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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 516
| Posted 6/28/2001 5:21 PM (GMT -6) |   |
05/07/01 12:09 AM
Question number 2
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Which of the following is more accurate? And please discuss the implications thereof.
A. In open theism, God experiences time as time, and he is contained within time.
B. In open theism, God experiences time as time, but his existence is not contained within it.
C. Neither of the above
-Yofu
C. In open theism,
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
Wislawa
05/07/01 10:02 AM
RE: Question number 2
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In my understanding of the open view the answer would be C. Time is a human construct that we project to help us understand and make sense of sequence. God is not so much in time as he is in sequence. Whether or not God needs to deal with sequence indirectly through some concept of time is something we can not know but I would suspect that he doesn’t.
—Wislawa
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
Yofu
05/07/01 7:58 PM
A rapid stutter of near nonsense ensues....
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This is something I am about to burn my brain out over...
When you say God is "not in time, but in sequence," do you think you mean something like each of what we would experience as a "moment of time" in God would be validly understood as sort of a "mode" or "phase" (in the mathematical, not temporal) sense of God's being and life? So that the reality that time reflects is affirmed as being real in God and in God's experience, but on the other hand, God is not affirmed to be "inside" and "limited to" time?
Oh gosh this gets so confusing. But I'm going to come back to this concept in a few moments...
First, some more of my ponderments on the subject, involving the question of what it can mean to say God experiences time. We (humans) experience time both as part of our nature, and as imposed on us in our environment. Change is part of who we are - time is in us. But change is also something that happens *to* us - we are in time.
If God is affirmed as the *ultimate reality* in a meaningful sense (see our discussion below...) then we have to affirm that time "comes from" God. This does not necessarily mean God is "outside" or "above" time - rather it can be (and I think it should be) understood as meaning that change (that which time is a measurement of) is part of God's nature. Hence, time is in God, just as time is in us.
But where we experience time also as part of our environment, I don't think God has an environment in the same sense - ie, the sense of that which is imposed from without. Rather, everything comes from God and comes from God's nature, so that in a real sense God's only "environment" is himself. This doesn't mean everything that happens happens because God willed it - because the "environment" which is from God's self would reflect all of God's nature - including his aspects of change and of freedom.
So anyway, if this is the case, that God does not have an environment in the same way that we have an environment, then I don't think it can be affirmed that God experiences time just as we do - but rather only analogously to the way in which we experience it. In other words, he experiences the reality which our experience of time reflects, but he does not experience it as limiting or as being imposed.
As to foreknowledge, here I want to come back to my speculation above of thinking of the "time" that is in God as being a sequence of modes or phases of/in God's being and life. I would say that the mode or phase of God that corresponds to "now" does not access foreknowledge of future events, but this mode or phase of God is not all that God is. Hence, God analagously experiences time, but is not limited to or limited by the constraints of time.
But What does it all MEAN!? ARGH! :lol
-Kris
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