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.