God's Attributes Flashcards
Temporality- Eternal and Everlasting
Everlasting- God has existed throughout all time
Eternal- God is perceived to exist independently of time, unchanging, infinite and timeless
Temporality- Geach
Everlasting- ‘God is the supreme Grand Master’ whose plan will be executed regardless of what happens- he anticipates all events
Temporality- Hartshorne and Process Theologians
Everlasting- God is part of the world as well as being above it, and is held by the laws of physics, does not know the future, no preconceived plan, nor can he force people to be morally good- gives free will due to lack of predetermination
Temporality- Cullman
Everlasting- God moves through time with us and knows all that is logically possible to know
Temporality- Lafleur
Everlasting- If God existed outside of the bounds of time, he would have no access to the present, no means of interacting with us, and so no religious significance or even omnipotence
Temporality- Pike
Everlasting- if God is timeless, he knows exactly what is going to happen and what a person will do- therefore this future is already, permanently decided, as in a simulation- thereby ridding humans of free will
Temporality- Kierkegaard
Everlasting- God cannot be active in time if he is apart from it
Temporality- Augustine
Eternal- Time exists only within the created universe and does not apply to God- ‘thy “today” yields not to tomorrow and does not follow yesterday’
Temporality- Descartes
Eternal- God can do the logically impossible and interact with us from outside of time
Temporality- Boethius
Eternal- God experiences all things as an eternal present, so there is no “foreknowledge” which imposes necessity on the “future”.
‘If you consider the divine foreknowledge through which God knows all things, you will conclude that it is not a knowledge of things in the future, but a knowledge of an unchanging present’
Temporality- Criticisms of Boethius
Faith is understood in Judeo-Christian belief as fulfilling a covenant between God and his people, which implies a sense of progress and a level of involvement between God and his people, which seems impossible if God is outside of time- Boethius’ God is more similar to Aristotle’s Prime Mover.
Boethius’ argument marginalises God’s omnipotence as he is devalued to little more than a spectator
Temporality- Criticisms of Boethius (Kotarbinski)
Everlasting- To speak of existence in any sense is to build a sense of duration into it- you cannot separate existence from temporality
Temporality- Bible
Contradicts itself. God interacts in a supposed present (everlasting), but is supposedly unchanging and infinite (I am the Lord; I change not). No clear interpretation
Temporality- two views of time (Craig)
Only the present is real, and all past, present and future are equally real. Craig- in order to view God as timeless, one needs to view time as one unitary thing rather than a continuous process
Temporality- God as Timeless
God is frozen in time, unable to act and intervene within time, in a single, unchanging state of mental consciousness
Temporality- God as Temporal
Constantly in change, as is knowledge and experience, which signals improvement, meaning he was less perfect than he is and less perfect than he will be- invalidates omnibenevolence
God is the victim of the passing of time like any of us
Craig argues that change of knowledge does not automatically signal improvement