God, Time, and Eternity Part II

Now we turn our attention to Temporal Eternity, which is the notion that God is everlasting within time. This has also been called sempiternity. Another way to understand this is that God exists at all times, he has no beginning or end. God's existence extends endlessly backwards and forwards. God has a past present and future just like his creatures. I am curious if Feinberg will deal with actual infinites or not which I will explain in a later post. Feinberg admits that two of God's primary attributes seem risky to postulate if we explain God's relationship to time in this way. God's simplicity (he is absolutely one without multiple parts, he is indivisible) and immutability (unchanging) are things that we know have to be true about God and are directly supported by the Bible. Feinberg asks an important question: How do we define time according to God? Is it a human measurement? Was there time before creation?

Two important questions must be examined: What does the Bible say? How did atemporal eternity (God outside of time) make its way into Christian theology? These are always important questions to ask when it comes to our assumptions and understanding of God.

The biblical authors never reflect directly on the nature of time and eternity. Feinberg seems to feel that there is enough data to warrant speculation, he turns to the history of the doctrine as he feels that would be more fruitful.

How did our current understanding of atemporal duration come into our theology? Why is this understanding necessary? Atemporal duration actually predates Christian theology and finds its origins in: Parmenides, Plato, Plotinus, and the Pythagoreans. The theologians who are responsible for bringing this doctrine into Christian theology are: Augustine, Boetheus, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas. Why were these theologians committed to atemporal duration? Feinberg offers a brief overview:
(I would like to say from the outset that it is always dangerous to develop a theology out of an apologetic. A good example would be Mormonism where Joseph Smith had an apologetic for God being active in the Americas during biblical times, but does that make Smith right?)
Augustine- Book XI of confessions, many were asking Augustine what God was doing before he created the world. Apparently, God has no reason to create. If he is at rest why not rest eternally? Why begin to create? If creation was always the plan why wait? Additionally, why not an eternal creation? If God begins to create then he changes when he begins to create (immutability), if he created the universe eternal this problem would be solved. If God made a decision to create at a certain point in time then there is a change in his will which is a change in his essence or character, which means he is not prefect. Augustine responds with atemporal duration. These question have their foundations in the assumption that terms like "before" apply to God. We as humans might use them to describe God within our limited reasoning capacity which is reflective in our limited language (anthropomorphisms).
Next time we will finish Feinberg's catalog of the history of this position and delve into some of the arguments for timeless eternity.