God, Eternity, and Time

"God is eternal" is a standard belief of all theistic religions. But what does it mean? If, on the one hand, "eternal" means timeless, how can God hear the prayers of the faithful at some point of time? And how can a timeless God act in order to answer the prayers? If God knows what I will do tomorrow from all eternity, how can I be free to choose what to do? If, on the other hand, "eternal" means everlasting, does that not jeopardize divine majesty? How can everlastingness be reconciled with the traditional doctrines of divine simplicity and perfection? An outstanding group of American, UK, German, Austrian, and Swiss philosophers and theologians discuss the problem of God's relation to time. Their contributions range from analyzing and defending classical conceptions of eternity (Boethius's and Aquinas's) to vindicating everlastingness accounts, and from the foreknowledge problem to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. This book tackles philosophical questions that are of utmost importance for Systematic Theology. Its highest aim is to deepen our understanding of religious faith by surveying its relations to one of the most fundamental aspects of reality: time.

Christian Tapp holds degrees in Catholic Theology, Mathematics, History of Science and Philosophy (the two latter ones doctoral degrees). He started his career as a Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at Göttingen Philosophical Institute, spent a year as a postdoc at CMU Pittsburgh Philosophy Dept. and two years at the Institute for Christian Philosophy of Innsbruck University (Austria). Since August 2008 he is Juniorprofessor (Assistant Professor equiv.) for interdisciplinary questions of Philosophy and Theology, and Head of the research group "Infinitas Dei" at the Faculty for Catholic Theology of Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany). In 2009 he became a member of the Junges Kolleg of the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Edmund Runggaldier SJ studied Philosophy at a Jesuit Faculty near Munich (Germany) and Theology at Innsbruck University (Austria). In 1977 he received his Ph.D. from Oxford University supervised by Alfred J. Ayer. He started his career the same year at Innsbruck University's Institute for Christian Philosophy, where he received his Habilitation in 1983 and became full professor in 1990. 1993-1995 Dean of the Theological Faculty in Innsbruck; Visiting Scholar at Notre Dame and Loyola University, Chicago (USA); 2003-2007 adjunct professor of analytical ontology at the Catholic University of Milano (Italy); 2007-2009 Romano Guardini Chair for Catholic Weltanschauung at the Protestant Theological Faculty at Humboldt Universität Berlin (Germany).