Thoughts on Time, Truth, and Transcendence

The founding father of modern temporal logic, A.N. Prior, held that there is a
logical tension between the Christian doctrines of human freedom and divine
foreknowledge. He argued that future contingents cannot be true now, since there is no way to settle them now. In consequence, he found that the classical doctrine of divine foreknowledge has to be rejected. In this paper, it is shown that this argument can be turned around—i.e., if we hold that there are true future contingents, then we have to accept that their truths at least in part rely on some kind of transcendence that makes it possible to assume that even future contingents can be settled. This alternative argument supports the classical views held by William of Ockham and Luis de Molina.