God in Eternity and Time

A New Case for Human Freedom

Robert E. Picirilli

• Publisher: B&H Academic
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781087756547
• eBook ISBN: 9781087756554
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

When theology begins with God’s eternal will and knowledge, determinism results. In God in Eternity and Time, eminent scholar Robert Picirilli argues that we should look first to God’s creation and the incarnation—to the created order where God has chosen to act and reveal himself. As God’s decrees and foreknowledge in eternity are then read in light of his acts within time, his interactions with human beings on the personal level clearly reveal themselves.

God in Eternity and Time is divided into two sections. The first part explores how God speaks and acts in creation. The second carefully examines foreknowledge and “middle knowledge” to demonstrate the fallacy of logical arguments against freedom based on foreknowledge. Based on these two sections, the reader will discover Picirilli’s fresh argument for libertarian human freedom.

Part One

The Acts of Eternal God in Time and Space

One

Speaking about God: Preliminary Considerations

This chapter introduces the “problem” of speaking about God—of doing theology, in other words. There is something of a duality in the way we use language. This results, at least partly, from the fact that we have only one language to speak about two radically different realms.

On the one hand, we speak about the world we ourselves inhabit, the world of space and time, of bodies and actions that can be observed. Apparently we form our language primarily with reference to this world.

On the other hand, we use the same language to speak about a metaphysical realm that is constituted differently, the realm of God’s existence in eternity. God’s “world” is not a physical one. It is not marked by the passage of time. He simply is—forever and unchanging. In that realm there is no beginning and no end, apparently not even a before and after.1 No crossing of space, apparently, no movement from one “place” to another.

I’ve made heavy use of apparently. Already the problem for speaking about God has reared its head. Our language is not sufficient to describe what it means for God to be, and never to become, in eternity.

This does not stop us—we are all theologians—from speaking many things about him, often without realizing that when we describe who he is in eternity we are for the most part expressing what is beyond our ability to express. (I say “for the most part” because it is true that Scripture now and then speaks of who he is in himself forever.) We love—theologians love—metaphysical speculation.

I am not campaigning against speculative theology; I enjoy it as much as the next person. However, when we ascribe things to God that go beyond what Scripture says about him, we need to be cautious. What the Bible says in its long narrative from Genesis to Revelation, about God and his inter­action with this world of space and time, may well be more reliable than our metaphysical speculation.

To be more specific, we theologians need to exercise some significant caution in affirming how things we attribute to God are so, or are not so. If for no other reason, the great difference between him as infinite and our human finitude—in addition to the limitations of our language as well as the negative impact of the fall and depravity on our cognitive abilities—ought to make us slow to speak and careful when we do.

This caution need not cause us to go off with Barth into thinking of God as so “wholly other” that we can say nothing understandable about his nature. Nor do we need to adopt a Thomist Deus absconditus as though God is hidden from our knowledge. 2 (It may be that neither Barth nor Aquinas would recognize my use of his words. Regardless, such a discussion is for another time.)

Discussing some of the traditional attributes of God will serve to illustrate the problem we encounter when we speak about God and the caution we need. The attributes themselves are well established and beyond question, but we can profit from exploring how we can speak about God in those terms.

Does God Have a Body?

I choose to ease into my subject in a way with which I think not many will disagree: the traditional affirmation that God is incorporeal, which means that he does not have a body, at least not a physical body. 3 The Bible is clear that God is a spiritual being, not a physical one. Jesus’s conversation with the woman at the well (John 4) includes a clear statement (by one who ought to know in ways far beyond our ability) that “God is spirit.” This means, among other things, that God does not have body parts. He has no eyes, no ears, no hands—for just a few of many possible examples. 4

However—and this is what is important for my purpose—Scripture attributes body parts to him. The Bible speaks freely of his eyes, ears, hands, and more. To be sure, we have been taught to say, correctly enough, that when we and the Bible say such things about God we are speaking anthropomorphically. An anthropomorphism is, simply, to attribute human form to God. (Or to anything else, like an animal or a machine, for that matter. When I say that my computer “thinks,” I am speaking anthropomorphically. Computers do not think at all; they only perform what they have been programmed to perform by people, who do think.)

So far, so good. When we read in Ps 11:4, for example, that Yahweh’s “eyes watch, / his gaze [lit. eyelids] examines everyone,” we are sophisticated enough to know that he does not really have eyes. Isaiah 59:1 assures us that “the Lord’s arm is not too weak to save, / and his ear is not too deaf to hear.” We automatically, almost subconsciously, translate this anthropomorphism into something more conceptual. God has no such body parts.

So, there is at least a sense in which our words, our speech, about God’s eyes or hands is equivocal, which means that our words have a meaning, when applied to God, which is different from their meaning when applied to human beings. Or to say this better, perhaps, we do not mean exactly the same thing when we speak of God’s eyes as when we speak of ours.

And here is where the need for caution arises. As soon as we begin to think about what words mean, we’re at an important place. There is also something univocal in speaking about God’s eyes. Anthropomorphisms express meaning; they communicate truth. 5 In other words, whatever it means for us to have eyes, there is something of the same meaning involved in saying that God has eyes.

What, then, does having eyes mean? One thing, of course, is the ability to see. If we can say that God does not have eyes, can we just as confidently say that he does not see? Probably not, even though it may be just as anthropomorphic to say that he “sees” as to say that he has “eyes.”

I digress a moment to say that I have deliberately chosen the terminology I am using: that such an anthropomorphism is both equivocal and univocal. I prefer this to the usual use of analogy as a way of describing how we speak about God, since analogy focuses on similarity, and I think it best to retain the tension between what is different and what is the same in words attributed to God. 6 Experimentally, I would suggest that such speech is equivocal in form and univocal in substance. 7 Any reader for whom this terminology complicates the issue may toss it; the main point stands even if we discard equivocal and univocal. To speak of God as having eyes is not to be taken as literally true but as an anthropomorphism, yet it is true, insofar as meaning is concerned, to speak of him as having eyes.

So then, when we read Ps 11:4, we had better know that, as the psalmist expressed it, the eyes of the Lord see and test everything we think and do. If there’s anything different between his “seeing” and ours, perhaps it’s that he “sees” far better than we. His eyesight is perfect. The reach of his hand to save is unlimited. His ears pick up our softest whispers, even when they are mere thoughts. And we are in awe of him for that.

Should I say to a grieving widow, for example, that God has no arms to comfort her, I might well be guilty of blasphemy. It is a wicked person, after all, who says, “God will never see what I do; he has no eyes” (cf. Ps 10:11). The response of the author of Ps 94:8–9 to such vacuous thinking is sharply pointed: “Pay attention, you stupid people! / Fools, when will you be wise? / Can the one who shaped the ear not hear, / the one who formed the eye not see?” We are, after all, in his image, not he in ours. 8

Indeed, then, our eyes may be poor and limited editions of his. Whatever it means to us to say that we have eyes and see, it means the same—even more fully—to say that God has eyes to see. Sometimes poetry—if that is what this is—speaks more truthfully and forcefully than prose. And I am not merely affirming a sentimental meaning here; I intend metaphysical meaning, meaning in ultimate reality.

So then, yes, to say that God is incorporeal is to say something important about him. However, to say that his eyes see and test everyone is likewise to say something important about him. And to say the same thing about human beings is to say something that corresponds, significantly, with saying it about God.

To state this another way, affirming that God has no body, as truthful as it is, has little meaning, comparatively speaking, for anything but metaphysical reasoning. 9 Such a statement is a largely a priori affirmation. Speaking relationally rather than metaphysically, the Bible refers to God’s body parts so often, and with such important lessons involved, that we need to give those representations their full measure of meaning for life—and for theology. 10

If anyone, in focusing on the doctrine that God is incorporeal, as true as it is, should do so in such a way as to mitigate the important reality of the biblical truth that God’s eyes are on us, it would be better to shift one’s emphasis away from the truth that he has no eyes. As I think about it, I cannot remember a single instance in Scripture where the author thereof thought it important to remind us that God has no body.

Does God Have Feelings?

We can pursue the same line of thought, in respect to something else we theologians affirm about God, by turning from body parts to feelings. The Westminster Confession (II.I), speaking theologically, observes that God not only has no body, he has no passions. In other words, God is impassible.

There has long been, and still is, much discussion, for and against, about the impassibility of God. 11 Some agree that he is abo...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Part One: The Acts of Eternal God in Time and Space
• Part Two: The Knowledge of Eternal God about Time and Space
• Excursus: Paul Helm’s Argument from Foreknowledge against Human Freedom
• Author Index
• Scripture Index