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God, Time and Freedom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Extract
There seems to be a growing consensus amongst both theologians and philosophers that the classical doctrine of God as a simple, eternal (atemporal) being is untenable. Worries are expressed about the very notion of atemporal existence and when the examples of numbers and universals are offered, attention is drawn to the uncertain ontological status of such entities. Further, some of the traditional expressions of divine eternity are strictly speaking incoherent, bearing in mind that eternity means having neither temporal location nor duration. For example, it is clearly self-contradictory to assert that atemporal deity enjoys the ‘Eternal Now’ since this would entail temporal location, and similarly Boethius' famous definition of eternity as ‘unending life existing as a complete whole all at once’ is suspect, for it suggests that God has both infinite duration (‘unending life’) and also no duration (‘all at once’). Of course, the traditionalist will hasten to point out that God's magnum mysterium is forcing him to employ language analogically, but the critics suspect they are rather in the presence of the fog of unknowing and just plain woolly thinking.
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