The nature of god, free will and eternity

we are mortal beings and our language reflects this
god does not experience this passage of time, so he will not make mistakes or suffer consequences
things decay in time, and god cannot decay
he is timeless and so he is perfect
what can his relationship to us be?
we don’t necessarily have free will just because we think we do
if god is timeless, then he made us knowing our fate
since augustine, the question of free will and predestination has been a concern
the timelessness of god is very significant

boethius’ book ‘the consolation of philosophy’ was written in prison awaiting execution
it contributed greatly to philosophical thought on the nature of god
he wrote his book to explain why he had been left to die by god and fortune
it is a dialogue between himself and lady philosophy

boethius argued for the timelessness of god.
“our now makes time…as if it were running along. but the divine now remains, not moving, standing still, makes eternity.“
in his day scientists believed the stars and planets were necessary, like god
for boethius god is outside and unaffected by time
he is in his own eternity where everything is now
boethius argues that ‘eternity is the complete possession all at once of illimitable life’.
some claimed boethius placed god completely outside the time process, which is not true
he wanted to distinguish from aristotle’s everlasting, unchanging and indifferent god
boethius goes further, asking the difference between our knowledge of god and god’s own knowledge
boethius uses time-bound words but he wants to deny that god is in time, in a reality beyond our understanding
for boethius, god has both duration and atemporality at once

there is some criticisms here, though, too
for boethius, the eternal is not reducible to time but is also not in any way incompatible with time
this poses two problems: is boethius’ notion of eternity coherent? how can the eternal interact with the temporal?
the notion of time is complicated
some philosophers say time is the duration of objects and not separate from this
time is what we attribute to the lasting of things
if there are no objects, there is nothing
god is not an object, so maybe he could be outside the time process
he has no duration, so he has no time
we are aware that time may not be the unchanging thing that we experience every day
we use language to imply that time is a process
but if time’s continuity is an illusion, how do we understand it?
a key question here is if god can change the past
for boethius, he can’t. we are temporal so we have a past, but god does not
eleonore stump argued that ‘god cannot alter the past but he can alter the course of the battle of waterloo’ because it is not in the past for him
but simply saying god cannot alter the past leaves the question of how he…

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