Does God Know What Time It Is? Part One

Kevin Harris: Always good to have you on Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. It’s Kevin Harris. We have a special message from Dr. Craig at the end of this podcast. So stand by for that. Now let’s go to the studio with Dr. Craig.

Bill, I'm starting to see interviews on social media with Dr. Emily Qureshi-Hurst. She's a teaching associate in the Divinity Department at Cambridge and author of the forthcoming Decoding the Cosmos: God, Physics, and the Search for Deeper Explanation. She's an atheist who loves Christian theology and the natural sciences, and she joins the growing ranks of academics who are not Christians but have a deep respect for the Christian faith and utterly reject Richard Dawkins and the fading remnants of the New Atheists. To illustrate, here's an excerpt of her recent interview with Alex O’Connor, clip number one.

Dr. Qureshi-Hurst: I've always been fascinated by the way that humans try to understand their place in the world, try to understand their experience, try to understand why we're here. And I think that the two most significant ways that humanity has done that are science and religion. And yet we see in popular discourse, although I think that's been corrected now, this idea that science and religion are completely in conflict. They can't ever exist together; one has to defeat the other. I really, really loved Richard Dawkins. That was my first taste of science and religion. And then when I got to university and realized that that was a very reductive and unhelpful way of viewing things. But every stage I've gone forward in academia, atheists have fallen away. And so I'm surrounded by a lot of religious people now, and I am in a minority very much so.

Alex O’Connor: I'm in a similar position in that I'm really interested in particularly New Testament studies. And a lot of people are sort of like, I don't get it. It's one thing to study religion as a sociological phenomenon or something, but why do you care about whether the Gospel of John is polemic if you're an atheist?

Kevin Harris: Alex O’Connor considers himself in the same camp, Bill. It seems to me—do you think, at least anecdotally, that we're seeing the beginnings of a movement of non-theist academics who are more open to God and Christian theology?

Dr. Craig: Well, I certainly hope so. But notice that what she describes is not a horizontal movement across time in favor of theism but a vertical movement. As she reaches higher and higher academic and intellectual levels, she finds fewer and fewer atheists there. Now, isn't that remarkable? I have asked British friends in the past why British culture is so secular when there are so many great British intellectuals who are Christians, and their response was: Christianity is not underrepresented among the intelligentsia; it's lagging in the working-class population. It is among the poorly educated that atheism flourishes and that Richard Dawkins finds his most enthusiastic fans.

Kevin Harris: Well, guess what? She mentions you in this interview, Bill. But before we get to that, let's take a look at some of the other things that Alex talks to her about. Here he asks her about the Bible and the Big Bang. Clip number two.

Alex O’Connor: Is the Bible predictive of a universe that began at a particular point in time?

Dr. Qureshi-Hurst: Yes and no. It depends who you ask. As with a lot of theological questions—questions about biblical interpretation—different people will have different opinions depending on whether they are more on the side of scriptural literalism or whether they're more willing to take a metaphorical approach. Generally, in academic theology, the doctrine of creation is understood to be more about a relation of absolute dependence between creation, or the universe, or the world, and God, who created it and sustains it. So if you take that view of the doctrine of creation, then whether or not the Big Bang was the beginning of everything in existence and the beginning of the universe in time doesn't matter so much. This is something that St. Thomas Aquinas said, although he did believe that there was a beginning in time. He said it's perfectly compatible with the doctrine of creation that the universe has always existed.

Kevin Harris: She mentions Aquinas's view in that clip, and that the Big Bang really doesn't matter, if I'm reading her right, if one takes a more metaphorical view of Genesis. Metaphorical or literal, I think the Big Bang is highly significant, Bill.

Dr. Craig: Yes, I do too. But she is right that among academic theologians the biblical doctrine of creation is reinterpreted to mean simply that the world is ontologically dependent upon God moment by moment for its existence, and creation doesn't have anything to do with a beginning at some point in the finite past. But as my mentor and doctoral supervisor Wolfhart Pannenberg argued, this is because of the retreat of academic theology into unfalsifiable realms. Academic theologians are absolutely terrified of being contradicted by modern science, and so they retreat into the safe harbor of unfalsifiable theological assertions where they will not be threatened by the empirical findings of modern science. But biblically speaking, there's no question that for the biblical writers, God is the only eternal being.

Kevin Harris: Next, Dr. Qureshi-Hurst addresses something near and dear to your heart, Bill, and your recent work. Clip number three.

Dr. Qureshi-Hurst: Theology at its best is supposed to be a coherent system that contains these ideas that all fit together into an interlocking whole. So I think it makes most sense to look at the theological system as it's presented. In the book, I start with creation, then I go to design, providence, incarnation, and salvation. It's moving through chronologically, if you like, the salvation historical narrative of Christian theology, and I want to take it as seriously as possible. I'm not a Christian. I'm not a religious believer. And I guess one of the motivators of the book is to see whether this system, this set of ideas, fits with modern science, particularly physics.

Kevin Harris: I put that in because she recognizes systematic theology even as a non-believer. And that highlights the importance of what you're doing as you publish your systematic philosophical theology.

Dr. Craig: Absolutely. And I want to agree with her when she stresses the importance of coherence for systematic theology. But where I would differ with Emily is that she begins with creation. Did you notice that? Whereas I begin with Scripture. I think before we ask the question “What is God like?”, “Has he created the world?” and so forth, we have to ask, how do we know these things? What is the source of our authority and information about God? And so I think that we need to begin at the very beginning with Scripture as the authoritative norm for systematic theology, and then we will work out, in seriatim, our doctrine of God, doctrine of creation, doctrine of man, and so forth.

Kevin Harris: At the end of that clip, she says she's exploring how systematic theology and physics relate. Where do you think those relations are, Bill?

Dr. Craig: Well, Emily and I agree that whether you adopt a tenseless or a tensed theory of time will have profound theological ramifications. The question of the nature of time is, I think, an absolute watershed for theology, and she agrees with that. But where I think I disagree with her profoundly is that I do not think that physics has the answers to those questions. These are metaphysical questions, not physical questions. And so while physics will certainly be relevant, it will not be the decisive factor in answering metaphysical questions. The way I like to put it is this: asking a scientist about the nature of time is like asking a doctor about medical ethics.

Kevin Harris: Next, they start their discussion on God and time. Here's how it starts. Clip number four.

Alex O’Connor: What does it mean to say that God is a timeless being or an eternal being or an atemporal being? Do these kinds of terms mean the same thing? Are there different ways of interpreting what that means, and what does it mean?

Dr. Qureshi-Hurst: Pretty much those mean the same thing. Generally, in contemporary philosophy of time, we have this distinction between God as either a temporal being or an atemporal being. The atemporal God is outside of time, has no temporal parts, doesn't experience temporal passage or change or succession in that God's life at all. And then the temporal God is within time, or experiences change, passage, succession. And the atemporal God seems to be the version that's more popular throughout theological tradition, although they're not using quite the same categories that we use today. And the temporal God is seeing a resurgence in contemporary discourse.

Kevin Harris: God as atemporal and a resurgence in a temporal God. Do you think she's right about that resurgence in theology?

Dr. Craig: Yes. If you take the long perspective—for example, the 20th century as a whole—the rise of process theology especially signaled the importance of temporality for God. And so I do think there's been a resurgence over the last century of theologians and philosophers of religion arguing for the temporality of God. Now, for the sake of our listeners, this doesn't mean that God is temporary, that he exists just for a short time and then goes into non-existence. It means, as Emily said, that God has a temporal location and a temporal duration. So in affirming the temporality of God, one is not affirming that he's temporary but simply that he is in time.

Kevin Harris: Now we're moving further into William Lane Craig territory in this next clip. In fact, I can see Alex's wheels turning here: Does God know what time it is? Clip number five.

Alex O’Connor: Does God know what time it is right now? And in order to say yes, do we require that God is temporal, or can you have an atemporal God who knows what time it is right now? Because I'm speaking in a temporal sense. I'm in the temporal world. Could a timeless God know what time it is now?

Dr. Qureshi-Hurst: Yes. But if you endorse the idea of a timeless God, you normally (in contemporary discourse at least) endorse a view of time that says there is no time that is now objectively. So an atemporal God knows what time it is at all points in spacetime, but there is no objective now. It's called the block universe view. I can talk a bit more about what that is. Whereas a temporal God knows what time it is now because normally you would have this marriage of a temporal God and a version or a theory of time where time does objectively pass and there is a now. So God knows what time it is now, and that knowledge is continuously changing as time passes and the future becomes present and goes to the past. But if you endorse an atemporal God, you think of the relationship generally between God and time as one a bit like an author holding their book or like a novel. All the pages exist; all of the events that happen to the characters—each moment in the characters' lives—is all there, and God knows all of those things that happen and can look at any point. And there is no objective, "It's objectively page 33 now." That doesn't make sense when you think about a novel. And so this is the version of time that goes with the timeless God, and it's the version of time, or theory of time, that I think is best supported by modern physics.

Kevin Harris: Comment on what she's saying in that clip, Bill. But I'm also curious about what you think about that illustration—her illustration of a block universe being like a book with all the pages present.

Dr. Craig: I think it's a very good analogy, just so long as you do not imagine anyone turning the pages or reading the book. The minute you do that, then you have introduced a time above time, and that's inconsistent with the block universe view and the atemporality of God. So I think it's a good analogy, but as I say, you mustn't posit some hypertime outside the book.

Kevin Harris: Okay, let's stop right there for today, and we're going to pick it up next time on the podcast for part two on this interview. And now, a special message from Dr. Craig.

Dr. Craig: Credible sociological surveys have revealed an unexpected resurgence of openness and interest among students in the existence of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. More than any other Christian ministry, I believe that Reasonable Faith is strategically positioned to supply the evangelistic and discipleship tools to help further this young generation.

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