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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    God and all spatial things share a reference frame—the re... — Carmelics
    Home/Afterlife & Death
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    God and all spatial things share a reference frame—the reference frame of eternity—in which nothing changes and all events are simultaneous, including God's actions and their effects.

    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.There is no change with respect to God.
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    • 2.If there is no change with respect to God, then God and all spatial things share a frame of reference (the reference frame of eternity) in which nothing changes.
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    • 3.In this reference frame, all events occur at eternity, and eternity is something like another time, so they are all simultaneous.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Simultaneity is a frame-relative relation requiring a shared metric structure, which eternity—as atemporal—cannot provide.
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    • 2.If eternity lacks temporal extension, it cannot function as a reference frame in any sense analogous to relativistic spacetime frames.
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    • 3.Therefore, calling all events 'simultaneous' in eternity equivocates between temporal simultaneity and mere co-presence, undermining the claim's coherence.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Boethius and Aquinas define eternity as the complete, simultaneous possession of life—a definition that entails no succession, not a shared frame with temporal things.
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    • 2.If God's eternity is strictly non-successive, then God and temporal creatures cannot occupy a common reference frame without reintroducing succession into eternity.
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    • 3.Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann's ET-simultaneity relation, designed to bridge this gap, has been shown by critics like Paul Fitzgerald to be non-transitive and thus not a genuine equivalence relation.
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    Topics

    Afterlife & Death

    Key Terms

    Eternity(how God's knowledge encompasses temporal possibilities)
    In this philosophical context, not just endless time, but a state of existing completely outside of time—all moments happening at once from God's perspective.
    Reference frame(as what determines how we see reality in relativity)
    A particular viewpoint or perspective from which you measure motion and position. In relativity, different observers moving at different speeds have different 'reference frames'—like measuring speed from a train vs. from the ground.
    metaphysics(Hartshorne's naturalistic redefinition of metaphysics)
    On Hartshorne's view, the study not of realities beyond the physical, but of features of reality that are ubiquitous or that would exist in any possible world.
    simultaneity
    The property of two events occurring at the same time, which in Einstein's model is relative to reference frames rather than absolute
    theological determinism(free will debates within a theological framework)
    The view that God is omni-determining, i.e., a sufficient and wholly determining cause for everything that happens

    Related

    Boethius and Aquinas define eternity as the complete, simultaneous possession of...Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann's ET-simultaneity relation, designed to brid...If God's eternity is strictly non-successive, then God and temporal creatures ca...If eternity lacks temporal extension, it cannot function as a reference frame in...
    +5 moreShow less
    If there is no change with respect to God, then God and all spatial things share...In this reference frame, all events occur at eternity, and eternity is something...

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: eternity
    View source passageHide passage
    For Brian Leftow, the central idea is that all things in time are also, with God, in timeless eternity. He finds this idea in Anselm. Like in the Stump and Kretzmann proposal, the idea is given a contemporary twist through appeals to the notion of a reference frame and special relativity.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit
    Simultaneity is a frame-relative relation requiring a shared metric structure, w...
    There is no change with respect to God.
    Therefore, calling all events 'simultaneous' in eternity equivocates between tem...

    Similar

    If there is no change with respect to God, then God and all spatial th...92%In this reference frame, all events occur at eternity, and eternity is...87%In temporal reference frames, God's actions occur at eternity but thei...85%In temporal reference frames, God's actions and their effects are nons...78%