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Empty Time and the Eternality of God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Don Lodzinski
Don Lodzinski
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1937 ½ University Avenue, Green Bay, WI 54302
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Abstract

The present paper defends Augustine's claim that time is ontologically dependent on the world. My proof is accomplished by establishing two sub-proofs. First, I argue that time requires change by criticizing Shoemaker's argument for the counterclaim that time does not require change. Second, I go on to show that there is no source of change apart from the created universe. I conclude that if we grant the traditional theistic assumption that the created universe has a beginning and an end, then since time is ontologically dependent on the world, time cannot extend from the infinite past into the infinite future. And if time does not extend from the infinite past into the infinite future, then a temporal God has a beginning and endures for only a finite period of time. This implausible consequence gives us reason to believe that God is eternal.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 1995, pp. 187 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Augustine, St, Confessions, trans. Bourke, Vernon (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1953)Google Scholar, book 11, sec. 13.

2 Ibid.

3 Helm, Paul, Eternal God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 38.Google Scholar

4 For example, see Gale, Richard, On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 96.Google Scholar

5 Huby, Pamela, ‘Kant or Cantor? That the Universe, If Real, Must Be Finite in Both Space and Time’, Philosophy (04, 1977), pp. 121–32.Google Scholar

6 Shoemaker, Sydney, ‘Time Without Change’, The Journal of Philosophy, LXVI, no. 12 (1969), 363–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 For a more detailed discussion of these matters seeReichenbach's, HansThe Philosophy of Space and Time (New York: Dover, 1958), especially pp. 113–15.Google Scholar

8 The reader may wish to note the similarities with my notion of empty time and Isaac Newton's notion of absolute, true and mathematical time which ‘flows equably without regard to anything external’. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, ed. Florian Cajori (Berkeley CA, 1947), p. 6Google Scholar, cited in Ernest Nagel's The Structure of Science (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979), p. 179.Google Scholar

9 I assume that all successively occurring states of created immaterial spirits occur within the temporal limits of the physical universe. However even if some created spiritual beings have no end they could not be the source of change before the created order.

10 For example, see Richard Gale, op. cit. chapters 2–3, and Nicholas Wolterstorff's ‘God Everlasting’ in God and the Good: Essays in Honor of Henry Stob (MI: Grand Rapids, 1975), pp. 181–203.Google Scholar

11 Some claim that things, like certain tensed facts, are in principle outside the range of knowledge even for an omniscient being. Therefore omniscience and an increase in knowledge are compatible.