I learned some things and I was challenged by many things. There were times when it was very exciting and times when I wanted to die. Part of me wonders if this isn’t just going to be the very nature of philosophy; the other part wonders if it isn’t something else. Only time will tell.

I wrote one essay which was pretty terrible (I will never post it for the sake of my dignity) and wrote two more for the final. The final went well; I was able to write on retrocausation and some of the junk Senor talked about. So that worked out in my favor; however I will not know for sure until my grade rolls in.

An important note to add to these “final thoughts” is that, as far as God and time goes, this is not my final thought. This is something I will continue to work on and struggle with. It may not be that I find the answer through A/B time theory or other grandiose ideas – but I will continue looking.

Although part of me still wishes I had just taken calligraphy. Damn.

I would like to talk about omniscience (also the topic of my paper for class). The easiest way of jumping into the issue is to give the quote that had me thinking this direction as soon as I read it.

…There is no known univocal answer to what is essential for us being human…”

The quote comes from Thomas Senor in his essay “Incarnation, Timelessness, and Leibniz’s Law Problems”. He really struck me with this one. I immediate wrote in the margin: “If that is the case then why do we assume we know what it takes to be divine?” The emphasis in that sentence was on the why – which is an interesting topic – but I want to focus more on the what and the how.

There are a few “givens” when it comes to God – some call them control beliefs or assumptions – such as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. Those are the three “o’s” and the only ones I’m going to be concerned with for now. (The others are usually “personal” and “creator,” sometimes “atemporal.”) On the one hand I recognize the place of control beliefs, if only as a starting point. I don’t see starting points as bad things, necessarily.

I do feel as though the prefix “omni” is used a bit too liberally though. It carries different meanings across the words, and that bothers me a little bit – something you’ll see in a minute or two. The first important definition is the definition of “omnipotent”:

almighty or infinite in power

Dictionary.com

Nowhere in this definition (or any of the other ones on the page that I could fine) define omnipotent as anything more than the possession of power. But this power doesn’t seem to have to be something that is acted out all the time. Actually, imagine God exercising all of His possible power at once…doesn’t seem very plausible, right? It seems downright silly. Whether our intuition is enough to except this as the reality of God’s omnipotence or not is a question in itself. Assuming it is, then we have a case where God has all the power in the world without having to exercise all of it at one time. In other words, God has the ability to use all the power in the world, whether He uses it or not.

Now is where I give the reason for the “Incarnation” in the title of this post. In the incarnation of the Son there is an issue regarding omniscience that I don’t think is seen when looking at omnipotence. Omnipotence, for instance, is easily acceptable of Christ without having to leap through very many (if any, really) philosophical hoops. It seems easy for us to say “Well, Christ just didn’t use the power that was clearly at His disposal. He chose to limit Himself.” It’s probably a bit presumptuous to think that anyone would accept that; really all I can say is that it appears obvious to me.

Examples of Christ exemplifying a limited omnipotence: allowing Himself to be crucified, not calming the storm.

Assuming that we can say that about omnipotence: can we say it about omniscience? If God can control His power can He control His knowledge? In other words, could Christ have chosen not to look into the future so that some greater good may come of it? (Or simply for the sake of being more human-natured?)

One example where this idea comes in particularly useful is the issue of the prayer of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. In this prayer Christ prays for this cup to pass over Him – now, would anything short of a temporal being with a limited (in some way) knowledge of the future pray a prayer like that? It doesn’t seem likely. It seems that if Christ knew He was to be crucified there would be many fewer attempts to escape coming out in His prayers. No, it seems as though even Christ had a choice up until the last moment when He decided it would be the will of God that would win out.

I can imagine a couple of immediate objections to this idea, partly because I’ve already received them – one was in class. The first objection goes as follows:

What do you mean God is limiting His knowledge? I don’t know what that looks like. For example, go ahead and forget something right now. Forget your phone number. Wait a year, and remember it again. Does that make sense? Is that possible? So why should we expect it of God?

I hope that’s a fair representation of that objection.

My response is simple: that misunderstands the idea I’m putting forward. My proposal is that God can choose whether or not He wants to know the result of any available future fact (I’ll explain ‘available’ soon). Maybe an illustration will help. Imagine a man standing in front of a house, directly in between two windows. This man is more than capable of moving over and looking into these windows – he doesn’t consider it a difficult task at all. And although he could do it, easily in fact, he decides not to. (Don’t even ask me why he’s putting so much thought into it, it’s an illustration!) Do we think less of the man for not looking into the window?

My point is that just because God has the ability to do something doesn’t (or shouldn’t) necessarily mean that He has to. God could look through any one of the windows, even into the window of a future act of yours. But maybe He doesn’t because He doesn’t want to.

Why wouldn’t God want to know the future?

I believe that God has created us to love Him for eternity. True love comes through choice – choice is one of the fundamental principles we live on; without choice true communion with God would never be possible. It seems that a God who has created a relationship in this way would hold choice and freedom to make said choice a very important aspect of life. It is this reason (which may be wholly intuition and to some untrustworthy) which makes God not want to look ahead and “know” what you are going to do – as this would, of course, make it so you would have to do the act. It makes sense – if God knows something you can’t do otherwise; therefore it would make sense that God would limit himself in order to give you free will. (God even values free choice in the manner of His Son’s crucifixion on the cross, as I said above.)

Why else wouldn’t God know the future? One possibility: it doesn’t exist. This may be an easier idea to sell than the one I just tried to sell above. Think of the definition of omniscience as “knowing all which is knowable”. (This is the ‘available’ stuff I previewed above.) If the future doesn’t exist yet (as adherents to a dynamic theory of time will say) then it is no big deal that God doesn’t know it. Think about it this way: Does God know that I am on a mountaintop right now breaking the land speed record in a 85 degree dive down a snowy bank? Of course not. Why? Because I’m not doing that. Now He knows that I was thinking about that just then, but He doesn’t know I was doing that. That knowledge isn’t available to be known because it doesn’t exist.

Where else can I go with this? It is worth mentioning that my logic for coming to the conclusion about omniscience being a choice of God (which is really cool if you think about it) may rest solely on an unjustifiable connection between the connotations of omnipotent and omniscience. I say unjustified because if the same principle is applied to the other “O” called omnibenevolent it may be the case that God has a choice whether to be truly good or not.

(Again, I don’t see this idea as especially unsatisfying.)

But again to the topic at hand. When it comes to omniscience it is important to keep three things in mind: what is logically sensible and necessary, what is scriptural and historic in terms of God’s nature, and what it is that we expect and experience out of God – for lack of a better word our intuition. If we keep these things in mind it may help guide our discussion a bit more. And that discussion is one which has existed for some time, and will continue for some time to come – what sort of omniscience do you prescribe to? Or, in other words, what does God know?

What I would like to pay most attention to are the parts of his essay where he referenced and discussed the incarnation (that is, Christ becoming man on earth) and how we are to deal with this issue when considering the nature of time and (especially) omniscience.

As I’ve said before there are a couple of different theories regarding time; to make things simple let’s reduce these options to:

1. God is temporal.
2. God is atemporal.

Technically these are the only two options, but I don’t really want to get into the nitty gritty by breaking down each of these into the different possibilities under them.

When we look at the trinity (a huge Christian issue in and of itself!) we see God in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I’m not going to make the claim that I understand the trinity – and anyone who says they do is lieing to you – but there are a couple of things I will affirm concerning the trinity. First, it is true (at least it seems to me to be true) that properties which parts of the trinity have must be shared by all. As three in one and one fully realized by three, it would become very messy to start giving the triune God different qualities. Not to mention running the risk of giving conflicting qualities!

No, I don’t think it’s out of line to say that the trinity shares characteristics. One of these characteristics must be the trinity’s relation to time.

In the incarnation we see and experience God (literally, we are told, God) coming to us in the form of Christ, the Son. It is important, as Senor shows, to identify the different things that Christ’s life on earth shows us. (I will be following from this point on the traditional understanding of Christ’s life on earth – that is that he lived, died, resurrected – lived a true human life. This ignores the possibility of other understandings, and I recognize that.)

Living a life, Christ existed temporally. Is there any question to have with that? He was born, He lived, He acted and reacted to reality in ways which were not simultaneous with one another, and He died. He also was resurrected, some time later. So it is nearly indisputable that Christ the Son of the triune God existed temporally.

The next question is this: Is it possible to enter into time from an atemporal state? In other words, could Christ have existed atemporally (supposedly in His natural state) and entered into the time of our world only for (excuse the term) a time, only to return to His natural state in atemporality? As far as our discussions went in class (which is hardly far enough to be considered adequate) we could not find an answer which would make this possible. In other words, the very idea of entering or exiting time is (at best) counter-intuitive and (at worst) illogical.

Therfore God is temporal.

Ah, but it isn’t that easy! There is one objection that stems from such atemporal philosophers as Stump or Kretzmann (who I wrote about) or Brian Leftow. This objection states that God exists in the eternal now (separate from our time) and that any and all actions or interactions that take place (apparently) within time are really part of one eternal act that takes place infinitely, eternally, through all of time.

Example: Dr. Woodruff loves his children. At one time he may wish to reward them by giving them something they want; another time he may want to punish them by taking the same thing away. My understanding of the eternal present states that both of these acts comprise a much larger act, one act, that is, loving his children. So these smaller acts, though actually part of an eternal act, are really only temporal because of our limited understanding.

Now I don’t know if anyone else is buying this as a viable solution, but it seems like escapism to me. Using this theory in regard to the incarnation would mean that the act of Christ being born in Bethlehem and the act of Him dying at Calvary are both part of the same act, that is, God’s love for mankind.

What’s that smell? Is that heresy? (Not that I’m all that against all forms of heresy, but I can’t resist.)

You can see where I’m going with this eternal present stuff. It may be convincing to some, but I see it as a lame attempt to avoid what (admittingly to me) is very clear: God is temporal.

As the discussion in God and Time today showed, not all views of time really allow for any sort of meaningful prayer – at least not the way many of us think about it.

The view I’m talking about, of course, is the atemporalist view (in other words the view that God is outside of time). The atemporalist view is normally taken, so it seems, in order to say certain things about God. Atemporalists call God “eternal” (read: infinite whereas we are finite) and “omniscient”. Whether they really come away with these characteristics of God is another conversation entirely.

But try and imagine something outside of time. I ask for a description here, or at the very least a mental picture I can use, because I’ve never been able to comprehend it. Nevertheless, let’s say you have a timeline ‘A’ and a God outside of time ‘B’. The atemporalist explanation for how God knows and interacts with the world (at least commonly – all of these are generalizations of course) is the “eternal present”. In the eternal present all things are present to God at once – there is no past, present, or future to God. This is desirable because the atemporalist believes we must remove God from time in order for the implications of time not to apply to Him (such as dying, beginnings and ends, etc.).

Follow me. If all things are present to God then all at once I am dead and alive. All at once I am being born and I am dying. All at once I am praying for a need and forgetting the need altogether. My point is – and this only touches on one aspect of atemporality by the way – what do we pray for if all of our prayers are going to be viewed without their temporal character? If everything we pray for is simultaneously present to God, doesn’t that change the way we pray? Shouldn’t it?

Background: we have been reading a variety of essays this week by philosophical theologians arguing for an atemporal God. There have been different ways of going about it, but the basic illustration stays the same. Think of time as a line (a timeline) on which events in our time take place. Then there is God, removed from time, and (depending on the particular philosopher) still able to act in and on our timeline. But God cannot be seen as having his own seperate timeline – God does not experience time.

Dr. Woodruff’s analogy is related to a popular understanding of time that most atemporalists would agree to: that is, the “B theory” of time. The A theory of time is one that most hold to without realizing it. If you think of time as having a present (now), a past, and a future, you would be an A theorist. A B theorist, however, would assert that the idea of “now” is an illusion. Everything can be reduced to tenseless language – that is, before, after, and simultaneous with. I will illustrate the difference in regard to my writing this post right now:

I am writing this post right now.

My writing of this post is simultaneous with 11:00 am on January 13, 2007.

The first statement fits into an “A” understanding of time. The tenseless statements of the second are “B” statements.

The analogy was one to try and illustrate how time may operate. Think about time as a dimension (just as you think about a flat plane or the dimensions of a 3 dimensional world) laid out as a line. If you can, draw a line out in front of you horizontally. Now distinguish the left from the right side of the line. If you understand what a line truly is (an infinite number of points that extends in two directions infinitely) then you’ll see a problem with identifying a left and a right side. As long as you have a 2 dimensions (such as a square or rectangle) it is not a problem to divide the line in half. Notice that it is impossible to denote a left and a right absent of a reference point. In other words, with a point it would be easy to label a left and a right.

Relate this to time. Can we have a past or a future without an ontologically unique present? Not only that, but should it be within God’s power to know the current “now”? This is related to the Kretzmann article from a few days ago. After typing this I’m not sure whether or not I communicated it as well as I would in person without a whiteboard. You’ll have to let me know. Or contact me in person about it; I don’t mind talking about it!

Now the student in class brought the question up in order to raise an issue with it. First of all, I appreciated this issue being brought up in class because an important question should be raised (one which I feel like I’m raising more and more often). That is: who says what perfection is? In other words, what if perfection is defined as changing in order to remain perfect in relation to other changing things? This is desirable if you see God as a being who acts in relational ways with beings who change. I was very excited that this idea was brought forward in class, if only to show that it is an available option.

Before I get too carried away with that idea (which I believe I have covered before anyway) I will go on to the real reason this particular student sticks out in my mind. He brought to the discussion a number of verses he had looked up that, at least in his mind, brought serious problems regarding certain assumptions concerning the nature of God.

First, he brought up the verse “His ways are perfect,” apparently as a way of proposing that the Bible doesn’t claim that God is perfect, only that His ways are. Though I don’t believe his conclusion is based on thorough research, I move on. He also referred to how God “rested on the 7th day” of creation. This would seem to show that God changes, and is thus not immutable. This same student drew attention to a verse in which “the Lord said” that He remembered our sins no more. But how could an omniscient being not remember something, even if He chose to? Wouldn’t His omniscience and omnipotence conflict?

In my eyes he did bring up an issue today in class, although I don’t think it’s what he intended to bring up. What he brought up has to do with what I call the purpose or place of scripture. Simply put the Bible is not a metaphysics textbook, meaning that we can’t draw single verses (or even passages or stories, settle down) to derive metaphysical or scientific principles concerning the nature of God. Of course the true nature of God may line up with some of these verses from time to time – even often – but they don’t rise and fall by single verses or ideas like those.

I view scripture holistically versus specifically. By this I mean that when I look to the Bible to determine God’s nature I look at the whole of scripture – what picture does it paint of God? I’m sure I’ve blogged about this in the past as well. When viewed from the perspective of narrative theology – something I continually feel a pull toward – scripture is a historical document that also contains romantic and poetic language describing the story of a loving God moving toward and within His people to bring about redemption. The purpose of this book is to show us God in one of the truest forms we have – but not to define Him metaphysically.

I don’t mean to undermine the value of metaphysics or philosophy in general – obviously, it’s my major for goodness sake! But it needs to have its place. Give scripture its place. Don’t confuse the two and come up with silly conclusions. Please?

Funny how that works, eh?

I wasn’t sure I was going to post anything about the day’s reading, but this particular chapter – Atemporal, Sempiternal, and Omnitemporal: God’s Temporal Mode of Being by G DeWeese had an interesting section. Actually I’m sure there are many interesting sections, so let me rephrase – one interesting section I think I understand.

DeWeese defined atemporality as the following:

Atemporal entities do not exist at any time.

This seems fairly straighforward. He goes on to make further statements concerning the nature of an atemporal thing – it must be abstract, it must exist necessarily, they must be immutable, and so forth. I think these properties would come to mind with enough dreaming on the topic of atemporality. That’s not the exciting part to me; what excites me is what he says next.

Given that atemporal beings are necessary, changeless things, it is clear why many philosophical theologians have wanted to say that God is atemporal. An atemporal God would be immutable, immaterial, and necessary. All seem to be attributes of God that a traditional theist would want to maintain. The tradition goes back at least as far as Augustine and includes Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas. Contemporary philosophers of religion who argue for God’s timelessness or atemporality include Paul Helm, Eleonore Stump, Norman Kretzmann, and Brian Leftow. But surely none of these would want to say that God was an abstract entity! So if my argument is correct, there is good reason to suspect that God is not atemporal.

Awesome! I have found an explanation (in complex philosophy jargon, of course) for something I have felt and argued for a long time. It does seem to be that God is not atemporal; it seems rather that God is somehow within time. This seems necessary to explain things like petitionary prayer (asking God to change your life now), the crucifixion, prophecy, or any other time God interacts with humans in time to bring about His will. These things – obviously argued from the stance of a theist rather than a theory of the idea of God – seem to scream for a temporal being.

DeWeese describes two ways of accepting, let’s say, the best of both worlds. He proposes sempiternality and omnitemporality as two ways in which God can both be a part of time and yet still retain all of the attributes (mentioned in the quote above) that traditional theists want Him to have. While I think there may be something for me in omnitemporality, I don’t want to dig myself into that hole until I hear it talked through in class. I had a tough time with all three discussions, especially omnitemporality. Now off to bed with me.

But I’m not one to complain about work. I enjoy work. I try to keep it so I enjoy all of it.

I’m taking a class right now – January term, they call it – called God and Time. It’s a 300 level course that has about fourteen class members right now – four of which are senior philosophy majors. At least they seem like it. Will I be that scary in three more years? The class isn’t actually all that bad; it should be interesting. We’re using a book that my philosophy professor co-edited called (you guessed it) God and Time.

I decided that since this is one of the first real courses I am taking in regard to my major (which I have been looking forward to for a long time) I figure I should write about it. Despite the fact that the class starts in eight hours, I’ve only read half of the essays I’m supposed to have (read: 1 of 2) and I’m dreading the lack of sleep I am about to receive, I still want to write about it.

Kretzmann has an interesting point, and one that I don’t necessarily disagree with. First, some background: Plantega pushed for God as an explanation out of necessity. The quote I have in my notes reads:

If it’s possible for God to exist than God must exist. – Plantega

At the very least it’s a strong statement to make. And if it’s true then it would seem like no problem at all for the Average Joe to believe in God – after all, if God is possible than God must exist. Surely you must agree that it is possible for God to exist?

Then again, look at it from the other side. Now all an atheist has to do is show that it is logically impossible to believe in God. If a philosopher can sit down and show that there are two characteristics of the “perfect” God of the theist that are logically contradictory (an antinomy) then God doesn’t exist. Technically if two characteristics are in disagreement with each other than there are only two options:

1. One of the characteristics must either be removed or changed (not many are willing to accept this)
2. God does not exist.

So Kretzmann sets out to show that there are antinomies which show that God (or weakly a certain interpretation of God) isn’t possible. In his “Omniscience and Immutability” Kretzmann focuses on the facts that God is unchanging and all knowing. He intends to show that these two things are logically contradictory, and I think he does a solid job. Kretzmann uses a form of the ontological argument called “reductio ad absurdum,” in which he will attempt to show that following logic from one statement to another will eventually result in a logical contradiction, in which case one of the premises must be rejected.

1. A perfect being is not subject to change. (Immutability)
2. A perfect being knows everything. (Omniscience)
3. A being that knows everything always knows what time it is.
4. A being that always knows what time it is is subject to change.
5. A perfect being is subject to change.
6. A perfect being is not a perfect being.
7. There is no perfect being.

Kretzmann uses this as a launch pad to attacking the very idea of a perfect being – he brings up a number of arguments which would attempt to reconcile his argument with God’s perfect nature (that is, the truth of both omniscience and immutability. I don’t see a problem with what Kretzmann has concluded, though. In fact I agreed with every point on his argument – every point except for number one.

1. A perfect being is not subject to change.

I think I would be hard pressed to find anyone who would stick to this true immutability until the end. It’s nice that Kretzmann does the idea justice – immutability truly means unchanging. It means unchanging in all ways. If there is a qualifier placed on it such as “his nature is immutable” – then God is no longer immutable.

But that isn’t a bad thing. I see it as exciting that we have a God who changes. Our God is a personal agent, something that has appeared throughout history in very real ways affecting people in real relationships. There is dialogue. There is action. There is time and there is change. God adapts. God reacts.

Kretzmann was right with his conclusion. If we are to affirm that our God never changes then we are to affirm a God that doesn’t exist. I wouldn’t bring up a problem in what Kretzmann suggested here. I would bring up a problem with the Christian who posits that God is unchanging. By unchanging I mean the true meaning of immutability – not the constant attitude of His nature.

And I won’t even go into the intricacies of omniscience. There are a lot of little nooks and crannies that interest and affect me in there. But I’m sure that will come up further into God and Time. Heck, I haven’t even read the second essay yet!