I suppose that single verse just carries more theology than the words alone can handle. God knows we’re very ingenious little creatures, inventing a volumes worth of theology and commentary on a lone verse or even single words.
Think how many books we’ve already composed on the subject of agape love, just the word can be filled up by millions of incredible illustrations and possibilities that we can cram into that concept
(from suitable things to horrible queer erotic theology.) There’s no end to the ingenuity of man.
About the wacko idea?
Well, Romans 4:17 has surrounding verses that remind me of a theme, a theme that argues
you can’t stop God, He calls things which aren’t as though they were because He can do the thing He’s talking about.
“Without weakening in his faith, he [Abraham] faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.”
God calls things which aren’t, namely the promised child, as though they were, and if He wants to bring about a miracle birth that’s something we can’t prevent. I used to tie Romans 4:17 into Isaiah 9:6 because there it’s present tense too...
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.
So although Isaiah’s ministry was some time before Jesus
God speaks things which aren’t as though they are, the prophecy carries a double meaning, and as a result the atheist I’m in conversation with just stands there in awe unable to refute my unfalsifiable style of reading the text.
This answer on God and time probably won’t be as biblical as you’d like, Rick. Still, it could interest you nonetheless...
The notion of how God relates to time is speculative
(really speculative,) but I’ve heard from his defenders call that Dr. William Lane Craig took several years out of his studies to review the relevant material. He shared the result in a book titled Time and Eternity: Exploring Gods relationship to time.
He explored both the
A and the B theory of time, from memory I believe the A theory means that time is in a
dynamic transition, so it’s much like how we experience time.
There’s moment 1 and moment 1 leads into moment 2 and it’s really happening as we experience it in our daily lives, like a train running along train tracks that are being dynamically built as we travel through time. Jesus (though timeless) enters into time and becomes part of this dynamic dance, experiencing time while simultaneously existing beyond it.
The B theory of time is more like
time is static and that the entire scope of eternity is laid out before God. Like a snow globe depicting the 1980s, the times never really went away, but rather, for the people in 1982 it’s still 1982 today, and for yourself in 2010 it’s still 2010 today. Gods above the entire timeline and in charge over the flow as a timeless being.
Whether it’s A, B or some combination of the 2 I’m not sure, I’ve never read the book!
I know what Dr. Craig concludes because of his Defenders classes, still there’s no point in spoiling that here.
Maybe this will inspire someone to go out and pick up a copy of time and eternity themselves, then they can tell us.