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Podcast
Time And The Nature Of God
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Transcript
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Hi, I'm Dave DeWitt and today I'd like to talk about time and the nature of God.
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If we're going to do that, here's some questions we need to consider.
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Does God see time as a progression of events or does he see time all at once or both?
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Is God involved in time as part of time or both?
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Are God and time a paradox or an antinomy, apparent contradictions between logical conclusions
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like sovereignty and free will?
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Did God create time at some point in time or is time a part of God?
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Here's four theories that have been suggested concerning God and time.
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Theory number one, God experiences all time at the same time.
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Theologian Thayer Shedd states it this way, quote, God sees the end from the beginning
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and hence for him there is no interval or sequence between the end and the beginning.
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With Shedd's idea, there would be no past, present, or future with God.
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For example, with God storing up wrath or God having patience.
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If God sees all the time instantaneously and simultaneously where there's no interval
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or sequence between the end and the beginning, then in what sense is the first sin and then
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a repentance of sin?
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Also the birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus would all be seen by
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God at the same time.
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It would also mean that God sees us as saved and unsaved at the same time and that's impossible.
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The gospel from God's perspective requires a passing of time.
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In the Bible, we only know about God acting in present time.
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He never jumps forward in time or goes back in time to do a do-over.
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For example, the people of Noah's day were only evil continually and God regretted he'd
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made man, but he did not go back into the garden of Eden and create something other
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than man to be a caretaker of the earth.
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He judged man in that present time by telling Noah to build an ark.
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Then 120 years later, he created a flood at that present time.
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All the judgments of God are God dealing with the past and the present, not going back
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into the future.
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Another problem arises in the area of prayer.
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If God experiences all time at the same time, then he does not hear our prayers in the present
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time and then answer them in the future time.
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He'd hear and answer in one timeless moment.
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But does this not sound like that's what the Bible intends for us to understand?
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When Jesus said, your father knows what you need before you ask him in Matthew 6a, he
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did not mean before in the sense of a place on a static ribbon of events.
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He was referring to a sequence of events.
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First he knows, then we ask, then he answers.
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Jesus is talking about an omniscience of God, not the timelessness of God.
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Jesus made this comment before he gave what we call the Lord's Prayer that indicates
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a succession of time between our prayer for something such as do not lead us into temptation
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and his answer to deliver us from evil.
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It seems like from God's perspective, these happen in a sequence of time, not all at once
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simultaneously.
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James 5.16 says the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.
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That sounds like the effective prayer is in the past time from what it accomplishes.
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Theory number two, God is outside of time.
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It seems to be a prominent view in the church through the Middle Ages.
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Cracker reports, quote, from Augustine through Aquinas, the major thinkers argued that God
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was not in time at all.
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They thought of God as eternal in the sense that he is a temporal without any connection
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to time.
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Many of these church fathers seem to think that the eternality of God eliminated any
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possibility of God seeing time sequentially.
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They saw eternality as something beyond time, not just an endless duration of it.
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But as we've seen, the Bible is filled with references to God involved in time, and there's
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no references which separate God from time.
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Even his predetermined plan involves time.
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Acts 1.7, And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which
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the Father has put in his own power.
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Theory number three, God is both involved in time and outside of time at the same time.
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Wayne Gruden writes, In his own being, God is timeless.
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He does not experience a succession of moments.
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Before God created the world, there was no passage of time.
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That's a close quote.
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We've already discussed the inaccuracy of the claim, Before God created the world, there
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was no passage of time.
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Gruden also does not deal with the contradiction between saying God is involved in time and
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God does not experience a succession of moments.
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If God has no succession of moments, then in what sense is he involved in our lives?
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Say for example, in our discipline, our care for our daily needs, our hearing our prayers.
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Either God is involved in the movement of our lives or he's not.
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The way they get around that dilemma is to treat it as another paradox or antinomy, like
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unity and trinity and predestination and free will.
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But it's not the same.
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With an antinomy, logic is applied to observations which lead to rational conclusions which contradict
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each other.
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In this case, the Bible never says God is apart from time.
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There's no biblical statement of God outside of time to observe and examine with logic.
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Theory number four, God is eternal in that he's everlasting, not temporal.
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In my opinion, this is the best theory.
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This theory says God is always involved in every present moment of all time, not apart
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from time.
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Although it's hard to be dogmatic, and we should always remain teachable if there's
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a better theory, this view seems preferable.
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It seems God is in time, not apart from time, temporal, not atemporal.
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It's unnecessary to say God was involved in the past time because he was involved in
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it when it was present time, and to say God is involved in future time because he'll be
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involved in it when the future becomes present time.
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It's sufficient to say God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.
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God can be sovereign over time and predetermine the future without being apart from time.
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Psalm 90, verses two to four, before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the
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earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you're God.
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Psalm 93, verse two, your throne is established from old, you're from everlasting.
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Both Moses in Psalm 90 and the psalmist in Psalm 93 call God everlasting.
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The word everlasting indicates time without end, not an existence outside of time.
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These psalms say God existed before the creation of anything he created, not that time did
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not exist until God began creating.
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Psalm 102 says your years will not come to an end.
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Here the psalmist pictures God as having years.
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God's years extend throughout all generations and will not come to an end.
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Even if years is a metaphor, the word describes God as everlasting, not timeless.
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Second Peter 3, eight to 10, but do not let this one fact escape your notice, brethren,
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that with the Lord a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day.
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The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient towards
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you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
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Peter sees God as patient with time, using time by his own schedule, but not apart from
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time.
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There are three things we should notice about this passage.
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First, Peter did not say, with the Lord, one day is a thousand years, and a thousand years
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is one day.
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A Greek word for as or like is in the original text, it's not just in Translator's Edition.
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Peter is giving us a metaphorical comparison about God's use of time.
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He's not saying God is a-temporal, apart from time.
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And second, Peter's assuming God uses the same time diagnations as we do, days and years.
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Once again, God is involved in time, not apart from time.
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Third, the context is about God not being subject to our schedule.
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Peter is answering the critical question, where's the promise of his coming?
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He is saying we cannot schedule God's events.
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His coming will be on his own time.
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Tom Constable writes, quote, this verse does not mean that God operates in a timeless state.
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The idea of a timeless existence is platonic, not biblical.
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God's relation to time is different from ours since he's eternal, but this does not
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mean eternality will be timeless.
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Eternity is endless, not separated from time.
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Revelation 1.8 reads, I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was
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and who is to come.
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God describes his eternality in terms of past, present, and future, is, was, is to
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come.
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I suspect the reason many Christians want to say God created time is because clearly
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God is not in submission to time.
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That would mean there's something over God which God is not sovereign, and that's impossible.
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It's certainly possible and reasonable to conclude that God created time sometime before
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time in eternity past, but we have no logical way to understand that, and the Bible never
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mentions it.
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The Bible describes God's eternality as everlasting, always existing, not out-temporal or apart
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from time.
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We can also not say God is limited by time, but it seems God has chosen to restrict himself
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to operate in present time, but remember, restrictions are not limitations, as is being
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restricted to holiness, truth, and consistency.
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These are restrictions that are not limitations.
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Summary and Conclusion.
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It seems we cannot exhaustively describe time or be dogmatic when it occurs to nature of
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God as related to time, but there are many things, I found seven things, we can know
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and we should have closely in mind as we think about the nature, duration, and involvement
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of God in time.
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First, time can be defined as the progress of existence.
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Time requires something to exist and something to be moving.
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Second, time is unavoidable.
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Third, it is not a static timeline of events.
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Time consists of a past which no longer exists, a present which exists, and a future which
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does not yet exist.
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Four, only the present exists, linear, not cyclical.
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The present creates history.
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Number six, time is not restricted to the creation of our cosmos.
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And seven, we can never exhaustively describe God's involvement in time, but from the Bible
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we can conclude he is never in subjection to time as if time somehow limited God.
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He is never described as operating outside of time or apart from time.
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He's not out-temporal.
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He predetermines what happens in time, but he never goes back or forward in time.
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And he is eternal in that he never runs out of time, nor that he is outside of time.
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God's eternality is expressed as his being everlasting, not timeless.
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Although many Christian songs say incorrect things about God, such as,
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In heaven time will be no more, one song is accurate.
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The last stanzas of amazing grace got it right.
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When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days
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to sing his praise than when we first meet.
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Thank you for listening.
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A longer paper on this subject with footnotes and quotes is available on our website relationalconcepts.org.
