First published Fri Jan 20, 2006; substantive revision Thu Feb 4, 2010
Concepts of eternity have developed in a way that is, as a matter of fact, closely connected to the development of the concept of God in Western thought, beginning with ancient Greek philosophers; particularly to the idea of God's relation to time, the idea of divine perfection, and the Creator-creature distinction. Eternity as timelessness, and eternity as everlastingness, have been distinguished. Following the work of Boethius and Augustine of Hippo divine timelessness became the dominant view. In more recent times, those who stress a more anthropomorphic account of God, or God's immanence within human history, have favored divine everlastingness. The debate has been sharpened by the use of McTaggart's distinction between A-series and B-series accounts of temporal sequence.

1. Etymology
2. The loci classici
3. The Eternalist View
4. Sources in antiquity
5. Eternality in theology and religion
6. Medieval thinkers
7. Modern philosophical debates
7.1 Eternalism
7.2 Temporalism
8. A basic difference
9. Other issues
Bibliography
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
1. Etymology

The English word ‘eternal’ comes from aeturnus in Latin, itself a derivation from aevum, an age or time. So ‘eternity’ means everlastingness. However, in the course of philosophical discussion the idea of everlastingness has been further refined, and two contrasting concepts can be denoted by it. It is usual to make the contrast clear by calling one of these ‘eternity’ or ‘atemporality’ and the other ‘sempiternity’ or ‘everlastingness'.

2. The loci classici

The richest and longest discussions of eternity have been in connection with the manner of God's life. The loci classici of this discussion, which makes the contrast between everlastingness and eternity clearer, and at the same time establishes what came to be the dominant account of eternity in western philosophy and theology, are to be found in Book XI of the Confessions of Augustine (354–430) and Book V of Boethius's (480–c.525) The Consolation of Philosophy. (The extent to which the platonism of Philo of Alexandria (c. 25 B.C.–40 A.D.), particularly applied to the idea of creation (for example, in his De opificio mundi) was influential is not clear.) However, the styles of these two thinkers are very different. Boethius presents the idea of divine eternity as straightforward and relatively problem-free, while Augustine wrestles with the idea and expresses continual puzzlement and indeed amazement at the idea of time itself and with it the contrasting idea of divine eternality.

In Boethius the contrast (which Boethius believes to be a ‘common judgement’) is drawn between timeless eternity which only God enjoys, and the sempiternity which (according to Plato) the world itself possesses.

It is the common judgement, then, of all creatures that live by reason that God is eternal. So let us consider the nature of eternity, for this will make clear to us both the nature of God and his manner of knowing. Eternity, then, is the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life; this will be clear from a comparison with creatures that exist in time.
…for it is one thing to progress like the world in Plato's theory through everlasting life, and another thing to have embraced the whole of everlasting life in one simultaneous present. (Boethius Consolation, V.VI.)

God has life, so eternity in this sense cannot also be possessed by abstract ideas or numbers. God's life is ‘at once’, simultaneous. Boethius invokes this idea in order to resolve the problem of providence. If God knows beforehand what I shall do then how can I be free not to do it? His answer is that this problem dissolves in the face of the fact that God does not know anything beforehand but has an immediate, atemporal knowledge of all things.

In Augustine the connection is made between divine eternity and divine fullness, and of God, existing timelessly, being the cause of all times.

What times existed which were not brought into being by you? Or how could they pass if they never had existence? Since, therefore, you are the cause of all times, if any time existed before you made heaven and earth, how can anyone say that you abstained from working? (Augustine, Confessions, XI. xiii (15)).
It is not in time that you precede times. Otherwise you would not precede all times. In the sublimity of an eternity which is always in the present, you are before all things past and transcend all things future, because they are still to come. (Augustine Confessions XI. xiii (16)).

In you it is not one thing to be and another to live: the supreme degree of being and the supreme degree of life are one and the same thing. You are being in a supreme degree and are immutable. In you the present day has no ending, and yet in you it has its end: ‘all these things have their being in you’ (Rom.11.36). They would have no way of passing away unless you set a limit to them. Because ‘your years do not fail’ (Ps.101.28), your years are one Today. (Augustine Confessions, I. vi (10)),

3. The Eternalist View

So, beginning with Augustine and Boethius, many thinkers have held the view that God exists apart from time, or outside time. He possesses life all at once. But the expression ‘all at once’ is not meant to indicate a moment of time, but the absence of temporal sequence, though not, in the view of some, the absence of duration. So it is not that God has always existed, for as long as time has existed, and that he always will exist, but that God does not exist in time at all. He is apart from his creation, transcendent over it. Eternalists such as Augustine and Boethius deliberately reject the idea that God is everlasting, or sempiternal, that for any time t God exists at that time.

On this view there is a radical and sharp distinction between the Creator and his creation. Among the marks of the Creator is that he exists necessarily, and is timeless and changeless, while his creation is contingent, and its changes are marked by time. Some, such as Augustine, suggest that God created the universe with time and if time is what you get when things change, then this seems an attractive proposal. Time is not a substance or a thing, but a relation between things, or more exactly a relation between changes in things.

What helps to form the thought that God is timeless (and spaceless) is the idea, surely a basic intuition of ‘Abrahamic’ theism, that God has fullness or self-sufficiency or perfection. Part of God's perfection is that he is changeless; he cannot change for the worse, and does not need to change for the better. He exists as a complete, entire unity, together. His existence is not spread out in time or in space, as the existence of material objects is, but his existence is all at once.

Those in time are bound by it, in this sense, that they cannot stop the process of change and therefore of time. They are the subjects of time, not its masters. In a sense, they are more the masters of space than they are of time, for they can choose to remain at the same physical location for a time, but they cannot choose to remain at some particular time. In this respect the hymn-writer Isaac Watts was perfectly correct when he compared time to an ‘ever-rolling stream’ which ‘bears all its sons away’.

Another feature of time is that those who exist in time have lives which are successive. Their memories are of parts that existed earlier, present awareness is of that part that exists now, (or perhaps a short time earlier) and hopes and expectations concern those parts that exist later. If God is in time in the sort of way that human beings are in time it follows that he has earlier and later phases. At any time, a part of his life is earlier than other parts. On the reasonable supposition that he has always existed there is a series of parts that is backwardly everlasting. There never was a time when God was not. Nevertheless it follows from the supposition that God is in time that there are segments of his life which together constitute a part of God's life that are presently inaccessible to him except by memory. And the eternalist will say that such an idea is incompatible with God's fullness and self-sufficiency. For how could God be restricted in this way?

4. Sources in antiquity

As noted, Boethius found the source of the idea of eternity which he attributes to God in Plato. In the Timaeus (37E6–38A6) Plato contrasts the eternal forms with the time-bound created world, the world of mutation and becoming, for time was created along with the heaven (38B5), meaning at least that time is the measure of change, and perhaps that it is identical with the movements of the heavenly bodies, a view later critiqued by Augustine (Confessions, Book XI. xxiii) Plato's idea of eternity in the Timaeus seems to be that of timeless duration, for the Forms endure in the temporal order in which ‘time is the moving image of eternity’. It is possible to trace a similar idea of timeless eternity back to Parmenides, though exactly what he means is the subject of scholarly dispute.

While in some places at least Plato connected the necessary character of the Forms, including mathematical objects, to eternity, in Aristotle the connection is between necessity and sempiternity. What is necessary is what exists for all times. What is contingent is what at some time might not be. God, being necessary, is sempiternal. Nevertheless it may be said that the sempiternal is not bounded by time (in a weaker sense than Plato ascribes to the Forms) in that what exists sempiternally cannot age. (Physics 221b30) Philo of Alexandria is reckoned to be the first to ascribe timelessness to God, to the God of the Jewish Scriptures. In Plotinus (ca. 185–254) timeless eternity and life are for the first time identified together. Nous is eternal and beyond time, enjoying duration without succession.

5. Eternality in theology and religion

The importance of Augustine and Boethius for developing the idea of eternality has already been noted. Anselm (c. 1033–1109) presents a similar view.

Suppose, on the other hand, that it exists as a whole in individual times severally and distinctly. (A human being, for instance, exists as a whole yesterday, today and tomorrow.) In this case we should, properly, say that it was, is and will be. In which case its time-span is not simultaneously a whole. Rather it is stretched out in parts through the parts of time. But its time-span is its eternity and its eternity is precisely itself. The supreme essence, therefore, would be cut up into parts along the divisions of time. (Anselm Monologion, Ch. 21)
In the Proslogion Anselm articulates for the first time a ‘grammar’ of the divine powers, what it makes sense to say of the most perfect being, including that being's timelessness.

6. Medieval thinkers

It is in the medieval period that discussion of eternity embraces not only Christian but Jewish and Islamic thinkers, often in controversy among themselves. In keeping with the sharp line drawn between the Creator and all that is created, medieval thinkers such as Thomas and the Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides (1131–1204) (who greatly influenced Aquinas) thought that God's timeless eternity ought to be understood primarily in negative terms. For Aquinas God's eternity is unending, lacking both beginning and end, and an instantaneous whole lacking successiveness) It is a correlate of divine simplicity, and so incapable of being defined or fully grasped by a creature. Part of what it means to say that God is incomprehensible is to say that though we believe that God is timeless we do not and cannot have a straightforward understanding of what his timeless life is, of what it is like to be timeless. For Aquinas also timeless eternity constituted part of the ‘grammar’ of talking about God. Since God is eternal it does not make any sense to ask how many years God has existed, or whether he is growing old, or what will he be doing later on in the year. And he is immutable: it does not make sense to ask whether God could change.

Despite differences with Thomas Aquinas regarding the nature of God's relation to time, Duns Scotus (c.1266–1308) upheld divine timelessness. In general, it would seem that commitment to divine simplicity, widespread if not universal in the medieval period, entails a commitment to divine eternality.

7. Modern philosophical debates

Modern discussion of the notion of eternity in a theological context has followed the trajectory set by this historical pattern, dividing itself into (broadly) eternalist and sempiternalist approaches to understanding God's relation to time. Debate has been sharpened and clarified by the use of the distinction propounded by J.M.E. McTaggart (1866–1925) between an A–series view of time, (in which the temporal series is characterised as if from some point within it, using temporal indexicals such as ‘tomorrow, ‘now’, ‘then’, ‘past’ and ‘future’) and a B-series view, in which the temporal series is characterised simply by the ‘earlier than’, ‘later than’, ‘simultaneous with’ relations between events, from a standpoint that is indifferent to its own temporal position. (McTaggart, 1908)

7.1 Eternalism

Laying aside theological arguments drawn from Scripture, the central argument for eternalism derives from a consideration of the implications of divine fullness and perfection.

A number of contemporary thinkers such as Paul Helm, in Eternal God, and Katherin Rogers, in Perfect Being Theology, argue that for God, who exists timelessly, the temporal order is a B-series, all times being equally present to his mind. On the eternalist view of creation, God creates the universe as a temporally ordered B-series, according to which every event in that universe is, tenselessly, either before, after or simultaneous with every other event in the universe. But God is in no temporal relation to this B series, not even in the tenseless relation that, according to the B theory, any event in the universe is to any other event in it.

How does thinking of time as a B-series help in our understanding of creation by a timeless God? On that view, as we have seen, each event is tenselessly related to each other. The Battle of Hastings has a fixed, tenseless but nonetheless temporal relation with the Battle of Waterloo. How does this help? By enabling us to think of the temporal series from a standpoint that is indifferent to any point within it. From this it is a short step to thinking of God as occupying a standpoint outside that series, a timeless standpoint that entails a tenseless relation between all events but which is not entailed by it.

Some Jewish and Christian writers read off God's eternality from the requirements of the Commandment forbidding the making and worshipping of graven images, which imply the falsity of any depiction of God using materials drawn from any aspect of the creation. (See the discussion of the variety of Jewish responses to the idea of the representation of God by artefacts in Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margolit,(1992, Ch.2. For a classic Christian response, see John Calvin, (1960 II. More philosophically, God lacks potential, and cannot fail to exist his existence, nor is there anything about God that is accidental, or composite, for then God would depend on what is (logically) prior to him, and would be caused to be, and so not be the first cause.

A critic may say that such a sharp distinction between the Creator and the creature does not do justice to the idea that the creation may bear the character of the Creator and so in some respects resemble him. It may also be argued that the idea of perfection is a flexible one and that though it may be reasonable to interpret perfection in Anselmic fashion, other conceptions of perfection in which God is understood temporally are not unreasonable.

Certain contemporary writers, such as Eleonore Stump, Norman Kretzmann, and Brian Leftow, who have defended the idea of divine timelessness, have sought to modify this stark picture by insisting that God's timeless eternity has some of the features of temporal duration. In this they have followed an important strand in the tradition going back to Boethius.

However it has been argued (e.g. by Sir Anthony Kenny and Richard Swinburne) that for all its distinguished theological pedigree eternalism is straightforwardly incoherent. For if God exists all at once, then he exists simultaneously with all the events that occur in the universe. What else does the denial that God has a past and a future mean but that everything is present at the same moment to God? Kenny claims that on the eternalist view

my typing of this paper is simultaneous with the whole of eternity. Again, on this view, the great fire of Rome is simultaneous with the whole of eternity. Therefore, while I type these very words, Nero fiddles heartlessly on. (Kenny, 1979, 38–9)
Whatever else we may think we know about time and eternity we know that if one event is later than another then they cannot both occur at the same time.

In an effort to respond to Kenny-type claims that eternal existence is incoherent, and to do justice to Boethius' (and others') idea that God's eternity has duration, albeit a duration that is nonsequential, Stump and Kretzmann (1981) have constructed the notion of ET-simultaneity, a simultaneity that may exist between what is temporal and what is eternal, or more exactly between an eternal reference frame and a temporal reference frame. On this view, for someone occupying an eternal reference frame two temporal events at different times can both be present, being ET-simultaneous, while not being simultaneous with each other.

But the introduction of ET-simultaneity seems entirely ad hoc, (Swinburne, 1994, 248–9) and the reason for introducing it seems to be based on a confusion. For if divine timelessness is a duration, or has essential durational aspects, then it makes sense to ask duration-type questions of the divine life, and the very purpose of, or one central purpose, of introducing the idea of divine timelessness must be abandoned. Further, it is not at all clear what is safeguarded by insisting on God's eternality being durational provided that it is understood that he has created whatever exists in time and has unique access to it in virtue of this fact.

However, constructing a hybrid concept, ET-simultaneity, is also unnecessary. For Kenny's objection rests upon a misunderstanding. The idea of divine timelessness is only incoherent in this sense if it is supposed that timeless eternity is a kind of time, having a kind of eternal duration, a duration which could be simultaneous with some event occurring in truly temporal time. But there is no compelling reason to think that timeless eternity is a kind of time, or that it has aspects of duration, as will be seen. To say that everything is present to God is not to suppose that everything is temporally present to God, that God has an experience of everything happening at once.

Another view, which combines features of both B-series and A-series views of the temporal series, though not to produce a 'hybrid' view, is noted by Katherin Rogers. In discussing Anselm's view on divine eternity, she argues that it is necessary to distinguish between the divine, timelessly eternal perspective, and the human temporal, perspective. (Rogers, 2008, 181f). From the divine perspective everything is simply 'there',and so, as on the B-series view, no event is nearer in time than anything else. By contrast, human actions must necessarily be guided by reference to the past, present or the future time, and so the indexicality of the A-series view of time is necessary. Such indexicality has a pragmatic or instrumental justification, enabling human beings to locate themselves in the temporal series and so to act effectively.

7.2 Temporalism

Temporalist views largely rest on the supposed adverse consequences of eternalism, though some theological views e.g. process thought, or Hegelian historicism, must reject eternalism as a matter of theological definition. Temporalism regards God as existing in a temporal sequences having the characteristics of an A-series, God being situated at a particular moment in time, the present, and having a past and a future. However, temporalism is compatible with a range of A-series views. For example, a temporalist may hold that only the present is real, or that past and present are each real, though it would be less common to hold that past, present and future are all equally real. Several philosophical arguments for temporalism may be identified.

First, that eternalism depends upon a demonstrably false view of time, the B-series view. Were it the case that it could be demonstrated that the A-series view is the true account, then this would severely handicap, if not provide a refutation of, eternalism. But the nature of time is a matter of a long-standing and inconclusive debate.

Second, that eternalism portrays a God who is ‘lifeless’ (Swinburne, 1977, Ch.12), “If we are to characterize God at all, we must say that He is personal, and if personal then temporal, and if temporal then in some sense in time, not outside it” (Lucas, 1989, 213). A God who is living must be affectable by the goings-on of the temporal universe, and so be in time. But a God who creates and sustains the universe can hardly be described in this way.

Third, some hold that nothing that existed outside of time could be the cause of temporal changes, and therefore, since God is a causal agent who brings about changes in the world, he must be in time. This is the view of William Lane Craig who says

Imagine God existing changelessly alone without creation, with a changeless and eternal determination to create a temporal world. Since God is omnipotent, his will is done, and a temporal world begins to exist…. Once time begins at the moment of creation, God either becomes temporal in virtue of his real, causal relation to time and the world or else he exists as timelessly with creation as he does sans creation. But this second alternative seems quite impossible. At the first moment of time, God stands in a new relation in which he did not stand before…this is a real, causal relation which is at that moment new to God and which he does not have in the state of existing sans creation. (Craig, 1998, 222)
Craig argues against the idea of divine timelessness on the grounds that, since the creation is contingent, God must have relations with his creation that he would not have had had there been no creation. As Craig understands matters there are two alternatives. One is that at the moment of creation, God becomes temporal in virtue of coming to possess a real, causal relation to his creation of the world, a relation that previously he did not have. Alternatively, God exists as timelessly with creation as he does sans creation. But, says Craig, this second alternative seems quite impossible. This is because he believes that it is impossible for what is timelessly eternal to bring about temporal changes.

The chief problem with this hybrid view is over the way in which the argument is set up, the coming into existence of the world being represented as an A-series temporal event for God. Craig has the idea that it is possible that God exists in a timelessly eternal fashion and then enters time upon creating a temporal universe. But this seems confused. There can be no temporal ‘and then’ for a timelessly eternal God. Even if the universe is created in time, and even if a timelessly eternal God eternally creates the universe by willing a temporal succession of events without changing his will, he has a timeless relation to each of these.

Another objection to timeless divine eternity is that these ideas, of God outside time and the universe as created with time, are crude and pre-scientific. The modern physical view of the universe is that time and space are linked in fundamental ways. There is therefore no such thing as absolute time, and the debate as to whether God is in time or timeless is over an outdated issue. But the theory of relativity is generally taken to support the idea that the universe is a 4-dimensional space-time block, that time is a matter of perspective and that an ideal knower outside the universe would observe it ‘all at once’.

Let us suppose that this theory of the relationship between time and space is the correct view. Even so, this cannot be taken to be a serious objection to the idea of divine eternality, for the following reason. We can say that whatever the true scientific view of the relation between time and space is, such a view is but an account of some fundamental aspect of created reality. But the very point of asserting divine timeless eternity is to say a something about how God transcends the creation. His timelessness is one eloquent way of expressing this transcendence. God transcends the entire space-time universe, however we are finally to understand this. We may even say that modern physical theory potentially presents more difficulties for the temporalist position than it does for divine eternalism.

To many philosophers the most attractive modern reason for holding to sempiternity is that it alone seems able to provide for the libertarian freedom of human beings and of the Creator himself. In the case of Richard Swinburne, for instance, so strong is the commitment to such freedom that it leads him to tailor his idea of divine omniscience so that God limits himself with regard to what he knows about the future, both in order to safeguard the reality of his own libertarian freedom, and also that of his human creatures.

If the theist is to maintain that there is a ‘perfectly free’ person, omnipresent, omnipotent, creator of the universe, who is also ‘omniscient’, he has to understand either ‘perfectly free’ or ‘omniscient’ in more restricted ways than those which I have outlined. It seems to me clear that he would prefer a restriction on ‘omniscient’…. I therefore suggest the following understanding of omniscience. A person P is omniscient at a time t if and only if he knows of every true proposition about t or an earlier time that it is true and also he knows of every true proposition about a time later than t, such that what is reports is physically necessitated by some cause at t or earlier, that it is true. (Swinburne, 1977, 175)
Nicholas Wolterstorff is also explicit that God must be in time in order to be able to interact with free human actions, though less explicit than Swinburne that God's actions must also be indeterministically free. He says

Some of God's actions must be understood as a response to the free actions of human beings—that what God does he sometimes does in response to what some human being does. I think this is in fact the case. And I think it follows, given that all human actions are temporal, that those actions of God which are “response” actions are temporal as well. (Wolterstorff, 1975, 197)
God's free interactivity with human creatures possessed with libertarian freedom is a core value which is to be preserved at all costs in our efforts to think with philosophical responsibility about the idea of God. As we have noted, however, from Boethius onward there have been who have held that eternalism solves the problem of human libertarian freedom and divine foreknowledge, and in any case such an argument has no appeal to non-libertarians.

8. A basic difference

We might interpret the words of Sir Anthony Kenny, discussed earlier, in a different way, not as providing a straightforward demonstration of the absurdity of divine timeless eternity, but as issuing a challenge to anyone who is tempted to uphold the idea of divine eternality. The challenge is to say clearly what divine timeless eternity is like. If it does not have elements of temporal duration, and so does not have the absurd consequences which Kenny suggests, then what exactly is divine timeless eternity? What is the life of the timelessly eternal God like? What is God's experience of the temporal universe like?

As we saw in the case of Aquinas, it is natural and warranted by the nature of things to exercise a little caution in attempting to speak about the very nature of God. How could minds are fashioned to function in space and time come to understand the nature of the one who allegedly exists outside space and time?

It is true that we can gain some positive understanding by the use of analogies. For instance it has been said that the relation between God and time is like that between the centre of a circle and its circumference. The relation of the centre of the circle to one point on its circumference is exactly similar to its relation to any other point on it. Another analogy is that between God's eternal vision and someone at the summit of a hill taking in at a glance what is taking place beneath her. But the hilltop analogy (which Boethius was the first to use) has been shown to be, strictly speaking, unsatisfactory. For the person at the summit is herself in time. And the idea of God as the centre of a circle with time being represented by the circumference is also defective because of the temporal order is linear and not circular. So these analogies remain, as all analogies do, rather unsatisfactory if offered as explanations. Others have been much more reserved in the use of analogies, even skeptical about their usefulness. So Augustine toys with the idea that God's atemporal knowledge of events in time is like the voice producing a sequence of sounds as it recites a familiar psalm. But ‘You know them (viz. the sequence of sounds) in a much more wonderful and much more mysterious way’. (Augustine Confessions, XI. xxxi.)

Augustine hints that it is not a reasonable requirement for a satisfactory articulation of a doctrine such as timeless eternality that one must be able accurately to describe what it is like to be timeless. Part of what it means to say that God is incomprehensible, ‘mysterious', is to recognize that even if we say that God is timeless we do not and cannot have a straightforward understanding of what his timeless life is, or of what it is like to be timeless.

9. Other issues

This article has concentrated on eternity as a metaphysical notion with two contrasting understandings. But besides this central metaphysical use there is also a sense in which certain sentences are timeless. For example, sentences which express necessary truths or falsehoods, or certain matters which are true by definition or essential. In saying that copper is a metal, or that the sum of the internal angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles, there is no implicit contrast to a time when what is asserted was not true or false. Here it is best to distinguish between the terms ‘tensed’ and ‘tenseless’, properties of sentences, and ‘timeless’ and ‘temporal’, properties of individuals and events

In his study of time and eternity,{1} Brian Leftow argues that the fleeting nature of temporal life provides grounds for affirming that God is timeless. Drawing on Boethius's characterization of eternity as complete possession all at once of interminable life, Leftow points out that a temporal being is unable to enjoy what is past or future for it. The past is gone forever, and the future is yet to come. The passage of time renders it impossible for any temporal being to possess all its life at once. Even God, if He is temporal, cannot reclaim the past. Leftow emphasizes that even perfect memory cannot substitute for actuality: "the past itself is lost, and no memory, however complete, can take its place--for confirmation, ask a widower if his grief would be abated were his memory of his wife enhanced in vividness and detail."{2} By contrast a timeless God lives all His life at once and so suffers no loss. Therefore, if God is the most perfect being, He is timeless.

Here I think we have an argument for divine timelessness that is really promising. The premisses of the argument rest on very powerful intuitions about the irretrievable loss that arises through the experience of temporal passage, a loss which intuitively should not characterize the experience of a most perfect being. The force of these considerations is such that Stump and Kretzmann have rested their case for divine timeless eternity solely on the shoulders of this argument, commenting,

No life, even a sempiternal life, that is imperfect in its being possessed with the radical incompleteness entailed by temporal existence could be the mode of existence of an absolutely perfect being. A perfectly possessed life must be devoid of any past, which would be no longer possessed, and of any future, which would be not yet possessed. The existence of an absolutely perfect being must be an indivisibly persistent present actuality.{3}
Whatever we may think of their demand for persistence and presentness, the claim that the life of a most perfect being must be indivisible actuality has a good deal of plausibility.

Notice that because the argument is based on the experience of temporal passage,{4} rather than on the objective reality of temporal passage itself, it cannot be circumvented by the adoption of a tenseless theory of time according to which the experience of temporal becoming is non-veridical and all times/things/events are equally real. Even if the future never becomes and the past is never really lost, the fact remains that for a temporal being the past is lost to him and the future is not accessible to him. As Wells's celebrated Time Traveller, who believed that time was a fourth dimension of space, remarked, "Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave."{5} Even if the cradle and the grave do not differ in their ontological status, we still find ourselves experientially at some point in between, and events which are located at times earlier than that point are irretrievably lost to us, and events later than that point can only be anticipated. For this reason a tenseless theory of time does nothing to alleviate the loss occasioned by our experience of temporal becoming. We can only shake our heads in bewilderment that Einstein, upon the death of his life-long friend Michael Besso, tried to comfort Besso's surviving son and sister by writing, "This signifies nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one."{6} I dare say that the bereaved find little comfort in the thought that the world-line of a deceased loved one exists tenselessly at earlier temporal co-ordinates than those which they occupy. Time's tooth gnaws away at our experience of life regardless of the purported tenseless existence of all events comprising one's life. For this reason, it would be futile to attempt to elude the force of this argument by postulating a temporal deity in a tenseless time.

However, the fact that this argument concerns, not temporal becoming itself, but our experience of temporal becoming, suggests another way round the argument. The fleetingness of our experience derives essentially from our confinement within the limits of our specious present, the subjective now-awareness of psychological time. The longer one's specious present, the less fleeting one's experience of life would be. If we could imagine someone who experienced a specious present which had the same duration as his entire life, such a person would experience his life all at once. These considerations have led William Alston to take up the view propounded by Royce{7} and Whitehead{8} that God's specious present has the same temporal extension as the whole of time, so that God has, indeed, at least experientially, complete possession all at once of interminable life. He writes,

just expand the specious present to cover all of time, and you have a model for God's awareness of the world . . . . a being with an infinite specious present would not, so far as his awareness is concerned, be subject to temporal succession at all. There would be no further awareness to succeed the awareness in question. Everything would be grasped in one temporally unextended awareness.{9}
This is also the solution which Grace Jantzen adopts in order to de-fang God's experience of time. Explaining that "In the specious present, we take up experiences which are objectively past into a whole with those which are still occurring . . .," she contends that a temporal God with an everlasting specious present could respond to the succession of events without having fleetingness of experience.{10}

Such a model would enable us to hold to God's being temporal and yet experiencing His entire life at once as a whole. Nevertheless, a little reflection reveals that this model exacts far too high a price for these benefits. This fact can be seen by examining the specious present in human experience. The reason we have a specious present is due to our physical limitations, particularly the finite velocity of the transmission of neural signals. Because we do not have instantaneous transmission of such signals, there is a minimum threshold of the psychological present, so that events which occur with a rapidity above a certain limit cannot be experienced by us as consecutively and discretely present. At most we can apprehend to a certain limit a succession of events within the psychological present. C. D. Broad has provided the following useful illustration of the specious present's gathering into successive now-awarenesses minimal, but non-zero, temporal intervals:{11}



Fig. 1. Each act of awareness on the part of O is of some sensible field of finite duration which is presented to O as now. Acts of awareness which are separated by intervals less than the length of the specious present have overlapping sensible fields.
In the case of a temporal God with an everlasting specious present, the temporal interval experienced as now expands to infinity:

Fig. 2. A temporal God with one everlasting specious present.
In this way God knows the temporal succession of all events within a single experienced present.

But such a model faces insuperable objections. (i) As unembodied Mind possessing maximal cognitive excellence, God should possess no minimal, finite psychological present at all, much less an infinitely extended one. He is not dependent upon finite velocity neural processes which would slow down His apprehension of present events. And being maximally excellent cognitively, we should rather expect that He be able to distinguish discrete, consecutive events as present rather than unable. As one commentator has remarked, a God with an everlasting specious present would be infinitely slow on the uptake!{12} In a literal sense, He would be mentally retarded. (ii) As Figure 2 above makes evident, God would not experience His specious present until He had endured to the end of time. But then although God at that instant becomes aware of the succession of all events, it is too late for Him to do anything about them, for they are already past by that point. Thus, contra Jantzen, God could not respond to individual events in time. God's providence is therefore obliterated by such a model. Worse, God could not even know what He Himself had done throughout history until it was over. How He could act throughout history without any consciousness of what was happening at the time the events occurred remains a mystery. A sort of backward causation would seem to be necessary to explain God's acts in time. Since backward causation requires a tenseless view of time, this model would be invalidated should a tensed theory be shown to be preferable. Moreover, God's being temporal in tenseless time seems to imply a quasi-polytheism, since on the most plausible view of identity over time on such tenseless theories, God is a temporally extended object composed of temporal parts or stages; each of which is a different object and, hence, a different God.{13} If God is to be identified strictly with His maximal temporal stage (His everlasting part), then it follows that God is neither conscious nor does He act, since only His final temporal stage could be so capable. All these untoward consequences result if time in fact has an end. But if time has no end, as Christian doctrine of the afterlife teaches, then God never becomes conscious. There is no point at which all His cognitions of individual events can be gathered into a specious present, since there will always be time after that. Thus, the model becomes self-contradictory, for in order to have a specious present which takes in all of unending time, God's becoming conscious is indefinitely postponed such that He never has a specious present. (iii) It might be suggested that we loose the model from its physical and temporal foundations and interpret God's specious present merely on the analogy of our specious present. God just has at every point in time a specious present which takes in the whole of time (Figure 3).

Fig. 3. God does not acquire a specious present, but simply has the same specious present at every moment of time.
But as recent studies of indexical reference have shown, the ability to apprehend tenses is essential to timely action. If God has the same specious present at every moment of time, then He has neither memory nor foreknowledge nor changing now-awarenesses. Thus, He is rendered utterly impotent to act in a timely fashion, since He never knows what time it is.{14} On a tensed theory of time, God would undergo tense changes and temporal becoming but be utterly oblivious to these. Like Plantinga's Epistemically Inflexible Climber,{15} His cognitive awareness is fixated: at every time He experiences the whole ordered series of events as present. Unable to act in a timely way, God seems to be equally a victim of cognitive malfunction as the hapless climber. On a tenseless theory of time, God would never know at any time where He (or His temporal part) is located. Instead of a variety of now-awarenesses at different times, He has at each time the same now-awareness. Hence, He is incapacitated to effect something at the time at which He is located or, barring causation at a (temporal) distance, any other time. In short, it seems to me that the theory of God's having an everlasting specious present is utterly inept and so affords no escape from the present argument.

Leftow himself discusses at considerable length an analogous model of what he calls quasi-temporal eternality, which might allow for a temporal God's complete possession of His life at once.{16} According to this theory, the whole, tenselessly existing temporal series of events is present. Just as on an atomic theory of time, chronons--finite intervals of time--are each present as a whole, so the whole extension of time is present as a whole. If this model is not to collapse into the specious present model above, it must be a tensed view of time, that is to say, time as a whole has the property of presentness. Unfortunately, Leftow seems to conflate the quasi-temporal model of eternity with tenseless time's being experienced by God as wholly present, that is, with the specious present view. On the view as I understand it, however, the whole of time is supposed to have objective, not merely psychological, presentness. Since, on this view, all of time is objectively present, God may experience it as such and so have His life all at once.

But such a theory seems altogether implausible. It requires us to break loose the earlier/later than relation from pastness, presentness, and futurity in such a way that events earlier and later with respect to each other can both actually be (not merely be experienced as) present. But if two events are both objectively present, how can one be earlier than the other? If it be said that they are earlier/later than each other respectively in virtue of being located at different times, though both times are present (unqualifiedly), has one not posited a hyper-time in which both times are present at the same hyper-time? And if there is only a single present comprising all times, then one must ask why the whole temporal series of events does not immediately elapse. Perhaps it does, the duration and successive lapse of time intervals being a subjective illusion of time-bound persons. But then God, as a temporal being, comes to be and passes away, which is absurd. If we say that the present of the whole of time does not elapse but endures, then we are back to the mistaken notion of eternity as presentness. If the present persists, then in what does it endure? The postulation of a tensed hyper-hyper-time in which the present of hyper-time endures seems the inevitable and unwelcome consequence. If we deny that the presentness of the whole time series elapses or endures, then it is not really presentness, and what we have here is the familiar tenseless theory of time according to which the entire temporal series just exists (tenselessly, not present-tensedly). Moreover, on the model under discussion, God, as a temporal being, can act in a timely fashion only if He knows what time it is or where He (or His temporal part) is located, but on this theory God, in order to have the whole of His life at once, must experience the objective presentness of the whole series of events, which renders timely action impossible. In short, this view of time and eternity is as implausible as the specious present view.

Perhaps, however, the realization that the current argument for divine timelessness is essentially experiential rather than ontological in character opens the door for a temporalist alternative. When we recall that God is perfectly omniscient and so forgets absolutely nothing of the past and knows everything about the future, then time's tooth is considerably dulled for Him.{17} His past experiences do not fade as ours do, and He has perfect recall of what He has undergone. To be sure, the past itself is gone, but His experience of the past remains as vivid as ever. A fatal flaw in Leftow's analysis is his assumption that God, like the widower, has actually lost the persons He loves and remembers. But according to Christian theism, this assumption is false. Those who perish physically live on in the afterlife where they continue to be real and present to God. At worst, what are past are the experiences God has enjoyed of those persons, for example, Jones's coming to faith. But in the afterlife Jones lives on with God, and God can recall as though it were present His experience of Jones's conversion. So it is far from obvious that the experience of temporal passage is so melancholy an affair for an omniscient God as it is for us. Indeed, there is some evidence that consciousness of time's flow can actually be an enriching experience.{18} R. W. Hepburn cautions against downplaying the importance of the flow of consciousness in awareness of music, for example. Music appreciation is not merely a matter of apprehending tenselessly the succession of sounds. Quoting Charles Rosen to the effect that "The movement from past to future is more significant in music than the movement from left to right in a picture," Hepburn believes that the phenomenon of music calls into question any claim that a perfect mode of consciousness would be exclusively atemporal.

Still, I think that we must admit that the argument has some force and could motivate justifiably a doctrine of divine timelessness in the absence of countermanding arguments. The question then will be whether the reasons for affirming divine temporality do not overwhelm the argument for divine timelessness.

Divine Timelessness and Personhood

William Lane Craig

It is frequently alleged by detractors of divine timelessness that the concept of a timeless person is incoherent, that the properties essential to personhood cannot be exemplified timelessly. Since it is essential to theism that God be personal, it follows that God cannot be timeless. Thus, if God exists, He is temporal. In effect these opponents of divine timelessness are arguing that the following two propositions are broadly logically incompatible:

1. God is timeless.
2. God is personal.
In order to demonstrate this, these philosophers try to show that it is necessarily true that:
3. If God is timeless, He does not exemplify properties x, y, z.
4. If God does not exemplify properties x, y, z, He is not personal where x, y, z are replaced by certain specified properties.
Debates on this issue are frequently muddied by the conflation of the question of the coherence of the notion of a timeless person with the question of whether such a timeless person could sustain relations with or interact with temporal persons. For example, when Grace Jantzen complains,
"A timeless and immutable God could not be personal, because he could not create or respond, perceive or act, think, remember, or do any of the other things persons do which require time. Thus, within the framework of a theology of a personal God, the doctrines of divine timelessness and immutability cannot be retained,"{1}
the problems she raises with divine timelessness, apart from thinking and remembering, arise only in connection with a timeless God's relation to temporal entities and so do not demonstrate any incoherence in the notion of a timeless person as such. Since I have elsewhere discussed the objection to divine timelessness based on God's relation to the temporal world,{2} I shall for clarity's sake in the discussion of this objection consider God as existing timelessly alone without creation, whether this be conceived to be a state of affairs included in the actual world, as on an Ockhamist model of divine eternity, or whether it be taken to be a state of affairs constituting a non-actual possible world, as on the Thomistic model. The question, then, is whether God so conceived could be personal.

The answer to that question will, of course, depend on one's concept of personhood and the conditions laid down for something's being a person. Typically detractors of divine timelessness propose certain criteria which serve as necessary conditions of personhood and then seek to show that a timeless being fails to meet these standards. In his helpful survey of this issue, Yates observes that these criteria tend to fall into three broad groups: (1) criteria based on states of consciousness, (2) criteria based on intentionality, and (3) criteria based on inter-personal relations.{3} Defenders of divine timelessness might choose to challenge the adequacy of the proposed criteria by arguing that they are not necessary conditions of personhood, thus in effect undercutting (4)--a not unpromising strategy in light of the difficulty of defining personhood, which stirs debates in applied ethics over beginning and end of life issues and in the field of artificial intelligence. More often, however, proponents of timelessness have sought to show that God as they conceive Him can in fact meet the conditions stipulated, however incorrect they may be, thus undercutting (3). Let us consider these questions with respect to each of the three types of criteria proposed.

Criteria Based on States of Consciousness

In his article, "Conditions of Personhood,"{4} Daniel Dennett discerns six different conceptions of personhood in the philosophical tradition, each laying down a necessary condition of an individual A's being a person:

A is a person only if:
i. A is a rational being.
ii. A is a being to which states of consciousness can be attributed.
iii. Others regard or can regard A as a being to which states of consciousness can be attributed.
iv. A is capable of regarding others as beings to which states of consciousness can be attributed.
v. A is capable of verbal communication.
vi. A is self-conscious; that is, A is capable of regarding him/her/itself as a subject of states of consciousness.
All of these criteria depend directly or indirectly on A's having or being ascribed consciousness. As an initial foray into this first objection to divine timelessness, then, we may ask, is the concept of a timeless, conscious being incoherent?

J. R. Lucas is adamant that it is. He maintains that it cannot be up to God whether to create time or not, for God, as a personal being, is conscious and time is a concomitant of consciousness. Hence,

Time is not a thing that God might or might not create, but a category, a necessary concomitant of the existence of a personal being, though not of a mathematical entity. This is not to say that time is an independent category, existing independently of God. It exists because of God: not because of some act of will on His part, but because of His nature: if ultimate reality is personal, then it follows that time must exist. God did not make time, but time stems from God.{5}
In Lucas's view, then, whether or not the physical world exists, time exists if a personal God alone exists. Now Lucas is clearly correct, I think, in maintaining that a succession of contents of consciousness in God's mind would itself be sufficient to generate a temporal series, and his insistence on this score is a healthy antidote for the physical reductionism that too often poisons the contemporary philosophy of space and time. But what if God's mental life in the absence of any created world is not discursive, but changeless? Why could the contents of God's consciousness not be comprised of tenselessly true beliefs such as "No humans exist," "7+5=12," "In W* Socrates drinks hemlock," "Anything that has a shape has a size," "If Jones were in C, he would write to his wife," "The atomic number of gold is 78," "God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect," and so on, and be such that He never acquires and never loses any of His beliefs? Would not such a changeless consciousness of truth be plausibly regarded as timeless? Short of a proof of the incoherence of all relational theories of time, we must grant that time would not be a concomitant of such a consciousness. What reason is there, then, to regard such a consciousness as impossible? Here Lucas has nothing to say; he confesses,
"My claim . . . that time is a concomitant of consciousness, is of course only a claim, and I have been unable to argue for it, except by citing poetry . . . . arguments would be better."{6}


Indeed, so what arguments are there against atemporal consciousness? Richard Gale would make short work of the question:

"the quickest and most direct way of showing the absurdity of a timeless mind is as follows: A mind is conscious, and consciousness is a temporally elongated process."{7}
This way is certainly direct, and it is all too quick: Gale fails to show that being temporally extended is an essential property of consciousness. Given some relational theory of time, God's solitary and unchanging consciousness of tenseless truths would not be temporally extended. As various defenders of divine timelessness have pointed out, knowing is not necessarily an activity which takes time.{8} Gale's retort that it makes sense to ask questions like "How long have you known logic?"{9} does nothing to show that believing a tenseless proposition p or knowing p necessarily takes time, but only shows that there are senses of the world "know" in which it is appropriate to speak of knowing something over time. Gale fails to blunt William Mann's point that "it need not take any time at all to know something. Of course, one can know something for a period of years, but the point is that knowing is not a process whose fulfillment takes time, or an activity which entails the existence of earlier and later stages in the mental life of the knowing agent."{10} Gale counters that one cannot know that p without having dispositions to engage in temporal episodes, occurrences, or processes, in which case God cannot be pure actuality as Thomists claim.{11} But this objection, even if cogent, strikes only against God's being pure actuality, not His being timeless--unless Gale thinks that being pure actuality is a necessary condition of a person's being timeless. It is true that Aquinas held that any being with even the potentiality for change could not be eternal, but inhabits at best the mysterious aevum, which he thought of as a sort of quasi-temporality.{12} But it is difficult to see any reason to adopt this peculiar, modal view of time. So long as God is intrinsically changeless and extrinsically unrelated to changing things, then in the utter absence of change it is hard to see how the mere disposition to engage in temporal activities suffices to render God temporal, even if it were conceded that were He to actualize those dispositions to so engage, then He would be temporal. In any case, Gale's stipulation is clearly false. There is no reason to think that God cannot know that 2+2=4 without having a disposition to engage in temporal activities. Moreover, on the Christian view God is free to refrain from creating at all, and were He to have so abstained and remained changeless, then He would have had no disposition whatsoever to engage in temporal episodes, occurrences, or processes, and He would have known a true proposition precisely to that effect.

Thus, we have not seen any grounds for thinking that God could not fulfill condition (ii) above. The mention of modal properties also helps us to see how God might meet conditions (iii), (iv), and (v). Even in a state of existing changelessly alone, God is still capable of regarding others as conscious beings, since He is capable of creating such beings, thereby fulfilling condition (iv). Condition (iii) can be taken to imply that even if no one in fact regards A as a conscious being, still there is a possible world W in which they do regard A as a being which can be conscious. Since God could create such persons, (iii) is met even in a world in which God exists changelessly alone. Even if in W God is temporal, that does not alter the fact that in the world or state we are envisioning He is such that possibly others regard Him as a being to which states of consciousness can be attributed. Similarly, even in the state we are imagining, God is capable of verbal communication, since He could create language users like us and communicate with them verbally by, say, causing sound waves in the air. Even if in such a case He would be temporal, that fact does nothing to detract from His timeless existence in the state of affairs we have pictured. Thus, no reason has been provided for thinking that a timeless being could not be a conscious being and, hence, on the above criteria a person. Thus, (3) is undercut. More than that, however; our thought experiment suggests more positively, I think, that a timeless being can be conscious and therefore can be a person. Could a timeless God be self-conscious? In order to be self-conscious a being must believe not merely propositions about himself de re, such as, in this case, "God exists necessarily" or "God knows that p," but he must have beliefs de se, which he would express from the first person perspective; for example, God must believe "I exist necessarily" and "I know that p."{13} If a timeless being can be conscious, there seems to be no reason remaining for denying to Him tenseless knowledge de se as well. It takes no more time to believe truly that "I have no human company" or "I believe that if Jones were in C, he would write to his wife" than it does to believe that "No human beings exist" or "If Jones were in C, etc." Hence, if a timeless being can be conscious, it seems that he could be self-conscious as well and therefore by criterion (vi) personal.

As for being rational, that depends on whether A is within his epistemic rights or exhibits no defect in his noetic structure with respect to the bulk of his beliefs.{14} There seems to be nothing about timelessness which would entail A's violating his epistemic duties or having a flawed noetic structure. In God's case He is surely within His rights in holding the beliefs He does, since it is broadly logically impossible for God to hold a false belief and He knows that fact. Moreover, it is plausible or at least possible that for God all His beliefs are properly basic, so that none of His beliefs is improperly founded or entertained. Being timeless has no inherent impact upon God's noetic structure or fulfillment of His epistemic duties (assuming that He even has such duties), so that by criterion (i) we ought to affirm that a timeless God can be personal.

Now some have denied that a timeless God can be a self-conscious, rational being because He could not then exhibit certain forms of consciousness which we normally associate with such beings (namely, ourselves). In an oft-quoted passage, Robert Coburn asserts,

Surely it is a necessary condition of anything's being a person that it should be capable (logically) of, among other things, doing at least some of the following: remembering, anticipating, reflecting, deliberating, deciding, intending, and acting intentionally. To see that this is so one need but ask oneself whether anything which necessarily lacked all of the capacities noted would, under any conceivable circumstances, count as a person. But now an eternal being would necessarily lack all of these capacities inasmuch as their exercise by a being clearly requires that the being exist in time. After all, reflection and deliberation take time, deciding typically occurs at some time--and in any case it always makes sense to ask, 'When did you (he, they, etc.) decide?'; remembering is impossible unless the being doing the remembering has a past; and so on. Hence, no eternal being, it would seem, could be a person.{15}
Even if Coburn were correct that the capacity to exhibit the above-mentioned forms of consciousness were essential to a personal being, it still does not follow that a timeless being cannot be a person. For Coburn just assumes that timelessness is an essential property of any timeless being; but that assumption is dubious. Suppose that God is in fact temporal. Is it implausible to think that God is contingently temporal, but possibly timeless? Since according to the Christian doctrine of creation, God's decision to create is freely willed, there are possible worlds in which God exists alone, with no reality extra se (apart from any timeless abstract objects which Platonists among us might want to posit). If in such a world God is unchanging, then on any sort of relational theory of time God would be timeless in such a world. Indeed, there would be no time at all in such a world, since literally nothing happens; there are no events to generate relations of before and after. God as He exists in such an atemporal world would differ in respect to some of His properties which He has in the postulated actual world--such as knowing what time it is, experiencing tense and temporal becoming, changing in His awareness, and so forth--, but none of these differences seems so major as to preclude transworld identity. In short, apart from highly controversial claims concerning divine simplicity and pure actuality, I see no reason to think that God may not be conceived as contingently temporal or atemporal.

In fact we can conceive of a model of divine eternity along Ockhamist lines which would combine states of divine timelessness and temporality into a single world. On such a model God exists timelessly sans creation and in time subsequent to the commencement of the temporal series of events. On this view God in the eventless, changeless state of existing alone without creation is timeless, since time does not exist in the total absence of events. Time originates with the first event, the creation of the world, and God endures throughout time from the moment of creation on. On such a model, as Leftow points out, God's having a first moment of existence does not entail that God's existence has a limit or that He came into existence:

If God existed in time once time existed and time had a first moment, then God would have a first moment of existence: there would be a moment before which He did not exist, because there was no 'before' that moment. . . . Yet even if He . . . had a first moment of existence, one could still call God's existence unlimited were it understood that He would have existed even if time did not. For as long as this is true, we cannot infer from God's having had a first moment of existence that God came into existence or would not have existed save if time did.{16}
On such a model, the past is finite, God exists atemporally without the world, and yet God exists temporally from the inception of the world and His creation of time. If such a model is coherent, then any objection that God is either essentially temporal or essentially timeless is nugatory.

If, then, timelessness is a contingent property of some timeless being, then that being might be quite capable of remembering, anticipating, reflecting, and so forth; only were he to do so, then he would not then be timeless. If he desists from such activities, he is timeless though capable of being temporal through engaging in them and so, by Coburn's own lights, personal.

If we modify Coburn's criterion such that in order to be a person a being must be not merely capable, but actually engaged in such activities, then it follows that we cease to be persons every time we fall asleep (at least a dreamless sleep) or are unconscious, which is absurd. We could perhaps say that a truly personal being must engage in some of these activities during its lifetime; to avoid begging the question, we could require that if A is personal, it must not be true of A that A never engages in such activities. But this criterion is still inadequate. Since memories and anticipations and intentions are not always veridical or fulfilled, a timeless being could still engage in such activities, so long as his memories, anticipations, and intentions never change. Remembering the past without having a past is not impossible, so long as one's memories are false; similarly with regard to anticipations and intentions and the future. What Coburn is really arguing is that a perfect being or God cannot be timeless and personal. If God is to be personal, it must not be true of Him that He never engages in the specified activities. But even this stricture would fail to preclude God's being personal and timeless on an Ockhamist view, according to which God is timeless sans creation and temporal subsequent to creation, for God exhibits the prescribed forms of consciousness subsequent to the moment of creation, even if He lacks them sans creation.

In any case, I think it is pretty widely recognized that the forms of consciousness specified by Coburn (with the exception of volitional activities, which I shall take up below) are not essential to perfect personhood. Indeed, it is not essential to perfect personhood even to be capable of them, so that even defenders of the non-contingent nature of timelessness need not be troubled by Coburn's objection. Take remembering, for example. Mental health requires that any temporal person remember his past. Persons suffering from aphasia, a mental disorder characterized by the disappearance of all memories within two or three seconds, are pitifully deranged; they are still persons, yet far from healthy persons. But if an individual is atemporal, why would being a healthy or perfect person require memories on his part? After all, he has no past. And he never forgets anything. Given God's status as an infallible knower, there is just no reason at all to think that His perfect personhood requires memory. Similarly with respect to anticipations: since He has no future, since his life is tota simul, there just is nothing to anticipate. Only a perfect person who is temporal would need to have beliefs about the future or the past.

As for reflecting and deliberating, these are essential only for persons who are not omniscient. For a perfect knower reflection and deliberation in any temporal sense {17} are precluded, since he would already know the conclusions to be arrived at. This is the case for a temporal deity as well as for an atemporal God. Are we to think then that omniscience is incompatible with personhood? That would be a bizarre conclusion; I see no reason to think that an omniscient being could not be personal.{18} But if a temporal God can be personal and yet never reflect or deliberate, it is gratuitous to deny the status of person to an atemporal deity because He does not engage in these activities either.

With a little imagination, as R. C. S. Walker has shown, it is not difficult to conceive of a personal being existing timelessly.{19} Yet, it might be maintained that the life of such a person, lacking collectively the sorts of forms of consciousness specified by Coburn, could not be perfect, and this even if it were shown that no one such form of consciousness alone was essential to a perfect being. Walker himself seems rather ambivalent on the value of timeless life as he imagines it, commenting,

life would be very strange, and very limited, in a timeless world. There would be none of the pleasures of putting right someone who has made a mistake one recognizes as such; nor would there be the more dubious, or Platonic, pleasure of being put right oneself. Life would not be exciting; but at least it would not be boring either. For us pleasure resides very largely in getting things done, not in having done them, and none of this would be available in our imaginary world. Aristotle thought that such an existence would be fun all the same; this may be doubted, but at least one could entertain a great variety of thoughts and a great complexity of mathematical argumentation, so long as one did it all at once. And tastes, after all, do vary.{20}
Walker's misgivings about the value of a timeless life are based on an overgeneralization from the anthropomorphic timeless world he envisions. If the finite, timeless persons he imagines had their attention fixed upon the infinite God, riveted by His supreme goodness and love for them, then their experience could be a timeless moment of sheer ecstasy, to which the puny goods mentioned by Walker could not even be compared. They would have no need of the pleasure of correcting someone else or of being corrected by them. How much more so for God Himself, who, on the Christian perspective, enjoys a complete apprehension of His infinite goodness and the infinite, inter-personal love of the Blessed Trinity! For finite persons, true fulfillment and, hence, their greatest pleasure lie, not in getting things done, but in knowing God. Similarly, what John Piper calls "the pleasures of God"{21} reside primarily not in what He gets done, but in Himself, as the supremely worthy one. Life so conceived is not only not boring, it is enthralling. The reason that Aristotle --and his medieval progeny--thought that such a timeless life would be "fun" is because they conceived this life to be God's life, perfect and complete and, hence, changeless in its apprehension of God's inexhaustible goodness. Once we conceive of timeless life as God's life, we can see that temporal forms of consciousness such as those mentioned by Coburn are not at all necessary in order for such a life to be supremely valuable and pleasurable.

In summary, then, it has not been shown that a timeless being, even a perfect timeless being, cannot meet the conditions necessary for personhood based on the possession of states of consciousness. Thus, no good reason has been given to think that

3'. If God is timeless, He does not exemplify the properties of self-consciousness and rationality
is necessarily true. On the contrary, our discussion suggests that God could be timeless and still fulfill all the proposed requisites of being personal. Thus, for any properties which are such that propositions of the form of (4) are plausibly taken to be necessarily true also seem to be such that propositions of the form of (3) turn out to be not necessarily true, so that no incompatibility has been demonstrated between (1) and (2).

Criteria Based on Intentionality

Some critics of divine timelessness have proposed volitional criteria such as intentionality and volition as essential to personhood and on that basis argued for the incompatibility of personhood with timelessness. Again Gale makes the point:

The necessity for a person to endure in time can also be seen from an analysis of what it is to be a rational agent. An agent performs intentional actions so as to bring about some goal or end. But to have a goal or end, the agent must have desires and values. But only a temporally incomplete being can have a desire or intention, since one cannot desire or intend what one already has.{22}


Unfortunately, here again old problems resurface. If we say that performing intentional activities is essential to personhood, then we are only sporadically persons. And this is not merely the case for a sleeping or comatose individual, but even for the couch potato passively watching television or the daydreamer whose mind is wandering. If we modify the criterion to state that persons must have the capacity for performing intentional activities, then a timeless God could possess such a capacity, even if it were true that, were He to realize that capacity by actually intending something, He would then be temporal. Again, we could modify the criterion to state that if A is personal, then it not be true of A that A never engages in intentional activity. But since intentions are not always fulfilled and the will is not inevitably efficacious, it is easy to imagine someone who has future-directed intentions and volitions without there being any future for that person; for example, a person who unbeknownst to him is about to be instantaneously killed. In a similar way a timeless being could possess unchanging future-directed intentions and volitions which are never fulfilled. We might be inclined to modify the present criterion such that if A is a personal being, A must have efficacious volitions and fulfilled intentions. But then it is much less obvious that this criterion states a necessary condition of personhood. So long as a person believes that his intentions and volitions are efficacious, it does not seem to matter if that person should really be a brain in a vat or the dupe of a Cartesian evil genius whose willings turn out to be wholly inefficacious. He intends to lift his arm or drive to town or enjoy a day at the beach, and the Mastermind produces an appropriate illusory experience. Doubtless some acts of will (say, to concentrate on a certain idea) cannot be merely seemingly efficacious; but then there is no necessity that our hypothetical individuals should have such volitions or intentions. Once the condition of efficacy is added to intentionality and volition, the criterion no longer states a plausible necessary condition of personhood.

All this makes it evident that the issue once again is not whether a person can be timeless, but whether God can be timeless. It is plausible that necessarily God has desire and volition, since, as Aquinas held, God desires and wills His own goodness. So the question is: Can God possess intentionality and volition and yet exist timelessly? The answer to that question will depend on whether intentionality and volition are essentially oriented toward the future. Even on a purely human level, it is easy to find counter-examples to Gale's assertion that the objects of one's intentions or desires must be future rather than present goods. A man dangling from a cliff wills to hold on as tightly as he can; a person admiring the beauty of a statue intends his experience of aesthetic pleasure; a sunbather desires the feeling of relaxation which he presently enjoys. Of course, we could imagine further ends to which these ends are typically subordinated; but the point remains that intentionality and will need not be oriented toward the future. There is nothing about intentionality and will as such which renders them essentially future-directed.

But if that is the case, then why could God not will and intend what He does timelessly? God's desiring and willing His own goodness obviously is not an activity which consumes time. Similarly, existing changelessly alone sans creation, God may will and intend to refrain from creating a universe. God's willing to refrain from creation should not be confused with the mere absence of the intention to create. A stone is characterized by the absence of any will to create, but cannot be said, as God, to will to refrain from creating. In a world in which God freely refrains from creation, that abstinence is the result of a real act of the will, choosing between two available alternatives. But in such a world, as we have seen, God can be conceived to exist atemporally with a timeless intention to refrain from creation. The efficacy of God's will is evident from the fact that in no possible world in which God wills to refrain from creation does a world of creatures exist, whereas in every world in which He wills to create, creatures are produced.

Although God's timeless volitions are not the result of decisions taken at any point in time, nonetheless they are freely willed, as is evident from the fact that there are worlds in which God does create a universe and in such worlds nothing external to God determines His volition to create. Thus, God can be truly said to have efficacious and free volitions timelessly.{23}

Therefore, although defenders of divine timelessness adhere to the necessary truth of :
4". If God does not exemplify intentionality and volition, He is not personal,
we have seen no reason why they should accede to the necessary truth of:
3". If God is timeless, He does not exemplify intentionality and volition.
Quite the contrary, our thought experiment suggests that (3") is not necessarily true, that it is possible for God to exist with timeless intentions and volitions.

Criteria Based on Inter-personal Relations

Certain philosophers have taken it as essential to personhood that one have the capacity to engage in inter-personal relations. But any number of thinkers have alleged that a timeless God is incapable of sustaining such relations with other persons and so cannot be personal. Pike's reservations are illustrative:

a timeless being could not be affected or prompted by another. It could not respond to needs, overtures, delights or antagonisms of human beings. There are two distinct issues connected with this last point: (1) A timeless being is immutable in the strong sense of 'immutable' . . . . Such an individual could not be affected or prompted by another. To be affected or prompted by another is to be changed by the other. (2) The actions of a timeless being could not be interpreted as a response to something else. Responses are located in time after that to which they are responses . . . An individual that is (in principle) incapable of all of these things could not be counted as a person.{24}
Now if we are to disentangle this objection from the objection based on God's relations to the temporal world, we need to continue to consider God as He exists changelessly alone sans creation. In such a timeless state, would God have the capacity for inter-personal relations?

The answer to that question depends on what it is that constitutes the capacity to engage in such relations. It seems to me that it consists in precisely those sorts of attributes which we have been discussing; sufficient intelligence, self-consciousness, volition. But we have seen that all of these can be possessed by a timeless being and by God in particular. It therefore follows that a timeless God existing sans creation has the capacity, if not the opportunity, to engage human persons in inter-personal relations, even if, should He create and so engage such persons, He would not then be timeless. Pike's appeal to immutability to bar this conclusion is nugatory. Even if a timeless God could not change, it does not follow that He could not have willed differently and chosen to be related to a temporal world and so been temporal. Pike gratuitously assumes that if God is timeless, He is so essentially rather than contingently. Moreover, Pike assumes that immutability is essential to a timeless being, rather than mere changelessness. But on some relational theory of time, the changelessness of a solitary God is sufficient for timelessness. That opens the door for an Ockhamist view according to which God exists timelessly sans creation and enters into time at the moment of creation in virtue of His relation to temporal things or events, including human persons. Thus, timelessness does not entail that God could not be affected or prompted by another or that He could not respond to any other persons He might choose to create.

It hardly needs to be said that it would be hopeless to modify the present criterion to require as a necessary condition of personhood that one actually be related to other persons in order to be personal, for then every marooned sailor, every prisoner locked in solitary, every reclusive hermit would no longer be a person. It would be more plausible to hold that if A is personal, then it must not be true of A that A never experiences inter-personal relations. Someone who lacks all contact with other human beings would fail to develop into a person. This criterion assumes a functional view of personhood, which is controversial; but let that pass. For a moment's reflection reveals the inadequacy of the proposal. What seems to be required for A's personhood is merely that A think that he is engaged in inter-personal relations, even if it should turn out that A is a brain in a vat or an unwitting denizen of a world of wonderfully constructed simulacra. Of course, God could not be so deceived; but then why think that the infinite and eternal God is subject to the same sort of developmental restrictions as human beings?

In any case this whole discussion presupposes that if God is to enjoy inter-personal relations, it must be human persons to which He must be related. But on the Christian view, that is false. Within the fullness of the Godhead itself, the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit enjoy the inter-personal relations afforded by the Trinity which God is. As a Trinity, God is eternally complete, with no need of fellowship with finite persons. It is a marvel of God's grace and love that He would freely create finite persons and invite them to share in the love and joy of the inner Trinitarian life of God. But would the existence of these Trinitarian inter-relationships necessitate that God be temporal, as Pike implies? I see no reason to think that the persons of the Trinity could not be affected, prompted, or responsive to one another in an unchanging and, hence, timeless way. Pike is mistaken when he asserts that to be affected or prompted by another is to be changed by the other. To use a mundane example, think of iron filings clinging to a magnet. The magnet and the filings need not change their positions in any way in order for it to be the case that the filings are stuck to the magnet because the magnet is affecting them and they are responding to the magnet's force. Of course, on a deeper level change is going on constantly in this case because the magnet's causal influence is mediated by finite velocity electro-magnetic radiation. Nonetheless, the example is instructive because it illustrates how on a macroscopic level action and response can be simultaneous and, hence, involve neither change nor temporal separation. How much more is this so when we consider the love relationship between the members of the Trinity! Since intra-Trinitarian relations are not based on physical influence chains or rooted in any material substrata, but are, as it were, purely telepathic, the response of the Son to the Father's love entails neither change nor temporal separation. Just as we speak metaphorically of two lovers who sit, not speaking a word, gazing into each other's eyes as "lost in that timeless moment," so we may speak literally of the timeless mutual love of the Father, Son, and Spirit for one another.

In his imaginative construction of a timeless world, Walker agrees that there could be a timeless society of inter-related persons, though with limitations which we might think incompatible with divine life:

The social life of these timeless beings would, it is true, be a trifle limited; limited in particular by the fact that they could not converse or argue with one another, for these things take time. They could, however, at least be aware of each other's existence. It is even perhaps conceivable that they might have a sort of language (of rather limited usefulness)--though of course they could never have learned it.{25}
But again Walker's world is a society of finite timeless persons, not the divine society of the Trinity, which has no use of conversation or argument. The ancient doctrine of perichoreisis, championed by the Greek Church Fathers, expresses the timeless interaction of the persons of the Godhead.{26} According to that doctrine, there is a complete interpenetration of the persons of the Trinity, such that each is intimately bound up in the activities of the other. Thus, what the Father wills, the Son and Spirit also will; what the Son loves, the Father and Spirit also love, and so forth. Each person is completely transparent to the others. There is nothing new that the Son, for example, might communicate to the Spirit, since that has already been communicated. There exists a full and perfect exchange of the divine love and knowledge, so that nothing is left undone which needs to be completed. In this perfect inter-penetration of divine love and life, no change need occur, so that God existing alone in the self-sufficiency of His being would, on some relational view of time, be timeless.

Thus, I think it is evident that God can enjoy inter-personal relations and yet be timeless. So even if we conceded that God is essentially timeless, that timelessness entails immutability, and that de facto inter-personal relations are essential to personhood--all of which are moot--, it is still not necessarily true that

3'''. If God is timeless, He does not stand in inter-personal relations.

The State of God

To exist outside of time has another implication. If you existed outside of time, it would mean that there are no 'frames' of you that change snapshot-by-snapshot. If you are not part of time, and changing, viewing it from within, then you are outside of time viewing everything from the outside.

“I the LORD do not change.”
Malachi 3:6
Without change-over-time, any eternal being is immutable. There are no frames, no changes over time. In other words: No progress, no retreat, no changes of mind, no learning, no psychology, no changing of emotions and no active thought. A being outside of time exists as one instant, one snapshot only (like our 2D painting in a 3D world; constant). Emotions, thought, planning, progress and all those other things require change over time. Knowledge, also, would be absolute.

Nothing new could be learned because everything that is real and true exists in the 4D object that the being outside-of-time sees all at once. A creator-god who created the universe would exist in a very strange state. This being would exist, forever, viewing the universe that it created as a single 4D object that itself doesn't change over time. All of reality, everything, is 'there', not 'happening' now, but merely existing in reality. Nothing in the world could ever surprise an eternal creator, just like the stickman will never do anything that the child hasn't already seen.

This explanation, going through all the dimensions, truly gives an idea of how a being could indeed be all-knowing about everything that goes on in the universe, but such a being lives in a sad state of eternal immutability. This ties in with one other commonly-cited feature of God: its perfection. If a being is perfect, it cannot change. God's all-knowing nature, the eternality of its existence outside of time, its status as an outside creator of the universe and finally its status as a perfect being, each predict that God is unchanging. William James calls this the lack of 'potential' for God:

“This absence of all potentiality in God obliges Him to be immutable. [...] Were there anything potential about Him, He would either lose or gain by its actualization, and either loss or gain would contradict his perfection. He cannot, therefore, change.”