Thus, God knows what our future holds without also affecting our present — or our free will.
God, in a sense, sees all things in eternal present. he wants to deny that god is in time, in a reality beyond our understanding. However, this argument, similarly to Swinburne’s, can still allow for God to reward and punish justly because human action is caused by human freewill. for boethius, god has both duration andatemporality at once. And now let's suppose that God decides to create the world, and He brings the universe into being. Being outside of time makes that entity (God) timeless, and by extension eternal. Richard Swinburne's Everlasting God: Richard Swinburne argues that God is a personable being which can be known He argues that a… Wolterstorff is, I think, significantly easier to follow. boethius goes further, asking the difference between our knowledge of god and god’s own knowledge. “our now makes time…as if it were running along. God could foreknow the future because the future was immediately present to Him. in discussing god’s eternity, boethius uses time-bound words. Boethius (ca.
boethius argued for the timelessness of god. Boethius hypothesized that God was timeless, standing outside of time as it were, and could therefore “see” all that happens in the past, present, and future in one fell swoop or glance.
boethius goes further, asking the difference between our knowledge of god and god’s own knowledge. So let's suppose that He's timeless. The idea that God should be eternal in the sense of timeless is partially derived from the characteristic of God being omniscient even though we retain free will. The way Boethius describes God’s cognitive grasp of temporal reality, all temporal events are before the mind of God at once. Being outside of time makes that entity (God) timeless, and by extension eternal. The center of a circle has the exact same relation to any of the points on the circle. Therefore God is everlasting and the timeless God cannot exist so both Helm and Boethius are incorrect. he wants to deny that god is in time, in a reality beyond our understanding. 150-152 & Wolterstorff, “God is Everlasting”, pp. If He's temporal, then the issue is decided. If God exists outside of time, then God can observe all events throughout the course of our history as if they were simultaneous.
I can only conjecture that Boethius understood God to be creator of time from his study of the scriptures - God's creation of "the heavens and the earth" (aka, the universe), God's self description; "from everlasting to everlasting," "the alpha and omega," "I AM." He served under the Ostrogoth emperor, Theodric, but sided with ... while God exists in a timeless eternal state outside time. God As Everlasting Many of the objections raised regarding God being timeless - such as his inability to be the loving, interventionist God as described in scripture, are supposedly solved by God being everlasting. for boethius, god has both duration andatemporality at once. but it is not easy to understand. - God is eternal/timeless o Classical theists e.g. Boethius god is timeless which is due to his omnipotence - says that it is better to be "eternal than the temporal" so god is "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" Boethius defines God’s eternal existence as timeless, and God seeing all times as the present. 475-525) was a Christian politician (consul) in the Roman hierarchy.
153-159 You will need to read Boethius carefully; he’s not easy to understand. Imagine God existing once more, alone, without the world, without the creation. One analogy deployed by Boethius, later developed by Aquinas, is that of the center of a circle. Roger Olson, at the link here, opens up a good conversation on whether God is himself timeless:.