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Time Lost and Time Regained: a Short Essay on the Eternity of God Dr Journal of Religion and Theology Volume 1, Issue 1, 2017, PP 33-37 Time Lost and Time Regained: A Short Essay on the Eternity of God Dr. Charles Taliaferro Professor of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, St. Olaf College, USA. *Corresponding Author: Dr. Charles Taliaferro, Professor of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, St. Olaf College, USA. ABSTRACT In philosophy of religion and analytical theology there is a substantial debate about God’s relation to time. The traditional, Christian theistic stance, championed by Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas, and others, is that God is timelessly eternal. This is opposed by Nicholas Wolterstorff, Richard Swinburne, and some other major philosophers of religion. Wolterstorff’s objections to the traditional position were examined to bring to light how the critics of the belief that God is eternal fail to appreciate how the traditional stance is pitted against anthropomorphism. It affirmed the unique self-subsistence of God as Creator, and the goodness of temporality. Keywords: Anthropomorphism, eternity, God, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Richard Swinburne, temporality, time. And there are some who have no memorial, metaphysical thesis that there is no past, present, and future for God, but with overriding divine who have perished as though they had not lived; values. they have become as though they had not been born, In this brief essay I use the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff as a foil to bring to light how the and so have their children after them. traditional belief that God is eternal is employed, Sirach 44:9 historically, to underscore three important tenants: God is not to be thought of anthropomorphically; Well! And what if she should die some the life of God is unsurpassably full as the self- afternoon, subsisting Creator; and every moment of time is Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and precious, in part, because of God‟s eternity. rose; TEMPORALITY, A LIFE WORTH LIVING, AND Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand CAUSATION With the smoke coming down above the Consider first the case against the view that God housetops…. is atemporally eternal. Wolterstorff‟s case against T. S. Eliot, Portrait of a Lady those who believe God to be temporal involves In analytical theology and philosophy of an appeal to human experience. religion the debate over God‟s relationship to What‟s characteristic of those of us who live in time is often suffused with highly technical time is that there are experiences we have had arguments involving the concepts of causation, that are over, “irretrievably over and done with.” modality, future free contingents, the theory of We cannot “live them again.” We may remember relativity, the tensed nature of knowledge, them with greater or lesser vividness. But as comparisons of the so-called dynamic and static experiences, they are “forever lost.” (Wolterstorff, theories of time, and so on. It is more rare that 69) philosophers and theologians attend to the root Although Wolterstorff does not explicitly rule values that are in play in the classical literature out the possibility of there being an eternal on God and time that we find in Boethius, person (or, in light of the doctrine of the Trinity, Augustine, Aquinas, and others. Such classical there being three divine persons that are thinkers were not concerned only with the Journal of Religion and Theology V1 ● I1 ● 2017 33 Time Lost and Time Regained: A Short Essay on the Eternity of God atemporally eternal), he focuses his analysis of “Wolterstorff‟s most important, direct challenge what it is to be like us. In our case, experiences to those who embrace God as eternal is that they must, by their very nature, become irretrievably seem to rob God of the capacity to enjoy lost as we live through time even if (perhaps per temporal goods”. impossibile) we never lose consciousness. “Now why would anyone imagine that unchanging “And if there be persons who need no sleep and experience, be it momentary or durational, is a for whom, accordingly, experiences can in more excellent form of life –or if you will, fuller- principle last a long time, it will still be the case, than that which I do experience? Consider how even for enduring experiences, that parts of little of what we actually experience could be them will be over and forever lost. So… gotten into a changeless state. Watching my intrinsic to the experience of a person in time is children grow up would be something I could that, at any moment in that person‟s life, many not experience, listening to a piece of music of her life‟s experiences have this quality of would be something I could not experience, irrevocable overness”. (Ibid., 69) walking through Hagia Sophia so as to see if Wolterstorff develops the following two thought from a variety of different angels would be experiment: if we imagine what it would be like something I could not experience, building a to be a person who did not experience the piece of furniture or designing a house would be overness of time, we wind up with bizarre something I could not experience, and so forth, results. In the first, we seem driven to absurdity; on and on. To me it seems just bizarre to the idea that one‟s experience would have to suppose that such a life would be more occur in a moment: excellent, more full. It seems, on the contrary, “What would be required for my life to be appallingly impoverished”. (Ibid., 73) lacking in any experience that has the quality of How should we assess these considerations irrevocable overnness? It would at least have to when it comes to the philosophy of God? be totally devoid of change. Would it have to be momentary? Strictly speaking, yes. For if it ETERNAL VALUES were not momentary, then a segment of it would The first point to note is that Wolterstorff‟s be over at a certain time”. (Ibid., 73) reasoning concerns what he takes to be the Although Wolterstorff does not press the issue, I “characteristic of those of us who live in time.” suggest that such a thought experiment would One may grant all his points; for us, thinking amount to a reduction to absurdity. No one can and acting are inconceivable without there being think in an instant. An instant as opposed to an temporal sequence. For us to have and raise event or an interval, has no temporal magnitude; children, build things, explore Hagia Sophia, it is akin to a point in space which may be said listening to music, and so on, requires sequential to have location but not spatial extension. activity in which events transpire and the In a second thought experiment, Wolterstorff present moment is (as it were) in motion and not conjures up the following case in which there is at all static or immutable (not subject to an irrevocable loss of the past, but this fact change). It is understandable that Wolterstorff, seems trivial and uninteresting. as a Christian philosopher, would use human “Suppose my experience is confined to that of life as a reference point for thinking about God seeing an unfaltering patch of vivid green. Yes, in light of the belief that human persons are after ten minutes of this the first ten minutes made in the image of God. But while one might would be over –irrevocably, irretrievably and all rightly think that God, like human beings, loves, of that. But since my experience would continue knows, creates, it is another matter to suppose to be more of exactly the same, surely there that the manner or mode of God‟s love, knowledge, would be no cause for lament in the fact that the and power is, like our own, temporal. The experience of the first ten minutes was forever classical, eternalist tradition does not in any way lost.” (Ibid., 73) claim that temporal changing and sequential So, Wolterstorff‟s reasoning here is that a activity is ipso facto defective. Such temporality changeless being that does not experience is (arguably) essential for there to be a created temporal loss is either an absurdity (thinking, a order of free, interdependent agents who are process that requires temporal passage, in an profoundly responsible for each other‟s welfare. instant) or not at all valuable. Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas, and others 34 Journal of Religion and Theology V1 ● I1 ● 2017 Time Lost and Time Regained: A Short Essay on the Eternity of God simultaneously affirm the goodness of a highlights, but to see them as more precious. contingent creation and recognize what they see Appreciating this may be done in three stages. as the perfection of God, which involves God First, consider Wolterstorff‟s raising children containing “all the plentitude of perfection of all and building things (and so on) under conditions being” --omnem plenitudinem perfcetionis where there is no God, the cosmos is totius esse (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.9.1.) (eventually) annihilated and there is no memory On this view, God‟s greatness cannot be of those acts by anyone or anything. We might augmented or diminished. God is loving, even imagine that at a certain point in time there knowing, and is revealed in time, but this is would be no trace of any kind of there once timelessly willed by a God who is not subject to being purposive, living creatures. In this time. On this point, the classical view may be scenario we may well deem the good lives and appreciated as non-anthropomorphic, not acts to be truly valuable. Those who are modeling the conception of God based on Platonists might go so far as to contend that it human life (and its limitations).
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