ULTIMATE A* ALEVEL NOTES - Summary - Qualities of God

QUALITIES OF GOD
 SPECIFICATION
God's attributes:
 Omniscient
 Omnipotent
 Supremely good (omnibenevolent)
 The meaning(s) of these divine attributes
 Competing views on such a being’s relationship to time including
God being timeless (eternal) and God being within time (everlasting)

Arguments for the incoherence of the concept of God including:
 The paradox of the stone
 The Euthyphro dilemma
 The compatibility, or otherwise, of the existence of an omniscient
God and free human beings - Freewill.




[TIP: when explaining arguments for God's existence, also explain concept of God which is being
assumed or defended by that argument]

, OMNISCIENCE
-> eternal/timeless
-> all-knowing
 God must exist outside or beyond time. To exist in time would limit his capacity to know the
future



 BOETHIUS

If God, by definition, lacks nothing and “includes the fullness of life” then such a being must
always be “present to itself” and have “the whole of moving time” present to it, because no time
can be missing for God

-> knowledge transcends the movement of time and exists only in a single, simple, unified
present; an ‘eternal present’. This contrasts with contingent human existence which is
characterized by limitation and a lack of knowledges:
 God must live in an ETERNAL PRESENT, with no past or future

- His knowledge transcends the movement of time and exists only in a single, simple, unified
present

- He experiences all moments in time as they happen, as they happen, in one single "present"

- human freedom is maintained as although all moments are present to God, he only sees them
in the 'present' as spontaneous events
 concepts such as 'past' and 'present' are expressions of limitation, and since God is without limit
they mean nothing to him.

BUT…
 Is human freedom an illusion as God can see the outcome of our 'free choices' before we make
them?



SOLUTION 1 - redefine what we mean by 'simultaneous'.
 ANTHONY KENNY - Boethius' understanding of time is incoherent
-The idea that two events, separated by hundreds of years, can at the same time be 'simultaneous'
with each other is incoherent because it contradicts the very idea of 'time' - that is a succession of
separate moments
-the notion of eternity as an 'eternal present' is incoherent and meaningless.
-If God exists, he cannot exist in eternity or any kind of 'timeless' state (must exist inside time, cannot
know the future and therefore human freedom is protected)



 NORMAN KRETZMANN and ELEANORE STUMP (response to Kenny)
-fails to understand the idea of simultaneity - experiencing two simultaneous events in the contingent
world will not be the same as experiencing the same events in an eternal present
->T-simultaneity; our own temporal experience
->E – simultaneity; the experience of God in an eternal present
-> Einstein's concept of the 'relativity of simultaneity'