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Time and Eternity E-Book

William Lane Craig

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Herausgeber: Crossway
Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
Sprache: Englisch

Beschreibung

This remarkable work offers an analytical exploration of the nature of divine eternity and God's relationship to time.

Das E-Book Time and Eternity wird angeboten von Crossway und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
time, god, theology, religion and science, cosmos, relativity theory, general relativity, space time, nonfiction, faith, spirituality, christianity, physics, quantum physics, creation, god the creator, religious philosophy, logic, theism, temporal universe, creatio ex nihilo, past, isaiah, bible, scripture, doctrine, science, eternity, cosmology, absolute space, divine foreknowledge, divine timelessness, divine temporality, einstein, big bang, divine, religion, nature

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Leseprobe

Time and Eternity deals with difficult issues in modern physics and brings them into relation with traditional theological doctrines. Craig has done a great work, and it is marvelous that now the philosophy of religion is engaging with the philosophy of science to the great benefit of both.

—JOHN R. LUCASFellow of Merton College, Oxford University

William Lane Craig is one the leading philosophers of religion and one of the leading philosophers of time. In this book, he combines his expertise in these areas to produce an original, erudite, and accessible theory of time and God that will be of great interest to both the general public and scholars. It is a rewarding experience to read through this brilliant and well-researched book by one of the most learned and creative thinkers of our era.

—QUENTIN SMITHProfessor of Philosophy, Western Michigan University

Time and Eternity offers a comprehensive discussion of the problems in the concepts of time and eternity on the basis of an extraordinary familiarity with a vast number of recent contributions to this issue from scientists and philosophers. The argument is subtle and precise. Particularly important are the sections on the impact of the different versions of relativity theory on the concept of time. . . . The book offers a plausible argument for a realistic conception of temporal process and for God’s involvement in the temporal distinctions and processes because of his presence in his creation.

—WOLFHART PANNENBERGProfessor of Systematic TheologyLudwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany

In Time and Eternity, William Lane Craig def.nds the remarkable conclusion that “God is timeless without creation and temporal since creation.” Craig argues his case philosophically by carefully weighing evidence for and against divine temporality and personhood in light of dynamic versus static theories of time, and this warrants, in turn, a Lorentzian interpretation of special relativity and an objective, mind-independent theory of becoming, including fascinating excursions into Big Bang cosmology and the philosophy of mathematics. As the latest in his series of ground-breaking books, Time and Eternity summarizes and extends Craig’s previous technical arguments and conveys them to a more general audience. It is a “must-read” for anyone seriously interested in the problem of time and eternity in Christian philosophy.

—ROBERT RUSSELLProfessor of Theology and ScienceCenter for Theology and the Natural SciencesGraduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Calif.

The nature of time is a continuing source of puzzlement both to science and in everyday life. It is also an important issue in theological understandings of the nature of God. In this interesting book, Craig tackles this complex set of topics in a clear way. His discussion of the interrelated scientific, philosophical, and theological issues clears up many previous misconceptions and proposes a plausible understanding of the relation of God to time and eternity that many will find helpful.

—GEORGE ELLISProfessor of Applied MathematicsUniversity of Capetown

As a scientist doing theoretical research in gravitational physics and quantum cosmology, I found Dr. Craig’s thoughtful book, Time and Eternity, highly interesting.

Craig has carefully given arguments def.nding several different viewpoints for each of the many issues about time that he discusses, followed by critiques in which he emphasizes his own opinion. Reading Time and Eternity has forced me to try to develop better arguments for my own opinions (which differ considerably from Craig’s), though I do not think that we yet know enough about the subject to settle the issue def.nitively to everyone’s satisfaction.

I am certain that Time and Eternity will also stimulate your thinking about this fascinating subject and your appreciation for the God who created time as part of the marvelous universe He has given us.

—DON N. PAGEProfessor of Physics and Fellow of the Cosmology and Gravitation Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced ResearchUniversity of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Time and Eternity

Published by Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture references are from the Revised Standard Version. Copyright © 1946, 1953, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

The Scripture reference marked kjv is from the King James Version.

Cover design: David LaPlaca

Cover photos: PhotoDisc™

Inside photos: Courtesy of the Archives, California Institute of Technology

First printing 2001

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Craig, William Lane, 1949 –

Time and eternity : exploring God’s relationship to time / William Lane Craig.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 13: 978-1-58134-241-3 (alk. paper)

ISBN 10: 1-58134-241-1

1. God—Immutability. 2. Eternity. 3. Time—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.

BT153.147 C73 2001

00-011716

231'.4—dc21

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

CH 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6

For J. P. MORELAND

Colleague and Friend

“a mighty man of valor . . . and the Lord is with him”

TIME, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly, forgotten, as a dream Dies at the op’ning day.

O GOD, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come,

Preface

1. TWO VIEWS OF DIVINE ETERNITY

I. The Nature of Time

II. The Biblical Data on Divine Eternity

III. The Importance of Articulating a Theory of Divine Eternity

2. DIVINE TIMELESSNESS

I. Divine Simplicity and Immutability

II. Relativity Theory

III. The Incompleteness of Temporal Life

3. DIVINE TEMPORALITY

I. The Impossibility of Atemporal Personhood

II. Divine Relations with the World

III. Divine Knowledge of Tensed Facts

4. THE DYNAMIC CONCEPTION OF TIME

115

I. Arguments for a Dynamic Conception

1. The Ineliminability of Tense

2. Our Experience of Tense

II. Arguments against a Dynamic Conception

1. McTaggart’s Paradox

2. The Myth of Passage

5. THE STATIC CONCEPTION OF TIME

167

I. Arguments for a Static Conception

1. Relativity Theory

2. The Mind-Dependence of Becoming

II. Arguments against a Static Conception

1. “Spatializing” Time

2. The Illusion of Becoming

3. The Problem of Intrinsic Change

Creatio ex Nihilo

6. GOD, TIME, AND CREATION

217

I. Did Time Begin?

1. Arguments for the Infinitude of the Past

2. Arguments for the Finitude of the Past

II. God and the Beginning of Time

1. Amorphous Time

2. Timelessness without Creation

7. CONCLUSION

239

APPENDIX: Divine Eternity and God’s Knowledge of the Future

243

General Index

266

Scripture and Extra-biblical Literature Index

271

PREFACE

THE FRENCH HAVE a striking name for God, which, in the French Bible, often stands in the place of our English word “Lord”: l’Eternel—the Eternal, or the Eternal One. For example, Psalm 106:48 reads,

Blessed be the Eternal One, the God of Israel, From eternity to eternity! Let all the people say, “Amen!” Praise the Eternal One!

For French-speaking Christians the name l’Eternel serves as a constant reminder of the centrality of the divine attribute of eternity. It has become the very name of God.

The present book is written for Christians who want to grapple seriously with the concept of God’s eternity. Unlike some other writers on the attributes of God, I am convinced that the best tool we have for really understanding what is meant by the affirmation that God is eternal is not poetry or piety, but analytic philosophy.

Some readers of my study of divine omniscience, The Only Wise God, expressed surprise at my remark that someone desiring to learn more about God’s attribute of omniscience would be better advised to read the works of Christian philosophers than of Christian theologians.1 Not only was that remark true, but the same holds for divine eternity. In the Middle Ages students were not allowed to study theology until they had mastered all the other disciplines at the university, but unfortunately today’s theologians generally have next to no training in philosophy and science and so are ill-equipped to address in a substantive way the complex issues raised by God’s eternity.

As we shall see, divine eternity probably cannot be properly understood without an exploration of the nature of time itself—a daunting prospect! For apart from the idea of God, I know of no concept so profound and so baffling as that of time. To attempt an integration of these two concepts therefore stretches our minds to the very limits of our understanding. But such an exercise will be healthy for us, making us more thoughtful people and deepening our awe and worship of God, the Eternal One.

I have tried to avoid specialist jargon and to define clearly concepts apt to be unfamiliar to most readers. Nevertheless, I harbor no illusion that this book will be accessible to any interested reader. In writing The Only Wise God I found that some concepts are just so difficult that the attempt to simplify can only go so far and that some things will always remain hard to understand. For example, try as one might, it is just impossible to make the Special Theory of Relativity, so central to discussions about time, easy to grasp. But I have tried to state the issues as clearly and simply as I can without sacrificing accuracy.

The present work is a popularization of four scholarly works which are themselves the product of over a dozen years of study of the problem of God and time. An eminent philosopher has remarked that “the problem of time” is virtually unrivaled in “the extent to which it inexorably brings into play all the major concerns of philosophy.”2 Combine the problem of time with “the problem of God,” as the study of divine eternity requires, and you have a subject matter which would exhaust a lifetime of study. Readers who are interested in exploring more deeply the nature of time may consult my companion volumes The Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination and The Tenseless Theory of Time: A Critical Examination, both part of the Synthèse Library series published by Kluwer Academic Publishers of the Netherlands. Those who want a deeper exploration of Relativity Theory from a theistic perspective may want to look at my Time and the Metaphysics of Relativity, also available from Kluwer. Finally, my fullest exposition of divine eternity in light of the conclusions of these other works may be found in God, Time, and Eternity, published as well by Kluwer.

I am grateful to God for the opportunity, available to so few, to have invested so much study in the effort to sort out divine eternity. And I am grateful to my wife, Jan, for her unflagging support and practical assistance in the execution of this project.

William Lane CraigAtlanta, Georgia

1 William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1987; rep. ed.: Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2000), 11.

2 Wilfrid Sellars, “Time and the World Order,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 8 (1962): 527.

1 TWO VIEWS OF DIVINE ETERNITY

I. The Nature of Time

Time, it has been said, is what keeps everything from happening at once.1 When you think about it, this definition is probably as good as any other. For it is notoriously difficult to provide any analysis of time that is not in the end circular. If we say, for example, that time is duration, then we shall want to know what duration is. And duration turns out to be some interval of time. So time is some interval of time—not very enlightening! Or if we say that time is a dimension of the world, the points or inhabitants of which are ordered by the relations earlier than and later than, we may ask for an analysis of those relations so as to distinguish them, for example, from similar relations such as behind and in front of or less than and greater than, only to discover that earlier and later, on pain of circularity, are usually taken to be primitive, or unanalyzable, terms. Perhaps we may define earlier and later in terms of the notions past, present, and future; but then this triad is irreducibly temporal in character. Even if we succeed in defining past and future in relation to the present, what is the present except for the time that exists (where “exists” is in the present tense)?

Still, it is hardly surprising that time cannot be analyzed in terms of non-temporal concepts, and the proffered analyses are not without merit, for they do serve to highlight some of time’s essential features. For example, most philosophers of time would agree that the earlier than/later than relations are essential to time. It is true that in certain high-level theories of physics one sometimes speaks of “imaginary time” or “quantum physical time,” which are not ordered by these relations; but it would be far less misleading simply to deny that the geometrical structures posited by the relevant theories really are time at all. Some philosophers of time who deny that the past and future are real or existent have also denied that events or things are related to one another as earlier than or later than; but such thinkers do affirm the reality of the present as an irreducible feature of time. These features of time are common to our experience as temporal beings, even if ultimately unanalyzable.

Time, then, however mysterious, remains “the familiar stranger.”2 This is the import of St. Augustine’s famous disclaimer, “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; but if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I know not.”3

II. The Biblical Data on Divine Eternity

The question before us concerns the relationship of God to time. The Bible teaches clearly that God is eternal. Isaiah proclaims God as “the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity” (Isa. 57:15). In contrast to the pagan deities of Israel’s neighbors, the Lord never came into existence nor will He ever cease to exist. As the Creator of the universe, He was there in the beginning, and He will be there at the end. “I, the Lord, the first, and with the last;I am He” (Isa. 41:4). The New Testament writer to the Hebrews magnificently summarized the Old Testament teaching on God’s eternity:

“Thou, Lord, didst found the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of thy hands; they will perish, but thou remainest; they will all grow old like a garment, like a mantle thou wilt roll them up, and they will be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years will never end” (Heb. 1:10-12).

Minimally, then, it may be said that God’s being eternal means that God exists without beginning or end. He never comes into or goes out of existence; rather His existence is permanent.4 Such a minimalist account of divine eternity is uncontroversial.

But there the agreement ends. For the question is the nature of divine eternity. Specifically, is God temporal or timeless? God is temporal if and only if He exists in time, that is to say, if and only if His life has phases which are related to each other as earlier and later. In that case, God, as a personal being, has experientially a past, a present, and a future. Given His permanent, beginningless and endless existence, God must be omnitemporal; that is to say, He exists at every moment of time there ever is. I do not mean that He exists at every time at once, which is an incoherent assertion. I mean that if God is omnitemporal, He existed at every past moment, He exists at the present moment, and He will exist at every future moment. No matter what moment in time you pick, the assertion “God exists now” would be literally true at that time.

By contrast, God is timeless if and only if He is not temporal. This definition makes it evident that temporality and timelessness are contradictories: An entity must exist one way or the other and cannot exist both ways at once. Often laymen, anxious to affirm both God’s transcendence (His existing beyond the world) and His immanence (His presence in the world), assert that God is both timeless and temporal. But in the absence of some sort of model or explanation of how this can be the case, this assertion is flatly self-contradictory and so cannot be true. If, then, God exists timelessly, He does not exist at any moment of time. He transcends time; that is to say, He exists but He does not exist in time. He has no past, present, and future. At any moment in time at which we exist, we may truly assert that “God exists” in the timeless sense of existence, but not that “God exists now.”

Now the question is, does the biblical teaching on divine eternity favor either one of these views? The question turns out to be surprisingly difficult to answer. On the one hand, it is indisputable that the biblical writers typically portray God as engaged in temporal activities, including foreknowing the future and remembering the past; and when they speak directly of God’s eternal existence they do so in terms of beginningless and endless temporal duration: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God” (Ps. 90:2). “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!’” (Rev. 4:8b). After surveying the biblical data on divine eternity, Alan Padgett concludes, “The Bible knows nothing of a timeless divine eternity in the traditional sense.”5

Defenders of divine timelessness might suggest that the biblical authors lacked the conceptual categories for enunciating a doctrine of divine timelessness, so that their temporal descriptions of God need not be taken literally. But Padgett cites the first-century extra-biblical work 2 Enoch 65:6-7 as evidence that the conception of timeless existence was not beyond the reach of biblical writers:

And then the whole creation, visible and invisible, which the Lord has created, shall come to an end, then each person will go to the Lord’s great judgment. And then all time will perish, and afterward there will be neither years nor months nor days nor hours. They will be dissipated, and after that they will not be reckoned (2 Enoch 65:6-7).

Such a passage gives us reason to think that the biblical authors, had they wished to, could have formulated a doctrine of divine timelessness.

Paul Helm raises a more subtle objection to the inference that the authors of Scripture, in describing God in temporal terms, intended to teach that God is temporal.6 He claims that the biblical writers lacked the “reflective context” for formulating a doctrine of divine eternity. That is to say, the issue (like the issue of geocentrism, for instance) had either never come up for explicit consideration or else simply fell outside their interests. Consider the parallel case of God’s relationship to space: Just as the biblical writers describe God in temporal terms, so they describe Him in spatial terms as well:

“Am I a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord” (Jer. 23:23-24). Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me (Ps. 139:7-10).

God is described as existing everywhere in space. Yet most theologians would not take Scripture to teach that God is literally a spatial being. The authors of Scripture were not concerned to craft a metaphysical doctrine of God’s relation to space; and parity would require us to say the same of time as well. Padgett considers Helm’s point to be well-taken: “The Biblical authors were not interested in philosophical speculation about eternity, and thus the intellectual context for discussing this matter may simply not have existed at that time.”7 Thus, the biblical descriptions of God as temporal may not be determinative for a doctrine of divine eternity.

Moreover, it must be said that the biblical data are not so wholly one-sided as Padgett would have us believe. Johannes Schmidt, whose Ewigkeitsbegriff im alten Testament Padgett calls “the longest and most thorough book on the concept of eternity in the OT,”8 argues for a biblical doctrine of divine timelessness on the basis of creation texts such as Genesis 1:1 and Proverbs 8:22-23.9 Padgett brushes aside Schmidt’s contention with the comment, “Neither of these texts teaches or implies that time began with creation, or indeed say [sic] anything about time or eternity.”10 This summary dismissal is all too quick. Genesis 1:1, which is neither a subordinate clause nor a summary title,11 states, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” According to James Barr, this absolute beginning, taken in conjunction with the expression, “And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (v. 5), indicating the first day, may very well be intended to teach that the beginning was not simply the beginning of the physical universe but the beginning of time itself, and that, consequently, God may be thought of as timeless.12 This conclusion is rendered all the more plausible when the Genesis account of creation is read against the backdrop of ancient Egyptian cosmogony.13 Egyptian cosmogony includes the idea that creation took place at “the first time” (sp tpy). John Currid takes both the Egyptian and the Hebrew cosmogonies to involve the notion that the moment of creation is the beginning of time.14

Certain New Testament authors may be taken to construe Genesis 1:1 as referring to the beginning of time. The most striking New Testament reflection on Genesis 1:1 is, of course, John 1:1-3: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” Here the uncreated Word (logos), the source of all created things, was already with God and was God at the moment of creation. It is not hard to interpret this passage in terms of the Word’s timeless unity with God—nor would it be anachronistic to do so, given the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo’s doctrine of the divine Logos (Word) and Philo’s holding that time begins with creation.15

As for Proverbs 8:22-23, this passage is certainly capable of being read in terms of a beginning of time. The doctrine of creation was a centerpiece of Jewish wisdom literature and aimed to show God’s sovereignty over everything. Here Wisdom, personified as a woman, speaks:

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. From everlasting I was established, From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth” (nasb).

The passage, which doubtless looks back to Genesis 1:1, is brimming with temporal expressions for a beginning. R. N. Whybray comments,

It should be noted how the writer . . . was so insistent on pressing home the fact of Wisdom’s unimaginable antiquity that he piled up every available synonym in a deluge of tautologies: r∑s’šît,beginning, qedem,the first, m∑’az,of old, m∑ <olam,ages ago, m∑ro’š,at the first or “from the beginning” (compare Isa. 40.21; 41.4, 26), miqqade mê’ares,before the beginning of the earth: the emphasis is not so much on the mode of Wisdom’s coming into existence, . . . but on the fact of her antiquity.16

The expressions emphasize, however, not Wisdom’s mere antiquity, but that there was a beginning, a departure point, at or before which Wisdom existed. This was a departure point not merely for the earth but for time and the ages; it was simply the beginning. Plöger comments that through God’s creative work “the possibility of speaking of ‘time’ was first given; thus, before this time, right at the beginning, Wisdom came into existence through Yahweh [the Lord].”17 The passage was so understood by other ancient writers. The Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament rendersm∑ <olamin Proverbs 8:23 as pro tou aionios(before time), and Sirach 24:9 has Wisdom say, “Before the ages, in the beginning, he created me, and for all ages I shall not cease to be” (cf. 16:26; 23:20).

Significantly, certain New Testament passages also seem to affirm a beginning of time. This would imply just the same sort of timelessness “before” the creation of the world which Padgett sees in 2 Enoch “after” the end of the world. For example, we read in Jude 25, “to the only God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and for ever” (pro pantos tou aionos kai nun kai eis pantas tous aionas) (emphasis added).The passage contemplates an everlasting future duration but affirms a beginning to past time and implies God’s existence, using an almost inevitable façon de parler, “before” time began. Similar expressions are found in two intriguing passages in the Pastoral Epistles. In Titus 1:2-3, in a passage laden with temporal language, we read of those chosen by God “in hope of eternal life [zoΣs aioniou] which God, who never lies, promised before age-long time [pro chronon aionion] but manifested at the proper time [kairois idiois]” (author’s translation). And in 2 Timothy 1:9 we read of God’s “purpose and grace, which were given to us in Christ Jesus before age-long time [pro chronon aionion], but now [nun] manifested by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus” (author’s translation). Arndt and Gingrich render pro chronon aionion as “before time began.”18 Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 2:7 Paul speaks of a secret, hidden wisdom of God, “which God decreed before the ages [pro ton aionon] for our glorification.” Such expressions are in line with the Septuagint, which describes God as “the one who exists before the ages [ho hyparchon pro ton aionon]” (LXX Ps. 54:20 [Ps 55:19]). Expressions such as ek tou aionos or apo ton aionon might be taken to mean merely “from ancient times” or “from eternity.” But these should not be conflated with proexpressions. That such pro constructions are to be taken seriously and not merely as idioms connoting “for long ages” (cf. Rom. 16:25: chronois aioniois) is confirmed by the many similar expressions concerning God and His decrees “before the foundation of the world” (pro katabolΣs kosmou) (John 17:24; Eph. 1:4; 1 Pet. 1:20; cf. Rev. 13:8). Evidently it was a common understanding of the creation described in Genesis 1:1 that the beginning of the world was coincident with the beginning of time or the ages; but since God did not begin to exist at the moment of creation, it therefore followed that He existed “before” the beginning of time. God, at least “before” creation, must therefore be atemporal.

Thus, although scriptural authors speak of God as temporal and everlasting, there is some evidence, at least, that when God is considered in relation to creation He must be thought of as the transcendent Creator of time and the ages and therefore as existing beyond time. It may well be the case that in the context of the doctrine of creation the biblical writers were led to reflect on God’s relationship to time and chose to affirm His transcendence. Still the evidence is not clear, and we seem forced to conclude with Barr that “if such a thing as a Christian doctrine of time has to be developed, the work of discussing it and developing it must belong not to biblical but to philosophical theology.”19

III. The Importance of Articulating a Theory of Divine Eternity

If the biblical data concerning God’s relationship to time are indeterminative, then why, it may be asked, not simply rest with the biblical affirmation of God’s beginningless and endless existence, instead of entering the speculative realms of metaphysics in an attempt to articulate a doctrine of God and time? At least two responses may be given to this question. First, the biblical conception of God has been attacked precisely on the grounds that no coherent doctrine of divine eternity can be formulated. Two examples come immediately to mind. In his God and the New Physics, Paul Davies, a distinguished physicist who was awarded the million-dollar Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion for his many popular books relating science and religion, argues that God, as traditionally understood, can be neither timeless nor temporal. On the one hand, God cannot be timeless because such a being “cannot be a personal God who thinks, converses, feels, plans, and so on for these are all temporal activities.”20 Such a God could not act in time, nor could He be considered a self and, hence, a person. Davies adds, “The difficulty is particularly acute for Christians, who believe that at some specific moment in human history, God became incarnate and set about saving Man.”21 On the other hand, according to Davies, God cannot be a temporal being because He would then be subject to the laws of Relativity Theory governing space and time and so could not be omnipotent; nor could He be the Creator of the universe, since in order to create time and space, God must transcend time and space. Davies insists,

God the Creator, by his very nature, must transcend space and time. . . . the coming into being of the physical universe involved the coming into being of space and time as well as matter. I can’t emphasize this too strongly and so if we wish to have a God who is in some sense responsible for the origin of the universe or for the universe, then this God must lie outside of the space and time which is being created.22

The logical conclusion of Davies’s dilemma is that God as the Bible portrays Him does not exist. The importance of this dilemma has grown in Davies’s thinking over the years; he has recently written, “No attempt to explain the world, either scientifically or theologically, can be considered successful until it accounts for the paradoxical conjunction of the temporal and the atemporal, of being and becoming.”23

A second example of such an attack on the biblical conception of God is the critique of God as Creator set forth by Stephen Hawking, one of the most celebrated mathematical physicists of the twentieth century, in his runaway best-seller A Brief History of Time. Hawking believes that in the context of standard Big Bang cosmology it makes sense to appeal to God as the Creator of the space-time universe, since according to that theory space-time had a beginning point, called the initial singularity, at which the universe originated.24 By introducing imaginary numbers (multiples of √-1) for the time variable in the equations describing the very early universe, Hawking eliminates the singularity by “rounding off,” as it were, the beginning of space-time. Instead of having a beginning point akin to the apex of a cone, space-time in its earliest state in Hawking’s theory is like the rounded tip of a badminton birdie. Like the surface of a sphere, it has no edge at which you must stop. Hawking is not at all reluctant to draw theological conclusions from his model:

There would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time. . . . The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would be neither created nor destroyed. It would just BE. . . . The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary . . . has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. . . . So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end. What place, then, for a creator?25

The success of Hawking’s gambit to eliminate the Creator of the universe hinges crucially on the legitimacy of his concept of “imaginary time.” Since on Hawking’s view imaginary time is indistinguishable from a spatial dimension, devoid of temporal becoming and earlier than/later than relations, the four-dimensional space-time world just subsists, and there is nothing for a Creator to do.

Both Davies and Hawking’s writings have been enormously influential in popular culture as well as in scientific thinking. An adequate answer to the challenges they pose to biblical theism requires a coherent theory of divine eternity and God’s relation to time.

The second reason why it is incumbent upon the philosophical theologian to articulate a doctrine of God and time is that a great deal of careless writing has already been done on this topic. The question is not whether orthodox believers will address the issue, but whether they will address it responsibly. It is inevitable that when Christians think about God’s eternity or knowledge of the future or of our “going to be with the Lord in eternity,” they will form conceptions of how God relates to time. These are usually confused and poorly thought through, a situation often exacerbated by pronouncements from the pulpit concerning divine eternity. Unfortunately, popular authors frequently compound the problem in their treatments of God and time.

Again, two examples will suffice. Philip Yancey is an enormously popular Christian author. In his award-winning book Disappointment with God, Yancey attempts to come to grips with the apparently gratuitous evil permitted by God in the world. The centerpiece of his solution to the problem is his understanding of God’s relationship to time.26 Unfortunately, Yancey’s view is a self-contradictory combination of two different positions based on a pair of confused analogies. On the one hand, appealing to the Special Theory of Relativity, Yancey wants to affirm that a being coextensive with the universe would know what is happening from the perspective of any spatially limited observer in the universe. But, contrary to Yancey, the fact that local observers have varying perspectives has nothing to do with relativity at all, but rather with the finite velocity of light. Localized observers can only form what cosmologists call a “world picture” of the universe: As they look out into space they are seeing astronomical events, not as they are occurring simultaneously with local events but as they were in the past. Local observers at distant places in the universe will thus have different world pictures. What they cannot form is a “world map,” that is, a picture of what is happening in the universe simultaneously with events in their vicinity. A cosmic observer such as Yancey imagines would, however, be able to form a world map precisely because he is not spatially localized. Such a cosmic observer would experience the lapse of worldwide cosmic time and would be able to know what is happening now anywhere in the universe. If we deny him such a cosmic perspective and grant to him only a combination of local perspectives, then he becomes a pitiful schizophrenic, lacking all unity of consciousness and possessing only an infinitely fragmented array of local consciousnesses—hardly an adequate analogy for God! In any case, the salient point is that such a being would be temporal and would experience the flow of time. Such an understanding is inconsistent with Yancey’s second analogy of the relation between the time of an author and the time of the characters in his book or film. “We see history like a sequence of still frames, one after the other, as in a motion picture reel; but God sees the entire movie at once, in a flash.”27 The analogy is problematic, since characters in novels and films do not really exist, and so neither do their “times” exist. Hence, there just is no relation between, say, the time of Shakespeare and the time of Hamlet. But again, the salient point is that this analogy points in a direction opposite the first, to an understanding of time as static, like a film lying in the can or a novel sitting on the shelf, with a timeless God existing outside the temporal dimension. Yancey’s two analogies thus issue in a self-contradictory view of divine eternity—unless, perhaps, he makes the extravagant move of construing eternity as a sort of hyper-time, a higher, second-order time dimension in which our temporal dimension is embedded—and so provides no adequate solution to the problem of disappointment with God.28

Our second example is the popular science writer Hugh Ross, who apparently does make so bold as to affirm that God exists and operates in hyper-time. Explicitly rejecting the Augustinian-Thomistic doctrine of divine timelessness, Ross affirms that “The Creator’s capacities include at least two, perhaps more, time dimensions.”29 In attempting to solve the problem of God’s creating time (raised by Davies above), Ross asserts that God exists in a sort of hyper-time, in which He created our space-time universe. Unfortunately, Ross does not accurately represent this notion. A divine hyper-time would be a dimension at each of whose moments our entire time dimension exists or not. On a diagram, it would be represented by a line perpendicular to the line representing our dimension (Fig. 1.1):

Fig. 1.1: At successive moments of hyper-time T, our entire time series t exists.

But Ross misconstrues the nature of hyper-time, representing God’s time on his diagram by a line parallel, rather than perpendicular, to the line representing our temporal dimension.30 Fig. 1.2 reproduces Ross’s Fig. 7.1:

Fig. 1.2:B represents God’s infinite time line, while C represents our finite time line.A erroneously depicts other alleged time lines.

What Ross’s diagram implies is that God’s temporal dimension is actually the same as ours, but that He pre-exists for infinite time prior to the creation of the universe. This is, in fact, a classical, Newtonian view of God and time. Newton believed that God existed from eternity past in absolute time and at some moment created the physical universe. The proper distinction to be drawn on such a view is not between two dimensions of time, but rather, as Newton put it, between absolute time and our relative, physical measures of time. In affirming God’s infinite pre-existence, Ross must face the old question that dogged Newtonians: Why would God delay for infinite time the creation of the universe?

In two places Ross suggests that the two dimensions of time may have the geometry of the surface of a hemisphere, our time being represented by the equator and God’s time by the longitudinal lines (Fig. 1.3).31

Fig. 1.3:UE represents the time dimension of the universe. G represents God. GU, GB, etc., must then represent separate time lines on which God exists.

Such a daring model is, however, misconceived. For then it is our time which is the hyper-time in which God’s temporal dimension is embedded, since there is one line representing our time but many lines for God’s. Moreover, it is incorrect to situate God at the pole of the hemisphere, as Ross does, for this would be to treat His time as the embedding hyper-time; in fact, He must exist at all the points on each of His longitudinal time lines. Since these divine time lines endure through successive moments of our hyper-time, they cannot represent lines of divine causal influence, as Ross thinks. Finally, such a view makes our time circular, which contradicts the Judaeo-Christian conception of time. This unwelcome conclusion could be averted only by making our time finite in extent, which contradicts the Christian doctrine of immortality. In short, Ross’s views, while ingenious, are neither coherent nor consistent with orthodox theology. What makes this conclusion disturbing is Ross’s repeated claim that Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and the incarnation are not logically coherent unless formulated in more than four dimensions. I suspect that, for Ross, talk of God’s extra-dimensionality is but a façon de parler for God’s transcending space and time—but then he has expressed himself in a most misleading way, which is bound to create confusion and still leaves us with no clear understanding of God’s relationship to time.

Examples could be multiplied to show the way in which popular expositions of divine eternity have promoted error or confusion. The philosopher Max Black once remarked that “a rough measure of the philosophical importance of a concept is the amount of nonsense written about it. Judged by this test the concept of time comes somewhat ahead of the concept of space and behind the concept of deity.”32 Combine time and deity and you really have something both important and difficult to write about! If we are to move beyond the nonsense, clear, rigorous thinking—not silence—is called for on this issue.

We therefore have good reason to turn to philosophical theology for an articulation of a doctrine of divine eternity. When we do so, as the above discussions remind us, we shall have to keep an eye on science as well as philosophy. Of course, for the Christian, one’s theory of divine eternity will be held tentatively, as our best effort to understand how God relates to time, rather than dogmatically, as if it were the teaching of Scripture. Scripture teaches that God exists beginninglessly and endlessly; now it is up to us to figure out what that implies.

2 DIVINE TIMELESSNESS

“WHATEVER INCLUDES AND possesses the whole fulness of interminable life at once and is such that nothing future is absent from it and nothing past has flowed away, this is rightly judged to be eternal,” wrote the medieval theologian Boethius.1 On such an understanding of divine eternity God transcends time altogether. But what reasons can be given for adopting such an understanding of God’s eternity? In the next two chapters we shall examine what I consider to be the most important arguments for divine timelessness and for divine temporality. In this chapter we shall look at what I deem to be the most important arguments on behalf of the view that God is timeless.

I. Divine Simplicity and Immutability

EXPOSITION

Traditionally, Christian theologians such as Thomas Aquinas argued for God’s timelessness on the basis of His absolute simplicity and immutability. The argument can be easily formulated. As a first premise, we assume either

1. God is simple

1’. God is immutable.

Then we add

2. If God is simple or immutable, then He is not temporal,from which we can logically deduce 3. Therefore, God is not temporal.

Since temporality and timelessness are, as we have seen, contradictories, it follows that

4. Therefore, God is timeless.

Since this is a logically valid argument, the only question to consider is whether the premises of the argument are true.

CRITIQUE

Consider premise (2) above. The doctrine of divine simplicity states that God has absolutely no composition in His nature or being. Thus, the notion of simplicity operative here is the polar opposite of complexity. God is said to be an absolutely undifferentiated unity. This medieval doctrine is not popular among theologians today, and even when Christians do give lip service to it, they usually do not appreciate how truly radical the doctrine is. It implies not merely that God does not have parts, but that He does not possess even distinct attributes. In some mysterious way His omnipotence is His goodness, for example. He stands in no relations whatsoever. Thus, He does not literally love, know, or cause His creatures. He is not really composed of three distinct persons, a claim notoriously difficult to reconcile with the doctrine of the Trinity. His nature or essence is not even distinct from His existence, an assertion which led to the very difficult doctrine that God’s essence just is existence; He is, Thomas Aquinas tells us, the pure act of existing.

Now if God is simple in the way described, it obviously follows that He cannot be temporal, for a temporal being is related to the various times at which it exists: It exists at t1 and at t2, for example. But a simple being stands in no real relations, as we have seen. Moreover, a temporal being has phases of its life which are not identical but rather are related to one another as earlier and later. But an absolutely simple being could not stand in such relations and so must have its life, as Boethius put it, “all at once” (totum simul).

Similarly, if God is immutable, then even if He is not simple He still cannot be temporal. Like simplicity, the immutability affirmed by the medieval theologians is a radical concept: utter immobility. God cannot change in any respect. He never thinks successive thoughts, He never performs successive actions, He never undergoes even the most trivial alteration. God not only cannot undergo intrinsic change, He cannot even change extrinsically by being related to changing things.2 But obviously a temporal being undergoes at least extrinsic change in that it exists at different moments of time and, given the reality of the temporal world, co-exists with different sets of temporal beings as they undergo intrinsic change. Even if we relax the definition of “immutable” to mean “incapable of intrinsic change,” or the even weaker concept “intrinsically changeless,” an immutable God cannot be temporal. For if God is temporal, He at the very least changes in that He is constantly growing older—not physically, of course, but in the purely temporal sense of constantly adding more years to His life. Moreover, God would be constantly changing in His knowledge, knowing first that “It is now t1” and later that “It is now t2.” God’s foreknowledge and memory must also be steadily changing, as anticipated events transpire and become past. God would constantly be performing new actions, at t1 causing the events at t1, and at t2 causing the events at t2. Thus, a temporal God cannot be changeless. It follows, then, that if God is immutable, He is timeless.

Thus, God’s timelessness can be deduced from either His simplicity or His immutability. Is this a good reason for thinking that God is timeless? That all depends on whether we have any good reason to think that God is simple or immutable. Here we run into severe difficulties. For the doctrines of divine simplicity and immutability are even more controverted than the doctrine of divine eternity. To try to prove divine timelessness via divine simplicity or immutability, therefore, takes on the air of trying to prove the obvious via the less obvious. More specifically, the doctrines of divine simplicity and immutability as explained above find absolutely no support in Scripture, which at most speaks of God’s immutability in terms of His faithfulness and unchanging character (Mal. 3:6; Jas. 1:17). Philosophically, there seem to be no good reasons to embrace these radical doctrines, and weighty objections have been lodged against them.3 These need not be discussed here; the point is that premises (1) and (1’) above are even less plausible and more difficult to prove than (4), so that they do not constitute good grounds for believing (4). Thus, while we may freely admit that a simple or immutable God must be timeless, we have even less reason to think God simple or immutable than to think Him timeless and so can hardly infer that He is timeless on the basis of those doctrines.

II. Relativity Theory

EXPOSITION

The branch of physics most directly concerned with the analysis of the nature of time and space is Relativity Theory, the brainchild of Albert Einstein. There are two theories of relativity, the restricted or Special Theory of Relativity (STR), which Einstein formulated in 1905, and the General Theory of Relativity (GTR), which he completed in 1915. According to physicist Hermann Bondi, “there is perhaps no other part of physics that has been checked and tested and cross-checked quite as much as the Theory of Relativity.”4 The predictions of both STR and GTR have been verified without fail to a fantastic degree of precision. Any adequate theory of God’s relationship to time must therefore take account of what these theories have to say about the nature of time. When we explore what STR has to say about the nature of time and particularly about simultaneity, however, a significant objection to divine temporality arises.

In order to grasp this objection, we need to have some understanding of STR. Although the mathematics of STR are not highly sophisticated, nonetheless the concepts of time and space defined by the theory are so strange and counterintuitive that most people, I venture to say, find them nearly inconceivable. Undaunted, I shall attempt to explain in as simple a way as possible what Einstein’s theory holds with regard to the nature of time and space, so that we may then understand what impact this has on our conception of divine eternity.

Isaac Newton

“And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appearances of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy.”

Let us begin with a historical retrospect. The physics which prevailed up until the reception of Relativity Theory was Newtonian physics, whose foundations were laid by Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist of all time, in his epochal Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687). In the Scholium to his set of Definitions leading off the Principia, Newton explains his concepts of time and space. In order to clarify these concepts, Newton draws a distinction between absolute time and space and relative time and space:

I. Absolute . . . time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration: relative . . . time, is some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by the means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a year. II. Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces; which our senses determine by its position to bodies; and which is commonly taken for immovable space; such is the dimension of a subterraneous, an aerial, or celestial space, determined by its position in respect of the earth.5

Fundamentally, Newton is here distinguishing between time and space themselves and our measures of time and space. Relative time is the time determined or recorded by clocks and calendars of various sorts; relative space is the length or area or volume determined by instruments such as rulers or measuring cups. As Newton says, these relative quantities may be more or less accurate measures of time and space themselves. Time and space themselves are absolute in the sense that they just are the quantities themselves which we are trying to measure with our physical instruments.

There is, however, another sense in which Newton held time and space to be absolute. They are absolute in the sense that they are unique. There is one, universal time in which all events come to pass with determinate duration and in a determinate sequence, and one, universal space in which all physical objects exist with determinate shapes and in a determinate arrangement. Thus Newton says that absolute time “of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external,” and absolute space “in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable.” Relative times and spaces are many and variable, but not time and space themselves.

On the basis of his definitions of time and space, Newton went on to define absolute versus relative place and motion:

III. Place is a part of space which a body takes up, and is according to the space, either absolute or relative. . . . IV. Absolute motion is the translation of a body from one absolute place into another; and relative motion, the translation from one relative place into another.6

By “translation” Newton means “transporting” or “displacement.” Absolute place is the volume of absolute space occupied by an object, and absolute motion is the displacement of a body from one absolute place to another. An object can be at relative rest and yet in absolute motion. Newton gives the example of a piece of a ship, say, the mast. If the mast is firmly fixed, then it is at rest relative to the ship; but the mast is in absolute motion if the ship is moving in absolute space as it sails along. Thus, two objects can be at rest relative to each other, but both moving in tandem through absolute space (and thus moving absolutely). Similarly, two objects—say, two asteroids—could be in motion relative to each other and yet one of them at rest in absolute space.

In Newtonian physics there is already a sort of relativity. A body which is in uniform motion (that is, no accelerations or decelerations occur) serves to define an inertial frame, which is just a relative space in which a body at rest remains at rest and a body in motion remains in motion with the same speed and direction. Newton’s ship sailing uniformly along would thus define an inertial frame. Although Newton postulated the existence of an absolute inertial frame, namely, the reference frame of absolute space, nevertheless it was impossible for observers in inertial frames which were moving in absolute space to determine experimentally that they were in fact moving. If someone’s relative space were moving uniformly through absolute space, that person could not tell whether he was at absolute rest or in absolute motion. By the same token, if his relative space were at rest in absolute space, he could not know that he was at absolute rest rather than in absolute motion. He could know that his inertial frame was in motion relative to some other observer’s inertial frame (say, another passing ship), but he could not know if either of them were at absolute rest or in absolute motion. Thus, within Newtonian physics an observer could measure only the relative motion of his inertial system, not its absolute motion.