Time and Eternity

by Brian Leftow

Brian Leftow makes an important contribution to the longstanding debate among philosophers and theologians about the nature of God's eternity. The author develops a powerful and original defense of the notion that God is eternal in that he exists timelessly; that is, that though God exists, he does not exist at any time. Leftow defends the claim that a timeless God can be an object of human experience, and he attempts to delineate the extent of such a God's omniscience. Finally, the author pays special attention to the relation between the claim that God is timeless and the claim that God is metaphysically simple.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology

392 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1991

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leftow advances a position that God is a-temporal, examining various thinkers, objections as well as proposing 19 separate arguments for God as timeless

[Raymond Lam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the most substantive, extensive, exhaustive work on the subject of time and eternity available. Leftow offers an Anselmian defence of a timeless God in eternity. The scope of his treatment is extensive and arguments from all major views are analysed carefully treated in detail and pursued to the end.

It is hard to review a work of such scope. But we can look at the flow of the approach of this work and highlights interesting treatments. In the beginning, the two chapters, the Possibility of Timeless  and the Logic of Eternity provides an excellent discussion of the logical and metaphysical issues of time and eternity. It covers such topic of two timelines and space, and God in eternity creating two separate discreet timelines. The notion of eternity considered is like another time or duration contiguous to time such that every point in each is contiguous to each other.

Leftow then proceeds to examines various notions of eternity from Augustine, to Boethius, Aquinas to Anselm, to include a good discussion of ET simultaneity by Stump and Kretzman's work on Boethius.  He finds Anselmian notion of eternity to be the most cogent.  In Anselmian approach, eternity is one time-like present or duration in which all of time is included. It is a present with no before and after. Leftow further develops it which begins in chapter 11, A Theory of Time and Eternity, that God sees and God's seeing of all temporal events all at once, similar to the Boethian view of complete possession  all at once of illimitable life. What is unique in the Anselmian approach is time is included in eternity instead of being a timeline parallel to eternity.  But, it seems this feature is formal. If all of temporal reality consists in God in eternity and the timeline he created, however many of them, you can say whether the timeline(s) is included in eternity or not. What is at issue is the relation dynamics  between the two.  With this notion of eternity and time, truth values of God's knowledge/beliefs attributed to human action in times are indexed to eternity not in time. So God does not have knowledge of human actions not yet done in time. God knowledge is indexed to his mental state in eternity. This approach sidesteps the foreknowledge and free will paradox. There is a chapter called A Çase of Timelessness which discusses the advantage of timelessness in relation to some of God's attributes such as necessary existence, infinity, providence but the most interesting is God being the creator of time. If God is in time  he cannot account for the first moment of time  which he is in it. If God is in time, saying God creates time seems unacceptable.

An original and helpful chapter is Timelessness and Personhood in which Leftow addresses whether a timeless being can have some of the person attributes that a personal agent has.
Can a timeless being deliberate, remember, anticipate and perform free actions?  Must a mental state involve a temporal mental process having a duration and a before and after. Leftow uses the mental state of understanding as an example of not requiring a temporal mental process. When you read a sentence in a book, the semantic process may require a temporal passage, but final understanding is an achievement that obtains without temporal passage. One just understand a sentence immediately once the meanings of the words are grasped. God`s knowledge are beliefs with immediate understanding that requires no temporal mental process.

This book offers an exhaustive coverage of issues pertaining to the relation between time and eternity.  It is written in a clear and lucid prose that flows freely and will remain a go to work on the subject

[Garrett Peters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thorough and well-argued defense of an account of divine eternity inspired by St. Anselm, essential reading for the divine eternity debate

[Jeffrey]

I have read this and intend to read through it again in the near future. Not for the faint of heart.