Lubos Rojka Web Site

List:

4. ROJKA, L.: Ako sa vyjadrovat rozumne a zmysluplne : Uvedenie do filozofickej metodológie. Bratislava : Dobrá kniha, 2009. 75 s. ISBN 978-80-7141-643-2

4. ROJKA, L.: The Eternity of God : Comparative Study of Bernard Lonergan and Richard Swinburne. Saarbrücken, Deutschland : VDM, 2009, 301s. ISBN 978-3-639-12807-9

3. BLAZEK, M., DURCEK, K. a ROJKA, L.: Filozofický a fyzikálny pohlad na vesmír. Bratislava : Typi Universitatis Tyrnaviensis; VEDA, 2006. 316 s. + xxxviii s. ISBN 80-8082-079-1; ISBN 80-224-0929-4

2. ROJKA, L.: Philosophical Methodology. Filozoficka metodologia. Bratislava, 2006, 51s. ISBN 80–7141–536–7

1. ROJKA, L.: The Eternity of God. Trnava : Dobrá kniha, Február 2005, 388 p. ISBN 80-7141-484

Abstracts:

THE ETERNITY OF GOD
Comparative Study of Bernard Lonergan, S.J. and Richard Swinburne
Abstract

Lubos Rojka SJ

Bernard Lonergan argues that God should be postulated in an explanatory context as absolutely timeless, because the most perfect understanding cannot exist as a sequence of acts. Different acts imply some unexplained facts, and thus limitations on the intelligibility of the primary being. If the primary being were not completely intelligible, the divine understanding would be restricted. Furthermore, given Lonergan’s concept of time, it is logically contradictory to postulate God as existing in time.
Richard Swinburne argues that God should be postulated as temporal (everlasting), because such a theistic explanation is meaningful, coherent, and it has greater explanatory power in comparison with other theistic theories. Swinburne is not able to see any meaning in the concept of a timeless God, and he argues that explanations using analogies with a temporal ‘instant’ or a kind of timeless ‘duration’ or ‘period’ are incoherent.
Even though Lonergan’s concept of God as unrestricted act of understanding seems to be meaningful, his affirmation of the timelessness of God does not seem to be sufficiently well justified for two main reasons. First, on Swinburne’s definition of time, the temporal existence of a perfect being does not seem to imply any unintelligible imperfection. The temporal nature of God can be explained by the divine choice to create temporal being, and his choice can be explained by good reasons for creating the universe. Second, Lonergan refuses Swinburne’s time as an illusion, but it is only with Swinburne’s concept of time that Lonergan’s God can really be said to be ‘time-less.’ Since the evidence of cosmic background radiation show that there is a preferred reference frame, all the temporal intervals could be synchronized in a temporal divine understanding. Swinburne’s explanation of the relation between an everlasting God and temporal creatures seems to display more explanatory power, and it makes the conception of God conceivable in ordinary language. Based on Swinburne’s criteria of explanatory power and simplicity as evidence of truth, Swinburne’s theory is more probably true.

Contents

I: Bernard Lonergan, S.J.

1. Preliminary Epistemic Clarifications
1.1. Patterns of Experience
1.2. Common Sense and Explanatory Theories
1.3. Heuristic Structures of Explanatory Inquiry
1.3.1. Classical Heuristic Structures
1.3.2. Statistical Heuristic Structures
Statistical vs. Classical
The Canons of Empirical Method
1.3.3. Genetic Heuristic Structures
1.3.4. Dialectical Heuristic Structures
1.4. Cognitive Foundation of Transcendent Knowledge

2. Generic World-Explanation and metaphysics of the proportionate being

2.1. Concrete Intelligibility of Empirical Reality
2.1.1. Emergent Probability
2.1.2. Systematic and Non-Systematic Processes
2.1.3. Complex systems
Essence of Emergence
Causal Powers
2.1.4. Generalized Emergent Probability
2.2. Metaphysics of Proportionate Being

3. Metaphysics of the Transcendent Being
3.1. The Notion and Definition of Being
3.2. The Idea of Being
3.3. The Existence of the Transcendent Being
3.4. The Notion of God
3.5. The Affirmation of the Existence of God

4. Time and Eternity
4.1. Descriptive and Explanatory Accounts of Space and Time
Descriptive Space and Time
Explanatory Space and Time
Special Theory of Relativity
4.2. Concrete Intelligibility of Space and Time
4.3. The Meaning of Eternity
Knowledge of the Future

II: Richard Swinburne

5. Epistemic Justification and Knowledge
5.1. Belief and Probability
5.2. Logical Probability of Explanation
Criteria of Upward Inference
5.3. Basicality of Beliefs
5.4. Synchronic and Diachronic Justification
5.5. The Nature and Value of Human Knowledge

6. Religious Language and the Concept of God
6.1. The Meaning of Theological Words and Sentences
The Meaning of Theological Words
6.2. The Theistic Concept of God
Omnipresent Person
Free Creator of the Universe
Omnipotence
Omniscience

7. Theistic Explanation of the Universe and the Arguments for the Existence of God
7.1. The Nature of Theistic Explanation
Justification of a Person Explanation
Bayes’s Theorem
7.2. The Arguments for the Existence of God

8. God and Time
8.1. The Concept of Time
Topology of Time
Time-Measurement
8.2. The Eternity of God
Immutability
Incoherence of the Concept of Timeless Eternity

III: Comparisons

9. EXPLANATORY KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF
9.1. Knowledge and Belief
The Value of a (Diachronic) Justification of the Eternity of God
9.2 The Nature of Theological Explanation
Explanations of Philosophical Theology
Complete Explanation

10. THE NOTION OF TIME
10.1. The Structure of the World-Order
10.2. Philosophical Theories of Time
Tensed Theories of Time
Tensless Theories of Time
The Mind-Dependence of Becoming
10.3. The Time-Theories of Bernard Lonergan and Richard Swinburne

11. THE ETERNITY OF GOD
11.1. The Concept of God
Perfection of a Timeless Life
Personal Consciousness
11.2. The Possibility of a Complete Explanation
The Arguments for the Existence of God
11.3. The Relation Between Temporal and Timeless Being

CONCLUSION