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God and eternal boredom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2015

VUKO ANDRIĆ  and
ATTILA TANYI
VUKO ANDRIĆ*
Affiliation:
Universität Mannheim, Lehrstuhl für Philosophie/Wirtschaftsethik, 68131 Mannheim, Germany
ATTILA TANYI*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, 7 Abercromby Square, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7WY, UK
*
e-mail: [email protected]
e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

God is thought to be eternal. Does this mean that he is timeless? Or is he, rather, omnitemporal? In this article we argue that God cannot be omnitemporal. Our starting point, which we take from Bernard Williams's article on the Makropulos Case, is the intuition that it is inappropriate for persons not to become bored after a sufficiently long sequence of time has passed. If Williams is right, then it follows that, if God were omnitemporal, he would suffer from boredom. But God is the greatest possible being and therefore cannot be bored. God, hence, is not omnitemporal. After the presentation of our argument, we address several objections by examining possible differences between human and divine persons.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 51 - 70
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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