Verb Tense for Actions Outside of Time

  • Thread starter Thread starter Neil_Anthony
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
N

Neil_Anthony

Guest
When we discuss God doing an action from outside time, we are often stuck with using past tense or present tense when really God’s actions are not past, present or future, they are all of them and none of them.

Is there a philosophical term or a special tense that can be used for such discussions?
 
(with respect to Douglas Adams – and to be serious for a moment, the short answer is no)

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can’t cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner’s Time Traveler’s Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term “Future Perfect” has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.

To resume:

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the history of catering.

It is built on the fragmented remains of an eventually ruined planet which is (wioll haven be) enclosed in a vast time bubble and projected forward in time to the precise moment of the End of the Universe.

This is, many would say, impossible.

In it, guests take (willan on-take) their places at table and eat (willan on-eat) sumptous meals while watching (willing watchen) the whole of creation explode around them.

This, many would say, is equally impossible.

You can arrive (mayan arrivan on-when) for any sitting you like without prior (late fore-when) reservation because you can book retrospectively, as it were, when you return to your own time (you can have on-book haventa forewhen presooning returningwenta retrohome).

This is, many would not insist, absolutely impossible.

At the restaurant you can meet and dine with (mayan meetan con with dinan on when) a fascinating cross-section of the entire population of space and time.

This, it can be explained patiently, is also impossible.

You can visit it as many times as you like (mayan on-visit re-onvisiting… and so on - for further tense correction consult Dr. Streetmentioner’s book) and be sure of never meeting yourself, because of the embarrassment this usually causes.

This, even if the rest were true, which it isn’t, is patently impossible, say the doubters.

All you have to do is deposit one penny in a savings account in your own era, and when you arrive at the End of Time the operations of compound interest means that the fabulous cost of your meal has been paid for.

This, many claim, is not merely impossible but clearly insane, which is why the advertising executives of the star system of Bastablon came up with this slogan: “If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?”
 
[Edited by Moderator]

Lucky for us, since God is outside of time, He only needs one tense (I think…)

🙂
 
Let’s create one: the eternal perfect progressive tense.

Instead of saying, “God loves us” or “God loved us”, we can say, “God lovingedes us.”

😛

Peace,
Dante
 
When we discuss God doing an action from outside time, we are often stuck with using past tense or present tense when really God’s actions are not past, present or future, they are all of them and none of them.

Is there a philosophical term or a special tense that can be used for such discussions?
Are you thinking of the concept that God is in the eternal now?
That means everything He does is both past, present and future, which theologians have described as the eternal now because everything is in the now with God. It’s a mind boggling concept. 🙂
 
When we discuss God doing an action from outside time, we are often stuck with using past tense or present tense when really God’s actions are not past, present or future, they are all of them and none of them.

Is there a philosophical term or a special tense that can be used for such discussions?
There is the Greek Aorist tense…
 
There is the Greek Aorist tense…
I’m no Greek scholar, but I don’t think the aorist really covers it. Human languages have never developed such a tense, since we are incapable of perceiving time in the same way that God does (or doesinged :D). I think the present tense is the closest we can get. For example, “for God so loves the world that he sends His only begotten Son,” etc.
 
When we discuss God doing an action from outside time, we are often stuck with using past tense or present tense when really God’s actions are not past, present or future, they are all of them and none of them.
that really makes no sense at all. the term ‘action’ itself requires a sequence. sequence requires the passage of time.

instead of reinventing god, why dont you just stick with bible examples…refering to god’s actions in the past tense. :rolleyes:

“…for God so* loved *the world that he gave his only begotten son…”
 
Are you thinking of the concept that God is in the eternal now?
That means everything He does is both past, present and future, which theologians have described as the eternal now because everything is in the now with God. It’s a mind boggling concept. 🙂
Mind boggling, yes. But describing action in the eternal now shouldn’t be. Since for God all time is now, just use the present tense. For instance, similar to how another poster put it, God so **loves **the world, that he **sends **his only begotten Son, that we may believe in Him and live.
 
that really makes no sense at all. the term 'action’ itself requires a sequence. sequence requires the passage of time.
Where are you getting this from? Is there a rule book you are quoting. or are these only your assumptions?

An eternal act requires no sequence, as it is without beginning or end.

Not all sequences require time. You can have a sequence of bowling balls, and their arrangement is independent of time. However, they are still in sequence. Here’s dictionary.com:
se·quence http://cache.lexico.com/g/d/premium.gif http://cache.lexico.com/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.pngcache.lexico.com/g/d/speaker.gif /ˈsihttp://cache.lexico.com/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.pngkwəns/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciationsee-kwuhhttp://cache.lexico.com/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.pngns] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -quenced, -quenc·ing. –noun 1.the following of one thing after another; succession. 2.order of succession: a list of books in alphabetical sequence. 3.a continuous or connected series: a sonnet sequence. 4.something that follows; a subsequent event; result; consequence. 5.Music. a melodic or harmonic pattern repeated three or more times at different pitches with or without modulation. 6.Liturgy. a hymn sometimes sung after the gradual and before the gospel; prose. 7.Movies. a series of related scenes or shots, as those taking place in one locale or at one time, that make up one episode of the film narrative. 8.Cards. a series of three or more cards following one another in order of value, esp. of the same suit. 9.Genetics. the linear order of monomers in a polymer, as nucleotides in DNA or amino acids in a protein. 10.Mathematics. a set whose elements have an order similar to that of the positive integers; a map from the positive integers to a given set. –verb (used with object) 11.to place in a sequence. 12.Biochemistry. to determine the order of (chemical units in a polymer chain), esp. nucleotides in DNA or RNA or amino acids in a protein.
[Origin: 1350–1400; ME < LL *sequentia,
equiv. to sequ- (s. of sequī to follow) + -entia -encehttp://cache.lexico.com/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.png]

—Synonyms 1. See series. 2. arrangement. 4. outcome, sequel.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

The consequences of Time ant Sequence are related, but not necessarily.
 
Interestingly, I happened upon the following sentence in a blog today:
…and then ponder. The Incarnation did not happen only once. It happens every day. Jesus comes. Time is a construct. Even now, as you read this, the star is being followed; the angels are heralding, and God kisses creation and feeds it with a new food.
“Time is a construct.” Very true. Unfortunately for us, language is also a construct, and an imperfect one. To avoid confusion, it’s probably best to go on using past and future tenses when referring to God’s actions; but at the same time I believe we must not fall into the trap of thinking that God is limited as we are by the constraints of Time. 🙂
 
common sense.
right. just like it was common sense that the sun revolves around the earth, and that the earth is flat, and that mice are spontaneously generated from dust and cloth, and that larger objects fall faster than smaller objects, and…

almost nothing about the fundaments of the physical world operates according to what you’re calling “common sense” - so why do you think concepts like “time” or “action” are resistant to similar analysis?

besides, what counts as common sense is contextual: what’s common for me as a theoretical physicist is not common to the lay person…and as someone who has studied the nature of time and action, i can tell you that what’s common sensical to you is not common sensical to me and the thinkers whose thought i’ve studied.

open your mind.
AgnsoTheist:
IN the bible, God referred to his own actions in the past tense.
right. so then there must also be a god, right? or else who was doing the talking…
 
Mind boggling, yes. But describing action in the eternal now shouldn’t be. Since for God all time is now, just use the present tense. For instance, similar to how another poster put it, God so **loves **the world, that he **sends **his only begotten Son, that we may believe in Him and live.
I agree that present tense is probably the most accurate, but it is still not correct. Sometimes you need to be really precise.

In the beginning, God **created **the heavens and the earth.
In the beginning, God **creates **the heavens and the earth.
In the beginning, God **will create **the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning, God **creatingedes **the heavens and the earth.

How about

In the beginning, God **createo **the heavens and the earth.

I think this tense would be helpful in discussing creation in the creation vs. evolution debates.
 
I haven’t heard of this, is it used in the bible to refer to God’s actions?
It’s used frequently in the Greek language to describe actions that are independent of time in moods besides the indicative. That is a lousy way of putting it and I suggest you search the internet on it, which would give you a better answer than I can presently, as I gotta go but I didn’t want you to feel I was ignoring you either.🙂
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top