Made for Eternity: Reflections on Time and Timelessness

This "maximal property idea" can be applied as well to the nature of God's life. God is a living being. He is not an abstract object like a number. He is not inanimate like a magnetic force. If whatever is true of him is true of him to the greatest degree possible, then his life is the fullest life possible. Whatever God's life is like, he surely has it to the fullest degree. Some philosophers have argued that this fact about God's life requires that he be timeless. No being that experiences its life sequentially can have the fullest life possible.

Temporal beings experience their lives one moment at a time. The past is gone and the future is not yet. The past part of a person's life is gone forever. He can remember it, but he cannot experience it directly. The future part of his life is not yet here. He can anticipate it and worry about it, but he cannot yet experience it. He only experiences a brief slice of his life at any one time. The life of a temporal thing, then, is spread out and diffuse. It is the transient nature of our experience that gives rise to much of the wistfulness and regret we may feel about our lives.

This feeling of regret lends credibility to the idea that a sequential life is a life that is less than maximally full. Older people sometimes wish for earlier days, while younger people long to mature. We grieve for the people we love who are now gone. We grieve also for the events and times that no longer persist. When we think about the life of God, it is strange to think of God longing for the past or for the future. The idea that God might long for some earlier time or regret the passing of some age seems like an attribution of weakness or inadequacy to God.

God in his self-sufficiency cannot in any way be inadequate. If it is the experience of the passage of time that grounds these longings, there is good reason not to attribute any experience of time to God. Therefore, it is better to think of God as timeless. He experiences all of his life at once in the timeless present. Nothing of his life is past and nothing of it is future. Boethius' famous definition of eternity captures this idea: Boethius contrasts this timeless mode of being with a temporal mode: However, those who think that God is in some way temporal do not want to attribute weakness or inadequacy to God.

Nor do they hold that God's life is less than maximally full. They will deny, rather, that God cannot experience a maximally full life if he is temporal. These philosophers will point out that many of our regrets about the passage of time are closely tied to our finitude. It is our finitude that grounds our own inadequacy, not our temporality. We regret the loss of the past both because our lives are short and because our memories are dim and inaccurate. God's life, temporal though it may be, is not finite and his memory is perfectly vivid.

He does not lose anything with the passage of time. Nor does his life draw closer to its end. If our regrets about the passage of time are more a function of our finitude than of our temporality, much of the force of these considerations is removed. One important issue that this argument concerning the fullness of God's life ought to put to rest is the idea that those who hold God to be timeless hold that God is something inert like a number or a property.

Whether or not they are correct, the proponent of timelessness holds that it is the fullness of God's life rather than its impoverishment that determines his relation to time. Another argument for God's timelessness begins with the idea that time itself is contingent. If time is contingent and God is not, then it is at least possible that God exist without time. This conclusion is still far from the claim that God is, in fact, timeless but perhaps we can say more. If time is contingent, then it depends upon God for its existence.

Either God brought time into existence or he holds it in existence everlastingly. The claim that time is contingent, though, is not uncontroversial. Arguments for the necessity of time will be considered below. If God created time as part of his creation of the universe, then it is important whether or not the universe had a beginning at all. Although it might seem strange to think that God could create the universe even if the universe had no beginning, it would not be strange to philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas. Working within the Aristotelean framework, he considered an everlasting universe to be a very real possibility.

He argued in his third way that even a universe with an infinite past would need to depend upon God for its existence. In his view, even if time had no beginning, it was contingent. God sustains the universe, and time itself, in existence at each moment that it exists. The majority position today is that the universe did have a beginning. What most people mean by this claim is that the physical universe began.

It is an open question for many whether time had a beginning or whether the past is infinite. If the past is infinite, then it is metaphysical time and not physical time that is everlasting. Arguments such as the Kalam Cosmological Argument aim to show that it is not possible that the past is infinite Craig and Smith, ; Craig b.

On Time and Eternity in Messiaen | Benedict Taylor - www.newyorkethnicfood.com

Suppose time came into existence with the universe so that the universe has only a finite past. This means that physical time was created by God. It may be the case that metaphysical time is infinite or that God created "pure duration" metaphysical time also. In the latter case, God had to be timeless. God created both physical and metaphysical time and God existed entirely without time.

God, then, had to be timeless. Unless God became temporal at some point, God remains timeless. The position that God is temporal sometimes strikes the general reader as a position that limits the nature of God. Philosophers who defend divine temporality are committed to a similar methodology to that held by those who are defenders of timelessness. They aim to work within the parameters of historical, biblical orthodoxy and to hold to the maximal property idea that whatever God is, he is to the greatest possible degree.

Thus, proponents of divine temporality will hold that God is omniscient and omnipotent. God's temporality is not seen as a limit to his power or his knowledge or his being. Those who hold to a temporal God often work on generating solutions to the challenge of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. They work within the notion that God knows whatever can be known and is thus omniscient. Even those philosophers who argue that God cannot know future free actions defend divine omniscience.

They either think that there are no truths about future free actions or that none of those truths can be known, even by God Hasker, and Pinnock et al. God is omniscient because he knows everything that can be known. Divine temporality is not a departure from orthodox concepts of God. In fact, it is often the commitment to biblical orthodoxy itself that generates the arguments that God is best thought of as temporal. Two of these arguments will be discussed: God acts in the world. He created the universe and he sustains it in existence.

God's sustaining the universe in its existence at each moment is what keeps the universe existing from moment to moment. If, at any instant, it were not sustained, it would cease to exist. If God sustains the universe by performing different actions at different moments of time, then he changes from moment to moment. If God changes, then he is temporal. God's interventions in the world are often interactions with human beings. He redeems his people, answers their prayer, and forgives their sin. He also comes to their aid and comforts and strengthens them.

Can a proponent of divine timelessness make sense of God interacting in these ways? It all depends, of course, on what the necessary conditions for interaction turn out to be. If it is not possible to answer a request a prayer unless the action is performed after the request, then the fact that God answers prayer will guarantee that he is temporal. Some thinkers have thought that an answer can be initiated only after a request.

Others have argued that, although answers to requests normally come after the request, it is not necessary that they do so. In order to count as an answer, the action must occur because of the request. Not any because of relation will do, however. An answer is not normally thought of as being caused by the request, yet a cause-effect relation is a kind of because of relation. Answers are contingent whereas effects of causes are in some sense necessary. The because of relation that is relevant to answering a request has to do with intention or purpose. In some cases, it seems that it is not necessary for the request to come before the answer.

If a father knows that his daughter will come home and ask for a peanut butter sandwich, he can make the sandwich ahead of time. There is some sense in which he is responding to her request, even if he has not yet been asked. If the relation between a request and an answer is not necessarily a temporal one, then a timeless God can answer prayer. He hears all our prayers in his one timeless conscious act and in that same conscious act, he wills the answers to our various requests.

Perhaps the effects of God's actions are located successively in time but his acting is not. In one eternal act he wills the speaking to Moses at one time and the parting of the sea at another. So Moses hears God speaking from the bush at one time and much later Moses sees God part the sea. But in God's life and consciousness, these actions are not sequential. He wills timelessly both the speaking and the parting.

The sequence of the effects of God's timeless will does not imply that God's acts themselves are temporal. Although God's knowledge of the future is thought by many to be a strong support for divine timelessness, many philosophers think that God's knowledge of the present strongly supports his temporality.

If God knows everything, he must know what day it is today. If God is timeless, so the argument goes, he cannot know what day it is today. Therefore, he must be temporal. This argument is put forward in various ways by Craig, a, b; DeWeese, ; Hasker, ; Kretzmann, ; Padgett, , and Wolterstorff, To get at the claim that a timeless God cannot know what day it is, we can start with the facts that a timeless God cannot change and that God knows everything it is possible to know. But if God knows that today is December 13, , tomorrow he will know something else.

He will know that yesterday it was December 13, and that today is December 14, So God must know different things at different times. If the contents of God's knowledge changes, he changes. If he changes, he is temporal and not timeless. The quick answer to this concern is to deny that God knows something different at different times.

First, it is obvious that someone who holds that God is timeless does not think that God knows things at times at all. God's knowings are not temporally located even if what he knows is temporally located. It is not true, it will be insisted, that God knows something today. He knows things about today but he knows these things timelessly. God knows that today is December 13 in that he knows that the day I refer to when I use the word "today" in writing this introduction is December When we raise the question again tomorrow "Can a timeless God know what day it is today?

Temporal indexical terms such as "today," "tomorrow," and "now" refer to different temporal locations with different uses. In this way they are similar to terms such as "here," "you," and "me. Since indexical terms may refer to different items with different uses, we can make such sentences more clear by replacing the indexical term with a term whose reference is fixed. The sentence, "I am now typing this sentence" can be clarified by replacing the indexical terms with other terms that make the indexicals explicit.

For example, "I type this sentence at In the same way, "I am now writing here" can be clarified as "Ganssle writes on December 13, at Furthermore, the content of his knowledge does not need to change day to day. The proposition expressed by a non-indexical sentence is true timelessly or everlastingly if it is true at all. The proposition expressed by the sentence, "Ganssle types this sentence at God can know these things and be changeless. He can, therefore, be timeless.

There are many philosophers who reject this quick answer on the grounds that God can know all of the non-indexical propositions and still not know what is happening now. This kind of objection raises the second approach to the question of a timeless God's knowledge of the present. This approach is not through change but through omniscience. I can know that you type a sentence at some date call the date, t 1 without knowing whether or not you are typing the sentence now. I might fail to know that t 1 is now.

A timeless God can know all propositions expressed by sentences of the form "event e occurs at t n. In order for God to be omniscient, he must know all propositions. If some sentences are essentially indexical if they do not express the same propositions as sentences of the form "event e occurs at t n " , he cannot know them.

If a timeless God cannot know this kind of proposition, he is not omniscient. There have been two basic kinds of responses to this line of argument. The first is to deny that there are propositions that are irreducibly indexical in this way. In knowing every proposition of the form "event e occurs at t n ," God knows every proposition about events. This response is, in effect, a defense of the quick answer given above. While this position has its adherents, it involves a commitment to the B-theory of time.

The B-theory of time also known as the tenseless theory or the stasis theory entails the claim that the most fundamental features of time are the relations of "before," "after," and "simultaneous with. The temporal now is not an objective feature of reality but is a feature of our experience of reality. If the B-theory of time is true, this objection to divine timelessness is undermined. Those who think that there are propositions about events that cannot be reduced to propositions of the form "event e occurs at t n ," hold the A-theory of time or tensed or process theory.

The A-theory claims that there is an objective temporal now. This now is not a feature only of our subjective experience of reality but it is a piece of the furniture of the universe. Another way to explain this is that even if there were no temporal minds, the property of occurring now would be exemplified by some events and not others. There would be facts about what is happening now. The fundamental temporal properties are the tensed properties.

So events objectively are past, present or future. They are not past, present or future only in virtue of their relation to other events.

Eternity in Christian Thought

The distinction between the A-theory and the B-theory of time was first articulated by J. McTaggart; see McTaggart, There are different versions of the A-theory and different versions of the B-theory. It is not for this essay to canvass all of these versions or to weigh the evidence for or against any of them. Suffice it to say that the A-theory is held more commonly than the B-theory. If the claim that all propositions about events can be reduced to propositions of the form "event e occurs at tn" entails a controversial theory of time, it will not be as successful a defense as many would like.

This consideration, to be sure, does not mean that it might not be the correct response, but the burden of defending it is greater accordingly. Another sort of response to the claim that divine omniscience requires that God is temporal is to embrace the conclusion of the argument and to hold that God is not propositionally omniscient even if he is factually omniscient. In other words, God knows every fact but there are some propositions that can be known only by minds that are located indexically. God is not lacking any fact.

His access to each fact, though, is not indexical Wierenga, , He knows the same fact I know when I think "I am writing here today. God knows the fact through the non-indexical proposition "Ganssle writes in Panera on December 13, First of all we have to adjust how we describe God's omniscience. We cannot describe it in terms of God's knowing every proposition. It is not true, on this view, that God knows every proposition. God knows every fact. One way to object to this view is to deny that propositions expressed by indexical and non- indexical sentences refer to or assert the same fact.

To take this road is to hold that some facts are essentially indexical rather than just that some sentences or propositions are. This objection does not seem too plausible because of stories like the following. Suppose you assert to me truly "You are in the kitchen," and I assert to you also truly , "I am in the kitchen. What makes both of these assertions true is one and the same fact; the fact consisting in a particular person Ganssle being in a particular place the kitchen.

My knowledge of this fact is mediated through a proposition that is expressed by sentences using the indexical "I" and your knowledge is mediated through propositions expressed by sentences using "you. Our knowledge of facts is conditioned by our indexical location. That is, we know them the way we do in virtue of our personal, spatial and temporal coordinates. A third response is possible. This response can be combined with the second and that is to deny that God's knowledge is mediated by propositions at all.

William Alston has argued that God knows what he knows without having any beliefs. God's knowledge is constituted instead by direct awareness of the facts involved. This view entails that God's omniscience is not to be cashed out in terms of propositions. Furthermore, if God's knowledge of a fact consists in the presence of that fact to God's consciousness, it may be that this presence does not affect God intrinsically.

If this is the case, God can be aware of different facts in their different temporal locations without himself changing. Whether a strategy such as this one will succeed is an open question Alston ; Ganssle , , c. Many philosophers who argue for divine temporality structure their arguments as follows: If God is timeless, the B-theory of time must be true. But the B-theory of time is false. Therefore, God is not timeless. Philosophers who defend divine timelessness, then, take one of two tacks.

Either they embrace the first premise and hold to the B-theory of time Helm , ; Rogers or they argue against the second premise. God can be timeless even if the A-theory of time is true. In this case, they try to show that a timeless God can know tensed facts without changing himself. Some advocates of timelessness will try to reconcile their view with the A-theory whether or not it is the theory of time they hold. Since the A-theory is the more widely held, showing God's timelessness to be compatible with it helps strengthen the overall case for timelessness.

Alan Padgett and Gary DeWeese Padgett , ; DeWeese , have each argued that God is not in physical time although he is everlastingly temporal. God's time is metaphysical time. Padgett and DeWeese, as is to be expected, emphasize different things in the details. For example, Padgett allows for the coherence of a timeless God while DeWeese would endorse the view that any timeless entity is causally inert.

No person, then, can be timeless. Only abstract objects such as numbers and properties can exist outside time. Nevertheless, their positions are similar enough to treat them together. The claim that God is "relatively timeless" or "omnitemporal" allows its proponents to endorse some of the criticisms of divine timelessness and, at the same time, affirm some of the arguments for timelessness.

Each affirms the argument that God can be timeless only if the B-theory of time is true and that the B-theory is false. They also can hold that God's life cannot be contained in the measured moments of physical time. They each also affirm that God created time physical time as he created the physical universe.

It is with these latter claims that they make the distinction between physical and metaphysical time. Physical time is metric time. In other words, it is time that has an intrinsic metric due to regularities in the physical universe. Events such as the earth revolving around the sun are regular enough to mark off units of time. Metaphysical time involves no metric or measured temporal intervals. God, in himself, is immune from temporal measure. These temporal items depend upon the physical measure of time. This measure is a function of the regular processes that follow physical laws.

Since God is not subject to the laws of nature, he is not subject to measured time. He does experience a temporal now, somewhat as we do, but his intrinsic experience is not measured by regular, law-like intervals. He experiences temporal succession, but this succession is that of the progression of his own consciousness and actions rather than that of any external constraints. Now that God has created a universe that unfolds according to regular laws, there is a metric within created time.

So while God's now coincides with the now of physical time, the measured intervals do not belong to his divine life. These positions combine some of the strengths both of the temporalist with strengths of the timelessness position. The challenge might consist in finding a stable middle ground between timelessness and temporality. When metaphysical time is described as being without metric and without law-like intervals, and perhaps even that God does not change before physical time is created, it becomes more difficult to see the difference between this position and timelessness.

The main difference is that on this view, God remains temporal and capable of change even when no change happens in the divine life for example, before creation. On the other hand, when the co-location of God's experience of his now and the now of physical time is emphasized, the distinction between the two becomes more difficult to see. William Lane Craig, who holds a similar position, identifies God's time with the absolute time that was posited by Newton Craig a, b, With this notion in place, one can see that physical time is that to which the Special Theory of Relativity applies.

Craig and others insist that if relativity theory is interpreted along neo-Lorentzian lines rather than along the lines recommended by Einstein, there is room for a privileged reference frame and, therefore, a cosmic time Craig But this cosmic or "absolute" time may still apply only to this universe and not to God. William Lane Craig's own position includes another variation. He holds that God is temporal in that he is within metaphysical time. This feature of God's life is due to the creation of time.

Once God created the universe, he became temporal. Prior to creation, God was timeless. Of course, it is not right to say "prior to creation" in any literal sense. The way Craig describes his view is that God without creation is timeless; God with creation is temporal. If God has shifted his eternal position in this way, then some of the arguments against timelessness or against temporality will have to be rejected.

For example, God in his timeless state is omniscient. He is not lacking any knowledge at all. God must know, in his timeless state, that I am typing now. If God without creation can know that I am typing now, then it seems that a timeless God with creation can know that I am typing now. Therefore, God's timelessness is not incompatible with the A-theory of time Hasker Craig's response is that until the universe is created, there is no time and so all tensed propositions are false.

What God, in his timeless state without creation knows is the tenseless proposition "Ganssle types on December 14, In order to be omniscient once time exists, God must also know that I type now. The challenge with this response is that it appears to endorse some of the strategies to make the B-theory work. Remember the A-theory of time is the view that the most fundamental things about time are the locations of past, present and future. The B-theory holds that the most fundamental aspects of time are the relations before, after, and simultaneous with. On Craig's view, it is hard to argue that the A-locations are more fundamental than the B-relations when there can be facts of the B-sort that have no A-locations.

Without creation, it is a fact that I type this sentence on December 14, Once time is created, there are further facts such as whether I type it now, or have already done so.

2. Methodology

The fact that I type it on December 14 seems to be more fundamental than the facts that come into existence when time is created. Craig's position raises another interesting question. Is it possible for a timeless being to become temporal or for a temporal being to become timeless? The philosophers whose views have been discussed will disagree about the answer to this question. Stump and Kretzmann, for example, would not think such a change possible. Their view of divine timelessness is deeply connected with divine simplicity which, in turn, is seen to be part of God's essential nature.

DeWeese also would not allow for this sort of change since no timeless being can be a person or stand in any causal relations on his view. Craig thinks that it is possible. Questions about God's relation to time involve many of the most perplexing topics in metaphysics. These include the nature of the fundamental structures of the universe as well as the nature of God's own life.

It is not surprising that the questions are still open even after over two millennia of careful inquiry. While philosophers often come to conclusions that are reasonably settled in their mind, they are wise to hold such conclusions with an open hand. God and Time Any theistic view of the world includes some notion of how God is related to the structures of the universe, including space and time. Timelessness as Duration Leftow: Timelessness as Quasi-Temporal Eternity Rogers: God as Relatively Timeless Craig: God's Relation to Time -- Preliminaries Theism is the view that there exists a person who is, in significant ways, unlike every other person.

What it Means to be Temporal: A First Pass The majority position today, at least among philosophers, is that God is everlasting but temporal. What it Means to be Timeless: Some In-between Views Some philosophers think that God's relation to time cannot be captured by either of the categories of temporality or timelessness. Methodology Many philosophers of religion think that the Scriptures do not teach definitively any one view concerning God and time Craig a, b; for a differing view, see Padgett, Timelessness as Duration Much of the contemporary discussion of timelessness begins with the article "Eternity" by Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann Stump and Kretzmann, Stump and Kretzmann, For every x and every y, x and y are ET-simultaneous if and only if: Stump and Kretzmann, This version of the principle eliminates the observation difficulties but continues to use the notion of reference frames to describe the timeless and the temporal states.

Timelessness as Quasi-Temporal Eternity Brian Leftow has defended timeless duration in the life of God in another way. Timelessness with No Duration Katherin Rogers , has argued that both Leftow and Stump and Kretzmann have not succeeded in articulating a compelling, or even coherent, notion of divine timeless duration. Arguments for Divine Timelessness Although there are many arguments for the claim that God is timeless, this essay will look at three of the most important.

God's Knowledge of the Future The most prominent argument for divine timelessness is that this position offers a solution to the problem of God's foreknowledge of free actions. The Fullness of God's Being In thinking about God's nature, we notice that whatever God is, he is to the greatest degree possible. God and the Creation of the Universe Another argument for God's timelessness begins with the idea that time itself is contingent.

Divine Temporality The position that God is temporal sometimes strikes the general reader as a position that limits the nature of God. Arguments for Temporality a.

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Divine Action in the World God acts in the world. Divine Knowledge of the Present Although God's knowledge of the future is thought by many to be a strong support for divine timelessness, many philosophers think that God's knowledge of the present strongly supports his temporality. Some In-between Views a. Conclusion Questions about God's relation to time involve many of the most perplexing topics in metaphysics.

The Confessions of St. On Free Choice of the Will. Tractates; The Consolation of Philosophy.

Loeb Classical Library Cambridge: They are the two intellectual instruments that permit our construction of the world. For the musician and rhythmician, the perception of time is the source of all music and all rhythm. A musician must be a rhythmician…. He should refine his sense of rhythm by a more intimate knowledge of experienced duration, by the study of different concepts of time and different rhythmic styles.

With the exception of the brief foray into quantum time that conflicts with much else , the general emphasis is on the relative nature of all these times, largely consistent with the reductionist interpretation indicated before. On one occasion pp. This, Messiaen seems to take it, sufficiently justifies the unmediated turning of experienced time into its opposite, abstract time, and thus the heterogeneous and immeasurable into the homogenous and measurable.

Through this equating of opposites, he is able to move freely between antithetical concepts. Yet the argument given by Bergson does not go as far as this proposal would suggest. Numeration of events is not equivalent to fixing a durational value to each. This reducing of duration to number is evident in a well- known comment Messiaen made on the birth of time and rhythm, which has rightly been seen as problematic.

The first, essential element in music is Rhythm, and Rhythm is first and foremost the change of number and duration. Suppose that there were a single beat in all the universe. One beat; with eternity before it and eternity after it. A before and after. That is the birth of time. Imagine then, almost immediately, a second beat. Since any beat is prolonged by the silence which follows it the second beat will be longer that the first. Another number, another duration. That is the birth of rhythm. Philosophers, however, strongly oppose this and establish them practically as opposites.

Duration here becomes interchangeable with number. Even a relatively simple passage of Messiaen surely presents an information overload if needing to be processed in the manner the composer advocates, let alone something like the Epode to Chronochromie. Everyone can achieve this with patience and study. The musician possesses a mysterious power: A procedure for which the term retrograde may be used evidently has something to do with going backwards.

Such orientation can easily be represented spatially, on paper. Yet the precise relationship of these with time—especially if time is something Messiaen is rather ambiguous in defining—is more complicated. Music is not in time, but rather time is in Music…The rhythmician…has the advantage of moving at will through the past and the future, and of chopping time up by retrograding and permutating it. The idea is undoubtedly attractive.

However, as soon as one begins to question how this music is perceived, either within the terms of reference Messiaen provides or indeed outside these, this notion rapidly becomes more fraught. Most commentators are understandably hesitant to assign too great an audible reality to such techniques, preferring instead to focus on their symbolic qualities. Time is assumed to be an internal part of consciousness in the latter quotation, yet something external in the former. At the very least, it would be more reasonable to suggest that if the perception of time is the source of all music, music is to this extent in time.

However, Messiaen does not actually say this, or clarify why he needs to cite so many different types of time without divulging their relationship. In our subjective, experienced time, everything is evolving, accumulating. It is only a palindrome on paper, or when removed from time by being spatialised in consciousness. It is the same with his claims of chopping up and reordering time. Messiaen proceeds as if each differentiable musical event had its own ordinal position according to a hypothetical regulative diachronic succession, which remains with the recurrence of this event, even when this succession is reordered.

The only real means for determining such a referential order is by allotting a numerical order to the musical events in the score and following their manipulations. This chops up time in a symbolic way, but at such an abstracted level that it has more or less nothing to do with time as most of us understand it, and certainly not how and as we experience it. How the listener can be attacked, let alone convinced by these procedures, remains unclear.

Essentially, despite professing his allegiance to Bergson, the reality of the internal experience of time and its relative, qualitative nature both subjectively and across nature , Messiaen appears to reduce time and duration here to no more than a spatialised quantum, an abstract pattern of semiotic relationships on paper.

Many of these features make their effect in conjunction; for instance, the freedom from metre, functional harmony and thematic development all contribute to downplaying the sense of temporal directionality obtained in previous Western music through the fusion of these different parameters. By spatialising in a mental conception events that may be played in diachronic time, a synoptic view of the music is obtained in which all events are rendered synchronic, to the extent that they are equally present to the imagination, in which connections can be formed based on criteria other than temporal succession, and which therefore to this extent also lies outside time.

For the philosopher J.

• Chapter 4: Eternity as the Fullness of Time?
• God and Time.
• The Medium (Emily Chambers Spirit Medium Book 1).
• Spitfire Ace of Aces: The Wartime Story of Johnnie Johnson.
• Eternity in Christian Thought (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)!

This thesis remains controversial; however, despite over a century of debate, it has not been satisfactorily refuted. From this statement, if something is not to do with time, it is to this extent not music. The answer is not necessarily so: But for Messiaen, the existence of properties belonging to an essentially temporal object that demonstrate a freedom from being tied to concepts of before and after might just constitute the eternity in which he believes. Is not the composer-rhythmician a little demiurge, with total control over his work that is his creation, his microcosm, his child, his object?

He knows in advance all the pasts and futures, which are all simultaneously present to his consciousness, is able to transform the present so that it grasps the past or future, and rearrange before and after. But by implication, the listener without recourse to the score is often caught in time in the same manner as humans.

Much of the problem is merely due to the sheer diversity of sources he draws on, which are inevitably contradictory. A more sceptical view, however, can easily be imagined. The other problem is the inherent difficulty one encounters in attempting to understand time and eternity.

Writing about music and time holds potential dangers, most obviously that this relationship may well not be capable of sufficient formulation in words; therein lies one of the attractions of music. Yet any separation of musical meaning into a purely musical essence and an accidental surrounding discourse is nonetheless problematic, and the lengths to which Messiaen goes in order to explain his music in words especially in his marshalling of philosophy, theology and science into his service suggest his own ambivalence on this issue.

Claude Samuel, Olivier Messiaen: Conversations with Claude Samuel, trans. Cornell University Press, , Oxford University Press, , ]. Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols. Princeton University Press, , I: Leduc, , A quotation from the geologist Pierre Termier on p. Florian Cajori, 2 vols. University of California Press, , 1: Music and Colour, Juilliard, , 64, Griffiths, Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time, Siglind Bruhn New York: Garland, , cf.

Endless repetition of temporal cycles is sempiternity, not atemporal eternity; a finite fragment of the sempiternal is just time. Aristotle, On the Heavens, II. On the Heavens, I. Leduc, , 1: The unspecified assumptions concerning the perceptual experience necessary for this statement to be true will be explored in the following section of this paper. Recent development of metaphor theory would suggest that metaphorical description is indeed an intrinsic part of all language use. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I Also see I