ABSTRACT
The idea that heaven would be unbearably tedious may seem more the preserve of comedians and popular authors than the subject of serious theological reflection. In this chapter, the author argues that those ancient theologians were right to take this problem seriously, but they failed to give a satisfactory solution to it. He briefly summarizes the Boredom Argument, as articulated by Bernard Williams, before going on to examine the major theological response to the Boredom Argument, which the author call the Infinity Defence. The fallacy rests on the implicit assumption that any action with an object that has property X must itself have property X. Although adverbial infinity was fashionable in some theological circles in the early thirteenth century, it had fallen from favour by the middle of that century. The Boredom Argument is a much more serious threat to Christian theology, and to corresponding accounts of the Christian spiritual life, than is normally recognized.
