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A Reductio Ad Absurdum of Divine Temporality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Steven B. Cowan
Steven B. Cowan
Affiliation:
1775 Janice Avenue Fayetteville, Arkansas 72703
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Extract

Theists believe that God is eternal, but they differ as to just what God's eternality means. The traditional, historic view of most Christian philosophers is that eternality means that God is timeless. He is ‘outside’ of time and not subject to any kind of temporal change. Indeed, God is the creator of time. Lets call this view divine timelessness.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 371 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 For a good presentation of the typical anti-timelessness arguments see Stephen Davis, T., ‘Temporal Eternity’, in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 2nd ed (ed. Louis, Pojman), (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994), pp. 223–30Google Scholar. Another important and influential treatment is Pike, Nelson, God and Timelessness. (New York: Schocken, 1970).Google Scholar

2 Leftow, Brian, Time and Eternity (Cornell University Press, 1991), 3.Google Scholar

3 For a brief but helpful discussion of these unacceptable implications of divine temporality, see Hugh McCann, J., ‘The God Beyond Time’, in Philosophy of Religion (ed. Pojman, ), 231–245.Google Scholar

4 The most thorough contemporary presentation of the Kalam argument can be found in Craig, William Lane, The Kalam Cosmological Argument (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Another more recent defence is Moreland, J. P., Scaling the Secular City: A Defence of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987)Google Scholar, ch. 1.

5 There are, however, some good reasons to doubt that there can actually be infinite sets of concrete entities. For which see Moreland, Scaling, 22–28.

6 Ibid., 22.

7 Ibid., 31.

8 Ibid.

9 Cited in Ibid. 23; and Craig, , ‘Time and Infinity’, International Philosophical Quarterly, XXXI (1991), 396–8.Google Scholar

10 Craig, ‘Time and Infinity’, 397.

11 Ibid.

12 Moreland, Scaling, 29.

13 William Lane Craig, ‘Time and Infinity’, 391.

14 William Wainwright raises this objection in his review of Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument, in Nous XVI (May 1982): 328–34. In connection with divine temporality, Morris, T. V. makes this point in his Our Idea of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1991), 126.Google Scholar

15 For a discussion of this objection and its rebuttal see Moreland, , Scaling, 30–31.Google Scholar

16 Craig is one philosopher who seems to advocate such a view. See his ‘God, Time, and Eternity’, in Religious Studies, XIV (1978), 497–503.Google Scholar

17 See, e.g., the excellent defence of timelessness given by Edward Wierenga, R., The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes (Cornell University, 1989), 166–201Google Scholar. See also McCann, , ‘The God Beyond Time’, Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, ‘Eternity, awareness, and action’, Faith and Philosophy IX: 4 (10 1992), 463–82Google Scholar; and Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity.