In Psalm 90:2, we read that God is “from eternity to eternity” (me olam ad olam); it could be said that Jehovah is “from hidden time to hidden time” (Gesenius). It thus appears that the Hebrew-Aramaic scriptures (Tanakh) depict YHWH as a dynamic being within time somehow. Concerning the God of the Hebrews, we read: “temporal categories are inadequate to describe the nature of God's existence” (Zodhiates 2348). Nevertheless, olam when used of the Creator in Ps. 90:2 expresses “the idea of a continued, measurable existence, rather than a state of being independent of time considerations” (2348).
Moreover, the question regarding how a timeless deity possibly responds to prayer might lend support to the temporal view of God: “For in responding to another it is of the essence that one first acts, then waits for the other to react, then acts responsively, and so on. There seems to be no way this sequence could be collapsed, as it were, into a single timeless moment” (William Hasker in God, Time, and Knowledge, page 156).
See also https://fosterheologicalreflections.blogspot.com/2011/06/omniscience-god-and-time.html
https://fosterheologicalreflections.blogspot.com/2015/02/god-time-and-divine-immutability-duncan.html
19 comments:
Once one makes time a finite creation all of those cause and effect arguments that theistic apologists like to rely on to prove God's existence collapse because temporal distinctions like before ,after and now simply cannot exists apart from time, if time itself is finite quantity rather than a quality,terms like past,present future become meaningless as does the supposition of free moral agency upon which any truly just assessment of righteousness or unrighteousness depends.
The eternity of God is commonly referred to as eternity. However, in Scripture, we search in vain for a word that precisely expresses the concept of eternity. The Hebrew 'ōlām, the Greek 'aiōnios', the Latin 'aevum', 'aeternum', 'saeculum', and other words most often refer only to a long duration. Thus, for example, the Old Testament sometimes calls heaven, earth, Mount Zion eternal, and desires an everlasting rule for the king, but at other times it expressly mentions their transience. However, both the Old Testament and the New Testament undoubtedly teach the eternity of God.
Since the Israelites did not have abstract concepts for a good while, in the earliest times, the eternity of God was expressed by the concept of someone who has existed from eternity (Gen 21:33). In this sense, Isaiah calls the Lord the eternal rock (26:4). Deutero-Isaiah already calls him timeless and contrasts him with the pagan gods, which arose and disappear again with the cycle of the world: the Lord is eternal because he created the earth (40:28), because he is the first and will be there at the last being (41:4; cf. 44:6; Ps 90:2; 103:27-28), because there was no God before him and will not be after (43:10). The expression "from everlasting to everlasting" also expresses beginninglessness and endlessness (Ps 90:2; 103:17; Sir 39:20). In several places, especially in the Psalms, we read of God's eternal plans, eternal love, grace, faithfulness, justice, and rule. There is also mention of an eternal covenant (Gen 9:16; 17:7,13; Is 24:5; Ps 106:8), and in the wisdom books of eternal wisdom (Sir 1:1; 24:9). In connection with his plans, love, rule, and wisdom, beginninglessness is also mentioned.
In the same sense, the New Testament praises the eternal God (Rom 1:20; 16:26; Phil 4:20; 1Tim 1:17; Rev 4:8, etc.), and also professes the eternity of the Son (Heb 1:10 et seq.; 13:8; Rev 1:17-18), eternal rule (Lk 1:33; Heb 1:8; Rev 11:15), eternal priesthood (Heb 7:24-25), and in many places mentions the eternal possession of eschatological goods. The New Testament revelation also speaks of eternal punishment. All these are contrasted by the sacred author against the changing and transient earthly things. In the Book of Revelation, God is the beginning and the end, alpha and omega; he is who is and who was and who is to come (1:8; 21:6; 22:13).
The recognition of God's eternity as timelessness and simultaneity occured gradually. It began as early as the patristic age, partly through the philosophical analysis of the concept of time (Tertullian, Augustine), and partly through the interpretation of the corresponding biblical passages. They soon realized that God's timelessness is not just about being without beginning or end, but also about denying the sequential nature of time, and that this implies an all-encompassing vision and possession.
a) In God, therefore, there is no succession, that is, the kind of change that we usually measure with time.
aa) There is no past or future in Him, but He lives everything in an eternal present. "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day," we read in the New Testament (2 Pet 3:8; cf. Ps 90: 3-4).
ab) Thus, God cannot hurry anything, nor can He be late. It only seems to us that He is waiting or delaying.
ac) We also project our own concepts onto Him when we say that He remembers something, since there is neither remembrance nor anticipation in Him. His vision encompasses, viewing in an eternal present what for us is past, present, and future. The Bible makes such statements as: "Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God" (Ps 90:2). Jesus said, "Before Abraham was born, I am" (Jn 8:58).
If we look for a metaphor for God's eternal present, we might imagine something like this: someone watching a parade from a very high platform sees at once, in the present, not only those passing by in front of him but also those who have passed and those who will come later. The higher one is, the more they can encompass at once from the present, past, and future. God views the world and its events from a completely "top" perspective.
b) It is not only God's knowledge that encompasses what, due to temporality, diverges in the world, but His essence also unites all values in such a way that He possesses the entire and complete being at every moment. In Him, values are not fragmented but exist in their full realization at every moment. According to Boethius, eternity is the perfect and simultaneous possession of a limitless life. There are no moments in God. But figuratively, we can say that at every moment, He not only experiences but also possesses the totality of His infinite perfections. Eternity, in this sense, is unimaginable for a creature, since only God can have the fullness of values.
God's timelessness is also one of the reasons why His intentions and actions are so incomprehensible to us. We can only think in terms of time and cannot imagine, for example, that what He has decided from eternity is a present decision for Him; we cannot conceive of the way His eternal decisions cooperate with our present actions; we cannot form a clear concept of the continuous creation of the world (creatio continua), especially if we also include the theory of evolution in the latter.
God is the sovereign lord of time, since time is one of the categories of created existence, and the creature is completely dependent on God in its existence and functioning. Because of the creature's dependency, we cannot imagine the eternal present of possessing the fullness of values as if timelessness were an "exclusive transcendence," somewhat floating above the world. The God of revelation is constantly in relation with temporality. This relationship began with the creation of the world, continues through the providential direction of history, and reached its culmination in the incarnation. For in the incarnation, God substantially "entered" time to make possible for man to partake in eternity.
What was God's activity and relation to time before the creation of the world? Since time began with creation, we can only speak of "before" in a metaphorical sense here. The answer will only be complete if we consider that the world cannot influence God's life:
a) The world cannot add anything to His infinite perfection.
b) Caring for the world cannot represent a new occupation for Him since the events of creation and history have always been "present" in Him. Their realization on His part results only in a logical relation, as we can see when discussing God's immutability.
c) His life without the world cannot be imagined as a boring solitude because, as the mystery of the Trinity shows, His inner life is the ceaseless dynamic of mutual knowledge and love.
Eternity is God's peculiar mode of existence, so a creature can only partake in it in a certain respect.
a) Revelation tells us that angels and humans have not existed from eternity, but their existence never ceases.
b) The justified can partake in God's eternal and infinite life, but only in an analogical sense, since their finitude makes them incapable of receiving infinite perfection. According to their capacity granted by grace, they do receive from God's life, but they can never experience its infinite perfection.
c) Since scholasticism, theology refers to the eternity of the saints and the angels as 'aevum', contrasting it with God's 'aeternitas'.
The relationship between time and eternity must be judged based on the difference in orders of existence. The time of the world is not a part of God's eternal "time". Therefore, questions like what God was doing before creation are meaningless. He does not live in time, but in eternal presence, so for Him, there is no before or after creation. In Him, the decision to create is eternal, but the world still has a temporal existence, which is a different order of being. For God, the past, present, and future of the world are always in the present, specifically in His own unchanging present. Since the world is entirely in Him, He is also entirely present at every point of our time. The world and man only partake in His eternity, because He does not annihilate anything He has created. Man is specifically invited into His own community of life, but man will carry this imperishable existence only in a creaturely way. Even there, man will live in the succession of finite beings.
Time is how the duration of stasis is evaluated to speak of God as being eternally unchanging apart from time is to utter an absurdity. Speaking of an eternal present in the absence of time is also to utter an absurdity ,the present is a temporal distinction from the future and the past and thus would not exists outside of time. Time in scripture is purely abstract like color ,maths or music and thus can neither be created nor destroyed only instantiated. The abstractions that qualify the great first cause are of literally eternal duration like the one they describe.
@aservantofJEHOVAH
"...is to utter an absurdity."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_stone
It is easy to recognize God's transcendence over time and his immutability. Our existence is characterized by changes, happening, actions, processes and events. We are born, we grow up, we learn, we forget, we sleep and wake up, we eat, we have a metabolism, we make resolutions, which sometimes we implement, sometimes we don't. We get sick and we get well, we grow old and we die. These are all happenings, events and processes, so changes. We can talk about before and after these events and changes. There is no such thing in God, since He himself is realized perfection, in Him and for Him there can be no novelty at all. Our entire existence is actually like a bubble in God's infinity.
Nincsnevem, I think you're cutting the Hebrew bible a bit short, I do think some of the authors of the Hebrew bible had significant philosophical ability (I mean Qohet has to be up there with Plato's dialogues), and certainly there are some implicit metaphysics in the Hebrew bible, so I don't think one can just write off the exegetical case by saying "the Israelites didn't have the sophistication necessary to express these concepts."
That being said, I ultimately think this issue cannot be resolved outside of philosophical concerns. Although what one should do is see what is explicit in scripture and see what metaphysical models can make sense of it while being coherent with what we otherwise know.
Although I do not rule out God's timelessness entirely (I'm open to the idea, and I think Augustine and Boethius make good arguments for it), I lean towards God being in time, at least with creation (pre-creation I think Pseudo-Dionysian apophatism is the only approach we have available) for the following reasons:
1. Scripture largely seems to assume is.
2. Any theodicy that makes sense of both scripture and the philosophical problem of evil will, in my view, end up needing to be some kind of open theism, and open theism presupposes an unknowable future.
I certainly believe in continuous creation, or God sustaining the world in being (this is, I believe explicit in scripture), but I do think we can understand in by analogy, i use an example of me holding my son up on my shoulders so he can pick apples from a tree, he's picking the apples, but only insofar as I hold him up, likewise, we act in the world, but only insofar as God is sustaining us in being.
BTW, Alasdair MacIntyre, perhaps the most brilliant contemporary *Catholic* moral philosopher and social theorist (anyone who can combine insights from Karl Marx and Thomas Aquinas is good in my book), has recently presented an open theist view:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGT_BlUbx-g&t=1404s
There can be no evaluation of duration of stasis apart from time. Time is the Abstract metric by which permanence is evaluated. So to say that JEHOVAH is unchanging apart from any metric for determining such makes no sense
I haven't gone into the philosophy of time all that much, but wouldn't a classical theist say that God being unchanging just mean's he is out of time and thus the temporal metric by which one measures change (if that is actually what time is, this is highly controversial, especially given contemporary physics), that seems to be a reasonable position.
Time also measures duration of stasis. The assessment that God is unchanging cannot be made if there is no time. There would then be no metric by which either transience or permanence can be compared or contrasted.
Daniel calls him the ancient of days,no,if time is not applicable to him he is neither recent nor ancient. Daniel ch.7:9
@Roman
Yes, this is often brought up against the principle of God's immutability, that God's outward works change. Not only does the world, maintained and governed by God, change continually in major and minor ways, but God intervenes in the course of the world through miracles, and what is more significant: He created the world in time, and the second divine person became incarnate in time. The argument goes that if God continuously creates new works in time, does something he did not do before; that is, he changes.
In God's outward activity, three aspects can be distinguished:
1.The decision regarding outward activity. As an immanent act of God, it is eternal and unchangeable.
2. The change; this occurs in God's works, not affecting God Himself. The creation of the world, the incarnation of the second divine person, does not change God; nothing new happens to Him; for this aspect: "the world to be created in time," etc., was also in His eternal unchangeable decision; only the creature enters into a new relation with Him, just as the Sun does not undergo change because it causes winter and summer on earth.
3. The creation of the changing work, that is, the divine activity that executes the eternal and unchangeable divine order regarding change. This activity, from God's perspective, is identical with His essence and does not represent a change in God but only in the results of the divine activity. When a doctor not only prescribes medicine to a patient but also specifies the time it should be taken, this prescription causes a change that occurs at a specified time; but when it occurs, it does not induce a change in the prescriber; and if the doctor's will were absolutely effective, the patient's time-bound medication intake would occur without any external factor, purely as a result of that medical order. That is, THE RESULT APPEARING IN TIME DOES NOT NECESSARILY IMPLY A CHANGE IN THE CAUSE (Thom Gent. II 35; cf. I 19, 7; 14, 8 ad 2.).
In the effective divine decrees containing changes, the change is only as an intention, as a thought; even in humans, thoughts related to change do not imply a uniform change in the thinker: if I decide to run, I am not physically running yet. It is not easy to imagine how the unchangeable God creates changes; because our perception is fixed in the world of changes. But there is no logical inconsistency in the concept. Moreover, if we consider how difficult a problem the logical processing of the concept of change is (for this reason, the Eleatics and Plato, as well as the Vedanta thinkers, considered being itself unchangeable), it is logically easier to conceive of God's immutability than the mutability of creation.
JEHOVAH Possesses limitless potential therefore he can neither accrue gain nor suffer loss from any discrete actualization of this potential. Thus he remains immutably immutable. The creation by contrast possessing only limited potential must be continual sustained by continual corrective inflows of energy and information,the creation is thus subject to change.
aservantofJEHOVAH, in what sense does time measure stasis? Doesn't it only do so in relation to change? I'm not disagreeing just trying to figure out your view of time and immutability.
Again, I'm open on this issue, I tend to want to deny a strong form of immutability for various reasons, but I'm not completely convinced either way.
Nincsnevem, what I meant by continous creation is something like what John Duns Scotus calls essential causation, or what more contemporary metaphycisians might call grounding, which, in principle, is not temporally situated prior to the effect but simultaneous with it. This might be distinguished from God bringning the world into being (accidental causation) which is a sequential causal relation, although for God (i.e. in reality) the two acts are one, they are not really distinct, but only conceptually (or perhaps formally) distinct.
Duration is the only metric by which stasis can be assessed,the only way I can assess that X has remained unchanged would be a comparison of X at one period of time with X at a later period of time. At psalm ch.90:2 JEHOVAH'S permanence is compared to creations that might seem ageless and permanent to mortal man but which from JEHOVAH'S Sensibilities are of comparatively recent vintage and transient.
All abstract truths eternally preexisting any instantiation of them the set of real numbers preexisted the existence of any circumstance that would require their use in problem solving.
aservantofJEHOVAH, wouldn't time be the only metric by which stasis can be assessed from the standpoint of mutable agents? i.e. relatively? In which case Jehovah himself could be timeless (not saying I believe this, but for the sake of argument) in relation to his creatures who can know him as timeless in relation to their temporal becoming?
I tend to agree, tentatively, on mathematical platonism, although I go back and forth, and prefer the Augustinian approach that places them in the mind of God.
It would not be sensible to contrast is permanence with the comparative transience of even the most ancient and enduring creations if the same metric was not being applied to both ,I can't suggest that x is older than y if I am not using the same metric to evaluate the ages of both. The connotation of the term permanence necessarily implies duration the evaluation of duration necessitates time even for JEHOVAH if there is no time ,there is no duration if there us no duration, there is no permanence.
Merriam Webster on duration:
2
: the time during which something exists or last
aservant, given that time is a highly contested concept in both physics and philosophy and don't think its fundamental nature can be adjudicated by the dictionary.
It's not sensible to contrast permanence with transience, but that's only a problem once you have change, which means that time is contingent on change not immutability. the "word" permanence is, like all words, comparative, that does not mean that God in and of himself requires time to exist immutably, because God does not know himself abstractly through relations of comparison but directly and immanently.
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