Changeless God cannot create

[DanAl]

1. God does not change
2. Creation was a part of God’s thought
3. From (1) and (2) we can deduce that creation has to be eternal
4. Creation has a beginning though hence it require change in God
5. (3) and (4) contradict each other hence (1) is wrong

you’re making an argument against infinity, if God changes then he’s not infinite anymore.
But the decree of creation was changeless “before” the creation of the world. when God creates the universe was another changeless decree that he had in mind prior to creation.

1-God does not change
2-the decree to create the universe was changelessly existent prior to its existence in God.
3-the decree of creating the universe was part of God’s decree before its execution.

There’s more that can be said about the subject but this will do for now.

 

[noorez]

God is the creator eternally (therefore his act of creation is also eternal). There was never “a time” when he was not creating/sustaining a creation. Creation is the eternal expression of the creator. But that does not mean that elements within a particular moment of the creation last forever (stars burn out and new ones are born, mountains crumble and new ones form.)

 

[Bahman]

I’m not exactly sure that I understood any of this at all. It’s a bit convoluted. But I’ll try to respond.

From point 2. I get from this that you are arguing that, logically, if God is able to perceive all points in time simultaneously, from His perspective, they all exist, yes? However, as we are bound to a specific time, the current one, at least from our own perspective, God does act on and in specific points in time. You then claim that this fact contradicts the assertion that God exists eternally and acts on and in all things simultaneously, as there are obviously specific points that we perceive God’s acting on creation, is that correct?

If I misinterpreted any of that, I apologize. My response to that though, is that God does not act on time while being subject to it. God exists not just outside of time, but above time. Likewise, I think there’s some confusion as to what is meant when God is said to be unchanging. This does not mean that God exists in a static state of no motion, no action, no etc. It means that God’s nature is constant and consistent with itself. He is Love, and will not later be something else. God is, and God is perfect. This does not mean God cannot act on His creation, and it certainly doesn’t render Him immobile or something.

God exists outside of time, which means that God does not grow or develop or learn more. He knows everything, is everything, and is perfect. He is not changed by the progression of time. This does not mean that he is unable to act. God does not exist in some kind of metaphysical “eternal now.” He does not exist in anything. Everything else exists in Him. Time is part of His creation. Time is subject to His will, not to mention everything else in the universe. God does not have to exist inside of time to be able to affect it. Time exists within God’s eternal being. God knows everything not because every moment is simultaneously occurring to Him, but because He has created and willed every moment in existence to exist in the first place. I feel as if you’re looking at it as though God is sitting in a room like in the Matrix, looking at every moment in time simultaneously. That is not so. That is how humans conceptualize existing outside of time, because we cannot comprehend what that would be like. But God does not simply experience every instance at the same time. God is the reason those instances are able to occur at all. He knows all because he already knew it before time even existed.

Truly it is impossible for us to even analogize, because existence within time is all we know. But God knew everything before He created the universe. And I think part of our problem with this lies in the fact that our only descriptions for what happened “before” creation rely on temporal terms and ideas in order to even talk about them in the first place. To God, words like now and before and later are not applicable. He does not act now. He acts. He is. Time is dependent on God, not the other way around.

Yes. You got the point but unfortunately your response was not adequate. The problem lies on the fact that timeless/theist God resolves a couple of issues but the problem I raised stays.

 

[Bahman]

you’re making an argument against infinity, if God changes then he’s not infinite anymore.
But the decree of creation was changeless “before” the creation of the world. when God creates the universe was another changeless decree that he had in mind prior to creation.

1-God does not change
2-the decree to create the universe was changelessly existent prior to its existence in God.
3-the decree of creating the universe was part of God’s decree before its execution.

There’s more that can be said about the subject but this will do for now.

There is no before and after for theist/changeless God. Everything has to be done in one point, so called eternal now.

 

[balto]

We are having a good progress. But consciousness is to me primary as it is defined as the ability to experience and affect/create other states. It is so primary that I could not imagine something simpler than that. Can you imagine another thing such as consciousness which is so fundamental at the same time simple? I would be glad to hear that. Needless to say that I agree with what you said in bold since I believe that I could be cognitively close to other beings, their attributes, the way that they see the world, etc. Lets call them gods.

Well I don’t know too much about philosophy of consciousness but I think I would be inclined to agree with you that consciousness is something that is relatively simple since it unifies multiple disjoint physical experiences into a single subjective experience. But it is not necessarily absolutely simple since in contingent conscious beings, whose existence is not necessary, there still needs to be an external source that actualizes their potential for existing so there is still a distinction between such a being’s essence and existence. I don’t know how you understand the term “gods” but if all you mean by it is simply a contingent immaterial intelligence or consciousness then your understanding is probably close to what the Catholic would refer to as an “angel” or “demon” depending on whether its will is aligned with God’s or not.

My question is how theist God could know the current time knowing the fact it is in timeless state. This is crucial since otherwise God could not sustain the creation.

Moreover I have two other objections to theist God and I would be glad to hear your solution to it.

1. Any temporal thing has a beginning. The beginning has to happen at a certain point in which the former to this point is nonexistence and the later is existence. Theist God must act at the specific point in eternal now, yet there exist other point all of them are in eternal now which is the problem. That is one way of looking at the problem.

I don’t know what the problem is here if you assume that God is eternally present to all times. God’s act of creation is simple, eternal, and unchanging but His effects are obviously multiple and temporal. It’s like the lightbulb and string example I gave near the beginning of this thread. That we as humans cannot imagine what experiencing an eternal now is like does not mean that there is no such thing as experiencing an eternal now since it doesn’t involve any logical contradiction.

1. An eternal God has a knowledge which is infinite. Lets consider them as a series of points in which one of them is related to creation. This means that creation has not a chance to come to existence unless the acts related to all these point is executed simultaneously. This means that future is as real as past from God perspective, in simple word they all exist. We however trapped in now hence the question is that if all the other points do exist then how we only experience now. This means that there exist a constraint on all temporal beings which is imposed by God so we can only experience now which means that God has to act on time. This is contrary to the former assumption that God exist in eternal now and act simultaneously. So you cannot resolve the problem unless you argue that there exist two Gods.

This is a good question, and to be honest I don’t know what a good solution is to it at this point. It probably involves a lot of philosophy of time with which I am unfamiliar. But I don’t know why God putting a time constraint on humans means that He acts in time since imposing that constraint would just be another effect of His eternal act of creation. The constraint is probably just due to the fact that humans have corporeal bodies and incorporeal intellects, so the intellect experiences “now” (which some may argue is a type of infinity that gets close to eternity) but only one “now” at a time due to the body being essentially temporal. I doubt purely corporeal bodies like animals have a conception of or experience “now” like humans do and angels probably experience creation as a single “now” in a way that is similar to God’s.

 

[DanAl]

There is no before and after for theist/changeless God. Everything has to be done in one point, so called eternal now.

I agree, there’s no before that’s why I wrote “before” in scare quotes. And the eternal now applies to God only if you believe he’s timeless.

 

[Kurisu35712]

There is no before and after for theist/changeless God. Everything has to be done in one point, so called eternal now.

Perhaps my response ended up too long to convey the point I was intending to. Which was that “the eternal now” is not really an accurate term in reference to God. For God, existence is not an “eternal now,” is just is. The reason God can act at any point in time is not because it is “now” for Him, but because it is, and any time frame is irrelevant and inapplicable.

God does not exist within time. He is not bound by concepts such as “now” or “after” or “before.” When asked who He was by Moses, he received the response “I AM.” He is. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, just as He is the God of Moses now, and the God of St. Catherine, and the God of Pope Francis. He did not say He was the God of Abraham, because that would be inaccurate. He is. Time is not even a factor in His will and His existence. His ability to act is not confined within time. He is changeless in nature and constant because He is perfect and complete. This does not mean He cannot act. I wanted to type already perfect and complete, but even that implies that there could have been a period that He wasn’t yet. Which is untrue. To say God has always been perfect is technically not correct, because it isn’t an always/never thing. He is perfect. Not in the sense of an eternal now. Eternity is not a period of infinite time. It is a state outside of time completely. Thus God is not forever perfect so much as He is eternally perfect, outside of time, outside of change.

 

[Kurisu35712]

I agree, there’s no before that’s why I wrote “before” in scare quotes. And the eternal now applies to God only if you believe he’s timeless.

Likewise to add to Dan’s point, Bahman, you seem to be interpreting God being eternal as synonymous with God being timeless. But that isn’t correct. He isn’t timeless. He is eternal. Timelessness implies that time is still being experienced, the subject is just unaffected by it. But God is not unaffected by time. He is outside of time, above time. Time is not something that God is just immune to. It is a thing that He created, like everything else in the universe. Spacetime is an appropriate concept in understanding this. Spacetime, that is the ever-expanding space and time contained within our universe, is time. God is not confined to the material universe. He created it. Including time. None of which He is subject to, hence timeless is not accurate. Eternal, as applied to God, refers to a state above time and without time.