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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Theological Q&A > Timelessness | Forum Quick Jump
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John
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Date Joined Aug 2006
Total Posts : 9
|  Posted 11/10/2006 9:41 AM (GMT -6) |   | On a different forum I was having discussion about timelessness, and the person gave me these verse.
[quote]Taking the instance of timeless, the Old Testament says:
Psa 90:4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
The New Testament repeats this with amplification:
2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
(and Peter was very unlikely to have been influenced by any Greek philosophy - being a relatively uneducated fisherman)
As had the Old Testament believers who wrote commentary on Psalm 90:
Sir 18:10 As a drop of water unto the sea, and a gravelstone in comparison of the sand; so are a thousand years to the days of eternity.
I was wondering the O.T understanding of these. Thanks.
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/10/2006 12:59 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 11/10/2006 9:27 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Holistic View
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Date Joined Jul 2006
Total Posts : 5
| Posted 11/12/2006 9:51 AM (GMT -6) | | To me, God in not timeless (which root sense means staticness, deadness, absolute stillness). God is living (active) and has been living for an endless period of time, an infinity in the mathematical sense. So, a thousand years compared to infinity (1000 years divided by infinity) is practically zero even as 1 day divided by infinity is also almost zero. Both 1 day and 1000 years are alike in brievity of time in comparison with infinity. I see those scriptures as being very mathematically precise.
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Similitude
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| Posted 11/12/2006 11:19 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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John
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Date Joined Aug 2006
Total Posts : 9
| Posted 11/12/2006 4:09 PM (GMT -6) | |  Cheers brother
Yeah, I think you are right about God not fitting in our boxes. I think it is risky to be dogmatic on something that may really suprises us when we get to heaven. I heard someone talking how if a being was in a 2D world, and a 3D creature stepped in, the 2D could not understanding or make sense of 3D being. Now of course I am doing a horrible job at repeating what I heard. But all that to say is, indeed God may in a way be in a totally different time zone and reality, and we cannot really jugde this or not. What we do have is the fact that when the bible speaks of God, it speaks of Him having a past, present and future, and it says a lot of other things that don't make any sense outside of the concept that God experiences some sort of duration. My deal is we should not make a view and call it doctrine that causes one to not take literally half of what God says He is and does, and timelessness is just such a doctrine from my understanding.
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 11/12/2006 8:54 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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John
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Date Joined Aug 2006
Total Posts : 9
| Posted 11/12/2006 9:27 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Holistic View
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Date Joined Jul 2006
Total Posts : 5
| Posted 11/13/2006 9:11 AM (GMT -6) | | Peace to PotOnWheel, but I think we need not fear to see God as IN time, as He and every living thing is in a true sense at the root (except the rock at the bottom of the sea). And this does not contradict Scripture but actually supported by it. If time is a category, timelessness is another, what then is "beyond time" ( = timelessless) ?
If we are made in the image of God, then God is the mirror image of man. The difference is that God is superlatively powerful and glorious, not "wholly other", up there in heaven. We know God from the categories of things that are made.
(Rom 1:20) For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.
(1Cor 15:41) There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.
In my view, classical theology has put a veil on a truly anthropomorphic God which is generously portrayed in the Bible. Open Theism has started to unveil this biblical God and draw Him closer to us.
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 11/13/2006 9:27 AM (GMT -6) | | Dear W-V,
Scripture also presents us the image of God being in darkness, unknowable. It is true, certainly, that "the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse." But that says that there are some things that are "invisible." It is *through* things made that we can--really can--"perceive" the invisible things. That's what the text says.
This has been the teaching of the Christian Church since the Nicene Creed era (Basil of Caesarea). the invisible things of God we DO NOT see, while the actions of God in the Creation (even in the simplist things) ARE witness not only "about" God but "of" his actions.
It is in this, too, that the Church witnesses that we can and should have PERSONAL relationships with the personal God. We are called to be "partakers of the divine nature," as Peter said!
And, of course, God not only created all of Creation, and with it created time, but God continuously acts IN time and UPHOLDS time in His providence.
(*Throw out* the "classical view," as it is a re-paganization of otherwise biblical ideas.)
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Holistic View
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Date Joined Jul 2006
Total Posts : 5
| Posted 11/14/2006 9:47 AM (GMT -6) | | Dear POW,
You said: "Scripture also presents us the image of God being in darkness, unknowable."
I would greatly appreciate if you could let me have some scriptures that prompted you to this understanding, so that I may check them out for myself.
Secondly, my reasoned view is that God did not create time, contrary to popular belief flowing from classical theology. And contrary to atheistic scientific presuppositions that try to do away with a living God. Time has always been there before the creation of the physical universe and even before the creation of the spiritual realm. Our references to time is the rotation of the sun, moon, earth and other relative motions of physical matter. Before the physical universe, there would be other spiritual reference points not dependent upon the sun, moon and earth -- as there would be motions in the spiritual realm as well. And when God was alone in Himself before external creation (whether spiritual or physical), He was alive and having motions, presumably and logically so. Otherwise, there would be no action and reaction, cause and effect. God is IN time and He embodies time. God cannot not be what He is.
Another reasoned view I hold, supportable by Scripture, is that God is also IN space (as much as He is IN time).
I do agree with you that the invisible things of God we do NOT NOW see, but I also believe that in the future resurrected spiritual state we will be able then to see.
Just some thoughts (not dogmatism or doctrine) for sharing.
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Tom
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| Posted 11/14/2006 8:03 PM (GMT -6) | | I don't think the lines of influence between the Hellenic world and the Christian faith all travel FROM faith TO the Greek world. It doesn't seem reasonable at all. Yes, the gospel transformed the Greco-Roman world, infiltrated and affected their catgories. But it didn't come out entirely unscathed. The Christian faith was (in my view) adversly influenced by Greek philosophical concepts and categories. I don't know that there's any way to insulate ourselves (our understanding and articulation of God and the world) from such influence.
I'm becoming more convinced that there is 'something' to the argument that the Christian faith was Hellenized to some extant (a) the more Greeks and fewer Jews making up the Church as the gospel moved int the Greek world, and (b) under the influence of Greek philosophical categories upon the Church’s articulation and understanding of the faith. There was some ‘hardening of the categories’ (maybe a bad expression), a shift from the Hebrew view of God as personally related and responsive to the Greek view of divinity or perfection as static and timeless.
As the Church moved into the Greek-speaking world demands were made that the faith be articulated in categories and terms taken from the Greek worldview. And this is only natural. The gospel gets contextualized. Always has. Always will. But though this had the benefit of communicating the faith in terms a new audience could understand and grasp (and so transform Greek culture as POW says, surely), it’s also the case that the Church was influenced by the worldview into which it moved. And I think this is what happened to the Church—early on and quickly, and subtly. The essential gospel wasn’t jeopardized. The Church stayed sufficiently on track. We remained Trinitarian monotheists who believed in the incarnation, personal sinfulness, the atoning work of Christ, and the history of God’s dealings with Israel. But there occurred a subtle but fundamental shift in part of our worldview—from the dynamic/affecting-affected/relating-related ‘Hebrew’ understanding of God to the static/timeless/unchanging view of Greek ‘perfection’. We adopted a core Greek worldview commitment to perfection as unchanging and timeless. A huge mistake.
The influence was already at work in Egypt through Philo, but it’s the same thing that occurs anytime a foreign faith or belief encounters a new context and has to find concepts and categories from that host context through which to make itself understood.
So it’s no surprise to me that given the Greek view of God as “unmoved mover” and of perfection as timelessly static ‘form’, those beliefs which require a more dynamic Hebrew view of God would very quickly fade. They’d just get buried or lost. Read Aquinas. My goodness, his whole project is an interpretation of the Christian faith in Aristotelian categories. I can imagine the Old Testament prophets turning in their graves. There’s no room in Aristotle for the Hebrew’s living, feeling, touching, changing and ever personally related God. It’s Aristotle who describes God as the “unmoved mover.” Aquinas is a bit later but he’s just setting the cap on a structure that was building for years. The Hellenizing influences are all there from the first days the gospel moves into Greek culture. We did good. We brought the gospel to Greece and Europe. Wonderful. But we should not have expect to be unaffected ourselves. And we've been sweeping out the Greek cobwebs since we woke up to this.
Tom
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 11/14/2006 9:28 PM (GMT -6) | |
TGB said...
I don't think the lines of influence between the Hellenic world and the Christian faith all travel FROM faith TO the Greek world. It doesn't seem reasonable at all. Yes, the gospel transformed the Greco-Roman world, infiltrated and affected their catgories. But it didn't come out entirely unscathed. The Christian faith was (in my view) adversly influenced by Greek philosophical concepts and categories. I don't know that there's any way to insulate ourselves (our understanding and articulation of God and the world) from such influence. OF COURSE it is VERY reasonable that it would go both ways. Lots of people an lots of territory, and lots of time. Lots happened. But that does not solve anything.
What is salient is that heresies HIT the Greek church hard and often. And it had a real struggle to work through that. But it did. Glad you understand that.
But the Latin church escaped some of those early fights. Good that it did because the Pope came in really handy. Maximus--a Greek--and his friend the Roman Pope were martyred by the Byzantines.) But in the middle ages (You mentioned Thomas Aquinas, Tom.) some of those viruses of classical hellenic philosophy found EASY PREY of the Latin world -- and they came in droves, with horrible results.
What I'd want to change in your post, Tom, is the historical sequence with such jumps.
Hopefully I've layed it out with more space to look at the way each venue got hit at different times, and how in the East a Palamas could resist a scholastic Barlaam.
Thanks, Tom.
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Holistic View
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Date Joined Jul 2006
Total Posts : 5
| Posted 11/15/2006 9:44 AM (GMT -6) | | Thanks for the scriptures, P.O.W. These actually reinforce the view I gather from Scripture that God is a humanlike body, the mirror image of man, but one who is gloriously bright, and some kind of shield (like dark clouds) must be in place if He were to speak to mortals, lest they be incinerated.
According to an article in an issue of Harvard Theological Review, “ordinary Christians for at least the first three centuries of the current era commonly (and perhaps generally) believed God to be corporeal. The belief was abandoned (and then only gradually) as Neoplatonism became more and more entrenched as the dominant world view of Christian thinkers.” A corporeal God is highly in tune with the personal God of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, though not with Classical Greek thought. Maybe (just a thought), some viruses of Greek thought are still not detected or recognised in the main. | | Back to Top | | |
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Holistic View
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Date Joined Jul 2006
Total Posts : 5
| Posted 11/16/2006 10:15 AM (GMT -6) | | The article is from David L. Paulsen, “Early Christian Belief in a Corporeal Deity: Origen and Augustine as Reluctant Witnesses,” Harvard theological Review 83 (1990).
I am aware of orthodoxy's thinking and their fears, but I am yet to be convinced that the Biblical God is some kind of hazy stuff.
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