According to classical theism, God is timeless. In Reformed circles, a modern proponent is Paul Helm, who's presented a detailed model of divine timelessness. There are many permutations to that issue in terms of hermeneutics and theological method:
1. W. L. Craig prooftexts divine timelessness from 1 Cor 2:7, 2 Tim 1:9; Tit 1:2-3, & Jude 25. But that runs the risk of infusing those passages with a more technical sense than they may intend or imply. There's the danger of posing more specialized questions than they were meant to answer.
3. Conversely, open theists have their own prooftexts for divine temporality. And it's true that Scripture frequently depicts God in temporal terms. If, however, we take all biblical depictions of God at face value, then Yahweh resembles a Zeus-like deity: impulsive, petulant, blindsided by events. A pagan concept of God.
Traditionally, Christian theologians appeal to divine accommodation and anthropomorphism. However, it might be objected that that's rationalistic face-saving maneuver, the way some Greek philosophers allegorize Homer. A filter that's superimposed on Scripture in spite of Scripture. And indeed, some theologians are too cavalier in the way they automatically translate biblical depictions into their philosophical categories. That said, the comparison with Homer is inapt:
i) If humans are embodied, timebound agents while God exists outside of time and space, then it may be necessary for God to relate to us on our own terms, as if he's a physical, temporal being. So the biblical depictions are consistent with both positions. Even assuming that God is not in time and space, if that's what it means to be a human creature, and God wants to reveal himself to us, then he will adapt to that medium.
ii) There's a genre distinction. The temporalist prooftexts typically occur in narrative and poetic passages. On the other hand, didactic literature like the NT epistles ascribe transcendent attributes to God. So that supplies a basis of comparison.
Furthermore, there are passages that differentiate God's role-playing from his ulterior intentions (e.g. Exo 4:21; 7:3-5). So there are clues within Scripture itself that God sometimes resorts to playacting–in much the same way parents relate to little kids. And given the infinite metaphysical distance between God and man, is that not inevitable?
In addition, there are predestinarian passages in which God is implementing a master plan. That's very different from heathen deities. So that supplies another frame of reference. God can't be improvising, winging it, writing, rewriting, erasing, and editing the script as he goes along if everything unfolds according to his eternal blueprint.
Those are two divergent theological paradigms. In terms of harmonization, it's easy to see how an omniscient, transcendent God plays a humanoid role when dealing with humans, whereas it's hard to see how a humanoid God can satisfy the transcendent attributes.
If you jettison inerrancy, you might take the position that different Bible writers have different, irreconcilable conceptions of God. And there are professed evangelicals who reject or belittle inerrancy. But in that event we don't know what God is really like. He disappears behind fallible, contradictory screens. We've lost touch with God.
4. If God is timeless, then he can't directly act in time. I accept that implication.
On that view, theophanies are like holograms. I regard those as audiovisual phenomena that symbolize God's presence.
i) I'd say God indirectly interacts in time by enacting the world. God's relation to time and space is analogous to a video gamer who designs the plot, characters, and setting. The designer is a pervasive, off-stage character, because everything within the game is a reflection of his mind and will. He caused everything to happen, although that allows for cause-and-effect relations within the game as well. A designer can also write himself into his own game by creating a character who represents the designer.
ii) Consider one other illustration. A person from the past sends you a message. He has supernatural foresight. So he plants message in the past for you to discover. He's interacting with you in your own timeframe even though he doesn't occupy your timeframe.
5. All said, I think the argument for divine timelessness is more a matter of philosophical theology than exegetical theology, although exegetical theology supplies some pointers. Reason can supplement revelation. While revelation is the standard and starting-point, God has given us minds. I think a better approach to the question is whether divine temporality abridges certain divine attributes, like aseity, transcendence, omniscience, and immutability.
6. A related issue concerns the alternative. What does divine temporality mean? If God is in time, what is the nature of time that God occupies? If you're a temporalist, what's your preferred theory of time? A-theory? B-theory? Presentism? What's your position on endurantism v. perdurantism? Does God have different temporal parts at different times? Does God exist in stages? Is tomorrow a new phase in God's existence? That's germane to the claim that God has duration. These aren't easy questions to answer, but the claim of divine temporality is a blank unless that can be given specific content.
Depending on which theory of time sponsors divine temporality, that will have differential implications for God. If God is in time, then the nature of God and the nature of time may be intertwined.
For instance, if presentism is your theory of time, and God is in time, does that mean God only exists in the present? If so, that seems to mean God is continuously coming into existence and passing out of existence, as the past ceases to exist and the future becomes present. Presentism also raises questions about the infinite divisibility of time. Does the present instance have any duration, or is that just a boundary condition between past and future? A surface with no width (as it were).
Is God contained him time? Does God have an existence outside of time as well?
On the A-theory, God's existence seems to be incomplete, consisting in temporal parts. The God of 1066 no longer exists since that is past, and the past is now nonexistent. The God of 2066 has yet to exist. That seems incompatible with divine aseity.
7. The B-theory may be a more promising platform for divine temporality. But if human experience is any analogy, that suggests a compartmentalized consciousness. The me of 12/10/1978 isn't conscious of the me of 12/10/2018. Even if I actually exist in both timeframes, I'm only conscious of the timeframes in which I exist. I'm not conscious across different timeframes.
8. What's the relation of time to possible worlds? Is time an exclusive property of actual worlds? If God exists in time, and time is a property of actual worlds rather than possible worlds, then it seems that his existence is confined to a single timeline (unless there's a multiverse).
Conversely, if God exists in every possible world (or we might say every possible world exists in God's mind), then doesn't that mean God exists outside of time? Possible worlds are abstract objects. Timeless objects. David Lewis would demur, but as an atheist, his conceptual resources were limited to physical entities.
Since different timelines can't be synchronized, how can God's duration be identical with different timelines? How can it be the same God in different timelines, if God is actually in time, or time is actually in God (whatever that means)?
The same problem doesn't arise if alternate timelines are abstract objects or alternate timelines are real but God is outside of time.
9. One fringe benefit of divine timeliness is that it sidesteps many thorny questions regarding the nature of time. Whether you're an A-theorist, B-theorist, presentist, endurantist, perdurantist, &c., that's inapplicable to God if he's timeless, so you don't have to take a position on those brain teasers.
If God is timeless, then God is outside of time regardless of what time is like. So the position of the eternalist is simpler in that regard. His position doesn't require him to take a position on a particular theory of time. If God is timeless, then God is not conditioned by time.
It doesn't require a commitment to a particular theory of time to reject a temporalist view of God. For an eternalist can run through all the different theories of time and explain how each one is inconsistent with certain divine attributes or actions. He can discount them one by one. By contrast, a temporalist is staking out a positive commitment.
An eternalist will still have his own issues regarding God's relation to a temporal world, but the issues are different.
If, by contrast, God is in time, then in that respect God is conditioned by time. That's a medium in which God operates. Indeed, if God is essentially temporal, then that's a medium in which he must operate. That's not confined to one particular theory of time. In that case, what time is like becomes far more significant for the temporalist than the eternalist vis-à-vis God.
I'm an eternalist. Given that God both creates and sustains temporal creation, exists temporally in the hypostatic union in the person of the Son and also works miracles, I hold a modified A-theory/B-theory combination. The hypostatic union supports the A-theory. Miracles support a B-theory of sorts. So if God sustains creation as the Scriptures say, then he not only sustains discrete existence at each point, but also sustains ontological and causal unity from point to point which he can modify at will.
ReplyDeleteIn this sense, he is a player in temporal creation in a first-cause sense. However, given the hypostatic union and other temporal manifestations of his existence, there is a sense in which he interacts with on a temporal level, perhaps in a way similar to the hypostatic union. What's interesting here is that Jesus taught that he must go so that the Holy Spirit could come. Since we aren't modalists who might assume that Jesus would need to stop being Jesus and come back in the form of the Holy Spirit, we must assume some other meaning for this. We can speculate that Jesus needed to go so that the church would be forced to struggle to refine its teachings under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We could speculate that the hypostatic union functions on the level of homoousios rather than hypostasis, although it is manifest in the hypostasis. I dare say that if we can characterize the presence of the Holy Spirit as a kind of hypostasis, it looks a bit different to us than Jesus' hypostasis. And all of this is speculation anyway. The Scriptures don't really spell this out.