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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > The raging debate continues here... > Eternity: Timelessness or Never Ending Time?? | Forum Quick Jump
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jessemorrell
Registered Member
Date Joined Sep 2007
Total Posts : 77
| Posted 4/12/2008 9:45 AM (GMT -6) |   | Ronald said...
Jesse,
Well stated throughout. Full agreement on all. Well done!
Plato, above, I fear sees the Augustinian view as most do today in the classical theism groups, that absolutely everything is created except God himself.
But for God to exists there are necessarily things that must also be true also, not preceding God, rather coexisting with him. The most fundamental things, the dimensions, one of which is time.
Time, of course causes the linearity mentioned above, allows for sequencing, and so on, and without which there is nothing but the Greek concept of a god who is in the perfect position, and cannot move because he would no longer be in that perfect position and therefore no longer by god (the so called “ultimate being”). So the Greeks defined what perfection is, and this, quite different from the Hebrew concept of completeness, and then defined the top of their pantheon of gods as the best of the.
Of course, if you are not going to move, or change in any way whatsoever, including learning new things about free will beings, you don’t have motion or change of anything, ergo, you don’t need time, and thank you Augustine for poisoning the church with that piece of sweet Greek pastry. We swallowed it, hemlock and all.
To Plato (above); if there were not time, God cannot have created anything because nothing could change including creating time itself because that would, of course, require a “before” and “after” which did not exist.
You see, time is not the kind of thing that is created.
God created everything (the beginning of everything, that is, not me, but the first humans who could then procreate to me) everything that was created. Conversely he did not create anything that was not created and he is the only self existent, non-created being, not the only non-created thing.
But then we covered all this years ago, look up a subject I started called simply "Time".
Hello Ronald,
Glad that we agree! Creation, without time already existing, is an impossibility, since creation is activity and therefore requires time. Creation is a sequence and cannot occur without sequence.
And God must have a nature. His nature is that which He has, not by choice, but by nature. He is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, etc, all by nature. And He is eternal by nature. If eternal is time without beginning or end, then time is not a limitation upon God anymore then omnipotence, omnipresence, or omniscience is a limitation upon God. Omni-time is no limitation at all. Time, as a linear attribute of God's nature, liberates God to be active and dynamic.
Here is something to consider:
Open Theism: Time is a natural attribute of God's existence, an element of His nature, which is internal to Himself and not external. God alone is eternal. Nothing external to Him has no beginning, He alone is infinite.
Classic Theism: God experiences all of time all at once in an Eternal Now. This experience never starts, never ends, never passes, and has no future. And if God experiences all of time, but never begins or ends this experience, then all of time is eternal with God. So there are things external to God which are also eternal. Everything is as old as God is, nothing has a beginning and nothing has an end, everything eternally exists in God's Eternal Now.
For the Audience of One
Jesse Morrell
www.OpenAirOutreach.com
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Ronald A. Newcomb
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 4/12/2008 9:54 AM (GMT -6) | | Hmm, I would say slightly off on the Open Theism sentence.
It is not that nothing at all existed other than God (let's say prior to any creation event), otherwise the dimensions would actually be part of God and since they are everywhere we end up inferring pantheism.
Rather, that there were non-created things also, and those, the fundamental things existed with God throughout time-eternity (as you stated, eternity is defined as endless time).
There is that risk of incorporating other things that are fundamental, self existent and yet not beings within the concept of God, but again, this makes for a basic pantheism.
I just posted to the end of my discussion called “Time” from 2002 to bring it up on the boards again. Simply reading the opening of that might be helpful.
~Professor Newcomb
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jessemorrell
Registered Member
Date Joined Sep 2007
Total Posts : 77
| Posted 4/12/2008 1:15 PM (GMT -6) | | When considering the linearity of God, I've also considered the locality of God. Asking questions about God's existence and experience prior to creation, like "Was there ever a time, when there was no time?", or "Is there a place where there is no time?". These questions lead me to ask, "Does God, or did God, live in a place where space does not exist? Is there a place without space?" (These are self-contradictory questions)
I mean, in the beginning, before God created anything, if God did not exist "somewhere", doesn't that mean that God existed nowhere?
We understand there to be a relation between time - space - and matter. Matter cannot exist without time and space, but maybe space and time can exist without matter (since God is Spirit).
So I have thought that God might not only have a linearity, but also a locality, and these being natural attributes of His being, while His metaphysical constitution is still immaterial instead of material.
Is this what you mean?
I'm just writing my ramblings.
(PS. Where are you a Professor at? I've often thought, if I wasn't a street preacher, I'd like to study to be a Professor).
For the Audience of One
Jesse Morrell
www.OpenAirOutreach.com
www.LibraryofTheology.comPost Edited (jessemorrell) : 4/12/2008 1:58:40 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Ronald A. Newcomb
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 4/13/2008 9:59 AM (GMT -6) | | Fogive me if this is a repeat. I am still getting used to the new format, at least the third since I have been posting, and I have been off for about a year.
First let me comment about the classical theism view. This rises so many absurdities that about 33 years ago I began to question the congruency of these ideas. The basic fact you cannot get away from is that if all time is simultaneous to God then Jesus is still on the cross to God just as you state above ‘nothing has a beginning and nothing has an end, everything exists in God’s eternal now’ Well stated.
Now about your statement: Open Theism: Time is a natural attribute of God's existence, an element of His nature, which is internal to Himself and not external. God alone is eternal. Nothing external to Him has no beginning, He alone is infinite.
And this may be repeated, thought I posted this yesterday but I can’t find it.
The idea that time or other dimensions are not external to God leads to a type of pantheism. I think you are trying to yield just a bit too many of the Calvinistic ideas which try to adapt it to reality and still maintain ideals of the false gods of Greece, in this case, the idea of the isolation and aloneness of the ultimate being.
I have seen this kind of concession in OT to classic theism people trying, I think, not to be too harsh on the brethren, but still, if it is wrong, it is wrong.
I hold that fundamental things are in fact external to God. Not of course preceding God, because nothing can, but there can be uncreated things besides God, but no <i><b>beings</i></b> beside God are uncreated. There is no claim in the Bible which can even be twisted into implying there was absolutely nothing else beside God before creation.
(I did read part of a mystic book by ‘Gene’ someone, claimed to being Christian, which went to great lengths to describe the great abyss that existed between the first two word of the Bible, and this turned out to be the Tao, and not in the same sense that C.S. Lewis used it.)
You agree with the idea that other things exist because you agree time existed also, but internalizing that to be a part of God himself, again, makes a fundamental dimension a part of God, internal to God. If dimensions are internal to God then the universe itself is simply because everything is found inside of dimensions. If the dimensions are in God, then so is the creation, ergo, the pantheism. I don’t think this is what you wanted to say.
Let me explain about dimensions:
Dimensions are what we call things that are inanimate but omnipresent bases for everything else. Nothing at all can exist without them. Where two dimensions exist, you have a domain. In a domain you can have something. In a two dimension domain, let’s say they are length and width, you can have something exist. What can exist in a two dimension domain? A plane can exist. A problem comes in describing that plane, but in theory it can exist.
Our domain, what we call the physical universe, exists in a domain of at least four dimensions, length, width, height, and time (some have debated others but this is according to the definitions used, to this I concede). You may or may not be able to have three dimensionality without time, that is something occupying 3d, but we can’t know that because we can’t even describe (rationally that is) something that can exist there. (Also, in our universe, what exists is matter which cannot exist in a 3d world, energy requires motion, ergo 4d.)
The Greeks thought they could create a 3d person as opposed to 4d but they did so by starting with humans, making them “superior” then stripping things away from the “ultimate being” concept, the top of their pantheon of gods. What they stripped away was time, because, being in the perfect position, the ultimate being could not move out of that position or he/she/it would stop being the ultimate being. How ridiculous, but that is what they thought. Augustine, and even others before him brought in false teachings about false gods from the Greeks and syncretized them to the Church and various of those ideas (probably others also) are what we kick against in OV.
The fact that our friend on the board Plato even used that name indicates probably first, that he is eastern orthodox? (No problem there, the great schism was over the same things we protestants split with Rome over.) But also that he cherishes Plato. Why else would he claim that he is Plato’s_Playdough rather than God’s? He is probably shocked by this thought as he reads it, but why wouldn’t you be God’s playdough? Are you shaped by Plato or God? On whose wheel do you sit to be shaped? I can see Plato in his writings and comments. I suggest he is more shaped by Plato that he will confess to. But in that same sense, the church in general has also been Plato’s playdough, or Augustine’s, or Calvin’s or Arminius.’ Soli Scriptura, Soli Deo Gloria! Last I checked Plato was not canonized.
This is an indictment, not of our friend on this board, but of the church in the broad sense, and indictment of the classical theisms themselves. What we need is another reformation to expel Plato and the rest of the Greeks. Keep only the basics they correctly described in logic. Oh, yes, it’s fun to read, and I have read them all, but elevating their sophistry to include it into the theology of the Bible is heresy.
These ideas of timelessness and God outside of time are proof texted to Christianity by using a verse about the tithe, Malachi 3:6-8 but then often tell others we don’t need to tithe. Go figure.
But even Plato posted on my Time subject Hosea 11:8 which stated God’s heart changed or repented or turned, according to the version. He did state correctly that God’s nature doesn’t change, but his heart does in that verse, his intent, his actions toward his people. The false gods of Greece will not lightly give up their grip on the Church of Christ to allow it to return to its Jewish roots where perfection was completeness, not a lack of motion, Jewish, not Greek.
(Though I will confess that when I am hungry I do thing Greek, not Jewish! My people of old created Haggus. I don't think we want to go there 
Professor Newcomb
San Diego State University
College of Sciences
Adjunct Faculty Member
P.I. ICATS
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Ronald A. Newcomb
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 4/13/2008 10:12 AM (GMT -6) | | OK, I found my earlier post and did repeat a bit.
RE: God and Locality
Good thinking Jesse. I discussed this with Doc several years ago also. I hold that God has the other three dimensions also. I do not hold that we know anything about what that means, where he is, how large, etc.
Having said that, Jesus, being incarnated, changes some of this. The people who knew him on earth, now in heaven, also know him and, if they brought measuring devices, could in fact use them to describe him physically in a way we could understand, but scripture doesn’t describe him.
This was actually one of my early points very long ago in overthrowing the idea that time would end. The test of a spirit is whether Jesus is still incarnate, ergo, must always be so, ergo, he is physical, ergo, the four (minimum) dimensions that that physicality exists in must therefore continue on forever. There is simply no way around that without the heresy of saying the second member of the trinity would lose is acquired aspect of physicality.
People who claim time would end fall into this problem without realizing it.
Me? http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/icats/ or http://members.cox.net/newcomb1/
Professor Newcomb
San Diego State University
College of Sciences
Adjunct Faculty Member
P.I. ICATS
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Ronald A. Newcomb
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 5/11/2008 8:38 AM (GMT -6) | | I will post this in two places, in my subject called “Time” and in Jesse Morrell’s post “Eternity.” It is in response to plato’s_playdough in the former.
Dimensions are things being are ‘within’ in the sense that the existence of entities is inside some domain and that domain consists of the interaction of dimensions, heralding back to the opening foray. And God may be in a domain what is somewhat different than ours, but not fully different, or we could not interact in any dimension we don’t share.
Most Christians attest to God being aesthetic, that is our understanding of what is beautiful comes from God. He creates beautiful things and we appreciate them, a cow doesn’t, because we share a characteristic of God, aesthetics. But the classic theist sees this much as I see a Monet, a set image that doesn’t change over time (forget that the painting ages). But a sunset changes moment by moment, Yosemite is not changeless, the four seasons change the appearance of parts of the world drastically and other less drastically (I live in San Diego, no seasons here, at least so goes the joke).
But we have a problem.
Throughout the Bible both humans and angelic beings sing songs to God and many seem assigned to that task as a continual thing.
God’s own live concert.
Music demands the progress of time. Without that moment by moment progress, it is simply a noise heard all at once and there is no beauty in it. The beauty, the aesthetic, the enjoyment of music comes from the moment by moment experience of the change in keys and the existence of those changes in notes and the way in which they are arranged in the performance.
There are hundreds of verses about singing to God by man and angels, simply look up “sing” “sang” and “song” in any Bible. If God was not within time he could not enjoy this, it would be reduced to noise.
So, if you believe in some kind of divine timelessness you must also discount the aesthetics of changes in sunsets, in Yosemite, in the seasons, and all music is simply a noise God experiences all in some kind of timeless instant. (I can’t say it is a moment because then you would have time, since there would be a moment before and a moment after.)
While I may claim to enjoy my photos of Yosemite or a sunset, I rather enjoy being there in real time so much better as the ‘timeless” photo merely is a poor remembrance of the aesthetic experience, but all of the aesthetics of music are caused by the dimension of time.
So it seems clear to me that to swallow the idea that God is somehow outside or unaffected by time creates an untenable thought the God is not an aesthetic being, which, of course, brings us to the question of why do angels and humans sing to God? And where did the appreciation of aesthetics originate from in our being if not from God? Why did he create only man to have an appreciation for aesthetics but not from a characteristic he shares with us.
In looking up Seraphim and Cherubim it occurs to me that there are many references in the Bible that also talk about their size and which even tell you what the measurement of them is, or at least the measurement of those the writer saw.
Two points here: First, I am not talking about images of them such as on the Ark of the Covenant, and, while this occurs in their appearance to humans on earth, it also happens in heaven, so the excuse that these were merely appearances, and not the real size, again, it happened in heaven also. You must ask, if an angel was going to appear to a human, would he project a false image of himself? I think not, God and his party are not given to deception as the other side is.
So, in the Bible classical theists must also excuse measurements, examples of the other dimensions being used in heaven, which supports my point that God, and also contingent beings in heaven are in a domain like ours that shares at least the four basic demensions.
Professor Newcomb
San Diego State University
College of Sciences
Adjunct Faculty Member
P.I. ICATS
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