Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect and prospect
- 2 Is it possible and desirable for theologians to recover from Kant?
- 3 Conundrums in Kant's rational religion
- 4 In defense of Gaunilo's defense of the fool
- 5 Divine simplicity
- 6 Alston on Aquinas on theological predication
- 7 God everlasting
- 8 Unqualified divine temporality
- 9 Suffering love
- 10 Is God disturbed by what transpires in human affairs?
- 11 The silence of the God who speaks
- 12 Barth on evil
- 13 Tertullian's enduring question
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - God everlasting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect and prospect
- 2 Is it possible and desirable for theologians to recover from Kant?
- 3 Conundrums in Kant's rational religion
- 4 In defense of Gaunilo's defense of the fool
- 5 Divine simplicity
- 6 Alston on Aquinas on theological predication
- 7 God everlasting
- 8 Unqualified divine temporality
- 9 Suffering love
- 10 Is God disturbed by what transpires in human affairs?
- 11 The silence of the God who speaks
- 12 Barth on evil
- 13 Tertullian's enduring question
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
All Christian theologians agree that God is without beginning and without end. The vast majority have held, in addition, that God is eternal, existing outside of time. Only a small minority have contended that God is everlasting, existing within time. In what follows I shall take up the cudgels for that minority, arguing that God as conceived and presented by the biblical writers is a being whose own life and existence is temporal.
The biblical writers do not present God as some passive factor within reality but as an agent in it. Further, they present God as acting within human history. The god they present is neither the impassive god of the Oriental nor the non-historical god of the deist. Indeed, so basic to the biblical writings is their speaking of God as agent within history that if one viewed God as only an impassive factor in reality, or as one whose agency does not occur within human history, one would have to regard the biblical speech about God as at best one long sequence of metaphors pointing to a reality for which they are singularly inept, and as at worst one long sequence of falsehoods.
More specifically, the biblical writers present God as a redeeming God. From times most ancient, human beings have departed from the pattern of responsibilities awarded them at their creation by God. A multitude of evils has followed. But God was not content to leave human beings in the mire of their misery.
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- Inquiring about God , pp. 133 - 156Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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