earl40
Puritan Board Professor
The following is a fellow that insists God is "in time" and "not outside" of time. (edited for brevity sake) The bolded part is the main contention I am trying to refute......
The post below
"To define time the first thing we have to do if we're going to start determining our (and God's) relationship to it. Time is simply the term that we give to things happening in a sequence. Something happening means there was a before and an after. Action requires some kind of "time"--otherwise you just have stasis.
An even more interesting question to me is, what relationship does God have to time? I find most of the common explanations unsatisfying and unbiblical. The idea that God is merely a stasis and that He exists "outside of time" in the sense that "every moment is an eternal 'now' to Him" is patently unbiblical and incoherent. Of course, there's no change in God's essence, but it's quite biblically clear that there was a....time (unless someone has a better word for it)...before God had created and after He had created. In other words, "time" is not merely some created thing that either could exist or couldn't. If God acts--if He actually does anything--then there is a "before" He does it and an "after"--in other words, time.
Of course, God is "outside of time" if what we mean by that is that He has no beginning and no end, and is not acted upon nor experiences decay. But He's not outside of "time" if time is merely a way of measuring action. God acts. He does things. Yes, He controls time. There is not some force called "time" that is prior to or above Him. But we don't need to be hyper-concerned about keeping him "outside of time" if we conceive of time as simply "God acting"--which I think is what it is. In that case, time, like logic, is simply part of His nature."
The post below
"To define time the first thing we have to do if we're going to start determining our (and God's) relationship to it. Time is simply the term that we give to things happening in a sequence. Something happening means there was a before and an after. Action requires some kind of "time"--otherwise you just have stasis.
An even more interesting question to me is, what relationship does God have to time? I find most of the common explanations unsatisfying and unbiblical. The idea that God is merely a stasis and that He exists "outside of time" in the sense that "every moment is an eternal 'now' to Him" is patently unbiblical and incoherent. Of course, there's no change in God's essence, but it's quite biblically clear that there was a....time (unless someone has a better word for it)...before God had created and after He had created. In other words, "time" is not merely some created thing that either could exist or couldn't. If God acts--if He actually does anything--then there is a "before" He does it and an "after"--in other words, time.
Of course, God is "outside of time" if what we mean by that is that He has no beginning and no end, and is not acted upon nor experiences decay. But He's not outside of "time" if time is merely a way of measuring action. God acts. He does things. Yes, He controls time. There is not some force called "time" that is prior to or above Him. But we don't need to be hyper-concerned about keeping him "outside of time" if we conceive of time as simply "God acting"--which I think is what it is. In that case, time, like logic, is simply part of His nature."