God and the Nature of Time

Garrett J. DeWeese

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351932837
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Theology & Religion
• Categoria: Religion

Is God temporal, 'in time', or atemporal, 'outside of time'? Garrett DeWeese begins with contemporary metaphysics and physics, developing a causal account of dynamic time. Drawing on biblical material as well as discussions of divine temporality in medieval and contemporary philosophical theology, DeWeese concludes that God is temporal but not in physical time as we measure it. Interacting with issues in the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and philosophy of religion, this book offers students a thorough introduction to the key issues and key figures in historical and contemporary work on the philosophy of time and time in theology.

Chapter 1

Introduction

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know. If someone asks me to explain, I’m baffled.

St Augustine¹

If the nature of time is perplexing in itself, as Augustine’s famous lament attests, the perplexity increases for the theist who must explain not only the nature of time but also God’s relation to time, or, more fundamentally, God’s temporal mode of being. Historically, it has been the case theologians—both exegetical and philosophical—systematized their treatments of God, time and eternity with more concern for concepts such as divine simplicity and divine immutability than for the nature of time. However in the last several decades, paralleling a surge of interest in the metaphysics of time, significant studies in philosophical theology have dealt with the question of God’s relation to time. Characterized by respect for, and interaction with, the philosophical theological tradition, these recent studies also attempt to come to grips with the very difficult issues that distinguish contemporary philosophy of time as well as issues arising from the treatment of time in the physical sciences. We are about to join this conversation.

The Nature of the Problem

On the one hand, it would seem that if God created time, he himself must somehow transcend time. On the other hand, it would seem impossible for a God outside of time to interact with his creation at moments of time. This, in a nutshell, is the problem. But many other issues in philosophical theology turn on the view one takes on God’s temporal mode of being and his relation to temporal creation. A satisfactory solution to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human freedom might well turn on this relation. But so might adequate treatments of topics such as creation, providence, omniscience, immutability, and divine simplicity. And God’s relation to time certainly figures in discussions of petitionary prayer as well as attempts to explicate the Incarnation.

A Survey of Proposed Solutions

Generally, solutions to the question of God’s relation to the temporal order must choose among two pairs of concepts. God may exist either atemporally or temporally, and time may be either static or dynamic. While the details of these solutions will be presented in Chapters 5 through 8, a brief survey at this point will be helpful.

God is Atemporal

From the fourth through the fourteenth centuries, with few exceptions, God was regarded as being outside of time.² Some philosophers and theologians understood God’s temporal mode of being as timeless duration (i.e., duration without temporal succession); others took it as simply atemporal (i.e., something to which temporal concepts cannot be applied). I shall refer to both as divine atemporality. For most of the medieval thinkers, as we shall see, divine was grounded in two theses rooted in an acceptance of a certain metaphysical point of view. The metaphysics that informed early medieval philosophy and theology was that of Neoplatonism.³ In the Neoplatonic tradition the realm of Being, the realm of the Forms, was eternal and immutable, while the realm of Becoming was temporal and mutable. The first-century Jewish theologian Philo of Alexandria (13 BC-AD 50?) saw in Plato a philosophical ally, while the mystical view of the One, developed by Plotinus (205–270), was virtually identified with the God of the Bible by early Christian theologians such as Origen (185–254).⁴ With Augustine (354–430) the influence of Plotinus is felt directly in his view of time, and Neoplatonist metaphysics becomes incorporated into the orthodox philosophical theological tradition.⁵

The acceptance of Neoplatonism brought with it certain metaphysical commitments that, for the next millennium, largely dominated philosophical thinking about God and time. Two theses which flowed from Neoplatonism and were accepted virtually as axiomatic were (i) the simplicity of God’s being, and (ii) compatibilism regarding God’s foreknowledge and human freedom. The unity and pure, unmixed nature of Plato’s Forms and Plotinus’ One translated into the doctrine of God’s simplicity. A metaphysically simple being is one of which its intrinsic attributes are identical with that entity’s individual essence, so it has no parts. So if God is simple, then for every intrinsic attribute F, if God is F, then God is identical to F-ness. Since simplicity entails immutability, and immutability entails atemporality, a simple being such as God is atemporal.⁶ And beginning with Boethius (480–524) the doctrine of God’s eternity served a crucial role in efforts to explain the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom.

Both the doctrine of simplicity and the problem of foreknowledge and freedom are significant for many contemporary supporters of divine atemporality as well. It seems clear enough that divine simplicity leads to divine timelessness, and timelessness seems to be an attractive way to resolve the foreknowledge/ freedom dilemma by placing God’s foreknowledge outside of time altogether, rather than temporally prior to putatively free actions.

Thus, for both the majority of medieval philosophical theologians, as well as many contemporary thinkers, divine atemporality is the preferred solution.

God is Temporal

In the late medieval philosophers, John Duns Scotus (1266?–1308) and William of Ockham (1285–1347), we see the first possibility of conceiving God’s being as temporal. In Duns Scotus’ doctrine of contingency we have the first arguments for dynamic time, and in Ockham’s proposed resolution to the foreknowledge/freedom dilemma we may discern the first medieval suggestion that God is temporal—that is, while unchanging, God endures through time. And although he himself was a proponent of divine atemporality, the sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit Luis de Molina makes a significant contribution to contemporary accounts with his doctrine of Middle Knowledge.

Many contemporary philosophers have concluded that proposed explanations of how a timeless God could stand in real relations with temporal things are either inadequate or incoherent. Further, the doctrine of divine simplicity seems to have lost its appeal as the Neoplatonic metaphysical background has faded, and divine immutability has been interpreted in a weak rather than a strong sense. These results, together with metaphysical arguments supporting dynamic time, have spawned several variations of the view that, rather than being timeless, God does in fact experience temporal succession, both internally (in his own mental states) and externally (in his relation to creation) and thus is properly termed temporal. Indeed, the majority of contemporary philosophers and theologians seem to be on the side of divine temporality.

Time is Static

In spite of some vague similarities with Parmedian stasis and Heraclitean flux, the distinction between the static and the dynamic views of time is a relatively recent one. To claim that time is static is to claim that all moments of time coexist, are equally real; that there is no ontological difference between past, present and future. According to this view, the common notion of temporal passage is a myth. Where we think pre-theoretically of ourselves as approaching possible future events that become actual in the present and then recede ever further into the past, we should realize upon reflection that such a view is reflective only of the phenomenology of our psychology. In the language of the Theory of Relativity, all points in four-dimensional space-time coexist.

We will see that the views of many of the medieval atemporalists entail a static view of time. Static time was not clearly understood as such by many of the medievals, I believe; nevertheless, it is the only view of time that comports with their views concerning God’s nature and foreknowledge. The medieval philosophical theologians worked from doctrinal considerations, and their view of time came along as part of the bargain, relatively unexamined.

On the other hand, a static view of time has become quite popular among metaphysicians in this century, largely due to (i) difficulties arising from McTaggart’s Paradox and from linguistic puzzles about time, and (ii) the successes of modern physical theories, notably the Special Theory of Relativity, and certain philosophical interpretations of these theories. Consequently some contemporary philosophical theologians begin with a static theory of time, and then proceed to develop philosophical theological views that cohere with such a theory.

Time is Dynamic

According to the dynamic theory of time, the present (and the past) have a quite different ontological status than the future. The present (and the past) are (or has been) real, while the future is not yet real. It follows that temporal becoming is a real feature of the world, not merely a psychological one.

A dynamic theory of time is not without difficulties, however; in addition to certain philosophical puzzles, the standard interpretations of the Special and General Theories of Relativity, as well as certain aspects of Quantum Mechanics, seem to present serious problems to any theory of dynamic time. These problems must be faced, since a metaphysical theory that entails the denial of well-confirmed experimental results predicted by contemporary scientific theories would be highly suspect.

Constraints on a Solution

I believe that the search for a solution to God’s temporal mode of being and his relation to temporal creation should be shaped by certain constraints. I shall not offer arguments for the following constraints, but only indicate the role they play in guiding the dialectic of this project.

Biblical Exegesis

This is a study in the Judeo-Christian tradition of philosophical theology. My perspective is that of St Anselm who articulated the principle of fides quarens intellectum, or ‘faith seeking understanding.’⁷ In this tradition, the doctrines derived from God’s special revelation in Scripture are examined, clarified, evaluated, and explained using the tools of philosophical analysis. The result of this approach might indeed be, in the end, the rejection of a traditional formulation of a doctrine as incoherent or implausible, and a consequent re-evaluation of the proper interpretation of the biblical texts.⁸ But it is Scripture that constitutes the core of the tradition, so the exegesis of scriptural material regarding God and time must be examined.

Philosophical Analysis

As the medieval philosopher theologians maintained, ‘Theology is the queen of the sciences, and philosophy is her handmaid.’ Although the queen did not even get out of bed without the help of the handmaid, there was no question as to who held the authority. Much has been written about the relationship between faith and reason,⁹ and this is not the place to add to that literature. Still, I should explain briefly how I see philosophical analysis serving as a constraint. First, philosophy plays a crucial role in clarifying theological concepts. For example, while theologians maintain that God is omnipotent, it remains for philosophers to clarify the notion by exploring whether omnipotence entails the ability to do the logically impossible, and the relation between the essential moral nature of God and his ability to do moral evil. Second, philosophical analysis applies the rigor of logic to theological claims. Contra the tradition associated with Tertullian and Kierkegaard, I hold that it is not rational to (attempt to) believe a logical contradiction,¹⁰ and a rational God would not desire irrational beliefs in his creatures. Third, philosophy is the second-order discipline that does the integrative work of assembling and adjudicating conflicts between biblical exegesis and other disciplines. So any solution to the problem of God and time must be philosophically satisfying in the end.

The Weight of the Historical Theological Tradition

A tradition of philosophical theology provides a certain kind of constraint on developments as the tradition evolves. In the sense in which I understand this constraint, a theological tradition plays...