Prophecy, Past Truth, and Eternity

Abstract

In an earlier article1 we presented, defended, and applied traditional doctrine of divine eternity, doctrine that God's mode of existence is timeless, characterized essentially by the complete possession all at once of illimitable life.2 The traditional conception of God as absolutely perfect being has included eternity as his mode of existence. In keeping with traditional conception, necessarily beginningless and endless life of a perfect being must also be possessed perfectly. No life, even a sempiternal life, that is imperfect in its being possessed with radical incompleteness entailed by temporal existence could be mode of existence of an absolutely perfect being. A perfectly possessed life must be devoid of any past, which would be no longer possessed, and of any future, which would be not yet possessed. The existence of an absolutely perfect being must be an indivisibly persistent present actuality. Our article prompted some criticisms that attacked concept of eternity directly, by focusing on difficulties in notion of atemporal duration, which we take to be at heart of concept, or on difficulties in epistemic and causal relationships between eternity and time, relationships presupposed by all traditional theological applications of doctrine. We reply to these criticisms elsewhere.3 The applications of doctrine of eternity that originally concerned us most were aimed at resolving apparent incompatibility of divine immutability with divine omniscience and with efficacy