ABSTRACT
The divine action itself (the causing of existence) may be the same in both cases, but in one case it may be instantaneous and presupposes no prior object, whereas in the other case it occurs over an interval and does involve a prior object. The doctrine of creation involves an important metaphysical feature which is under-appreciated: it commits one to a tensed or A-Theory of time. For if one adopts a tenseless or B-Theory of time, then things do not literally come into existence. Things are four-dimensional objects which tenselessly subsist and begin to exist only in the sense that their extension along their temporal dimension is nite in the earlier than direction. The universe thus does not come into being on a B-Theory of time, regardless of whether it has a nite or an in nite past relative to any time. Hence, clause (iii) in E2 represents a necessary feature of creation. In the absence of (iii) God’s creation of the universe, ex nihilo could be interpreted along tenseless lines to postulate merely the universe’s ontological dependence on God and its nitude in the earlier than direction. What about conservation? At rst blush this notion would seem to be much more amenable to a tenseless construal. God can be conceived to act tenselessly on e to sustain it from t1 to t 2. But a moment’s re ection reveals this construal to be problematic. What if e exists only at t? Or what if e is the whole, four-dimensional space-time block? In neither case can God be said to conserve e, since the entities do not persist from one time to another. Yet on a tenseless view of time, God is the source of being for such entities and therefore in some sense sustains them. Similarly, if we allow timeless entities into our ontology, such as abstract objects, then God must be the source of their being as well. In their case there is properly speaking no conservation, no preserving them in existence from one moment to another. The existence of such entities would seem to necessitate a third category of creation not contemplated by the classical theologians, a sort of static creation, which is the relation appropriate to a
tenseless theory of time. We can use ‘sustenance’ as the technical term for such divine action and explicate it as follows:
E4. God sustains e if and only if either e exists tenselessly at t or e exists timelessly, and God brings it about that e exists.
