Parts, wholes and eternity

Brian Leftow

pp. 199-206

in: L. N. Oaklander (ed), The importance of time, Berlin, Springer, 2001

Abstract

For Western theists, God is eternal. Western theists disagree over what it is to be eternal, but the most influential view historically has been that of Boethius, who wrote that "eternality is the complete possession, all at once, of illimitable life ... for which nothing of the future is absent and nothing of the past has flowed away."¹ On one reading, Boethius' account entails a surprising view of how God's life fills time. I now set this view out, and take a step toward showing that it is at least coherent.