Nature or attributes of God - Eternal

Question 1

Eternal/timeless:

Answer 1

God is outside of time.

Question 2

Biblical idea of God eternal:

Answer 2

Isaiah- ‘who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy’.

Question 3

Wolterstorff on God eternal:

Answer 3

God also has separate experience:
For humans- ‘the gnawing of time bites us all’.

Question 4

Key thinker for God as eternal:

Answer 4

Boethius

Question 5

What is Boethius’ book:

Answer 5

The Consolation of Philosophy

Question 6

Boethius context:

Answer 6

Philosophy is ‘Lady Companion’ comforting him through his dichotomy whilst he is in prison.
How are we with free will, but God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent?

Question 7

What does Boethius say about time?

Answer 7

God doesn’t experience past, present and future, but instead sees them all at the same time. Separate to time.
Humans see time as linear.
No interaction by God and us.

Question 8

What does Augustine say about God and time?

Answer 8

• God created time, time does not exist for him.
• Also speaks of ‘analogical language’, we cannot live up to God, too supreme so we are describing a time that is nothing like his.

Question 9

How does Aquinas respond to Boethius?

Answer 9

‘Eternity exists as a simultaneous whole but time does not’.

Question 10

What is Anselm’s approach?

Answer 10

The Four Dimensionalist Approach

Question 11

What is Anselm’s four dimensionalist approach?

Answer 11

• Opposes Presentism.
• Says terms like ‘yesterday’, ‘next week’ are subjective. Happy New Year. Time is limited by space.
• Yet, God is omnipresent, so it not limited by time.
• God is not in ‘time and space’, instead ‘time and space’ is in God.
• Means we have free will, God sees but doesn’t interact.

Question 12

Boethius quote:

Answer 12

‘as though from a lofty peak’.

Question 13

Anselm response to Boethius quote:

Answer 13

There is no ‘as though’, literally how God sees the world.

Question 14

Problem with Boethius:

Answer 14

• Defines a God that is intrinsically different to one of classical theism.
• Rather than theist God, a Deist God- provides questions about Jesus and Prayer.

Question 15

Problems with a timeless God:

Answer 15

• Swinburne- notion of time being ‘simultaneously present’ to God is incoherent.
• How can God be personal? Stories of miracles in the Bible.
• Why should we love God if it’s only a one way purpose?
• Point of prayers?
• Paul Helm, ‘God considered to be timeless cannot have temporal relationships with any of his creations’.

Question 16

Defence of the timeless view:

Answer 16

• Bible can be disproven:
  ‘Balem’s talking ass’. Just how people of the time thought they were experiencing God with little scientific knowledge.
• Maurice Wiles- God does not interact with the world, would be a Partisan God (only granting miracles for few).