Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:21:47.210Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Divine Sempiternity and Atemporality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

J. L. Tomkinson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Notable among the current fashions in philosophical theology is the movement away from the view that the mode of being properly attributable to God is some form of atemporal eternity. It sometimes seems almost to be the case that a consensus is in process of formation in support of the contention that the only rationally defensible interpretation of the divine eternity is in terms of sempiternity, i.e. of beginingless and endless temporal duration. This is true not only of the so-called ‘process theologians’, for leading theistic philosophers throughout the English-speaking world seem to be in something of a rush to espouse this particular cause.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 177 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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.)

References

page 177 note 1 For example Hick, J.., ‘Necessary Being’, Scottish Journal of Theology, XIV (1961), 353–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Swinburne, R. G., The Coherence of Theism (Oxford, 1977), pp. 210–29.Google Scholar

page 177 note 2 It would not, I think, be unfair to level this accusation at Edwards, R. B., ‘The pagan dogma of the absolute unchangeableness of God’, Religious Studies, XIV (1978), 305–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 178 note 1 Swinburne, R. G., CT, p. 222.Google Scholar

page 178 note 2 Anselm of Bec, Proslogion, ed. Charlesworth, M. J. (Oxford, 1965), Book 2.Google Scholar

page 179 note 1 Boethius, , The Consolations of Philosophy, tr. Watts, V. E. (London, 1969), p. 164.Google Scholar

page 179 note 2 English Hymnal, number 450, verse 5.Google Scholar

page 180 note 1 R.S.V. Genesis 1:31.

page 180 note 2 Matthew, 10: 30.Google Scholar

page 181 note 1 Lucas, J. R., Treatise on Time and Space (London, 1973), p. 307.Google Scholar

page 181 note 2 Al-Ghazali, , ‘Resuscitation of the Sciences of Religion’, in Philosophers Speak of God, ed. Hartshorne, C. and Reese, W. L. (Chicago, 1953), p. 107.Google Scholar

page 182 note 1 See Kneale, W.., ‘Time and Eternity in Theology’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXI (1960–1961), 87–108.Google Scholar

page 182 note 2 Plato, , Timaeus, tr. Lee, D..(London, 1965), pp. 50–4.Google Scholar

page 182 note 3 Wolfson, H. A., ‘Negative attributes in the Church Fathers and the Gnostic basilides’, Havard Theological Review, L (1957), 145–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 182 note 4 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, tr. Pine-Coffin, R. S. (London, 1961), 263.Google Scholar

page 182 note 5 Kneale, M., ‘Eternity and Sempiternity’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LX (1968–1969), 227–8.Google Scholar

page 183 note 1 Anselm, , P, 141, 3.Google Scholar

page 183 note 2 Anselm, , P, 143.Google Scholar

page 183 note 3 Wolfson, H. A., NACFGB, p. 145.Google Scholar

page 183 note 4 Averroes, , The Incoherence of the Incoherence, ed. Van Den Bergh, S. (London, 1969), p. 66.Google Scholar

page 183 note 5 Plato, , T, 51.Google Scholar

page 184 note 1 Cudworth, R., The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1820), p. 396.Google Scholar

page 184 note 2 Plotinus, , Enneads, tr. MacKenna, S..(London, 1956), II, 73.Google Scholar

page 184 note 3 Spinoza, B., Ethics (London, 1910), p. 2.Google Scholar

page 184 note 4 Hepburn, R. W., ‘Time transcendence and some related phenomena’, in Contemporary British Philosophy: Fourth Series, ed. Lewis, H. D. (London, 1976).Google Scholar

page 184 note 5 Paffard, M., Inglorious Wordsworths (London, 1973)Google Scholar; and The Unattended Moment (London, 1976).Google Scholar

page 185 note 1 Boethius, , CP, p. 163.Google Scholar

page 185 note 2 Baltazar, E., ‘Evolutionary perspectives and the divine’, in Traces of God in a Secular Culture (New York, 1973).Google Scholar

page 186 note 1 Coburn, R., ‘Professor Malcolm on God’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, XL, I (1962–1963), 155.Google Scholar

page 186 note 2 E.g. Pike, N.., God and Timelessness (London, 1970), pp. 121–9Google Scholar; Swinburne, R. G., CT, pp.221–2.Google Scholar

page 186 note 3 Barth, , Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh, 1957), v. ii. (i).Google Scholar

page 187 note 1 Ewing, A. C., Value and Reality (London, 1973), pp. 279 ff.Google Scholar

page 187 note 2 Idem.

page 187 note 3 E.g. John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham; see Swinburne, R. G., ‘The Timelessness of God’, Church Quarterly Review (1965), p. 336, note 17.Google Scholar

page 188 note 1 Plutarch, , ‘The E at Delphi’, 17, 20Google Scholar, in Plutarch's Moralia v, tr. Babbitt, F. C. (London, 1957), pp. 239, 245.Google Scholar