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Statements: 321,452
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Topics: 42

The view that God has both a timeless phase and a tempora... — Carmelics

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The view that God has both a timeless phase and a temporal phase is logically incoherent.

Afterlife & Death

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1 reason against

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Reasons For

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Reason for 1 of 2

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1.Any coherent description of God requires a single unified mode of existence, since a being with ontologically distinct phases is composed and therefore not absolutely simple.
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2.Divine simplicity, defended by Aquinas in Summa Theologiae I.3, entails that God has no real internal distinctions between phases, properties, or temporal stages.
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3.A being with both a timeless phase and a temporal phase violates divine simplicity by introducing real composition into God's nature, generating incoherence on classical theism's own terms.
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Reason for 2 of 2

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1.Transition between any two modes of existence—timeless to temporal—requires a cause or mechanism, but for God no external cause exists and no internal cause is possible without prior temporality.
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2.Garrett DeWeese and William Lane Craig's debate on 'timeless-then-temporal' God shows that the transition point itself must be located either in time or outside it, and neither option is coherent.
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3.If the transition is in time, God was already temporal before creation; if outside time, the transition is causally unintelligible, so either way the two-phase model is logically unstable.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

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1.On such a view, there seem to be two phases of God's life: a timeless phase and a temporal phase.
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2.The timeless phase seems to have existed earlier than the temporal phase.
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3.To stand in a relation of 'earlier than' is by all accounts to be temporal.
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Topics

Afterlife & Death

Related

A being with both a timeless phase and a temporal phase violates divine simplici...Any coherent description of God requires a single unified mode of existence, sin...But the timeless phase is supposed to be non-temporal, so it cannot stand in a r...Divine simplicity, defended by Aquinas in Summa Theologiae I.3, entails that God...

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Garrett DeWeese and William Lane Craig's debate on 'timeless-then-temporal' God ...If the transition is in time, God was already temporal before creation; if outsi...On such a view, there seem to be two phases of God's life: a timeless phase and ...The timeless phase seems to have existed earlier than the temporal phase.To stand in a relation of 'earlier than' is by all accounts to be temporal.Transition between any two modes of existence—timeless to temporal—requires a ca...

Similar

The timeless phase seems to have existed earlier than the temporal pha...87%On such a view, there seem to be two phases of God's life: a timeless ...86%But the timeless phase is supposed to be non-temporal, so it cannot st...84%God is temporal after creation, even if God was timeless before creati...82%

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[O]n such a view, there seem to be two phases of God’s life, a timeless phase and a temporal phase, and the timeless phase seems to have existed earlier than the temporal phase. But this is logically incoherent, since to stand in a relation of earlier than is by all accounts to be temporal. (Craig 2000: 32)

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 3 (2 for, 1 against)
Edits: 1 edit