Concepts of God: God does not exist in time (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by David Turell , Friday, February 26, 2021, 20:37 (1147 days ago) @ David Turell

Ed Feser on the subject eulogizing an atheist philosopher:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2021/02/smith-and-divine-eternity.html#more

"Smith begins by noting that the concept of eternity is traditionally defined in theological terms, as in Boethius’ famous characterization of it as God’s “possession all at once of unlimited life.” This “possession all at once” involves God’s existing timelessly. It’s not that God has always existed in the past and will continue to do so in the future, but rather that he exists outside of time altogether.

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"I [Feser] would add two more points. First, “simultaneous” and “duration” are temporal notions, which should already make us suspicious of this way of spelling out the notion of eternity. (To be sure, it is very hard to avoid all temporal language when speaking of eternity, which means that we need to rely heavily on the analogical use of terms and explicit negation of all of the temporal implications of univocal usage.

"Second, talk of God “seeing” different points of time all at once, though very common in discussions of eternity, is extremely misleading ... God does not know the world via anything like perception. He knows it by virtue of being its cause. In particular, he does not know what is happening in 1776 and 2021 by way of observing them. He know them because he knows himself as the cause of a world in which a series of events occurs, some of which are in 1776 and some of which are in 2021.

"(Compare: A novelist knows what happens in chapter 1 and chapter 5 of his book, not because he has read both chapters, but because he wrote both of them. Much bad thinking about God’s relation to the world in general and to time in particular results from thinking of God as if he were just one more reader of the “novel” that is the world, rather than the novel’s author.)

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"...all this talk of God having “stages” is in any event a non-starter, because it violates divine simplicity... talk of “duration” has, here too, potentially problematic temporal connotations.

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"Eternity is not endless duration, but it is more like endless duration than it is like an instant.

"The main problem Smith raises against the “tenseless instant” view is this. Suppose Washington was worshipping God one morning in 1776, but was not doing so an hour later when his attention was distracted by other matters. Then it seems that God underwent a change (i.e. from being worshipped by Washington to not being worshipped by him), and if he undergoes change, then he is in time. A traditional response to this kind of objection, which Smith considers, is that while this involves a change to Washington, it does not really involve a change to God himself, but only a change in the relations Washington bears to him. And this kind of change does not require God to exist in time.

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"Smith (or his dialogue’s character) also neglects to consider the Thomistic position that while the world bears a real relation to God, God does not bear a real relation to the world.

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"...his talk of eternity as a “standing now” also deploys a term with temporal connotations. However, the situation here is similar to the one we face when attributing things like power, goodness, knowledge, and the like to God. We are saying both that there is in God something analogous to what we call the now (or power, or goodness, or knowledge) in our case, but that it is not exactly the same thing, and that it lacks all aspects concomitant with our being changeable, corporeal, composite, and so on.

Comment: I must remind that Feser was an atheist and now a highly regarded Catholic philosopher. Time is our concept, not God's. God does not create in anticipation of watching with interest that creation in the future. As stated, 1776 is the same as 2021 to God. If this seems disjointed, it is. Read the entire long entry for completeness.