God and Time

[2PhiloVoid]

The same problem presents itself: how did the event happen if the entity supposed to initiate it is static (as per your earlier construal of timelessness) and therefore in no position to initiate anything?

Maybe God's 'actions' are analogous somehow to the way in which Quantum Fluctuations take place?

Does God really not change at all? Sure, he never stops being omnipotent, omniscient, immortal, omnibenevolent, or even just existing. So broad strokes, God doesn't change. But what about after he does some action? At one point God was God who hadn't created anything, and then he created everything. Now he is God who has created everything. Is that no change at all? It is a change in how he can be described. So doesn't that mean that he changed?

Maybe God is Himself multidimensional within His own being. Perhaps one dimension of His being (the Father) is "static" in some quantum way, yet in all places at all 'moments,' while the other dimension(s) (the Logos and Holy Spirit) 'move about' and cause change on different frequencies from within the static dimension of the Father, kind of like the way in which the Quantum Vacuum and the Higgs Field interplay and 'bring about' mass. Just my guess from reflection and re-appropriation of some things Frank Close says in his book, The Void.

2PhiloVoid

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Maybe God's 'actions' are analogous somehow to the way in which Quantum Fluctuations take place?

Can you scale down an intelligence to the quantum level?

Maybe God is Himself multidimensional within His own being. Perhaps one dimension of His being (the Father) is "static" in some quantum way, yet in all places at all 'moments,' while the other dimension(s) (the Logos and Holy Spirit) 'move about' and cause change on different frequencies from within the static dimension of the Father, kind of like the way in which the Quantum Vacuum and the Higgs Field interplay and 'bring about' mass. Just my guess from reflection and re-appropriation of some things Frank Close says in his book, The Void.

Although interesting to speculate on, I don't think this furthers our understanding of cosmogony in any fundamental or important way.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Right, I simply think that doesn't mean there can be no changes.


It does help though. You were saying "To do so would require time, or to put it differently, to do so would mean that the was not timeless." My point earlier is that that view of time IMO is false. On a relational view, time is not required to act rather time begins to exist when God moves.

Then why not save a step and say that time begins to exist when the universe first "moves"?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Can you scale down an intelligence to the quantum level?

Although interesting to speculate on, I don't think this furthers our understanding of cosmogony in any fundamental or important way.

Well, sure. I mean, let's just get to brass tacks: Unless God Himself reveals to us the cosmogonic principles regarding 'time' that you guys are so ardently trying to figure out here, I find it hard to believe that any of us will actually be able to further this discussion in any "important" way, Arch.

By presenting what we might call a 'quantum analogy,' I am merely attempting to 'break open' what seems to me to be an interminable loop of semantics with which you guys just keep going round and round. Why don't we just talk about the Chicken or the Egg conundrum then? It might be simpler to figure out.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Well, sure. I mean, let's just get to brass tacks: Unless God Himself reveals to us the cosmogonic principles regarding 'time' that you guys are so ardently trying to figure out here, I find it hard to believe that any of us will actually be able to further this discussion in any "important" way, Arch.

By presenting what we might call a 'quantum analogy,' I am merely attempting to 'break open' what seems to me to be an interminable loop of semantics with which you guys just keep going round and round. Why don't we just talk about the Chicken or the Egg conundrum then? It might be simpler to figure out.

The problem is that introducing theological concepts doesn't seem to shed any further light on the question. It only adds another layer of mystery to work through.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

God is either necessary or impossible. If he is contingent he may or may not be, but God cant pop into and out of existence. These are classic "produced" temporal objects.


Maybe we have a heirarchy:

Necessity -God - eternity, ever living, unproduced
Contingency - Creation - temporal, produced, impermanent
Impossiblity - anti-eternity/nothingness.

 

[juvenissun]

So everything happened at the same time until after time existed in order for it to pass.

Nothing happened before Time.

 

[Moral Orel]

Personally, I think that time may not run in a straight line for God like it does in this universe. Rather, it may run radically differently for him. I'm still trying to figure out how that might work in reality, however.

What purpose would that serve? If God is capable of time travel, why would he ever need to? And how would changing things through time travel not create logical paradoxes?

If God knows everything, then he knows the exact best course of action at every single moment as it comes along and he knows every single outcome as a result of his action (or choice of inaction). If he were to use time travel to change things, that would imply that he saw some outcome and had to go back to do things differently than he did the first time, which would imply he made a mistake the first time through.

Secondly, if he changes the past, then doesn't that mean that the made something that has happened not have happened? That is a logical contradiction. Either something has happened, or it has not happened. It can't be both.

So I'm not sure what direction or directions you were thinking of when you talked about the arrow of time, but if these examples and explanations don't apply, then I'll ask what purpose there would be to the arrow of time going in any other direction than forward?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

The problem is that introducing theological concepts doesn't seem to shed any further light on the question. It only adds another layer of mystery to work through.

Actually, I don't think that what I call a 'quantum analogy' qualifies as a mere addition of theological concepts, at least not in this specific thread. I think you would be right if I had just attempted to introduce something like Paul's quip in 1 Corinthians 2:10 where he says, "...for the Spirit [of God] searches all things, even the depths of God." Yes, if that was the kind of concept I was adding to the discussion, then I'd agree with you that I'm just adding "another layer of mystery." But, if I'm trying to utilize an analogy admittedly borrowed from quantum theory, I don't think it's just another layer.

Sure, my way of thinking about the [Time:God] issue may not be one you think is useful, but it does give us the beginning of another model to ponder. With that being said, I'm not insisting that a persistent modification of mental models will surely enable us to reach an Analytical Solution which we all find philosophically satisfying. In fact, I not sure these kinds of discussions can get us to that point. Maybe they can; maybe they can't.

Regardless, thus far, it seems to me that the discussion on this particular thread of Deka's has been somewhat two-dimensional (or three-dimensional, if we want to pretend we're being scientific about it.) [...And no, I'm not inferring that I'm smarter than the rest of you guys or that I clearly "see the light." I'm just offering another philosophical structure, another point-of-view.]

2PhiloVoid

 

[Achilles6129]

Yeah, try to make sense of that one! It is either stupidly profound or profoundly stupid.

Not at all. Have you read his book or essays?

 

[Moral Orel]

Not at all. Have you read his book or essays?

I read a bunch of those essays after you linked them. They're full of holes and presumptions just like his arguments for God's existence (Kalem, teleological, objective morality, etc...). They aren't "profoundly stupid" but they aren't valid either.

 

[golgotha61]

I've been thinking about what it means for God to create time itself, and it seems to mean strange things, so I thought I would share my thoughts and see what other people think.

First, if time doesn't exist, then time can't pass. This seems self evident, but it is important to think about.

Second, without the passage of time words like "before" and "after" are nonsense.

So from this it seems that anything that happens while time doesn't exist must happen simultaneously. Now given the concept of God, I don't think this is anything that is too hard for him. Of course he can do an infinite number of things and think an infinite number of thoughts all simultaneously, so don't think this is supposed to be a disproof of his existence.

So I'll put it into argument form given these premises.

1. Time doesn't pass until time exists
2. We measure age based on the amount of time that has passed.
3. No time passed until God created time.
4. God's age is equal to the amount of time that has passed since time was created.

So wether you believe the universe is 13.7 billion years old, or you believe that the universe is 6000 years old, we all pretty much agree that time began to exist at the onset of creation. I believe the theory of general relativity and the big bang theory state this, and that is why it is so hard (impossible?) to see what is beyond that threshold.

But it seems that without time, "eternity" is a nonsense word just like "before" and "after". Eternity needs to extend infinitely backwards in time in order for it to make sense (and infinitely forwards). So to say that God is eternal, but to say that time is not, seems like nonsense to me.

So what explanation for this could there be? Thoughts?

God is outside of time. That is why he says, “I am the first and I am the last” (Isa 44:6, 48:12), and of all human generations he can say that he has been “calling forth the generations from the beginning . . . I, the LORD—with the first of them and with the last—I am he” (Isa 41:4). Likewise in John’s Revelation he says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Rev 22:13; cf. “ ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty,’ ” Rev 1:8; cf. Rev 21:6). Another way of putting this is to say that God “inhabits eternity” (Isa 57:15, kjv, esv, asv [Heb, d[" ˆkEvø]; cf. Ps 102:12 [Heb 102:13]). One consequence of this fact is that all times are present to God. God existed eternally before he created the cosmos, and man and woman in it, and when God created them God also already dwelt in the eschaton, and in eternity beyond the eschaton. That is why Paul can say of God that “he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Eph 1:4). God could choose Paul’s contemporary believers (and subsequent believers as well) “before the creation of the world” because all of them were present in his view before the creation of the world. So also at this moment in human time God is already with his redeemed in our future: “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6). Paul can say that God has already “seated us with him” in heaven, because, although for Paul it was future, for God it was past. And for God, outside of time, it remains future, present, and past.

Niehaus, Jeffery J., “Covenant and Narrative, God and Time.” JETS, (2010): 535-559. Web. 22

August. 2012.

 

[Achilles6129]

I read a bunch of those essays after you linked them. There full of holes and presumptions just like his arguments for God's existence (Kalem, teleological, objective morality, etc...). They aren't "profoundly stupid" but they aren't valid either.

Care to show how they're "full of holes"?

 

[Moral Orel]

Care to show how they're "full of holes"?

I'm not derailing my thread going into everything that is wrong with every one of WLC's arguments. If you have one specific argument that you think is the best and that it applies directly to this thread, share it, and we can discuss it.

 

[zippy2006]

But it seems that without time, "eternity" is a nonsense word just like "before" and "after". Eternity needs to extend infinitely backwards in time in order for it to make sense (and infinitely forwards). So to say that God is eternal, but to say that time is not, seems like nonsense to me.

So what explanation for this could there be? Thoughts?

Great question! Thomas Aquinas takes up the eternity of God in question 10 of the first part of the Summa Theologica (link). Here is a small excerpt:

As therefore the idea of time consists in the numbering of before and after in movement; so likewise in the apprehension of the uniformity of what is outside of movement, consists the idea of eternity.

Further, those things are said to be measured by time which have a beginning and an end in time, because in everything which is moved there is a beginning, and there is an end. But as whatever is wholly immutable can have no succession, so it has no beginning, and no end.

Thus eternity is known from two sources: first, because what is eternal is interminable--that is, has no beginning nor end (that is, no term either way); secondly, because eternity has no succession, being simultaneously whole.

Theologically we would distinguish what is eternal from what is everlasting. The eternity we attribute to God simply isn't infinite duration.

 

[2404]

God creates time.
The beginning of time is at the hand of God.
Time is a space. And the space has no edge. God creates it all at once.
So time is "eternal" to other God's creature.

What is wrong with it?

If God created time then it had a beginning. My definition of eternal is no beginning or end.
I also believe space and time are a creation.
In my simple understanding the Word was God's first expression/manifestation in creation as we understand it.
I believe the Word is Eternal because it is God and we can know Him as the Son.

 

[Moral Orel]

Theologically we would distinguish what is eternal from what is everlasting. The eternity we attribute to God simply isn't infinite duration.

This last statement is a bit unclear. Is the "eternity we attribute to God" infinite duration plus something else, or is it not infinite duration?

I would think that it is not infinite duration at all if time doesn't have an infinite duration, because it can't be measured forever. That would be the general idea of the thread. If God created time, then time has a beginning, and therefore God has a duration, because the word "duration" only makes sense in a universe with time.

But there is always the option that time and space are eternal. God didn't create everything, and people seem to forget that. He didn't create intelligence, he created things with intelligence. God didn't create life, he created things with life. You see what I mean?

 

[zippy2006]

This last statement is a bit unclear. Is the "eternity we attribute to God" infinite duration plus something else, or is it not infinite duration?

It is not infinite duration, per Aquinas.

I would think that it is not infinite duration at all if time doesn't have an infinite duration, because it can't be measured forever. That would be the general idea of the thread. If God created time, then time has a beginning, and therefore God has a duration, because the word "duration" only makes sense in a universe with time.

God created time and God has no duration, he is eternal. He also has no lack of duration. The word doesn't apply to him in any way. Saying that God has duration is like saying that a llama has the number 8. Similarly, God created the color red, but he is not himself red.

But there is always the option that time and space are eternal. God didn't create everything, and people seem to forget that. He didn't create intelligence, he created things with intelligence. God didn't create life, he created things with life. You see what I mean?

I don't really see what you mean. All that exists outside of God is created by God. Nothing is co-eternal with God. If "life" exists outside of God, then God created it. If it doesn't, then he didn't.

 

[Moral Orel]

God didn't create everything, and people seem to forget that. He didn't create intelligence, he created things with intelligence. God didn't create life, he created things with life. You see what I mean?

All that exists outside of God is created by God. Nothing is co-eternal with God. If "life" exists outside of God, then God created it. If it doesn't, then he didn't.

Is God alive? Is God intelligent? Then these things are eternal right along with him.

 

[zippy2006]

Is God alive? Is God intelligent? Then these things are eternal right along with him.

Even without breaching the topic of divine simplicity, it's not clear that this is true. You are alive. You are intelligent. That doesn't mean that there are 3 things sitting in front of the computer: you, your intelligence, and your life. There is one thing, and we can make rational distinctions to talk about it in different ways.