Aristotle’s Temporal Logic and the Problem of Foreknowledge in Jesus' Prediction of Peter's Denial

In his On Interpretations, chapter 9, Aristotle raises an important issue that relates to the application of the rules of bivalence and contradiction to statements about future. If the statement “there will be a sea fight tomorrow” is true now, then it implies that a sea fight is bound to happen tomorrow – though one may say that the statement is not the cause of the event, but only an assertion. Its contradictory statement “there will not be a sea fight tomorrow” would, therefore, be necessarily false.  Thus, necessity is predicated of both the statements: one is necessarily true while the other is necessarily false. This would mean that all events (past and future) are necessary and not fortuitous, meaning there were no unactualized possibilities. This went against Aristotle’s theory of potentiality and actuality; so, he considered propositions related to future as excepted from the rule of contradiction.

If so, Jesus’ statement, “You will deny me thrice,” would not be subject to the law of contradiction at the moment it is said; while “Peter denied him thrice” as actualized event fits therein. In that sense, there is at least this one statement among many of such future statements of Jesus that is neither true nor false (in Aristotle’s words “that which is not always existent or not always nonexistent”) – unless the truth of statement is known as an actualized possibility already (or is in the past). However, Jesus’ statement evinces necessity in meaning “It cannot be that you would not deny me thrice”. While one may contend about modality issues, the issue of whether Jesus was speaking the truth or not still exists.

In reply to … Jonah’s prophecy, as well as that to Hezekiah, were altered since they were open to conditionality. Could it be said that Jesus’ statement here was also open to conditionality – obviously, it is not, unless one could linguistically explain away the meaning of the words “Verily I say unto you…”