^{page 385 note 1} Alston, William P., ‘Does God Have Beliefs?’ Religious Studies XXII (1986), 287–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Page references in the text are to this article.

^{page 385 note 2} Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action', Philosophical Review, LXXIV (January 1965), 27–46.

^{page 386 note 1} For more on this argument, see my ‘Foreknowledge and Necessity’, Faith and Philosophy II (1985), 121–57; also, ‘Hard Facts and Theological Fatalism’, Nous, XXII (1988), 419–436 and God, Time, and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).

^{page 388 note 1} Personal correspondence. Here I take the opportunity to explain something which may have puzzled other readers of Alston's paper as it did me. On p. 305 there is a reference to ‘the radical position ofsection IV, to the effect that divine knowledge is not in any way propositional. ’ This is perplexing, because section IV does not espouse any single position; rather it discusses the merits of various positions developed previously. Professor Alston informs me that this was a simple misprint; the correct reading is ‘section I ’.

^{page 389 note 1} Note that even a timeless God has apparently temporally successive aspects; it certainly appears to us that God delivered the Israelites from Egypt before he anointed David as king. But the theory of timelessness tells us that this is only an appearance, that as regards God himself there is no temporal succession.

^{page 390 note 1} Creel, Richard, Divine Impassibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 96.Google Scholar

^{page 390 note 2} Somewhat similarly, Norman Kretzmann in 1966 suggested as a possible interpretation of the doctrine of timelessness that ‘from a God's-eye view there is no time, that the passage of time is a universalhuman illusion’ (‘Omniscience and Immutability’, Journal of Philosophy, LXIII (1966), 415).

^{page 390 note 3} Summa Theologiae, I a, 14, 6 (emphasis added).

^{page 390 note 4} Summa Theologiae, Ia, 14, 6, Reply Obj. 2 (emphasis added).

^{page 390 note 5} Summa Theologiae, Ia, 24, 14; quoted by Alston, , p. 289 (emphasis added).Google Scholar In spite of this quotation, Alston fails to comment on this divergence of his own view of divine knowledge from that of Aquinas.

^{page 390 note 6} For a different reading of Aquinas, see Craig, William Lane, ‘Was Thomas Aquinas a B-Theorist of Time?’ (The New Scholasticism (1985), 475–83).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Craig quotes several statements from Aquinasabout the ‘presence’ of contingent events to God, and concludes, ‘The point here seems to be that this presence is not internal to God, but a real external presence’ (Ibid., p. 481). From this heis led to conclude, for reasons similar to those urged by Creel, that Aquinas was committed to a ‘B-theory of time’ according to which ‘temporal becoming is merely a subjective feature of consciousness, not the successive actualization of states of affairs’ (Ibid. p. 475). ‘Nevertheless’, Craig writes, ‘I find it inconceivable that he consciously adhered to such a theory of time. For him becoming was not mind-dependent but real … ’ (Ibid. p. 483). My interpretation removes this contradiction from Aquinas' view; therefore I think it preferable to Craig's.

^{page 391 note 1} Kenny, Anthony, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 29.Google Scholar

^{page 391 note 2} Ibid. p. 31.

^{page 391 note 3} Whether God has an equally detailed knowledge of the future depends on the outcome of the foreknowledge controversy, which will not be prejudged here.

^{page 392 note 1} Note that it is only the durationless present moment which canbe literally present to God (or to anyone else). Clearly, there is nothing to be gained by supposing the mental representation to he absent just at that moment, like a line with just a single point missing.

^{page 392 note 2} Summa Theologiae, I a, 24, 14; quoted by Alston, , p. 289.Google Scholar

^{page 393 note 1} This issue was initially raised by Norman Kretzmann in ‘Omniscience and Immutability’.

^{page 394 note 1} This argument is pursued vigorously in Grim, Patrick, ‘Against Omniscience: The Case from Essential Indexicals’, Nous, XIX (1985), 151–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar