(For all my musician friends)
I endorse something other (and I believe better) than “God is outside of time” dogma. This is controversial for sure, but I cannot help what started as an intuitive aversion and has grown into Open Theism. True, very smart and sincere Christians disagree with me and others on this. Yet “God is outside of time” still seems to create problems. Already, I have argued why I think it is a problem for free will. Now, I think I have another: can a timeless God hear music? Can he know our songs and voices when we sing to him? Or is music, which must exist in time, simply another ‘weakness’ of us pitied temporal beings? The truth may be in between, but If God is timeless, hearing music might be very, very, hard.
God’s timelessness –or eternality- carries with it some implications for knowledge of anything –music included. Timelessness does not say that God lives forever, or that God has infinitely long past. Rather, it says that God is outside these temporal categories altogether. Putting time prepositions on God such as “before,” “during,” “after,” etc are actually incoherent. There can be no changes in God, for this involves time. Likewise there can be no learning in God, for this would change God’s knowledge.
God’s timeless knowledge of things in time is different than our knowledge. God knows all things, as Aquinas put it, “in one act of understanding.” God knows all things without them being mediated via time or anything else. Saying God knows “instantly” fails to capture it. This of course, does not mean that God doesn’t know when things happen. God knows that my typing occurs at 11:08am Friday morning. He also knows that I drive my Toyota at 9:43am the same day, and that I talk with a friend at 12:32pm. God knows the times, but God does not experience them in a sequential order. This would imply changes in God’s knowledge and thus violate timelessness.
The crux of the problem comes when we think about what music is. During my time at a junior college (I was a music major, then I switched to theology for the money), my theory instructor explained that music is an art form that unfolds in time. It is not like a painting or sculpture that is static. When listening to music, we hear a sequence of notes, changes in timbre, crescendo etc. Something as fundamental as a single pitch (“the A string vibrates at 440hertz per second”) is still measured and described in time. For someone to know music as music, it must be known in time. Dramatic crescendos are not music until you hear them soft before and then louder later. A melody is not a melody unless you hear one note, followed by another note, and then a third and so on. To know music, one must do something a timeless being does not: know things in a sequential order and experiences the changes over time.
Some may object here and say that a timeless God would know music just like he knows everything else. God knows this note is played at this time, another is played at another time, a third played a different time and so on and so forth. God knows also the intensity and volume of each note. Any other detail he knows in the same way. Thus, God knows an entire song in one act of understanding, without experiencing it sequentially.
But is this really music? What this sounds more like to me is a piece of music written down but not played, or better yet MIDI data or piano reel. Does anybody seriously think that looking at piano reel is fundamentally the same as actually listening to a piano? Of course not. The piano reel or the MIDI data are not music. It is not until that you hit the “play” button and listen to changes of sounds and music sequentially and in time.
Some may persist, under that grounds (or habit) that God’s timeless is simply too sacrosanct to reject. I can respect this position, but I still think that it has certain implications for music. If someone wants to preserve God’s timelessness and God hearing music, then we have to change the term “music” slightly. Instead of saying that music is art form that unfolds in time, we have to be willing to say that there is no essential difference between MIDI data and music being heard in time. Or, a piece of sheet music is more fundamentally music than that music performed. This is strange implication that I think most musicians (myself included) would not accept, but this is what I think follows from reconciling God’s timelessness and God hearing music.
That’s the end of this blog then. Music is something that must be experienced sequentially, but a timeless God experiencing nothing sequentially. Therefore, God does not know music. No doubt, many of you reading this probably think I’ve gone of the top. Chances are you are correct. Nonetheless, I think that my lifelong involvement with music is probably one of the reasons why I’ve always had an intuitive aversion to timelessness dogma.
Thanks for reading.
Showing posts with label Foreknowledge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foreknowledge. Show all posts
Neo-Calvinism?
A recent article in Time, and another (and older) one in Christianity Today cited a growing trend of the new Calvinists in the United States. They’re interesting articles, so go ahead and read them whenever you get a chance. I thought, as this is a blog mostly about religion, that I should give a few cents worth of thoughts.
I am pretty far from Calvinism. Granted, I understand it a lot better now than when I was nineteen and stupid, but it is still not on my theological radar. My litany of objects can wait for some other time, as I am not really an “anti-Calvinist” as many Christians are.
There are few good things I should say anyway. I am actually not surprised, and think it is a good thing, that people are attracted to … doctrine. Such a word is just as scandalous as “religion” in many evangelical minds. It’s good to know that people are paying attention to the theological well, instead of scorning it as un-spiritual. Secondly, there seems to be a great sincerity in feelings one’s sinfulness and being truly amazed that God would save anybody. I think this is a nice check to a lot of the “touchy feely west coast evangelicalism” that is common in southern California. Finally, reformation theology poses a nice challenge to the dispies of the world.
Still though, I always cringe at the phrase “biblical.” I do not affirm the reformed doctrine that one can only believe what you read in scripture and nothing outside of it. This is sola scriptura in the “exclude all else” sense not in the “above all else” sense. Such a thing, I believe, leads to a bad hermeneutic as one must constantly search for where scripture speaks to some issue it was never meant to speak to. People eventually start proof-texting. Also, many of the “young reformed” are passionate about how they came to believe Calvinism via studying the Bible, and not by listening to Calvinist. Isn’t this alleged purity a little naïve? No one reads the Bible without assumptions, and if you’re guided by a charismatic Calvinist preacher chances are, you’ll start reading the Bible like a Calvinist. I’m still Wesleyan at the core myself.
In the larger picture though, I still think this is probably a good and expected thing. I feel that a lot 20-something Christians are dissatisfied with the evangelicalism handed down from the Jesus people generation. It is no surprise that something different attracts our attention, just by virtue of it being different. For some it’s Protestantism with a capital P. Others it’s the emergent church. Some may jump ship completely and go to the RCC or EO.
So I expect, at least for now, for Neo-Calvinism to grow into the next generation. Unless the rapture happens, of course.
I am pretty far from Calvinism. Granted, I understand it a lot better now than when I was nineteen and stupid, but it is still not on my theological radar. My litany of objects can wait for some other time, as I am not really an “anti-Calvinist” as many Christians are.
There are few good things I should say anyway. I am actually not surprised, and think it is a good thing, that people are attracted to … doctrine. Such a word is just as scandalous as “religion” in many evangelical minds. It’s good to know that people are paying attention to the theological well, instead of scorning it as un-spiritual. Secondly, there seems to be a great sincerity in feelings one’s sinfulness and being truly amazed that God would save anybody. I think this is a nice check to a lot of the “touchy feely west coast evangelicalism” that is common in southern California. Finally, reformation theology poses a nice challenge to the dispies of the world.
Still though, I always cringe at the phrase “biblical.” I do not affirm the reformed doctrine that one can only believe what you read in scripture and nothing outside of it. This is sola scriptura in the “exclude all else” sense not in the “above all else” sense. Such a thing, I believe, leads to a bad hermeneutic as one must constantly search for where scripture speaks to some issue it was never meant to speak to. People eventually start proof-texting. Also, many of the “young reformed” are passionate about how they came to believe Calvinism via studying the Bible, and not by listening to Calvinist. Isn’t this alleged purity a little naïve? No one reads the Bible without assumptions, and if you’re guided by a charismatic Calvinist preacher chances are, you’ll start reading the Bible like a Calvinist. I’m still Wesleyan at the core myself.
In the larger picture though, I still think this is probably a good and expected thing. I feel that a lot 20-something Christians are dissatisfied with the evangelicalism handed down from the Jesus people generation. It is no surprise that something different attracts our attention, just by virtue of it being different. For some it’s Protestantism with a capital P. Others it’s the emergent church. Some may jump ship completely and go to the RCC or EO.
So I expect, at least for now, for Neo-Calvinism to grow into the next generation. Unless the rapture happens, of course.
God, time, and Free Will: Am I Making Any Sense?
As many of you know, I have serious reservations about the a-temporality (“God is outside of time”) and its relation to free will, which I define as the ability of human agents to choose between alternatives. I am writing a paper on this for my Aquinas class, and my thesis is this: God’s a-temporality, and knowledge gained by such, cannot be reconciled with human free-will in any workable, meaningful sense. It is very important to note that I am not yet endorsing Open Theism for this paper, only that I don’t think Aquinas’ view solves the problem. This blog is my practice round. I hope that I am making some kind of sense?
What is free will?
One of the problems I have with this paper is that I work with a definition of “free will” that is a little different than Aquinas’ view. I think of free will like this: a temporal agent has free-will when it is in that agent’s power, now, to either refrain from some future action, or actualize some future action. So I have free will if I can refrain or actualize from going to a Good Friday service tomorrow. You can are free if you can refrain or actualize drinking that cup of coffee Monday morning. The professor is free if s/he can refrain or actualize from doing his pile of grading come the end of the semester.
Such is so simple that it seems to make sense. Notice, however, that there is a degree of contingency here. What this means is that something is capable of being other than it is. Additionally, in terms of the future, something is capable of being prevented. “Two and three make five” is not contingent because it cannot be any other way. However, “The General Sherman tree is the largest tree in the world by mass” is contingent because that tree could have been chopped down in 1832. “Obama is the President of the United States” is also contingent because he could’ve lost.
Most future events we think of as contingent, but add something else. “Obama will win a second term in 2012” is contingent. “I drink another cup of coffee tomorrow at 9:00am” is contingent. The important thing about future contingencies is that they are contingent and are mutable by our actions. Obama gets voted out 2012 because the libertarians finally get a good candidate and he steals democratic votes. I refrain from that second cup of coffee because I want to fast on Good Friday or something. We cannot, however, change some past contingent like Obama being elected in 2008, or the latte we drank yesterday afternoon. So our past is contingent and immutable, while the future is contingent and mutable.
God’s eternality (a-temporality)
It is important to note that “eternality” is actually a negation that means something like “without time,” which is why I use “a-temporality” for the same concept. If God is outside of time, than a few things follow: (1) Time prepositions such as “before,” “fore,” “after,” “during,” etc should not be applied to God. (2) God takes in all knowledge of human activity “in one act of understanding.” This is exactly what Aquinas believes. For us, time is like a dot of light going across a straight line, but for God the line is already completely lit up. (3) There is no change in God’s knowledge. This again, was an assumption of Aquinas. Additionally, God can never be wrong about anything.
God’s knowledge of our future actions cannot really be called fore-knowledge. Rather, it should just be called “eternal knowledge.” God is aware of the coffee I am having tomorrow afternoon, the fact that I am typing this paper now, and philosophical wise-crack comments I made last night after class all in the same act of understanding. It is something like looking at film strip. We know that there events in the film, we know when they occur, but I do not know them in a sequential temporal order. We, as temporal beings, see time in a sequence of events. The past is done, the present is where the choices are made, and the future will be one way or another based on a choice we make now. But given God’s a-temporality and knowledge, there is simply no difference of this kind between past, present, and future. God sees Obama being reelected in 2012 just like he sees Obama getting elected in 2008. To say something like “God saw Obama getting elected in 2008, and now knows that Obama will be elected in 2012 is to place temporal prepositions on an a-temporal being.
Refraining from that cup of coffee?
Recall what I said about free-will: a temporal agent has free-will when it is in that agent’s power, now, to either refrain from some future action, or actualize some future action. I can refrain from a cup of coffee tomorrow, or I can drink it. Now recall that God’s knowledge cannot change and that God cannot be wrong. God sees me already drinking that cup of coffee tomorrow morning, just like he sees me trying to explain all this to another grad student last night. If I refrain, from that cup of coffee, have I not proven God wrong about something? God, in his eternality, sees me drinking a cup of coffee at 9:00am tomorrow. If God is never wrong, how can I do otherwise?
The response to this is that it is still my choice. God may know exactly what I’ll do, but I still choose those things. My choices cause God to know. The problem is that this is a confusion of what I mean by “choice.” Something is not just a result of my choice if I caused it, but is the result of my choice if I caused it and could have done otherwise. The future we see is contingent, but it is not mutable by our actions under a “God outside of Time” thinking. If it was, God would either be wrong, or his knowledge would change as our choices affect future states of affairs.
So there it is
And that, very briefly stated, is why I do not think that God’s a-temporality can be reconciled with human freedom.
Did I make any kind of sense? Am I clear? Or was this just some existentially driven, and caffeine infused, philosophical gibberish?
What is free will?
One of the problems I have with this paper is that I work with a definition of “free will” that is a little different than Aquinas’ view. I think of free will like this: a temporal agent has free-will when it is in that agent’s power, now, to either refrain from some future action, or actualize some future action. So I have free will if I can refrain or actualize from going to a Good Friday service tomorrow. You can are free if you can refrain or actualize drinking that cup of coffee Monday morning. The professor is free if s/he can refrain or actualize from doing his pile of grading come the end of the semester.
Such is so simple that it seems to make sense. Notice, however, that there is a degree of contingency here. What this means is that something is capable of being other than it is. Additionally, in terms of the future, something is capable of being prevented. “Two and three make five” is not contingent because it cannot be any other way. However, “The General Sherman tree is the largest tree in the world by mass” is contingent because that tree could have been chopped down in 1832. “Obama is the President of the United States” is also contingent because he could’ve lost.
Most future events we think of as contingent, but add something else. “Obama will win a second term in 2012” is contingent. “I drink another cup of coffee tomorrow at 9:00am” is contingent. The important thing about future contingencies is that they are contingent and are mutable by our actions. Obama gets voted out 2012 because the libertarians finally get a good candidate and he steals democratic votes. I refrain from that second cup of coffee because I want to fast on Good Friday or something. We cannot, however, change some past contingent like Obama being elected in 2008, or the latte we drank yesterday afternoon. So our past is contingent and immutable, while the future is contingent and mutable.
God’s eternality (a-temporality)
It is important to note that “eternality” is actually a negation that means something like “without time,” which is why I use “a-temporality” for the same concept. If God is outside of time, than a few things follow: (1) Time prepositions such as “before,” “fore,” “after,” “during,” etc should not be applied to God. (2) God takes in all knowledge of human activity “in one act of understanding.” This is exactly what Aquinas believes. For us, time is like a dot of light going across a straight line, but for God the line is already completely lit up. (3) There is no change in God’s knowledge. This again, was an assumption of Aquinas. Additionally, God can never be wrong about anything.
God’s knowledge of our future actions cannot really be called fore-knowledge. Rather, it should just be called “eternal knowledge.” God is aware of the coffee I am having tomorrow afternoon, the fact that I am typing this paper now, and philosophical wise-crack comments I made last night after class all in the same act of understanding. It is something like looking at film strip. We know that there events in the film, we know when they occur, but I do not know them in a sequential temporal order. We, as temporal beings, see time in a sequence of events. The past is done, the present is where the choices are made, and the future will be one way or another based on a choice we make now. But given God’s a-temporality and knowledge, there is simply no difference of this kind between past, present, and future. God sees Obama being reelected in 2012 just like he sees Obama getting elected in 2008. To say something like “God saw Obama getting elected in 2008, and now knows that Obama will be elected in 2012 is to place temporal prepositions on an a-temporal being.
Refraining from that cup of coffee?
Recall what I said about free-will: a temporal agent has free-will when it is in that agent’s power, now, to either refrain from some future action, or actualize some future action. I can refrain from a cup of coffee tomorrow, or I can drink it. Now recall that God’s knowledge cannot change and that God cannot be wrong. God sees me already drinking that cup of coffee tomorrow morning, just like he sees me trying to explain all this to another grad student last night. If I refrain, from that cup of coffee, have I not proven God wrong about something? God, in his eternality, sees me drinking a cup of coffee at 9:00am tomorrow. If God is never wrong, how can I do otherwise?
The response to this is that it is still my choice. God may know exactly what I’ll do, but I still choose those things. My choices cause God to know. The problem is that this is a confusion of what I mean by “choice.” Something is not just a result of my choice if I caused it, but is the result of my choice if I caused it and could have done otherwise. The future we see is contingent, but it is not mutable by our actions under a “God outside of Time” thinking. If it was, God would either be wrong, or his knowledge would change as our choices affect future states of affairs.
So there it is
And that, very briefly stated, is why I do not think that God’s a-temporality can be reconciled with human freedom.
Did I make any kind of sense? Am I clear? Or was this just some existentially driven, and caffeine infused, philosophical gibberish?
Reasons why God is Outside of Time (and you better believe it!)
Alexander, my good friend, posted a blog entitled “Why I am not an Open Theist” in his blog. This has forced me out of my lazy slumber.
This blog is about some of the reasons that God must be outside of time, and why I disagree with them. Note here, I am not actually arguing for Open Theism. What I am arguing for is option of Open Theism. Too often, Open Theism is considered a heresy because “God is outside of time” is not considered a good option, but the only option. This is evidenced by the Wikipedia article before I edited it I do not believe that this doctrine deserves the status of creedal dogma (which obviously not all of the “God is outside time” assert). To show why, I will list off four reasons why “God is outside of time” is believed, and then argue that none of these reasons are beyond reasonable discussion.
Here goes.
Reason 1: If God moves, that implies that God is imperfect. Any move is either a move from perfection or to imperfection. God is perfect, so God can’t move. Ergo, God is outside of time. This type of argument is simple and clear and understandable. It is hard to refute, but there is more behind it than one might expect.
First, one gets to this conclusion by reasoning like an Aristotelian, specifically like an Aristotelian scientist. I actually respect Aristotle quite a bit, but I ask Christians who reason this way if they are willing to use Aristotle’s science as a basis for dogmatic opinions about God. In the middle ages, people appealed to Aristotle because they wanted to reconcile science and faith just like we do today. But Aristotle’s science is no longer our science. So is this kind of move necessary? Was it even necessary then? There are quite a bit of implications in following Aristotle, and it is hard to separate the reason 1 from the whole package.
Secondly, the term “perfect” may be loaded on a sub-conscious level for philosophers. “Perfect” actually comes from the Latin ”Per Factum”. It meant “thoroughly made.” Notice it does not mean “thoroughly making.” The former implies “not time” while the latter implies “process.” Philosophically, the phrase “perfect” has already long been loaded with a certain meaning that most evangelicals are not even aware of when they use it. I can’t even begin to expound on it here. Suffice to say, “Perfect beings do not move” might be simply be another way of saying “beings that are unable to move do not move.” So it is not really an argument, but another way of saying the same thing.
Finally, reason 1 ignores the possibility that immobility, stasis, might not praise worthy (which perhaps we should use instead of “perfection”) in the way Christians normally think of. What kind of things do we think of when we describe something as being worthy of worship? Immobility is usually not one of the things on my list.
In summary we should ask the following when it comes to reason 1: How much do we want to follow Aristotle, as was done in the middle ages? What do we even mean when we say “perfect”? What makes immobility a praise-worthy trait?
Reason 2: (1) Time is part of God’s creation. (2) God is not in his creation. Ergo, God is outside of time. All Christians believe that God is not ‘subject’ to his creation, so if time is part of his creation, then he must be outside of it by definition. The distinction between creator and creation makes “God is outside of time” dogma.
But what if the major premise, “Time is part of God’s creation” is not true? This may seem counter-intuitive, after all everything is created by God. However, strictly speaking, this is not the case.
Consider this rule of logic: “A tree cannot exist and not exist at the same time.” God, therefore, cannot create a tree that does not exist and exists at the same time. A very small minority of Christians say that God actually created that rule of logic, but the majority of Christians say the rules of logic are part of God himself, and are thus not created. Logic exists because God exists.
The concept of time could very well be uncreated in the same sense. While the statement, “Time exists because God exists” could very well be false, it is not as self-evidently false as some may think. So again reason 2 is at least questionable.
Reason 3: God knows the future, especially in the sense of dramatic prophecies. God sees things that we don’t and that we can’t. Ergo, God is outside of time. Cleary, scripture speaks of God as knowing things about the future that we cannot possibly know. All Christians accept this, so it needs to be dogma, right?
This argument is non-sequitor because it confounds two things: the first is God’s omniscience, and the second is God’s relation to time. It is the difference between the fact that God knows and how that God knows. God does not have to be outside of time in order to predict and foretell the future. God could be determining the entire universe. God could’ve known how everything would ‘pan-out’ in this world when he created it. God might have created the universe with certain events happen of a logical necessity. Maybe best of all, how God knows the future is completely mysterious to us.
In any case, reason 3 goes like this (1) scripture clearly shows prophecies, then (2) God has omniscience, so finally (3) God is outside. But this is missing some significant steps between (2) and (3). Scripture tell us that God knows, but they never tell us how God knows.
Reason 4: God foreknows what people do, but these actions are free. Ergo, God is outside of time. This is what I call the “C.S. Lewis approach” because he was the first person I read that expounded on it. Basically, it is hard to understand how our choices are free if God knows exactly what we do. C.S. Lewis’ posited that if God is not in time, then this problem is overcome. God does not see what a free agent will do, because there is no future for God. Instead God sees what a free agent does in the present and the future in the same sense. God does not see what I will do three weeks from now, God just sees me doing it. Thus, because there is no ‘time’ in God’s perspective there is no determination. So God needs to be outside of time in order to have a free will and foreknowledge. There is no other way.
What frustrates me about this approach is that it doesn't need to be the only option. When people invoke the free-will/foreknowledge issue to dogmatize “God is outside of time,” it is almost a deliberate ignorance of every other way that Christians have tried to reconcile the question. No, this is not the only way that people have come up with to resolve free-will/foreknowledge. There are plenty of other theories that deserve a hearing. One of them is Open Theism.
Furthermore, I don’t think that this approach actually solves the problem. In fact, I think it makes it worse. That is the subject for another blog.
So one last time…
To sum up, I have listed four arguments that assert that God is outside of time. I think none of these reasons are indubitable, logically necessary, or scriptural. Because of this, I do not think that any evangelical is justified in making “God outside of time” unquestioned dogma. Thus, this is not good reason to exclude Open Theism. The view that God is in time should be just as much on the table as Calvinism or Arminianism. Open Theism certainly does not deserve to be called a heresy.
No matter what people on Wikipedia say.
This blog is about some of the reasons that God must be outside of time, and why I disagree with them. Note here, I am not actually arguing for Open Theism. What I am arguing for is option of Open Theism. Too often, Open Theism is considered a heresy because “God is outside of time” is not considered a good option, but the only option. This is evidenced by the Wikipedia article before I edited it I do not believe that this doctrine deserves the status of creedal dogma (which obviously not all of the “God is outside time” assert). To show why, I will list off four reasons why “God is outside of time” is believed, and then argue that none of these reasons are beyond reasonable discussion.
Here goes.
Reason 1: If God moves, that implies that God is imperfect. Any move is either a move from perfection or to imperfection. God is perfect, so God can’t move. Ergo, God is outside of time. This type of argument is simple and clear and understandable. It is hard to refute, but there is more behind it than one might expect.
First, one gets to this conclusion by reasoning like an Aristotelian, specifically like an Aristotelian scientist. I actually respect Aristotle quite a bit, but I ask Christians who reason this way if they are willing to use Aristotle’s science as a basis for dogmatic opinions about God. In the middle ages, people appealed to Aristotle because they wanted to reconcile science and faith just like we do today. But Aristotle’s science is no longer our science. So is this kind of move necessary? Was it even necessary then? There are quite a bit of implications in following Aristotle, and it is hard to separate the reason 1 from the whole package.
Secondly, the term “perfect” may be loaded on a sub-conscious level for philosophers. “Perfect” actually comes from the Latin ”Per Factum”. It meant “thoroughly made.” Notice it does not mean “thoroughly making.” The former implies “not time” while the latter implies “process.” Philosophically, the phrase “perfect” has already long been loaded with a certain meaning that most evangelicals are not even aware of when they use it. I can’t even begin to expound on it here. Suffice to say, “Perfect beings do not move” might be simply be another way of saying “beings that are unable to move do not move.” So it is not really an argument, but another way of saying the same thing.
Finally, reason 1 ignores the possibility that immobility, stasis, might not praise worthy (which perhaps we should use instead of “perfection”) in the way Christians normally think of. What kind of things do we think of when we describe something as being worthy of worship? Immobility is usually not one of the things on my list.
In summary we should ask the following when it comes to reason 1: How much do we want to follow Aristotle, as was done in the middle ages? What do we even mean when we say “perfect”? What makes immobility a praise-worthy trait?
Reason 2: (1) Time is part of God’s creation. (2) God is not in his creation. Ergo, God is outside of time. All Christians believe that God is not ‘subject’ to his creation, so if time is part of his creation, then he must be outside of it by definition. The distinction between creator and creation makes “God is outside of time” dogma.
But what if the major premise, “Time is part of God’s creation” is not true? This may seem counter-intuitive, after all everything is created by God. However, strictly speaking, this is not the case.
Consider this rule of logic: “A tree cannot exist and not exist at the same time.” God, therefore, cannot create a tree that does not exist and exists at the same time. A very small minority of Christians say that God actually created that rule of logic, but the majority of Christians say the rules of logic are part of God himself, and are thus not created. Logic exists because God exists.
The concept of time could very well be uncreated in the same sense. While the statement, “Time exists because God exists” could very well be false, it is not as self-evidently false as some may think. So again reason 2 is at least questionable.
Reason 3: God knows the future, especially in the sense of dramatic prophecies. God sees things that we don’t and that we can’t. Ergo, God is outside of time. Cleary, scripture speaks of God as knowing things about the future that we cannot possibly know. All Christians accept this, so it needs to be dogma, right?
This argument is non-sequitor because it confounds two things: the first is God’s omniscience, and the second is God’s relation to time. It is the difference between the fact that God knows and how that God knows. God does not have to be outside of time in order to predict and foretell the future. God could be determining the entire universe. God could’ve known how everything would ‘pan-out’ in this world when he created it. God might have created the universe with certain events happen of a logical necessity. Maybe best of all, how God knows the future is completely mysterious to us.
In any case, reason 3 goes like this (1) scripture clearly shows prophecies, then (2) God has omniscience, so finally (3) God is outside. But this is missing some significant steps between (2) and (3). Scripture tell us that God knows, but they never tell us how God knows.
Reason 4: God foreknows what people do, but these actions are free. Ergo, God is outside of time. This is what I call the “C.S. Lewis approach” because he was the first person I read that expounded on it. Basically, it is hard to understand how our choices are free if God knows exactly what we do. C.S. Lewis’ posited that if God is not in time, then this problem is overcome. God does not see what a free agent will do, because there is no future for God. Instead God sees what a free agent does in the present and the future in the same sense. God does not see what I will do three weeks from now, God just sees me doing it. Thus, because there is no ‘time’ in God’s perspective there is no determination. So God needs to be outside of time in order to have a free will and foreknowledge. There is no other way.
What frustrates me about this approach is that it doesn't need to be the only option. When people invoke the free-will/foreknowledge issue to dogmatize “God is outside of time,” it is almost a deliberate ignorance of every other way that Christians have tried to reconcile the question. No, this is not the only way that people have come up with to resolve free-will/foreknowledge. There are plenty of other theories that deserve a hearing. One of them is Open Theism.
Furthermore, I don’t think that this approach actually solves the problem. In fact, I think it makes it worse. That is the subject for another blog.
So one last time…
To sum up, I have listed four arguments that assert that God is outside of time. I think none of these reasons are indubitable, logically necessary, or scriptural. Because of this, I do not think that any evangelical is justified in making “God outside of time” unquestioned dogma. Thus, this is not good reason to exclude Open Theism. The view that God is in time should be just as much on the table as Calvinism or Arminianism. Open Theism certainly does not deserve to be called a heresy.
No matter what people on Wikipedia say.
Open Theism as I see it
I was thinking about writing a few blogs about Open Theism. Yet, Open Theism is often so derided that I thought I should loosely define it as I think about it. Naturally, there will be several blogs about how why I prefer Open Theism to Calvinism or Arminianism. Here it is.
God knows the future as possibilities. God has perfect knowledge of the future, but this future is not a rigid rail-road track of events. It is rather an infinite list of potential events that become actual events as time moves on. Some events are more likely than others. Other events are inevitable. God can determine, or not determine, whatever he chooses. Open Theists often talk about the future being “partially open” and “partially settled” whereas other viewpoints believe the future is “completely settled.”
The world is developing and organic. When God created the world, he created a world that would change and grow in many possible ways. God did not choose “the best of possible worlds.” He did not choose to between this world, which contains evil, and some other world that had less evil or more evil. The world was simply created and became this one.
Human Beings have free will Human beings have free will in a very strong sense. Our choices, especially our moral choices, are as genuinely contingent. This means that God knew that I might have made a cup of coffee , slept in, or surfed Facebook instead of typing this blog this morning. If God knew exactly what I was going to do, there was no real choice involved because there were no real alternatives. This has serious implications because it implies that Human Beings are free enough to frustrate God’s plans by not joining with them. God may have desired that humans choose something good, but we decided to choose many bad things instead.
God is not “Outside of Time” God does not stand outside of time and look at the future in a perpetual present as one of us might look at a film strip. Instead, God is inside of time in the sense that he experiences and interacts with our world. He sees the changes and movements of the world he created. He responds to it based on what occurs within it.
God Suffers and God Loves God’s capacities of Love and emotion is of paramount importance in Open Theism. God’s relational nature involves him being affected by the actions, for good or evil, of the free agents he created. God takes calculated risks with his creation, and is grieved by the tragedies that can result. Because of this, God is able to grieve sympathetically with us in our own disappointments. Likewise, because God can see us grow and change in life, he is able to relate to us on a very genuine level.
Thanks for reading!
God knows the future as possibilities. God has perfect knowledge of the future, but this future is not a rigid rail-road track of events. It is rather an infinite list of potential events that become actual events as time moves on. Some events are more likely than others. Other events are inevitable. God can determine, or not determine, whatever he chooses. Open Theists often talk about the future being “partially open” and “partially settled” whereas other viewpoints believe the future is “completely settled.”
The world is developing and organic. When God created the world, he created a world that would change and grow in many possible ways. God did not choose “the best of possible worlds.” He did not choose to between this world, which contains evil, and some other world that had less evil or more evil. The world was simply created and became this one.
Human Beings have free will Human beings have free will in a very strong sense. Our choices, especially our moral choices, are as genuinely contingent. This means that God knew that I might have made a cup of coffee , slept in, or surfed Facebook instead of typing this blog this morning. If God knew exactly what I was going to do, there was no real choice involved because there were no real alternatives. This has serious implications because it implies that Human Beings are free enough to frustrate God’s plans by not joining with them. God may have desired that humans choose something good, but we decided to choose many bad things instead.
God is not “Outside of Time” God does not stand outside of time and look at the future in a perpetual present as one of us might look at a film strip. Instead, God is inside of time in the sense that he experiences and interacts with our world. He sees the changes and movements of the world he created. He responds to it based on what occurs within it.
God Suffers and God Loves God’s capacities of Love and emotion is of paramount importance in Open Theism. God’s relational nature involves him being affected by the actions, for good or evil, of the free agents he created. God takes calculated risks with his creation, and is grieved by the tragedies that can result. Because of this, God is able to grieve sympathetically with us in our own disappointments. Likewise, because God can see us grow and change in life, he is able to relate to us on a very genuine level.
Thanks for reading!
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