Is God Temporal or Timeless? (Part 1 of 2) (William Lane Craig)

I am fascinated by God's personal relationship if there's a God with time not just what time is but God's personal if this God have a history why didn't God create the world sooner is gard God get a get bored just living forever and this so much happening when you think about God in time yes I think it's a fascinating topic ever since I became a Christian I've been baffled and intrigued by God's relationship to time one of the most difficult questions I think is if God is timeless then how could he be active in the temporal world and particularly how could he become incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth the way Christians believed the Danish philosopher søren Kierkegaard said that this is the absurd that that the eternal and the timeless should enter into history well I had a flirtation with Kierkegaard existentialism for a while but my mind couldn't rest in that and so I thought there has to be a rational explanation of God's relationship to time and so this has been one of the major foci of my research what are some of the implications without discussing whether what God is but what are the implications of it well one question would be as you say the personhood of God does it make sense to talk about a timeless person and if so how should we conceive the the life of God another question would be whether or not God is able to be active in the world or is he so removed from it that he doesn't really get involved in our temporal lives if he's timeless another question would be whether or not time would affect God's life does God have all the life that he has in a timeless moment or is God's life distributed over time the way ours is just God have a future so to speak well and that would mean that if God had a past there are things to God that no long or real that's not maybe a memory they may be a perfect memory of it in every respect God's memories better than mine it wouldn't take much but but they're no longer real God's lost it yes that's right and on the other hand if you think about the evils and the atrocities that have existed in human history if there isn't a passage of time that is real then that means in a sense those things still exist they're still equally real and an evil has never really overcome on this view of reality that says things are timelessly or tense lessly existing so do we have a bimodal choice one or the other either God is in time or God is outside time I do think that it is a choice of that sort Robert because these are contradictory to be in time is to have a temporal location and a temporal extension and to be timeless is simply to have no temporal location or extension so these are contradictory they they cannot both be true so you've got to choose between timelessness and temporality there's no other possibility the only other way you could put them together would be to qualify these in some way for example we can say that something can be both black and not black if it's black at one time but not black at a later time or maybe it's black on one side but not black on the other side you've got to qualify it so if you want to say God is both timeless and temporal you've got to qualify it some way or that's just a blanket contradiction that cannot be true yeah now what are the implications if God were timeless that means that does that mean there's no sequence of events well I am persuaded that the timelessness or temporality of God will stand or fall on which view you adopt of the nature of time itself I think that how you view God's relationship to time will depend upon what you think time is like and philosophers have distinguished two very different views of time one is a dynamic view of time that says that past present and future are objective and that the past is gone the future is is merely potential only the present is real the other view of time says that all moments and events in time are equally real and temporal becoming is just an illusion of human consciousness now those are very different views of time and I think that how you conceive of time will radically and fundamentally determine how you view God's eternity in his relationship to times that may God a dependent upon the nature of time no I think it would merely mean that if God has chosen to create a a tensed universe if he has chosen to create a tensed time or that's no longer here in the future here I come then that will affect how he exists as well whereas if there is a tense less reality this sort of static view of reality then that will not affect God in in his eternity in other words what I would want to say is that if you want to have a timeless view of God where God is absolutely timeless then I think you need to go with this tense 'less view that sees time as just a part of a four dimensional block just an internal dimension of this four-dimensional space-time block and God exists outside the block and he sustains the Block in being and can see or interact with any point in this block exactly at any point in this block has a time component to it that's right and God exists outside the block of space-time and therefore time Leslie and sustains tense 'less causal relations to everything that's in the block does that mean though in God's own internal mental life if we can say that that there are no sequence of events nothing before or after in God's own in terms that would imply that a timeless God would be a God who experiences no past present and future no earlier and later he would know of things in the block that they are earlier in later than each other but for God the whole block would just be there in a single timeless moment as it were and how does God then process we think of processes this has to be sequences and sequences seem to have to be in time so it would seem like God is a like a granite block well I I think that's correct on this view of time everything is static change just means that earlier points in the block are different from later points in the block but they're both equally real that the change in time on this view is no different than say the change in space from one point in space to another there is no process on this view I'm trying to get at God's own life I send the block and a block is everything God created God created that block because God created everything according to your view so God created this four dimensional block in this timeless view of God but my my struggle is what does that mean for God's own internal mental life it would mean that God has a single state of consciousness that never changes he just knows all tense 'less truths about himself reality the block and nothing ever changes all in this one tense 'less moment yes and so it is as you say kind of frozen it it's everything is just sort of frozen in in timelessness now what are what do we know from that is there some benefits to that I mean in one sense you will very few I think I don't accept this view of reality but benefits it would enable you to explain very easily how God knows the future because just his future for us see your point yeah it's already out there so he just looks and sees it so to speak so it would be very easy to explain how God knows the future on this view but apart from that I think that this view is just filled with philosophical and theological problems that render it implausible one of the one of the arguments for it is that if God is in time God is is losing experience this thing's that that will have happened that are forever lost yes well let's talk about the other view because we haven't really spoken of it if you have a dynamic theory of time where things are coming into being and passing away then God is the creator and sustainer of the world must bring things into being and sustain them in being as long as they exist and then they pass out of being so God himself would be in process and would be constantly creatively active in bringing things into being and he would also know things as they come to be in pass away so his knowledge would constantly be changing he would know I am now delivering Israel out of Egypt I am now parting the Red Sea I am now bringing them into the promised land for example okay if God is in time and continuing to create continuing to improve because God is good to do those kinds of things doesn't that mean that there's an imperfection here that if God is getting better that means at some point he was not as good as he could be well I wouldn't agree that being in time implies that God is continuing to improve something can be at absolute perfection and change not so to speak vertically on the scale of perfection but change horizontally in being in different states of perfection so for example suppose God knows at one moment it's 3 o'clock and at the next moment he knows it's 301 I don't think that change is any improvement in God whatsoever nor does it show that God was imperfect when he knew it was 3 o'clock instead of 301 on the contrary it's a mark of his perfection that he always knows accurately what time it is so I would see God's any changes in God that transpires a result of being in time as not being improvements or growing in perfection but it would be an expression of his cognitive perfection that he would always know the tensed truths that are true at any time and therefore would always know what time it is and he would never believe any false propositions

Channel: drcraigvideos

Views: 36,417

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Keywords: William, Lane, Craig, God, Temporal, Timeless, Tensed, Tenseless, Dynamic, Static, Past, Present, Future, Eternity, soren, kierkegaard, Robert, Lawrence, Kuhn, Closer, to, Truth

Id: T3N_RAvksP4

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2011