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Originally posted by Tim

I have to agree with "Neuk'em", that time is not created and that neither of us is saying that time is larger than God is. Think more of, or about, time as a dot, where everything occurs and not a line, in a sequence of events, this might help you to understand, also, change your definition of 'time' to what it actually is and nothing more, it is only, simply, merely the measurement of movement. Which is to say that if and/or when God moved: the ability for the measuring of movement had always and already existed.

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At the very beginning, it is made plain who created everything we see, including us. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” In this once sentence, we have a load of theology being presented. For on one point, this says no matter what views one may hold about how God created the world, it is foundational that He did created it. This indicates further that it was a real creation from nothing, not a re-arranging of pre-existent matter.

This fact also spells out to us the difference between the creation and God. It is a matter of nature. One is uncreated, unchanging, immovable, uncontainable, and infinite in wisdom, power and will; the other is created, changing, movable, limited, finite in wisdom, power and will. Panayiotis Nellas, in his book “Deification in Christ” states, “From the Orthodox point of view St. John of Damascus summarizes the whole of the patristic tradition which preceded him when he teaches that ‘all things are distant from God not by place but by nature.’” For if He is distant by place that denies His omnipresence. He can “hide” Himself from us, but God is not bound by place. Rather the distance is due to the nature of being uncreated and created.

Yet, despite this, as we shall see, God interacts with His creation, and there is a dynamic relationship that exist between the uncreated and created. This interaction between the infinite and unmovable God and His finite and movable creation provides the paradoxes that exist in our faith. Therein exist the true mystery, when the uncreated existence intersects with the created existence, for strictly speaking this is logically impossible. Yet, revelation tells us that it happens, and the Church is founded upon that reality.

www.orthodoxconvert.info/Creation_and_the_Fall.php?inquire=QAT-SalvationMenu.html

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Ezekiel 36:27 "And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws."

James 1:17 "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

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. . . I would argue however that a dimension is simply a particular kind of relationship. How are "relationships" not objective? The fact that the earth is related to the sun in a particular way is an objective phenomenon. The fact that relationships change is a particular kind of relationship that we call "time". It is not that some dimension first exists - it is rather that the very fact of change of relationships IS time. This is no different than our spatial dimensions. It is not that first there existed 3 infinite spatial dimensions and that the universe came into being at some particular point within that grid - it is rather that the big bang generated our three spatial dimensions - which are really not actually grid-like, but rather are curved. If you leave the earth and travel in a straight line you will eventually come right back to the earth. Our spatial dimensions are actually curved - this is a proven experimental fact - Euclidean geometry is false - Riemannian geometry is a better model.

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Before God created the universe there must have an “outside” of the universe. After God created the universe why wouldn’t there also be an “outside” of the universe? Thus there must an “in” the universe and an “outside” of the universe.
Now, to us who are within the universe there is really no “border” to the universe. The fact that travelling in any direction would bring you back to where you started shows that our normal concept of a border doesn’t really apply when space itself is curved.

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. . . And while it also points us to a greater understanding of what reality "looks like" it is of course completely provisional and incomplete - in other words - it is only valid within a certain domain.

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. . . In my view God deciding to create object that have proximity relationships to each other what created the spatial dimensions. And God deciding to create created the time dimension that we experience.
Is there some fundamental dimension or dimensions? To get at this we would have to understand the nature of God's existence. How does God vary? And do God's variances give rise to the dimensions He experiences or were those dimensions there to begin with? And if they were - where did they come from?

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But while God is ALIVE, he does not move/change!

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As my good friend asked, WHY doe people assume that time is a fourth dimension? In a two-dimensional world, one side of a room is thirty-feet from the other. In a three-dimensional world the same two sides are still thirty-feet from each other. In a four-dimensional, still thirty feet.

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Originally posted by Newcomb

PotOnWheel

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But while God is ALIVE, he does not move/change!

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I don’t have the time to respond point by point when most of it is off topic, but Pot is from the very old school, old orthodox, and I am not sure why he is on the board. The error he makes here is from the ancient Greeks who were describing the top guy in their pantheon as one who much be in the perfect position at all times and cannot move and this is what started all the baloney about God being outside of time.
Is Jesus God? Does he move? Thank you We’re done.

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Originally posted by Newcomb

Lastly Pot states:

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As my good friend asked, WHY doe people assume that time is a fourth dimension? In a two-dimensional world, one side of a room is thirty-feet from the other. In a three-dimensional world the same two sides are still thirty-feet from each other. In a four-dimensional, still thirty feet.

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You might want to distance yourself from your friend or at least not quote him: Without time you can’t know they are thirty feet, you need time for measurement.

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

The above does not deny the existence of time. It assumes it. I don't think you made sense. My friend only pointed out that thirty feet is the same in both a three and a four dimensional setting.

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Originally posted by Newcomb

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

The above does not deny the existence of time. It assumes it. I don't think you made sense. My friend only pointed out that thirty feet is the same in both a three and a four dimensional setting.

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OK, granted, but how do you know the distance? How did you measure it without a 3d object of some type to do the measurement and then, how did you take the measurement without time?

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NOW THAT'S A FUN ONE, NEWCOMB!

CAN YOU HELP ME WITH THAT. I FORGET WHAT WAS ON THE NEWS A WHILE BACK. SOMEONE WAS ENCRYPTING WITH LASERS OR SOMETHING... AND I THINK IT WAS NEARLY TIME-TRAVEL...OF SORTS. REMEMBER?

FOR FUN, COULD YOU USE THAT METHOD TO BOTH ADD AND THEN SUBTRACT AGAIN.

TOO MUCH FUN!

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I just completed the book, Four Views, God & Time edited by Ganssle but the views are those of Paul Helm, Alan Padgett, Wm. Craig, and Nicholas Wolterstorff.

Very interesting book but I was struck by the fact that all three had a naturalist cosmology behind their statements.

Let me illustrate with a though experiment that you can actually draw quite readily on paper. On that paper, make two sections and draw Cartesian coordinates, three lines representing the three primary dimensions. Now, let's say, on the left draw a circle around the entire coordinate system. This represents the naturalist view. On the right, draw that circle inside those coordinates, that is, the lines protrude outside of the circle. This is the Judeo Christian view of the universe.

Why is this so?

The naturalists view tried to put all of reality into the universe. By that I mean virtually all of reality. Every single thing that is real, every stitch of space, and all of time itself fits into the universe. Therefore, beyond that universe, there is nothing at all. When the universe was incredibly small, all of reality was small with it.

This isn't a Christian view, of course, because we believe that God, outside and not part of the universe, created it. So the view on the right is the Judeo Christian cosmology and always has been.

The left side cosmology has distinct problems that I have probably covered in previous posts, but think of it this way: Let's call the place we, that is, the entire world is in the universe is a coordinate we will call E100, the 100th position we might describe as where the earth was at 100 moments in time, and that the center of the universe is C1. Before the Big Bang, the naturalist cosmology would say, we are all at C1 and all other positions do not exist at all or, they are all in that one spot, according to the particulars of the individuals cosmology. At any rate, E2 through E100 do not exist at all, that is, they are not even coordinates to be reached in the future. They simply do not exist.

We Christians, if we accept the Big Bang, would state it differently indeed. We would say, coordinates E2-E100 do indeed exist but the universe has not yet expanded to the point that the earth could reach those locations.

Do you see the difference?

Let's look at the same illustration with a different idea and talk only about now.

Right now, draw a line, let's say, due north, even say we draw that through the north star, Polaris, and straight beyond that. Take that line to the edge of the universe and let's assume it is expanding slowly enough that we can maintain our edge position and we will call that coordinate Edge 100. According to the Christian cosmology, there is indeed a position describes as Edge 101, Edge 102, and so forth, into which the universe is expanding.

According to the naturalists cosmology, this is not the case. There is no location which can be described as existing now called Edge 101 or Edge 102. There is no location like that in their coordinate system because everything ends at Edge 100. Only sometime in the future when the expanding universe reaches Edge 101 will that coordinate exist at all.

The odd thing about the book I referred to is that all four Christians described things using the naturalists cosmology, quite likely, without realizing the difference.

It was also quite telling that all, being philosophers, though philosophy was the absolute answer to the question. The description of time must be some philosophic argument.

I would propose that I can see, hear, and describe things without a philosophic argument, but those arguments could be useful in describing purposes, why the esthetic of an item appeals to me or does not, and so forth. Philosophy is not the final answer to all problems, and here, all of them were off base by some measure, though several were quite close to reality.

Let's go one further.

Since the Judeo Christian view is that God created the universe inside of space and time, those things preexisted the creation of the universe.

Remember, Genesis 1 speaks to the beginning of Creation, not the beginning of time. Remember, there are things beyond our universe, outside of it, the universe does not incorporate all of reality, so things outside of it exist. If the universe ceased to be, the empty space would still be there.

That coordinate system described earlier is independent of the universe itself therefore it is not a part of it, rather a fundamental thing that existed independently of the universe.

This is the Judeo Christian cosmology that was missed through the entire book. Several arguments made would have been better made using the Christian cosmology.