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The doctrine of God’s timelessness is now very unpopular. Several major objections have been levelled against it, and these can be summarised thus:
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1 If God is timeless, he cannot be a person.
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2 If God is timeless, his knowledge entails absurd consequences or is restricted.
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3 If God is timeless, he cannot act.
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4 If God is timeless, he cannot command our admiration or love.
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5 There is Biblical precedent for rejecting the view that God is timeless.
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6 There is no good reason for supposing that if there is a God, then he is timeless.
I think these objections are answerable, and here I propose briefly to say why.
What might be meant by the assertion ‘God is timeless’? The most detailed discussion of this question known to me is Nelson Pike’s God and Timelessness (London, 1970). And, as Pike suggests, it seems reasonable to argue as follows:
First, if God is timeless, He has no duration, i.e. He lacks temporal extension ... It is not just that the life of God lacks temporal limits: the point is that it has no temporal spread at all. Secondly, if God is timeless, God also lacks temporal location. God did not exist before Columbus discovered America nor will he exist after the turn of the century ... The point seems to be that God is not to be qualified by temporal predicates (such as, e.g. ‘six years old’) nor time-location predicates (such as, e.g. ‘before Columbus’). (pp 7 f.)
As Pike indicates, these views can be found in writers like Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, and Aquinas.
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- Copyright © 1983 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
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