Author
Craig, W. L. (2001). Timelessness & Omnitemporality
9 quotes Popular first.
- “Perhaps this realization ought to prompt us to reconsider the alternative that God is simply timeless without creation and temporal subsequent to creation. Detractors of this position simply assume that if God’s life lacks earlier and later parts, then it has no phases. But why could there not be two phases of God’s life, one timeless and one temporal, which are not related to each other as earlier and later? Critics have perhaps too quickly assumed that if any phase of God’s life is timeless, the whole must be timeless.”— Craig, W. L. (2001). Timelessness & OmnitemporalitySource:God & Time: Four Views (p. 159)
- “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 James 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.””— Craig, W. L. (2001). Timelessness & OmnitemporalitySource:God & Time: Four Views (p. 132)
- “The impossibility of atemporal personhood. Could God exist timelessly? Is there no logically conceivable world in which God exists and time does not? According to the Christian doctrine of creation, God’s decision to create a universe was a freely willed decision from which God could have refrained. We can conceive, then, of a possible world in which God does refrain from creation, a world that is empty except for God. Would time exist in such a world? Certainly it would if God were changing, experiencing a stream of consciousness. But suppose God were altogether changeless. Suppose that he did not experience a succession of thoughts but grasped all truth in a single, changeless intuition. Would time exist?
An adherent of a relational view of time would say no, for there are no events to generate a relation of earlier than or later than. There is just a single, timeless state. Substantivalists of a Newtonian stripe would disagree, of course. For Newton timeless existence was a logical impossibility. But there is no reason why we should side with Newton on this score. In the utter absence of change it seems plausible to think that time would not exist. Why, then, should we think that God could not exist timelessly in such an empty world?
“Because God is personal!” is the answer given by certain advocates of divine temporality. They contend that the idea of a timeless person is incoherent and therefore God must be temporal. They argue that in order to be a person, one must possess certain properties that inherently involve time. Since God is essentially personal, he cannot be timeless.”— Craig, W. L. (2001). Timelessness & OmnitemporalitySource:God & Time: Four Views (pp. 136–137) - “The argument of the advocate of divine temporality can be summarized as follows:
1. God is creatively active in the temporal world.
2. If God is creatively active in the temporal world, God is really related to the temporal world.
3. If God is really related to the temporal world, God is temporal.
4. Therefore God is temporal.
This argument, if successful, does not prove that God is essentially temporal, but that if he is Creator of a temporal world—as he in fact is—then he is temporal.”— Craig, W. L. (2001). Timelessness & OmnitemporalitySource:God & Time: Four Views (p. 141) - “The crucial difference between them is that Wierenga makes presentness a feature of the individual essence of every moment of time. Wierenga’s analysis thus entails the metaphysical doctrine of presentism, according to which the only time that exists is the present time. According to presentism, future times do not yet exist and past times no longer exist. Therefore there literally are no times that have the property of pastness or futurity. When a time becomes past, it does not exchange the property of presentness for the property of pastness; rather it just ceases to exist altogether. Times exist when and only when they are present. They come into existence successively and are present just as long as they exist. No time exists which is not present.”— Craig, W. L. (2001). Timelessness & OmnitemporalitySource:God & Time: Four Views (pp. 148–149)
- “The defender of divine timelessness therefore has a way out: he can adopt a static theory of time and deny the reality of tensed facts and temporal becoming. But this represents a very unpalatable route of escape, for the static theory of time faces formidable philosophical and theological objections, not to mention the arguments that can be offered on behalf of a dynamic theory of time. I therefore prefer to cast my lot with the dynamic theory. And it is noteworthy that almost no defender of divine timelessness has taken this route. Virtually the only person who appears to have done so is Paul Helm. On his view there is no ontological difference between the past, present and future: “Do the times which are at present future to us exist, or not? Answer: they exist for God … and they exist for those creatures contemporaneous with that future moment, for that moment is present to them, but it is not now present to us.” In the same way, “the past event … belongs in its own time, and is therefore real, belonging to the ordered series of times which comprise the creation and which are … eternally present to God.”32 Thus Paul affirms what he takes to be Augustine’s view that “God created the temporal order, by an eternal act, as a B-series.” He explains, “In creation God brings into being (timelessly) the whole temporal matrix,” and “God knows at a glance the whole of his temporally ordered creation.” Similarly, tense is but an ephemeral feature of language; the truth conditions of tensed sentences are given by tenseless facts, facts that are known to God.35 Paul thus appears to be the one advocate of divine timelessness who has seen and taken the way out. But it is a hard and lonely road.”— Craig, W. L. (2001). Timelessness & OmnitemporalitySource:God & Time: Four Views (pp. 152–153)
- “It is plausible to believe that time began to exist and that therefore God has not existed for infinite time. But now we are confronted with an extremely bizarre situation. God exists in time. Time had a beginning. God did not have a beginning. How can these three statements be reconciled? If time began to exist—say, for simplicity’s sake, at the big bang—then in some difficult to articulate sense God must exist beyond the big bang, alone without the universe. He must be changeless in such a state; otherwise time would exist. And yet this state, strictly speaking, cannot exist before the big bang in a temporal sense, since time had a beginning. God must be causally, but not temporally, prior to the big bang. With the creation of the universe, time began, and God entered into time at the moment of creation in virtue of his real relations with the created order. It follows that God must therefore be timeless without the universe and temporal with the universe.”— Craig, W. L. (2001). Timelessness & OmnitemporalitySource:God & Time: Four Views (p. 156)
- “Is God temporal or timeless? Oftimes laypeople, anxious to affirm both God’s transcendence and God’s immanence, 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. One cannot affirm both.”— Craig, W. L. (2001). Timelessness & OmnitemporalitySource:God & Time: Four Views (p. 129)