#769 God, Time, and Change

Dr. craig’s response

I’m always delighted to hear from someone who does not yet believe in God, George! I hope that as you engage with these fascinating questions you might draw nearer to God in your own spiritual journey.

I’ve dealt with all of your questions in my published work, e.g., Time and Eternity:  Exploring God’s Relationship to Time (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2001), particularly the chapter on the possibility of timeless personhood, which I’d commend to you. It’s worth noting in passing that my own views on God and time are just one option among many. Because the biblical data are underdeterminative, Christian theists have defended a wide variety of views on God’s relationship to time and change. Some have defended views according to which God is timeless and immutable, others views according to which God is omnitemporal and constantly changing. My own view is something of a hybrid: God is timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation.  

I agree with you that God (apart from the incarnation) is an unembodied (n.b. not disembodied) mind that, being self-conscious, is thinking. The question, then, is whether thinking is an essentially temporal process. Although a few philosophers have defended such a position, I can’t think of any good arguments for this claim. So long as a person’s mental state is unchanging, there is no need that that person be temporal. It seems entirely coherent to conceive of a timeless person with an unchanging mental state, especially if such a person is omniscient and so does not need to learn any new truths. It doesn’t take any time to know something, e.g., the proposition that I am God or 2+2=4 or In 1492 Columbus discovers America (the boldface indicating that the verb is tenseless). If God’s mental state is unchanging, then God, existing alone without creation, would on a relational view of time, according to which time cannot exist in the absence of events, exist timelessly.

So as to the argument you discovered online, while I agree with (P3), I’m confident that you have the logical acumen to see that (P2) does not follow from (P1), which is a mere tautology. Indeed, as we have seen, (P2) is plausibly false. It is perfectly possible that a spiritual being exist changelessly, just as a great many theists have held with respect to God. Therefore, (C) does not follow. In particular, a timeless, changeless being can think. And, I should add, he can also will, just in case his will does not change.

Now since counting would involve a succession of mental states, a timeless, changeless being cannot be engaged in counting. Were God to count down to creation, “3, 2, 1, Let there be light!,” time would begin, not at the moment of creation, but earlier when God began to count. But your inference does not follow that “This means that if god were to count from 1 to 10 there would always be a moment prior to him counting and a moment after him counting.” Why think that there would be a moment prior to His counting? Why not think rather that time would begin with the first event of counting? Indeed, how could it begin earlier in a changeless state devoid of all events? In the utter absence of events, there would be no time, and time would begin with the first event. So there would be both a first event and a first moment of time (just as secular cosmologists believe!). For that reason I have been careful to say that God existing alone sans creation, rather than prior to creation, is timeless.

As for the claim that my position is absurd, I do not think that any logical incoherence in the view has been demonstrated. The claim “A timeless being must be static and frozen unto all possibilities by its very definition, otherwise any change in state, either physical or mental prerequisites time,” gratuitously presupposes that God’s temporal status (i.e., His relationship to time) is an essential, rather than contingent, property of God. Not only is such a presupposition unjustified, but I think that it is plainly false. Suppose that God, in virtue of being related to changing things in the world, is temporal. But now imagine a possible world in which God refrains from creation but simply exists changelessly alone. On a relational view of time God would be timeless in such a possible world. So whether God is temporal or timeless is not an essential property of God but a contingent property. Therefore it is false that a timeless being must be “static and frozen unto all possibilities by its very definition.” A timeless being can change if he wants to.

Of course if he were to change, as it’s perfectly possible for him to do, then he would be in time. For that reason we have been careful to talk about the changelessness of God sans creation rather than the unchangeability or immutability of God sans creation. God need not be unchangeable in order to exist changelessly. Whether He chooses to change is a contingent matter dependent upon His free will. In the actual world God exists in precisely the same state of affairs sans creation as He does in the eventless world and so is plausibly timeless sans creation, even though He is temporal once He creates the world and time begins.

The further claim “any change in state, either physical or mental prerequisites time" is ambiguous. If it is meant that any change in state implies the existence of time, then the statement is true. It is precisely for that reason that God’s creating the universe brings about time and He comes into time. But if the statement means that in order for God to change time must already exist, then the statement is false. On a relational view of time, time is the consequence of the occurrence of an event. So the claim “A timeless being therefore could not have ‘created’ time because time itself must necessarily prerequisite its own creation if there exist a being prior to it that creates it,” begs the question by the addition of the final clause “if there exist a being prior to it that creates it.” For on a relational view of time one denies precisely that there exists a being prior to the first moment of time.

Rather God exists changelessly and timelessly sans creation. He freely exercised an act of causal power to bring about the universe, thereby also bringing about time as a concomitant of that first event. When did He do so? About 13.8 billion years ago.