The attributes and Nature of God (Lesson 4) Responses to God as Eternal and God as Omnipotent Mr. DeZilva Philosophy of Religion Year 13
God is Eternal but how? God is Atemporal God is timeless and is outside the constraints of time God is immutable God is Sempiternal God is everlasting and moves along the same timeline that we do God is changeable
Arguments against an Eternal God Against Atemporal Our thoughts and desires are all performed in the present with reference to the past and future. But, the claim of a timelessness for God demands that all of God’s actions and thoughts and desires take place simultaneously. Thus, there is only the “Now” for a timeless God. Coincidentally, the “now” is still a time! How can God act “timelessly in time?” A timeless God is not able to love, because God is immutable and not affected by anything. Swinburne: “The God of the Old Testament […] is a God in continual interaction with men, moved by men as they speak to him, his action being more often in no way decided in advance” Pike: If we have a timeless, eternal God, then Free Will is certainly limited, given that God has known what will happen. (Handout) God became man (Jesus) and entered human history at a particular time. Because God is unchanging, is there any point to prayer?
Arguments Against an eternal god Against Sempiternal: If God is bounded by time, this gives rise to his potential limitations; he would be limited in His present because of his past and future. This perspective limits God’s “omnipotence” and “omniscience” Numbers 23:19 – An example of a fixed intention, unchanging God. Augustine: If God is everlasting, why did he pick a particular moment to create the universe, and what was he doing for all the “time” before that? If prayer can, in fact, change God’s mind, so that he ends up acting differently from the way He might’ve acted without prayer, thus, is God really a perfect being that is greater than that which can be conceived (Anselm)?
God is Omnipotent but how? God is all-powerful Because God is all-powerful, God is all loving (unable to do evil and is absolutely perfect) God has supreme power, this is evident by giving human salvation and carrying out plans for the universe. Aquinas: To sin is to fall short of full activity. Therefore, to be able to sin is to be able to fail in something […] it is because God is Omnipotent that He cannot sin
Arguments against the Omnipotence of God Because God is all-powerful, this makes god into an unpredictable and arbitrary tyrant who might do anything. If God can, in fact, do anything, then this means he is capable of doing evil. If Descartes is correct, and God is capable of suspending the laws of logic to allow us to have free will without the consequent evil, then the existence of evil in the world becomes something which God could change if he wanted to, but which he chooses to inflict on us even though there is no justification for it. Vardy: God’s omnipotence is limited. God is not in control of the whole of history, and it is wrong to suggest that everything which happens is because of the will of God. However, it is a self-imposed limitation (and this is an act of power) God’s omnipotence is self-contradictory The Paradox of the Stone The Paradox of the Free Will Creature The Paradox of the Past (Handout)