Divine Omniprescience: Are Literary Works Eternal Entities?

By Richard R. LaCroix

Presented at the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division Meeting, March, 1977

There are two quite common views which appear to be embraced by both a large number of aestheticians as well as a large number of non‑aestheticians.  It is quite commonly believed by many of both groups that God is omniscient with respect to the future, that is, that God knows everything that will ever occur.  I refer to this belief as the doctrine of divine omniprescience.

It is also quite common to many of both groups to believe that literary authorship is creative in the sense that by means of his composing activity an author is an agent who brings about the existence of some thing (e.g., a play, a poem, a novel, etc.) which did not exist prior to the composing activity of that agent and which would not exist without the composing activity of that agent or some similar agent.  I shall call this belief the doctrine of literary creativity.

What does not appear to be recognized is that these two doctrines cannot both be consistently endorsed.  I argue that the two doctrines jointly entail a contradiction and I will point out some of the logical consequences of trying to avoid that contradiction.

It seems quite unexceptionable to say that there exists a whole host of compositions.  By a composition I mean such a thing as a play, a poem, a novel, an essay, a story, a review, and the like.  Despite the difference in kind, it is no more accurate to say that the moon exists than it is to say that Shakespeare's play Hamlet exists....

Assume first that William Shakespeare brought about the existence of that play by means of a certain sequence of his composing activities, that the play did not exist prior to his composing activity, and that the play would not exist without his composing activity or the composing activity of Marlowe or Bacon or some other person.

Assume second that God is omniprescient.  By the second assumption God knew before the creation of the universe that such things as that he would create the universe, that in 1564 C.E. William Shakespeare would be born at Stratford upon Avon, that Shakespeare would marry Anne Hathaway, and so on.  Including among the countless numbers of things that God knew before the creation of the universe, by the first assumption, was that in 1600 C.E.  Shakespeare would bring about the existence of a play which had no prior existence and that it would be called Hamlet.

In addition, God knew what the first word of the play would be and that it would be first, what the second word of the play would be and that it would be second, and what each succeeding word or symbol of the play would be and its proper sequential order; and God knew all this before the creation of the universe.

So, before the creation of the universe it was possible for God to recite all the lines of Hamlet, an aesthetic critique of Hamlet, to provide a grammatical critique of Hamlet, and so on.  It was even possible before the creation of the universe for God to stage the play with his angels (he could have prompted them in their lines) or, in the absence of angels, he could have created some beings for the express purpose of producing Hamlet.

In short, since the possibility of someone to do the sort of things enumerated above for some given composition entails that the composition exists, then the given assumptions jointly entail that Hamlet existed before the creation of the universe, and hence they also entail that before creation God knew both that Hamlet existed and that it existed before the creation of the universe.

But part of the first assumption is that Hamlet did not exist prior to 1600 C.E. and so it did not exist prior to the creation of the universe, and it has already been observed that the given assumptions jointly entail that before creation God knew that Hamlet did not exist prior to 1600 C.E.  and so before creation he knew that it did not exist prior to the creation of the universe. It follows, then, that Hamlet both existed and did not exist before creation and that before creation God knew both that Hamlet existed before creation and that Hamlet did not exist before creation.  So, since the two given assumptions jointly entail a contradiction, they cannot both be true; and, since the above reductio ad absurdum argument applies to all compositions, it follows that the doctrine of divine omniprescience and the doctrine of literary creativity are logically incompatible.