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CCinVA
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 1
| Posted 1/20/2003 3:01 PM (GMT -6) |   | Is there a Biblical basis for believng that God exists outside of (our notion of) time and space? First time poster, so I apologize if this question is in the wrong place.
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GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 1/20/2003 3:44 PM (GMT -6) | | Welcome aboard CCinVA.
In my opinion, the answer is definitive NO. Indeed, I would argue that the entire biblical narrative, which depicts God as interacting with us in the flow of history, counts against such a notion.
Blessings
Doc
"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6 | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/20/2003 4:27 PM (GMT -6) | | Dear CVinVA,
You asked "...basis for believng that God exists outside of (our notion of) time and space?"
Let me taka a different 'tack' from Doc. Limitt the question for a moment to "...basis for believng that God exists outside of (our notion of) SPACE." Dwelling on that single part for a moment, IMHO, is worht the while.
As to space, we hopefully would NEVER say that God is "outside" of space. Two things need saying: that God created space, and that he moves and acts in it. YET (Love that "yet.") we understand that heaven is not up, not higher than the clouds, and not somewhere in outer space. We know that God created the cosmos, OUT OF NOTHING. So God (gotta use time words here; but I'm talking about space.) predates space, matter, Creation. Creation has its own history. It was created, it suffered with the fall, it awaits and groans until the day. And it will experience the fulness of "that day" when all will be changed or renewed. Corruption will cease. But until then falling apart is the trajectory. That line of history and redemption is a line that God does not trace. God is not on that line. (While this is a 'timeline' of sorts, its marks as to qualitative changes are more important than quantitative changes in minutes or years.) So when he did join that line (our 'line') it was exceptional. He joined that line, without suffering corruption himself, but dying destroyed the power of that corruption, to restore what was lost.
God and Space HAVE a common aspect--that which belongs to Creation. And God and Space have aspect that is NOT in common--that which belongs to God.
Personally, I think that something mighty similar can be said about time too. So don't let anyone say that "God is outside of Time" -- because He is IN too; just like God is IN Space.
A dime and three nickles worth.
Al
Edited by - Al2Si2H4O9 on 01/20/2003 9:30:00 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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SIM
Registered Member
Date Joined Nov 2002
Total Posts : 90
| Posted 1/26/2003 5:01 AM (GMT -6) | | Me, too, Al.
SIM
"Looking for God--or Heaven--by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters..."
C. S. Lewis | | Back to Top | | |
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GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 1/26/2003 9:17 PM (GMT -6) | | The space thinking works.
A huge issue hangs on whether "time" and "space" are more alike than they are NOT alike.
Many philosophers and scientists in the last two decades in particular argue that a central limitation of Newtonian physics was in thinking of time IN SPATIAL TERMS. I think the categorical confusion goes back to Plato. Most of the metaphors he used for time were spatial, and the practice was pervasive in the Western philosophical tradition. E.g. Aquinas main metaphor for God's view of time was a person standing on a mountain seeing two travelors approaching one another while each travelors could not see the other.
In the Book Philosophy in the Flesh, Lakoff and Johnson argued that our tendency think of time in spatial metaphors is rooted in the way our brain abstracts from concrete physical experience to think abstractly about things. Most of the unsolvable quagmires philosophers have struggled with about time, they argue, is rooted in their forgetting that our spatial language about time is metaphorical.
Blessings
Doc
"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6
Edited by - GregBoyd on 01/27/2003 02:24:26 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/27/2003 1:24 AM (GMT -6) | | My post above does not at all equate time and space. (As I wrote: "Let me taka a different 'tack' from Doc.")
The salient part of my post is this: "God and Space HAVE a common aspect--that which belongs to Creation. And God and Space have aspect that is NOT in common--that which belongs to God." The salient part is that God and [Creation] have both aspects in common and aspects that are not in common.
When we look at the subject of time, it is, indeed, a different subject than space. But this same duality (Creature and Creator) is present. There are certainly aspects of time of which Creation and Creator have in common. But there are also aspects of time of which Creation and Creator do not have in common. And the subject is further complicated by the Fall, and with it the fact that time needs healed. Time presently is pointed (its meaning) towards death and decay. That needed healing.
Nothing that I've read has convinced me that the Pleroma is static. But neither am I convinced that it resembles the present quality (and with it meaning) of time. So, I'm highly skeptical of attempts to build a closed system and to fit God within it. (To construct a mythology.)
Al | | Back to Top | | |
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fyodor
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Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 179
| Posted 1/27/2003 5:29 AM (GMT -6) | | One could suggest that God's knowledge of time transcends our understanding of time in some way. It's like the experiment of the clocks and the water tower in which two highly accurate clocks where used to measure time at a point on the earth's surface and a point high above the earth. The clock closest to the earth ran slower than the clock high above the earth, but when brought to the same point on the earth's suface they ran at the same speed meeting at the same point in time. The perspective from which time is measured comes from different points of measurement and therefore are measured with differing outcomes. All the while, when those tools of measurement meet at the same point in space to measure time, the measurement is the same.
God could appropriately experience time in a different measurement than that of the creation all the while experiencing time in the same measurement as creation by being in different spaces and all spaces at the same point in time.
One point I'm a little confused on is this: If God does know difinitively some or all future events how has God attained that knowledge without existing outside time as we understand it? Is that a question that just gets appointed to the mystery of God's foreknowledge or is there an explanation? This is further complicated by an open-theism arguement in which God does know some events difinitively while knowing other events only as possibilities. If God transcends time to the point that he knows difinitively say an event in the year 2020, how does he not know all the events leading up to that event? Please help me understand this further if possible?
Thanks
†††"To have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession, an infinite concession, given to man, but it is also eternity's claim upon him." – S. Kierkegaard
Edited by - fyodor on 01/27/2003 10:30:51 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 1/28/2003 12:45 AM (GMT -6) | | Rom 11:33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
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