hathawayj has 37 favorites
“That measure is different for different “observers” moving at high speeds relative to each other, in the world that God has in fact created. The measure of time is created along with the physical universe and is just as stable as the other principles and laws of nature that God upholds moment by moment. But temporal measure does not apply to God any more than the laws and principles of nature do. God’s own infinite, pure eternity is not measured by physical reality.” — Padgett, A. G. (2001). Response to Critics
Source:God & Time: Four Views (pp. 127–128)
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“But “our time,” which is physical time or measured time, exists only with physical things. And so “our time” has a beginning, even though every moment of our time is simultaneous with a moment of God’s time.” — Padgett, A. G. (2001). Response to Critics
Source:God & Time: Four Views (pp. 125–126)
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“God is immutable relative to essential divine attributes, those powers and properties that constitute a perfect Being. God changes only in relational ways, in order to create and care for that creation. The ability to change in response to others is part of what makes God a perfect Being.” — Padgett, A. G. (2001). Eternity as Relative Timelessness
Source:God & Time: Four Views (p. 109)
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“Our time, created time, exists within the pure duration of God’s time, which is relatively timeless. And God’s time exists because God exists (not the other way around). What many people seem to imply by “God is in time” is that God exists only if time exists—and this is what I deny.” — Padgett, A. G. (2001). Eternity as Relative Timelessness
Source:God & Time: Four Views (p. 106)
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“Nothing that is temporal can also be timeless. In the second place, all times cannot and do not coexist in any sense—and certainly not “timelessly” or “in eternity.” Different times are not all present, and only present things are fully real (on the process view). Things have happened in the past, and things will happen in the future, but those things are not real. Therefore they cannot coexist with present things.” — Padgett, A. G. (2001). Eternity as Relative Timelessness
Source:God & Time: Four Views (p. 98)
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“The main problem with the everlasting model is not logical consistency but theological inadequacy. Given our notion of God as an infinite, personal Creator, we would expect God to transcend time in some way. Merely knowing the future and living forever is not enough to satisfy this demand. Recent developments in physics would join with St. Augustine and many traditional philosophers to insist that time is a created category that came into existence with the physical universe. Space-time as we know it has a beginning—but God does not. Space-time is warped by the presence of matter—but God is not. Thus God must be beyond time as we know it, in some sense. David Braine may overstate the case when he writes, “If we understand eternity as mere everlastingness, then it seems that we are in danger of reducing him who is worshiped to the level of the creature,” but he is giving voice to a common and powerful objection to a merely everlasting eternity for God. Proponents of an everlasting view of eternity have difficulty overcoming this objection, in my view.” — Padgett, A. G. (2001). Eternity as Relative Timelessness
Source:God & Time: Four Views (p. 93)
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“The relationship between God and time may seem an obscure subject. Yet the more one studies it, the more convinced one becomes that this doctrine plays a key role in our grasp of the relationship between God and the world. How we understand God’s relationship to the world, in turn, is a central part of any theistic worldview. So despite the seeming obscurity of the topic, the doctrine of divine eternity is an important part of any fully developed theology.” — Padgett, A. G. (2001). Eternity as Relative Timelessness
Source:God & Time: Four Views (p. 92)
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“It seems to me that if the eternalist view were correct, then God would not respond to what happens in time, and that the way God acts within time would simply be the way that deists have always held that God acts within time. I see the crux of the debate as located at this point: An eternalist God is necessarily a deistlike God.
Think of God’s action in the world, says Paul, on the model of one of us setting the timer on our central heating system. As the result of my one act of setting the timer, the system may go on at 7:00 in the morning, go off again at 10:30 in the evening, day after day. Let us add that the system has a thermostat that I set at 65 degrees Fahrenheit—so that when the system is on during the day, if the temperature dips a bit below 65 in the room the furnace will light, and if it gets a bit above 65 degrees the flame will go out.
I agree that this is a rather good model of how the eternalist thinks of God’s action vis-à-vis the world. So let us ask, first, whether on the model I respond to the time of day or the temperature in the room. It seems to me obvious that I do not. I program the timer so that it responds to the time of day, and I program the thermostat so that it responds to the temperature in the room. But I myself don’t respond to those events. Probably a good many of them I don’t even know about. And in any case, when I set the timer and the thermostat, those events hadn’t even occurred yet
I performed some basic actions a week earlier when I programmed the timer and the thermostat; but those are the last basic actions I performed relative to the heat in the room. Having performed those then, I may well have gone off on vacation.
On the eternalist’s picture of God’s action in the world, God in eternity formulates a plan for world history, initiates the first stage of the plan and then watches the scroll unroll. God does not respond to the actual events of history any more than I respond to the actual events of temperature fluctuation when I set the thermostat in advance. And the only basic actions God performs are whatever basic actions are necessary for instituting the first stage in cosmic history. After that, God acts “in” history only in the sense that I act “in” my room by doing something a week before which has the consequence that now the flame turns on at 2:10.” — Wolterstorff, N. (2001). Response to Paul Helm
Think of God’s action in the world, says Paul, on the model of one of us setting the timer on our central heating system. As the result of my one act of setting the timer, the system may go on at 7:00 in the morning, go off again at 10:30 in the evening, day after day. Let us add that the system has a thermostat that I set at 65 degrees Fahrenheit—so that when the system is on during the day, if the temperature dips a bit below 65 in the room the furnace will light, and if it gets a bit above 65 degrees the flame will go out.
I agree that this is a rather good model of how the eternalist thinks of God’s action vis-à-vis the world. So let us ask, first, whether on the model I respond to the time of day or the temperature in the room. It seems to me obvious that I do not. I program the timer so that it responds to the time of day, and I program the thermostat so that it responds to the temperature in the room. But I myself don’t respond to those events. Probably a good many of them I don’t even know about. And in any case, when I set the timer and the thermostat, those events hadn’t even occurred yet
I performed some basic actions a week earlier when I programmed the timer and the thermostat; but those are the last basic actions I performed relative to the heat in the room. Having performed those then, I may well have gone off on vacation.
On the eternalist’s picture of God’s action in the world, God in eternity formulates a plan for world history, initiates the first stage of the plan and then watches the scroll unroll. God does not respond to the actual events of history any more than I respond to the actual events of temperature fluctuation when I set the thermostat in advance. And the only basic actions God performs are whatever basic actions are necessary for instituting the first stage in cosmic history. After that, God acts “in” history only in the sense that I act “in” my room by doing something a week before which has the consequence that now the flame turns on at 2:10.” — Wolterstorff, N. (2001). Response to Paul Helm
Source:God & Time: Four Views (pp. 76–78)
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“I find this an interesting, though ultimately baffling, answer to the question. I understand Paul to be saying that “dialogue, real dialogue,” is impossible between two persons unless both are mutable; if one is not capable of change, then it’s only “make-believe” dialogue that can take place between them, not “real” dialogue. If we now add to this thesis about dialogue—which seems to me eminently correct—Paul’s thesis that God is immutable, then it follows that, on Paul’s view, there can be no genuine dialogue between God and human beings. Nonetheless—this seems to be his view—it was indispensable to God’s achievement of “his purposes for his people on whose behalf he intervenes in time” that the people believe that they were engaged in genuine dialogue with God.” — Wolterstorff, N. (2001). Response to Paul Helm
Source:God & Time: Four Views (p. 72)
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