ANSELMIAN ETERNALISM

Abstract

Anselm holds that God is timeless, time is tenseless, and humans have libertarian freedom.This combination of commitments is largely undefended in contemporary philosophy of religion.Here I explain Anselmian eternalism with its entailment of tenseless time, off er reasons for accepting it, and defend it against criticisms from William Hasker and other Open Theists.I argue that the tenseless view is coherent, that God's eternal omniscience is consistent with libertarian freedom, that being eternal greatly enhances divine sovereignty, and that the Anselmian view supports the contention that the Bible is relevant today far bett er than does Open Theism."Now that God is eternal is the common judgement of all who live by reason," writes Boethius. 1 Things have changed since Boethius's day, and many contemporary philosophers of religion now question the value, and even the coherence, of supposing that God is eternal.In this paper I defend "Anselmian eternalism," the analysis of divine eternity proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury.First I off er a litt le historical background, with a word about Anselm's predecessors and a quick review of some of Anselm's writing on the subject.Anselm does not devote much time to developing and explaining his views on time, and so, in the next section, I try to show some of what does, and what does not, follow from Anselmian eternalism.Then I explain why, at least on Anselm's analysis of perfection, a perfect being must be eternal.Finally I att empt to respond to a series of criticisms raised against the idea that God is timeless-those that seem to me not to have been adequately addressed in the literature to date.I am especially interested to refute the spirited att ack on divine eternity mounted by William Hasker and other Open Theists. A Brief History of Anselmian EternalismAnselm is, to my knowledge, the fi rst philosopher to spell out clearly the conclusion that if God is timeless, then the entire space-time universe must be immediately present to Him, with all places and all times equally real. 2 This is the essentially tenseless view of time.Past, present and future are not absolute, rather they are relative to a given temporal perceiver at a given time.The main alternative to this theory of time, in the Middle Ages and today, is "presentism" or the essentially tensed view of time.The present is absolute.All that exists exists in the present, since that is all there is.The past and future are absolutely non-existent.I will sometimes use the