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God, Time, and Eternity
Abstract
hose who think about time are thinking deeply. Those who think about God T are thinking even more deeply still. Those who try to think about God and time are pressing the very limits of human understanding. Undaunted, this is precisely the project which we have set for ourselves in this study: to try to grasp the nature of divine eternity, to understand what is meant by the amnnation that God is etemal, to fonnulate a coherent doctrine ofGod's relationship with time. This study, the second installment of a long-range research pro gram devoted to a philosophical analysis of the principal attributes of God, flows naturally out of my previous exploration of divine omniscience. ! For the most contentious issue with respect to God's being omniscient concerns divine foreknowledge of future contingents, such as free acts of human agents. The very concept of foreknowledge presupposes that God is temporal, and a good many thinkers, from Boethius to certain contemporary philosophers, have thought to avoid the alleged incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom by afflnning the timelessness of God. Thus, in examining the complex of issues surrounding the foreknowledge question, we found ourselves already immersed in the question of divine eternity.
... Fortunately, Craig (2000a;2000b;2001) has dealt with all these and other related issues in painstaking detail. 5 For example, Craig (2001, 267) recognises the problem posed by Wielenberg: ...
Erik J. Wielenberg argues that William Lane Craig’s understanding of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) is logically incoherent. According to Craig’s account, God was timeless or atemporal without the universe, but created the universe (including time itself) and entered into time (or became temporal) at the moment of creation. Wielenberg argues, however, that this account entails that (i) the first cause of time is both timeless and temporal at the first moment of time, and (ii) the beginning of time is both caused and uncaused. In this article, I respond to Wielenberg’s objections and show that they are unsuccessful.
... 54 Flint (1998, 64). 55 Craig (2001aCraig ( , 2001b. 56 For a discussion of this option, see Florio and Frigerio (2019, chapter 5). ...
In contemporary debates, one is presented with temporal and timeless conceptions of divine eternality. Each conception is said to have various consequences for understanding divine perfection and providence. In this paper, I shall consider a pair of arguments against divine temporality that suggest that a temporal God could potentially make mistakes, thus making the temporal God less than perfect. I shall develop these objections, and discuss various ways for the temporalist to reply.
... 13 These two conditions seem able to incorporate most of the criteria given above of personhood and therefore shouldn't be seen as ad hoc. Further, and more importantly, criteria such as this, and the criterial approach more generally have been used by advocates of (PP) when they argue that God is a person (Mawson 2005(Mawson , 12-19, 2019Craig 1998cCraig , 2001. 14 Given this, those advocating (PNP) should take the majority of (PP) advocates as holding to a criterial view of persons, rather than thinking of persons as Cartesian souls, 15 and as such it should be the criterial view they primarily aim their concerns at. ...
Within contemporary philosophy of religion there are three main ways in which God is conceptualised in relation to personhood:(1)God is a person and so personal (PP).(2)God is non-personal, and so is not a person (NPNP).(3)God is a personal non-person (PNP).The first two of these options will be familiar to many, with (PP) held by most contemporary monotheist philosophers of religion and (NPNP) mainly by those who are pantheists. (PNP), however, is a view some may not have come across, despite its proponents claiming it was the view of great philosophical theologians from the past. However, within recent times (PNP) has become more popular. On the face of it, it might not be clear what the difference between (PP) and (PNP) is, and whether debate had between the two positions is substantive. The goal of this paper is therefore to clarify the debate and assess whether the many claims advocates of (PNP) make as to why God cannot be a person (PP) stand up to scrutiny or are persuasive. My suggestion will be that on the whole they do and are not. As such, defenders of (PNP) will either need to defend these reasons in more detail or focus on the area I suggest the debate really rests on.
In this article, the God’s relationship to time is viewed from the perspective of modern physics. The purpose is to examine new perspectives by introducing a theory of time that has been unexplored in contemporary theology. The paper begins with an analysis of the two competing views of God’s relationship to time: timelessness and temporality. They are reviewed from the perspective of the special theory of relativity. In contemporary theology, God’s timelessness is usually combined with the block universe theory, which is based on the concept of unchanging spacetime. God’s temporality is usually associated with presentism, which denies the concept of spacetime. This division reflects a central conflict in physics: the mainstream interpretation of the special theory of relativity treats time as unchanging spacetime, while quantum physics treats time as dynamic and flowing. To resolve this conflict between the ontologies of the special theory of relativity and quantum physics, the implicate order theory is introduced. The implicate order theory was developed by David Bohm (1917–1992), one of the most visionary physicists of the 20th century. After introducing the theory, it is applied to the context of God’s relationship to time. This produces interesting new opportunities for theological research.
In recent years Mullins and Craig have argued that there is a problem for a timeless God creating, with Mullins formulating the argument as follows:
(1) If God begins to be related to creation, then God changes.
(2) God begins to be related to creation.
(3) Therefore, God changes.
(4) If God changes, then God is neither immutable nor timeless.
(5) Therefore, God is neither immutable nor timeless.
In this paper I argue that all the premises, (1), (2), and (4) are false, and then provide a revised formulation of the argument which more clearly represents what Mullins and Craig wish to argue, given the explication and commentary they give when discussing this objection to timelessness. I then call into question this argument, and conclude by stating what I think Mullins and Craig should really be arguing given the specific views they have about creation ex nihilo and in virtue of what timelessness requires.
Here we survey arguments for and against the Existential Inertia Thesis (EIT). We begin by sketching a variety of motivations for EIT. These include theoretical virtues, divine temporality, an Aristotelian proof argument, a probabilistic argument, and an argument from the Principle of Material Causality (PMC). Next, we fend off the principal criticisms of EIT in the literature. These include alleged counterexamples, microstructural dependence, four arguments from Hsiao and Sanders, proportionate causality, form-matter interdependence, contingent natures, vicious circularity, the De Ente argument for classical theism, and worries from four-dimensionalism.
We begin by surveying and comparing different articulations of the existential inertia thesis. We then raise and analyze a series of questions aiming to taxonomize inertial theses. This includes questions about scope, relativity theory, modal register, dependence and destruction, and metaphysical accounts of inertial persistence. We then articulate our existential inertia thesis using our answers to these taxonomic questions. Finally, in hopes of providing a foundation and jumping-off point for further research on existential inertia, we list each taxonomic question in the concluding section.
In contemporary theology, one can find an array of models of God to choose from. There are various types of arguments that one can put forth in order to reject one model, or to defend another model. In this paper, I wish to examine one popular type of argument. This argument typically says that one should reject a model of God that blurs the creator/creature distinction. The problem with this kind of argument is that it usually begs the question by presupposing one’s own model of God in the creator/creature distinction. In other words, the argument basically boils down to, ‘I reject your model of God because it is not my preferred model of God.’ On many other occasions, the arguments beg the question by confusing additional metaphysical doctrines with the concepts of creator and creature. In this paper, I shall examine several different versions of the creator/creature distinction argument in an effort to find a version that is not question begging. I shall begin with articulating what I take to be the basics of a Christian understanding of the creator/creature distinction. Then, I shall consider several recent attempts from classical theists to argue that a rival model of God violates the creator/creature distinction. In each case, I shall find the arguments wanting. First, I shall examine James E. Dolezal’s attempt to argue that non-classical models of God violate the creator/creature distinction. I will argue that Dolezal’s attempt is question begging because it sneaks in his own model of God and several questionable metaphysical assumptions into the concepts of creator and creature, and thus goes beyond the basic creator/creature distinction without justification. Second, I shall examine a recent attempt by Kevin J. Vanhoozer to argue that Thomas J. Oord’s panentheistic model of God violates the creator/creature distinction. I will argue that Vanhoozer’s attempt suffers from several conceptual errors.
In contrast to those who read Genesis 1 through 11 as myth, the story of Genesis is historical narrative with a theological purpose (theo-history). The Hebrew theo-history of creation was undergirded by a worldview that did not converge with her neighbors but significantly diverged from the surrounding nations. While the literary style of Genesis has elements common to other ancient mythologies, the content itself is quite distinct. Unlike other ancient cosmologies, the Hebrew worldview perceived the people, places, and events of Genesis as historical and not merely religious symbols. The divergence of the Hebrew worldview from all ancient Near East (ANE) cultures is illustrated in three observations: (1) Genesis is monotheism not polytheism/panentheism, (2) Genesis is special revelation not cultic theology, and (3) Genesis is theo-history not myth or mytho-history. These three distinctives of Hebrew cosmology reflect a unique worldview shaped by divine revelation, and because Genesis was written in the genre of theo-history, Hebrew cosmology offers us a dependable foundation for knowing something true about our material origins, shaping ethical priorities, safeguarding the sacredness of human life, directing moral decision making, recognizing the significance of historical progress, and guiding scientific inquiry into the book of nature.
It is often said that time must have a beginning because otherwise the series of past events would have the paradoxical features of an actual infinite. In the present paper, we show that, even given a dynamic theory of time, the cardinality of an endless series of events, each of which will occur, is the same as that of a beginningless series of events, each of which has occurred. Both are denumerably infinite. So if (as we believe) an endless series of events is possible, then the possibility of a beginningless series of past events should not be rejected merely on the ground that it would be an actual infinite. What would be required to rebut our argument is a symmetry breaker – something that motivates treating the past relevantly differently to the future. We consider several attempts to provide a symmetry breaker and show that none of them is successful.
This paper considers two problems -- one in philosophy of religion and another in philosophy of physics -- and shows that the two problems have one solution. Some Christian philosophers have endorsed the views that (i) there was a first finitely long period of time, (ii) God is in time, and yet (iii) God did not have a beginning. If there was a first finitely long period of time and God is in time then there was a first finitely long period of time in God's life. But if God's life includes a first finitely long period of time, then, on one initially intuitive conception of beginning to exist, God began to exist. Thus, at first glance, (i)-(iii) are not mutually compatible. Meanwhile, on a variety of proposals for quantum gravity theories or interpretations of quantum theory, space-time is not fundamental to physical reality and instead can (somehow) be explained in terms of yet more fundamental physical substructures. As I show, there is a strong intuition that if space-time is not fundamental to physical reality, then, even if there were a first finitely long period in the life of physical reality, physical reality would be beginningless. Thus, both theistic philosophers and philosophers of physics have developed theories on which some beginningless entities have a first finitely long temporal period in their lives and so both groups should be interested in developing criteria that distinguish such entities from entities with a beginning. In this paper, I offer one necessary (but not sufficient) condition, namely, that entities that begin to exist are absent from the closest possible worlds without time. The view that I defend has one significant upshot: no sound argument can use the mere fact (if it is a fact) that past time is finite to reach the conclusion that the totality of physical reality had a beginning.
Much has been written on the relationship between the nature of temporal reality and the God of Classical Theism. Despite the popularity of this general area, what the physics and metaphysics of spacetime might mean for specific theological doctrines has received less attention. Recently, however, interest in this rich and dynamic interplay of ideas has seen rapid growth. This Element provides both an introduction to the physics and metaphysics of spacetime and a jumping-off point for understanding how these can – and in fact should – inform both Christian theology and the philosophy of religion more generally. The author will argue that the nature of spacetime raises particular and pressing problems for Christianity, specifically the interrelated doctrines of salvation and eschatology, and explore whether adequate solutions to these problems are available.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/god-salvation-and-the-problem-of-spacetime/3256416169B3737BF33DC3CA1BD3B046
There is a longstanding argument that purports to show that divine foreknowledge is inconsistent with human freedom to do otherwise. Proponents of this argument, however, have for some time been met with the following reply: the argument posits what would have to be a mysterious non‐causal constraint on freedom. In this paper, I argue that this objection is misguided – not because after all there can indeed be non‐causal constraints on freedom (as in Pike, Fischer, and Hunt), but because the success of the incompatibilist's argument does not require the real possibility of non‐causal constraints on freedom. I contend that the incompatibilist's argument is best seen as showing that, given divine foreknowledge, something makes one unfree – and that this something is most plausibly identified, not with the foreknowledge itself, but with the causally deterministic factors that would have to be in place in order for there to be infallible foreknowledge in the first place.
This study considers the notion of divine simplicity, the idea that God is not a composite of more basic features, and the criticisms by al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) and Alvin Plantinga of that doctrine. What is shown is that most of the argumentation against divine simplicity frequently credited to Plantinga had been nearly perfectly anticipated by al-Ghazālī. Moreover, in responding to a stronger form of divine simplicity, which Avicenna (d. 1037) had presented, than the Thomistic version that Plantinga attacks, Ghazālī develops ‘new’ arguments and moves that are still valuable and informative to the discussion of divine simplicity today.
The modal collapse objection to classical theism has received significant attention among philosophers as of late. My aim in this paper is to advance this blossoming debate. First, I briefly survey the modal collapse literature and argue that classical theists avoid modal collapse if and only if they embrace an indeterministic link between God and his effects. Second, I argue that this indeterminism poses two challenges to classical theism. The first challenge is that it collapses God’s status as an intentional agent who knows and intends what he is bringing about in advance. The second challenge is that it collapses God’s providential control over which creation obtains.
Many physicists have thought that absolute time became otiose with the introduction of Special Relativity. William Lane Craig disagrees. Craig argues that although relativity is empirically adequate within a domain of application, relativity is literally false and should be supplanted by a Neo-Lorentzian alternative that allows for absolute time. Meanwhile, Craig and co-author James Sinclair have argued that physical cosmology supports the conclusion that physical reality began to exist at a finite time in the past. However, on their view, the beginning of physical reality requires the objective passage of absolute time, so that the beginning of physical reality stands or falls with Craig’s Neo-Lorentzian metaphysics. Here, I raise doubts about whether, given Craig’s Neo-Lorentzian metaphysics, physical cosmology could adequately support a beginning of physical reality within the finite past. Craig and Sinclair’s conception of the beginning of the universe requires a past boundary to the universe. A past boundary to the universe cannot be directly observed and so must be inferred from the observed matter-energy distribution in conjunction with auxilary hypotheses drawn from a substantive physical theory. Craig’s brand of Neo-Lorentzian has not been sufficiently well specified so as to infer either that there is a past boundary or that the boundary is located in the finite past. Consequently, Neo-Lorentzian implicitly introduces a form of skepticism that removes the ability that we might have otherwise had to infer a beginning of the universe. Furthermore, in analyzing traditional big bang models, I develop criteria that Neo-Lorentzians should deploy in thinking about the direction and duration of time in cosmological models generally. For my last task, I apply the same criteria to bounce cosmologies and show that Craig and Sinclair have been wrong to interpret bounce cosmologies as including a beginning of physical reality.
In this book, I have addressed a range of issues. What means Descartes’s real distinction argument? What is the mind? Did Descartes think that the mind was able to exist on its own without the body existing? Does Descartes’s theory of mind relate to some kind of emergent dualism? Is this conception of the mind-body relationship still worthwhile? Does this version of emergentism have advantages compared to other theories?
Time can only be understood within physics as a special dimension of a four-dimensional reality given “all at once” in its totality. There seems to be no way that a special moment (“now”) can be distinguished. Within human experience, however, the feel of time is vivid: now is intensely present, and time flows from one now to another. This dramatic difference, between the realm of personal experience and the realm of material existence, raises doubt about the unity of the concept of nature and thus about the attraction of naturalism. Following the thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel, I explore whether a solely physical universe can serve as an appropriate whole of an existence that also includes persons. Heschel argues that the whole of existence needs to have a personal character as well, in other words God.
We argue that there is a conflict among classical theism's commitments to divine simplicity, divine creative freedom, and omniscience. We start by defining key terms for the debate related to classical theism. Then we articulate a new argument, the Aloneness Argument, aiming to establish a conflict among these attributes. In broad outline, the argument proceeds as follows. Under classical theism, it's possible that God exists without anything apart from Him. Any knowledge God has in such a world would be wholly intrinsic. But there are contingent truths in every world, including the world in which God exists alone. So, it's possible that God (given His omniscience) contingently has wholly intrinsic knowledge. But whatever is contingent and wholly intrinsic is an accident. So, God possibly has an accident. This is incompatible with classical theism. Finally, we consider and rebut several objections.
Eric Wielenberg’s two alleged contradictions in my view of God, time, and creation are easily resolved. The first is dissolved by appreciating that God’s power to create the universe is a modal property which God may possess but even if He never in fact exercises that power. The second contradiction evaporates once one adopts a relational view of time.
William Lane Craig’s much-discussed kalam cosmological argument for God’s existence is intended to provide support for a particular theistic explanation of the origin of the universe. I argue here that Craig’s theistic account of the origin of the universe entails two contradictions and hence should be rejected. The main contribution of the paper is the identification of some relatively straightforward but previously unrecognized problems in Craig’s hypothesis that the beginning of the universe was a temporal effect of a timeless personal cause.
“The Concept(s) of God” In this chapter, Lorkowski draws attention to just how difficult the concept of a deity would be. Though different conceptions entail different problems, the author’s primary focus is on difficulties inherent to the concept of virtually any creator deity. These include the absolute foreignness of the being that is posited, the dilemma created by positing an eternal person either temporally or atemporally, and the difficulties inherent to positing a god as a metaphysically necessary ultimate cause. Lastly, to both emphasize how problematic the concept is and as an introduction to the reader, Lorkowski includes an appendix of twenty worries regarding the impossibility of standard conceptions of a deity.
W.L. Craig has argued that the universe has a beginning because (1) the infinitude of the past entails the existence of actual infinite multitudes of past intervals of time, and (2) the existence of actual infinite multitudes is impossible. Puryear has rejected (1) and argued that what the infinitude of the past entails is only the existence of an actual infinite magnitude of past time. But this does not preclude the infinitude of the past, Puryear claims, because there can be no justification for the claim that actual infinite magnitudes are impossible. I argue, against Puryear, that there can be such a justification. I claim, nevertheless, that, for reasons entirely different from Puryear’s, the finitude of the past cannot be established based either on the impossibility of actual infinite multitudes or on the impossibility of actual infinite magnitudes. My arguments in this paper draw on insights from al-Kindī and Avicenna.
On the orthodox interpretation of bounce cosmologies, a preceding universe was compressed to a small size before "bouncing" to form the present expanding universe. William Lane Craig and James Sinclair have argued that the orthodox interpretation is incorrect if the entropy reaches a minimum at the bounce. In their view, the interface between universes represents the birth of two expanding universes, i.e., a ``double bang'' instead of a ``big bounce''. Here, I reply to Craig and Sinclair in defense of the orthodox interpretation. Contrary to their interpretation, features of one universe explain features of the other universe and so must precede the other universe in time. Moreover, contrary to a crucial part of Craig and Sinclair's interpretation, there are bounce cosmologies in which the thermodynamic arrow of time is continuous through the bounce even though the entropy is ``reset'' at the bounce.
Special relativity has been understood by many as vindicating a tenseless conception of time, denying the existence of tensed facts and a fortiori objective temporal passage. The reason for this is straightforward: both passage and the obtaining of tensed facts require a universal knife-edge present moment-yet this structure is not easily reconcilable with the relativity of simultaneity. The above being said, the prospects for tense and passage are sometimes claimed to be improved on moving to cosmological solutions of general relativity. In this paper, we evaluate in detail these arguments, finding that there remain several open questions to be addressed if the introduction of tensed facts into the relativistic context is to be compelling. Moreover, we argue that, even setting aside these issues, objective tense stands and falls in relativity for exactly the same reasons that it does in classical philosophical discussions on the matter.
Basis der Behandlung der Frage nach der Allgegenwart, (Außer-)Zeitlichkeit und Unveränderlichkeit Gottes ist die sogenannte Vollkommenheitstheologie (perfect being theology), nach der es logisch unmöglich ist, dass etwas vollkommener als Gott ist.
The universe plausibly has an infinite future and an infinite past. Given unlimited time, every qualitative state that has ever occurred will occur again, infinitely many times. There will thus exist in the future persons arbitrarily similar to you, in any desired respects. A person sufficiently similar to you in the right respects will qualify as literally another incarnation of you. Some theories about the nature of persons rule this out; however, these theories also imply, given an infinite past, that your present existence is a probability‐zero event. Hence, your present existence is evidence against such theories of persons.
This chapter explains that most of the standard objections to substance dualism (SD) count as effectively against property dualism (PD), and that PD is hardly more plausible, or less implausible, than SD. Dualism competes, not with neuroscience (a science), but with materialism, an opposing philosophical theory. The chapter shows that although Cartesian dualism faces some serious objections, that does not distinguish it from other philosophical theories, and the objections are not an order of magnitude worse than those confronting materialism in particular. There remain the implausibilities required by the Cartesian view; but bare claim of implausibility is not argument. The dialectical upshot is that, on points, and going just by actual arguments as opposed to appeals to decency and what good guys believe, materialism is not significantly better supported than dualism.
After defining presentism, I consider four arguments that presentism and divine atemporality are incompatible. I identify an assumption common to the four, ask what reason there is to consider it true, and argue against it.
According to the Infinity Argument, an actually infinite regress of past events cannot exist because an actual infinite cannot exist. The Infinity Argument is one of the most common arguments for a beginning of the universe espoused by advocates of the kalām cosmological argument. However, in this chapter I argue that the Infinity Argument is inconclusive and not a good argument in support of theism because it depends on controversial metaphysical positions. I show that the Infinity Argument is, first, incompatible with Platonism, second, incompatible with the standard definition of omniscience and, third, relies on a controversial metaphysical intuition.
Eternity, the concept of divine temporality, is the theological term used to describe the timeframe of God's existence as well as the timeframe of future eschatological existence of believers in Christ. Since eternity is the temporal mode in which God exists, it is an attribute or characteristic of God. Likewise, since eternity is the destined temporal mode in which those who are in Christ will dwell with God, it is also an attribute or characteristic of heaven. As a result, the concept of eternity is significant for understanding the nature of God and the nature of a believer's eschatological future; however, this significance is often thwarted by the great amount of confusion on the subject of eternity.
The timeless solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom has many advantages. Still, the relationship between a timeless God and temporal beings is problematic in a number of ways. In this paper, we focus on the specific problems the timeless view has to deal with when certain assumptions on the metaphysics of time are taken on board. It is shown that on static conception of time God’s omniscience is easily accounted for, but human freedom is threatened, while a dynamic conception has no problems with human freedom, but, on this view, some truths seem not to be knowable by a timeless God. We propose Fragmentalism as a metaphysics of time in which the divine timeless knowledge of temporal events and human freedom can be reconciled.
In this paper I define ‘open theism’ as a version of ‘broadly classical theism’ distinguished by commitment to a causally, epistemically, and providentially open future. After clarifying open theism, I then compare and contrast the open theistic model of divine providence with its chief competitors: theological determinism, Molinism, and process theism.
The Standard Anselmian Model of God conceives perfection as a static state that cannot improve, and thus interprets divine attributes as fixed maximal states of a being that is impassible yet still personal. This paper argues that a coherent alternative view, labeled the New Existential Model, can be collected from several alternative traditions, including Existential personalism, Process theology, Panentheism, and recent work on Open Theism. The new model is unified by the central idea that the divine is distinguished by two attributes or features: being the free creative genesis of reality, including creatures that enjoy derivative alterity, and being the source of eschatological possibilities in which the good is completely fulfilled in the culmination of time. The eschatological idea, which is the core of Kierkegaard’s conception of God as the object of existential faith, implies that God’s perfection is processive “growing rather than static” and that divine greatness is enriched rather than diminished by relation to free beings who add to reality through their own initiative and who enter into free relation with God. This model has several interesting implications for the problem of evil, foreknowledge, and providence.
In certain theological circles today, panentheism is all the rage. One of the most notorious difficulties with panentheism lies in figuring out what panentheism actually is. There have been several attempts in recent literature to demarcate panentheism from classical theism, neo-classical theism, open theism, and pantheism. I shall argue that these attempts to demarcate panentheism from these other positions fail. Then I shall offer my own demarcation.
For two hundred years after 1687, Newton's notion of absolute time dominated the world of physics. However, Newtonian metaphysical absolute time is so ideal that it may only be realised and actualised by God. In the early twentieth century, Einstein breaks this dominant understanding of time fundamentally by his Special Theory of Relativity and General Theory of Relativity. In the Einsteinian paradigm, we are forced to think no longer of space and time but rather to look at a four-dimensional space-time continuum, in which time appears to be more space-like than temporal. The Newtonian theory implies that there is an absolute, dominant point from which the universe can be observed, whereas Einstein argues for the opposite: there can be no vantage perspective and no universal present by which God can divide past and future.
Barth takes a trinitarian approach to interpret the concept of time. For Barth, the Father is coeternal with the Son and the Holy Spirit. The eternal immanent Trinity acts concretely as the temporal economic Trinity, thus the triune God is pre-, supra- and post- to us. In actual temporality, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit transcend time concretely in our history and penetrate time absolutely from divine eternity. God's eternity is both transcendent and immanent to human time.
Such a trinitarian temporality might serve as a ‘dynamic privileged perspective’ since time, energy and movement are all created by God from eternity. On the one hand, the triune Creator transcends his creature and its creaturely form – time absolutely; on the other hand, even when God enters time and moves together with the time ‘uniformly’ in the Son and the Holy Spirit, he becomes concretely simultaneous with all time. Also the Barthian perspective might provide something which is lacking in Einstein's relative time, i.e. the direction of time from the past to the future. Since every historical event in Einsteinian four-dimensional continuum is posited as a static space-time slice and Einstein equations are time-reversible, there is no ontological difference between time dimensions at all. However, in Barth's trinitarian opinion, such extraordinary events as the creation, resurrection and Pentecost are ontologically superior to other events in human history because they do change our temporality in an absolute way. Penetrated by the trinitarian eternity, those discrete space-time slices also become communicable and hence take genuine temporal characteristics, i.e. the past, present and future.
Of the many problems which evolutionary theodicy tries to address, the ones of animal suffering and extinction seem especially intractable. In this essay, I show how C. D. Broad's growing block conception of time does much to ameliorate the problems. Additionally, I suggest it leads to another way of understanding the soul. Instead of it being understood as a substance, it is seen as a history—a history which is resurrected in the end times. Correspondingly, redemption, I argue, should not be seen as an event which redeems some future portion of time. God's triumph is over all of history, not just some future temporal portion.
God is thought to be eternal. Does this mean that he is timeless? Or is he, rather, omnitemporal? In this paper we argue that God cannot be omnitemporal. Our starting point, which we take from Bernard Williams’ article on the Makropulos Case, is the intuition that it is inappropriate for persons not to become bored after a sufficiently long sequence of time has passed. If Williams is right, then it follows that, if God were omnitemporal, he would suffer from boredom. But God is the greatest possible being and therefore cannot be bored. God, hence, is not omnitemporal. After the presentation of our argument, we address several objections by examining possible differences between human and divine persons.
Much attention in this journal has been paid to the ahistorical nature of management and organizational studies. Drawing from academic, practitioner and consultant literature, I look at examples where history itself is called upon – absent any of the theoretical and methodological discipline that should accompany history – to augment an authors' analysis and conclusion. In particular, I focus on presentism and the tranquility fallacy; the terms I use to label the tendency to find the current era to be exceptionally, even uniquely turbulent and past eras to seem calm in comparison. Calling on both economic and philosophical fields, I argue that presentism is a universal human condition, inherent in the state of being. The turbulence fallacy, however, compounds that flaw, distorts the past, and severely constricts our capacity to learn from experience. The essay concludes with a call for management historians to counter the tranquility fallacy.
William Lane Craig's defence of the kalam cosmological argument rests heavily on two philosophical arguments against a past-eternal universe. In this article I take issue with one of these arguments, what I call the ‘Hilbert's Hotel Argument’ – namely, that the metaphysical absurdity of an actually infinite number of things existing precludes the possibility of a beginningless past. After explaining this argument, I proceed to raise some initial doubts. After setting those aside, I show that the argument is ineffective against proponents of presentism. The remainder of the article considers and rejects possible replies on Craig's behalf.
Against the second premiss of the kalam cosmological argument, that the universe began to exist, J. L. Mackie objects that the arguments for it either assume an infinitely distant beginning point or fail to understand the nature of infinity. In fact, the argument does not assume any sort of beginning point, whereas Mackie himself commits the fallacy of composition. Mackie fails to show that infinite collections can be instantiated in the real world. Against the first premiss, that whatever begins to exist has a cause, Mackie objects that there is no good reason to accept a priori this premiss and that creatio ex nihilo is problematic. But Mackie does not refute the premiss and even admits its plausibility. One can resolve the conundrums of creatio ex nihilo by holding God to be timeless sans creation and temporal with creation.
The Kalām cosmological argument deploys the following causal principle: whatever begins to exist has a cause. Yet, under what conditions does something ‘begin to exist’? What does it mean to say that ‘X begins to exist at t’? William Lane Craig has offered and defended various accounts that seek to establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for when something ‘begins to exist.’ I argue that all of the accounts that William Lane Craig has offered fail on the following grounds: either they entail that God has a cause or they render the Kalām argument unsound. Part of the problem is due to Craig’s view of God’s relationship to time: that God exists timelessly without creation and temporarily with creation. The conclusion is that Craig must abandon either the Kalām argument or his view of God’s relationship to time; he cannot consistently hold both.
This paper addresses the most fundamental question in metaphysics, Why is there something rather than nothing? The question is framed as a question about concrete entities, Why does a possible world containing concrete entities obtain rather than one containing no concrete entities? Traditional answers are in terms of there necessarily being some concrete entities, and include the possibility of a necessary being. But such answers are threatened by metaphysical nihilism, the thesis that there being nothing concrete is possible, and the subtraction argument for this thesis, an argument that is the subject of considerable recent debate. I summarize and extend the debate about the argument, and answer the threat it poses, turning the tables on it to show how the subtraction argument supports a cosmological argument for a necessary being.
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