The Eternal Present

Western theists agree that God is eternal. But they disagree over what eternality is. This chapter clarifies one view of eternality, that of Boethius, and shows that some aspects of this view are coherent. On Boethius' view, God is not temporal. The chapter first gives a minimal account of what it is to be temporal. This account explains what sets Boethius' view of God's eternality apart from others. It is shown that Boethius' view implies that though God's life is not temporal, there are events in it, and these events have what is typically a temporal property: they occur in a present. The chapter argues that these are coherent claims.