What is God's relationship to time?
I normally don't post this kind of stuff on here, but thought it would be ok for a change. How does God relate to time as we experience it?
The classical answer is a variation of timelessness: God is outside of time. Aquinas affirms a version of time being spread out before God like a parade that he sees all at once.
A more recent answer is that God is temporal: He experiences time in ways similar to us and the future is still open; he does not inhabit the future.
Somewhere between are varying answers of God's relativity to time: God experiences time in a different way from us. Boethius said that if time is like a wheel, then we experience the wheel at the rim, but God experiences it at the centre.
My own take is the following. God is timefull. He contains all of time. If I could change Boethius' analogy, God is the wheel and time is the centre. Where God "touches" time, he experiences time and shapes and moulds history. Where he does not touch time, he contains it.
How do I arrive here? Via Einstein, we know that time and space are relative. At higher speeds, time slows and space shrinks. This means (and this is NOT an original illustration) that
if one twin flew in a space ship that travelled near the speed of light for a certain amount of time and then returned to earth, he would be younger than his other twin. Time proceeds at a slower pace at such high speeds. If the twin in the space ship had a high-powered telescope, he could look back and watch the events of his brother's life occur at a different speed than his brother can.
Let's expand this to God: God contains all of time, being beyond the boundaries it creates. He "sees" time proceed at a different pace. But God has also entered the created order, making himself subject to the boundaries of time/space by his Son and Spirit. The Son and Spirit are the persons of God who "touch" time, moulding and shaping it, drawing it to the conclusion God desires.
So, I think it best to say that God is timefull. He contains time and is not bound by it. But God also touches time in the Son and Spirit and therefore is involved in it and working to draw it to a purposeful conclusion.
The classical answer is a variation of timelessness: God is outside of time. Aquinas affirms a version of time being spread out before God like a parade that he sees all at once.
A more recent answer is that God is temporal: He experiences time in ways similar to us and the future is still open; he does not inhabit the future.
Somewhere between are varying answers of God's relativity to time: God experiences time in a different way from us. Boethius said that if time is like a wheel, then we experience the wheel at the rim, but God experiences it at the centre.
My own take is the following. God is timefull. He contains all of time. If I could change Boethius' analogy, God is the wheel and time is the centre. Where God "touches" time, he experiences time and shapes and moulds history. Where he does not touch time, he contains it.
How do I arrive here? Via Einstein, we know that time and space are relative. At higher speeds, time slows and space shrinks. This means (and this is NOT an original illustration) that
if one twin flew in a space ship that travelled near the speed of light for a certain amount of time and then returned to earth, he would be younger than his other twin. Time proceeds at a slower pace at such high speeds. If the twin in the space ship had a high-powered telescope, he could look back and watch the events of his brother's life occur at a different speed than his brother can.
Let's expand this to God: God contains all of time, being beyond the boundaries it creates. He "sees" time proceed at a different pace. But God has also entered the created order, making himself subject to the boundaries of time/space by his Son and Spirit. The Son and Spirit are the persons of God who "touch" time, moulding and shaping it, drawing it to the conclusion God desires.
So, I think it best to say that God is timefull. He contains time and is not bound by it. But God also touches time in the Son and Spirit and therefore is involved in it and working to draw it to a purposeful conclusion.
posted by Aaron Perry at
9:18 AM
12 Comments:
Cool stuff man. When having these conversations I always feel like I should be sitting in a circel of a certian basement in Point Place, Wisconsin. Cool stuff man. When having these conversations I always feel like I should be sitting in a circle in a basement in Point Place, Wisconsin.
I can buy the “parade” view for past and present but I’m not sure I buy it for the future. It’s related to my hang ups about foreknowledge and free will and what, if I remember correctly, is called open theism. What if God doesn’t know the future because the future doesn’t exist? What if time is not a road being traveled but a road being built and so the point in front of the steam roller of the present simply doesn’t exist. That doesn’t mean that God can’t choose to act at some future point on the road but he can’t act on it until it is the present. The Father didn’t send the Son into the future He sent Him into the eventual present. I see no instances in scripture (with the possible exception of “slain before the foundation of the world”, but I think that could be explained) where God interacts with the past or the future. God doesn’t time travel into the past because He was already there and did what He wanted to do and he doesn’t “time travel” into the future because that part of the road hasn’t been built yet. It’s a thought in progress and it may not merit much more progress but…
hey aj,
funny about the circle in wisconson. funny about the circle in wisconson.
of course, God cannot act in the past or in the future, depending on what you mean. pannenberg has suggested that God goes "ahead" of us, as a conceptual tool for thinking about his relation to the eschatological goal. but of course any revealed work of God written down is a matter of history and so necessarily done. and any prophesied work of God is written in the future ("God will do....") and so becomes incoherent to speak of God working now in the future ("God is now working at 2010").
your consideration of open theism is generally correct. some argue that the future does not exist for God to know. greg boyd argues that God knows all possible future outcomes of all possible future contingencies (called "counterfactuals") and so he says that it is better to say that "God overknows the future" rather than God doesn't know it.
your issues with foreknowledge and free will are ones that i share. strictly speaking, for Aquinas there is no such thing as "fore"knowledge because there is only the "eternal now" to God. one cannot know something before it happened if all happens at once. i prefer to combine two notions: God being separate from time and God acting in time. in this way God both knows the future--the future is already contained in him--but to speak of foreknowledge is a little misleading because God's vantage point is within time, as well.
I'm with you on God being both in and seperate from time but I think there is still room for the future to not exist. If much of the future is still contingent upon free choices we have yet to make I think the non-existence of the future is a very, maybe the most, reasonable explanation. That's not to say that God has no influence over the future but that He either works from now to aim the direction of the steamroller or waits untill then is now and does what he wants. I like the over know option. Still allows for free will but unless he knows which conter-falafel we will cause it seems pretty irrelevant but might help the "God must know the future" types to sleep better.
Brilliant! You have made me think about God and time in new ways! Thank you.
The line that impacted me most: "The Son and Spirit are the persons of God who "touch" time, moulding and shaping it, drawing it to the conclusion God desires."
When can we buy your book? Have you considered writing one?
really really good ap.
i had only heard the Aquinas' and Boethius' versions.
yours is better, i think.
Tim - I'll be the first to admit you were about 2 big words over my quota for understanding but let me try to respond to what I understand to be the basic gist of your comment.
The future does not need to exist for God to bring about a certian future. He's God. If He wants conditions to be such and such at such and such a time he can push time to that direction. The fact that the future doesen't exist yet doesen't mean God isn't God of the future. If I am showing that I don't understand your point at all explain it again and pretend I'm 8.
Thanks for the clarification Tim. I guess on the end of time thing my first thought is that God will end it when he wants or when it's how he wants but I hear your point. It would seem to me from scripture that creation does effect God. I think of the "God regretted" passages etc but not that it changes who God fundamentally is.
On your second point I will be the first to admit that the foreknowledge vs free will tension seems to be one that either occurs to people or not. It's self evident to some and irrelevant to others. I don't know who's right but but we will find out someday. Of course to God we have already will find out or is it just that He intends to tell us. Or... Ok now my brain hurts. Where is that circle?
You are not in hell because you are time bound. And the Son and Spirit are at work drawing the creation to the conclusion God wants. But if I can change the language a bit, just as we are time-bound, so is creation God-bound. it is limited in him and by him for his (which is also the creation's) good purpose.
if i can combine your telos language and my existentialist leanings, you are already in heaven because you are living in "harmony with the Maker" (to borrow a quote from Rob Bell). and persons against him are already living in hell because their cause is futile. because teh telos of creation is in God's control since creation is God-bound, then heaven and hell are present realities for the creation vis-a-vis God, though not present realities vis-a-vis time.
that last message was to Tim and i can assure you, tim, that I would have written "you are not in heaven" had i been thinking straight! :S :D
So if we are time bound (and I assume so is all of creation) and we are not in the future then God's interaction in the future is not with us but with...
Or the furure is real but creation is not there because it is time bound and so God is in the future all by Himself? I have caught up to the future point at which God foreknew I would be confused again.
hey aj,
good pushes. i think it's a matter of perspective. the person of God who binds time by being outside it does not experience it as future and while he "waits" for us to catch up. there is nothing "before" or "after" for God who creates. there is before and after for God who draws and works and moulds creation. so, in short, i could say, "the future exists because God exists." but this would only be a statement that would make sense from my perspective. i would prefer saying, "God does not interact with the future as much as he interacts with the present by the Son and the Spirit *from* all of time, which includes what is for us the future."
i think this makes sense of how though the events don't change, my perspective on the past can become radically different--and it all even look different.
I am interested by your nod to Einstein. I have dipped into (popular)physics a little bit (Brian Greene)and found it to be fascinating and mind boggling. These physicists are relentless in carrying on Einstein's search for a theory of everything. They are so smart and they blow me away. Another thought that strikes me while reading in this field is the limitation of the human mind to understand the fringes of the cosmos.
I enjoy reading the science I really do, but I still think my question about time, for example, will have to be answered theologically. (I think this is true for scientists too though perhaps they would appeal to philosophy) I love reading where the disciplines collide
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