Divine temporality is all the rage in certain theological circles today. Some even suggesting that the doctrine of the Trinity entails divine temporality. While I find this claim a bit strong, I do think that divine temporality can be quite useful for developing a robust model of the Trinity. However, not everyone agrees with this. Paul Helm has offered an objection to the so-called Oxford school of divine temporality based on the Christian (...) doctrine of the Trinity. He has argued that this form of divine temporality entails Arianism. In other words, divine temporality suffers from an inadequate doctrine of the Trinity. In this paper I shall first articulate the so-called Oxford school of divine temporality. From there I shall develop some of the Oxford school’s theological benefits that help flesh out the doctrine of the Trinity, and assuage the charge of Arianism. Then I shall offer an examination and refutation of the Arian charge to divine temporality in order to show that the divine temporalist can maintain a robust Trinitarian theology. (shrink)

If God exists atemporally, could God still be temporally conscious? This article aims to clarify a conceptual space for a divine temporal mode of consciousness under the traditional assumption that God exists atemporally. I contend that an atemporally existing and conscious God – by the divine nature, and not just the human nature in Christ – could also be conscious of the temporal world – and indeed, all possible temporal worlds – through a temporal mode that is akin (...) to human temporal consciousness, albeit exempt from its limitations. I submit that although (a) God exists atemporally (ontological atemporalism), (b) God could be both temporally and atemporally conscious (bimodalism of divine consciousness), and (c) these two modes of consciousness could be unified in an absolute divine consciousness without incurring schizophrenia-like problems (unity of bimodal divine consciousness). (shrink)

In this paper, I present an argument to show that the doctrine of divine temporality (the view that God is in time, but everlastingly eternal) is incoherent. The doctrine of divine temporality entails that God has traversed an actually infinite series of moments in order to reach the present. But I show that an actually infinite series of moments cannot be traversed. Hence, God could not have traversed his infinite past to reach the present. Therefore, the (...) doctrine of divine temporality is necessarily false. I defend this argument against various responses and objections. (shrink)

Open theists argue that God's relationship to time, as conceived in classical theism, is erroneous. They explain that it is contradictory for an atemporal being to act in a temporal universe, including experiencing its temporal successions. Contrary to the atemporalists, redemptive history has shown that God interacts with humans in time. This relational nature of God nullifies the classical notion of God as timelessly eternal. Therefore, it lacks a philosophical and theological basis. Because God is in time, He does not (...) know all future contingencies and, therefore, changes. This study examines open theism's appropriation of the A and B theories of time to the divine-human relationship. The study argues that divine temporality does not solve the tension of divine-human relationships, especially in relation to the future. Further, historical divine temporality does not negate the fact of divine atemporality. It mainly stems from God's choice to create temporal creatures and His relationship with them. Furthermore, if it is not logically and metaphysically contradictory for an omnipresent being to act in space, then it follows that an atemporal being can act in time. Whether time is understood from the metric or psychological point of view, it does not transcend God, and therefore, the limitation it places on human creatures with respect to the future does not apply to God. Lastly, although a few philosophers reject the notion of eternity as timelessly eternal, the doctrine has a philosophical and theological basis in the Scripture. (shrink)

This article considers Aquinas' doctrine of predestination as an eternal reality in God in light of its temporal realization in time by the incarnation of the eternal Son. In particular, Aquinas' repeated recourse to the ratio of the divine goodness as the motive of predestination is documented in conjunction with his teaching on the fittingness of the incarnation. In this light, the relation of the natural sonship of Christ to the grace of adoption is developed by Aquinas as the (...) temporal realization of the eternal reality of predestination in God. (shrink)

Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) is arguably the most influential philosophical mystic in Islam. He is also a presentist. This paper responds to the arguments of contemporary philosophers, Norman Kretzmann, William Lane Craig, Garrett DeWeese, and Alan Padgett, who argue that divine atemporality and temporal presentism are incompatible, through the temporal ontology of Ibn ‘Arabī. Ibn ‘Arabī asserts that all entities in the universe are loci of manifestation of God’s most beautiful Names. These divine Names constitute sensible (...) reality. The principal response of Ibn ‘Arabī to the arguments of contemporary scholars is that the divine Names as they are manifested in the cosmos cannot be conflated with the divine Names as they are in themselves, which, in turn, cannot be conflated with God in His numinous essence. This allows him to simultaneously maintain the atemporality of God and temporal presentism. (shrink)

The relationship between the eternity of the divine attributes and the origination of the universe (ḥudūth al-‘ālam), fate, and human freedom is among the most important problems of Kalām. This study deals with this problem by examining the connection of the kalāmī view of the origination of the world with God’s attributes in general and His eternal knowledge in particular. In this connection, it also revisits the issue of human free will. One of the main arguments of this paper (...) is that the difficulties in the explanation of the relationship between God and the universe lies on the misapprehension of the term eternity. The difficulties in the explanation of the divine attributes and their relation to the universe revolve primarily around the conception of eternity understood as the infinite succession of moments in time or as something before the beginning of time. On the other hand, if eternity is understood as an attribute peculiar to God only, which also embraces all the temporal extensions as a succession in it, we may provide some explanations regarding God’s attributes and their relation to the universe. Within this direction, some intellectual developments in the 20th century such as the theory of relativity and quantum physics have enabled us to posit a better concept of eternity that seems to be promising in the explanation of the abovementioned problems. (shrink)

Religiosity is a prominent feature of the Geschwind syndrome, a behavioural pattern found in some cases of temporal lobe epilepsy. Since the 1950s, when Wilder Penfield induced spiritual feelings by experimental manipulation of the temporal lobes, development of brain imaging technology has revealed neural correlates of intense emotional states, spurring the growth of neurotheology. In their secular empiricism, psychiatry, neurology and psychology are inclined to pathologise deviant religious expression, thereby reinforcing the dualism of objective and phenomenal worlds. Considering theological perspectives (...) and the idea of cosmic consciousness, the authors urge a holistic approach to the spiritual events of epileptic aura, potentially leading to a deeper understanding of the mind and its transcendent potential. (shrink)

A promising argument for divine timelessness is that temporal life is possessed only moment by moment, which is incompatible with the existence of a perfect being.Since the argument is based on the experience of time’s passage, it cannot be circumvented by appeal to a tenseless theory of time.Neither can the argument be subverted by appeals to a temporal deity’s possession of a specious present of infinite duration.Nonetheless, because the argument concerns one’s experience of time’s passage rather than the objective (...) reality of temporal becoming itself, it is considerably weakened by the fact that an omniscient being possessing perfect memory and foreknowledge, need not find such experience to be an imperfection. (shrink)

A number of thinkers today, including open theists, find reasons to attribute temporality to God. According to Robert W. Jenson, the Trinity is indispensable to a Christian concept of God, and divine temporality is essential to the meaning of the Trinity. Following the lead of early Christian thought, Jenson argues that the persons of the Trinity are relations, and these relations are temporal. Jenson’s insights are obscured, however, by problematic references to time as a sphere to which (...) God is related. Schubert M. Ogden gives the notion of divine temporality coherent content by arguing that God’s actuality is best understood as an unending succession of experiences. This paper was delivered in the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

The Divine Attributes explores the traditional theistic concept of God as the most perfect being possible, discussing the main divine attributes which flow from this understanding - personhood, transcendence, immanence, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, perfect goodness, unity, simplicity and necessity. It argues that the atemporalist's conception of God is to be preferred over the temporalist's on the grounds of perfect being theology, but that, if it were to be the case that the temporal God existed, rather than the atemporal (...) God, He'd still be 'perfect enough' to count as the God of Theism. (shrink)

In “Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom” [6] Anthony Kenny returns to a ‘very old difficulty’ stated by Aquinas at Summa Theologiae Ia, 14, 3, 3. Kenny rejects the Thomistic strategy of treating God as an atemporal knower, Who grasps all events of history simultaneously in a timeless present. He takes this notion to be neither Biblical nor coherent. He hopes instead to reconcile a temporal God's literal foreknowledge with free action among men. I shall follow Kenny in treating the (...) concept of God as a temporal being. But I shall argue against the attempts of Kenny and some other recent writers to provide a reconciliation. (shrink)

Taking divine omniscience as including temporal omniscience, which means God exists at all times and knows everything, I point out the fallacies in an incompatibilist argument. Syntactically, due to misapplication of the principle of substitutivity, this incompatibilist argument isn’t valid. Semantically, due to cancelation of a supposition on which God’s earlier belief depends, an agent’s alternative action won’t result in falsification of divine belief. Finally, by appealing to an eternalist conception of truth of proposition about the future, I (...) argue that what divine belief entails isn’t the necessity of an agent’s action but the action itself, and put forward a notion of conditional fatalism, which allows for human free will. (shrink)

This article explores the paradox between the classical doctrine of divine aseity and the notion of divine self-limitation. Drawing from biblical narratives and theological concepts such as divine accommodation and kenosis, the article shows that God’s choice to enter into a temporal and relational interaction with creation affects God in such a way that God would not have been affected without the creation. Given the foregoing, open and relational theists conceptualised the notion of divine self-limitation in (...) which, as a result of the creation and human libertarian freedom, God cannot maximally exemplify his great-making properties upheld in traditional theism. I argued in this article that although God seems to become vulnerable because of the act of creation, He nevertheless remains a se because He is not only the source of his existence, but the creation of significant others could not cause God to lose his essential attribute of independence. Therefore, God is still omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, immutable and the like because the possession of these divine attributes does not rule out the possibility that God can enter into a temporal relationship with the creatures. Divine self-limitation predicates real limitations of God contrary to the negating language of the Scripture and, therefore, undermines God’s Almightiness.Contribution: It is argued in this article that although it may be possible to speak about God’s vulnerability because of his act of creation, which seems like a hard choice because He is omniscient, a weaker version of divine aseity that ascribes real limitations to God is not viable. (shrink)

This paper describes Stein’s process for establishing the relationship between finite and temporal beings and infinite and eternal beings. Although she contextualized her research in the fields of phenomenology and ontology, Stein surpasses these domains. Following Aquinas, Stein uses the analogy to trace the ascension towards the sense of Being. However, this process ends up being closest to the position of St. Augustine. In fact, the author first draws up a temporal analogy and then a personal analogy starting from two (...) pieces of evidence: the certainty of “I am”, from Augustine, Descartes, and Husserl, and the divine “I am”, according to the name that God reveals of himself: “I am who I am”. Through personal analogy, the author goes beyond phenomenology and ontology, while the category “person” includes both being and an attributed fullness. (shrink)

Philosophical theologians have been sharply divided with respect to God's relationship to time. This article examines the principal arguments they have offered for divine timelessness and temporality. Based on the discussion, it appears that the grounds for affirming divine timelessness is comparatively weak, but that there are two powerful arguments in favour of divine temporality. It would seem, then, that we should conclude that God is temporal. But such a conclusion would be premature, for there (...) remains one way of escape still open for defenders of divine timelessness. The argument based on God's action in the world assumes the objective reality of temporal becoming, and the argument based on God's knowledge of the temporal world assumes the objective reality of tensed facts. If one denies the objective reality of temporal becoming and tensed facts, then the arguments are undercut. For, in that case, nothing to which God is related ever comes into or passes out of being, and all facts exist tenselessly, so that God undergoes neither extrinsic nor intrinsic change. He can be the immutable, omniscient Sustainer and Knower of all things and, hence, exist timelessly. In short, the defender of divine timelessness can escape the arguments for divine temporality by embracing the tenseless theory of time. It is noteworthy, however, that almost no defender of divine timelessness has taken this route. (shrink)

This book deals with an old conundrum: if God knows what we will choose tomorrow, how can we be free to choose otherwise? If all our choices are already written, is our freedom simply an illusion? This book provides a precise analysis of this dilemma using the tools of modern ontology and the logic of time. With a focus on three intertwined concepts - God's nature, the formal structure of time, and the metaphysics of time, including the relationship between temporal (...) entities and a timeless God - the chapters analyse various solutions to the problem of foreknowledge and freedom, revealing the advantages and drawbacks of each. Building on this analysis, the authors advance constructive solutions, showing under what conditions an entity can be omniscient in the presence of free agents, and whether an eternal entity can know the tensed futures of the world. The metaphysics of time, its topology and the semantics of future tensed sentences are shown to be invaluable topics in dealing with this issue. Combining investigations into the metaphysics of time with the discipline of temporal Logic this monograph brings about important advancements in the philosophical understanding of an ancient and fascinating problem. The answer, if any, is hidden in the folds of time, in the elusive nature of this feature of reality and in the infinite branching of our lives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Temporal Registers in the Realist NovelIlya BernsteinIThere are two ways of thinking about time: in terms of sequences of events, and in terms of time-scales. In the first case, each event is conceived of as having a "before" and an "after": it is categorized as part of a sequence and distinguished from other events by its position in that sequence. In the second case, there is no "before" and (...) "after": events are conceived of as occupying different time-scales and distinguished from one another by being associated with durations of greater or lesser magnitude.1 Thus, the same situation may be categorized alternatively as an unfolding succession of events (event 1, event 2, event 3...) or as a progression of overlapping events on expanding time-scales (the second-event, the minute-event, the hour-event...). In what follows, I will argue that this distinction can shed light on narrative structure—as well as musical form—and that it has particularly interesting implications for literary realism.It may be claimed that this distinction between two ways of approaching time has been an explicit theme in the arts over the course of their history. Different musical forms, for instance, may be seen as being oriented toward one paradigm or the other. Thus, melody aesthetically suggests a sequential conception of time. Melodic forms are supposed to take listeners on a journey from point A to point B, by way of a succession of points in between. By contrast, a form such as the fugue addresses itself to discovering different degrees of density and intensity within the [End Page 173] same event, as it were. It adds layer upon layer, aesthetically dilating the event without moving away from it. The ideology of melody, we might say, thus leans toward a conception of time as a sequence, while the ideology of the fugue suggests a scaling notion of time.Echoes of the distinction between these two aesthetic alternatives may also be found in literature, as embodied in different approaches to narrative. Narrative, conceived of as a succession of episodes, suggests a sequential conception of time, oriented around a "before" and an "after." Yet within these parameters, a spectrum of tendencies may be identified. In some literary forms, the succession of episodes is organized to suggest the idea of a passage from one event to the next (Shakespearean drama, the realist novel), as the notions of "before" and "after" are projected onto ideas of past and future. In others, the succession of episodes represents the layer-by-layer assembly of some larger imaginative or conceptual construct (as is true, in different ways, of such texts as Plato's dialogues, the Divine Comedy, and any number of religious, philosophical, or allegorical narratives): "before" and "after" are interpreted not so much in terms of a past and a future, as in terms of premises and conclusions.Within this spectrum, the novel—and perhaps the realist novel in particular—would appear to be the literary form par excellence that embodies a sequential conception of time. It thematizes and dramatizes time's passage—the unknowability of the future and the irretrievability of the past—more exhaustively than any other narrative genre. Yet as I hope to show below, while the explicit themes of literary realism treat fictional events as a sequence (event 1, event 2, event 3...), its implicit organization is grounded in time-scales and directs readers' attention to differentiations among events taking place at different temporal registers (the sentence-event, the chapter-event, the novel-event...).III would like to begin exploring the theoretical distinction laid out above by going back to music and focusing on an empirical observation that has been made about a variety of musical forms. It has been pointed out that when people listen to a piece of music, they retain in their memory, at greater or lesser degrees of awareness, a certain segment of what they have just heard; this memory serves as a background for their perception of incoming sounds and as a frame of reference for their experience of them. Consequently, musical forms may be characterized, [End Page 174] compared, and distinguished from one another based... (shrink)

Analyses the divine properties, which all follow from eternal omnipotence, omniscience and perfect freedom. ‘Eternal’ must be understood as ‘everlasting’. A divine individual cannot have a beginning; but in the absence of a temporal metric, there is no difference between such an individual existing for only a finite time and existing for an infinite time. A divine individual is not a logically necessary being.

A central part of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation is that the Son of God ‘becomes’ incarnate. Furthermore, according to classical theism, God is timeless: He exists ‘outside’ of time, and His life has no temporal stages. A consequence of this ‘atemporalist’ view is that a timeless being cannot undergo intrinsic change—for this requires the being to be one way at one time, and a different way at a later time. How, then, can we understand the central Christian claim (...) that the Son of God ‘becomes’ human? This paper examines one such explanation, drawn from a brief remark by Brian Leftow: the Word takes on flesh by exhibiting modal variation with regards to the incarnation. On this account, a timeless God ‘becomes’ incarnate simply due to variation across logical space: at some possible worlds He is incarnate and at others He is not. Modal variation need not, therefore, require temporality: it only requires variation across possible worlds. I draw out the problems with Leftow’s modal claim under the heads of Ersatzism and Genuine Modal Realism about possible worlds, respectively. I argue that in both instances, Leftow’s desired cross–worldly variation of the Son’s incarnation cannot be achieved. (shrink)

Understanding Ukrainian sacred art is impossible without understanding how ancient Ukrainians felt space and time, transformed and materialized this understanding in signs, the most ancient among which is the circle, square and cross. These symbols are universal spatial and temporal signs that play the role of archetypes and have deep pre-Christian roots and origins. Their original, cosmological essence of the understanding of nature, the desire to convey the divine essence through comprehension of space and time converges the sacred art (...) of the Christian, Hindu and Islamic worlds. (shrink)

Purpose: Some enigmatic remarks and behaviors of Socrates have been a subject of debate among scholars. We investigated the possibility of underlying epilepsy in Socrates by analyzing pathographic evidence in ancient literature from the viewpoint of the current understanding of seizure semiology. Methods: We performed a case study from a literature survey. Results: In 399 BCE, Socrates was tried and executed in Athens on the charge of “impiety.” His charges included the “introduction of new deities” and “not believing in the (...) gods of the state,” because he publicly claimed that he was periodically and personally receiving a “divine sign,” or daimonion, that directed him in various actions. We found textual evidence that his daimonion was probably a simple partial seizure (SPS) of temporal lobe origin. It was a brief voice that usually prohibited Socrates from initiating certain actions. It started when he was a child, and it visited Socrates unpredictably. Moreover, we found at least two descriptions of Socrates’ unique behavior that are consistent with complex partial seizures (CPSs). The fact that Socrates had been experiencing both SPSs and CPSs periodically since childhood makes the diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) likely. Conclusions: We hypothesize that Socrates had a mild case of TLE without secondary generalization. This is the first report in 2,400 years to present a pathographic diagnosis of TLE in Socrates based on specific diagnostic features in the ancient textual evidence. Our study demonstrates that the knowledge of modern epileptology could help understand certain behaviors of historic figures. (shrink)

A difficulty for a view of divine eternity as timelessness is that if time is tensed, then God, in virtue of His omniscience, must know tensed facts. But tensed facts, such as It is now t, can only be known by a temporally located being.Defenders of divine atemporality may attempt to escape the force of this argument by contending either that a timeless being can know tensed facts or else that ignorance of tensed facts is compatible with (...) class='Hi'>divine omniscience. Kvanvig, Wierenga, and Leftow adopt both of these strategies in their various defenses of divine timelessness. Their respective solutions are analyzed in detail and shown to be untenable.Thus, if the theist holds to a tensed view of time, he should construe divine eternity in terms of omnitemporality. (shrink)

The ancient problem of fatalism, more particularly theological fatalism, has resurfaced with surprising vigour in the second half of the twentieth century. Two questions predominate in the debate: (1) Is divine foreknowledge compatible with human freedom and (2) How can God foreknow future free acts? Having surveyed the historical background of this debate in "The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge" and "Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez" (Brill: 1988), William Lane Craig now attempts to address these issues critically. His (...) wide-ranging discussion brings together a thought- provoking array of related topics such as logical fatalism, multivalent logic, backward causation, precognition, time travel, counterfactual logic, temporal necessity, Newcomb's Problem, middle knowledge, and relativity theory. The present work serves both as a useful survey of the extensive literature on theological fatalism and related fields and as a stimulating assessment of the possibility of divine foreknowledge of future free acts. (shrink)

Hartshorne holds that #1 and #2, taken with a proper theory of such relations as knowing and loving, entail #3, so that by denying the latter, classical theism abandons the privilege of holding to the conjunction of #1 and #2 consistently. Its only alternatives are to turn Leibnizian or to be inconsistent. The former option is to deny the contingency of the world. God's creative decrees always have a sufficient reason, else how could we call him wise. This reason must (...) always be the highest good, else how could we call him good. This world is really the best possible world precisely because it is the only possible world morally necessitated by the divine character. (shrink)

The paper discusses Heidegger's early notion of the “movedness of life” (Lebensbewegtheit) and its intimate connection with Aristotle's concept of movement (kinēsis). Heidegger's aim in the period of Being and Time was to “overcome” the Greek ideal of being as ousia – constant and complete presence and availability – by showing that the background for all meaningful presence is Dasein, the ecstatically temporal context of human being. Life as the event of finitude is characterized by an essential lack and incompleteness, (...) and the living present therefore gains meaning only in relation to a horizon of un-presence and un-availability. Whereas the “theological” culmination of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics finds the supreme fulfillment of human life in the semi-divine self-immanence and self-sufficiency of the bios theōrētikos, a radical Heideggerian interpretation of kinēsis may permit us to find in Aristotle the fundamental structures of mortal living as self-transcendent movement. (shrink)

In conclusion, then, the notion of temporal necessity is certainly queer and perhaps a misnomer. It really has little to do with temporality per se and everything to do with counterfactual openness or closedness. We have seen that the future is as unalterable as the past, but that this purely logical truth is not antithetical to freedom or contingency. Moreover, we have found certain past facts are counterfactually open in that were future events or actualities to be other than (...) they will be, these past facts would have been different as a consequence. God's beliefs about the future are such past facts. Moreover, the effects of actions which God would have taken had He believed differently are also such past facts. Oddly enough, then, virtually any past fact is potentially counterfactually open, and the only necessity that remains is purely de facto. We, of course, do not in general know which events of the past depend counterfactually on present actions, and those cases we do know about seem rather trivial. Our intuitions of the necessity, unalterability, and unpreventability of the past as opposed to the future stem from the impossibility of backward causation, which is precluded by the dynamic nature of time and becoming. But the counterfactual dependence of God's beliefs on future events or actualities is not a case of backward causation: rather future-tense propositions are true in virtue of what will happen, given a view of truth as correspondence, and God simply has the essential property of knowing all and only true propositions. With regard to the future, virtually all facts are counterfactually open, and therefore future-tense propositions are not temporally necessary. Propositions thus move from being temporally contingent to being temporally necessary when all the opportunities to affect things counterfactually have slipped by. Hence, the mere fact that an event is past is no indication that it is counterfactually closed. This is especially evident in the case of God's foreknowledge. If we say that God foreknows that I shall do x and therefore I cannot refrain from doing x, lest I change God's past foreknowledge, we are being deceived by a modality which has nothing to do with my power or freedom. All that is impossible is the conjunction of God's foreknowledge that p and of ~ p; but this modality in sensu composito has no bearing on my ability to act such that ~ p would be true and God would have foreknown differently. Temporal necessity, then, turns out to be only obliquely temporal and modally weak, certainly no threat to freedom or divine foreknowledge. (shrink)

Drawing primarily upon Dante’s three major philosophical treatises (De vulgari eloquentia, Convivio, and Monarchia), this essay explores how Dante’s ethico-political philosophy operates within the crucial tension between the phenomenology of time as the condition for the possibility of human moral development and yet also as, metaphysically speaking, the privation and imitation of eternity. I begin by showing that, in the De vulgari eloquentia, Dante’s understanding of the poetic and rhetorical function of the illustrious vernacular is tied to his political philosophy (...) in a way that depends upon a rich but ultimately unresolved tension between (a) the demand that only an atemporal, unchanging vernacular would be suitable for the tasks of universal monarchy and (b) the recognition that only a temporal, localized, and changing illustrious vernacular could possibly bring about the existence of the universal monarchy. In the second half of the essay, I will turn to Dante’s treatment of the providential grounding for the independence of spiritual and temporal authority in Convivio and Monarchia. I will argue that Dante’s understanding of divine providence provides common justification for the temporal and spiritual authorities whose independence he otherwise insists upon. Finally, drawing on the letter to Cangrande della Scala (the authorship of which is disputed), I will discuss how, for Dante, the providential ground for the legitimacy of temporal authority can only be discerned through the allegorical interpretation of history itself. In light of my discussion of these themes in Dante’s political philosophy and its dependence on his understanding of divine providence, I will conclude with a brief reflection on how Dante’s understanding of divine providence might help us better appreciate important aspects of the neglected legacy of Renaissance humanism in the history of early modern philosophy. (shrink)

Suppose we believe that God created the world. Then surely we want it to be the case that he intended, in some sense at least, to create THIS world. Moreover, most theists want to hold that God didn't just guess or hope that the world would take one course or another; rather, he KNEW precisely what was going to take place in the world he planned to create. In particular, of each person P, God knew that P was to exist. (...) Call this the "standard" conception. Most theists find the standard conception appealing. Unfortunately, the view seems to conflict with the equally appealing idea — call it "temporal actualism" — that there are no "future" individuals beyond those that already exist in the present moment. For, on this view, for any historical person P, prior to creation, there was no such person as P and hence nothing about P for God to know. Hence, in particular, God couldn't have known that P was to exist. This is of course not a new problem. But past solutions to it are highly problematic. In this paper, after canvassing previous approaches, I will propose a solution that seems to preserve both temporal actualism and a suitably robust form of the standard conception while avoiding the pitfalls of the past. (shrink)

Christianity claims that the incarnation provides reliable knowledge about God but also that the incarnation was undertaken freely and thus need not have happened. Alexander Garton-Eisenacher resolves this tension between epistemological reliability and divine freedom, building particularly from the work of Karl Barth. Garton-Eisenacher offers a fresh reading of the Church Dogmatics that demonstrates how Barth’s theology provides a promising starting point but notes that his argument is ultimately undermined by the doctrine of eternity within which it is framed. (...) The author overcomes this issue by showing how the promising motifs employed by Barth can be authentically derived from the classical doctrine of eternity instead. In so doing, this work shows that reading classical eternity against a Barthian background also serves to draw out a more temporal interpretation of the doctrine than its contemporary characterization, reclaiming it as a viable Christian understanding of God’s relationship to time. (shrink)

In this paper, we will defend a particular version of the timeless solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. Our strategy is grounded on a particular temporal framework, which models the flow of time and a libertarian understanding of freedom. The propositions describing a certain act by an agent have an indeterminate truth value until the agent makes her choice; therefore, they become true or false when a decision is made. In order to account for this (...) change of truth value, a multiple frame structure is introduced in which every frame presents a privileged time, with its past and the possible alternative futures, which are still open. God atemporally knows all the frames and the truth values of propositions with respect to each one. Since divine knowledge of what an agent decides in a certain temporal frame depends on the agent’s act itself, divine knowledge does not conflict with the agent’s free will. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza el pensamiento de Agustín respecto a la incorporeidad de Dios, una doctrina que él desarrolló principalmente como una reacción contra las reflexiones maniqueas y arrianas sobre este tema. La decisión de Agustín de integrar la Iglesia católica estuvo fuertemente influenciada por su manera de entender la incorporeidad divina, un concepto con el cual se familiarizó hacia la mitad del año 380 en Milán. Esta implica que Dios no es sujeto de tiempo ni espacio en ningún sentido, compromiso (...) metafísico que le permite a Agustín responder a varias objeciones dirigidas a la cristiandad. Poco después de su bautizo, Agustín aplicó su visión de la divinidad a sus críticas de los maniqueos. En ese artículo vemos cómo, décadas después, este compromiso doctrinal fue desarrollado y expresado en sus homilías y en sus polémicas contra el arrianismo. Knotts examina tanto fuentes del 390, como homilías de la segunda década del 400. Esto nos permite apreciar cómo el tema de la incorporeidad es desarrollado y movilizado en mayor grado en los contextos homiléticos y polémicos. Así, dos temas íntimamente relacionados emergen: primero, Agustín mantiene que no debemos concebir la generación del hijo en los términos de la lógica terrena, no debemos buscar una duración temporal en la eternidad; segundo, debemos tener la humildad intelectual para constatar que nuestras categorías terrenas no son suficientes para pensar acerca de Dios. Agustín opta por confesar su ignorancia acerca de lo que significa que el hijo sea eterno y más bien funda su teología sobre las escrituras. Estos son los dos puntos cruciales que surgen de la crítica de Agustín hacia los arrianos. Veremos también cómo el Evangelio de Juan forma un locus theologicus para Agustín. El desarrollo de la incorporeidad divina aparece en las homilías y polémicas de Agustín como una vía para neutralizar a sus oponentes y le ofrece a su audiencia mayores herramientas. (shrink)

This article constructs an ecological theology following Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy of religion. I suggest that the Son and Spirit express divinity through corporeal and temporal realities best described through Levinas’ ideas concerning the an‐archy and awakening of time. Following Levinas, and theologians such as Mark I Wallace, I construct a materialist theology that blurs the line between God and corporeal bodies, positing that such an understanding of the Son and Spirit re‐sacralizes nature in a way that assists Christianity in overcoming (...) the tenuous relationship between humanity and Earth. (shrink)

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav describes the tzaddik as experiencing time in a distinctive, enlightened way: What is seventy years for the rest of us feels like a mere fifteen minutes for the tzaddik. Furthermore, even higher levels of enlightenment are possible—for a tzaddik on a higher level, what feels like seventy years for the first tzaddik is again but a mere fifteen minutes. This pattern continues, approaching a limit point which Rabbi Nachman calls “above time,” and which is the perspective (...) on time of the Divine. How might Rabbi Nachman’s claims about enlightened temporal experience be understood? In this paper, my aim is to examine some ways of understanding what it might mean to ‘experience time more quickly’ or to ‘experience 70 years as 15 minutes’ in light of contemporary theories of the structure of temporal experience. I then present a novel interpretation of Rabbi Nachman’s claims which appeals to the contemporary notion of the specious present —a nonzero temporal interval experienced in a unified way as present. (shrink)

This paper explores Nicholas of Cusa’s framing of the De pace fidei as a dialogue taking place incaelo rationis. On the one hand, this framing allows Nicholas of Cusa to argue that all religious rites presuppose the truth of a single, unified faith and so temporally manifest divine logos in a way accommodated to the historically unique conventions of different political communities. On the other hand, at the end of the De pace fidei, the interlocutors in the heavenly dialogue (...) are enjoined to return to earth and lead their countrymen in a gradual conversion to the acceptance of rites which would explicitly acknowledge the metaphysically presupposed transcendent unity of all true faiths. In light of these two aspects of the literary framing of the De pace fidei, the question that motivates this paper concerns the extent to which the understanding of history subtending Cusanus’ temporal political aims is consistent with the understanding of history grounded in his metaphysical presupposition that there is una religio in omni diversitate rituum. In addressing this question, I shall argue that the literary strategy of the De pace fidei sacrifices Nicholas of Cusa’s apologetic doctrinal aims insofar as the text creates an allegorical space in which the tension between its literal and figurative dimensions assigns to its readers the task of choosing their own orientations to the significance of history as a foundation for future action. (shrink)

Theological incompatibility arguments suggest God's comprehensive foreknowledge is incompatible with human free will. Logical incompatibility arguments suggest a complete set of truths about the future is logically incompatible with human free will. Of the two, most think theological incompatibility is the more severe problem; but hardly anyone thinks either kind of argument presents a real threat to free will. I will argue, however, that sound theological and logical incompatibility arguments exist and that, in fact, logical incompatibly is the more severe (...) problem. A deep analysis of the arguments will reveal that, to avoid a fatalist conclusion, we must reject bivalence and adopt a specific kind of temporal ontology (presentism), which also forces the theist to embrace open theism. (shrink)

This paper shows how the authority of the poet in certain of Hölderlin’s later hymns depends on the remembrance of the sacred word. In the last three strophes of his “As on a Holiday,” the holy appears as the Kantian sublime: the divine intellectually elevates the poets while its overwhelming power makes them aware of human limitations. The poets’ physical act of accepting the word enables them to come to speech and signifies acknowledgement of limitation. But the speaker’s illicit (...) effort to enter the realm of the deities results in speechlessness. In poems “The Only One” and “Patmos” Jesus emerges as the mediator between the timeless realm of the gods and temporal world of humans. God’s word—articulated by the God incarnate—gives meaning to finite human existence. Through the commemorative inscription of the divine word, poets gain their voice and speak of human existence as being unto the departed gods. (shrink)

At least since Aristotle’s famous 'sea-battle' passages in On Interpretation 9, some substantial minority of philosophers has been attracted to the doctrine of the open future--the doctrine that future contingent statements are not true. But, prima facie, such views seem inconsistent with the following intuition: if something has happened, then (looking back) it was the case that it would happen. How can it be that, looking forwards, it isn’t true that there will be a sea battle, while also being true (...) that, looking backwards, it was the case that there would be a sea battle? This tension forms, in large part, what might be called the problem of future contingents. A dominant trend in temporal logic and semantic theorizing about future contingents seeks to validate both intuitions. Theorists in this tradition--including some interpretations of Aristotle, but paradigmatically, Thomason (1970), as well as more recent developments in Belnap, et. al (2001) and MacFarlane (2003, 2014)--have argued that the apparent tension between the intuitions is in fact merely apparent. In short, such theorists seek to maintain both of the following two theses: (i) the open future: Future contingents are not true, and (ii) retro-closure: From the fact that something is true, it follows that it was the case that it would be true. It is well-known that reflection on the problem of future contingents has in many ways been inspired by importantly parallel issues regarding divine foreknowledge and indeterminism. In this paper, we take up this perspective, and ask what accepting both the open future and retro-closure predicts about omniscience. When we theorize about a perfect knower, we are theorizing about what an ideal agent ought to believe. Our contention is that there isn’t an acceptable view of ideally rational belief given the assumptions of the open future and retro-closure, and thus this casts doubt on the conjunction of those assumptions. (shrink)

By “pantheism” I mean to pick out a model of God on which God is identical with the totality of existents constitutive of the universe. I assume that, on pantheism, God is an omnispatiotemporal mind who is identical with the universe. I assume that, given divine omnispatiotemporality, God knows everything that can be known in the universe. This includes having knowledge de se of the minds of every conscious creature. Hence, if God has knowledge de se of the minds (...) of every conscious creature, then divine omniscience implies omnisubjectivity. Assuming that eternalism is true, robust temporal passage is an illusion. But, conscious creatures, such as human persons, experience robust temporal passage. If God has the attribute of omnisubjectivity, then God experiences temporal passage. However, God also has a unified experience of the entire spatiotemporal continuum. God’s having these two perspectives creates a tension for pantheism given that God would seem to experience both temporal passage and an absence of temporal passage. I compare non-personal pantheism and personal pantheism and consider which one has better resources to answer the foregoing puzzle. I argue that personal pantheism is better equipped to address this problem than non-personal pantheism. (shrink)

Central to Raimon Panikkar’s work is the acclaimed Cosmotheandric epigram, according to which reality has three interrelated and irreducible dimensions, the human, the cosmos, and the divine. The paper examines this thesis and examines related concepts, such as ‘sacred secularity’ in Panikkar’s thinking. The overall pluralistic thesis allows for dialogue, communication and conversations across cultures. Panikkar considers that a new mythos may be emerging that places value on actions in this world and on temporality. Related to the above (...) is Ken Wilber’s ‘Integral Theory’ that underscores the stages of development of consciousness and worldviews, especially with regard to spirituality. Different perspectives on the divine and atheism are said to arise at each level of development. Wilber’s principal thesis is that religions and spiritualities have continuing and future potentials as ‘conveyor-belts’ of human development in three movements of the Spirit : art, religion and science. A brief discussion will follow on ‘participative spirituality’ and Nondual Śaiva Tantra, and their relation to contemporary atheism. The paper argues that rich space and forum for dialogue are opened between the discourses explored here with global a/theism. (shrink)

This collection highlights such issues as how the nature of time is relevant to the question of whether God is temporal and how God's other attributes are ...

Thomas Aquinas, along with many other medieval philosophers, believed that God is timeless. Aquinas’s treatment of this doctrine seems to imply a view of time that some commentators have noticed is inescapably tenseless, what we would now call a “B-theory” view of time. This is problematic because Aquinas also seems to affirm that tense and temporal becoming are real, implying that what we would now call an “A-theory” of time is correct. In this essay I attempt to adjudicate this apparent (...) conceptual tension in Aquinas’s thought. After analyzing some of the relevant passages I conclude that these passages inescapably, though perhaps inadvertently, commit Aquinas to what is fundamentally a B-theoretic notion of time. I move on to criticize some philosophers’ attempts to reconcile Aquinas’s treatment of divine timelessness with the A-theory. I argue that all these attempts are unsuccessful. I conclude with what I believe are the implications of my interpretation of Aquinas for his broader system of philosophy. (shrink)

According to the Westminster Confession, “God from all eternity did... freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. Yet... thereby neither is God the author of sin or is violence offered to the will of the creatures.” It is hard to see how these two points can be consistently maintained. Hugh McCann, however, argues that by placing God’s decisions outside of time, both propositions are perfectly consistent. I agree with McCann that God’s determining decisions do not make him the author (...) of our sins. But I think that God’s determining decisions, whether temporal or outside of time, preclude our possessing the libertarian free will that McCann’s believes we do possess. In fact, so I argue, if we possess libertarian free will, then elevating God’s determining decisions outside of time only results in God’s eternal decisions being within our power to determine. (shrink)

Written and set on the banks of the Neva, St Petersburg Dialogues is a startlingly relevant analysis of the human prospect at the end of the twentieth century. As the literary critic George Steiner has remarked, "the age of the Gulag and of Auschwitz, of famine and ubiquitous torture,... nuclear threat, the ecological laying waste of our planet, the leap of endemic, possibly pandemic, illness out of the very matrix of libertarian progress" is exactly what Maistre foretold. In the Dialogues (...) Maistre addressed a number of topics which are discussed briefly or not at all in his other works already available in English. These include an apologetic for traditional Christian beliefs about providence, reflections on the social role of the public executioner and the "divinity" of war, a critique of John Locke's sensationalist psychology, meditations on prayer and sacrifice, and a mini-course on "illuminism." The literary form is that of the "philosophical conversation" -- one that allowed Maistre to be deliberately provocative and to indulge his taste for paradox, a "methodical extravagance" that he judged particularly appropriate for the eighteenth-century salon. Translator and editor Richard Lebrun provides a full scholarly edition of this classic work, complete with an introduction, chronology, critical bibliography, and generous explanatory notes. The Dialogues will be of interest to scholars of literary history as well as the history of ideas. (shrink)

In the verse (2:31) of the Qur’ān, it is mentioned that all names were taught to Adam (PBUH). This verse indicates that revelation is decisively the source of language. On the other hand, it is a common fact that people have been constantly producing symbols to express new ideas and concepts. This situation makes it necessary to associate the utterance (muṭlaq) and static with the relative (al-muqayyah) and dynamic between language and reality in religious thought. In the historical process, Mutakallims (...) have undertaken the responsibility of understanding and interpretation between the transcendent dimension of the religion (ad-Dīn) indicated in the Qur’ān and the innovative and dynamic dimension of life. The Mutakallims’ responsibility continues today. However, to establish the relationship among language, thought, and existence in today’s kalâm, it is necessary to identify the roots of this subject in kalām’s classical sources. In our study designed for this purpose, the truth and value of naming divine meanings in the context of ta‘līm al-asmā’ are examined. On the other hand, since dealing with such a large subject in a limited study is not possible, it is just focused on the research of linguistic theories, the relationship between language and thought, and the issue of whether the names used in the main sources to indicate the meanings are divinely determined (tawqīfī). In fact, it has been determined that the subject of ta'līm al-asmā’ is overshadowed by the vehement debates over the createdness of the Qur’ān (Khalq al-Qur’ān) and the relationship between Allāh’s essence and His attributes, although it is a Qur’ān-centered issue. As can be seen in the study, the approach of the Mutakallims to the issue of ta‘līm al-asmā’ is parallel to their understanding of Allāh’s essence and His attributes. As stated in this research, if the divine names were determined by Allāh, then Allāh’s names will be eternal. Besides, if the names expressed in human languages are the same as the essence of Allāh, this will lead to the problem of eternality. If it is said that the names are separated and unrelated from Allāh’s essence, there will be also more than one independent and eternal being. The idea of multiple eternal beings is against the principle of tawḥīd. However, in cases where the distinction between attributes and essence of Allāh is separated from each other in the mind, it causes attributes to be considered as something existing independently of the essence of Allāh. Therefore, as stated in the study, Mu‘tazilite theologians, who were very sensitive about this issue, attached great importance to the concept of eternity (qadīm) while transcending the essence of Allāh from the attributes of the created. As they appealed to tanzīh by which they transcend Him from all the originated things in time, they were focused on His eternality (qidam). In this regard, all His actions concerning the universe are regarded as temporal, in other words, originated in time (ḥādith). From this point of view, according to them, Allāh’s names specified in the Qur’ān are created just like the Qur’ān itself. Although their meanings are within the boundaries of the Divine Knowledge, their wordings (lafiẓ) belong to humans. Therefore, these names (asmâ’) that people use to describe Allāh in their speech, as Abū ‘Alī al-Jubbā’ī argues, are determined by the convention of the human. It has been determined by people via consensus, like other words of the language, to indicate the essence and attributes of Allāh in a language because of communication. Then, Allāh has sent down His message to people with these words. The conclusion that Mu‘tazilite theologians have regarded the connection of names with the meanings in Allāh’s knowledge as a linguistic use, while Sunnī theologians have addressed this issue based on the creative act (Khalq) of Allāh. There is another explanation which is known as the theory of faculty or habitus as an alternative way. Some Ash‘arî and Māturīdī theologians supported this theory. Today, the importance of this new perspective is clear, which appears another association of both ideas. In this context, it has been determined that the views of Māturīdī, who attributes the content (or meaning) of revelation (waḥy) to Allāh while arguing that its wordings belong to humans, are more appropriate to the theory of the faculty (malakah). (shrink)