Abstract
If God does not change, can He be really related to creatures? It is argued that objectively true—and, in this sense, real—relations between God and creation obtain, without thereby affecting the nature of God. Then, the relationship between God and time as such is addressed: God does not need to be subject to the passage of time in order to have full knowledge of the temporal world. Long-debated problems such as the dilemma of foreknowledge and freedom, as well as Kretzmann’s dilemma of whether God can know what time it is, are shown to simply dissolve given the absence of a global passage of time. Furthermore, it is shown that the notion that God changes the local past is contradictory.
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- 1.
“A new look at the immutability of God”, in R. J. Roth (ed.) God Knowable and Unknowable (1973), here p. 45.
- 2.
“Die Unveränderlichkeit Gottes erzwang weiter die Konsequenz, dass alle Veränderung im Verhältnis des Menschen zu Gott nicht von Gott, sondern nur vom Menschen ausgehen kann … Ihretwegen meinte Descartes alle Veränderungen in der Natur ausschließlich auf geschöpfliche Ursachen zurückführen zu müssen, weil jeder Eingriff Gottes in die einmal geschaffene Welt unvereinbar wäre mit seiner Unveränderlichkeit.” Systematische Theologie, vol. I (1988), p. 472.
- 3.
God, Time, and Eternity (2001), pp. 67–68.
- 4.
As cited according to L. Schütz, Thomas-Lexikon, 2nd edn (1895), p. 701: “relationes, quae consequuntur operationem intellectus, sunt relationes rationis, th. I. 28. 1 ob. 4; cum fundentur super aliquid, quod vere in re est … sunt reales relationes, habentes esse fundatum in natura rei, 1 sent. 33. 1. 1 c.”
- 5.
Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 13, art. 7.
- 6.
As Clarke puts it: “Perhaps all that people finally mean when they ask whether God is ‘really related’ to them is whether He is truly related to them. And the answer … would be a resounding ‘Yes’.” Clarke (1973), p. 59.
- 7.
A. Padgett, God, Eternity, and the Nature of Time (1992), ch. 4.
- 8.
God, Time, and Eternity, p. 60.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 108.
- 10.
See Sect. 3.1.2 for the definition of this relation.
- 11.
This is not to say that a conscious observer is necessarily involved in such a calculation, since temporal measurement can also be carried out by machines.
- 12.
Time in Eternity (2012), chs. 4 and 5.
- 13.
See Sect. 4.3.
- 14.
See, for example, C. H. Pinnock, R. Rice, J. Sanders, W. Hasker, D. Basinger, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (1994).
- 15.
Clarke (1973), pp. 63–64, emphases in the original. This point was also made by Boethius: “His [God’s] knowledge … in its simple cognition beholds all things as happening now. Therefore, if you would like to consider the presence by which it discerns everything, you will more rightly estimate it, not as foreknowledge of, so to speak, ‘the future’ but as knowledge of a never ceasing instant.”
In the original: “scientia eius … omnia quasi iam gerantur in sua simplici cognitione considerat. Itaque si praesentiam pensare velis qua cuncta dinoscit, non esse praescientiam quasi futuri sed scientiam numquam deficientis instantiae rectius aestimabis.” Consolatio philosophiae V, P6, 60–68.
- 16.
Cf. Boethius op. cit. V, P. 4, 56–60, and V, P. 6, 91–102. In the latter passage, Boethius distinguishes between the “necessitas simplex” and the “necessitas condicionis”, a distinction which later became known as that between the necessitas consequentis and the necessitas consequentiae .
- 17.
This problem would need to be discussed in the context of the much larger issue of contingency and the principle of sufficient reason, which is beyond the scope of this book. However, for some in my view insightful reflections on free choice and divine causality in conscious agents, cf. Clarke (1973), pp. 67–70.
- 18.
Ethica Nicomachea, 1139b, 6–11.
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Saudek, D. (2020). God’s Relations to Temporal Being. In: Change, the Arrow of Time, and Divine Eternity in Light of Relativity Theory. Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38411-1_13
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