The nature of God: God eternity and free will Flashcards
as humans what causes us to regret and experience a sense of decline?
awareness of time passing reminds us of the brevity and fragility of human existence
what was old age considered to be in Elizabethan england?
rare, old age began at 45
Book of common prayer
he cometh up
and is cut down like a flower
what is the problem if we are creatures of time and God is timeless?
his relationship to us becomes even more ambigious
what is free will?
the believe that human beings may freely choose their own actions
- are we truly free in our choices if God already knows them
what is predestination?
largely associated to Augustine and Calvin that because God knows all our future actions we have no freedom of will
who is boethius
occupied the role analogus to prime minister following the collapse of the Roman Empire
Wrote the ‘consolation of philosophy’ in prison before execution, abandoned by fortune and God left to die
Boethius’ comparison of our now and divine now
our now makes time as if it were running along
the divine now remains, not moving, standing still, makes eternity
what did Boethius say about time and God
God is outside time and eternal, unaffected by time
what is the difference between eternal and sempiternal?
eternal - outside time
sempiternal - always existing
how does Boethius distinguish eternity from everlasting existence?
eternity - timelessness meaning that time does not effect the eternal
everlasting existence (ARISTOTLE) - existence without beginning or end
why is Boethius’ description of God as remaining and enduring and living always problematic ?
implies time, but wants to deny that God is within time
how does Boethius describe God
complete posession all at once of illimitable life
suggests that God is atemporal and outside the time process
criticism of boethius
how can eternity interact with the temporal
- Kotarbinski - time is the duration of objects and how long something lasts not what the objects exist within
- if god is not an object, is there room to say he is outside time - Einstein’s general theory of relativity - if continuity of time were to be an illusion, what does this mean for our understanding of time
what would Boethius answer to ‘can God change the past’?
no he cannot, he has no past unlike us (we are temporal beings)
Eleanore Stump and Norman Kretzmann omnipotent, omniscient eternal entity can affect events only as they are occuring
Boethius on divine foreknowledge
If God knows what we are going to do, why not hold him at least partly responsible for evil
although god knows what will happen and choices made, this is not the human experience, you find yourself making choices
boethius - ‘God’s foreknowledge does not
impose neccessity on things’
what is a simple neccessity?
something that has to be case, mortality
what is a conditioned necessity?
when necessity follows from choice, necessary consequence of a made choice
criticism of boethius notion of timelessness
greatness and otherness preserved at the expense of other qualities - justice and benevolence
DZ Philips
St Anslem
what does DZ philips say about Boethius’ notion of timelessness
is it loving to allow someone to cause harm while knowing the consequence
god=love
why not intervene to prevent those evils
if God is not timeless then opens an infinite number of possibilities for future creative opportunities
Anselm’s four dimensionalist approach
freedom is tied to rectitude and doing the right thing
if you do the right thing but didnt chose to do it you have not demonstrated goodness
