Divine Eternity: On God's Relationship to Time
“Does God exist in time or independently of it? Is he timelessly eternal, or does his life pass through an everlasting succession of moments? Most Christians agree that God transcends time in some fashion, but how, exactly?” - Credo
- 147 views
I found this pretty interesting to ponder… (bold added). Not that I necessarily agree w/Augustine on every point, but pretty fascinating perspectives.
Augustine of Hippo appropriates insights from the Greek philosophers and weds them to his Christian doctrine of creation. While he rejects the philosophers’ notion that time and the world of movement are bidirectional everlasting realities, he endorses their fundamental claims regarding God’s simplicity, perfection, and immutability (see Von Jess 1975; Rogers 1996). As Creator of the world, God is prior to it. Yet this cannot be a temporal priority since all temporality exists within the world itself, comprised as it is of mutable creatures whose motion time measures (West 2001; Ravicz 1959: 542–543; Callahan 1948: 150). Consequently, it is not legitimate to ask what God was doing when the world was not:
If […] there was no time before heaven and earth came to be, how can anyone ask what you were doing then? There was no such thing as ‘then’ when there was no time. (Confessions XI, 13; Augustine of Hippo. 1997: 294–295)
Perhaps one of the more surprising implications of this is that God must be eternally creating: ‘There was therefore never any time when you had not made anything, because you made time itself’ (Confessions XI, 14: Augustine of Hippo. 1997: 295; see also Quinn 1999: 319; Wilberding 2016: 46). God did not move from idleness to suddenly conceiving the idea of creation as though his will were causally changed (City of God XI, 4; Augustine of Hippo. 1950: 347–349). Willing to create, which just is God’s act of creating, is not a novel activity that emerges from a preceding period of rest. Rather, as atemporal, God is both at rest and wholly active, the beatitude of rest following from his eternal inner activity. ‘In His leisure’, Augustine states, ‘is no laziness, indolence, or inactivity; as in His work is no labour, effort, industry. He can act while He reposes, and repose while He acts’ (City of God XII, 17; Augustine of Hippo. 1950: 400). Given this active life of rest, Augustine says to God:
Your years do not come and go. […] Your years are a single day, and this day of yours is not a daily occurrence, but a simple ‘Today’, because your Today does not give way to tomorrow, nor follow yesterday. Your Today is eternity. (Confessions XI, 13; Augustine of Hippo. 1997: 295)
God’s life is a dynamic ‘standing now’. His immutable ‘today’ means that the world would not be coeternal with him even if it had no beginning and were bidirectionally everlasting, since it would still be marked by change and the passage of successive moments while God’s eternity transcends such vicissitudes (Callahan 1948: 182).
If Augustine doesn’t have it right on every point, the full truth is even more mind-bogglingly amazing.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (ESV Ps 90:2)
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! (ESV Ro 11:33)
Awesome, in the truest sense of the word!
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Really if you want to get into cosmology, we have no clue really. I think Scripture is clear that he is not beholden to our time. Time is inextricably linked to the fabric of Space. Both can be manipulated, stretched and condensed. It is clear that God is neither constrained by Space or Time and exists wholly outside of it. With that said, we don't know what He exists within and any levels of constraint or non-constraint that His nature may place on His existence and the environment of His existence. Time is not an easily defined element and that definition has changed "over time".
Discussion