Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Creation Part 5.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org.

We've been talking about the definition of Creatio X. Nehilo, and I offered three conditions that are necessary and sufficient for

something beginning to exist. And the third of those was that the events existing at the time

T is a tensed fact. And Charmaine has asked me to review the difference between the tensed and tenseless theories of time

because that's not entirely clear.

Now, these are sometimes called the A theory versus the B theory of time.

And the way you can remember this is that the B theory is like a loaf of bread,

B for bread.

So imagine a loaf of bread that is then sliced into particular slices.

And all of the slices are equally real and exist in this loaf.

And those slices of the loaf of bread are like time slices.

This could be 2018.

That slice up there might be 2050.

This slice back there might be 1950.

And all of the slices of the loaf of bread are equally real and exist.

By contrast, on the tense theory of time, only the present slice exists.

The other slices are unreal. They haven't yet come into being. And so only the present, only the now exists, and past and future moments are unreal. So if you can remember, B is for bread, you can remember that the B theory or tenseless theory of time is like a loaf of bread where all the slices are equally real, and the A theory or tense theory is like a single slice of bread when where only one slice, namely the now, the present slice, exists.

Any question about that very simple illustration and explanation?

Jonathan has a question.

We'll get the mic to you.

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