In this book, the author considers the doctrine of ultimate reality - God - within five world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. By closely studying an orthodox writer in each tradition, the author builds up "pictures" of God and uncovers a common core of belief.

Spinoza's doctrine of the eternity of the mind is often understood as the claim that the mind has a part that is eternal. I appeal to two principles that Spinoza takes to govern parthood and causation to raise a new problem for this reading. Spinoza takes the composition of one thing from many to require causal interaction among the many. Yet he also holds that eternal things cannot causally interact, without mediation, with things in duration. So the human mind, (...) since it is the idea of a body existing in duration, cannot have an eternal part. In order to solve this problem, I propose an aspectual reading of Spinoza's doctrine of the eternity of the mind: the mind itself is eternal, under one of its aspects. (shrink)

This article argues that an intentional acrostic spanning the first five lines of Propertius’ elegy for Cynthia's birthday (3.10), MANE[T], contributes significantly to the poignancy and purpose of the poem. MANE can be read as māne, ‘in the morning’, or manē, ‘stay!’, both of which emphasize the fleeting nature of dawn—and of Cynthia's youthful beauty. MANET can suggest both ‘[art] remains’ and ‘[death] awaits’. All four of these meanings work together to capture the tension between human transience and artistic immortality. (...) The theme is further enhanced by a balancing reverse telestich at the poem's end, ROSA RVES (‘[a] rose, you will fall to ruin’). (shrink)

We conjecture that the existence of some fast-growing functions implies in a simple way the existence of some inaccessible cardinals. This note expands some previous work by the second author.

_An intimate, philosophic quest for eternity, amidst the disenchantments and disappointments of our time “Anyone who, in our age of disbelief, longs to believe in God will find Mr. Kronman worth reading.”—Andrew Stark, _Wall Street Journal___ “Aims to persuade America’s ‘relentlessly rational’ elites to acknowledge the existence of ‘divinity.’... Kronman’s ambition is to repair ‘the schism between those for whom religion continues to matter and those who view it with amusement or contempt.’”—Tunku Varadarajan, _Wall Street Journal__ Many people of (...) faith believe the meaning of life depends on our connection to an eternal order of some kind. Atheists deride this belief as a childish superstition. In this wise and profound book, Anthony Kronman offers an alternative to these two entrenched positions, arguing that neither addresses the complexities of the human condition. We can never reach God, as religion promises, but cannot give up the longing to do so either. We are condemned by our nature to set goals we can neither abandon nor fulfill, yet paradoxically are able to approach more closely if we try. The human condition is one of inevitable disappointment tempered by moments of joy. Resolutely humanistic and theologically inspired, this moving book offers a rational path to the love of God amidst the disenchantments of our time. (shrink)

Wartime (1941‑1945) reveals an incomprehensible Russian usefulness three-quarters of a century later. The quality and properties of Russia are determined by its trajectory of two millennia, not one. Therefore, its meaning and mystery of the great Patriotic war can only be understood thanks to the Holy Scripture. N.V. Gogol insisted on this who saw the events of national history "clearer than day" through crimes "before God". In Gogol's words, "the last judgment of God" took place over the aggression of Germany. (...) As a result, the great Victory will "wake up the present" [4]. The author's philosophical view is presented as a concept: the time of the great war is first studied in the light of the two-thousand-year trajectory of the Fatherland. It was started by St. Andrew the First-called. National usefulness treated after V.I. Dahl. The qualitative properties of "usefulness" generalizations can be traced in the concepts of "Russianness", "all-Russianness" and "Sovietness". Eternity sanctified wartime, which became the pinnacle of the sacred Spirit. The sanctity of war is considered comprehensively, based on history, science, religion, philosophy, and art. (shrink)

Anselm holds that God is simple, eternal, and immutable, and that He creates “necessarily”—He “must” create this world. Avicenna and Averroes made the same claims, and derived as entailments that God neither knows singulars nor interacts with the spatio-temporal universe. I argue that Anselm avoids these unpalatableconsequences by being the first philosopher to adopt, clearly and consciously, a four-dimensionalist understanding of time, in which all of time is genuinely present to divine eternity. This enables him to defend the divine (...) perfections in question, and the claim that God creates “necessarily,” while still maintaining the position that God knows singulars and acts in the physical world—in one, immutable, and eternal act. (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 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)

In the Incoherence of the Philosophers, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali leveled a critique against twenty propositions of the Muslim peripatetic philosophers, represented chiefly by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. In the Fourth Discussion of this work, he rejects their claim to having proven the existence of God. The proof to which he objects is none other than the famous ‘argument from contingency.’ So why did the eminent theologian of Islamic orthodoxy reject an argument for God’s existence that ultimately became so historically influential? (...) I will show that the real targets of Ghazali’s objection are the philosophers’ doctrine of the pre-eternity of the world, and their denial of divine attributes. These two issues are linked in such a way that, only if the philosophers’ argument regarding the divine essence is sound, would they be able to prove that He exists while holding to the doctrine of the world’s pre-eternity. (shrink)

In this essay I wish to defend the intuition that God transcends time, of which he is the Creator. To do this, I will develop a new understanding of the term ‘timeless eternity’ as it applies to God. This assumes the inadequacy of the traditional notion of divine eternity, as it is found in Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas. Very briefly, the reasons for this inadequacy are as follows. God sustains the universe, which means in part that he is (...) responsible for the fundamental ontological status of things. Because the universe is an everchanging reality, things do change in their fundamental ontological status at different times – a change we must ascribe to God, and cannot ascribe to the objects themselves, since this has to do with their very existence. God himself, therefore, does different things at different times. This implies change in God. Whenever a change occurs, a duration occurs. Therefore, God is in time. But I do not think it is proper to say that God is in our time. God transcends time, and he is the Creator of our space-time. It is theologically more proper to say that we are in God's time, and I will adopt this language here. (shrink)

phers] to be a demonstration of the fact that the human species (and in every case the species of all generable and corruptible individuals) began to exist at a time when previously it had not existed at all, a question is raised: whether, following the Philosopher’s method, the human species (and in every case any given species of generable and corruptible [individuals]) began to exist at a time when previously it had not existed at all.

İnsanlık, başlangıcından bu yana bir takım varoluşsal soru ve problemlerle karşı karşıya kalmış ve bunlara mantıklı cevaplar bulmaya çalışmıştır. Bu soruların en başında evrenin kökeni ve ortaya çıkışıyla alakalı sorular gelmektedir. Felsefe Tarihi bağlamında evrenin ezeliliği ve yaratılmışlığı hususunda fikirler ortaya koyan ilk ve en etkili filozofun Aristoteles olduğu söylenebilir. Aristoteles, Antik Yunan düşüncesinin genel kabulü çerçevesinde evrenin ezeli olduğuna inanmış ve bunu farklı şekillerde ortaya koymaya çalışmıştır. Daha sonraki dönemlerde de bu tartışma ezelilik ve yaratıcılık üzerinden varlığını sürdürmüştür. Ezelilik (...) anlayışına en çok karşı çıkanlar yaratıcı tanrı anlayışına sahip filozoflar olmuştur. İslam Felsefesi içerisinde kabul edilen Yahudi filozof İbn Meymûn adıyla meşhur Musa b. Meymûn (Maimonides) da evrenin ezeli olduğu fikrine karşı çıkmış ve yaratılmış evren fikrini savunmuştur. Bu çerçevede Aristoteles’in düşüncelerine katılmadığını belirtmiştir. Bu bağlamda İbn Meymûn, evrenin yaratılmışlığı hususunda teistik düşüncedeki diğer filozoflardan farklı sayılabilecek ancak çok da açık olmayan bir cevap ortaya koymuştur. (shrink)