Eternal God: A Study of God without Time

by Paul Helm

Paul Helm presents a new, expanded edition of his much praised 1988 book Eternal God, which defends the view that God exists in timeless eternity. This is the classical Christian view of God, but it is claimed by many theologians and philosophers of religion to be incoherent. Paul Helm rebuts the charge of incoherence, arguing that divine timelessness is grounded in the idea of God as creator, and that this alone makes possible a proper account of divine omniscience. He develops some of the consequences of divine timelessness, particularly as it affects both divine and human freedom, and considers some of the alleged problems about referring to God. The book thus constitutes a unified treatment of the main concepts of philosophical theology. Helm's revised edition includes four new chapters that develop and extend his account of God and time, taking account of significant work in the area that has appeared since the publication of the first edition, by such prominent figures as William Lane Craig, Brian Leftow, and Richard Swinburne. This new discussion takes the reader into further areas, notably timelessness and creation and the nature of divine causality.

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Religion

320 pages, Paperback

First published December 22, 1988

About the author

Paul Helm teached philosophy at the University of Liverpool before becoming Professor of the History and Philosophy of Religion at King s College, London (1993-2000).

Reviews

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Helm is painstakingly thorough in examining the challenges to God’s being outside of time. Almost too thorough. In any case, this book will likely be remembered as one of the classics in analytic theology.

Flow of the book: If God is outside of time, then a number of challenges and (perceived) difficulties arise. The traditional view is the Boethian view: all of past, present, and future is present to God. This view is correct in maintaining that God is outside of time. It is open, however, to a number of devastating defeaters. Helm’s goal is to reformulate the Boethian view in light of these defeaters.

The most challenging section of the book deals with indexicals: I am here at this place at this hour. The problem is that many of these indexicals can’t apply to God’s being timeless. God can affirm the following proposition?

(1) I know that it is raining today.

The critic says he can’t because this would place God in a time-bound relation. It’s not clear, though, why God can’t timelessly affirm this proposition. The only force indexicals would have is that God can’t affirm the following proposition:

(2) I know what it is to be married.

This deals more with omniscience than eternality. In any case, it doesn’t seem like anything is lost.

Can God know future events? Presumably, he can. This has been a given in almost every form of theistic belief. Some philosophers like Swinburne say God can’t know the future if he has also given libertarian freedom to his creatures. The future actions haven’t yet happened; therefore, God can’t know them. Helm offers something along the lines of a rebuttal:

(3) There is no logical connection between the view that the future does not already exist and the view that the future is indeterminate (121).

I think there is an easier rebuttal, though. Christianity and Judaism (and I presume Islam) believe that some humans can prophesy (with varying degrees of accuracy) about the future. If they can know the future actions of free creatures, then it stands to reason that God could, too.

Possibilities of Fatalism

Not all fatalisms are the same. One can mean:

(4) Everything that happens was bound to happen.

It can mean something weaker:

(5) Everything that happens does so because of a logical necessity.

Timelessness and Human Responsibility

(6) God timelessly decreed that B occur at t₂ and this cannot be isolated from his timeless decree of A at t₁

(7) God timelessly decrees a complete causal matrix of events and actions (170).

Whenever we speak of God’s being and actions, we must realize that God’s being is logically prior to what he does.

Kripkean Terms

Rigid designator: a proper name which has x property in every possible world.

Accidental designator: property in some world.

Using these terms Helm suggests that “God” expresses the individual essence of God (208). A general essence isn’t a particular essence. God has a set of properties unique to himself. These are “God-making” properties. This is important because “Being the creator of the world’ is not a part of his nature whereas ‘being infinitely good is’” (209).

Eternal Generation of the Son: “There is no state of the Father that is not a begetting of the Son, and no state of the Son which is not a being begotten by the Father and necessarily there is no time when the Father had not begotten the Son” (285).

Corollary: If God is in time, then it does make sense to speak of a time when the Son was not. When did the Father beget the Son? Even asking that question illustrates the problem. You can’t say in eternity past, for that is the thing the temporalist denies.

[Jared Mindel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was pretty good, nothing amazing though. His section on divine freedom and the character of God was especially good. I also really enjoyed his section on comparing temporal and spatial indexicals. My primary disappointment was that he didn't actually discuss the nature of time much in itself. I think that would have really helped his case.

[Vagabond of Letters, DLitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

9.5/10

Just see Jacob Aitken's review above. This was one of the first works of analytic theology, which still was just as much analytic philosophy of religion (cf 'The Logic of God Incarnate', a similarly early book straddling the divide) as the analytic theological work carried on today by Crisp, Hudson, Rea, McCall, Pawl, Plantinga, etc.

Helm proves his points and proves them well; they've stood for 30 years, and will stand for many more. He focuses on divine eternity, its first degree corollaries omniscience, immutability, and aseity, and its second degree corollaries determinism and the possibility of interaction with creation. Chapters 7 and 8 on holy determinism are some of the best in print, and are an excellent complement to 'The Most Real Being'. He closes with a chapter on the possibility of referring to or identifying a timeless eternal being from inside a temporal series, and in this the second edition adds a 60-page appendix refuting some of William Lane Craig's philosophical nuttiness and theological heresy (only some, because it is endless), viz. the idea that God 'was' eternal but is now temporal and sempiternal, the A-series of time, the coherence of middle knowledge in Craig's God, and finally closes with a chapter of analysis of the doctrine of eternal creation.

Contra the 3-star review above, though the author is a Westminster Confession Calvinist, I'm a Thomistic Catholic, and found the book excellent, as will anyone with interest in analytic theology. The only reason you wouldn't is if you hold an irrational, preconceived notion of the absolute necessity and truth of libertarian free will, in which case you can't believe God is eternally timeless... but neither can you believe him omniscient in a strong sense, immutable, or omnipotent, so basically can't believe in anything resembling a coherent doctrine of God.

[Kevin Kallin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helm's strong devotion to Calvinism runs throughout his book, which is not surprising, but it often feels like his arguments are merely ways to justify his beliefs (namely in God's strong sovereignty, strong immutability, etc.) rather than honest attempts to deal with the issues at hand. He flouts libertarian freedom in favor of compatibilism and unfortunately is never very clear on his stance about time (he accepts the B-theory, but often speaks as though the A-theory were correct). His treatment of William Lane Craig's material in chapter 12 often amounts to straw man caricatures as he leaves out key parts of Craig's arguments. Overall I think the subject of God and time has been handled better in other books (see William Lane Craig's Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time).

[Steven Robertson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finished this out of sheer stubbornness.

The best analogy I can give is to Lewis' Space Trilogy. There are a few brilliant passages, but the slog you have to go through to get to them greatly diminishes their value.

I agree with Dr. Helm's thesis. It seemed to me that the book was overwhelmingly apophatic (or else I just missed the positive case in large part). I don't mind interacting with opposition, but I suppose I expected something different.

Glad to have finished it, but can't say that I enjoyed it.

[Nick Roark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Timely

[Randy Hulshizer · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this interesting work, Helm argues that God exists timelessly. This book is heavy philosophy, so if you're not used to reading philosophy, you probably won't get much out of this. Also, if you're not too familiar with the debate about God and Time, you might miss the significance. Would have been nice if he had concluded with a chapter that wrapped it all up and summarized the main points for the average reader, but alas...

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very clear and exceptional defense of the traditional view of God existing timelessly. Even if you are not sympathetic to this position, this is an excellent resource exploring the positions in historical and current literature concerning various issues in philosophical theology including God's relation to time, referencing God indexically, human responsibility, etc. Helm does an fantastic job of making such metaphysically rich issues very approachable and understandable. Highly recommend!