Is god in time?

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does god exist in time? my philosophy professor says he does and this strikes me as odd.
 
To the extent that God interacts with his creation, we can say that He exists in time. In His essence, God is pure spirit, and does not occupy time or space, existing outside of both.

Yet we can also say with respect to any spiritual being, that it is where it acts. So to the extent that God acts in time (as He does) we can say that he exists in time. However, he is not limited by either time or space.

If your philosophy professor is saying that God is constrained by the limits of time or space, or that He exists only and wholly within time or space, then he is wrong.
 
The previous poster is completely correct.

There are a couple ways in which one can understand God existing “in time.”

One way is the way that that the previous poster outlined. By virtue of who we are, existing as we are within time, God can be said to exist in time, also, as if he were to relate to us on terms we can understand and accept. God reveals Himself in time.

The other way, which the previous poster warned against, is to say that God exists within the constraints of time. Or that, when we say that God is “eternal,” that he is stretched out indefinitely throughout all time, as if to say, there was a “time” before the world was created. (note the problem when answering the question, “What was God doing before He created the world?”)

However, how I understand it and what makes most sense to me, is that God, through His creation, has created time as part of the world in which we live. We are incapable, cognitively, to fully understand a realm without time. But as St. Augustine wrote about in his Confessions, we must not try to imagine a God who exists somewhere and sometime in what we believe to be reality. The reality which God possesses, which is inherent in his being, does not require time to exist.
 
Rather than God being in time, time is in God. Peter Kreeft has some good ideas about this.
 
I was listening to a talk given by Fr Robert Altier on this just yesterday. Essentially, to God:

The rebellion of the Angels is happening NOW
Creation is happening NOW
Jesus is being made man NOW
The Crfucifixion is happening NOW
The second coming is happening NOW
We are all in Heaven - or Hell - NOW
 
Thanks for the help, everyone!

My teacher is an atheist. He grew up Jewish, but is non-practicing, a more common trend I am finding among Jews. He gave me an argument and it goes like this:
God exists in temporal relation or God doesn’t
If God exists in temporal relation, he’s in time
If God exists in temporal relation to a temporal world, time is not real
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God acts in time
If you act in time, you’re in time
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These are also some of the notes he’s given in class entitled: FEATURES OF GOD
FEATURE #1: Omnibenevolence
1.) God is all-good. God thus has two features.
a. All of his motives are good
b. All of his acts are right
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FEATURE #2: Omnipotence
1.) God is all-powerful
2.) By this, we mean that God is able to do anything that is logically possible to do
a. The inability to do impossible tasks is not a restriction on God’s power. (i.e., the paradox of the stone too big for God to lift)
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FEATURE #3: Omniscience
1.) God is all-knowing. This has two parts to it
a. God knows all truths
b. God does not believe in any false propositions
2.) Note the relation of omniscience to human free will.
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FEATURE #4: God is eternal
1.) God does not begin or cease to exist
2.) It is logically necessary that God neither begins nor ceases to exist.
a. This does not assume that God exists because his neither beginning nor ceasing to exist is consistent with his existing and with his never existing
b. If it is logically possible for anything to create or destroy God, then there is a more powerful and hence more perfect being than God. Hence, it is logically impossible for anything to create or destroy God. However, if God’s existence were contingent, then it would be possible for something to create or destroy him. Hence, he is necessarily eternal
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FEATURE #5: God is holy
1.) God is the being who is most worthy of being worshipped, honored, and obeyed
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Here’s my problem with his argument. He says God is eternal, but asserts God exists only in time and is in temporal relation. He has in his notes that God is all-powerful and omnipotent, but in class he said God must be confined in time. If he wants to say God is confined in time, how can he claim that God is all-knowing and all-powerful? This teacher is making no sense to me. He claims that the idea that God is outside of time and space, what I claimed in class, is ridiculous and illogical and that no serious philosopher or metaphysician holds those views seriously, but the only thing I find illogical are his claims, and I’m nothing more than a college student. What are all your thoughts on this?

Who is this Peter Kreeft by the way? If anyone has any links concerning with God and His relation to time, I’d really love to read up on it.
 
Ooops, it wa actually Fr Larry Richards folks.

It was a talk he gave at the Young Adults Conference at Steubenville Franciscan University.

This priest ROCKS!!! If I find the link I will post it.
 
God is eternal, no beginning or end. He created the heavens and earth and us in it (it meaning our universe). God also created our concept of time. Then we are limited to this world, not God, because He created it.

How can we limit God to our own existential plane? God is the timeless being.

God as creator is fully aware of all events past, present, and future. These events are temporal; however Hugh McCann suggests that God’s awareness is eternal. It’s unified and unchanging.

Philosophy of Religion is deep.👍

Oh, I almost forgot God is definitely: OUT OF TIME

Interesting reads:
Stephen Davis “Temoral Eternity”
Hugh J. McCann: “The God Beyond Time”
 
For an atheist, your professor seems to take an inordinate interest in the attributes of God. He seems also to be a materialist. The concept of eternity has nothing to do with time; the idea that God exists outside of time is certainly not illogical. Although he might take umbrage at the title, I would perhaps recommend Frank Sheed’s Theology For Beginners for his perusal.
 
Juno Star Lighter,

God does not exist in time any more than an author exists inside a book he has written. God created time and is not constrained by it at all.
  • Liberian
 
I don’t understand what it would mean for God to have a mind, and yet not exist in some timeline, even if he didn’t exist in ours. And if God doesn’t have a mind that is essentially like ours (though vastly superior), that is if it isn’t constituted by a linier progression of thoughts, I don’t know what it means for it to be true that “God exists”. “Mind” and the words referring to its attributes and states are words that we use to refer to ourselves, after all. To propose that God exists seems at least to propose that the origin of everything else is a thinking thing, as opposed to a non-thinking thing, which seems to define the atheist position (at least for those atheists who grant the universe has not always existed). Jewish, Christian, and Muslim accounts of God all ascribe psychological characteristics to him. He is supposed to have goals, desires, and beliefs. If such accounts are mere metaphors, then what distinguishes the atheist from the theist? For surely an atheist would grant that we CAN use all sorts of metaphors when talking about nature or the origin of nature, whatever that may be. I wonder if theists, such as Catholics, who are adamant that God exists outside of time would accept a conception of him merely being outside of OUR time. Perhaps he can “walk around” our universe rather as if it were a 4-dimensional sculpture housed within the temporal and perhaps spatial dimensions that also house God.

If God must be outside of ALL time, I have no idea what theists mean by “God”, for all personal attributes ascribed to him must then be understood as mere metaphors. Could the conflict between atheism and theism really come down to that?

Perhaps advocates of a specific religion could define “God” as the origin of not only nature, but of particular paranormal events that are themselves suggestive of mentality, though in fact God has no mentality. To “believe in God” is merely to believe in these paranormal events and behave AS IF they reflected the will of a being with a mind. Would that be adequate? (I rather suspect it wont’ be. J )

Michael
 
Yes, God exists outside of all time.

To exist in time is ultimately to possess one’s being as a succession of events. Because we exist in time, we possess only a slice of our existence at a time. Other parts of our worldline are past or future.

For God to exist in such a way would mean that he couldn’t be God, since God at this moment, would posses some fulfillment of his being that he didn’t possess at that moment.

But God possesses all of his being in the eternal now.

To him, all events—past, present, future—are now. They are like dots laid out on a line, of which he sees the entirety at once.

This is not a detriment to mind, but rather its apex.

Once again, I recommend Frank Sheed.
 
JimG said:
For an atheist, your professor seems to take an inordinate interest in the attributes of God. He seems also to be a materialist. The concept of eternity has nothing to do with time; the idea that God exists outside of time is certainly not illogical. Although he might take umbrage at the title, I would perhaps recommend Frank Sheed’s Theology For Beginners for his perusal.
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I think the only reason he takes an interest in the attributes of God is because he gets a sick childlike humor in tearing down a theist. Because he is a proud self-proclaimed atheist, I would say he’s a materialist. He also rejects libretarian free will and holds to some form of determinism. I don’t know if he believes in soft determinism or hard determinism, but I would make an educated guess from some of his lectures that he is a hard determinist because he seems to deny the existence of moral responsibility.

I’ve seen Frank Sheed’s book in a Catholic bookstore near my house and I’ve it as part of the texts for some theology classes. Can you give me just a brief review/your thoughts on it?
 
MichaelLewis said:
What then is a mind? Is it not a THINKING thing by definition?

Michael
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I would say that mind (or intellect) is that faculty of a rational being by which enables one to know.

For human minds, it involves the ability to pull the matter out of the material, thereby forming ideas, which are internal, non-material representations of external reality. A philosopher might call this process abstraction.

But the human mind (although I consider it to be non-material) is limited by the fact that the sensory (name removed by moderator)ut which is subject to abstraction, comes to it in a linear minute by minute fashion. Consequently our mind works “in” time.

The divine mind, which is identical to the divine essence, does not work by means of sensory (name removed by moderator)ut. All things which are knowable are known immediately and simultaneously by God. (This includes God’s knowledge of Himself, which the gospel of John calls the divine Word.)
 
junostarlighter said:
I don’t know if he believes in soft determinism or hard determinism, but I would make an educated guess from some of his lectures that he is a hard determinist because he seems to deny the existence of moral responsibility.
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And logically so. I’m not familiar with the terms “hard” or “soft” determinism, but determinism of any sort, it seems to me, makes all human action ultimately the result of material forces acting on us. Our actions then, are solely determined by the (name removed by moderator)ut, negating free will and moral responsibility.

Indeed, he should not be grading the course, since in a materialistic world, students have no control over their actions or their mastery of any given subject. It’s all (name removed by moderator)ut and output.
 
JimG said:
I would say that mind (or intellect) is that faculty of a rational being by which enables one to know.

For human minds, it involves the ability to pull the matter out of the material, thereby forming ideas, which are internal, non-material representations of external reality. A philosopher might call this process abstraction.

But the human mind (although I consider it to be non-material) is limited by the fact that the sensory (name removed by moderator)ut which is subject to abstraction, comes to it in a linear minute by minute fashion. Consequently our mind works “in” time.

The divine mind, which is identical to the divine essence, does not work by means of sensory (name removed by moderator)ut. All things which are knowable are known immediately and simultaneously by God. (This includes God’s knowledge of Himself, which the gospel of John calls the divine Word.)
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But you use words such as “know” and “rational” as if they had a meaning to humans that is independent of their own experience with knowing things and being rational. If I am rational, my thoughts are rational. If I know something, I have justified a true belief that I would not have if it were not true. If I believe something I have thought about it or at least I have a disposition to think that it is true. Do you really claim to understand how such words can be applied to something outside of time? What does it mean for something that doesn’t think to know something or to be rational?

Is your position just that there is some interpretation of the words ‘know’ and ‘rational’ such that it would be true to apply them to what you call “God”? Is it important for Catholics to understand what that interpretation is? Can a Catholic merely use those words in that way, believe that that is a good thing to do, and believe that they make sense to someone more educated then herself?

Michael
 
JimG said:
And logically so. I’m not familiar with the terms “hard” or “soft” determinism, but determinism of any sort, it seems to me, makes all human action ultimately the result of material forces acting on us. Our actions then, are solely determined by the (name removed by moderator)ut, negating free will and moral responsibility.

Indeed, he should not be grading the course, since in a materialistic world, students have no control over their actions or their mastery of any given subject. It’s all (name removed by moderator)ut and output.
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If the professor in question is a soft determinist or compatibilist, he believes that moral responsibility and determinism are compatible, but even if he were a hard determinist, he could consistently affirm that negative and positive sanctions do influence behavior and that we are better off holding people responsible so long as the consequences of doing so are good.

Those who think that libertarian-style free will is more attractive and/or plausible than compatibilist-style free will ought to ask themselves exactly what the difference between a free action and a random event is. I’ve never seen a coherent, non-question begging distinction between the two.
 
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