Eternal/Everlasting God and Omniscience

Eternal vs Everlasting God

Eternal: Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas: would argue that God is eternal because God created time and is out of time
Everlasting: God moves along the same timeline as we do, but exists always

Problems with God being eternal

• How can a God who is separate from the world have a relationship with the people in it?

• If God knows the future, surely he’s responsible for the problem of evil?

• If God is both eternal/knows our actions, can we be held morally responsible for our actions? Are we truly free?

• If God is eternal, can he choose between actions? Does he even need to if he can simultaneously see what the choice was?

God as eternal

God’s knoweldge/powers ARE NOT limited
Holds it all in - simultaneous present. Everything in one moment, eternal
God vs our own nature: ‘clearer by comparison’ with all eternal beings
Boundless time, succession - we don’t embrace the infinity of life all at once

Boethius

Takes into account that if God is eternal/knows the future, how cn we be morally responsible for our actions?
God simply sees the result of our free choices, always our free will: knowledge does notdetermine or force our action

Against Boethius

God’s omniscience may not force our actions, but means our actions are fixed/set in stone: if God knows I chose vanilla, means I am not free to choose chocolate

Defending Boethius

• However, this criticism fails because it is overcome by Boethius’ distinction between simple and conditional necessity.

• Boethius ultimately argues that yes – God’s knowledge of our future actions means they are set in stone and necessary – it God’s knowledge isn’t what makes our future actions set in stone/necessary.

• Iit was our free choices that set them in stone and made them necessary.

• Boethius argues that yes, God’s knowledge of our future choices does make them fixed and necessary, but a special type of necessity which doesn’t undermine free will but actually depends on it.

• Boethius asks us to imagine seeing someone walking – it’s necessary that they are walking – because it’s necessary that what’s happening is happening, otherwise it wouldn’t be happening. However – in the past, they could have chosen not to walk, and then it wouldn’t have become necessary that they are walking.

• So – sometimes our actions can become necessary – yet their necessity still be dependent – conditional on – our having chosen them.

• Similarly – when God views our future actions – this does make them necessary and fixed – but only because – only conditionally on – the fact that we chose them.

• In other words, God only sees the future choices that he does – because they are the choices we freely will make.

• God’s knowledge of our future actions doesn’t undermine their being freely chosen. God eternally sees that I choose X, which means that I will freely choose X. This still does seem unsatisfying because it still sounds like I can’t do otherwise.

• This is something Anselm addresses by fleshing out a more detailed account of the relationship between time and eternity.

Anselm’s 4 dimensionalism

• Anselm wanted to improve on Boethius’ view – to further be able to explain how an eternal God’s actions could still have an effect on time. 

• Boethius presents God as radically disconnected from time – but then how could God do anything to the world? For example how could God be the sustaining cause of the universe if he’s so radically separate?

• Anselm wants to upgrade Boethius’ theory of God’s eternity to explain how God could act upon time.

• So, Anselm wants to show that God has some relation to time – to be able to act on it – but he doesn’t think God could be inside time, as then God would be confined within time, which seems to detract from omnipotence – from being the greatest conceivable being.

• Anselm concludes that God is not in time, but all of time is in God.

• All of space – the first three dimensions – are contained within one moment of time (4th dimension). Anselm’s proposal is that similarly, all the moments of time are contained within the one eternally present moment of divine eternity – both in and with God.

• So, now Anselm can give the same solution as Boethius – that God knows our future actions – not merely by observing them from outside of time, but through actually being with them in divine eternity – because all of time is within God.

Critique of Anselm

• Kenny’s critique – the eternal view of God makes no sense because events in time are not all happening in one moment. 

• Some events necessarily happened before others – e.g. my parents birth was before mine. 

• If God is seeing all events in one moment – he’s not seeing them correctly – so he lacks omniscience.

Defending Anselm

• This criticism works against Boethius – but not Anselm.

• Anselm can say:

• Within time, my birth and my parents birth are non-simultaneous.

• Within eternity, my birth and my parents birth are simultaneous.

• All events within time, whether they are simultaneous with each or not, all exist in one moment in eternity. So in eternity, non-simultaneous events are simultaneous.

• So when God sees my birth and parents birth happening at the same time in eternity, that isn’t seeing things incorrectly – because it is correct that in eternity all events happen at once, even if they don’t within time.

• In the first dimension, a straight line cannot be part of a cube, but in the third dimension it can.

• Similarly, in the fourth dimension of time, my parents’ birth cannot be simultaneous with my birth, but in eternity it can.

• It’s Boethius who gives the impression that God is radically outside time – seeing time in one moment, which leads to the problem that time isn’t all in one moment.

• Anselm, however, with his use of dimensions, shows that actually – in divine eternity – all events really are happening in one moment – because all the moments of time are actually happening at once. It’s not merely from God’s perspective that they ‘appear’ to be simultaneous, as Boethius had suggested.

• Anselm Scholar Katherine Rogers interprets Anselm as viewing eternity as a kind of 5th dimension – which contains all the moments of fourth dimensional time within it.

• Stump and Kretzman – introduced useful terminology to explain Anselm’s view – there is ‘t-simultaneity’ – the simultaneity of events within time – and ‘e-simultaneity’ – the simultaneity of events within eternity. Two events like my birth and my parents birth can be t-nonsimultaneous, but e-simultaneous on Anselm’s view.

• So, the compatibility of omniscience and free will has been successfully defended by Anselm.

• For Boethius, God was seeing all of time at once – which was incorrect as Kenny points out.

• However for Anselm, it actually is both correct that temporal events can be non-simultaneous within time, but also simultaneously within eternity. So when God sees all of time in one moment, that is not incorrect – in the sense that events are within eternity, they are simultaneous – even if non-simultaneous in time.

• For Boethius eternity is like a perspective, whereas for Anselm it’s more like an actual thing

Swinburne

• Swinburne proposes a very different solution to this question and problem.

• He thinks an eternal God would be a ‘lifeless’ thing, which we couldn’t have a loving relationship with. Relationships require a two-way interaction between beings within time.

• So, he claims God is everlasting – within time. This seems most compatible with omnibenevolence.

• To preserve our free will, Swinburne argues God must engage in cognitive self-limitation.

• God could know our actions if he wanted to, but chooses to limit his knowledge of the future to only that which is physically determined. This would not include actions that are free.

• So, God doesn’t know what we’re going to do next

• This might make it seem that God is not omniscient. But Swinburne insists that the future actions of genuinely free creatures cannot be known. If they could, they would be necessary and then not free.

Against Swinburne

• The bible involves God knowing our future actions – e.g. Jesus knew Judas would betray him and knew that Peter would deny him three times before the cockerel crowed.

• Plus Anselm’s arguments – that if God were within time he would be confined and limited which contradicts his omnipotence.

• Swinburne tries to explain this by saying God knows us as a parent knows a child – so he knows us very well and can have a good prediction about what we’re going to do next, but he doesn’t know it for absolutely certain because that’s unknowable.

• However – this just doesn’t credibly align with the way the Bible presents Jesus’ and God’s knowledge of the future, especially when it comes to biblical prophecy. The Bible presents God as knowing our future actions for certain, so Swinburne’s interpretation is invalid.