Popular Questions About Time

KEVIN HARRIS:

Dear Dr. Craig, Why do you think a B-theory (tenseless theory) of time is incompatible with the incarnation? I know you think events like Christ’s crucifixion are not really done or over with on a B-theory understanding of time, but my thinking is why must God be bound to the same way we perceive time and so as to relate to the world in that same way? Can God relate to the world via some X-theory of time or B-theory/tenseless theory of time perhaps, while we as finite beings still perceive the world under an A-theory (or a tensed view) of time?

We've talked a lot about A and B-theory of time in past podcasts.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. For those who aren't familiar with the terminology, let's just make it clear. According to the A-theory of time, temporal becoming is real. Things really come into being and pass away. The past and the future do not exist but are merely potentialities. Whereas on the B-theory, past, present, and future are all equally real, and temporal becoming is just an illusion of human consciousness. What I claim is that the tenseless theory of time is incompatible, not with Christ's incarnation, but really with his crucifixion and resurrection because on the B-theory of time Christ’s crucifixion is still just as real as it ever was. Christ is there on the cross in AD 33 and his resurrection is just the resurrection of a later stage of the four-dimensional space-time entity that is Christ. So it really evacuates, I think, the victory of the resurrection, and it means that the evil of the crucifixion is like a permanent stain in space-time that is never really expunged or done away with. He says maybe you can have some other theory of time – some X-theory of time. Fine. If he's got that, let's hear it. Enunciate it. But the point remains, I think, that the B-theory, or tenseless theory, of time does seem to have these consequences which I think are theologically unacceptable.

KEVIN HARRIS:

Hello, Dr. Craig. The following are two time-related questions that I've had on my mind recently. One: Is the nature of time necessarily immutable or could the nature of time change in some fundamental way at the return of Christ? And then, number two, if you're interested in possibly sharing, did your thirteen years of studying God's relation to time influence your personal and/or professional time management practices?

DR. CRAIG: In response to the first question, the nature of anything is immutable. If something changes in its nature then it undergoes an essential change and so ceases to exist. So his first question is: Could the time that we live in and experience be replaced by a different sort of time in the new heavens and the new Earth after the return of Christ? And I do think that's certainly possible. We may have no idea of what time would be like in the new heavens and the new Earth. But I see no reason at all to think that it couldn't be different in some way. As for the second very practical question, I have to say, no, my study of divine eternity and time didn't do anything to influence my time management practices other than demand that I be extremely efficient in my study and writing so as to get through this monumental research project.

KEVIN HARRIS: I think that the philosophical term for that time management system is “Jan” [laughter], at least to a big extent. We all know that. Clarence in the United States says,

Thank you, Dr. Craig. Thank you for your hard work to bless and equip the church. I frequent your podcast often and have enjoyed listening to your work over the years. My question is concerning the second premise of the kalam cosmological argument – the premise “the universe began to exist.” In defense of this premise you have argued greatly. I have one objection to your defense. You have said that it is impossible for the universe to consist of an infinite number of past events because if it did we would never be able to arrive at the present moment. However, isn't it possible that we never do arrive at the present moment? It seems to me like the present moment is infinitely fleeting – the moment it becomes the present, it simultaneously becomes the past as the precipice of time pierces on. Is it possible that the present moment is not a metric of dividing infinity? Is it possible that the future extends into the infinite potential, and because of that infinite potential we never arrive at a static state or a present moment? Thank you. I hope to learn more from you about the nature of time and infinity.

I was laughing there because that's such a good question.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. I would commend to Clarence my book Time and Eternity if he hopes to learn more about the nature of time and infinity. I certainly think that we do not arrive at a static state, so that's a red herring. I would agree that the present moment is not a metric concept. It doesn't have a measure. But we can easily solve that by being more specific by talking about the present minute or the present year or the present session of Congress. Certainly those things do become present. The present minute has obviously arrived because I am existing right now at this present minute and experiencing it. So I think that you cannot evade the argument by saying that the present never arrives.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. This is a similar question.

Hello, Dr. Craig. I'm a young Christian with an interest in apologetics. Thank you for all your work. You mentioned that traversing an infinity and ending at a point, presumably the current day, is absurd. However, many Thomists object. They respond that if one selects any event in the past the succession of events between that event and the present is finite. Even if it were on an infinite number line, the succession between any particular past point and the present is still finite. Hence the idea of traveling an infinite seems removed along with the absurdity. Is there a good answer to this? Thank you and God bless. Joe in the United States.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, Joe, there is a great answer to it. And I have answered this objection a number of times in my published work. This objection commits the so-called fallacy of composition. The fallacy of composition is saying that because every particular part of something has a property therefore the entire thing has that property. And that's fallacious. For example, every particular part of an elephant might be light in weight, but it doesn't follow that the whole elephant is light in weight. So reasoning by composition is a fallacy, and this objection commits that fallacy. What it says is because every part of the past is traversable therefore the entire past is traversable, and that doesn't follow. Just because every finite part of the past to the present is traversable, that doesn't mean that the whole infinite past is traversable. An easy way to see this is by his example of the number line. We can think of the series of past events as being numbered by the negative numbers with 0 being the present moment. So 0 at the present, -1, -2, -3, -4, -5, and so on to infinity. Now, the distance from every negative number to 0 is a finite distance. There is no number in the negative number series that is infinitely distant from 0. Each number in the negative number series is only a finite distance from 0. But that doesn't imply that therefore the whole distance is finite. On the contrary, it's infinite. So the fact that you can traverse every finite segment of the past does not imply that therefore the whole infinite past is traversable.

KEVIN HARRIS: Is he correct that this is something that Thomists would adhere to?

DR. CRAIG: I didn't want to say anything about that, but I've never heard any Thomist make this objection. I've seen this objection from J. L. Mackey and certain other secular thinkers. Maybe John Howard Sobel might have offered this objection. But I've never heard a Thomist say this. It's clearly fallacious.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK.

Dear Dr. Craig, First, I want to thank you for your valuable and enlightening work. Like many, I am struggling on my way to theism and often I am left with questions that for some reason aren't talked about much. I've listed some of these here, and it would be very valuable to hear your response to them. None of these are my views. They contain different angles of the same issue so I've grouped them together. 1. On God's infinity . . .

This is the one that we're going to look at.

If something exists apart from God, would that not limit God since he is infinite and would encompass everything?

DR. CRAIG: Let me say immediately that I've written an article on this subject that Tom should read. It's called “Pantheists in Spite of Themselves? Pannenberg, Clayton, and Shults on Divine Infinity.”^[1] He will find that this article addresses directly his question. This is to be found on the ReasonableFaith.org website under Scholarly Articles, and then the subsection Christian Doctrine. Again, it’s called “Pantheists in Spite of Themselves?” The fallacy here is thinking that if something is infinite there can't be something outside it; that if something is infinite then it includes everything. And that's simply a non-sequitur. Take, for example, the set of odd numbers. The set of odd numbers is infinite, but there's also the set of even numbers which is also infinite, and neither one is included in the other. In addition to those sets of infinite quantities, there are other things like Kevin Harris and Bill Craig that aren't included in those collections. So the idea that God is infinite in no way implies that he is all-inclusive. There can be a finite world which is not God and is distinct from God even though God is infinite.

KEVIN HARRIS: He continues,

If God resides in a domain beyond the finite outside of time, this is a limit and he cannot be infinite.

DR. CRAIG: I don't see that as a limit to God's infinity that he should exist timelessly. Again, he's thinking that the infinite can't have limits, and that's clearly wrong. Think again of the series of natural numbers. It has a limit. It begins with zero. It has one end. By contrast, the series of negative numbers has a limit. It has an end with -1. So it's simply incorrect to think that something that is infinite is limitless in the sense that it's all-inclusive.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. So that answers his next question.

How can God be infinite when he doesn't include everything? Also the finite – if the finite is part of God, something it must be if he is infinite, then God, too, is finite.

DR. CRAIG: I would not say that the finite is part of God. In fact, that's the burden of this article that I just referred to. To suggest that Pannenberg, Shults, and Clayton do seem to commit themselves to a kind of pantheism whereby the finite would be included in God because they think God must include everything and be all-inclusive. But in answer to his question, “How can God be infinite if he doesn't include everything?”, he can be infinite in the sense that he is eternal in his being, that he is omnipotent, that he is omniscient (he knows everything), that he is omnipresent (he's everywhere present). None of those properties exclude the existence of finite reality which is non-divine.

KEVIN HARRIS: He says,

When God created the finite, he must logically have become finite because of the existence of this. Because there are finite beings and infinite beings seems contradictory.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. And that is not correct. As the illustrations I've given show, the equivocation here that's going on on the part of these thinkers is equating the word “infinite” with all-inclusive, and that is a false equivalent. It's odd that these sorts of arguments should have developed at the same time that Cantor’s work on trans-finite arithmetic and infinite set theory would make the concept of the infinite in mathematics very clear and understandable and would show quite the contrary that the infinite can have limits, that you can have an infinite collection that is not all-inclusive. There's no contradiction between the infinite and the finite. In fact, in trans-finite arithmetic you can do addition within infinite quantities and finite numbers. For example, aleph-null is the lowest trans-finite cardinal number. It is the number of elements in the set of natural numbers. And you can ask questions like: What is alpha-null plus 1? What is aleph-null plus 2? What is aleph-null plus 3? Those are perfectly intelligible arithmetical operations in which you add the finite to the infinite. The infinite is not all inclusive.

KEVIN HARRIS: So what is he getting at here? He says, “However, if the finite is a part of God and he really is infinite then the finite is also infinite.”

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, I liked his earlier expression that if the finite is part of God then God is finite. It's hard to know what he's saying here.

KEVIN HARRIS:

God's infinite being couldn't interact with anything else because there would be nothing that he is not.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. See, that's the idea here. This equation of infinitude with being everything there is or being all-inclusive. And that is a false equation.

KEVIN HARRIS: He just sums it up by saying,

If there is an interaction between the infinite God and our finite world, how can God then be infinite?

DR. CRAIG: He can be infinite in possessing these superlative properties that I just described: absolute moral perfection, omnipotence, omniscience, eternality, omnipresence, aseity, metaphysical necessity. These are the attributes that go to make up the infinity of God’s being.

KEVIN HARRIS: I hope that helps Tom since he is on his way to theism.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. We wish him well.^[2]