2010/12/09 by Paul Helm · 60 citations
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Theology and Philosophy of Evil #Foreknowledge #Eternity #Philosophy #Epistemology #Relation (database) #Philosophy of religion #Causation #Timeless #Theology #Psychology
paper · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199590391.001.0001
published in Oxford University Press eBooks (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 2010/12/09 · openalex created_date 2022/05/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The book is a new edition of Eternal God first published in 1988, and contains four new chapters. It offers a defence of divine timeless eternity. After sketching the nature of such eternity in the first two chapters, a number of philosophical objections are considered, such as the argument from personality and from the incompatibility of divine eternity and indexical knowledge. A number of standard objections are discussed, and the account is further developed in the light of these. Among them are the nature of an eternal God's foreknowledge of what happens in time, and its relation to human choice, and how and in what manner such divine foreknowledge differs from fatalism. This leads to a consideration of foreknowledge and human responsibility, the sense in which timeless divine choice is free, and how it is possible to refer to an eternal God. The first of the final four new chapters explores the view of W. L. Craig that God is timeless sans creation but temporal thereafter. This leads to a consideration of timelessness and causation, in connection with creation, and then the importance of the distinction between a timeless God's perspective on his creation and those of agents in time. Assuming that God is triune, the final chapter discusses the relation between the three persons of the divine, first if God is considered to be in time, and then if he is eternal.