A new tempo-modal logic for emerging truth

Mogens Wegener

Peter Øhrstrøm

pp. 417-441

in: Jan Faye, UWE Scheffler, Max Urchs (eds), Perspectives on time, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

It was always true that what is true in the present was to be in the future. But as the truth of a proposition regarding the present is a created truth, so is that of a proposition regarding the future. Therefore some created truth is eternal. On the contrary: God alone is eternal. Reply: What is now was to be before it was because its future lay in its cause. Hence, if the cause were removed, that thing's coming to be would not be future. But the first cause alone is eternal. Thus it does not follow that it was always true that what now is would be, except so far as its future was in the semiternal cause. God alone is such a cause.