CS Lewis on God’s Relation to Time

[JAL]

God is described as uncreated, a spirit

Immaterial spirit? The church father Tertullian didn't believe that nonsense. He believed that God is physical.

Take a harder look at the Greek and Hebrew words that, due to the influence of the pagan philosopher Plato, are today mistranslated as (immaterial) spirit. You can start with this post 422 from an old thread.

 

[JAL]

Sorry I actually missed this post.

You are confusing eternality with intimacy and emotional experience, and experience in general.

Empty fluff. Your (oxymoronic) notion of atemporal conversation fails of any coherence and is therefore sheer assertion contrary to reason. An event that took place for less than one moment of time never happened. Period. THAT is what we, as humans, understand. Deny it all you want - you're not making any sense.

And what is more, you are suggesting that what is incomprehensible is invalid, however, the inscrutable nature of God is attested to in Scripture.

No it's not. A theologian who regards God as incomprehensible should remain forever silent about Him, since it is a patent contradiction to make positive assertions about something we do not understand.

However, I have not read anywhere that Plato suggested God existed outside of time...

Matter is a temporal reality, and Plato is the founder of immaterialism. Ultimately it is his influence that led to the concept of an immaterial reality existing outside of time. Here's a commentary on Plato's forms by the way:

"In addition to being aspatial, forms are also atemporal. They did not come into existence at a particular time and indeed the realm of forms does not have any particular relationship to time."
Plato's Theory of Forms | The Realm of Forms vs. The Physical Realm - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

...and as I stated in the preceding paragraph, I arrived at this conclusion independently, based on John 1. When it states that by Christ all things were made, since spacetime is a thing, quite obviously, I accept that as fact.

That's an interpretation, not a fact. Creation does not necessarily mean ex nihilo.

That being said, just because Plato or someone else you dislike...says something, it does not mean they are automatically wrong.

Of course not. But preachers should be honest in the pulpit. Admit that immaterialism came from Plato, not from Scripture.

Regarding the materiality or immateriality of God, since God created all matter...

That's one possible interpretation, but not mine.

....it follows that logically, God is material through the Incarnation of the Word.

He is the material-immaterial God?

Before that time, before we met Jesus Christ, although it is obvious there were physical interactions with God, these were clearly with either our Lord or the Holy Spirit, and not the Father, who has only ever been heard.

That's one interpretation. Not mine. No one can withstand the Father in the absolute fullness of the (physical) divine Light but anyone can safely behold a shaded view.

In the case of the Holy Spirit, in the New Testament He is seen in the form of a dove and as tongues of fire, so it seems reasonable that the fire which burned but did not consume (it is very much alive and in the courtyard of the Monastery of St. Catharine in Sinai) the bush where Moses encountered God was the Holy Spirit, and likewise the Pillar of Fire, while other Theophanies in the Old Testament point to our Lord.

As Augustine noted, these are all material forms. Anything immaterial is rooted in Platonism, not in Scripture.

If Tertullian actually believed that, it was in error,

Sheer assertion.

...and, while some of his contributions were valued and accepted by the early church, Tertullian did become a Montanist heretic, because he believed that Montanus, a man, was the Paraclete (and if what you are saying is accurate, he may have thought Montanus to be the Holy Spirit, which is…sad). Note this is not an appeal to authority but rather a rejection of an appeal against unqualified authority, since there is some reason, as I just stated, to consider that you might be reading Montanist-influenced doctrines of Tertullian, which were rejected by the Early Church for very good reasons.

Funny you admonish me for ad hominem arguments but seem to stoop here to a quite-similar guilt-by-association tactic: Tertullian's Montanism is false, therefore his immaterialism is false?

I haven't studied his Montanism, but if it is in favor of present-day prophetic revelations, I'm 100% in favor of that much. Make that 200% - the degree of success in the church, in my view, is the prevalence of prophecy and prophethood in the church. Hence our historic languid condition.

 

[JAL]

Oh by the way - regardless of whatever Paraclete-heresy he fell into during later years, Phillip Schaff rated Tertullian as one of the two best defenders of mainstream theology. As I recall, Schaff even considered him an important contributor to the rise of Trinitarianism. He's the first theologian known to use the word Trinity, after all.

 

[The Liturgist]

An event that took place for less than one moment of time never happened. Period.

Actually we have established that the smallest unit of time is the Planck time, which is 10 -43 seconds, scarcely a moment, but even that fails to account for certain conditions that can arise with subatomic particles in which it becomes impossible to say exactly when an event occurred, due to the impossibility of knowing both the momentum and position of a particle with perfect accuracy (wave-particle duality). But all of this is irrelevant in the case of God, who is uniquely omnipotent and, having created time, can do whatever he wants at any time and in all times without restriction.

Funny you admonish me for ad hominem arguments but seem to stoop here to a quite-similar guilt-by-association tactic: Tertullian's Montanism is false, therefore his immaterialism is false?

Appeals to authority are fallacious when the authority is unqualified, which when it comes to Tertullian, is very possibly the case with respects to whether or not God is a spiritual being, given that he thought the Paraclete, which we know to be the Holy Spirit, was Montanus, a man.

Oh by the way - regardless of whatever Paraclete-heresy he fell into during later years, Phillip Schaff rated Tertullian as one of the two best defenders of mainstream theology. As I recall, Schaff even considered him an important contributor to the rise of Trinitarianism. He's the first theologian known to use the word Trinity, after all.

In his early years, Tertullian was indeed a promising theologian, and I am not going to begrudge him that. It makes his fall from grace one of the definitive tragedies of the early church, for no other early church father accomplished anything like what he accomplished before falling into such complete heresy, in the form of Montanism. His heresy was not limited to having been deceived into believing Montanus was the Paraclete, nor schismatically leaving the Christian Church to follow Montanus after the bishops correctly refused to admit Montanus on the basis of Galatians 1:8-9; as I recall he was also the most prominent of the Rigorists, who denied the possibility of forgiveness for sins committed post-Baptism.

For the early Church Fathers, the story of Tertullian was a sad one, and a cautionary tale.

That's an interpretation, not a fact. Creation does not necessarily mean ex nihilo.

Creation ex nihlo is the doctrine of the Christian church. And there is a good reason for it: logically, if God did not create the universe from nothing, then whatever preceded His creation would have a claim on godhood. And also the text of the Gospel of John would be at best, misleading, and at worst, false.

In the case of time, however, we know that God created it, because spacetime either exists or it does not exist. There is no intermediate state of completion wherein God could bring order to some partially extant spacetime and transform it into the fully functional reality of spacetime we now enjoy, because if we get down into the weeds of the science of spacetime it becomes evident that such an act would effectively constitute creating it.

By the way, I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but you are using a debating style which, if intentional, would make it unlikely for me to want to continue to discuss this with you. I am going to assume you are not, but I must ask you, if you wish to discuss this with me, to extend the same common courtesy of civility and mutual fellowship which I have endeavoured to show you, which entails among other things not dismissing the carefully considered views of someone else as “nonsense,” which I would also note as a strategy of debate is unlikely to change my mind.

Indeed some members of this forum have changed my opinion on different matters, and others have influenced my thought in a positive way and opened up my thinking to new possibilities. I would cite @MarkRohfrietsch @ViaCrucis @Philip_B @Der Alte and several other members whose interactions with me have been profoundly edifying.

Matter is a temporal reality, and Plato is the founder of immaterialism. Ultimately it is his influence that led to the concept of an immaterial reality existing outside of time. Here's a commentary on Plato's forms by the way:

"In addition to being aspatial, forms are also atemporal. They did not come into existence at a particular time and indeed the realm of forms does not have any particular relationship to time."

I am well aware of Platonic philosophy regarding forms and the ideal, and I have generally taken a dim view of it, just as I am not very interested in Aristotle’s concept of accident and substance and prefer Eastern Orthodox and Patristic Eucharistic theology to the Scholastic Eucharistic theology of Thomas Aquinas due to the latter relying on the Aristotelian categories. But as I said earlier, none of this has anything at all to do with how I reached my conclusion that God created time. Neither does my belief that God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are beings who transcend existence in this reality, and only God the Son by virtue of His union with humanity through the Theotokos can definitely be said to be material in the same way you or I are material.

Of course not. But preachers should be honest in the pulpit. Admit that immaterialism came from Plato, not from Scripture.

Since Scripture talks about spiritual beings, I cannot do this. For example, the Church recently commemorated the Feast of St. Michael and the Bodiless Powers.

You yourself previously stated you believe there is an intentional mistranslation in something based on Platonic influence - are you suggesting that Scripture, including the Greek manuscripts we have of the New Testament, are unreliable?

I would also note that since the idea God created time is not an official doctrine of the church, but is rather a common interpretation of Scripture and of His eternality, it is not something I have spent much, or indeed any, time preaching about during the brief fifteen minute homilies I grant myself. I am much more interested, in the limited time available, to talk about the scripture lessons we have read from the Lectionary.

 

[The Liturgist]

To get home I'd catch a bus or tram. Brisbane had trams in those days, and the last tram ran in April 1969.

Yeah, its a pity only Melbourne and Adelaide got to keep their trams. Now, due to continued growth of the Melbourne system, the Calcutta system collapsing to the point where it now teeters on the brink of oblivion, and massive cutbacks of the once-expansive networks in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Melbourne trams are actually the largest in the world.

I get the feeling that as far as trains and public transport are concerned, Brisbane and Queensland must feel like, compared to everywhere else except perhaps Canberra, or Tasmania, or the small inhabited part of Western Australia around Perth, that you got something of the short end of the stick.

 

[JAL]

Actually we have established that the smallest unit of time is the Planck time, which is 10 -43 seconds, scarcely a moment, but even that fails to account for certain conditions that can arise with subatomic particles in which it becomes impossible to say exactly when an event occurred, due to the impossibility of knowing both the momentum and position of a particle with perfect accuracy (wave-particle duality). But all of this is irrelevant in the case of God, who is uniquely omnipotent and, having created time, can do whatever he wants at any time and in all times without restriction.

That's like saying He can make 2 +2 = 5 just because He is the omnipotent God. Sorry, if a claim is incoherent to the human mind, such as atemporal conversation, it doesn't count as a real doctrine. Omnipotence isn't the ability to reify the incoherent.

Appeals to authority are fallacious when the authority is unqualified, which when it comes to Tertullian, is very possibly the case with respects to whether or not God is a spiritual being, given that he thought the Paraclete, which we know to be the Holy Spirit, was Montanus, a man.

Matter is all we know for sure - and it is the only reality clearly supported in Scripture. "Use the immaterial Force, Luke!" Any notion of immateriality is NOT something we know for sure, it therefore shifts the burden of proof entirely upon those proposing this apparent fairy-tale. Immaterialism is an extraordinary claim and, as such, calls for extraordinary amounts of corroborating evidence. There is no hard evidence for it. Just Greek philosophy.

Creation ex nihlo is the doctrine of the Christian church. And there is a good reason for it: logically, if God did not create the universe from nothing, then whatever preceded His creation would have a claim on godhood. And also the text of the Gospel of John would be at best, misleading, and at worst, false.

Misleading? Because you are reading the text through the lens of theologians indoctrinated into Plato's immaterialism for 2,000 years. Which erroneous view of God explains why the church can't explain something as simple as the Incarnation after 2,000 years. Or regeneration. Or resolve the Problem of Evil in a THOROUGH and CONVINCING manner. All they can do is speak of incoherent concepts such as creation out of nothing.

Creation ex nihlo is the doctrine of the Christian church. And there is a good reason for it: logically, if God did not create the universe from nothing, then whatever preceded His creation would have a claim on godhood.

So? What difference does that make? There is only one possible authority, ultimately, in ANYONE's life including God: the rule of conscience. Since Yahweh designed our conscience to recognize Him alone as God, we are stuck with that belief and obligation. YOU are addressing a PHILOSOPHICAL concern, namely, "In my ideal concept of God, He alone should have claim to a unique kind of uniqueness". In MY understanding of Yahweh, He is preoccupied with more PRACTICAL concerns. You can read my definition of Yahweh here.

In the case of time, however, we know that God created it, because spacetime either exists or it does not exist. There is no intermediate state of completion wherein God could bring order to some partially extant spacetime and transform it into the fully functional reality of spacetime we now enjoy, because if we get down into the weeds of the science of spacetime it becomes evident that such an act would effectively constitute creating it.

This is immaterial bias. You seem to be saying that:
...(1) An immaterial reality can exist from the getgo.
...(2) A material reality cannot exist from the getgo.
Your metaphysical prejudice is dismissed out of hand. I don't see any real logic to this dichotomy. And bear in mind that I define matter first and foremost as anything tangible - it doesn't have to be arranged in a way identical to the matter of our universe (electrons in orbit around a nucleus). In fact, at the start, it is stationary transitioning into motion. This stationary state is what makes that first motion "the start". The first motion is logically subsequent, not temporally subsequent, to its existence.

Since Scripture talks about spiritual beings...

No it does not. Immaterialism originated in Plato. I'd be surprised if you could fine a Philsophy 101 course that attributes the origin of immaterialism to the Bible (unless it is a course designed by biased Christians).

You yourself previously stated you believe there is an intentional mistranslation in something based on Platonic influence...

Theologians who thought they were smarter than the Bible try to stuff Plato's immaterial spirit into the text. Except where such an effort would fail miserably such as Ex 15:8-10 where the Third Person is clearly identified as the divine Wind/Breath - a physical person. Did you read my post on Wind/Breath?

...are you suggesting that Scripture, including the Greek manuscripts we have of the New Testament, are unreliable?

Of course not.

 

[JAL]

A similar example of the incoherence in mainstream thinking is the atemporally/eternally begotten son. "I begat a son, but this event didn't happen at any point in time. It never actually happened."

This is not to say that the Son was created. Simply picture metamorphic Fire. The Father SHAPED the Son at a particular point in time, in my view. Problem solved. This event - this begetting - did not create the Son, nor brought Him into existence, nor even conferred upon Him cognition - full cognition was already there.

Of course in mainstream thinking God is immutable, and atemporal, hence it is impossible to ascribe any coherent, meaningful connotation to the facticity of a begotten Son.

 

[The Liturgist]

That's like saying He can make 2 +2 = 5 just because He is the omnipotent God.

Forgive me, but that is a strawman argument and I am not prepared to entertain such arguments.

Sorry, if a claim is incoherent to the human mind, such as atemporal conversation, it doesn't count as a real doctrine. Omnipotence isn't the ability to reify the incoherent.

Firstly, as I have stated previously, my views concerning God’s mastery over time are not doctrinal, or to be more precise, dogmatic, but rather are theologoumemnatic, that is to say, belonging to the realm of theological opinions based on an interpretation of the text. However, the text of scripture does clearly say that God created all things and is eternal, so we can assert that to be doctrine.

I also maintain that the position I share with CS Lewis, in addition to being in no respects founded on Platonic philosophy, is one that is strongly indicated by our Lord saying “Before Abraham was, I AM,” and other quotes which indicate that God’s experience of time is not synchronous with the human experience of time, but rather transcends it.

Finally, in response to this paragraph, I would note that whether or not you find a claim incoherent is irrelevant with respect to the nature of God. Scripture affirms that God is utterly transcendent and beyond the limits of human comprehension, and inscrutable in His ways. We do not need to understand the mystery that is the Divine Essence of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in order to offer Him worship as our Creator and Savior.

I would also note that in this specific case, I myself have no difficulty comprehending what I have outlined. I am not sure what part of what I have said you mean when you speak of “atemporal conversation,” so I cannot say whether or not I comprehend that, but what I have written concerning God in this thread, I personally am able to comprehend. However, I do not expect by any means to be able to comprehend God at all times and in all circumstances.

 

[JAL]

The most obvious and telltale incoherence in mainstream thinking is the dogma of divine infinitude. No existing reality can be meaningfully described as infinite since infinity is not a specific number. What would it mean to say that God knows an infinite number of languages? In that case, how many languages does He actually know? Is the number growing daily? There is simply no coherent answer to such questions, if we postulate an infinite number of languages.

This also leads to a couple of other problems:

....(1) True love intervenes to reduce suffering. Infinite love, therefore, spells infinite atonement whence hell would be a logical impossibility even for the devil.

....(2) Can an infinitely powerful God crave more power? No. Fine, no problem there. However, can an infinitely self-sufficient God have cravings of any kind - wants, needs, unfulfilled desires? Here too the obvious answer is No. Therefore He could not WANT to create the world - especially a world of suffering - as a source of pleasure. This leaves the Problem of Evil unresolved - why create a world where suffering is possible?

 

[JAL]

Oh I see we cross-posted.

 

[The Liturgist]

The Father SHAPED the Son at a particular point in time, in my view. Problem solved.

Forgive me, but I am compelled to point out that if, in asserting that, you are claiming there was a time when the Son was not, you are literally professing a belief in Arianism per se, because Arianism is defined by a belief that the Son is not coequal and coeternal with the Father, begotten of the Father before all ages.

Also, we do not confess that the Father “shaped” the Son but that He begat Him.

So, I am hoping you can clarify this and confess these two essential Nicene doctrines so that we can continue our discussion, namely, that there never was a time when the Son was not, and that the Son is begotten and not made.

Also at this time I am compelled to ask you before discussing this matter any further what texts you feel were mistranslated or otherwise corrupted under Platonic influence?

 

[JAL]

Forgive me, but that is a strawman argument and I am not prepared to entertain such arguments.

No it's not. You keep basing a seemingly oxymoronic postulation of "atemporal consciousness" on divine omnipotence. As if to argue that God can do ANYTHING regardless of logical coherence. It's not a strawman to create an analogy illustrating the non-sequitur status of that argumentation.

However, the text of scripture does clearly say that God created all things and is eternal, so we can assert that to be doctrine.

Sheer assertion. It is well known that Hebrews and Greeks can - and have -used the term "create" for creation out of existing material.

I also maintain that the position I share with CS Lewis, in addition to being in no respects founded on Platonic philosophy, is one that is strongly indicated by our Lord saying “Before Abraham was, I AM,” and other quotes which indicate that God’s experience of time is not synchronous with the human experience of time, but rather transcends it.

That's one possible interpretation, not a necessary one.

Finally, in response to this paragraph, I would note that whether or not you find a claim incoherent is irrelevant with respect to the nature of God. Scripture affirms that God is utterly transcendent and beyond the limits of human comprehension, and inscrutable in His ways. We do not need to understand the mystery that is the Divine Essence of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in order to offer Him worship as our Creator and Savior.

You are confusing qualitative with quantitative. I cannot quantitatively appreciate/understand God's love, power, etc. But I do know what power is. I do know what love is. The same is true when I say I understand what a computer is - a flow of electricity among circuits. Qualitatively I understand it just fine - I just don't have memorized every circuit on the motherboard. If we cannot qualitatively understand God - if He is transcendent in THAT sense - we have no hope. For example is His love is a deviation from MY definition of love (kindness), heaven will in fact be hellish.

 

[JAL]

Forgive me, but I am compelled to point out that if, in asserting that, you are claiming there was a time when the Son was not, you are literally professing a belief in Arianism per se, because Arianism is defined by a belief that the Son is not coequal and coeternal with the Father, begotten of the Father before all ages.

That's precisely what I repudiated. Read my post again.

 

[JAL]

Also at this time I am compelled to ask you before discussing this matter any further what texts you feel were mistranslated or otherwise corrupted under Platonic influence?

Any text presumed to convey immateriality. 99% of the time, this means any text where the translators are using the English word "spirit" as opposed to the correct translation (physical) wind/breath. Again, did you read my post on Wind/Breath, linked to from another thread?

 

[JAL]

In case I wasn't clear, the English word "spirit" should NEVER appear in a translation, as it conveys immateriality.

 

[The Liturgist]

That's precisely what I repudiated. Read my post again.

So to be clear, you affirm there is never a time when the Son was not, and that the Son is begotten and not made, before all ages?

Forgive me, but I am compelled to clarify this point before discussing this any further.

 

[JAL]

So to be clear, you affirm there is never a time when the Son was not, and that the Son is begotten and not made, before all ages?

Forgive me, but I am compelled to clarify this point before discussing this any further.

Before all ages? I define God as a temporal being who exists only within time. His first motion/thought initiates time (because time is properly defined as a count of motions). Anyway His physical mind/substance/consciousness did not COME into existence, ex nihilo, hence the Son has always existed. The begetting was simply a re-shaping of what was already there.

 

[The Liturgist]

Before all ages?

The Nicene Creed variously reads “Begotten of the Father before all ages” or “Begotten of the Father before all worlds” but the meaning is the same, in both cases referring to John 1:1-18. The question is, do you agree with it?

I define God as a temporal being who exists only within time. His first motion/thought initiates time (because time is properly defined as a count of motions). Anyway His physical mind/substance/consciousness did not COME into existence, ex nihilo, hence the Son has always existed. The begetting was simply a re-shaping of what was already there.

The problem with such a definition is that it makes time the actual God, precludes divine omnipotence, and disagrees with Sacred Scripture on the nature of God. The Holy Bible makes the following declarations about God which your definition is incompatible with:

• God is omnipotent
• God is eternal, which literally means the opposite of temporal
• God created all things, and we know from General Relativity that spacetime actually is a thing, not merely a count of motions, or to be more scientific, the transition of a system from minimum to maximum entropy. This is because of time dilation (the impact of massive objects and relativistic velocities on the curvature of time).

Scripture does also literally assert God is a spirit, so there is that problem as well.

Additionally, your suggestion that the begetting of the Son was a re-shaping of something pre-existent contradicts John 1:1, which states In the Beginning was the Word (the Son) and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Finally, your entire proposition does contradict John 1:3, as I have stated numerous times.

 

[JAL]

It's beginning to look like a bit of a copout here - like you'd rather debate the nit-pickiest version of the Nicene Creed than resolve any logical problems facing you. Isn't this why you keep asking me the same questions over and over again - meanwhile deflecting mine? Is this the easy way out here?

The Nicene Creed variously reads “Begotten of the Father before all ages” or “Begotten of the Father before all worlds” but the meaning is the same, in both cases referring to John 1:1-18. The question is, do you agree with it?

Again, Jesus created all things. There is no created thing, except what He fashioned/formed/created.

The problem with such a definition is that it makes time the actual God....

Time doesn't even exist in my view. There's no existing river of time passing by, into which I can dip my feet. The word "time" is just a convenient term for counting consecutive motions. What's real is matter in motion. When the minutes hand of a clock, for example, has motioned 60 times around, we conveniently say, "An hour has passed."

The problem with such a definition is that it makes time the actual God....

You seem to be stooping to the level of random accusations that do not make any clear sense. Looks pretty desperate to me.

You do understand, don't you, that an atemporal God could merit no praise, right? After all, there's only one possible definition of merit:

Merit is a status attained by freely choosing to labor/suffer for a righteous cause for an extended period of time.

The cross is a perfect example. Had there been no labor/suffering over time, it would not have merited any praise. In fact anything you praise God for today - you are merely insulting Him if you think it is an innate perfection, when in fact it must be a competence that He labor/suffered to develop over time. (Otherwise He wouldn't expect any praise for it. Only a jerk expects praise for innate traits).

...precludes divine omnipotence

It precludes the incoherent description of a reality as a non-specific number named "infinite".

Many years ago my own Dad "warned" me, "If God is finite, someone could overthrow Him." My reply: "Dad, He holds 100 billion galaxies in the palm of His hand. Are you going to overthrow Him? If not you, then who?" He never raised that issue with me again.

When we say that a dictator is all-powerful over his kingdom, we do not mean he is an infinitely powerful man. Similarly, when Scripture describes God as all-powerful, it simply means there is no humanly appreciable - no practically relevant - limit to His sovereign power and control. Nothing can thwart Him, and He cannot fail us in any meaningful way, shape, or form.

Again, you are championing PHILOSOPHICAL ideals above practical concerns and logical coherence. That's why, as I said, even 2,000 years deep, theologians like you still can't explain something as simple as the Incarnation. Even today, you maintain that this philosophically ideal, immutable God - became man? Clearly, it doesn't make any sense. It is completely incoherent to claim that an immutable God mutated Himself into a man.

Why don't we start with all the coherent theories, lay them on them the table, and then debate them? Wouldn't that be a better start than what you're doing here?

....and disagrees with Sacred Scripture on the nature of God. The Holy Bible makes the following declarations about God which your definition is incompatible with....God is eternal, which literally means the opposite of temporal

Sheer assertion. That's one interpretation. William Lane Craig, for example, admitted that there is NOTHING in Scripture insisting on atemporality. It's merely a philosophical assertion arguably consistent with Scripture but certainly not based on Scripture, he said.

• God created all things, and we know from General Relativity that spacetime actually is a thing, not merely a count of motions, or to be more scientific, the transition of a system from minimum to maximum entropy. This is because of time dilation (the impact of massive objects and relativistic velocities on the curvature of time)

Newton invented the theory of gravity - and didn't believe his own theory! He never took it literally despite how well it worked in applied science. He said you'd have to be naive to take it literally. Similarly, you have opted to take Einstein's conclusions literally. I literally laughed when I read your words. This is not to be disrespectful but merely to awaken you to the fact that sometimes we are so indoctrinated that we cannot see the forest for the trees. You HONESTLY believe in things like:

- Constancy of the speed of light? (Anyone who has seen two vehicles traveling side by side should know that velocity of one is always relative to the other. Anyone who posits an exception to this rule is obviously steeped in incoherence).

- Curvature of space? So the shortest distance between two points is NOT a straight line?

Tell you what: would you like to see a proof created by a highly qualified physicist that constancy of light-speed, along with time dilation, is a contradiction in terms?

Scripture does also literally assert God is a spirit, so there is that problem as well.

No it does not. For the third time, did you read my post on Wind/Breath? Why do you keep deflecting this question.

Additionally, your suggestion that the begetting of the Son was a re-shaping of something pre-existent contradicts John 1:1, which states In the Beginning was the Word (the Son) and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

Random accusations that do not make any clear sense. You don't even have ANY clear, coherent concept of begetting. At least I provided one. What is your claim here? That God cannot shape-shift?

"The Holy [Wind/Breath] descended on Him in the bodily shape of a dove" (Luke 3:22).

Tell me, how does an atemporal being have one shape at time-A, then assume another at time-B? Immaterialism is traditionally defined as having no size and shape! How does that square with Christ's lament at John 5:37? You want to take Scripture oh-so-literally when you feel it SUPPORTS your views, but seem quick to copout when it CHALLENGES your views.

Finally, your entire proposition does contradict John 1:3, as I have stated numerous times.

Random, baseless accusations. Fine. Show me where I contradicted John 1:3. Specify one created object that, in my view, Jesus did not create.

You can't legitimately sit here steeped in a bunch of incoherent propositions meanwhile claiming that your theology is better than mine. Notice how John 1:14 contradicts your position:

"The Word became flesh"

That is the literal translation, by all accounts. Are you going to take THIS verse oh-so-literally? Or only when it suits you? When I eat a sandwich, my digestive system converts it to flesh. The sandwich becomes flesh. Thus we see that a material object easily becomes flesh. But YOU claim that God is an immaterial object BY NATURE/ESSENCE - and it became flesh? That's a contradiction in terms. That's as bad as claiming that an immutable God became man.

 

[JAL]

@The Liturgist,

A couple of points of incoherence are as yet unmentioned. In your view, God created space. That means that, at the outset, God existed, but He existed NOWHERE since space did not originally exist. Completely incoherent. Whereas in my view, space is a requirement for His existence, wherefore when Scripture claims that God created all things, it is not referring to space.

What now of your space-less God - this being with no size and shape? He is said to fill our universe? He occupies all points of space, but does this as a space-less being? Totally incoherent. Your claim, if you follow the traditional view, is that the fullness of God exists at every point in space. This leads to two problems.

...(1) Take me for example. To claim that I exist, in fullness, at just five points in space would require five duplicates of me. Unless you believe in duplicate gods, then, it is totally incoherent to claim that He exists in fullness at each point in space.

....(2) The traditional view means that God is fully present - in an exhaustive sense. This flatly contradicts the notion of an outpouring such as Pentecost. How can the Son send forth the Third Person if He is already exhaustively present at every point in space?

Scripture simply rules out these Greek philosophical concepts. Take indivisibility, presumed to be inherent to immaterialism. Here again, it contradicts the notion of an outpouring. If the Father and Son remained enthroned while sending forth the Third Person, that's divisibility into three parts. In fact the Third Person subdivided into 120 tongues of Fire when descending on Pentecost.

Mainstream thinking is a hodge-podge of incoherent concepts coupled with attempts to salvage inklings of coherence by standing on both sides of the fence.

Scripture does also literally assert God is a spirit,

The title Holy Spirit is easily shown to be a linguistically incoherent translation. Suppose I introduced you to a husband, wife, and child with this description, “This is the father, the son, and The Human Being.” That’s a ridiculous statement because all three are human beings. Mainstream Christianity regards each member of the Trinity as both spirit and holy. Thus the term "Holy Spirit," in mainstream thinking, could actually serve as an appropriate title for each of them. Hence the phrase “The Father, Son, and The Holy Spirit” is just as ludicrous as a human family captioned with, "The father, the son, and The Human Being." Within a family or organization, the main purpose of a title is to provide a clear distinction between the members. The Human Being fails of that goal, as does The Holy Spirit. Whereas my metaphysics creates a threefold distinction:

- The Father is a physical human-shaped figure seated on a throne.
- The Son is a physical human-shaped figure seated at His right hand.
- The fiery Holy Breath - the Third Person - is all divine effluence, released from the Son's mouth when He speaks (Exodus 15:8-10 Isaiah 55:11 Psalms 18:8 Psalms 33:6), and from His nostrils when He breathes/exhales (John 20:22), and even as Light radiating from His face.

Scripture lends NO SUPPORT to a space-less being devoid of size and shape. The origin of that concept is Plato. It's amazing you think yourself uninfluenced by Plato. Trust me, you became influenced the very first time you ever heard a phrase like, "Mind over matter", or "creation out of nothing", or even the word "soul" - since most people who use the term soul assume it means something immaterial.

By the way, we can form no humanly coherent notion of how an immaterial God manipulates matter. Without tangible hands? Here too, all we have is 2,000 years of incoherent "doctrine" (if you really want to dignify it with that term).

The Son created all things, you say. Unqualifiedly? Let me ask you, is the Father an existing thing? Is the Third Person an existing thing? Yes. Therefore "created all things" CANNOT be unqualified. YOU yourself must qualify it, and then, hypocritically, accuse me of wrongdoing if I qualify it.

By all accounts, the Hypostatic Union is a humanly incoherent "doctrine". Nobody understands what's being said - hence it's like speaking Chinese to an English audience! According to this "doctrine", God selected a created human soul - one of us - and placed it inside Christ's body. Had YOUR soul been the lucky one selected, we'd now be worshipping it as a member of the Trinity - Quadrinity?

Feinberg remarked, “No sane study of Christology even pretends to fathom [the Hypostatic Union]" (Charles Lee Feinberg, "The Hypostatic Union: Part 2," Bibliotheca Sacra, (1935), p. 412)

Oden’s assessment is the most important because his systematic theology is a survey of classical consensus. He writes, “The incarnation remains incomprehensible” (Thomas Oden, The Word of Life: Systematic Theology Volume Two (Peabody: Prince Press, 2001), p. 97).

Charles Hodge called it “mysterious and inscrutable” (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology Vol. II: Anthropology (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers), 2001, reprint, p. 390).

Michael Bozack classified both the Trinity and Incarnation as “beyond human comprehension” (Michael J. Bozack, “Physics In The Theological Seminary,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Vol 36:1 (1993), p. 65).

Lewis Sperry Chafer described Christ’s simultaneous ignorance and omniscience as unfathomable, for “How could He know and not know?…These are problems the finite mind cannot solve” (Lewis Sperry Chafer, “Trinitarianism Part 7,” Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol 98:391 (1941), p. 278).

Norm Geisler conceded that the human mind, being limited, cannot conceptualize the hypostatic union without contradiction, “The fact that one cannot explain how the two natures unite in one person without contradiction has nothing to do with the obvious fact that what happens when they do [unite] is clearly not a contradiction” (Norman L. Geisler, “Avoid… Contradictions” (1 Timothy 6:20): A Reply To John Dahms,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Vol 22:1 (1979), p. 62).

Yet, in my simple materialism, the Incarnation is a cinch to explain! No need for all this incoherence and apparent contradiction!