Attributes of God - eternity

Question 1

Why does Jantzen argue for God being everlasting?

Answer 1

If God lives and acts, he must be changeable and so cannot be timeless

Question 2

What are the strengths of Jantzen’s view?

Answer 2

Upholds the personal God - has biblical support - maintains free will. he can love and feel emotion.

Question 3

What are the issues with Jantzen’s view?

Answer 3

Aristotle - if God can change then this means that he isn’t perfect. Limits his transcendence. If he lives, can he die? Shouldn’t take biblical support as fact - liberals read it as myth. God can still be unchanging and bring about effects - prime mover - cat and milk example.

Question 4

Why does Swinburne argue for God being everlasting?

Answer 4

If God brings things about, it is sensible to ask, “when does God bring things about?” - for this, you need time, so God cannot be timeless.

Question 5

What are the strengths of Swinburne’s view?

Answer 5

Maintains the idea that God can act and intervene. Maintains him as personal.

Question 6

What are the weaknesses of Swinburne’s view of Gods omniscience?

Answer 6

Limits Gods perfection. Descartes - God can do the logically impossible and so he can act without time - don’t need to ask “when?”. Based on religious language. God could bring something about in time without being in time himself.

Question 7

Why do Moltmann, Hartshorne and Sobrino argue for God being everlasting?

Answer 7

If God is timeless, God cannot love. This is because if God is timeless then God is also immutable. Therefore, God cannot be affected by anything. Yet to love is to suffer. God cannot know and love humans unless he shares in human suffering and joy.

Question 8

What are the strengths of Motlmann, Hartshorne and Sobrino’s view?

Answer 8

Love may well involve sacrifice of oneself on behalf of the one you love. Thus, love can involve suffering.

Question 9

What are the weaknesses of Motlmann, Hartshorne and Sobrino’s view?

Answer 9

Davis - God’s divine benevolence is different to our understanding of benevolence, and thus we cannot understand how God can love us without suffering because we cannot understand God’s love. God did suffer as the Son but maintains timelessness as the father. Davis - suffering limits God - so cannot be applied to God. Love doesn’t involve suffering - could mean to will the good of other - can be done as a timeless God.

Question 10

How is God’s will affected by him being timeless?

Answer 10

If God is timeless, God cannot truly will anything, as his will is unchanging and unchangeable. God cannot choose to do anything other than create (because God is changelessly the creator)

Question 11

What are the strengths of how God’s will is affected by him being timeless?

Answer 11

Maintains his omnipotence as he is still the creator.

Question 12

What are the weaknesses of how God’s will is affected by him being timeless?

Answer 12

Restricts his omnipotence because he can’t act of true will, his actions are unchanging God doesn’t have free will. Can’t act or intervene out of choice - not truly loving. Anselm - he can will things because all of time is within him. Yet God is also free. God could choose not to create.

Question 13

Why does Kenny argue for God being everlasting?

Answer 13

If God is timeless, then God - as Aquinas claims is like a person stood on top of a mountain watching a road which goes around it. People are at different points on this road (past, present and future). Yet God can see the road at the same time. This makes past present and future simultaneous to God. This makes no sense because these events did occur at different times.

Question 14

What are the strengths of Kenny’s view?

Answer 14

If God in eternity is thought of as an observer and if in a glance, he sees Kenny typing and Nero fiddling, we might say that God sees Kenny typing as Nero fiddles. This would mean that God sees the two events simultaneously, but this cannot be so. Kenny did not type as Nero fiddled and Nero did not fiddle whilst Kenny typed. Biblical support - God’s actions take place chronologically.

Question 15

What are the weaknesses of Kenny’s view?

Answer 15

Anthropomorphises God - God sees time as we see time, sees past, present and future. “That which nothing greater can be conceived”, we cannot limit God to human boundaries.

Question 16

How would Boethius criticise Kenny?

Answer 16

He argues that God can see everything in one simultaneous moment, however, when he sees them happening, they are present, therefore you can maintain that God sees simultaneously happening without compromising order in time.

Question 17

How would Wittgenstein criticise Kenny?

Answer 17

Kenny is mistaken in applying the human language game to God

Question 18

How would Descartes criticise Kenny?

Answer 18

You shouldn’t limit God for what is logically possible for humans - God is outside the laws of logic

Question 19

Why does Newton argue for God being everlasting?

Answer 19

He claimed that there was such a thing as Absolute, true and mathematical time, which flows from its own nature and not in relation to anything external to itself. It is known as duration and is not a measure of change. The time which we use is a measure of this duration by means of motion but is not true time. Therefore, there can be time without change. God can be in time and not change.

Question 20

What are the strengths of Newton’s view?

Answer 20

By making time not linked to change means that you can either have God out of time but can change, or God can be in time but not change. Overcomes the issue of the everlasting God that has to change.

Question 21

What are the weaknesses of Newton’s view?

Answer 21

Acting is still linked with change; therefore, God can’t act without changing, acting requires change, and therefore, action still implies imperfection. Science accepts that there is a connection between motion and time. If God is in time - he can lose things, he can therefore change and therefore he can lack and therefore, he isn’t fully actual

Question 22

What did Wolterstoff argue about God’s eternity?

Answer 22

Argued that God as the Redeemer cannot be an eternal God. This is so because God the Redeemer is a God who changes. And any being which changes is a being among whose states there is temporal succession.

Question 23

How does Wolterstoff support his views?

Answer 23

Argued that in the Bible God instructs Abraham to leave Chaldea and later instructs Moses to return to Egypt - so doesn’t the event of God’s instructing Moses succeed that of God’s calling Abraham? And does not this sort of succession constitute a change on God’s time strand.

Question 24

Give Bible quotes to support God being out of time.

Answer 24

“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” and “I am God, I change not.”

Question 25

Give Bible quotes to support God being in time.

Answer 25

“I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned” and “I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it”

Question 26

What does John Lucas say about the Bible?

Answer 26

The whole thrust of the biblical record implies that God changes

Question 27

What does Pike say about God’s creating?

Answer 27

God’s creating must involve him in some real change.

Question 28

What does Pike say about a timeless, personal God?

Answer 28

Something timeless cannot really count as a person

Question 29

What does John Lucas say about God as a person?

Answer 29

“To say that God is outside time, as many theologians do, is to deny, in effect, that God is a person”

Question 30

What does Hartshorne say about God’s emotions?

Answer 30

When God knows us in our joys, he shares joy with us and, when he knows us as suffering, he suffers too

Question 31

What does Moltmann say about God’s emotions?

Answer 31

“We find suffering that is not wished, suffering that is accepted and the suffering of love. If God were incapable of suffering in all those ways, and hence in an absolute sense, then God would be incapable of loving”