Can a timeless God create time?

[CatholicSoxFan]

I’ve heard two arguments a bit recently that have the same idea behind them. The first one is that if time began to exist, then so did God, because when God created time, God existed, and God didn’t exist at any time before that (because it’s the beginning of time.) The second one is that if God is timeless, He can’t create time, because doing something, like creating the universe, presupposes a succession of events in order to create the universe.

What is your response to both of these?

 

[tamedlion]

Your key word here would be ETERNITY, not the same as time.

 

[L_Marshall]

God is eternal. God exists outside of time altogether. God can exist without time. Time cannot exist without God.

Time is part of creation, in the same way that the physical universe is. When God created the universe, through his Word, God spoke “One eternal utterance.” At this moment, creation (including time) came into existence.

The argument that an eternal God could not create a non-eternal universe is flawed. God is all-powerful, and He is not limited to create anything. In the same way, an infinite God can create finite beings; an all-knowing God can create something that lacks knowledge.

 

[polytropos]

The first one is that if time began to exist, then so did God, because when God created time, God existed, and God didn’t exist at any time before that (because it’s the beginning of time.)

Can you spell this out more formally, premise by premise? It does not even look valid to me.

There also seems to be a hidden premise that would entail that time is essential to God’s causation, such that if God causes something to exist, then there must have been a time prior to that when God was not causing that thing to exist. But that is not consistent with divine eternity, so the argument as far as I can tell assumes an analysis of God’s causation that the theist (at least the theist who holds that God is eternal and changeless rather than sempiternal) would not accept. (The theist would also deny that there is some state in God that is merely logically prior to God’s action.)

The second one is that if God is timeless, He can’t create time, because doing something, like creating the universe, presupposes a succession of events in order to create the universe.

This also begs the question against the theist, who obviously will develop an eternal conception of causality if he is to hold that God is eternal.

God wills. There was no “time” at which he did not will.

 

[Bahman]

I’ve heard two arguments a bit recently that have the same idea behind them. The first one is that if time began to exist, then so did God, because when God created time, God existed, and God didn’t exist at any time before that (because it’s the beginning of time.) The second one is that if God is timeless, He can’t create time, because doing something, like creating the universe, presupposes a succession of events in order to create the universe.

What is your response to both of these?

Could you please first define timeless and time so we can engage to a fruitful discussion?

To me time is a subjective reality measuring changes of objective reality hence there is no time without at least two beings. Timeless state is the state of no changes.

There are several issues to match a changeless God to changeable creation.

1. If God is changeless then it has no beginning and no end. Creation is caused by God in state of changeless hence it cannot have any begging since beginning requires a change in state of God which is changeless.
2. God cannot know of any changes since the knowledge of changes requires changes which is impossible for changeless God hence he cannot know comprehend time.

I had a couple of other issues to timeless state which I discussed it long time ago but they are not related to issue of time.

 

[chefmomster2]

Time, can be defined as: (Google)

1. the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole
2. a point of time as measured in hours and minutes past midnight or noon.

This sense of time as measurable and consisting of three periods is largely an organizational device, not Time itself. It is required by man to coordinate his activities, reference history, and plan. God, being present everywhere has no need for such a system. He exists in all time and place.

 

[Counterpoint]

I’ve heard two arguments a bit recently that have the same idea behind them. The first one is that if time began to exist, then so did God, because when God created time, God existed, and God didn’t exist at any time before that (because it’s the beginning of time.) The second one is that if God is timeless, He can’t create time, because doing something, like creating the universe, presupposes a succession of events in order to create the universe.

What is your response to both of these?

God is “pure act” (“actus purus”). As such, he is timeless. (There is no “before” or “after” with God, just the ever-present “now.”)

 

[kristos]

There are, to the best of my knowledge, two things God can’t create: a rock he can’t lift and evil.

 

[Bahman]

God wills. There was no “time” at which he did not will.

Hence there is no beginning for anything which means that God cannot create a changeable universe since any being is a part of Gods thought and owes its existence to God who is in timeless state.

 

[polytropos]

Could you please first define timeless and time so we can engage to a fruitful discussion?

I imagine he means eternal (outside of time) rather than sempiternal (exists for all of time).

1. If God is changeless then it has no beginning and no end. Creation is caused by God in state of changeless hence it cannot have any begging since beginning requires a change in state of God which is changeless.

There are a lot of hidden premises here. It would help if you spelled this out in a logically valid argument form. (I hate to nitpick but this is a topic that people generally bring a lot of unwarranted assumptions to, so logical rigor is a necessity, so that we can tell what they are.)

Here your argument seems to share a lot of assumptions with the first that CatholicSoxFan gave. Your second sentence assumes that if something comes into existence, then there were two states in God, one where he was not willing its existence, and one where he was. But that already assumes at best a sempiternal rather than eternal God who is in time and has multiple acts of willing. If God is causative of all time (which is the position that you need to assume for the sake of argument, if you are going to show that there are “several issues” with it), then obviously he does not have a succession of willings, different acts of creation. For God there is a single act of creation; it has multiple effects. But there is no time at which he starts willing otherwise than he did. So no change is required in God.

1. God cannot know of any changes since the knowledge of changes requires changes which is impossible for changeless God hence he cannot know comprehend time.

Here you say that “the knowledge of changes requires changes.” Why? Do you mean it requires changes in the knower?

In any case, I don’t see why this should be true for an omniscient, eternal being. Say x is a temporal being which changes over the interval [t1, t2]. God knows the state of the universe at every time between t1 and t2 inclusive, and he knows all of the active powers of any natural substance at those times as well. All of this is part of a single intellective act. There is no change whereby he learns that x has changed between t1 and t2 by observing x at t1 and then at t2.

 

[polytropos]

Hence there is no beginning for anything which means that God cannot create a changeable universe since any being is a part of Gods thought and owes its existence to God who is in timeless state.

You are, I think, confusing God’s single act of willing with the variety of objects of his will. God wills once, eternally. It doesn’t follow that the objects of his will are eternal.

God wills that (x comes into existence at t1 & x goes out of existence at t2 & y comes into existence at t3). This is all one act of willing for God; there are several objects of his will.

 

[empther]

Post 9
Classic Bahman!

Originally Posted by polytropos
God wills. There was no “time” at which he did not will.

Hence there is no beginning for anything which means that God cannot create a changeable universe since any being is a part of Gods thought and owes its existence to God who is in timeless state.

1. there is no “hence” and no conclusion from polytopos’s remarks
2. God willed from eternity, but there was a beginning to time/change
3. no being is a part of God and so beings can change
4. if a being’s existence was in any way dependent on time then not only would there be no beginning but there’d be no duration, no existence, which is ridiculous.
5. time does not exist. It is a mental concept used to measure change. So God does not have to be in time to create something that exists in time.
   To say God does not exist in time simply means he never changes and is in no way affected by time. Thus, he is “outside time” in the sense that if there were no time, no changing of created beings, it would have no effect on him. Nevertheless, he exists now, in all of the finite past, and all the future which will similarly always be finite since it will never reach an infinity of time.

 

[Bahman]

I imagine he means eternal (outside of time) rather than sempiternal (exists for all of time).

Ok, lets start with this picture.

There are a lot of hidden premises here. It would help if you spelled this out in a logically valid argument form. (I hate to nitpick but this is a topic that people generally bring a lot of unwarranted assumptions to, so logical rigor is a necessity, so that we can tell what they are.)

Argument of homogeneity:

1. Creation was performed in one act at one point
2. This means that the creation was homogeneous
3. Any changes is the result of inhomogeneity in another word a homogeneous being cannot change
4. Creation is changeless
5. We observer changes
6. This means that (1) is wrong

We cannot assume an inhomogeneous creation since it requires that God to be in space to cause inhomogeneity which he cannot since there was no space prior to creation otherwise we fall in trap of infinite regression.

Argument of beginning:

1. God exist
2. Creation has a beginning and was caused by God
3. There exist two beings after creation, namely God and creation
4. This means that the state of existence has to be subject of change meaning there has to exist two state of being, {God} and {God,creation} the later follows by former
5. This means that there should exist a divine who allows this changes
6. This leads to infinite regression

Here your argument seems to share a lot of assumptions with the first that CatholicSoxFan gave. Your second sentence assumes that if something comes into existence, then there were two states in God, one where he was not willing its existence, and one where he was. But that already assumes at best a sempiternal rather than eternal God who is in time and has multiple acts of willing. If God is causative of all time (which is the position that you need to assume for the sake of argument, if you are going to show that there are “several issues” with it), then obviously he does not have a succession of willings, different acts of creation. For God there is a single act of creation; it has multiple effects. But there is no time at which he starts willing otherwise than he did. So no change is required in God.

No. This I have discuss it long time ago.

1. Time is subjective reality and measure the changes
2. State of mind has to change to allow experiences of changes
3. God’s mind is changeless hence it cannot perceive changes
4. God cannot know what the current time is since the current time by definition means that something has changed compared to past

Here you say that “the knowledge of changes requires changes.” Why? Do you mean it requires changes in the knower?

Yes.

In any case, I don’t see why this should be true for an omniscient, eternal being. Say x is a temporal being which changes over the interval [t1, t2]. God knows the state of the universe at every time between t1 and t2 inclusive, and he knows all of the active powers of any natural substance at those times as well. All of this is part of a single intellective act. There is no change whereby he learns that x has changed between t1 and t2 by observing x at t1 and then at t2.

He cannot know since you cannot have a changeless being with a changeable being enforcing that changeless being has the current knowledge of changeable thing.

 

[polytropos]

Argument of homogeneity:

1. Creation was performed in one act at one point
2. This means that the creation was homogeneous
3. Any changes is the result of inhomogeneity in another word a homogeneous being cannot change
4. Creation is changeless
5. We observer changes
6. This means that (1) is wrong

When I said “logically valid argument form,” I meant “logically valid argument form.” The transition from (1) to (2), for example, has not been done according to a valid rule of inference, and there is yet again a suppressed premise.

(1) is false. Creation is a single act performed eternally, not “at one point.” There is not a single point of time at which God created.

(2) does not follow from (1) validly, nor, I suspect, is there any premise you could add to make the inference sound. A single cause does not need to have a single effect (or a “homogeneous effect”).

(3) seems to imply that God is “a homogeneous being.” That is not what divine simplicity requires, however; it only requires that God is not composite and has no real distinctions. (Homogeneity and heterogeneity can only be predicated of things that are composed of matter, which God is not. So the attempted application to God would be at best metaphorical.)

We cannot assume an inhomogeneous creation since it requires that God to be in space to cause inhomogeneity which he cannot since there was no space prior to creation otherwise we fall in trap of infinite regression.

This is simply false. God being spatial is not a necessary condition of the heterogeneity of creation; there is no reason in principle why a simple being cannot in a single act have multiple effects.

Argument of beginning:

1. God exist
2. Creation has a beginning and was caused by God
3. There exist two beings after creation, namely God and creation
4. This means that the state of existence has to be subject of change meaning there has to exist two state of being, {God} and {God,creation} the later follows by former
5. This means that there should exist a divine who allows this changes
6. This leads to infinite regression

First, I object to your usage of the term “creation.” I think it would make things clearer if we speak of the beginning of the universe temporally as a “coming into existence,” since God’s act of creation does not just bring the universe into being from nothing but sustains it in being (according to the classical view, at least).

I am confused by (4) and cannot tell what you are talking about. Do you mean that there must have been a time (a “state of being”?) at which God existed, and then after that a time when both God existed and creation existed? And that is a change, so there must be a being that accounts for the change?

First, (4) would be false on that interpretation. If God created time, then it is possible for time to have a beginning, but for both God and creation to exist at all times at which time exists. In other words, time can have a finite past even if it is the case that at no time God was the only thing that existed.

Second, (6) does not follow from (5). This is because God is, by any traditional argument for his existence, a divine being who creates without having any potentialities of his own actualized. So there does exist a divine being who would allow the change in (4), and his doing so is self-explanatory. (You concede all of this in adopting (1), unless you are working with a very strange and therefore irrelevant definition of God.) So no regress is generated.

I will address the rest later.

 

[Bahman]

You are, I think, confusing God’s single act of willing with the variety of objects of his will. God wills once, eternally. It doesn’t follow that the objects of his will are eternal.

God wills that (x comes into existence at t1 & x goes out of existence at t2 & y comes into existence at t3). This is all one act of willing for God; there are several objects of his will.

Argument of homogeneity in time:

1. Creation is performed at one point
2. All beings has to come out in order, one sooner and one later
3. All these information are gathered at one point because of (1)
4. From (2) we must have an inhomogeneity which confer with (3)

 

[Robert_Sock]

What is ‘time’ if not the measurement of change? God’s Creation happens to allow for change, so we try to measure it in many ways. I therefore do not see God as being ‘timeless,’ but unchanging. God is also all knowing, and knows the exact sequence of the smallest of changes within all of Creation.

LOVE!

 

[Bahman]

When I said “logically valid argument form,” I meant “logically valid argument form.” The transition from (1) to (2), for example, has not been done according to a valid rule of inference, and there is yet again a suppressed premise.

(1) is false. Creation is a single act performed eternally, not “at one point.” There is not a single point of time at which God created.

So we have to agree with your definition that what eternally is. Does creation has a beginning? If it is so then it has to happen at one point which differentiate existence from non existence.

(2) does not follow from (1) validly, nor, I suspect, is there any premise you could add to make the inference sound. A single cause does not need to have a single effect (or a “homogeneous effect”).

A single cause that happen at one point is homogeneous meaning that the effects cannot be distinguished from each other since otherwise it is not single cause yet effects has to be distinguished from each other otherwise they cannot be different hence they could not exist. A being cannot be different and indifferent at the same time.

(3) seems to imply that God is “a homogeneous being.” That is not what divine simplicity requires, however; it only requires that God is not composite and has no real distinctions. (Homogeneity and heterogeneity can only be predicated of things that are composed of matter, which God is not. So the attempted application to God would be at best metaphorical.)

I was not talking about God. I was talking about creation. Creation is at one point since it has a beginning, lets forget about common concept of space for a second and try to imagine something that allows inhomogeneity to happen in general. The inhomogeneity is needed to guarantee changes but we cannot have inhomogeneity without any space. Everything has to accumulate at one point with no space at the moment of creation hence it is homogeneous because there is no space to make any difference. Since there is nothing that can cause changes hence the creation cannot evolve.

This is simply false. God being spatial is not a necessary condition of the heterogeneity of creation; there is no reason in principle why a simple being cannot in a single act have multiple effects.

I was talking about creation and please read the previous comments.

First, I object to your usage of the term “creation.” I think it would make things clearer if we speak of the beginning of the universe temporally as a “coming into existence,” since God’s act of creation does not just bring the universe into being from nothing but sustains it in being (according to the classical view, at least).

That is subject of discussion. I have a argument against it but which relate to changeless God and changeable creation but lets postpone that for future.

I am confused by (4) and cannot tell what you are talking about. Do you mean that there must have been a time (a “state of being”?) at which God existed, and then after that a time when both God existed and creation existed? And that is a change, so there must be a being that accounts for the change?

I am not saying that. I am saying that considering the fact that the creation has a beginning enforces us to accept two states of existence namely {God} and {God,creation}. Can we agree on that.

First, (4) would be false on that interpretation. If God created time, then it is possible for time to have a beginning, but for both God and creation to exist at all times at which time exists. In other words, time can have a finite past even if it is the case that at no time God was the only thing that existed.

Time is subject reality hence it cannot be created.

Second, (6) does not follow from (5). This is because God is, by any traditional argument for his existence, a divine being who creates without having any potentialities of his own actualized. So there does exist a divine being who would allow the change in (4), and his doing so is self-explanatory. (You concede all of this in adopting (1), unless you are working with a very strange and therefore irrelevant definition of God.) So no regress is generated.

It does. Lets assume that we could agree that two state of existence should be allowed otherwise creation cannot have any beginning. This means that we should have {God} and {God, creation} as two separate states of existence. This means that there must exist a deity which allow this changes meaning that there must be God’ in which it is supreme to God and can create {God} and then {God,creation}. Lets define {creation’}={God,{God,creation}}. This means that we have to assume that there must exist two state {God’} and {creation’,God’} if creation’ has a beginning which leads to infinite regression.

 

[polytropos]

Moving on…

1. Time is subjective reality and measure the changes
2. State of mind has to change to allow experiences of changes
3. God’s mind is changeless hence it cannot perceive changes
4. God cannot know what the current time is since the current time by definition means that something has changed compared to past

Elsewhere you argue:

To me time is a subjective reality measuring changes of objective reality hence there is no time without at least two beings. Timeless state is the state of no changes.

What makes time subjective? Reality is objective. The relations among reality that account for change (ie. acts, potencies, active powers, etc.) are all objective. Where does subjectivity need to come in? Sure, our experience of time is subjective, but also our experience of everything is subjective, by virtue of being our experience.

The argument as you’ve given it, though, is once again invalid. (2) and (3) claim that change in the subject is required for the experience and perception of change. OK. It doesn’t follow as you claim in (4) that change in the subject is required for the knowledge of change. I don’t think God has experiences or perceptions, as those impute potencies to him, though he does have knowledge, which can be purely active.

Furthermore, the above argument does not seem to address the argument I was originally responding to, which was about change being necessary for God to cause the beginning of creation, not necessary for God to know about change in creation. Those are two different issues, and you seem to have changed the subject, unless I’ve misunderstood you, which is possible.

He cannot know since you cannot have a changeless being with a changeable being enforcing that changeless being has the current knowledge of changeable thing.

The changeable being does not “enforce” that God knows about its changing. God’s knowledge, wholly active knowledge, is causative of creation. And God’s activity is “concurrent” with creaturely activity. His concurrent causal involvement in it is why he can know it (and without implying any passibility on his part, too).

 

[polytropos]

So we have to agree with your definition that what eternally is. Does creation has a beginning? If it is so then it has to happen at one point which differentiate existence from non existence.

God exists eternally, so God acts eternally. (Not sempiternally.) God is simultaneous with all times. Probably the best way to describe it is the slightly metaphorical way Counterpoint gave (and which, I believe, Aquinas employs): eternity is a changeless “now.”

re the bolded: Do you mean “creation” as the sum of all creatures, or “creation” as God’s act of creation? If the former, yes (though I don’t necessarily believe that this is demonstrable), creatures came into existence some finite amount of time to go and so had a beginning. If the latter, though, then the answer is no. God’s act of creation is eternal, and there was no point at which God went from not creating to creating.

Note also that creatures could come into existence a finite amount of time ago (and so have a beginning) even if there were no time prior to their existing. Time began with their creation. Then for every time t, God exists at t (or maybe we should say God is simultaneous with t, or ET-simultaneous with t to use Stump & Kretzman’s term), and some creature exists at t.

In your next claim, I take “at one point” to mean “at one time.” Because of the above, this claim is false; there did not have to be a time that differentiates existence from non-existence (if by that you mean the existence of creatures from the non-existence of creatures).

I hope this shows why clear thinking, qualifying everything as appropriate, etc. is absolutely essential to discussions like these…

A single cause that happen at one point is homogeneous meaning that the effects cannot be distinguished from each other since otherwise it is not single cause yet effects has to be distinguished from each other otherwise they cannot be different hence they could not exist.

re the first sentence: you have not responded to the basic problem that (1) is false. The act of creation cannot be characterized as “a single cause that happen at one point” because the act of creation is eternal. It is not instantiated at any particular time.

It seems like the bolded portion begs the question. There is nothing about the concept of causality that implies that a cause needs to have a single effect, even if the cause and effect(s) are all at the same time t (which in the case of the act of creation and the creation/sustenance of creatures, is not even true).

As I pointed out in my other post, the sense of homogeneity is unclear. I understand what it would mean for a mixture to be homogeneous, but you have not defined the term as you’re using it in this context.

I was not talking about God. I was talking about creation. Creation is at one point since it has a beginning, lets forget about common concept of space for a second and try to imagine something that allows inhomogeneity to happen in general. The inhomogeneity is needed to guarantee changes but we cannot have inhomogeneity without any space. Everything has to accumulate at one point with no space at the moment of creation hence it is homogeneous because there is no space to make any difference. Since there is nothing that can cause changes hence the creation cannot evolve.

I would reiterate what I said above about the need for a definition of homogeneity (the contrary of which is “heterogeneity,” not “inhomogeneity”) and for the disambiguation of God’s act of creation from creation as the sum of all creatures.

I am now suspecting that you are using “at one point” not in a temporal sense as I supposed above, but in a spatial sense? (Granted, the spatial use probably implies the temporal sense, so my previous criticisms would still apply.)

So your claim is “Creation is at one point since it has a beginning.” I honestly am not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean that because creatures came into existence at some time in the past, all of creation was at one spatial location? I reject that principle just like I reject its cause-effect correlate that a cause must have one effect. I actually take the classical theistic arguments as counterarguments to that principle; God’s causal activity is omnipresent. This may not be what you mean, but I really can’t tell.

I am not saying that. I am saying that considering the fact that the creation has a beginning enforces us to accept two states of existence namely {God} and {God,creation}. Can we agree on that.

What do you mean by “state of existence”? I can’t figure out how that locution could be relevant to creation having a beginning unless it had to do with {God} being all that existed at one time, and {God, creation} being all that existed at some other time.

Time is subject reality hence it cannot be created.

Since all of the principles involved in time are objective (ie. the existence of changeable objects with determinate powers, potencies, activities, etc.), I do not accept the position that time is subjective. In creating things that change, God creates time.

Lets assume that we could agree that two state of existence should be allowed otherwise creation cannot have any beginning.

I don’t accept that because I still can’t figure out what you mean by “states of existence.”

 

[polytropos]

This means that we should have {God} and {God, creation} as two separate states of existence. This means that there must exist a deity which allow this changes meaning that there must be God’ in which it is supreme to God and can create {God} and then {God,creation}. Lets define {creation’}={God,{God,creation}}. This means that we have to assume that there must exist two state {God’} and {creation’,God’} if creation’ has a beginning which leads to infinite regression.

My objection had to do with the bolded part. If the bolded part were true, I agree you’d have your regress, but the bolded part is false and begs the question against every traditional argument for God’s existence. God is self-explanatory and causative of creation. If you do not concede that, then you are using the term “God” in a way utterly foreign to traditional religion and the western philosophical tradition, and so we would be talking past each other.

Since God is self-explanatory and sufficiently accounts of creation, {God, creation} is also self-explanatory. The change from {God} to {God, creation} would be accounted for the fact that God is an Unactualized Actualizer; there is no need to explain the shift by means of some God’, nor could you, because God is Pure Act and there could not be anything “supreme to” Pure Act, nor any being which could act on Pure Act.