Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T20:04:01.114Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

God and Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2018

Natalja Deng
Affiliation:
Yonsei University, Seoul

Summary

The God of Western religion is said to be eternal. But what does that mean? Is God somehow beyond time, living a life that does not involve one thing after another? Or is God's relationship to time much more like ours, so that God's eternality just consists in there being no time at which God doesn't exist? Even for non-believers, these issues have interesting implications for the relation between historical and scientific findings on the one hand, and religion on the other. This Element introduces the reader to the requisite metaphysical background, and then examines reasons for and against thinking of God as timeless.
Get access
Type
Element
Information
Online ISBN: 9781108653176
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 29 November 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Bibliography

Alston, William P. (1984). Hartshorne and Aquinas: a via media. In Cobb, J. and Gamwell, F., eds., Existence and Actuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Alston, William P. (1989). Does God have beliefs? In Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pp. 178193.Google Scholar
Balashov, Yuri & Janssen, Michel. (2003). Presentism and relativity. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 54 (2): 327346.Google Scholar
Baron, S., Cusbert, J., Farr, M., Kon, M. & Miller, K. (2015). Temporal experience, temporal passage, and the cognitive sciences. Philosophy Compass 10(8): 560571.Google Scholar
Benovsky, Jiri. (2013). From experience to metaphysics: on experience-based intuitions and their role in metaphysics. Noûs 49(3): 684697.Google Scholar
Boethius, . (1973). The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. V. E. Watts, London: Penguin Books, 1969; also transl. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester, Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Broad, C. D. (1938). Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy, Vol. II, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Butterfield, Jeremy. (1984). Seeing the present. Mind 93 (370): 161176.Google Scholar
Callender, Craig. (2017). What Makes Time Special. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Craig, William L. (1999). The eternal present and Stump-Kretzmann eternity. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 73: 521536.Google Scholar
Craig, William L. (2000). Timelessness and omnitemporality. Philosophia Christi, Series 2, (2/1): 2933.Google Scholar
Craig, William L. (2001). Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time. Wheaton IL: Crossway Books.Google Scholar
Craig, William L. (2009). Divine eternity. In Rea, M. C. and Flint, T. P., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dainton, Barry. (2008). The experience of time and change. Philosophy Compass 3/4: 619638.Google Scholar
Deng, Natalja. (2013a). Fine’s McTaggart, temporal passage, and the A versus B debate. Ratio 26(1): 1934.Google Scholar
Deng, Natalja. (2013b). On explaining why time seems to pass. Southern Journal of Philosophy 51(3): 367382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deng, Natalja. (2015). On whether B-theoretic atheists should fear death. Philosophia 43(4): 10111021.Google Scholar
Deng, Natalja. (2018a). What is temporal ontology? Philosophical Studies, 175/3: 793807.Google Scholar
Deng, Natalja. (2018b). Eternity in Christian thought. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/eternity/.Google Scholar
Deng, Natalja. (forthcoming). Time, metaphysics of. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/time-metaphysics-of/v-1.Google Scholar
DeWeese, Garrett J. (2000). Timeless God, timeless time. Philosophia Christi 2/1: 5359 l.Google Scholar
DeWeese, Garrett J. (2002). Atemporal, sempiternal or omnitemporal: God’s temporal mode of being. In Ganssle and Woodruff 2002, pp. 4961.Google Scholar
DeWeese, Garrett J. (2004). God and the Nature of Time, Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Dorato, Mauro. (2015). Presentism and the experience of time. Topic 34(1): 265275.Google Scholar
Dummett, Michael. (1960). A defense of McTaggart’s proof of the unreality of time. Philosophical Review 69 (4): 497504.Google Scholar
Dyke, Heather. (2003). Tensed meaning: a tenseless account. Journal of Philosophical Research 27: 6783.Google Scholar
Earman, John. (2008). Reassessing the prospects for a growing block model of the universe. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 22 (2): 135164.Google Scholar
Einstein, Albert & Besso, Michele. (1972). Correspondance, 1903–1955. Transl. by Pierre Speziali. Paris: Hermann.Google Scholar
Fales, Evan M. (1997). Divine intervention. Faith and Philosophy 14 (2): 170194.Google Scholar
Falk, Arthur. (2003). Time plus the whoosh and whiz. In Jokic, Aleksandar and Smith, Quentin (eds.), Time, Tense and Reference. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, pp. 211250.Google Scholar
Fine, Kit. (2006). The reality of tense. Synthese 150 (3): 399414.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, Paul. (1985). Stump and Kretzmann on time and eternity. The Journal of Philosophy 82: 260 269.Google Scholar
Frischhut, Akiko. (2013). What experience cannot teach us about time. Topoi 1: 113.Google Scholar
Ganssle, Gregory E. (1993). Atemporality and the mode of divine knowledge. International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 34: 171180.Google Scholar
Ganssle, Gregory E. (1995). Leftow on direct awareness and atemporality. Sophia 34: 30–3.Google Scholar
Ganssle, Gregory E. (2001). God and Time: Four Views. Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press.Google Scholar
Ganssle, Gregory E. (2002). Direct awareness and God’s experience of a temporal now. In Ganssle and Woodruff 2002, pp. 165181.Google Scholar
Ganssle, Gregory E. & Woodruff, David M. eds. (2002). God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grünbaum, Adolf. (1967). The status of temporal becoming. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 138: 374395.Google Scholar
Hartshorne, Charles. (1947). The Divine Relativity. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hasker, William, (1989). God, Time, and Knowledge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University PressGoogle Scholar
Hasker, William. (2002). The absence of a timeless God. In Ganssle and Woodruff 2002, pp. 182206.Google Scholar
Helm, Paul. (1988). Eternal God. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Helm, Paul. (2001). Divine timeless eternity. In Ganssle 2001, pp. 2860.Google Scholar
Hoerl, Christoph. (2014a). Do we (seem to) perceive passage? Philosophical Explorations 17(2): 188202.Google Scholar
Hoerl, Christoph. (2014b). Time and the domain of consciousness. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1326: 9096.Google Scholar
Horwich, Paul. (1987). Asymmetries in Time: Problems in the Philosophy of Science. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.Google Scholar
Inman, R. (2016). Omnipresence and the location of the immaterial. In Kvanvig, J. (ed.) Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion Vol. 7, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ismael, Jenann. (2011). Temporal experience. In Callender, C. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
James, William. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
Kaplan, D. (1989). Demonstratives. In Almog, Perry, and Wettstein, (eds.) Themes From Kaplan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 481563.Google Scholar
Kenny, Anthony. (1979). The God of the Philosophers. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Kretzmann, Norman. (1966). Omniscience and immutability. The Journal of Philosophy 63: 409421.Google Scholar
Leftow, Brian. (1991). Time and Eternity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Leftow, Brian. (2005). Eternity and immutability. In Mann, William, ed., The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion. Oxford and New York:Blackwell.Google Scholar
Leftow, Brian. (2010). Eternity. In Taliaferro, Charles, Draper, Paul, Quinn, Philip L., eds., A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed. Oxford and New York: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Leftow, Brian. (2016). Immutability. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/immutability/>>Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (1986). On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Lewis, Delmas. (1984). Eternity again: a reply to Stump and Kretzmann. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 15: 7379.Google Scholar
Le Poidevin, R. (2007). The Images of Time: An Essay on Temporal Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Loftin, R. Keith. (2015). On the metaphysics of time and divine eternality. Philosophia Christi 17/1: 177187.Google Scholar
Lucas, John R. (1973). A Treatise on Time and Space. London: William Clowes and Sons Limited.Google Scholar
Lucas, John R. (1989). The Future: An Essay on God, Temporality and Truth. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell Inc.Google Scholar
Maimonides, Moses. The Guide of the Perplexed. Transl. with an introduction by Shlomo Pines, with an introductory essay by Leo Strauss, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963.Google Scholar
Mawson, T. J. (2008). Divine eternity. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 64(1): 3550.Google Scholar
McTaggart, John M. E. (1908). The unreality of time. Mind 17: 456473.Google Scholar
Mellor, D. Hugh. (1998). Real Time II. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mellor, D. Hugh. (2001). The time of our lives. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 48: 4559.Google Scholar
Mozersky, M. Joshua. (2006). A tenseless account of the presence of experience. Philosophical Studies 129: 441476.Google Scholar
Mullins, Ryan T. (2014). Doing hard time: Is God the prisoner of the oldest dimension? Journal of Analytic Theology 2: 160185.Google Scholar
Mullins, Ryan T. (2016). The End of the Timeless God, Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, Herbert J. (1987). Time(s), eternity, and duration. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 22, No. 1/2: 319.Google Scholar
Ney, Alyssa. (2014). Metaphysics: An Introduction. Routledge.Google Scholar
Norton, J. D. (2010). Time really passes. Humana Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies 13: 2334.Google Scholar
Oppy, Graham. (1998). Some Emendations to Leftow’s Arguments about Time and Eternity, on the Secular Web https://infidels.org/library/modern/graham_oppy/leftow.html; a revised version is incorporated into Oppy 2014.Google Scholar
Oppy, Graham. (2014). Describing Gods: An Investigation of Divine Attributes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Padgett, Alan G. (1992). God, Eternity and the Nature of Time. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Padgett, Alan G. (2001). Eternity as Relative Timelessness, in Ganssle 2001, pp. 92110.Google Scholar
Pasnau, R. (2011). On existing all at once. In Tapp, Christian and Runggaldier, Edmund, eds. God, Eternity, and Time, Aldershot: Ashgate Press, pp. 1128.Google Scholar
Paul, Laurie A. (2010). Temporal experience. The Journal of Philosophy CVII: 333–59.Google Scholar
Perry, John. (1979). The problem of the essential indexical. Nous 13: 321.Google Scholar
Phillips, Ian. (2010). Perceiving temporal properties. European Journal of Philosophy 18 (2): 176202Google Scholar
Phillips, Ian. (2017). The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Temporal Experience. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pike, Nelson C. (1970). God and Timelessness. New York: Schocken.Google Scholar
Pike, Nelson C. (1965). Divine omniscience and voluntary action. The Philosophical Review, 74(1): 2746.Google Scholar
Pooley, Oliver. (2013). Relativity, the open future, and the passage of time. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 113(3pt3), pp. 321363.Google Scholar
Prior, A. N. (1962). The formalities of omniscience. Philosophy 37: 114129.Google Scholar
Prosser, Simon. (2016). Experiencing Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rea, Michael C. & Murray, Michael J. (2008). An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Cambridge Introductions to Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rhoda, Alan. (2007). The philosophical case for open theism. Philosophia 35: 301–11.Google Scholar
Rogers, Katherin A. (1994). Eternity has no duration. Religious Studies 30: 116.Google Scholar
Rogers, Katherin A. (2000). Perfect Being Theology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Rogers, Katherin A. (2006). Anselm on eternity as the fifth dimension. The Saint Anselm Journal 3.2: 18.Google Scholar
Rogers, Katherin A. (2007). Anselmian eternalism: the presence of a timeless God. Faith and Philosophy 24: 327.Google Scholar
Sider, Theodore. (1996). All the world’s a stage. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74: 433453Google Scholar
Sider, Theodore. (2001). Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Skow, Bradford. (2009). Relativity and the moving spotlight. Journal of Philosophy, 106: 666678.Google Scholar
Skow, Bradford. (2015). Objective Becoming. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stump, Eleonore & Kretzmann, Norman. (1981). Eternity. Journal of Philosophy 78(8): 429458.Google Scholar
Stump, Eleonore & Kretzmann, Norman. (1987). Atemporal duration: a reply to Fitzgerald. Journal of Philosophy 84 (4): 214219.Google Scholar
Stump, Eleonore & Kretzmann, Norman. (1992). Eternity, awareness, and action. Faith and Philosophy 9 (4): 463482.Google Scholar
Swinburne, Richard. (1965). The timelessness of God. Church Quarterly Review, 116: 323337.Google Scholar
Swinburne, Richard. (1977). The Coherence of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Swinburne, Richard. (1993). God and time. In Stump, Eleonore, ed., Reasoned Faith. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, p. 204.Google Scholar
Swinburne, Richard. (1994). The Christian God. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Tallant, Jonathan. (2012). (Existence) presentism and the A-theory. Analysis 72 (4): 673681.Google Scholar
Tallant, Jonathan. (2013). Recent work: time. Analysis 73 (2): 369379.Google Scholar
Tooley, Michael. (1997). Time, Tense and Causation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Ware, Bruce. (2008). A modified Calvinist doctrine of God. In Ware, Bruce, ed., Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: 4 Views. Nashville, TN: B and H Publishing.Google Scholar
Wierenga, Edward R. (1989). The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wierenga, Edward R. (2002). Timelessness out of Mind, in Ganssle and Woodruff 2002, pp. 153164.Google Scholar
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. (1975). God everlasting. In Orlebeke, Clifton and Smedes, Lewis, eds., God and the Good: Essays in Honor of Henry Stob. Rapids, Grand, MI: Eerdmans, pp. 181203.Google Scholar
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. (2000a). God and time. Philosophia Christi 2: 510.Google Scholar
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. (2000b). God is “everlasting,” not “eternal”. In Davies, Brian, ed., Philosophy of Religion: A Guide and Anthology. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. (2001). Unqualified divine temporality, in Ganssle 2001, pp. 187213.Google Scholar
Wüthrich, Christian. (2013). The fate of presentism in modern physics. In Ciunti, Roberto, Miller, Kristie, and Torrengo, Giuliano, eds., New Papers on the Present, Focus on Presentism. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.Google Scholar
Wüthrich, Christian and Callender, Craig. (2017). What becomes of a causal set? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (3): 907925.Google Scholar
Yates, John C. (1990). The Timelessness of God. Lanham: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Zagzebski, Linda. (1991). The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, Dean. (2002). God inside time and before creation, in Ganssle and Woodruff 2002, pp. 7594.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, Dean. (2005). The A-theory of time, the B-theory of time, and “taking tense seriously.” Dialectica 59: 401–57.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, Dean. (2011). Presentism and the space-time manifold. In Callender, C., ed., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 163244.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

God and Time
  • Natalja Deng, Yonsei University, Seoul
  • Online ISBN: 9781108653176
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

God and Time
  • Natalja Deng, Yonsei University, Seoul
  • Online ISBN: 9781108653176
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

God and Time
  • Natalja Deng, Yonsei University, Seoul
  • Online ISBN: 9781108653176
Available formats
×