble here, Lewis thinks, is that it is a contradiction for one thing to have both the property of sitting and the property of standing. Lewis believes that the only plausible way to solve the problem is by invoking perdurance, according to which it is not one thing that has these contradic- tory properties, but, rather, it’s different things that have them—one tem- poral part has the property sitting, and another has the property standing. Presentists, as you would expect, do not find this objection decisive. As we’ll see, the problem of temporary intrinsics is importantly relevant to my argument below, so I will briefly outline a good presentist reply to the problem. Look again at the problem: if it is possible for persisting objects 318 Faith and Philosophy to change, then it is possible that a persisting object O is F, and that in the past, O was ~F. Thus, it seems, O is both F and ~F. And that’s not good. Presentists avoid this problem by insisting that an object exemplifies only the properties it has at the present. There is no contradiction, then, because O, if it is now F, is no longer ~F, even though it once was.5 This will be important in what follows. It is, I think, relatively uncontroversial that perdurance entails eternal- ism.6 To see why, imagine that presentism is true. Then, if perdurance is true and I am the sum of all my temporal parts—but only the present part exists—I am not a persisting thing at all, but simply an instantaneous blip. After all, how could I have parts that don’t exist?7 But perdurance is sup- posed to be a theory of persistence, so it isn’t compatible with presentism. Thus, not only do we see that perdurance entails eternalism, we also see that presentism entails endurance. It’s not, however, entirely clear that endurance and eternalism are incom- patible. Indeed, some very good philosophers believe these doctrines are compatible. I’m inclined to think they are mistaken, but we needn’t settle that dispute here.8 We’ll put that combination of views aside, and return to it later. For the time being, I will argue against perdurance—on the under- standing that perdurance entails eternalism.9 Also, until further notice, when I speak of endurance, I shall mean endurance combined with presen- tism. Once I have shown that the last moment view rules out perdurantist eternalism, I shall then briefly take up the question of whether endurantist eternalism can escape my arguments. I don’t think it can. II Those who accept the last moment view believe that a person’s moral state at the time of his death is the determining factor in his fate—God assigns people their place in either heaven or hell on the basis of his judgment of the state of the soul at death. The Catholic Church, again, teaches that one who dies with unconfessed mortal sin on his soul is damned. Now consid- er of a fairly standard complaint about the Catholic teaching on mortal sin and damnation. Imagine that Wendy has been a good and faithful Catholic all her life, but that one day she returns home from work to find her husband in bed with the mailman. Wendy kills her husband with the very heavy mailbag she happens to find handy. Let’s stipulate that this is a mor- tal sin.
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