Rojka, L: The Eternity of God

Is God timeless? That is one of the most intriguing questions in the philosophy of religion, not only for students of the subject but for every scholar who looks into field. Bernard Lonergan argues that God is absolutely timeless because the most perfect understanding cannot exist as a sequence of acts. Given Lonergan s concept of time, it turns out to be logically contradictory to postulate God as existing in time. Richard Swinburne argues that God is temporal (everlasting); he argues that such an explanation is both meaningful and coherent. The present book argues that, although Lonergan s concept of God as unrestricted act of understanding is meaningful, his insistence on the timelessness of God is not justified. First, on Swinburne s minimal definition of time, the temporal existence of a perfect being does not imply any unintelligible imperfection. Secondly, although Lonergan would reject Swinburne s time as an illusion, it is only with this concept of time that God can be said to be truly timeless. Swinburne s explanation, therefore, displays more explanatory power, especially taking into consideration his criterion of simplicity.