Ebook: Eternity and Time's Flow

“Neville’s opening claim is simply indisputable, that nothing in ancient mythical cosmology, no matter how fantastic, rivals the sort of sweepingly imaginative cosmological claims issuing from the pens of today’s most prominent theoretical physicists. Neville writes with the same easy, fluent, and (most of all) authoritative command of ideas and of relevant details employed by Hawking, Feynman, and Bohm. The. difference, in Neville’s favor, is that he has acomprehensive graspof the broad philosophical context for the discussion of time, together with a perspective informed by knowledge of major, non-Western contributions toward representing and understanding the problem.” (George R. Lucas, Jr.)

Neville returns eternity to the center of consideration by analyzing the obsessive culture that attempts to get along denying it; and he analyzes the nature of time’s flow itself, the nature of divine eternity, and the subtle problems of personal immortality. He argues that time and eternity constitute one topic and that, therefore, time itself is beyond understanding, beyond personal grasp, and beyond civilized orientation without a proper comprehension of eternity.

Robert Cummings Neville is Dean of the School of Theology and a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Boston University. He was President of the Metaphysical Society of America in 1989, of the American Academy of Religion in 1992, and of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy in 1992. He is the editor of 'New Essays in Metaphysics' and he is the author of 'The Tao and the Daimon: Segments of a Religious Inquiry'; 'The Puritan Smile: A Look Toward Moral Reflection'; 'A Theology Primer'; 'God the Creator: On the Transcendence and Presence of God'; 'Recovery of the Measure: Interpretation and Nature'; 'Reconstruction of Thinking'; 'Behind the Masks of God: An Essay Toward Comparative Theology'; and 'The Highroad Around Modernism', all published by SUNY Press.