Timeless

• Eternal as timeless


  God exists outside of time with no beginning and no end.
• ”who inhabit eternity, whose name is Holy” - Isaiah
• Nicolas Wolterstorff points out that a timeless God is not just from the influence of Classical Philosophy but the view that a timeless God has to be different from human experience of life in the physical world.
• For humans: “The gnawing of times bites all.” - Wolterstorff
• ”the whole simultaneous and perfect possession of unending life” - Boethius
• For Boethius all time is present for God is present simultaneously
• Augustine suggested that if God made the world at a particular point in time then what was God doing before this.
• The Bible indicates a timeless God who chose to create day and night, who is separate from this. There was no ‘before’ for God, as time (as we know it) does not work in the same way for God.
• Aquinas: When we speak of God we are using analogical language (analogy). God is not like us, we have no words to describe how God experiences ‘time’, so everything we say is just comparing similar things but is not actually the reality for God.
• ”eternity exists as a simultaneous whole and time does not” - Aquinas
• Presentism


  Only focusses on the present moment, past is gone, future has not yet happened. Reality is this moment.
• Anselm's Four-dimensionalist approach

  • God is not limited by space and time, like we are. Therefore God can be in the past present and future at once.
  • God is not just ‘in every time and space’ but every ‘time and space’ is in God - God is not contained by them but in control of them.
  • This means we do still have freewill, God can see the free choices we made in the past and what we will do in the future.
  • Boethius describes God views of our free actions ‘as though from a lofty peak’. Whereas Anselm says there is no ‘as though’ about it.
• Swinburne argues that the notion of time being simultaneously present to God is incoherent, saying he could not “make much sense” of this.
• Language that suggests God acting personally in the Bible reflects people of the time encountering God.
• Theologian Maurice Wiles argues that God does not literally act in the world e.g. through miracles, as this would create a partisan God. God loves us all through the gift of creation.
• Aquinas: prayers should not be for requests.
• It is hard to understand Anselm's understanding of God's perspective of time as Anselm still use language associated with time such as preceding and following necessities.