related to the structures of the universe, including space and time.
The question of God's relation to time has generated a great amount of
theological and philosophical reflection. The traditional view has
been that God is timeless in the sense of being outside time
altogether; that is, he exists but does not exist at any point in time
and he does not experience temporal succession. What may be the
dominant view of philosophers today is that he is temporal but
everlasting; that is, God never began to exist and he never will go
out of existence. He exists at each moment in time.
Deciding how best to think of God's relation to time will involve
bringing to bear one's views about other aspects of the divine nature.
How a philosopher thinks about God's knowledge and his interaction
with his people within the temporal world shapes how that philosopher
will think about God's relation to time and vice versa. In addition,
other metaphysical considerations also play important roles in the
discussion. For example, the nature of time and the nature of the
origin of the universe each have a bearing on whether God is best
thought of as timeless or temporal.
This article traces the main contours of the contemporary debate.
Several versions of the view that God is timeless are explained and
the major arguments for timelessness are developed and criticized.
Divine temporality is also explored and arguments in its favor are
presented along with criticisms. In addition, some views that attempt
to occupy a middle ground will be considered.
1. God's Relation to Time — Preliminaries
Theism is the view that there exists a person who is, in significant
ways, unlike every other person. This person, whom we will call "God,"
is the creator of the entire universe. Any theistic world-view
includes some notion of how God is related to this universe. There
must be some account of how God relates to events, things, and people
within the universe and of how God is related to what we could call
the structure of the universe. That is, how God is related to space
and to time. If God is the creator of the universe, the question
arises as to whether God created space and time as well. The answers
to these questions turn on whether space and time are parts or aspects
of the universe or whether they are more fundamental. Not many
theologians or philosophers think that space is more fundamental than
the universe. They think that God brought space into being. This view
implies that God is in some sense spaceless or "outside" space. God's
relation to time, however, is a topic about which there continues to
be deep disagreement. From Augustine through Aquinas, the major
thinkers argued that God was not in time at all. They thought of God
as eternal, in the sense that he is timeless or atemporal. Now, the
dominant view among philosophers is that God is temporal. His eternal
nature is thought of as being everlasting rather than timeless. He
never came into existence and he will never go out of existence but he
exists within time.
Proponents of each of these positions attribute eternality to God. As
a result, the term, "eternal" has come to be either ambiguous or a
general term that covers various positions. In this article, the term,
"eternal" will be used to refer to God's relation to time, whatever it
is. The term "temporal" will refer to God as within time and
"timeless" will designate God as being outside time.
a. What it Means to be Temporal: A First Pass
The majority position today, at least among philosophers, is that God
is everlasting but temporal. That is, God never began to exist, and he
will never go out of existence. God does, however, experience temporal
succession. That is, God experiences some events (for example, the
first century) before he experiences other events (for example, the
twenty-first century.) If God is temporal, his existence and his
thoughts and actions have temporal location. He exists at the present
moment (and he has existed at each past moment and he will exist at
each future moment.) In August, he was thinking about the heat wave in
the mid-west. In the thirteenth century, he listened to and answered
Aquinas' prayers for understanding. His dealings, like those of the
rest of us, occur at particular times.
b. What it Means to be Timeless: A First Pass
The claim that God is timeless is a denial of the claim that God is
temporal. First, God exists, but does not exist at any temporal
location. Rather than holding that God is everlastingly eternal, and,
therefore, he exists at each time, this position is that God exists
but he does not exist at any time at all. God is beyond time
altogether. It could be said that although God does not exist at any
time God exists at eternity. That is, eternity can be seen as a
non-temporal location as any point within time is a temporal location.
Second, it is thought that God does not experience temporal
succession. God's relation to each event in a temporal sequence is the
same as his relation to any other event. God does not experience the
first century before he experiences the twenty-first. Both of these
centuries are experienced by God in one "timeless now." So, while it
is true that in the thirteenth century Aquinas prayed for
understanding and received it, God's response to his prayers is not
something that also occurred in that century. God, in his timeless
state of being, heard Aquinas' prayers and answered them. He did not
first hear them and then answer them. He heard and answered in one
timeless moment — in fact, he did so in the same timeless moment that
he hears and answers prayers offered in the twenty-first century.
c. Some In-between Views
Some philosophers think that God's relation to time cannot be captured
by either of the categories of temporality or timelessness. Rather,
God is in some third kind of relation to time. One in-between position
is that God is not within our time, but he is within his own time. In
this view, God's inner life is sequential and, therefore, temporal,
but his relation to our temporal sequence is "all at once." In a
sense, God has his own time line. He is not located at any point in
our time line. On this view, God's time does not map onto our time at
all. His time is completely distinct from ours.
Another view is that God is "omnitemporal." It is true on this view as
well that God is not in our time, but he experiences temporal
succession in his being. Our time is constituted by physical time.
God's time (metaphysical time) has no intrinsic metric and is
constituted purely by the divine life itself (Padgett 1992, 2001;
DeWeese 2002, 2004). If God is omnitemporal, his metaphysical time
does map in some way onto our physical time. So there is a literal
sense in which God knows now that I am typing this sentence now.
Another view (Craig, 2001a, 2001b) is that God became temporal when
time was created. God's existence without creation is a timeless
existence but once temporal reality comes into existence, God himself
must change. If he changes, then he is, at least in some sense,
temporal. Just as it is not quite accurate to talk about what happens
before time comes into existence, we should not describe this view as
one in which God used to be timeless, but he became temporal. This
language would imply that there was a time when God was timeless and
then, later, there is another time when he is temporal. On this view,
there was not a time when he was timeless. God's timelessness without
creation is precisely due to the fact that time came into existence
with creation.
2. Methodology
Many philosophers of religion think that the Scriptures do not teach
definitively any one view concerning God and time (Craig 2001a, 2001b;
for a differing view, see Padgett, 1992). The Scriptures do provide
some parameters for acceptable theories of God's relation to time,
however. For example, they teach that God never began to exist and he
will never go out of existence. They also teach that God interacts
with the world. He knows what is going on, he reveals himself to
people, he acts in such a way that things happen in time. They also
teach that God is the Lord of all creation. Everything is subject to
him. Philosophers generally take claims such as these as parameters
for their thinking because of their concern either to remain within
historical, biblical orthodoxy themselves or, at least, to articulate
a position about God and time that is consistent with orthodoxy. Any
departure from the broad outlines of orthodoxy, at least for many
Christian philosophers of religion, is made as a last resort.
These parameters, as has been noted, allow for a plurality of
positions about how God is related to time. Determining which position
is most adequate involves trying to fit what we think about other
aspects of God's nature together with our thinking about God's
relation to time. What we want to say about God's power or knowledge
or omnipresence will have some bearing on our understanding of how it
is that God is eternal. In addition, we will try to fit our theories
together with other issues besides what God himself is like. Some of
the most obvious issues include the nature of time, the nature of
change and the creation of the universe.
3. Divine Timelessness
a. Stump and Kretzmann: Timelessness as Duration
Much of the contemporary discussion of timelessness begins with the
article "Eternity" by Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Stump and
Kretzmann, 1981). Stump and Kretzmann take their cue from Boethius who
articulated what became a standard understanding of divine
timelessness: "Eternity, then, is the whole, simultaneous and perfect
possession of boundless life" (Boethius, 1973). Stump and Kretzmann
identify four ingredients that they claim are essential to an eternal
(timeless) being. (Although they cast their discussion in terms of an
"eternal being," this article will continue to use the term
"timeless".) First, any being that is timeless has life. Second, the
life of a timeless thing is not able to be limited. Third, this life
involves a special sort of duration. Anything that has life must have
duration but the duration of a timeless being is not a temporal
duration. Last, a timeless being possesses its entire life all at
once. It is this last element that implies that the timeless being is
outside time because a temporal living thing only possesses one moment
of its life at a time.
The two aspects of divine timelessness that Stump and Kretzmann
emphasize are that a timeless being has life and that this life has a
duration, though not a temporal duration. The duration of the life of
a timeless being puts the nature of such a being in stark contrast
with the nature of abstract objects such as numbers or properties. The
picture of God that this view leaves us with is of a being whose life
is too full to exist only at one moment at a time.
The challenge for a defender of a timeless conception of God is to
explain how such a God is related to temporal events. For example, God
is directly conscious of each moment of time. The relation of his
timeless cognition and the temporal objects of his cognition cannot be
captured by using strictly temporal relations such as simultaneity
because temporal simultaneity is a transitive relation. God is
timelessly aware of the fall of Rome and, in the same timeless now, he
is aware of my spilling my coffee. The fall of Rome is not, however,
occurring at the same time that my coffee spills. What is needed is
some non-transitive notion of God's relation to the temporal world. To
this end, Stump and Kretzmann introduce the notion of "ET
(eternal-temporal)-simultaneity:"
(ET) for every x and every y, x and y are ET-simultaneous if and only if:
1. either x is eternal and y is temporal, or vice versa; and
2. for some observer, A, in the unique eternal reference frame, x
and y are both present — that is, either x is eternally present and y
is observed as temporally present, or vice versa; and
3. for some observer, B, in one of the infinitely many temporal
reference frames, x and y are both present — that is, either x is
observed as eternally present and y is temporally present, or vice
versa. (Stump and Kretzmann, 1981: pp 230-231.)
If x and y are ET-simultaneous, one is timeless and the other
temporal. This fact preserves the non-symmetrical and non-transitive
nature of the relation. If ET-simultaneity captures the truth about
God's relation to a temporal world, then we do not have to worry about
the fall of Rome occurring at the same time that I spill my coffee.
Unfortunately, there are numerous difficulties with ET-simultaneity.
Philosophers have complained about obscurity of the use of "reference
frame" terminology (for example, Padgett 1992). There is clearly an
analogy with relativity theory at work here. To put an analogy at the
core of a technical definition is pedagogically suspect, at the least.
It may be that it masks a deeper philosophical problem. Furthermore,
Delmas Lewis (1984) has argued that a temporal being can observe
something only if that thing is itself temporal and a timeless being
can observe only what is timeless. Observation cannot cross the
temporal/timeless divide. Therefore, the observation talk, as well as
the reference frame talk, must be only analogous or metaphorical.
It has also been argued that the notion of atemporal duration, that
Stump and Kretzmann hold to be required by the timeless view, is at
bottom incoherent. Paul Fitzgerald (1985) has argued that for there to
be duration in the life of God, it must be the case that two or more
of God's thoughts, for example, will have either the same or different
amounts of duration. Different thoughts in God's mind can be
individuated by their respective lengths of duration or at least by
their locations within the duration. Fitzgerald argues that if a
timeless duration does not have these analogues with temporal or
spatial duration, it is hard to think of it as a case of bona fide
duration. On the other hand, if the duration in God's life has this
sort of duration, it is difficult to see that it is not simply one
more case of temporal duration.
Stump and Kretzmann attempt to respond to such objections and have
revised their analysis of ET-simultaneity accordingly. In their first
response to Fitzgerald (Stump and Kretzmann, 1987), they make much of
his analyzing timeless duration in a way that makes it incompatible
with the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity. They will not
accept any notion of God's life that requires them to give up on the
simplicity of the divine nature. For example, there cannot be any sort
of sequence among distinct events or "moments" within the duration of
God's life. There are no distinct events or moments at all within the
life of a God who is metaphysically simple. Although the two positions
are linked throughout medieval thought, there is a cost to holding
that a timeless God must be metaphysically simple as well. Any
independent argument against divine simplicity (such as in
Wolterstorff, 1991) will count against such a view of timelessness.
In a later response, Stump and Kretzmann put forward a new version of
ET-simultaneity (called ET'):
(ET'): For every x and every y, x and y are ET-simultaneous if and only if:
1. either x is eternal and y is temporal or vice versa (assume x is
eternal and y temporal)
2. with respect to some A in the unique eternal reference frame, x
and y are both present — that is: (a) x is in the eternal present with
respect to A, (b) y is in the temporal present, and (c) both x and y
are situated with respect to A in such a way that A can enter into
direct and immediate causal relations with each of them and (if
capable of awareness) can be directly aware of each of them; and
3. with respect to some B in one of the infinitely many temporal
reference frames, x and y are both present — that is: (a) x is in the
eternal present, (b) y is at the same time as B, and (c) both x and y
are situated with respect to B in such a way that B can enter into
direct and immediate causal relations with each of them and (if
capable of awareness) can be directly aware of each of them. (Stump
and Kretzmann, 1992)
This version of the principle eliminates the observation difficulties
but continues to use the notion of reference frames to describe the
timeless and the temporal states. Alan Padgett (1992) has argued that
Stump and Kretzmann cannot be defending anything more than a loose
analogy with relativity theory here. He points out that they admit
that the use of relativity theory is a heuristic device and nothing
more. Yet their analysis of the relation between a timeless being and
events in time requires more than a loose analogy. As far as the
Special Theory of Relativity is concerned, there is an absolute
temporal simultaneity or an absolute temporal ordering between any two
events within each other's light cones. The problems with holding that
simultaneity is absolute only arise when two events each of which is
outside the other's light cone are considered. If two events are
outside each other's light cones in this way, they cannot causally
interact. This feature of Special Relativity makes the analogy of the
relations between a timeless being and a temporal event on the one
hand and the relations between events in different reference frames
quite weak.
b. Leftow: Timelessness as Quasi-Temporal Eternity
Brian Leftow has defended timeless duration in the life of God in
another way. He holds that there are distinct moments within God's
life. These moments stand in the successive relations of earlier and
later to one another, although they are not temporally earlier or
later than one another. Leftow calls this view Quasi-Temporal
Eternality (QTE) (Leftow 1991). A QTE being is timeless in that it
lives all of its life at once. No moment of its life passes away and
there is no moment at which some other moment has not yet been lived.
Because the life of a QTE being has sequential moments, its duration
is significantly like the duration or extension of the life of a
temporal being. Because it experiences all of these moments "at once,"
or in the same timeless now, it is a timeless being.
One advantage Leftow thinks his view affords is that it can meet
Fitzgerald's challenges while holding to the doctrine of divine
simplicity. There can be the sort of duration that allows discrete
moments to be individuated by location in the life of a metaphysically
simple, timeless God. Leftow argues that there is a significant
difference between a being that has spatial or material parts and a
being that has a duration consisting of different moments or positions
or points. If the duration of God's life was made up of discrete
parts, God could not be a metaphysically simple being. Points are not
parts, however. A finite line segment is not made up of some finite
number of points such that the addition or subtraction of a (finite)
number of points will change its length. If the points or moments or
positions in the duration of the life of God are not to count as parts
of that life, they must be of zero finite length.
Fitzgerald had criticized Stump and Kretzmann's notion of timeless
duration by insisting that any duration must be made up of distinct
positions. This charge will not affect Leftow's position. Leftow
allows that in the life of a timeless God (and a metaphysically simple
God) there are distinct points. He insists that these points are not
parts in the life of God. Therefore God is not a being whose life
contains distinct parts. He is metaphysically simple. His life does
contain points that are ordered sequentially, however. So the QTE God
with its sequential points allows God to have the sort of duration
that Fitzgerald wanted, yet be timeless. In this way, the QTE concept
of timeless duration is more satisfactory than the one put forward by
Stump and Kretzmann.
Timeless duration, in Leftow's understanding, shares features with
temporal duration. In a recent essay, he defends the idea that such
features can be shared without rendering God temporal (Leftow 2002).
He distinguishes between those properties that make something temporal
and those that are typically temporal. A typically temporal property
(TTP) is a property that is typical of temporal events and which helps
make them temporal. Having some TTP is not sufficient to make an event
a temporal event, however. What will make an event temporal is having
the right TTPs. Leftow notes that nearly everyone who argues that God
is timeless also holds that God's life has at least some TTPs.
Similarly, no one who holds that God is temporal thinks that God has
every TTP. For example, being wholly future relative to some temporal
event is a TTP; but God, even if he is temporal, does not have that
property. God has no beginning. As a result his life is not wholly
future to any temporal event.
God's life, like any life, is an event, but it is one in which time
does not pass and in which no change takes place. This description
captures what is meant by a timeless duration. While having a duration
and being an event are each cases of TTPs, Leftow has well-argued that
they are not the sort of TTP that only temporal beings can have. God's
life, then, can be a timeless duration.
Which other TTPs does God have if he is timeless? God's life also has
a present, Leftow argues. Having a present is a TTP, but God's present
is a non-temporal present. God's "now" is not a temporal now. "Now" is
the answer to the question asked of some event, "When does it occur?"
The term, "now," according to Leftow, picks out when the speaker
tokens it. Not all whens are times, however. Eternity, in the sense of
being a timeless location, can also be a when (see also Leftow 1991).
"At eternity" can be the answer to the question, "When does God act?"
Leftow's analysis of these typically temporal properties shows that
some of the objections to timeless duration and a timeless God's
relation to a temporal world are not decisive. A timeless God can be
present, though not temporally present, to the world. He can have a
life which is an event having duration, though not temporal duration.
So the critics of Stump and Kretzmann are correct in so far as they
argue that these properties are the sort of things that make their
bearers temporal. It may be that though things that have these
properties are typically temporal, they are not necessarily so.
c. Rogers: Timelessness with No Duration
Katherin Rogers (1994, 2000) has argued that both Leftow and Stump and
Kretzmann have not succeeded in articulating a compelling, or even
coherent, notion of divine timeless duration. She challenges their
claims that the views of timelessness found in Boethius and other
medieval thinkers include duration. These texts, she argues, are at
best ambiguous. Given their background in Plotinus and Augustine,
Rogers argues that it is better not to read these philosophers as
attributing duration to the life of God. Augustine and Anselm
especially express the notion of timelessness by the use of the notion
of the present.
Even if the medieval thinkers did think of timelessness as involving
duration, the more difficult question is whether we ought to think
about it in this way. Rogers points out that both Stump and Kretzmann
and Leftow, in defending the notion of divine timelessness against
common objections do not make use of their distinctive notions of
timeless duration at all. Furthermore, the explanations given of the
coherence of timeless duration are not compelling.
Stump and Kretzmann use the analogy of two parallel lines (Stump and
Kretzmann 1987: 219). The higher one is completely illuminated (all at
once) while the lower has illuminated a point at a time moving with
uniform speed. The light on each line represents the indivisible
present. The entirety of the timeless line is one indivisible present
while each point on the temporal line is a present (one at a time). In
this way the life of God is stretched out, so to speak, along side
temporal reality.
This analogy breaks down at crucial points. Rogers argues that the
line representing timelessness (call this line, "E") either is made of
distinct points or it is not. It if is not, then timelessness has no
duration. If it is, then these points must correspond in some way to
the points on the temporal line (called "T"). The geometric aspect of
the analogy is strained considerably when it is seen that some point
on T (call it T1) is going to be much closer to a point on E (E1) then
the point T235 will be. Yet all of God's life must stand in the same
relation to each point in time, if God is to be truly timeless. Rogers
points out that such an analogy is never found in the medieval
writers. Their favorite geometric analogy is the circle and the point
at the center. The circle represents all of time and the dot,
timelessness. Timelessness stands in the same relation to each point
along the temporal array. The point itself has no extension or parts.
If God is a QTE being, then his timeless life does have earlier and
later points. These are not experienced by God sequentially, however.
They are experienced all at once in the one timeless now. Rogers
argues that Leftow has two options. Either he must argue for a
principled distinction between there being moments in God's life and
his experiencing these moments (such that the moments can exist
sequentially but be experienced all at once) or he must grant that
earlier and later moments of God's life can also be simultaneous.
Neither alternative increases the plausibility or the clarity of the
claim that God's life has timeless duration.
Rogers offers a non-geometric analogy, found in Augustine (1993), that
captures the relation between a timeless God and temporal reality.
God's relation to the world is similar to human memory of the past.
Just as in one present mental exercise, a human being can call to mind
a whole series of events that are themselves sequential, God in his
timeless state can know the whole sequence of temporal events
non-sequentially.
Rogers's position, then, is that God's timeless life does not involve
duration. She does not think that denying duration to God's life
reduces it to some kind of frozen or static existence. These terms are
temporal in nature. They each imply a motionless state through a
period of time. She writes, "With the exception of lacking extension,
God is nothing like a geometric point" (Rogers, 1994, p 14). His life
does, however, lack extension.
4. Arguments for Divine Timelessness
Although there are many arguments for the claim that God is timeless,
this essay will look at three of the most important. These are
arguments concerning God's knowledge of future free actions, the
fullness of God's life, and God's creation of the universe. In
addition, we will look at some responses to these arguments.
a. God's Knowledge of the Future
The most prominent argument for divine timelessness is that this
position offers a solution to the problem of God's foreknowledge of
free actions. The challenge of reconciling human freedom and divine
omniscience is best seen if we presume that God is temporal. If God is
omniscient and infallible, he knows every truth, and he is never
mistaken. If human beings are free in a libertarian sense, then some
actions a person performs are up to her in the sense that she can
initiate or refrain from initiating the action. The problem arises if
it is supposed that someone will (in the future) choose freely some
particular action. Suppose Jeanie will decide tomorrow to make a cup
of tea at 4:00 pm. If this is a free act on her part, it must be
within her power to make the cup of tea or to refrain from making it.
If God is in time and knows everything, then hundreds of years ago, he
already knew that Jeanie would make the cup of tea. When tomorrow
comes, can Jeanie refrain from making the cup of tea? As Nelson Pike
has argued, (Pike 1965) she can do so only if it is within her power
to change what it was that God believed from the beginning of time.
So, although God has always believed that she would make the tea, she
must have the power to change what it was that God believed. She has
to be able to make it the case that God always believed that she would
not make the cup of tea. Many philosophers have argued that no one has
this kind of power over the past, so human freedom is not compatible
with divine foreknowledge.
If God is timeless, however, it seems that this problem does not
arise. God does not believe things at points in time and Jeanie does
not, therefore, have to have power over God's past beliefs. She does
need power over his timeless beliefs. This power is not seen to be
problematic because God's timeless knowledge of an event is thought to
be strongly analogous to our present knowledge of an event. It is the
occurring of the event that determines the content of our knowledge of
the event. So too, it is the occurring of the event that determines
the content of God's knowledge. If Jeanie makes a cup of tea, God
knows it timelessly. If she refrains, he knows that she refrains.
God's knowledge is not past but it is timeless.
One might argue that even if God is temporal, the content of his
foreknowledge is determined by the occurring of the event in the same
way. This claim, of course, is true. There are two items which allow
for difficulty here. First, it is only in the case of a temporal God
foreknowing Jeanie's making tea that she needs to have counterfactual
power over the past, Second, if God knew a hundred years ago that she
was going to make tea, there is a sense in which she can "get in
between" God's knowledge and the event. In other words, the fact that
God knows what he knows is fixed before she initiated the event. If it
is a free choice on her part, she can still refrain from making the
tea. Her decision to make tea or not stands temporally between the
content of God's beliefs and the occurring of the event.
The position that God is timeless is often cited as the best solution
to the problem of reconciling God's knowledge of the future and human
freedom. If God is timeless, after all, he does not foreknow anything.
Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas and many others have appealed to God's
atemporality to solve this problem.
While the proposal that God is timeless seems to offer a good
strategy, at least one significant problem remains. This problem is
that of prophecy. Suppose God tells Moses, among other things, that
Jeanie will make a cup of tea tomorrow. Now we have a different
situation entirely. While God's knowledge that Jeanie will make a cup
of tea is not temporally located, Moses' knowledge that Jeanie will
make tea is temporally located. Furthermore, since the information
came from God, Moses cannot be mistaken about the future event
(Widerker 1991, Wierenga, 1991).
The prophet problem is a problem, some will argue, only if God
actually tells Moses what Jeanie will do. God, it seems, does not tell
much to Moses or any other prophet. After all, why should God tell
Moses? Moses certainly does not care about Jeanie's cup of tea. Since
prophecy of this sort is pretty rare, we can be confident that God's
knowledge does not rule out our freedom. Some have argued, however,
that if it is even possible for God to tell Moses (or anyone else for
that matter) what Jeanie will do, then we have a version of the same
compatibility problem we would have if we held that God is in time and
foreknows her tea making. We could call this version, the "possible
prophet" problem. If the possible prophet problem is serious enough to
show that God's timeless knowledge of future acts (future, that is,
from our present vantage point) is incompatible with those acts being
free, then holding God to be timeless does not solve the problem of
foreknowledge.
b. The Fullness of God's Being
In thinking about God's nature, we notice that whatever God is, he is
to the greatest degree possible. He knows everything that it is
possible to know. He can do anything that it is possible to do. He is
maximally merciful. This "maximal property idea" can be applied as
well to the nature of God's life. God is a living being. He is not an
abstract object like a number. He is not inanimate like a magnetic
force. He is alive. If whatever is true of him is true of him to the
greatest degree possible, then his life is the fullest life possible.
Whatever God's life is like, he surely has it to the fullest degree.
Some philosophers have argued that this fact about God's life requires
that he be timeless. No being that experiences its life sequentially
can have the fullest life possible. Temporal beings experience their
lives one moment at a time. The past is gone and the future is not
yet. The past part of a person's life is gone forever. He can remember
it, but he cannot experience it directly. The future part of his life
is not yet here. He can anticipate it and worry about it, but he
cannot yet experience it. He only experiences a brief slice of his
life at any one time. The life of a temporal thing, then, is spread
out and diffuse.
It is the transient nature of our experience that gives rise to much
of the wistfulness and regret we may feel about our lives. This
feeling of regret lends credibility to the idea that a sequential life
is a life that is less than maximally full. Older people sometimes
wish for earlier days, while younger people long to mature. We grieve
for the people we love who are now gone. We grieve also for the events
and times that no longer persist.
When we think about the life of God, it is strange to think of God
longing for the past or for the future. The idea that God might long
for some earlier time or regret the passing of some age seems like an
attribution of weakness or inadequacy to God. God in his
self-sufficiency cannot in any way be inadequate. If it is the
experience of the passage of time that grounds these longings, there
is good reason not to attribute any experience of time to God.
Therefore, it is better to think of God as timeless. He experiences
all of his life at once in the timeless present. Nothing of his life
is past and nothing of it is future. Boethius' famous definition of
eternity captures this idea: "Eternity, then, is the whole,
simultaneous and perfect possession of boundless life" (Boethius,
1973). Boethius contrasts this timeless mode of being with a temporal
mode: "Whatever lives in time proceeds in the present and from the
past into the future, and there is nothing established in time which
can embrace the whole space of its life equally, but tomorrow surely
it does not yet grasp, while yesterday it has already lost" (Boethius,
1973).
However, those who think that God is in some way temporal do not want
to attribute weakness or inadequacy to God. Nor do they hold that
God's life is less than maximally full. They will deny, rather, that
God cannot experience a maximally full life if he is temporal. These
philosophers will point out that many of our regrets about the passage
of time are closely tied to our finitude. It is our finitude that
grounds our own inadequacy, not our temporality. We regret the loss of
the past both because our lives are short and because our memories are
dim and inaccurate. God's life, temporal though it may be, is not
finite and his memory is perfectly vivid. He does not lose anything
with the passage of time. Nor does his life draw closer to its end. If
our regrets about the passage of time are more a function of our
finitude than of our temporality, much of the force of these
considerations is removed.
One important issue that this argument concerning the fullness of
God's life ought to put to rest is the idea that those who hold God to
be timeless hold that God is something inert like a number or a
property. Whether or not they are correct, the proponent of
timelessness holds that it is the fullness of God's life (rather than
its impoverishment) that determines his relation to time.
c. God and the Creation of the Universe
Another argument for God's timelessness begins with the idea that time
itself is contingent. If time is contingent and God is not, then it is
at least possible that God exist without time. This conclusion is
still far from the claim that God is, in fact, timeless but perhaps we
can say more. If time is contingent, then it depends upon God for its
existence. Either God brought time into existence or he holds it in
existence everlastingly. (The claim that time is contingent, though,
is not uncontroversial. Arguments for the necessity of time will be
considered below.)
If God created time as part of his creation of the universe, then it
is important whether or not the universe had a beginning at all.
Although it might seem strange to think that God could create the
universe even if the universe had no beginning, it would not be
strange to philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas. Working within the
Aristotelean framework, he considered an everlasting universe to be a
very real possibility. He argued (in his third way) that even a
universe with an infinite past would need to depend upon God for its
existence. In his view, even if time had no beginning, it was
contingent. God sustains the universe, and time itself, in existence
at each moment that it exists.
The majority position today is that the universe did have a beginning.
What most people mean by this claim is that the physical universe
began. It is an open question for many whether time had a beginning or
whether the past is infinite. If the past is infinite, then it is
metaphysical time and not physical time that is everlasting. Arguments
such as the Kalam Cosmological Argument aim to show that it is not
possible that the past is infinite (Craig and Smith, 1993; Craig
2001b). Suppose time came into existence with the universe so that the
universe has only a finite past. This means that physical time was
created by God. It may be the case that metaphysical time is infinite
or that God created "pure duration" (metaphysical time) also. In the
latter case, God had to be timeless. God created both physical and
metaphysical time and God existed entirely without time. God, then,
had to be timeless. Unless God became temporal at some point, God
remains timeless.
5. Divine Temporality
The position that God is temporal sometimes strikes the general reader
as a position that limits the nature of God. Philosophers who defend
divine temporality are committed to a similar methodology to that held
by those who are defenders of timelessness. They aim to work within
the parameters of historical, biblical orthodoxy and to hold to the
maximal property idea that whatever God is, he is to the greatest
possible degree. Thus, proponents of divine temporality will hold that
God is omniscient and omnipotent. God's temporality is not seen as a
limit to his power or his knowledge or his being. Those who hold to a
temporal God often work on generating solutions to the challenge of
divine foreknowledge and human freedom. They work within the notion
that God knows whatever can be known and is thus omniscient. Even
those philosophers who argue that God cannot know future free actions
defend divine omniscience. They either think that there are no truths
about future free actions or that none of those truths can be known,
even by God (Hasker, 1989 and Pinnock et al., 1994). God is omniscient
because he knows everything that can be known. Divine temporality is
not a departure from orthodox concepts of God.
In fact, it is often the commitment to biblical orthodoxy itself that
generates the arguments that God is best thought of as temporal. After
all, the Pslamist affirms that God is 'from everlasting to
everlasting.' (Psalm 90:2) It looks like what is affirmed is God's
everlasting temporality. Two of these arguments will be discussed: the
argument that divine action in the world requires temporality and the
argument that God's knowledge of tensed facts requires that he be
temporal.
6. Arguments for Temporality
a. Divine Action in the World
God acts in the world. He created the universe and he sustains it in
existence. God's sustaining the universe in its existence at each
moment is what keeps the universe existing from moment to moment. If,
at any instant, it were not sustained, it would cease to exist. If God
sustains the universe by performing different actions at different
moments of time, then he changes from moment to moment. If God
changes, then he is temporal.
God's interventions in the world are often interactions with human
beings. He redeems his people, answers their prayer, and forgives
their sin. He also comes to their aid and comforts and strengthens
them. Can a proponent of divine timelessness make sense of God
interacting in these ways? It all depends, of course, on what the
necessary conditions for interaction turn out to be. If it is not
possible to answer a request (a prayer) unless the action is performed
after the request, then the fact that God answers prayer will
guarantee that he is temporal. Some thinkers have thought that an
answer can be initiated only after a request. Others have argued that,
although answers to requests normally come after the request, it is
not necessary that they do so. In order to count as an answer, the
action must occur because of the request. Not any because of relation
will do, however. An answer is not normally thought of as being caused
by the request, yet a cause-effect relation is a kind of because of
relation. Answers are contingent whereas effects of causes are in some
sense necessary. The because of relation that is relevant to answering
a request has to do with intention or purpose.
In some cases, it seems that it is not necessary for the request to
come before the answer. If a father knows that his daughter will come
home and ask for a peanut butter sandwich, he can make the sandwich
ahead of time. There is some sense in which he is responding to her
request, even if he has not yet been asked. If the relation between a
request and an answer is not necessarily a temporal one, then a
timeless God can answer prayer. He hears all our prayers in his one
timeless conscious act and in that same conscious act, he wills the
answers to our various requests.
Perhaps the effects of God's actions are located successively in time
but his acting is not. In one eternal act he wills the speaking to
Moses at one time and the parting of the sea at another. So Moses
hears God speaking from the bush at one time and much later Moses sees
God part the sea. But in God's life and consciousness, these actions
are not sequential. He wills timelessly both the speaking and the
parting. The sequence of the effects of God's timeless will does not
imply that God's acts themselves are temporal.
b. Divine Knowledge of the Present
Although God's knowledge of the future is thought by many to be a
strong support for divine timelessness, many philosophers think that
God's knowledge of the present strongly supports his temporality. If
God knows everything, he must know what day it is today. If God is
timeless, so the argument goes, he cannot know what day it is today.
Therefore, he must be temporal. (This argument is put forward in
various ways by Craig, 2001a, 2001b; DeWeese, 2004; Hasker, 2002;
Kretzmann, 1966; Padgett, 1992, 2001 and Wolterstorff, 1975.)
To get at the claim that a timeless God cannot know what day it is, we
can start with the facts that a timeless God cannot change and that
God knows everything it is possible to know. But if God knows that
today is December 13, 2006, tomorrow he will know something else. He
will know that yesterday it was December 13, 2006 and that today is
December 14, 2006. So God must know different things at different
times. If the contents of God's knowledge changes, he changes. If he
changes, he is temporal and not timeless.
The quick answer to this concern is to deny that God knows something
different at different times. First, it is obvious that someone who
holds that God is timeless does not think that God knows things at
times at all. God's knowings are not temporally located even if what
he knows is temporally located. It is not true, it will be insisted,
that God knows something today. He knows things about today but he
knows these things timelessly.
God knows that today is December 13 in that he knows that the day I
refer to when I use the word "today" in writing this introduction is
December 13. When we raise the question again tomorrow ("Can a
timeless God know what day it is today?"), God knows that this second
use of "today" refers to December 14. Temporal indexical terms such as
"today," "tomorrow," and "now" refer to different temporal locations
with different uses. In this way they are similar to terms such as
"here," "you," and "me." The point is that the meaning of any sentence
involving an indexical term depends upon the context of its use. Since
indexical terms may refer to different items with different uses, we
can make such sentences more clear by replacing the indexical term
with a term whose reference is fixed.
The sentence, "I am now typing this sentence" can be clarified by
replacing the indexical terms with other terms that make the
indexicals explicit. For example, "I type this sentence at 11:58 AM
(EST) on December 13, 2006." Even better is "Ganssle types this
sentence at 11:58 AM (EST) on December 13, 2006." These sentences, it
can be claimed, express the same proposition. In the same way, "I am
now writing here" can be clarified as "Ganssle writes on December 13,
2006 at11:58 AM (EST) in Panera Bread in Hamden, CT." God, of course,
knows all of the propositions expressed by these non-indexical
sentences. Furthermore, the content of his knowledge does not need to
change day to day. The proposition expressed by a non-indexical
sentence is true timelessly (or everlastingly) if it is true at all.
The proposition expressed by the sentence, "Ganssle types this
sentence at 11:58 AM (EST) on December 13, 2006″ will be true tomorrow
and the next day and so on. God can know these things and be
changeless. He can, therefore, be timeless.
There are many philosophers who reject this quick answer on the
grounds that God can know all of the non-indexical propositions and
still not know what is happening now. This kind of objection raises
the second approach to the question of a timeless God's knowledge of
the present. This approach is not through change but through
omniscience. I can know that you type a sentence at some date (call
the date, t1) without knowing whether or not you are typing the
sentence now. I might fail to know that t1 is now. A timeless God can
know all propositions expressed by sentences of the form "event e
occurs at tn." Sentences of the form, "event e occurs now," so the
objection goes, express different propositions. In order for God to be
omniscient, he must know all propositions. If some sentences are
essentially indexical (if they do not express the same propositions as
sentences of the form "event e occurs at tn"), he cannot know them. If
a timeless God cannot know this kind of proposition, he is not
omniscient.
There have been two basic kinds of responses to this line of argument.
The first is to deny that there are propositions that are irreducibly
indexical in this way. In knowing every proposition of the form "event
e occurs at tn," God knows every proposition about events. This
response is, in effect, a defense of the quick answer given above.
While this position has its adherents, it involves a commitment to the
B-theory of time. The B-theory of time (also known as the tenseless
theory or the stasis theory) entails the claim that the most
fundamental features of time are the relations of "before," "after,"
and "simultaneous with." Talk of tenses (past, present and future) can
be reduced to talk about these relations. The temporal now is not an
objective feature of reality but is a feature of our experience of
reality. If the B-theory of time is true, this objection to divine
timelessness is undermined.
Those who think that there are propositions about events that cannot
be reduced to propositions of the form "event e occurs at tn," hold
the A-theory of time (or tensed or process theory.) The A-theory
claims that there is an objective temporal now. This now is not a
feature only of our subjective experience of reality but it is a piece
of the furniture of the universe. Another way to explain this is that
even if there were no temporal minds, the property of occurring now
would be exemplified by some events and not others. There would be
facts about what is happening now. The fundamental temporal properties
are the tensed properties. So events objectively are past, present or
future. They are not past, present or future only in virtue of their
relation to other events. (The distinction between the A-theory and
the B-theory of time was first articulated by J. M. E. McTaggart; see
McTaggart, 1993.)
There are different versions of the A-theory and different versions of
the B-theory. It is not for this essay to canvass all of these
versions or to weigh the evidence for or against any of them. (For
more information, see Le Poidevin and MacBeath, 1993; Oaklander and
Smith, 1994; and the section "Are there Essentially Tensed Facts?" of
the article on Time in this encyclopedia.) Suffice it to say that the
A-theory is held more commonly than the B-theory. If the claim that
all propositions about events can be reduced to propositions of the
form "event e occurs at tn" entails a controversial theory of time, it
will not be as successful a defense as many would like. This
consideration, to be sure, does not mean that it might not be the
correct response, but the burden of defending it is greater
accordingly.
Another sort of response to the claim that divine omniscience requires
that God is temporal is to embrace the conclusion of the argument and
to hold that God is not propositionally omniscient even if he is
factually omniscient. In other words, God knows every fact but there
are some propositions that can be known only by minds that are located
indexically. God is not lacking any fact. His access to each fact,
though, is not indexical (Wierenga, 1989, 2002). He knows the same
fact I know when I think "I am writing here today." The proposition
through which he knows this fact, however, is different than the
proposition through which I know it. God knows the fact through the
non-indexical proposition "Ganssle writes in Panera on December 13,
2006." Embracing this solution is not without its costs. First of all
we have to adjust how we describe God's omniscience. We cannot
describe it in terms of God's knowing every proposition. It is not
true, on this view, that God knows every proposition. God knows every
fact.
One way to object to this view is to deny that propositions expressed
by indexical and non- indexical sentences refer to or assert the same
fact. To take this road is to hold that some facts are essentially
indexical rather than just that some sentences or propositions are.
This objection does not seem too plausible because of stories like the
following. Suppose you assert to me (truly) "You are in the kitchen,"
and I assert to you (also truly), "I am in the kitchen." These
sentences are not identical and, according to the view we are
considering, they express different propositions. What makes both of
these assertions true is one and the same fact; the fact consisting in
a particular person (Ganssle) being in a particular place (the
kitchen). My knowledge of this fact is mediated through a proposition
that is expressed by sentences using the indexical "I" and your
knowledge is mediated through propositions expressed by sentences
using "you." If there is one fact that makes these different indexical
sentences true, it seems that there can be one fact that makes the
following two indexical sentences true: "Ganssle is now typing" and
"Ganssle types on December 13, 2006." If these sentences are made true
by the same fact, God can know all facts even if he does not know some
facts in the same we know them. Our knowledge of facts is conditioned
by our indexical location. That is, we know them the way we do in
virtue of our personal, spatial and temporal coordinates.
A third response is possible. This response can be combined with the
second and that is to deny that God's knowledge is mediated by
propositions at all. William Alston has argued that God knows what he
knows without having any beliefs. God's knowledge is constituted
instead by direct awareness of the facts involved. This view entails
that God's omniscience is not to be cashed out in terms of
propositions. Furthermore, if God's knowledge of a fact consists in
the presence of that fact to God's consciousness, it may be that this
presence does not affect God intrinsically. If this is the case, God
can be aware of different facts in their different temporal locations
without himself changing. Whether a strategy such as this one will
succeed is an open question (Alston 1989; Ganssle 1993, 1995, 2002c).
Many philosophers who argue for divine temporality structure their
arguments as follows: If God is timeless, the B-theory of time must be
true. But the B-theory of time is false. Therefore, God is not
timeless. Philosophers who defend divine timelessness, then, take one
of two tacks. Either they embrace the first premise and hold to the
B-theory of time (Helm 1988, 2001; Rogers 2000) or they argue against
the second premise. God can be timeless even if the A-theory of time
is true. In this case, they try to show that a timeless God can know
tensed facts without changing himself. Some advocates of timelessness
will try to reconcile their view with the A-theory whether or not it
is the theory of time they hold. Since the A-theory is the more widely
held, showing God's timelessness to be compatible with it helps
strengthen the overall case for timelessness.
7. Some In-between Views
a. Padgett and DeWeese: God as Relatively Timeless
Alan Padgett and Gary DeWeese (Padgett 1992, 2001; DeWeese 2002, 2004)
have each argued that God is not in physical time although he is
everlastingly temporal. God's time is metaphysical time. Padgett and
DeWeese, as is to be expected, emphasize different things in the
details. For example, Padgett allows for the coherence of a timeless
God while DeWeese would endorse the view that any timeless entity is
causally inert. No person, then, can be timeless. Only abstract
objects such as numbers and properties can exist outside time.
Nevertheless, their positions are similar enough to treat them
together. The claim that God is "relatively timeless" or
"omnitemporal" allows its proponents to endorse some of the criticisms
of divine timelessness and, at the same time, affirm some of the
arguments for timelessness. Each affirms the argument that God can be
timeless only if the B-theory of time is true and that the B-theory is
false. They also can hold that God's life cannot be contained in the
measured moments of physical time. They each also affirm that God
created time (physical time) as he created the physical universe.
It is with these latter claims that they make the distinction between
physical and metaphysical time. Physical time is metric time. In other
words, it is time that has an intrinsic metric due to regularities in
the physical universe. Events such as the earth revolving around the
sun are regular enough to mark off units of time. Metaphysical time
involves no metric or measured temporal intervals. God, in himself, is
immune from temporal measure. These temporal items depend upon the
physical measure of time. This measure is a function of the regular
processes that follow physical laws. Since God is not subject to the
laws of nature, he is not subject to measured time. He does experience
a temporal now, somewhat as we do, but his intrinsic experience is not
measured by regular, law-like intervals. He experiences temporal
succession, but this succession is that of the progression of his own
consciousness and actions rather than that of any external
constraints. Now that God has created a universe that unfolds
according to regular laws, there is a metric within created time. So
while God's now coincides with the now of physical time, the measured
intervals do not belong to his divine life.
These positions combine some of the strengths both of the temporalist
with strengths of the timelessness position. The challenge might
consist in finding a stable middle ground between timelessness and
temporality. When metaphysical time is described as being without
metric and without law-like intervals, and perhaps even that God does
not change before physical time is created, it becomes more difficult
to see the difference between this position and timelessness. The main
difference is that on this view, God remains temporal and capable of
change even when no change happens in the divine life (for example,
before creation). On the other hand, when the co-location of God's
experience of his now and the now of physical time is emphasized, the
distinction between the two becomes more difficult to see. William
Lane Craig, who holds a similar position, identifies God's time with
the absolute time that was posited by Newton (Craig 2001a, 2001b,
2002). With this notion in place, one can see that physical time is
that to which the Special Theory of Relativity applies. Craig and
others insist that if relativity theory is interpreted along
neo-Lorentzian lines rather than along the lines recommended by
Einstein, there is room for a privileged reference frame and,
therefore, a cosmic time (Craig 2002). But this cosmic or "absolute"
time may still apply only to this universe and not to God.
b. Craig: God as Timeless without Creation and Temporal with Creation
William Lane Craig's own position includes another variation. He holds
that God is temporal in that he is within metaphysical time. This
feature of God's life is due to the creation of time. Once God created
the universe, he became temporal. Prior to creation, God was timeless.
Of course, it is not right to say "prior to creation" in any literal
sense. The way Craig describes his view is that God without creation
is timeless; God with creation is temporal.
If God has shifted his eternal position in this way, then some of the
arguments against timelessness or against temporality will have to be
rejected. For example, God in his timeless state is omniscient. He is
not lacking any knowledge at all. God must know, in his timeless
state, that I am typing now. If God (without creation) can know that I
am typing now, then it seems that a timeless God with creation can
know that I am typing now. Therefore, God's timelessness is not
incompatible with the A-theory of time (Hasker 2003). Craig's response
is that until the universe is created, there is no time and so all
tensed propositions are false. What God, in his timeless state without
creation knows is the tenseless proposition "Ganssle types on December
14, 2006." Once the universe is created, time is real and these
tenseless sentences do not capture all the facts there are. In order
to be omniscient once time exists, God must also know that I type now.
The challenge with this response is that it appears to endorse some of
the strategies to make the B-theory work. Remember the A-theory of
time is the view that the most fundamental things about time are the
locations of past, present and future. The B-theory holds that the
most fundamental aspects of time are the relations before, after, and
simultaneous with. On Craig's view, it is hard to argue that the
A-locations are more fundamental than the B-relations when there can
be facts of the B-sort that have no A-locations. Without creation, it
is a fact that I type this sentence on December 14, 2006. Once time is
created, there are further facts such as whether I type it now, or
have already done so. The fact that I type it on December 14 seems to
be more fundamental than the facts that come into existence when time
is created.
Craig's position raises another interesting question. Is it possible
for a timeless being to become temporal or for a temporal being to
become timeless? The philosophers whose views have been discussed will
disagree about the answer to this question. Stump and Kretzmann, for
example, would not think such a change possible. Their view of divine
timelessness is deeply connected with divine simplicity which, in
turn, is seen to be part of God's essential nature. DeWeese also would
not allow for this sort of change since no timeless being can be a
person or stand in any causal relations on his view. Craig thinks that
it is possible.
8. Conclusion
Questions about God's relation to time involve many of the most
perplexing topics in metaphysics. These include the nature of the
fundamental structures of the universe as well as the nature of God's
own life. It is not surprising that the questions are still open even
after over two millennia of careful inquiry. While philosophers often
come to conclusions that are reasonably settled in their mind, they
are wise to hold such conclusions with an open hand.
9. References and Further Reading
Alston, William P. (1989). "Does God Have Beliefs?" in Divine Nature
and Human Language.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 178-193.
Aquinas. (1945). Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas. ed., Anton C.
Pegis New York: Modern
Library.
Augustine. (1960). The Confessions of St. Augustine. trans. John K
Ryan. New York: Image
Books.
Augustine. (1993). On Free Choice of the Will. trans. Thomas Williams.
Indianapolis: Hackett.
Boethius. (1973). Tractates; The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated
by H. F. Stewart and E.
K. Rand, and S. J. Tester. (Loeb Classical Library) Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Castaneda, Hector Neri. (1967) "Omniscience and Indexical Reference,"
The Journal of
Philosophy 64: 203 210.
Craig, William Lane and Quentin Smith. (1993). Theism, Atheism, and
Big Bang Cosmology.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Craig, William Lane. (2001a). Time and Eternity: Exploring God's
Relationship to Time.
Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
Craig, William Lane. (2001b). "Timelessness and Omnitemporality," in
Ganssle (2001a): 129-
160.
Craig, William Lane. (2002). "The Elimination of Absolute Time by the
Special Theory of
Relativity," in Ganssle and Woodruff (2002): 129-152.
DeWeese, Garrett J. (2002) "Atemporal, Sempiternal or Omnitemporal:
God's Temporal Mode
of Being," in Ganssle and Woodruff (2002a): 49-61.
DeWeese, Garrett J. (2004). God and the Nature of Time. Hampshire UK: Ashgate.
Fitzgerald, Paul. (1985). "Stump and Kretzmann on Time and Eternity,"
The Journal of
Philosophy 82: 260 269.
Ganssle, Gregory E. (1993). "Atemporality and the Mode of Divine
Knowledge," International
Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 34: 171-180.
Ganssle, Gregory E. (1995). "Leftow on Direct Awareness and
Atemporality," Sophia 34: 30-3.
Ganssle, Gregory E. (2001a) ed., God and Time: Four Views. Downers
Grove, IL: Inter Varsity
Press.
Ganssle, Gregory E. (2001b). "Introduction: Thinking about God and
Time," in Ganssle (2001a):
9-27.
Ganssle, Gregory E. and David M. Woodruff (2002a) ed., God and Time:
Essays on the Divine
Nature. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ganssle, Gregory E. (2002b). "Introduction," in Ganssle and Woodruff
(2002a): 3-18.
Ganssle, Gregory E. (2002c). "Direct Awareness and God's Experience of
a Temporal Now," in Ganssle and Woodruff (2002a): 165-181.
Hasker, William.(1989). God, Time, and Knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Hasker, William. (2002). "The Absence of a Timeless God," in Ganssle
and Woodruff (2002a):
182-206.
Hasker, William. (2003). "Review of God and Time: Four Views ed.,
Gregory E. Ganssle and
God, Time and Eternity by William Lane Craig," International Journal
for the Philosophy of Religion 54: 111-114.
Helm, Paul. (1988). Eternal God: A Study of God without Time. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
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