Being Eternal

[.InshAllah.]

I thought this was nice. From Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy.

Eternity is the complete possession all at once of illimitable life. This becomes clearer by comparison with temporal things. For whatever lives in time proceeds as something present from the past into the future, and there is nothing placed in time that can embrace the whole extent of its life equally. Indeed, on the contrary, it does not yet grasp tomorrow but yesterday it has already lost, and even in the life of today you live no more fully than in a mobile, transitory moment... (A temporal thing's) life may be infinitely long, but it does not embrace its whole extent simultaneously... Therefore, whatever includes and possesses the whole fullness of illimitable life at once and is such that nothing future is absent from it and nothing past has flowed away, this is rightly judged to be eternal, and of this it is necessary both that being in full possession of itself it be always present to itself and that it have the infinity of mobile time present to it.

[eThErEaL]

I thought this was nice. From Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy.

Mashallah...

[.InshAllah.]

http://www.closertotruth.com/video/Is-God-Temporal-or-Timeless-Eleonore-Stump-/1983

[Free_Spirit]

Thanks for that .InshAllah., I've been looking into the nature of time recently, so this was good to read.

 

 

The Imams were very clear that Allah exists outside of time. How can we reconcile this with the Quran, which seems to portray Allah to exist in time? For example, interacting with Prophets, creating the universe in 6 days, etc.

 

 

Also, regarding time, is this not a contradiction in the Quran...

 

“He arranges the affair from the heaven to the earth; then shall it ascend to Him in a Day the measure of which is a thousand years of what you count.” (32:5)

 

“The angels and the spirit will ascend to Him during a Day the extent of which is fifty thousand years.” (70:4)

 

“… a day with your Lord is like a thousand years of those which you count.” (22:47).

 

 

From the context of these verses, it seems to me they are all a reference to the Day of Judgement. So is the Day of Judgement 1,000 years or 50,000 years?

[.InshAllah.]

I think that we should distinguish between our perspective of God's actions as temporal beings on the one hand, and God's perspective on the other.  From our perspective God does X on one day and Y on another.  From God's perspective it is all done in the eternal ''now''.

 

Re Day of Judgement verses:  I may say ''give me a minute'' on one occasion and ''give me a second'' on another, yet mean exactly the same thing each time, which is ''give me a short period of time''.  I dont mean to be taken literally.  Probably something similar applies to the verses you mention.