Well, now things really heat up as we explore the opposition to timeless eternity or what we will be calling the Temporalist's position. I am fascinated to know what their ideas are as I hope that you are as well so let's dive in.
TIMELESSNESS AND GOD AS A PERSON
What does it mean to be a person? Are there not some things that must be inherent in an individual in order to qualify one as a person? Certainly we would say that God is a person wouldn't we? If God is a person what are some of the important qualities required to possess personhood?
Feinberg quotes Richard Coburn whom I will paraphrase:
In order to be a person one should be able to do the following: remember, anticipate, reflect, deliberate, decide, intend, and act intentionally (if your thinking what I'm thinking this list in reference to God should be bothering you right about now. In reference to humans I am a bit uncomfortable with this list as well, there have been babies aborted whom would not possess some of these traits, are they not persons? Don't count him out yet, but this is not a good beginning and seems to reek of a bit of existentialism). If an eternal being lacked these qualities he could not be a person, if he did possess these qualities he must be in time.
Furthermore, a timeless being could not respond in writing or speech or stimuli. The being would be frozen or static as he would have no before or after. Some disagree with the notion that a timeless being is incapable of doing ALL of these things. How so? Let us say that God (given atemporal assumptions)intends to do something or has a purpose. Now, suppose you or I intend to go shopping this would be that we wish to go shopping (not necessarily that we intend in that we are making plans to go but incline to go shopping, or that we have the desire to go). To say that God intends all to be saved means he wishes all to be saved. One can be timeless and have such a wish. Another way in which the word intend can be used is to say one intends to accomplish something by doing something. One does not have to be temporal in this sense either. To do something in the belief that there will be some consequence, one would not have done said activity if one did not believe that certain results would be achieved. Although the activity to produce the results must be in time the agent causing the activity does not. This only holds water if a timeless being can act on the timeless at all (interesting!). All of this assumes that the timeless agent knows what time is in a world wrought with time and the Temporalist believes that this will be very difficult for the Atemporalist to maintain. Many Atemporalist say that this is all a moot point because God acts out of a perfect timeless state and makes events occur within time with precision, Feinberg seems to doubt that this will turn out to make sense though.
The next part of the argument will look at hog God interacts with time outside of time and how he responds to time laden events outside of time, should be interesting.
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