# God's Relation to Time



## Justified (Mar 15, 2015)

What are you're guys' views on God's relation to time? I guess this would first depend on your philosophy of time-- A or B theory. Do you think that God exists in time after creation, or do you think that divine eternity has to do with timelessness?

I'd be really interested to hear some of the responses/discussions! The one problem I'd have with the timelessness conception is that this entails to me that one must believe in an eternal creation (e.g., Augustine). 

I'm personally undecided on the question, so I'd like your input!


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## aadebayo (Mar 16, 2015)

Time was created by God. The Genesis narrative tells us that


> in the *beginning*, God ...


 The implication is that there was nothing called time, before the 3 first words in Genesis 1:1. I stand to be corrected, but this is my understanding. God does not live in time, He is eternal and infinite, so He is not bound by the things that He has created. Another attribute of God this informs us is His sovereignty.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Mar 16, 2015)

I "debated" a fellow on the topic at a discussion site mainly managed and overrun by open theists as well as many other heterodoxies. I provide the link to the debate below with the caution that rummaging around the site outside of the thread in question below will result in all manner of violations of the second and ninth commandments. Just keep your eyes on the thread below and all will be well.

See:
One on One: AMR and JCWR on the Temporality of God - Theology Online | Christian Forums & More


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## jwright82 (Mar 16, 2015)

Since only we as humans experience time we have no idea what God's relation to time would be outside of his condescension into our world via the covenant.


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## Peairtach (Mar 16, 2015)

God shaped time as well as space during the creation week, including creating day and night on Day One, creating the month through the natural revelation of the moon's revolution round the earth and creating the year through the natural revelation of the earth's revolution round the sun.

The perfectly numbered seven day week, with the Sabbath, was by special revelation. It spoke to Adam about God's rest and the perfect world he would one day enter, and still speaks to us of that.

God is not bound by time, just as He is not bound by space. For Him 1,000 years is as 1 day, and 1 day is as 1,000 years.

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2


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## Cymro (Mar 16, 2015)

If my memory holds true Augustine stated that time is a creature because it was created,
therefore it excludes the creator. Save of course through the Godman coming into time!


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## Jimmy the Greek (Mar 16, 2015)

From Answers in Genesis website:
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Time is actually a created entity. The first verse of the Bible reads: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, emphasis added).

A study of this verse reveals that God created time, space, and matter on the first day of Creation Week. No one of these can have a meaningful existence without the others. God created the space-mass-time universe. Space and matter must exist in time, and time requires space and matter. Time is only meaningful if physical entities exist and events transpire during time.

“In the beginning . . .” is when time began! There was no time before time was created!
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Therefore, God is above (or outside of) time. Everything is eternally present to God.


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## Justified (Mar 16, 2015)

aadebayo said:


> Time was created by God. The Genesis narrative tells us that
> 
> 
> > in the *beginning*, God ...
> ...


Well, obviously before (not in the temporal sense) the space-time universe existed, God did not exist at all in time. Nevertheless, the view of some is that, after God created the universe, God entered into time (but not space); William Lane Craig and many others, for instance, believe this model.

One of the interesting things you have to think about if you hold to divine timelessness (i.e., God _never_ enters into time and always transcends it) is the problem of the Divine Logos and the incarnation. If God is timeless existing out of space, how does it make sense at all to say _before_ the incarnation. If the Logos exists completely out of time, he has for all eternity been joined to the human nature. That seems like a problem to me.


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## Justified (Mar 16, 2015)

Cymro said:


> If my memory holds true Augustine stated that time is a creature because it was created,
> therefore it excludes the creator. Save of course through the Godman coming into time!



Correct, Augustine holds to divine timelessness; to him, God does not at all exist in time. As Paul Helm has suggested, however, a view of divine timelessness seems to imply the need for eternal creation (which Helm himself espouses). Eternal Creation is also the view that Augustine holds (look in the back of his _Confessions_ for reference).


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## Justified (Mar 16, 2015)

Also, do any of you think that divine timelessness requires a B-Theory of time? The more I think about it, the more I'm rather sure that it is a necessary condition for divine timelessness.


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## RamistThomist (Mar 16, 2015)

My problem with the Boethian view (also espoused by C.S. Lewis) is one can't say God knows the future because there is no future. If there is just an eternal present, then it's hard to see how God doesn't get "caught off guard."


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## Justified (Mar 16, 2015)

ReformedReidian said:


> My problem with the Boethian view (also espoused by C.S. Lewis) is one can't say God knows the future because there is no future. If there is just an eternal present, then it's hard to see how God doesn't get "caught off guard."


If you also held to a B-Theory of time, and believed that the creation of the space-time block that is our universe was created according to the decree of God, I don't think God would be caught off guard necessarily; for nothing would happen that was not decreed.


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## Jimmy the Greek (Mar 16, 2015)

I am not sure that God's transcedence and eternality imply that He never enters into time, e.g. the incarnation and His presence in our lives via the Holy Spirit; at least in my mind? But i may not fully understand what was said above.

There is surely a sense of comfort knowing that God, though timeless and eternal, is in time with us right now. But He is not constrained by time since it was part of creation. Thus He is above time. (I am not arguing, merely discussing).


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## Justified (Mar 16, 2015)

Jimmy the Greek said:


> I am not sure that God's transcedence and eternality imply that He never enters into time, e.g. the incarnation and His presence in our lives via the Holy Spirit; at least in my mind? But i may not fully understand what was said above.
> 
> There is surely a sense of comfort knowing that God, though timeless and eternal, is in time with us right now. But He is not constrained by time since it was part of creation. Thus He is above time. (I am not arguing, merely discussing).


If you are using timeless in the sense that God exists outside of time, then you would have a contradiction in saying that God "enters into time."


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## Peairtach (Mar 17, 2015)

He enters time in the Person of the Logos. He experienced and experiences time and space.

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2


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## earl40 (Mar 17, 2015)

Peairtach said:


> He enters time in the Person of the Logos. He experienced and experiences time and space.
> 
> Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2



Indeed. A distinction that is often forgotten.


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## Justified (Mar 17, 2015)

Peairtach said:


> He enters time in the Person of the Logos. He experienced and experiences time and space.
> 
> Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2



True, but in what sense? I don't think you would say that the Logos is _extended_ in space. He enters into the space-time universe by way of the union he has with the divine nature. 

But if you hold to a timeless God (and a B-Theory of time), it seems hard to make sense of the incarnation unless you say that the logos has _always_ been joined to the human nature, since you cannot say (from God's perspective) _before_ or _after_ the incarnation since those are temporal markers, and God isn't in time; everything is an eternal present to him.


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## earl40 (Mar 17, 2015)

Justified said:


> Peairtach said:
> 
> 
> > He enters time in the Person of the Logos. He experienced and experiences time and space.
> ...



We ought to distinguish between the two natures of Jesus without seperating them. We can say what is proper to the person of Jesus about being in time according to His human nature, which is not proper to The Father or Holy Spirit (including the divinity of Jesus) who do not have physical parts and thus are totally still outside time.


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## timmopussycat (Mar 17, 2015)

Another interesting consequence: if God is in some way outside time, does his state of timelessness somehow make it possible to feel human emotions without being affected by them? Certainly after the incarnation, the Son knows well the feeling of human emotions.


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## earl40 (Mar 17, 2015)

timmopussycat said:


> Another interesting consequence: if God is in some way outside time, does his state of timelessness somehow make it possible to feel human emotions without being affected by them? .



No, because to experience feeling, emotions, or passions, is to predicate something that is improper to God Who is immutable.


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## Justified (Mar 17, 2015)

earl40 said:


> Justified said:
> 
> 
> > Peairtach said:
> ...


 I think you're missing the point of what I'm saying. So under the B-Theory of time, imagine all of time as a meter stick. And imagine God as outside of that meter stick. Does it make sense to say God is anywhere in that meter stick? Of course not. However, at some point in that meter stick, the divine Logos takes upon himself human flesh. From the divine perspective, it is all _present_. There is no "time," properly speaking, when the Logos takes on human flesh. And therefore, as the argument goes, the Logos would be eternally bound to the human nature.

The above is the charge that has to be answered if you're going to hold to timelessness after the creation. (No one is arguing that God was a timeless being before creation.) You can bite the bullet and just say that the Logos has eternally been joined to the human nature, yet relative to our experience in time it happened 4-6 BC.

I'm not coming out on either side of God's relation to time, but I don't think I'm willing to commit to the divine timelessness view until I can solve the above puzzle-- if in fact it can be solved.


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## earl40 (Mar 17, 2015)

Justified said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> > Justified said:
> ...



You are correct I am missing your point that I still do not understand your point.  The Son, before the incarnation was outside of time, and did not enter into time (permanently) until He came in the flesh was my point. So far as God seeing time as being only "present" I think this is the point that may be causing my misunderstanding in that I believe time and how God sees it is a measure of creaturly construct which has a past, present, and future to both God and men.


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## Justified (Mar 17, 2015)

earl40 said:


> Justified said:
> 
> 
> > earl40 said:
> ...


There is no "before" if God is outside of time. He is looking at that meter stick, and he sees all of time as present to himself. Saying "before" and other temporal clauses, implies that God exists in time. That is the dilemma. If all is present to God, it doesn't make sense to say _when_ God became incarnate.


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Mar 17, 2015)

Before you can deal with this issue, you need to establish "where" things exist. Everything exists in the mind of God. How then does that affect the way we view the created order? From there you can argue about how those things live and move and have their being in him.


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## Justified (Mar 17, 2015)

C. Matthew McMahon said:


> Before you can deal with this issue, you need to establish "where" things exist. Everything exists in the mind of God. How then does that affect the way we view the created order? From there you can argue about how those things live and move and have their being in him.


Interesting point. You're not implying, though, that we exist as ideas in the mind of God, correct?


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Mar 17, 2015)

How else does the universe exist except as an idea in God's mind? The universe actually exists, but exists in his mind.


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## timmopussycat (Mar 18, 2015)

C. Matthew McMahnon, are you saying only that the universe existed in the mind of God "prior" to "In the beginning" or are you saying that the the universe only exists in the mind of God, even after "in the beginning"?


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## aadebayo (Mar 19, 2015)

timmopussycat said:


> Are you saying only that the universe existed in the mind of God "prior" to "In the beginning" or are you saying that the the universe only exists in the mind of God, even after "in the beginning"?



I believe that the universe existed in God's mind prior to " in the beginning ". This is because God is infinitely all knowing.


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