God, time, free will

[CatholicSoxFan]

I’ve been thinking quite a lot lately about whether God is temporal or timeless, whether the A- or B- theory of time is true, and how to solve the omniscience/free will problem, and I’ve been continually frustrated, because it seems that any way I try to answer these questions, I seem to fall into one or more of these “pitfalls”:

1. A B-theory of time which seems to contradict the de fide doctrine of creation out of nothing; it would make the temporal becoming of the universe just something that is true from our perspective, not something that actually happened. Or at least you’d have to put it into the realm of mystery, kind of like the doctrine of middle knowledge, where you put “logical moments” between God existing alone and God existing with the universe, even though there is no real temporal relation between the two.
2. I existed in some sense before I was conceived, which contradicts de fide Catholic doctrine.
3. Our souls are in some kind of “hypertime”, in which temporal becoming is real, which transcends the time our universe is in, in which it isn’t; however, this seems to bring up some problems with how our soul and body can be united.
4. Propositions about what will happen at a certain time are not true until they happen, and God doesn’t know them until they happen; this makes prophecy impossible.
5. God is timeless under the A-theory of time; this seems problematic, because AFAIK, there’s no conceptually coherent way to explain how God could interact with an A-theory of time unless He Himself is in time; it seems similar to the interaction problem under substance dualism in some way; there has to be some kind of “bridge” between God and time in order for God to interact with time.

The best idea I’ve been able to come up with is that there is a kind of “hypertime”, another dimension of time, where God is, and from which He actualizes all time at once (so logically prior to God’s creating the universe, none of the history of it was real, and from then on, everything in the history of the universe is real); however, this still falls into pitfall 2, and my way of trying to make it not make it fall into pitfall 2 made it fall into pitfall 3.

How do you try to solve these problems in a coherent way that doesn’t fall into one of these pitfalls? If it does fall into one of these pitfalls, how is it not a problem?

 

[zippy2006]

…and how to solve the omniscience/free will problem, and I’ve been continually frustrated, because it seems that any way I try to answer these questions…

Why does a Boethian solution fail?

1. God is timeless under the A-theory of time; this seems problematic, because AFAIK, there’s no conceptually coherent way to explain how God could interact with an A-theory of time unless He Himself is in time; it seems similar to the interaction problem under substance dualism in some way; there has to be some kind of “bridge” between God and time in order for God to interact with time.

I don’t find this objection convincing. If I create a (man-made) lake, I can enter and leave the lake at will. I am not bound by the lake, I am not confined to it, and I am not barred from entering it. The manner in which I exist does not imply any restrictions of this sort. Similarly, “atemporal” does not mean that one could never participate in the temporal realm. I simply don’t see why folks make such a big deal of this. Parallel questions in Christology are addressed all the time (e.g. mortality, materiality, passability, etc.).