1. Helm, Paul. Eternal God: God Without Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
2. Craig, William Lane. Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001.
3. DeWeese, Garrett J. God and the Nature of Time. Hampshire UK: Ashgate, 2004.
4. Hasker, William. God, Time, and Knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.
5. Padgett, Alan G. God, Eternity and the Nature of Time. London: Macmillan. (Reprint, Wipf and Stock, 1992 [2000]).
6. Pike, Nelson. God and Timelessness. New York: Schocken Books, 1970.
7. Swinburne, Richard. The Coherence of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
8. Wierenga, Edward R. The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.
9. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. (1975). “God Everlasting,” in God and the Good: Essays in Honor of Henry Stob, ed. Clifton Orlebeke and Lewis Smedes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Reprinted in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, ed. Steven M. Cahn and David Shatz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 77-89.
10. Craig, William L. Time and the Metaphysics of Relativity. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
11. Deng, Natalja. God and Time. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
12. Stump, Eleonore and Norman Kretzmann. (1981). “Eternity,” Journal of Philosophy 78: 429-458. Reprinted in The Concept of God, edited by Thomas V. Morris. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987: 219-252.
13. Stump, Eleonore. "The Openness of God: Eternity and Free Will" in Mirosław Szatkowski (ed.), Ontology of Theistic Beliefs. De Gruyter. pp. 137-154 (2018).
14. Mullins, R.T. The End of the Timeless God. Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
I appreciate the suggestion for Mullins. I'm familiar with his work and have read him, but that book totally slipped my mind.
13 comments:
I'd add : The End of the Timeless God, by RT Mullins
Eleanore Stump is an interesting theologian, and she uses illustrations to explain her positions in a way that breaks them down well, although I disagree with her position (she's a pretty standard Thomist, and although I think the Thomist school of thought is useful, it makes a few wrong turns, and some Thomist theologians treat Thomas almost as though he was inspired).
William Lane craig's view on time is also interesting, (William Lane Craig is very hit and miss, I think he's great on the cosmological argument, but his defense of Penal Substitutionary Atonement is horrible), I don't think his Monalism works, but his idea that God creates time, and in doing so puts himself in time, makes sense, along with his endorsement of the A theory of time.
It's good to see how wide your reading is, approaching a subject from many different angles.
Do you have a favorate work that you find most compelling with regards Eternity, God etc etc.
Thanks, I will add Mullins to the list. I've read some of his stuff, and I think he's pretty good.
Roman, you state exactly how I feel about Stump. I enjoy reading her material and watching her lectures/interviews and I think she's a master explainer, but her idea about God's timeless duration and relative simultaneity has been justly criticized IMO.
And with Craig, I like his work on the kalam cosmological argument, and I enjoyed all of his books on God and time and I agree for the most part, with his view of the matter. More recently, Craig has also done work on God's aseity. The lectures are on YT and there is a book about the issue. I found that work to be interesting too.
My views on God and time most closely align with Richard Swinburne and Garrett Deweese. Another write, who makes a lot of sense to me when it comes to time and God in time is John Lucas. He's a smart fellow and usually makes his writings available online for free. Lucas is abstract, but he's erudite.
I wrote a paper on Aquinas and Boethius as an undergrad that dealt with God and time. I've worked on the paper for years and tried to edit it for presenting at a conference, but I stalled. That's one problem with teaching lots of classes and other things have arisen. On a hopeful note, I did work on that paper 2 weeks ago, but that's one thing that got me reading these books.
I would love to read your paper on Aquinas and Boethius!
Thanks for the John Lucas tip, I'll check him out.
I like this kind of topic because it's something we can't really know because the Bible doesn't tell enough, clearly.
Anonymous: Granted, the Bible is not real clear on the subject, yet I agree with those who understand the biblical God to be a God in time. The Bible writers also portray Jehovah as a dynamic God who has a range of emotions, but I know the timelessness people will say we have to make room for analogy and anthropomorphic language.
Roman, see https://fosterheologicalreflections.blogspot.com/2015/03/part-of-paper-in-works-on-god-time.html
For John Lucas, see https://philpapers.org/s/John%20Lucas
Yes, it's clear from the Bible that God is temporal.
All these considerations about presentism, eternalism, endurance, perdurance, and what it entails biblically... fascinating
I agree. Years ago, I really got into the issues about God and time, but I don't read much of the subject anymore. One biblical text that still fascinates me is Psalm 90:2: Jehovah is from olam to olam.
I kind of feel like a lot of the Arian controversy came down to Christ's relationship to time, i.e. did God create time? If so did he create time through Christ? If so was Christ's begetting outside of time? it wasn't was time's coming into being concominent with Christ's begetting? Is time an aspect of God?
I lean towards thinking time is concominent with Christ's begetting, which itself was done as the beginning of creation (thus the beginning of time), but I'm not knowledgable about the issues enough to know. For me
I've gone around in circles when it comes to time, but I accept the A theory of time (time is temporal/tensed) rather than the tenseless view of time. I believe God is temporal, but that he's not restricted by our time. You likely know that the eternal generation is supposed to occur outside of time and Augustine said the Son is always being generated (semper natus), but he believed that God created the universe "with time" or something to that effect.
RT Mullins is writing something on this From Divine Timemaker to divine Watchmaker. This will be out this year.
Thanks again, anon. I will check out the work by Mullins.
Post a Comment