God, Eternity, and Time

Edmund Runggaldier, Christian Tapp, Christian Tapp

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351932745
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Theismus

"God is eternal" is a standard belief of all theistic religions. But what does it mean? If, on the one hand, "eternal" means timeless, how can God hear the prayers of the faithful at some point of time? And how can a timeless God act in order to answer the prayers? If God knows what I will do tomorrow from all eternity, how can I be free to choose what to do? If, on the other hand, "eternal" means everlasting, does that not jeopardize divine majesty? How can everlastingness be reconciled with the traditional doctrines of divine simplicity and perfection? An outstanding group of American, UK, German, Austrian, and Swiss philosophers and theologians discuss the problem of God's relation to time. Their contributions range from analyzing and defending classical conceptions of eternity (Boethius's and Aquinas's) to vindicating everlastingness accounts, and from the foreknowledge problem to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. This book tackles philosophical questions that are of utmost importance for Systematic Theology. Its highest aim is to deepen our understanding of religious faith by surveying its relations to one of the most fundamental aspects of reality: time.

Part I
In Defence of Divine Timelessness

Chapter 1
On Existing All at Once

Robert Pasnau

The nature of divine eternality is obscure in both historical and modern discussions. In a way its obscurity is no surprise, given that the nature of time is so mysterious. But the obscurity is still notable relative to the other traditional divine attributes, which are comparatively much better understood. Our perplexities regarding eternality are compounded, I will argue here, by a failure to recognize the full range of conceptual possibilities concerning divine eternality. Modern discussions have been ignoring what is not only an intrinsically plausible conception of eternality, but what might also be regarded as its most historically prominent construal.

1.1 Two Conceptions of Timelessness

Discussions of divine eternality ought to distinguish between the sort of complete timelessness - God’s being outside of time - that is sometimes associated with the concept, and a different sort of timelessness, also frequently associated with eternity, that involves lacking temporal parts, and so existing “all at once”. The main thesis of this chapter is that a plausible case can be made for all-at-once existence, rather than complete timelessness, as the best understanding of what eternality is.

To be clear about exactly what these different notions involve, I need some precisely defined terminology:

A temporal entity, as I will use the term here, exists at one or more times and, unless it exists for just an instant, exists through time. It coexists - that is, exists simultaneously - with other entities existing at the same time.

An atemporal entity, on my usage, is one that is not temporal. It does not exist in time, in the sense that it does not exist at any time and so, a fortiori, does not exist through time. It cannot be said to exist simultaneously with, or before, or after any other entity.

A merechronic entity partly exists at some instant in time, but also existed or will exist at other times, and does not wholly exist at any one time.

A holochronic entity is one that is not merechronic. It exists as a whole, all at once, for all of its existence, and does not partly exist at different times.

To make this last distinction, I might have appealed instead to the standard scholastic terminology of ‘successive’ and ‘permanent’ entities, or to the modern terminology of ‘perduring’ and ‘enduring’ entities. As will become clear, I think all these terms aim at a similar distinction. This is, however, a conclusion I want to derive from the discussion, rather than build it into my terminology from the start. Hence it will be safer for now to employ these neologisms, so that we can talk directly about the notion of all-at-once existence, without entangling it with various other issues.

Under any name, the notions of merechronicity and holochronicity are seriously obscure. To see what they involve, begin with an ordinary physical event, like kicking a football. The event takes place over time, and we can distinguish between parts of the event, such as the motion of the foot before contact and the motion of the foot after contact. Now try to extend this same idea to a substance that changes over time, like a growing boy. Just as we talked about parts of an event, it seems that we might talk about the six-year-old part of the boy and the seven-year-old part of the boy. Inasmuch as the boy is something that exists through time, it seems possible to conceive of him as having parts, temporal parts, just as he has spatial parts such as his right half and his left half. To have temporal parts in this way is to be a merechronic entity. If it is right to conceive of temporal stages of existence as parts, then anything that changes, at least if it changes intrinsically, must have such parts, and so must be merechronic. But now consider an entity that does not change intrinsically in any way. If such a being is possible, then it cannot be merechronic, because merechronicity itself is a kind of intrinsic change, a part-by-part traversal of a complete life. A wholly unchanging being would therefore have to be holochronic.

As I have defined these terms, atemporality and holochronicity are compatible. Indeed, atemporality entails holochronicity. Since an atemporal entity does not exist through time, there can be no question of its lacking some past or future part of itself. Holochronicity, in contrast, does not entail atemporality. An entity can exist through time, and so be temporal in my sense, and yet not have the sorts of temporal parts associated with ordinary temporal existence. Such a being would wholly exist at one moment and then wholly exist at the next moment, such that no part of it gets left behind. One might want to argue that in fact this apparent possibility is illusory, and that whatever exists through time must have temporal parts. In that case, holochronic existence would entail atemporal existence. This is, however, very far from obvious, and one might even argue to the contrary that ordinary material substances are themselves holochronically temporal entities.

The notion of holochronicity has a venerable pedigree. Skipping over its various antecedents in Greek thought, it appears among Christian philosophers in Augustine:

Why, my soul, do you perversely follow your flesh? It would follow you, if you 1 turned away. Whatever you sense through it is partial. You are unaware of the whole of which these are the parts, and yet these parts delight you. But if the sense of your 3 flesh were suited to comprehend the whole, and were not, in punishment, justly confined to a part of the universe, you would wish to pass over whatever exists in 5 the present, so that the whole would provide you with more pleasure. For so it is that you hear, with the same sense of the flesh, the words we speak, and you certainly do 7 not want to stop at the syllables, but to pass on so that other syllables may come and you may hear the whole. So it always is when all of what makes up some one thing 9 does not all exist at once (omnia simul): if it could all be sensed, it would be more enjoyable than it would individually. But far better than these is he who made all 11 things, our God. He does not pass away, because nothing succeeds him.¹

It also seems to appear in Boethius’s famous discussion of eternity:

Eternity is the complete possession all at once of illimitable life. This becomes clearer 1 by comparison with temporal things. For whatever lives in time, as present, proceeds from the past into the future, and there is nothing located in time that can embrace 3 the whole extent of its life equally. On the contrary, it does not yet grasp tomorrow even though it has already lost yesterday, and even in your life today you live no 5 more fully than in a mobile, transitory moment. Therefore whatever undergoes the condition of time, even if (as Aristotle held about the world) it never began or ceases 7 to exist, and even if its life is extended with the infinity of time, still it is not such as is rightly judged to be eternal. For although the extent of its life is infinite, it does 9 not encompass and embrace it all at once; instead it does not now have the future that has not yet arrived. Therefore whatever encompasses and possesses the whole 11 fullness of illimitable life equally and is such that nothing future is absent from it and nothing past has flowed away, this is rightly judged to be eternal.² 13

There can be hardly any doubt that both of these authors are describing the merechronic character of the created world. For Augustine, we sense the present parts of things, ‘unaware of the whole’ (line 2). For Boethius, ‘there is nothing located in time that can embrace the whole extent of its life equally’ (lines 3-4). Each author is taking the familiar spatial notion of a whole and its parts, and applying that to temporal extension, conceiving of a thing’s existence in a moment of time as a part of its existence, and then imagining how God might exist wholly, entirely lacking in such parts. This is the famous Boethian notion of the ‘interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio’ (line 1).

So far, I do not think that I have said anything controversial. I am, however, right on the brink of various controversial questions. One such question is whether this Boethian conception of eternality as holochronicity might best be captured without removing God from time entirely. Rather than make any bold assertions, I will frame this as a query:

• Query 1: Is eternality just illimitable, temporally extended, holochronic existence?

A start toward answering Query 1 in the affirmative would be to observe that holochronicity appears to be a plausible candidate for a perfection. Certainly, at any rate, merechronicity looks like an imperfection. Beings that are only fragmentarily realized at an instant look quite imperfect, and it looks to be quite an improvement to exist holochronically. Indeed - given that the two options are exhaustive - it seems plausible that a perfect being would have to exist holo chronically. I thus take it to be uncontroversial that holochronicity is at least part of what it is to be eternal. The crucial question then becomes whether atemporality is also required.

Here it is important to be very clear about the notion of timelessness. Although it is commonly agreed that eternality requires timelessness, there are different ways of being timeless.³ Particularly relevant for present purposes is that one can be timeless by being either atemporal or by being holochronic. It seems to me that the messy interconnections between these three concepts - timelessness, atemporality, holochronicity - have led to much confusion regarding eternality. Boethius, in the famous passage above, is committed not just to holochronicity but also to timelessness, when he remarks that ‘there is nothing located in time that can embrace the whole extent of its life equally’ (lines 3-4). From this we can safely infer that God is not ‘located in time’. It is certainly not unreasonable to suppose, then, that Boethius is committed to God’s atemporality. On this reading of the passage, one would have a ready explanation of why he talks about holochronicity, since holochronicity follows trivially from atemporality. But there is another way to read the passage. Mere holochronicity itself might be considered a kind of timelessness. Since such a being is entirely changeless, without even a distinct past or future, it fails to be located in time in the usual way. Hence it might be argued that Boethius’s denial of God’s being located in time should be understood merely as the denial of God’s merechronicity, not as the claim that God is entirely outside of time. I am not taking a position on whether this is the most plausible reading - we would need to look at more texts - only that we should be alert to the conceptual room here for different sorts of timelessness, including illimitable holochronicity, rather than atemporality.⁴

Why suppose that, in addition to illimitable holochronicity, eternality also requires atemporality? One reason, as noted already, would be that atemporality is the only way to achieve holochronicity. Suppose for now, however, that this is not so, and that there is nothing logically impossible about the notion of existing holochronically through time. Why, then, insist on adding atemporality? One reason to doubt whether atemporality should be added is that, in a sense, it diminishes the perfection of holochronicity. Although an atemporal being is, strictly speaking, holochronic, it satisfies the definition vacuously, inasmuch as an atemporal being does not exist through time in such a way as even possibly to have temporal parts. Anything that might exist outside of time - the number 9, a Platonic form, a solitary, immutable rock - would be holochronic in this sense. It is only when holochronicity is manifested in time that it appears to be a positive perfection, because we then have the picture of a being existing wholly at one time, possessing its whole life, and also existing wholly at the next time, still possessing its whole life, and so without any gain or loss between the two times. Supposing such holochronicity is a possible mode of existence, it surely looks like a great-making feature. An atemporal being, in contrast, is holochronic only trivially, by default, in virtue of being unable to pass from time to time. Hence there is a real sense in which those who wish to associate eternality with atemporality are turning their back on the perfection of holochronicity. They are, to be sure, avoiding the clear imperfection of merechronicity. But they are doing so in a way that debars them from capturing what appears to be the great-making feature of being holochronic.

Of course, this would be a serious objection to atemporality only if there are no countervailing advantages in adding atemporality to the notion of holochronicity. It is a familiar idea that some great-making features have to drop out of the concept of a perfect being because they do not fit within the overall package of the...