Yesterday R went to a philosopher’s luncheon. Five folks set around and discussed God and free will and many another concept.
One thing they “decided” is that God and time are both infinite and uncreated. God lives only in time. God cannot know the future.
This bothered me for a myriad of reasons. One is that if time is uncreated, if anything besides God is uncreated, then there is also… the possibility that other things are not created. It would be useful if Satan were not created, if God did not make him. Then evil would be something God did not create, and I don’t think God created evil, but not that way.
I don’t see how God can be in time and not outside of time. I can see God being in time AND outside of time. But I do not see how God can be the first.
How would David know to say “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” How would Micah know that Jesus was going to be born in Bethlehem? How would Isaiah know that Mary was going to be a virgin? Did God not give them these dualistic prophecies, these prophecies that spoke of a near and a far time? Then God can see the future. God knows the future.
Yes, I realize that there are things that are hard to understand if God knows the future. How can he change his mind if he is omniprescent?
I don’t know. But I don’t see how he can do the things he has done, if he doesn’t know the future.
One of their reasons for saying that he must be inside of time is that relationships are within time. But a mom, a good mom, loves her child before it is born, when she doesn’t know anything about it; after it is born, even when it is screaming and needy; after it is grown, even if it doesn’t want anything to do with her. Love is a choice that is made, in a way, outside of time. The acting on love may be within time, but… maybe the love is outside. –Just a thought.
I always thought that Genesis 1 indicated that God created time. “It was evening and it was morning of day one.” But, as R mentioned, it says “the world was without form and void” before the creation started. So maybe the universe existed in some form and time existed in some form before God began creating.
May I just say that if that is true, I’m going to have a headache trying to wrap my head around the idea.
I think that God IS Time……not “who” rather “what.” No matter how I look at it, it seems to me that out of our choice of nouns….person, place, or thing…the latter seems the only reasonable conclusion. Person is specific…place is specific….thing is everything else. Unfortunately, our language may attach an “insignificance” to the idea of “a thing” but, if God is Time, then a whole lot more of the Bible and Jesus’ teachings, as well as the Old Testament tales, and most world theologies begin to seem much more accessible, usable and understandable to me. When God is Time, every second that passes is a holy moment and responsibility for how we exist in that moment is squarely on our shoulders then…”the kingdom of heaven (truly) is within.”