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Did anyone in this discussion mention Willian Lane Craig's recent book Time and Eternity? It is the BEST defense of temporal theism I've ever read (despite his rejection of Open theism). The highlight of the book is his discussion of relativity theory and how it does NOT negate the idea of "absolute time." Newcomb, you'd love this book.

Just thought I'd through it out for your consideration.

Greg

"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6

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Time....is very simply God's way of preventing everything from happening all at once. Just think how noisy that would be!

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Did anyone in this discussion mention Willian Lane Craig's recent book Time and Eternity? It is the BEST defense of temporal theism I've ever read (despite his rejection of Open theism). The highlight of the book is his discussion of relativity theory and how it does NOT negate the idea of "absolute time."

Greg

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Yes, a great book! Science is a difficult subject for me, and I was afraid Craig would be way over my head, but I actually understood this book. Ditto on what Doc said. Criag's discussion of relativity and Newton's idea of absolute time was worth the whole book.

He has an appendix (not the one in his stomach ) that argues against the open view. Oh well.

But Craig also argues, remember, that God is "absolutely timeless" (no sequence, nothing) in the absence of creation and entirely temporal since creation (and God will never again be "timeless"). Creation was a real self-emptying on God's part in this sense. God will never be the same again. He rejects God's temporal existence in the absence of creation because of a) the impossibility of an actual infinite, and b) the impossibility of accounting for why God waited to created when he did. Wolterstorf deals with (b) in his response to Craig in God and Time: Four Views, but I don't remember anyone dealing with the problem of an acutal infinite.

Oh yeah, Craig also faces the problem which absolute timelessness (only in the absence of creatoin mind you) has for God's personhood. How is God actively personal and self-related? What happens to the inner Trinitarian life of God when it's locked in timelessness? This is where (I think) Craig was weakest. He simply says God didn't have to be actively self-related prior to Creation. He argues that the essential characteristics of "personhood," that is, what has to be present in order for an entity to be a "person," where present in God as "potentialities" prior to Creation. This I couldn't buy.

I'd love to hear arguments in defenses of an actual infinite leading up to Creation. I find Craig's arguments here rather strong. Makes sense to me. Even if he's right on this, I don't see that it rules out the open view. I don't know how to adjuticate between the impossibility of a) an actual infite (which leads to timelessness prior to creation) and b) the impossibility of God's being "potentially personal" prior to creation (which leads one to conclude God was temporal prior to creation).

All in all a super book.

Tom

"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde


Edited by - TGB on 11/01/2002 01:03:49 AM

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Yes, a great book! (Willian Lane Craig's recent book Time and Eternity) Science is a difficult subject for me, and I was afraid Craig would be way over my head, but I actually understood this book. Ditto on what Doc said. Criag's discussion of relativity and Newton's idea of absolute time was worth the whole book.

He has an appendix (not the one in his stomach ) that argues against the open view. Oh well.

But Craig also argues, remember, that God is "absolutely timeless" (no sequence, nothing) in the absence of creation and entirely temporal since creation (and God will never again be "timeless"). Creation was a real self-emptying on God's part in this sense. God will never be the same again. He rejects God's temporal existence in the absence of creation because of a) the impossibility of an actual infinite, and b) the impossibility of accounting for why God waited to created when he did. Wolterstorf deals with (b) in his response to Craig in God and Time: Four Views, but I don't remember anyone dealing with the problem of an acutal infinite.

Oh yeah, Craig also faces the problem which absolute timelessness (only in the absence of creatoin mind you) has for God's personhood. How is God actively personal and self-related? What happens to the inner Trinitarian life of God when it's locked in timelessness? This is where (I think) Craig was weakest. He simply says God didn't have to be actively self-related prior to Creation. He argues that the essential characteristics of "personhood," that is, what has to be present in order for an entity to be a "person," where present in God as "potentialities" prior to Creation. This I couldn't buy.

I'd love to hear arguments in defenses of an actual infinite leading up to Creation. I find Craig's arguments here rather strong. Makes sense to me. Even if he's right on this, I don't see that it rules out the open view. I don't know how to adjuticate between the impossibility of a) an actual infite (which leads to timelessness prior to creation) and b) the impossibility of God's being "potentially personal" prior to creation (which leads one to conclude God was temporal prior to creation).

All in all a super book.

Tom

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Surely it is a necessary condition of anything’s being a person that it should be capable (logically) of, among other things, doing at least some of the following: remembering, anticipating, reflecting, deliberating, deciding, intending, and acting intentionally. To see that this is so one need but ask oneself whether anything which necessarily lacked all of the capacities noted would…count as a person. But now an eternal being would lack all of these capabilities in as much as their exercise by a being clearly requires that the being exist in time.”

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Craig responds by claiming that it does not follow that a timeless God would be incapable of exhibiting the forms of consciousness Coburn lists, for “God could be capable of exhibiting such forms of consciousness but be timeless just in case (that is, ‘if and only if’) He does not in fact exhibit any of them. In other words, the hidden assumption behind Coburn’s reasoning is that God’s being timeless or temporal is an essential property of God, that God is necessarily timeless or He is necessarily temporal. But that assumption seems to me dubious.”

But Coburn’s assumption is not that God is either necessarily timeless or temporal. It is rather that God is necessarily “personal.” THAT’S what must equally apply to God’s existence both in the absence and presence of Creation.

Again, Craig: “As for intending and acting intentionally, there is no reason to think that intentions are necessarily future-directed. One can direct one’s intentions at one’s present state. God, as the Good, can timelessly desire and will His own infinite goodness. Such a changeless intention can be as timeless as God’s knowing His own essence. Moreoever, in the empty world we have envisioned, God may timelessly will and intend to refrain from creating a universe. God’s willing to refrain from creation should not be confused with the mere absence of the intention to create.”

Craig gets closer to the heart of the ‘relational’ aspect of personhood when he says:“…some theologians have objected to the picture I have painted of a timeless, solitary deity, for such a being lacks all interpersonal relationships, and such relationships, they believe, are essential to personhood. If God is to be personal, He must be engaged in relationships with other persons. But the give-and-take of personal relationships inherently involves temporality.

“In response to this objection, I think it would be extraordinarily difficult to prove that engaging in personal relationships, as opposed to the capacity to engage in personal relationships, is essential to personhood. A timeless God could have the capacity for such relationships even if, were He to engage in them, He would in that case be temporal. But let that pass. The more important assumption underlying this objection is the assumption that the persons to whom God is related must be human persons. [Tom interjects: “No, this is NOT the underlying assumption of the objection.”] For on the Christian conception of God, that assumption is false. Within the fullness of the Godhead itself, the persons of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit enjoy the interpersonal relations afforded by the Trinity which God is. [Tom interjects: “Exactly. And what of THESE interpersonal relations?] As a Trinity, God is eternally complete with no need of fellowship with finite persons. [Tom: “So what? The objection is not that God “needs” fellowship with “finite” persons.”] It is a marvel of God’s grace and love that He would freely create finite persons and invite them to share in the love and joy of the inner Trinitarian life of God.”

But the issue raised with regard to God’s timeless mode of existence sans Creation, of course, is not divine-human relations, but the very “love and joy of the inner Trinitarian life of God,” the “interpersonal relations” which Craig admits God necessarily engages in. The question is, How does God engage in “interpersonal relations” that include the give-and-take of “love and joy”?

Craig does respond to this: “But would the existence of these Trinitarian interrelationships necessitate that God be temporal? I see no reason to think that the persons of the Trinity could not be affected, prompted, or responsive to one another in an unchanging and, hence, timeless way.” Craig suggests a couple of analogies and then mentions the Greek Orthodox doctrine of perichoreisis, by which there is a “complete interpenetration of the persons of the Trinity, such that each is intimately bound up in the activities of the other.”

Enough said. I’m not persuaded Craig is right on the possibility of atemporal personhood. I am wondering whether such a view is incompatible with the open view. Craig admits a) that timelessness and temporality are both contingent attributes of God, and b) that God is maximally personal regardless of whether God is timeless or temporal.

Al, I’ll try to find sometime of Craig’s arguments for why God cannot be both timeless an temporal.

Tom



Edited by - TGB on 11/02/2002 01:09:30 AM

Edited by - TGB on 11/02/2002 01:10:35 AM

Edited by - TGB on 11/02/2002 01:16:14 AM

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Open theists all (I think) argue . . . [that] God has genuine reciprocal relations (Father-Son-Spirit). The give-and-take of these interpersonal relationships requires that God be temporal.

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The Logos, God by essence, became man and messenger of the divine will. He let the most intimate ground of the goodness of the Father appear, if one may say so, and showed in Himself the goal for which created begins were created. For it is for Christ, i.e., for the Christic mystery, that all time and all that is in time has received in Christ its beginning and its end. The union between the determined and the indetermined, the finite and the infinite, the limited and the non-limited, and also between Creator and creature, between rest and movement was conceived before the times. It found its accomplishment at the end of time, giving through itself fullness to the preknowledge of God. This was so in order that the beings who are mobile by nature should find in Him who is by essence absolutely immobile -- when their movement toward themselves and toward each other had reached its goal -- and also in order that they should gain, through experience, and active knowledge of Him, in whom they were made worthy to find their rest and have in themselves, always unchangeable, the enjoyment of this knowledge.


Thunberg quoting Maximus the Confessor, page 79

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Al: Creation IS an 'incarnation'.

Tom: Craig would agree. That’s my point. That’s why Craig argues that creation brought a permanent change to God’s mode of existence. This much I agree with. Craig goes on to argue, then (where I don’t know that I agree with), that before that ‘incarnation’ (Creation) God was absolutely timeless. Afterwards God is temporal. That change in mode of existence IS part of the divine kenosis of creation.

Al: Time is God's creation. It is true that before the creation there was no time.

Tom: Well, that’s what we’re discussing. I’m not convinced. It seems plausible to me that time is not a “creation” of God at all.

Tom: Open theists all (I think) argue . . . [that] God has genuine reciprocal relations (Father-Son-Spirit). The give-and-take of these interpersonal relationships requires that God be temporal.

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Tom: That change in mode of existence IS part of the divine kenosis of creation.

Al: the phrase "mode of existence" has become for my ears and eyes a tightly defined term. It refers (in Zizioulas--for whom it is certainly not original--it defines "Communion" as an "ontological category.") So, to me, "mode of existence" gets its place reserved inter-Trinitarian. Not external in the acts of God, and "the divine kenosis of creation." So, obviously I don't echo Craig there. Being a word-pickiness, it may not signify any thing. But it does point to what I think is important. God's "mode of existence" is NOT his acts. Nor is his "mode of existence" his divine attributes (as, perhaps, B. Ware or Hodge would say.). It is the ontology of God--Communion. (Tom, was THAT less than 125 words? )

Tom: It seems plausible to me that time is not a “creation” of God at all.

Al: Why the impious speculation? Really? you can't see into the Trinity. Can you?

Tom: Open theists all (I think) argue . . . [that] God has genuine reciprocal relations (Father-Son-Spirit). The give-and-take of these interpersonal relationships requires that God be temporal.

Al: Perhaps the kind of 'mechanized'"give-and-take" I've read Open-theists remark upon does, but that is the point. The Triunity is not a machine. Machines have to be temporal. I'll agree with that. But "give-and-take" does not even begin to describe the perichoresis of the Trinity. (That is part of the problem with the Open View.) Part of that perichoresis is what the Father does not do; and that part is love too. I fear that the mechanical/give-and-take model will get too much air time, and will be far too satisfying to mull over, that it will crowd out what really needs to be meditated upon.

We, as Christians, are called to participate in the Trinitarian life of God, by Grace (not by nature). If we have such a rusty, corroded view of the Trinity, how are we to do this???

The point of the incarnation is to 'bridge' the 'gap' between all those diads. Only Christ, of all human beings ever or will be participates in the perichoresis of Trinitarian existence (timeless...); and we must also participate in the same. But we can ONLY do so IN Christ. Were Origin right, we could just return to some non-existent primordial communion. But creation was created immature, and needing a growing period in time. Maximus at one place burst out a feeling that Adam and Eve might have fallen immediately. We need time. We need growth. And now we need redemption. And we need participation in what we cannot possibly participate in. And all those gaps that the Open view wants to minimize jsut plain have been regarded by God, from the beginning, as non-preventions. From before the beginning God's plan was to bridge the gap between the mobile and the immobile. And to do it in a way that incorporates mobility, to mature mobility into the knowledge of his love.

(Got to get to the next post, for the next subject.)

- Al

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The Logos, God by essence, became man and messenger of the divine will. He let the most intimate ground of the goodness of the Father appear, if one may say so, and showed in Himself the goal for which created begins were created. For it is for Christ, i.e., for the Christic mystery, that all time and all that is in time has received in Christ its beginning and its end. The union between the determined and the indetermined, the finite and the infinite, the limited and the non-limited, and also between Creator and creature, between rest and movement was conceived before the times. It found its accomplishment at the end of time, giving through itself fullness to the preknowledge of God. This was so in order that the beings who are mobile by nature should find in Him who is by essence absolutely immobile -- when their movement toward themselves and toward each other had reached its goal -- and also in order that they should gain, through experience, and active knowledge of Him, in whom they were made worthy to find their rest and have in themselves, always unchangeable, the enjoyment of this knowledge.


Thunberg quoting Maximus the Confessor, page 79

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Wrong Doctrines of the Trinity

The main question for the Church to answer about God is that of the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. According to Orthodox Tradition, there are a number of wrong doctrines which must be rejected.

One wrong doctrine is that the Father alone is God and that the Son and the Holy Spirit are creatures, made "from nothing" like angels, men and the world. The Church answers that the Son and the Holy Spirit are not creatures, but are uncreated and divine with the Father, and they act with the Father in the divine act of creation of all that exists.

Another wrong doctrine is that God in Himself is One God who merely appears in different forms to the world: Now as the Father, then as the Son, and still again as the Holy Spirit. The Church answers once more that the Son and Word is "in the beginning with God"(Jn 1:12) as is the Holy Spirit, and that the Three are eternally distinct. The Son is "of God" and the Spirit is "of God." The Son and the Spirit are not merely aspects of God, without, so to speak, a life and existence of their own. How strange it would be to imagine, for example, that when the Son becomes man and prays to his Father and acts in obedience to Him, it is all an illusion with no reality in fact, a sort of divine presentation played before the world with no reason or truth for it at all!

A third wrong doctrine is that God is one, and that the Son and the Spirit are merely names for relations which God has with Himself. Thus, the Thought and Speech of God is called the Son, while the Life and Action of God is called the Spirit; but in fact -- in genuine actuality -- there are no such "realities in themselves" as the Son of God and the Spirit of God. Both are just metaphors for mere aspects of God. Again, however, in such a doctrine the Son and the Spirit have no existence and no life of their own. They are not real, but are mere illusions.

Still another wrong doctrine is that the Father is one God, the Son is another God, and the Holy Spirit still another God. There cannot be "three gods," says the Church, and certainly not "gods" who are created or made. Still less can there be "three gods" of whom the Father is "higher" and the others "lower." For there to be more than one God, or "degrees of divinity" are both contradictions which cannot be defended, either by divine revelation or by logical thinking.

Thus, the Church teaches that while there is only One God, yet there are Three who are God -- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit -- perfectly united and never divided yet not merged into one with no proper distinction. How then does the Church defend its doctrine that God is both One and yet Three?


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One God, One Father
First of all, it is the Church's teaching and its deepest experience that there is only one God because there is only one Father.

In the Bible the term "God" with very few exceptions is used primarily as a name for the Father. Thus, the Son is the "Son of God," and the Spirit is the "Spirit of God." The Son is born from the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father -- both in the same timeless and eternal action of the Father's own being.

In this view, the Son and the Spirit are both one with God and in no way separated from Him. Thus, the Divine Unity consists of the Father, with His Son and His Spirit distinct from Himself and yet perfectly united together in Him.


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One God: One Divine Nature and Being
What the Father is, the Son and the Spirit are also. This is the Church's teaching. The Son, born of the Father, and the Spirit, proceeding from Him, share the divine nature with God, being "of one essence" with Him.

Thus, as the Father is "ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing and eternally the same" (Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom), so the Son and the Spirit are exactly the same. Every attribute of divinity which belongs to God the Father -- life, love, wisdom, truth, blessedness, holiness, power, purity, joy -- belongs equally as well to the Son and the Holy Spirit. The being, nature, essence, existence and life of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are absolutely and identically one and the same.


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One God: One Divine Action and Will
Since the being of the Holy Trinity is one, whatever the Father wills, the Son and the Holy Spirit will also. What the Father does, the Son and the Holy Spirit do also. There is no will and no action of God the Father which is not at the same time the will and action of the Son and the Holy Spirit.

In Himself, in eternity, as well as towards the world in creation, revelation, incarnation, redemption, sanctification, and glorification -- the will and action of the Trinity are one: from the divine Father, through the divine Son, in the divine Holy Spirit. Every action of God is the action of the Three. No one person of the Trinity acts independently of or in isolation from the others. The action of each is the action of all; the action of all is the action of each. And the divine action is essentially one.


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One God: One Divine Knowledge and Love
Since each person of the Trinity is one with the others, each knows the same Truth and exercises the same Love. The knowledge of each is the knowledge of all, and the Love of each is the Love of all.

If taken in distinction, each person of the Trinity knows and loves the others with such absolute perfection, knowledge, and love that there is nothing unknown and nothing unloved of each in the others, and all in all. Thus, if the creaturely knowledge of men can unite minds in full unanimity, and if the creaturely love of men can bring the divided together into one heart and one soul and even one flesh, how incomparably more perfect and absolutely uniting must be the oneness when the Knowers and Lovers are eternal and divine.


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The Three Divine Persons
In Orthodox terminology the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are called three divine persons. Person is defined here simply as the subject of existence and life -- hypostasis in the traditional church language.

As the being, essence or nature of a reality answers the question "what?", the person of a reality answers the question "which one?" or "who?" Thus, when we ask "What is God?" we answer that God is the divine, perfect, eternal, absolute ... and when we ask "Who is God?" we answer that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The saints of the Church have explained this tri-unity of God by using such an example from worldly existence. We see three men. "What are they?" we ask. "They are human beings," we answer. Each is man, possessing the same humanity and the same human nature defined in a certain way: created, temporal, physical, rational, etc. In what they are, the three men are one. But in who they are, they are three, each absolutely unique and distinct from the others. Each man in his own unique way is distinctly a man. One man is not the other, though each man is still human with one and the same human nature and form.

Turning to God, we may ask in the same way: "What is it?" In reply we say that it is God defined as absolute perfection: "ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing, and eternally the same." We then ask, "Who is it?", and we answer that it is the Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In who God is, there are three persons who are each absolutely unique and distinct. Each is not the other, though each is still divine with the same divine nature and form. Therefore, while being one in what they are; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are Three in who they are. And because of what and who they are -- namely, uncreated, divine persons -- they are undivided and perfectly united in their timeless, spaceless, sizeless, shapeless super-essential existence, as well as in their one divine life, knowledge, love, goodness, power, will, action, etc.

Thus, according to the Orthodox Tradition, it is the mystery of God that there are Three who are divine; Three who live and act by one and the same divine perfection, yet each according to his own personal distinctness and uniqueness. Thus it is said that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are each divine with the same divinity, yet each in his own divine way. And as the uncreated divinity has three divine subjects, so each divine action has three divine actors; there are three divine aspects to every action of God, yet the action remains one and the same.

We discover, therefore, one God the Father Almighty with His one unique Son (Image and Word) and His one Holy Spirit. There is one living God with His one perfect divine Life, who is personally the Son, with His one Spirit of Life. There is one True God with His one divine Truth, who is personally the Son, with His one Spirit of Truth. There is one wise and loving God with His one Wisdom and Love, who is personally the Son, with His one Spirit of Wisdom and Love. The examples could go on indefinitely: the one divine Father personifying every aspect of His divinity in His one divine Son, who is personally activated by His one divine Spirit. We will see the living implications of the Trinity as we survey the activity of God in his actions toward man and the world.

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Starkman: This leads me to ask how, then, can there be any sensible conversation among these Members if there isn't individuality as there is with humans? And, quite frankly, without exhausting my thinking on this, I don't think there is any conversation among them as we converse. Relationship among them, therefore, is something slightly (or maybe radically) different than we among ourselves.

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As for intending and acting intentionally, there is no reason to think that intentions are necessarily future-directed. One can direct one’s intentions at one’s present state.

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