Christian theologians are agreed that God is eternal. However, disagreement arises within the Christian tradition over the precise interpretation to be given to the word 'eternal'. Professor Nelson Pike examines one way of understanding the doctrine of divine eternity that has had considerable prominence in the writings of both Catholic and Protestant theologians. On this interpretation, to say that God is eternal is to say that God exists 'outside of time'; in other words, that God is 'timeless'. Professor Pike undertakes to expose both the strengths and shortcomings of this analysis of God's eternity. In addition to his discussion of divine eternity, Professor Pike treats a wide range of other theological and philosophical topics. These include the medieval doctrine of essential prediction, the syntactical status of the term 'God', the problem of divine foreknowledge, the notion of God's omnipotence, the doctrine of divine immutability, and the general methodological issues connected with traditional ways of determining the adequacy of statements ascribing specific attributes to God.

Editor Gregory Ganssle calls on four Christian philosophers to present and defend their views on the place of God in a time-bound universe. The positions taken up here include divine timeless eternity, eternity as relative timelessness, timelessness and omnitemporality, and unqualified divine temporality.

This remarkable work offers an analytical exploration of the nature of divine eternity and God's relationship to time.

The claim that God is timeless has been the majority view throughout church history. However, it is not obvious that divine timelessness is compatible with fundamental Christian doctrines such as creation and incarnation. Theologians have long been aware of the conflict between divine timelessness and Christian doctrine, and various solutions to these conflicts have been developed. In contemporary thought, it is widely agreed that new theories on the nature of time can further help solve these conflicts. Do these solutions actually solve the conflict? Can the Christian God be timeless? The End of the Timeless God sets forth a thorough investigation into the Christian understanding of God and the God-world relationship. It argues that the Christian God cannot be timeless.

This book focuses on the timelessness of God, providing a detailed analysis of the nature of time and eternity. Padgett offers a biblical and historical survey of the doctrine of eternity, rejecting both theories of eternity being both 'timeless' and 'everlasting'. Padgett argues that traditionally the doctrine of absolute divine timelessness is not compatible with God's actions in the world. "God is in some sense temporal, yet He is the ground of time, the Lord of time and is 'relatively' timeless.

Starting from the assumption that 'time is the horizon of the meaning of Being' (Heidegger), Eternal God/ Saving Time attempts to discover what the central religious idea of eternity or of God as 'the Eternal' might mean today. Negotiating ideas of divine timelessness and sempiternity (everlastingness) as well as the attempts of some philosophers to develop the idea of a temporal God, Professor George Pattison surveys a range of positions from analytic philosophy and from the continental tradition from Spinoza through Hegel to the present. Intellectual and cultural forces have tended to separate time and eternity, and both philosophical and theological examples of this tendency are examined. Nevertheless, starting from the experience of life in time, some modern thinkers have developed a new approach to the Eternal as what grounds or gives time. This leads through ideas of novelty, utopia, hope, promise, and call to the projection of a creative and transformative memory-remembering the future-that affirms human solidarity and mutual responsibility. Even if this cannot be made good in terms of knowledge, it offers a basis for hope, prayer, and commitment and these options are explored through a range of Christian, Jewish, Greek, and secular thinkers. This development re-envisages the idea of redemption, away from the Augustinian view that time is what we need to be rescued from and towards the idea that time itself might save us from all that is destructive and tyrannical in time's rule over human life.

"This outstanding book... is a genuinely pivotal contribution to the lively current debate over divine foreknowledge and human freedom.... Hasker's book has three commendable features worthy of immediate note. First, it contains a carefully crafted overview of the recent literature on foreknowledge and freedom and so can serve as an excellent introduction to that literature. Second, it is tightly reasoned and brimming with brisk arguments, many of them highly original. Third, it correctly situates the philosophical dispute over foreknowledge and freedom within its proper theological context and in so doing highlights the intimate connection between the doctrines of divine omniscience and divine providence."—Faith and Philosophy"[God, Time, and Knowledge] is an elegantly written, forcefully argued challenge to traditional views, and a major contribution to the discussion of divine foreknowledge."—Philosophical Review"This is a very competent, thorough analysis of the conflict between free will and divine foreknowledge (or, on some acounts, timeless divine knowledge of our future). It is exceptionally clear."—Theological Book Review

In this highly original and ground-breaking work, the author brings together discussions in the philosophy of time and space, philosophy of language, phenomenology, philosophy of science, Special and General Relativity, classical cosmology, quantum mechanics, and so forth, with the concerns of philosophy of religion and theology, in order to craft a philosophically informed and scientifically tenable doctrine of divine eternity and God's relationship to time.

Eternal God offers a powerful defence of the view that God exists in timeless eternity. This classical Christian view is claimed by many theologians and philosophers to be incoherent but Helm rebuts this charge.

The dominant view among Christian theologians and philosophers is that God is timeless--that he exists outside of time in an "atemporal" eternity. In God, Time, and the Incarnation, Richard Holland offers a critical evaluation of this traditional view in light of the most central doctrine of Christianity: the Incarnation of Christ. Holland reviews the history of this controversy, highlighting the various theological problems for which atemporal models have been offered as a solution. He asserts the central importance of the Incarnation for Christian theology and evaluates several atemporal models in light of this doctrine. Finally, he suggests that the traditional atemporal view is not compatible with a robust and orthodox view of the Incarnation. This book rejects the traditional atemporal view of God's relationship to time and argues, based on the Incarnation, that God experiences temporal sequence in his existence.