Space, time, and God

A friend of mine asked me to assess the pros and cons of different positions on God's relation to time and space. This is an intricate debate. It involves exegetical theology, systematic theology, and philosophical theology. It involves theories of time, theories of causality, temporal indexicals, &c. 

i) These positions range along a continuum, from classic Christian theism at one end to open theism, process theism, and Mormonism at the other end. Classic Christian theism regards God as timeless and spaceless. Some mediating positions regard God as spaceless, but temporal. They may regard God as timeless before creation, but temporal after creation. Or they may take the position that as of creation, God occupies time and space alike. The Incarnation is considered a limiting case of the respective positions.

ii) We need to clarify two semantic issues. Is it inconsistent for eternalists to speak of God "preexisting" the world, existing "before" creation, or "prior" to creation? Not necessarily.

It seems to me that "before" is literally a spatial preposition. Although we often use it as a temporal preposition, I think that's figurative. An example of how a concrete expression acquires an abstract sense, the way we use "seeing" for physical perception as well as psychological perception. Likewise, the "pre-" suffix isn't essentially temporal. It can be used to denote timeless relations. Same thing with "prior." And, in any event, we use "pre-" and "prior" as synonyms for "before" for stylistic variation. 

Finally, we can often express the same idea using a different spatial preposition, like God existing "apart" from creation or "outside" of time rather than "before" creation. 

iii) Eternalists refer to divine "accommodation." But that's ambiguous. That could mean two different things:

a) When Bible writers produce a record of God communicating with Abraham (to take one example), they depict a timeless God in temporal terms. 

b) When God communicates with Abraham, he adapts his mode of communication to Abraham's humanity, as a timebound creature with eyes and ears.

The first interpretation is epistemological while the second interpretation is ontological. The first interpretation is about the record of the event, while the second interpretation is about the event itself. The first interpretation assumes that in writing about God, the authors of Scripture must resort to anthropomorphic representations. The second interpretation assumes that God really does communicate this way. That's not just a literary representation. It's not how we speak about God, but how God speaks to us. Yet it's still a case of God coming down to our level. 

iv) A prima facie advantage of the temporalist position is that it allows us to take more of the Biblical depictions of God at face value, viz. dialogue, interaction, reaction, answering prayer. But is that an actual advantage?

a) Open theists take these depictions more literally than classic theists, while Mormons take these depictions more literally than open theists. For that matter, Scripture sometimes depicts God in bestial or inanimate terms. If we took that literally, it would be very pagan, like Ovid's protean gods in the Metamorphosis. Carried to its logical extreme, this hermeneutic goes further than almost anyone wants to take it. 

b) It fails to make allowance for the use of theological models and metaphors. That's a pervasive feature, rather than an isolated feature, of Biblical revelation. God assumes certain roles drawn from human society. Bible writers use various theological metaphors for God.

v) Temporalists think there are philosophical and theological advantages to God's presence in time and space. He knows time and place by direct experience. 

a) But what does that really mean? God isn't present in space the way an embodied agent like a human being is present in space. God doesn't interact with his physical environment the way I manipulate physical objects with my hands. God doesn't move through space the way I walk. God doesn't acquire information the way I perceive the world through my five senses. 

But if God's spatial presence is subject to so many qualifications, it seems increasingly abstract as we shear off one concrete analogue after another. 

b) Likewise, is God present in time the way humans are present in time? But if existing in time is the way God knows what happens, then that rules out divine foreknowledge. Temporalists can stipulate that God exists throughout time, but is that coherent? And even if that's coherent, why think it's true? 

vi) Eternalists have their own prooftexts. The invisibility of God implies his incorporeality. The six-day creation account implies the creation of time with the creation of space. They also cite passages like 1 Cor 2:7, 2 Tim 1:9; Tit 1:2-3, and Jude 25 to show that the beginning of the world was the beginning of time. 

There is the danger of making this biblical data answer a more specific question than it was designed to address. But it does counterbalance facile temporalist prooftexting. 

vii) Some temporalists think God entered time at the moment he created time. But there are problems with that inference:

a) Even if creation generates a new relation, that's an extrinsic relation rather than a real change in God. To take a comparison, if I father a child, that makes my late father a grandfather. My action causes that retroactive effect. But it doesn't change the past. It doesn't change my father. It's merely an extrinsic relation.

b) Moreover, since eternalists think God is timeless, they don't grant that creation even generated a new relation vis-a-vis God. For if God is timeless, then there was no time before God made the world. Since God isn't on or in the timeline, God isn't earlier than the world. The world isn't later than God.

viii) Temporalists think God's presence in time is necessary to secure God's knowledge of tensed facts. But that's a dubious claim.

a) To begin with, God's knowledge of time-indexed facts would be time-indexed knowledge (of time-indexed facts). But in that event, God's knowledge of tensed facts would be severely limited to his own position on the timeline. Since humans live and die at different times, their past, present, and future doesn't generally match his past, present, and future. 

To take a comparison, consider an immortal being who came into existence at the beginning of the world. He coexisted with Abraham. He coexisted with David. But because the "present" shifts, what is past, present, or future for him won't synchronize with other timebound beings. who come on the scene at different points in world history. 

b) Apropos (a), the temporal indexical perspective reflects an inherently first-person rather than third-person perspective. Say I'm writing this on Oct 16, 2013 AM. That's my present, at the moment. What is present to me or for me. In the nature of the case, I can't identify with everyone else's first-person indexical perspective, for a universal perspective would be third-person rather than first-person. So the temporalist explanation fails to solve the problem it posed for itself. 

God doesn't "know" my temporal indexical in the unobjectionable sense that God isn't me. But that's not a limitation on divine omniscience. It would be false for God to know my temporal indexical. For each individual has a unique first-person viewpoint. It would be false for God to see himself as me. 

However, it's possible for God to see himself as if he were me. There's a critical difference between assuming someone's else's viewpoint and having someone else's viewpoint. Between seeing yourself as someone else, and seeing yourself as if you were someone else. 

ix) Temporalists appeal to the Incarnation. However, they also appeal to creation. But if God already entered time at creation, then in what unique sense did he enter time at the Incarnation? On the face of it, there's a tension in the temporalist argument. 

x) Calvinism has a resource over and above classical Christian theism, a resource lacking in freewill theism. If God has planned everything in advance, then whatever happens in time and space is the exemplification of God's extramundane plan. Dialogue, "reaction," interaction, were written into the script before the curtain rises. Those are built-in features. There's nothing incongruous about a timeless predestinarian God dialoguing with Abraham, or answering prayer. 

To take a comparison, it's been said that Alfred Hitchcock filmed his movies in his head before he actually directed them. It was just a logistical question of filming what he imagined. Outwardly depicting his mental picture. He saw it all in his imagination before he had stagehands build sets, before he directed actors, before he shot on location, before the cameras rolled. 

Another example is sculpture. The 3D image that emerges from the marble slab is the result of the sculptor's prior mental image. He didn't see that in the marble. Rather, he chisels out of the marble what he first saw in his own mind. He objectifies his preconception. The statue is a physical projection of a mental image, superimposed on stone. 

Of course, freewill theists resent the idea that we are basically storybook characters come to life. They find that humiliating. But that's the price you pay to be a creature. It's either that or nothing. We are the effects of Someone else's mind.