Reading: Boethius, “God is Timeless”, pp. 150-152 & Wolterstorff, “God is Everlasting”, pp. 153-159
You will need to read Boethius carefully; he’s not easy to understand. Wolterstorff is, I think, significantly easier to follow.
Boethius
The editors give a pretty good summary on p. 150 of Boethius’ position. Boethius here endorses the doctrine that God is outside of time. He begins by defining eternity and then contrasts the eternal with the temporal. Temporal things “live in no more than a fleeting, transitory moment”; by contrast, an eternal being “grasps and possesses simultaneously the entire fullness of an unending life, a life which lacks nothing of the future and has lost nothing of the fleeting past” (150-151). An eternal thing is, of course, infinite, but an infinite thing is not necessarily eternal. So, even if Aristotle is right when he says that the universe is infinite, it does not follow from this that the universe is eternal.
The next key move comes at the bottom of the left-hand column on p. 151 where Boethius tells us that the nature of a being determines the contents of its knowledge. Since God is eternal, His knowledge will be eternal; as B. puts it, God’s “foresight” is “the knowledge of a never fading instant” (151). He later adds that “God sees all things in His eternal present”; hence, His “divine foreknowledge does not change” (151).
Boethius then considers the objection that if God sees something as “about to happen”, it must happen. Doesn’t God’s foreknowledge then render all human actions unfree? Boethius’s response to this objection rests on a distinction between simple necessity (necessity that is in the nature of things, e.g., man is mortal) and conditional necessity (see p. 152 for an explanation of this concept). Simple necessity is incompatible with freedom. To use B’s example, we are not free not to die. We have no control over whether we will die. By contrast, conditional necessity is compatible with freedom. For example, IF I “really know” that you will be on time this morning, then you WILL be on time. However, this kind of necessity does not “alter the nature of things”. Boethius thinks it doesn’t matter whether the knower is another human being or God Himself. The mere fact that God knows what you will do before you do it does not entail that your action is unfree. What determines whether your act is free or not is whether it is simply necessary. Another way of putting the argument is this: God’s foreknowledge implies conditional necessity, but does not imply simple necessity.
Finally, Boethius responds to the objection that it seems like “I can make Providence void” because “it is within my power to change my mind” (152). Here, I think the objector is assuming that if an act is free, then the agent could have done otherwise. If that’s the case, then it seems like the agent can, by doing something other than God foresees, negate Providence.
Wolterstorff
Wolterstorff rejects the traditional interpretation of the doctrine that God is eternal. In this selection, he argues that the God of the Bible is everlasting, “existing within time”. He supports his argument by looking at the picture of God presented by the biblical authors.
He begins by noting that God is presented as both an Agent and a Redeemer. Both of these roles imply change - not change in God’s nature, but rather “a change on God’s time-strand”. He gives 4 examples from the Bible of God as an Agent (one of these is also an example of God as Redeemer). A God that changes cannot be outside of time.
After explaining the origins of the view that God is timeless, he considers how Aquinas might interpret his 4 examples. Aquinas held that God’s actions are not temporal even though the effects of God’s actions ARE temporal. In explaining Aquinas’ view, W. distinguishes between an everlasting event and a temporal event (p. 155). He acknowledges that Aquinas and others could argue that the biblical language is misleading and could plausibly interpret these passages as being consistent with the view that God is timeless. But, he then asks whether Aquinas’s strategy can be generalized – that is, whether every act of God that appears to be temporal could be re-interpreted as eternal via Aquinas’ strategy. At the bottom of the left-hand column on p. 157, he identifies 3 types of divine actions that cannot be successfully interpreted as eternal.
Later on p. 157, W. adds that God’s role as a Planner is inconsistent with the doctrine that God is timeless. Finally, on p. 158, he explains why two key passages that appear to support the doctrine that God does not change actually do not support the doctrine that God does not change and thus cannot be used to support the doctrine that God is timeless.
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8 comments:
Wolterstorff examines two alternatives for the timeless nature of God: either God is eternal (existing outside of time) or God is everlasting (existing within time). Although Boethius supports the dominant Christian claim that an eternal God can see all of time within a single instant, Wolterstorff finds that this conclusion is impossible due to God's biblical role as an active redeemer.
By intervening chronologically in the flow of human time, God must therefore reside within that given reference system. Wolterstorff's logic seems fundamentally flawed in his abrupt jump to this conclusion. Supposing that the nature of God is eternal (a characteristic beyond our comprehension as mortal beings), then why would it be a stretch of logic to believe that he is capable of altering the course of temporal events while still residing outside the system of time in which they take place?
Alteration of any given event in the flow of human history would drastically change the future in an infinite number of ways, but this can still be accounted for by Boethius' logic. If God can see all of time in a single instant, then such a change would alter his visions throughout the timeline simultaneously. All changes would take effect instantaneously, thereby allowing God to maintain his omniscience through his truly eternal nature.
I find Boethius' arguments, like Pike's, restrictive in thought. What I'm referring to is his inability to acknowledge the realm in which god exists. Naturally, and in keeping with the doctrine, since god is the source of all creation one could justifiably assume time is one of his creations as well (since according to just about everything we know so far about physics suggests each facet of this plane of existence is intrinsically linked with space and time). If that doesn't suffice, one can simply revert back to the idea that god is supreme over all things yadda yadda, ergo if the rules of time applied to him then there would be something to which god was subordinate.
Anyway, the misstep I think Boethius takes is when he mentions that god doesn't know beforehand what humans will do. I can very easily get on board with the idea that god sees things on our realm as an eternal present. However, Boethius needs to reconcile one thing: if before everything, the earth, stars, universe, there was only god (again this assumes a linear time line but, getting there hold on), would god necessarily know precisely what we would do at the moment of creation since it is one act for him? God being timeless, at least as Boethius described it, does nothing to solve the problem of omniscience and free will.
While both Wolterstorff and Boethius present many valid points as to whether God is in fact everlasting or eternal, it's difficult to definitively side with either one. The reason being that an eternal God sees all events of the past, present, and future and does so in a way that it allows humans to truly be voluntary in their actions. An eternal God sees all possible outcomes of any event throughout what we would consider "time" but knows each individual through and through so that all actions are known and seen by Him. Thus, free will is the basis for arguing for an eternal God and siding with Boethius; however, the fact that God has in fact been present in human affairs throughout history, as described by Wolterstorff, leads one to believe that He is in fact existing within time and only chooses when to interfere. If this is the case, it would be almost impossible for one to claim that an everlasting God allows free will if He has the power to change that which he has forseen. In addition, one would have to ask what the criteria would be for an everlasting God to feel it necessary to become involved in Human affairs.
I would like to make a counter to Wolf's arguement. It is stated in the bible that Jesus was born of Mary and that he took on human form. Since God/Jesus took on human form he would be constrained to linear time and thus would be able to know the past and be able to intervene in the present. Furthermore, i don't think that the arguement that God cannot operate in the eternal and temporal sense was really hashed out that well. Also, if God new that man would sin and thus he sent a saviour, How would he be able to predict our sin and thus send a saviour if he was not eternal?
David, I was wondering the same thing about creation.
However, I do think Boethius makes a rather convincing (though I am rather biased) argument as to how it works. As there is no implied causation, and he sums it up perfectly here: "Therefore free acts, when referred to the divine intuition, become necessary in the conditional sense because God's knowledge provides that condition; on the other hand, viewed by themselves, they do not lose the perfect freedom of their nature." This is exactly what we talked about last time, and he rejects the other definition of freedom and breaks it up into two categories that make sense.
Another thing I can't help but wonder... if we assume God's omnipotence, why can't he exist outside of time- that is, be timeless- but be able to act inside of time? They don't seem to clash for me, as long as God is all-powerful. If he sees the past, present, and future as an eternal present, and he can do just about anything he wills- that is, of course, how these things come about- why wouldn't he be able to act within our timeline? It is, after all, present for him. He does not have to exist on the same timeline to act in it.
He is God, after all.
Hats off to you, Monsieur Charles, as I believe we have made the same point, I just did the reading much later than you!
I like the idea of a God who exists simultaneously across time. It lends weight to the idea of omniscience with free will. I disagree with the idea of a God with an unchanging nature. These two ideas clash. If God is outside the standard flow of time as we understand time, then his nature should never change. In the Old Testament, a destructive god destroys the world with a flood. In the New Testament, a compassionate god gives up his son for the sake of the souls of humanity. He seems to have shifted from a destructive to a redemptive nature. This change would need to occur over time, which would imply that he is within our normal time scheme.
Let me see if am getting this right. One of the comments earlier seemed to say that if God is omnipotent then he can be both inside time and outside time which allows human free will and also his interfering with human affairs possible. I don’t know if I can accept the idea that God lives outside of time in the first place, as Boethius tries to reason, because if God sees every moment happen together, then when he interfered and went inside time then what he would have seen when he was outside time would be different after he went inside time and engaged with human affairs. It seems contradictory to me so say he is both inside and outside of time. Also I don’t know if I can accept Wolterstorff’s idea that God changes even though he states that the Bible says it is so. Just because God was destructive at one point and redemptive at another does not mean his nature changes. A changing nature is not an attribute that seems compatible with the concept of God.
I tend to agree more witht he Wolterstorff argument. However, it seems to me from the limited amount of reading i have done in this class that any great philosophical thinker has the ability to articulate any conclusion he wishes about the nature of God. It would seem that the topic would become somewhat jaded in that aspect because the most essential part about the nature of God is that we do/can not know his true nature as is revealed by the fact that there are multiple contradicting arguments pertaining to it (different religions). It seems interetsing to me that our understanding of God is so limited even though He has been a part of the culture of our world for thousands of years. I think that Wolterstoff's strongest point is that if God were an eternal being, acting outside of time, how then has he been able to intervene in worldly activities over time. The notion seems somewhat contradictory.
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