#932 Divine Eternity and Omnipresence
March 23, 2025Thank you for your podcast, I really enjoy listening and thinking through each episode and I often share them with my friends! My question is in regards to God's omnipresence and your view of God "entering into time". Does God "experience" time dilation when present near a black hole or "on board" a space station orbiting the earth (with time slowing down) while simultaneously "experiencing" lesser time dilation when present on earth (with a relatively faster time rate to the previous example)? Or is God, being immaterial, not affected by such time dilations? One of the examples you have used illustrating God being in time is that God knows that it is now 6:00 PM then 6:01 PM and so on. But clocks and, as I understand it, time itself, move at different rates due to time dilation. What information am I missing? Further, are there different models of God's omnipresence and where would I learn about His omnipresence a little more deeply than the average layman (though I am still very much a layman). Thank you for your time, I look forward to Vol. 1 of your philosophical Systematic Theology and I already purchased a copy of your "In Quest of the Historical Adam" as Genesis 1-11 is one of those "questions in a bag on the shelf" I want to start investigating soon. Thank you for your ministry, I pray that God continues to bless it and the systematic theology project you have been working on for so long now!
Connor
United States
Dr. craig’s response
A
These sorts of questions will be dealt with in the second volume of my Systematic Philosophical Theology on the Attributes of God. With respect to God’s experience of time, you are right on target, Connor, when you say that God as an immaterial being does not experience time dilation, either through motion in space or gravitational fields. So when I speak of God’s knowing that it is now 6:00 PM and then a minute later 6:01 PM, I am referring to the cosmic time that measures the duration of the universe as a whole. Cosmic time is independent of space and so is the same for all observers. It is the proper time of the universe itself. When astrophysicists speak of the universe as 14 billion years old, it is this cosmic time in terms of which they are speaking. God knows what is the present moment of cosmic time.
Yes, there are radically different views of divine omnipresence, which I discuss in the chapter on Omnipresence in vol. IIa. God may be conceived to transcend space altogether or to exist throughout space, whether at every region of space, or every point of space, or only in space as a whole, and so on. Such spatial relations are incredibly complex, making this chapter one of the most difficult in the book. You can find a preview of that chapter here: “God and Space,” Religions 15/3 (2024): 276; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030276. But you can get a layman’s account of divine omnipresence by looking at my Defenders 4 lectures at our website on the Attributes of God.
I’m thrilled that you are reading my material and finding it helpful and enjoyable!
- William Lane Craig