Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are taking
on a concept that is, well, it's just so vast,
so fundamental, it underpins, you know, the entire
structure of monotheistic thought. It really
does. We're going to be plunging into the nature
of eternity. And it sounds simple, right? When
we say it, it's just the idea that God always
was and always will be. But, and this is the
key, when philosophers and theologians start
trying to fit that infinite reality into our
finite human concepts of time, well, the contradictions
start to pop up. And they're not just minor footnotes,
are they? Oh, not at all. They become these huge
foundational structural problems. Exactly. So
our mission today is to unpack this core attribute
of God eternity, which, you know, it's always
listed right up there with omnipotence being
all powerful and omniscience being all knowing.
The big three. The big three. But the problem
is this. How we define eternity dictates everything
about how God relates to the universe. And crucially,
it determines whether those other attributes,
like being all -knowing or even relational, can
logically exist. That's the absolute core tension
we found running through all the source material.
We have to immediately set up this foundational
dichotomy that scholars like William Rowe and
Nelson Pike identified. Because we are not dealing
with a single, simple idea of existence without
end. We are dealing with two really distinct
and often totally irreconcilable realities of
what infinite existence actually means. Okay,
let's get right into it then. define those two
realities in detail for us. What is the fundamental
difference in how God relates to time itself?
So the first one, and this one has the longest
and deepest philosophical pedigree, is what's
called timelessness. Or the more technical term
is a temporality. A temporality. Right. And you
should think of this as an absolute existence
completely outside of the bounds of time. So
not just a long time. Not a long time. Not even
an infinite amount of time. It's a different
category altogether. For a truly timeless being,
the concepts we live by, past, present, and future,
they're not just irrelevant. They literally do
not apply. They just don't exist for that being.
Exactly. Exactly. They are human categories and
they're tied to succession and change. Things
a perfect being wouldn't experience. So let me
see if I get this. If God is timeless in this
sense, he is not like remembering what happened
last Tuesday. And he is certainly not waiting
around for tomorrow morning to happen. All events,
all of creation, all of history and all future
possibilities. They just are. They are all simultaneously
present to him in a single, static, unending
moment. That's a great way to put it. So there's
no succession. No, before or after in his experience
of reality. Precisely. That emphasis on a non
-successive existence is the absolute key characteristic
of timelessness. Okay. So what's the second definition?
The second definition, which is, I think, much
more intuitive for most of us, is everlastingness.
It's often called sempaternity or a more modern
term, omnitemporality. Omnitemporality. I like
that one. It's very descriptive. And this is
existence in time. Meaning God exists on our
timeline. He's on the same clock as us, just
infinite. Infinite version of it. Exactly. He
exists on the timeline, but it extends infinitely
in both directions for him. So under this view,
God has already existed for an infinite amount
of time in the past. He exists right now in the
present with us, and he will continue to exist
for an infinite amount of time into the future.
So he exists in all time dimensions. He is omnitemporal.
Yes. All of them. Past, present, and future.
And the sources are really careful to point out
there's one single point of agreement here, right?
Yes, and it's an important one. Both conceptions,
both timelessness and everlastingness, agree
that God's existence never terminates. It never
ends. Okay. The entire philosophical fight rests
completely on whether God experiences sequence,
duration, and change alongside his creation or
whether he stands utterly completely outside
of it. So is God in time or is God outside of
time? that one question and that question immediately
pulls us into some of the most famous most difficult
philosophical debates concerning god's nature
because it forces us to re -examine what it even
means to be all -knowing okay let's unpack this
this brings us to section two the philosophical
conflict what happens to god's traditional attributes
particularly on missions, if we commit to that
first definition to timelessness, this is, you
know, the battleground staked out by thinkers
like Nelson Pike, William Rowe, and Stuart Sutherland.
Right. And Nelson Pike, he kind of introduces
the challenge by asking a very pointed question.
Can God logically be both timeless and all -knowing?
So he sees an immediate contradiction there.
A potential one, yes. And he hooks this question
to the age -old philosophical problem of foreknowledge
and human freedom. This is sometimes called the
problem of fatalism. Right, the classic paradox.
If God is truly all -knowing, then he must possess
foreknowledge. So God knows right now with absolute
certainty what specific action I will take next
Tuesday at 3 p .m. That's right. And Pike argues
that if God has that total knowledge of that
future action, then that knowledge is a necessary,
eternally true fact. It has to be true. Because
God can't be wrong. God's knowledge cannot be
mistaken. So the action you will take next Tuesday
is, in reality, the only thing you can do. It's
a settled fact, almost as if it's in the past.
The past of God's knowledge anyway. Which means
my ability to choose freely to do something different
is what's severely limited. Or outright eliminated.
It's a huge problem for free will. So that knowledge.
Having been known eternally makes my future action
necessary, which basically eliminates my freedom
of choice. And that's a challenge to free will,
it seems, regardless of whether God is in time
or outside it, as long as he knows the future
perfectly. Exactly. That problem exists on its
own. But William Rowe, he introduces a fruitful
twist by linking this philosophical problem specifically
to the definition of timelessness. OK. Rowe challenges
the very coherence of a timeless, all -knowing
being. What's the mechanism of that challenge?
Why does being outside time prevent knowledge?
It feels like it should do the opposite. It does
feel that way, but Rowe points out that if God
is truly timeless and temporal, then God would
not know what a person is planning to do before
they do it. Wait, unpack that. That sounds like
just wordplay. It's not, I promise. The very
concepts of before, after, planning, and doing
rely entirely on succession. On a sequence of
events, a timeless being by definition does not
experience succession. So if I visualize the
entire timeline as like a single tapestry, God
sees the whole pattern at once, I get that. Yeah.
But if he is truly outside of sequence, how can
he know where on that tapestry I am right now?
That's the question. I always thought omniscience
meant knowing everything, including the flow
of events from beginning to end, even if he sees
it all at once. And that's where the philosophical
nuance really hits hard. The problem arises because
a key component of omniscience must be knowing
the world as it is experienced by temporal beings
like us. Okay. And we experience the world using
what philosophers call temporal indexicals. They're
words like now, yesterday, soon, and present.
And the timeless God cannot know what now means.
How could he? Because now is constantly changing.
It's a moving target. That's the crux of it.
If God is truly outside of time, he cannot say,
it is raining now. If he said that, it would
imply that that moment is somehow distinguishable
and different from the moments before and after
it in his experience. But his experience is non
-successive. It's all one moment. It's all one
moment. He would know the fact of the rain, and
he'd know the fact that humans call that period
of time now, but he couldn't genuinely know the
experience of now in a temporal sense. He can't
feel the nowness of now. That distinction between
knowing all the facts about a thing and knowing
the experience of a thing, that seems absolutely
vital here. So if I say, help me in this present
moment, and a timeless God receives that prayer,
the concept of present moment only exists for
me, the temporal being. If the recipient of my
prayer can't truly grasp the essence of present,
then our whole interaction is based on fundamentally
different realities. It's like we're speaking
different languages. And Stuart Sutherland. He
agrees with Pike's whole dichotomy, and he really
amplifies this difficulty. He argues that the
logical consequences of timelessness are, well,
severe for the concept of omniscience. How severe?
Sutherland argues that if God is timeless, there
are entire categories of temporal knowledge that
are simply inaccessible to him. Okay, tell us
what those inaccessible categories are. What
can't a timeless God know? Specifically, Sutherland
concludes that a timeless God cannot know what
is happening now, what will happen tomorrow,
or what happened yesterday. Because all of those
are relative terms. They are entirely dependent
on a temporal location relative to the observer.
If God is not located in time, those locations
are meaningless. It would be like asking a map
to tell you where you are right now without telling
the map where you started. The map has all the
data, but it doesn't know you're here and now.
Wow. Okay, if that argument holds up... It means
that the classical definition of divine perfection,
absolute timelessness, It fundamentally limits
what God can know about the sequential moment
-to -moment reality of his own creation. That
is a profound trade -off. It is. And this limitation,
ironically, it actually solves the initial problem
that Pike raised about free will. How so? Well,
if God's knowledge is non -sequential and non
-foreknowing in that deterministic sense, if
he doesn't know my tomorrow as a settled, immutable
fact, then I am truly free to choose my actions.
I see. The necessary consequence of timelessness,
not knowing the temporal now or tomorrow, eliminates
the idea of God's traditional deterministic foreknowledge.
It completely sidesteps the problem. So to save
human free will, we sacrifice a portion of omniscience
as we've traditionally understood it. Or at the
very least, we have to redefine God's knowledge
to be purely non -temporal, purely factual and
non -experiential. This is a massive theological
tradeoff. And it just highlights why that one
definition of eternity is the absolute linchpin.
It's the highest philosophical cost you can imagine.
But the discussion doesn't stop at just intellectual
coherence. We have to move into the religious
consequences, you know, the practical side of
relationship, worship, and prayer. Which brings
us into section three, the conflict of relevance.
And for this, we're using the really powerful
arguments put forward by Lawrence LeFleur in
his essay, If God Were Eternal. Right. LeFleur
takes the philosophical conclusions we just discussed,
and he applies them directly to the experience
of faith. He does. LeFleur confronts the idea
of a timeless God head on, specifically regarding
human interaction and relationality. He actually
accepts the philosophical conclusion that if
God were truly eternal, meaning timeless, he
must be entirely outside of time. He cannot participate
in succession. And this outside status for LeFleur
completely severs the link for interaction. But
why? Why is time so crucial for interaction?
Why can't a timeless God reach across the void?
Because interaction requires causality and sequence.
I mean, think about it. When we talk about God
interacting, we mean God responds to a prayer
or God intervenes in a war or God acts to heal
someone. Right. All of these verbs respond. intervenes
acts they require a change in state or a sequential
relationship they require a before the action
and an after the action of course if i pray now
i expect god to hear and then respond at some
point in my future that's a sequence a then b
exactly and if god is entirely a temporal his
nature is static and immutable he cannot in principle
change or become anything he's not subject to
succession which means he cannot enter our stream
of existence at a specific now moment to respond
to a prayer or perform an action. Why not? Because
that would imply a change in his state. He would
go from not acting to acting. That's a change.
And a timeless being can't change. So LeFleur
argues that this crucial consequence means a
timeless God cannot actively interact with humanity.
This challenges, I mean, the fundamental premise
of so many faiths, that God is actively working
in the world, intervening, listening. If God
is entirely static and intemporal, how can he
hear and respond to the pleas of a temporal being?
It implies that the phone line is dead. Or maybe
that the communication channel only works one
way from us to a static reality that just is.
Right. And Le Fleur pushes this even further,
doesn't he? Into the realm of religious significance.
He does. He argues that if God is outside time.
and cannot interact with us, cannot change, and
therefore cannot have a hand in our current fate,
then God would have no religious significance
to us. None at all. That's a huge claim. It is.
But he argues that the essential quality of a
deity relevance to the human condition, providence,
judgment, love, it's all dissolved by the timeless
definition. That is a direct attack on the foundations
of worship. He's essentially saying that a perfectly
timeless God is a perfectly irrelevant God. It
prioritizes the utility of the deity over its
philosophical perfection. And he reinforces this
with a second powerful argument, one that's directly
connected to our earlier discussion of omniscience.
LeFleur posits that if God is all -knowing and
has already conceived the entire world and all
its inhabitants, every choice, every prayer,
every response, every outcome, as a single static
reality. Then what's the point of praying? Exactly.
Then praying and worship are rendered pointless.
Because if the whole world is just a closed,
pre -written book, a fixed script that exists
simultaneously, then my petitionary prayer cannot
possibly change the sequence of events. It's
already written. Absolutely. If God's knowledge
is total and settled and his reality is non -successive,
what function does a petitionary prayer serve?
The timeless God knows your needs before you
ask, and the response is already part of the
total static reality that he observes. It's all
one seamless fact. So prayer becomes what, at
best, a form of self -contemplation, not an interactive
appeal to a responsive being. That's his argument.
So Le Fleur arrives at this very practical, almost
semantic conclusion. He suggests that when religious
people use the term eternal, what they really
mean, what they must mean, if they want God to
be active, relational, and responsive, is everlasting.
Semp Eternity. They're using one word but intending
the other definition? Yes. For Le Fleur, only
by being everlasting, existing in time alongside
us yet infinitely, can God be everything we think
of him as. both all -knowing in a sequential
sense and possessing the qualities necessary
for relationship and intervention. So for Le
Fleur, it's the only definition that maintains
religious utility and coherence with the narratives
of scripture. It is. This shifts the entire debate
from a purely academic battle over philosophical
purity to a choice based on theological functionality.
Do we prioritize God's perfect, simple, non -changing
nature, even if it makes him distant and potentially
irrelevant? It's timelessness. Right. Or do we
prioritize God's relational intervening nature,
even if it implies some form of change or succession
to the divine thought life? That's everlastingness.
That's the critical choice. And this leads us
perfectly into section four, where we can look
at how Christian theology has attempted to synthesize
these ideas, or in some cases, definitively choose
between these options, recognizing the massive
cost inherent in either decision. Okay, so first
we have to acknowledge the difficulty inherent
in looking to the foundational religious texts
themselves. The ambiguity of scripture on this
is immense. It's huge. The Bible is much less
clear than we might hope on which of the two
senses, timeless or everlasting, is actually
the true one. Scripture provides compelling data
points for both sides, which is honestly why
the debate persists. You have passages that emphasize
God's absolute immutability, his simplicity,
his transcendence, you know, I the Lord do not
change. And those all strongly support the timeless,
a temporal view. That view emphasizes God's majestic
separation from the, let's say, temporal messiness
of creation. Perfectly put. But then you have
countless narrative accounts of God reacting,
responding, even repenting using language that
seems fundamentally temporal. God speaks to Abraham
at a specific time. God regrets making Saul king
at a specific time. These are sequential events
in a story. Exactly. The fact that God interacts
with humans at a specific now moment and that
he initiates sequential covenants and actions
strongly supports the second notion. God being
in time but everlasting. Sempaternity. So the
scriptures don't provide a clean theological
answer. Not at all. which forces systematic theologians
to make a choice, usually based on which model
they find more philosophically coherent. So let's
look at that choice in the modern context. We
turn to scholars like John Feinberg, who makes
a specific, very strong case for omni -temporality,
that everlasting existence in time over strict
timelessness. Right. Feinberg, in his excellent
work No One Like Him, he acknowledges the philosophical
difficulties on both sides. He actually agrees
with William Lane Craig, who is a major proponent
of timelessness, that the biblical data is compatible
with both views, provided you interpret those
narrative passages non -literally. So you can
make the Bible fit either model if you try hard
enough. Pretty much. However, Feinberg still
finds the notion of omni -temporality simply
easier to make sense of, both logically and religiously,
than a temporal eternity. Okay, easier in terms
of logic. That means addressing the pike and
roe issue head on. How does Feinberg approach
that logic problem? So, logic first. Feinberg
finds it incredibly hard to believe that an omniscient,
supremely rational being could know everything
there is to know without being temporal in some
sense. Why? He points out that our knowledge
of actions and events is inherently tied to sequence
and succession. Right. If I know that the prayer
happened and then the healing happened, that...
and then is a temporal concept if god is timeless
he knows the prayer and the healing simultaneously
and the and then just vanishes from his perspective
correct but if the and then vanishes you lose
the essence of causation which is fundamental
to how we understand reality feinberg asserts
that in order for god to truly know reality as
it is he must in some way be aware of sequence
so if god has a thought life That thought life
must have some form of temporal sequence, even
if that sequence is vastly different and more
complex than our own. That's his conclusion.
But wait a minute. If we say God's thought life
has a temporal sequence, doesn't that imply God
is changing or learning? That seems to immediately
violate the classical definition of divine immutability.
It feels like we're heading down a risky theological
path. That is the danger. And it's a real one.
But Feinberg counters that the coherence of God's
relational dynamic outweighs that philosophical
risk. Which brings us to his second point. utility,
and relationship. Feinberg strongly believes
the concept of fellowship is dramatically easier
to understand on the omnitemporal model. Scripture
repeatedly points to God interacting with humans
at various specific successive points. Abraham,
Moses, the prophets. So if God has a temporal
sequence in his thought life, it means he can
genuinely respond to a prayer that happens now
in our present moment because he is also experiencing
a now alongside us. It makes the relational elements
of faith coherent. It allows for genuine dialogue,
reaction, and interaction, the exact religious
utility that Le Fleur argued was essential. The
omnitemporal view, while it might complicate
God's absolute simplicity, retains the essential
relational dynamic that you see all through the
sources. So, the choice is functional. Pick the
definition that makes the most sense of the biblical
narrative of God's active involvement in human
history. That's Feinberg's preference. However,
he is very quick to add a crucial theological
safety net, which we absolutely must emphasize
for you, the listener. He affirms that both the
timeless and the omnitemporal views are fully
theologically orthodox. That is a critical distinction.
This is not about heresy. Not at all. The debate
is about refining attributes, about finding the
most coherent philosophical description, not
choosing between core Christian tenets. But what
about that risk you mentioned? If omnitemporality
implies sequencing God's thoughts, doesn't that
risk the charge of heresy? It risks sliding into
a specific heresy known as process theology.
And this is where the advantage of divine timelessness,
the temporal view, becomes a really compelling
safeguard. Okay, so we have to clarify what process
theology is and why it's such a threat to classical
orthodoxy. Let's define it clearly. Process theology
suggests that God is not static, not unchanging,
not perfect in all time. Instead, it posits that
God is mutable, temporal, and actually changes
and evolves over time with the universe. So God
is the work in progress. In a sense, yes. In
this view, God is incomplete. He is constantly
realizing his full potential in relationship
with the universe. So God needs creation. To
become fully God. Precisely. And this view is
considered heretical by classical theology because
it completely challenges the doctrine of divine
immutability, God's unchangeable nature, and
divine simplicity, the idea that God is not composed
of parts or subject to change. I see. If God
is defined as purely temporal, existing in time,
and reacting in sequence, the risk of implying
changeability or imperfection in God, which is
the core claim of process theology, it increases
dramatically. So timelessness, by its very definition,
insists upon God's changeless nature and ultimate
simplicity. Those are ancient tenets of classical
theology. To be outside time is to be immutable.
It's like a doctrinal guardrail. It is a guardrail
against the worst theological outcomes of embracing
temporality, but it provides that theological
safety at a very high philosophical cost. The
cost being the loss of coherence regarding knowledge
of now and relationality, as detailed by Rowe
and LeFleur. Exactly. Now, despite these modern
preferences, we have to acknowledge the immense
weight of historical Christian thought, which
tried to achieve the ultimate synthesis, retaining
the benefits of both sides. Right. DP Walker's
research highlights this historic Christian doctrine,
which was formulated by towering figures like
Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, and Thomas Aquinas.
These thinkers were fully aware of this dichotomy.
They saw the same problems we're discussing.
They absolutely did. And they attempted to combine
the best of both worlds into a single comprehensive
definition of eternity. How on earth did they
manage to synthesize two seemingly contradictory
concepts? Static timelessness and infinite duration.
They did it by combining two notions. Non -successive
experience, that's the static atemporal element,
which ensures immutability. Okay. And infinite
duration, that's the everlasting sempiternal
element, which ensures God never ends. So God
is timeless in his experience of reality, but
everlasting in the span of that reality. Yes.
Boethius, he famously defined eternity as the
perfect simultaneous possession of unending life.
Simultaneous possession. Think of it this way,
and this is a classic analogy. If time is a line,
we are traveling. along a single point on that
line experiencing one moment after another succession
right god in this classical synthesis is not
just one coin on the line he is the infinite
circle that encompasses the entire line so we
are the travelers experiencing one second at
a time but god sees the entire journey the beginning
the middle and the end all at once exactly he's
like the center of the circle from which the
entire infinite circumference is viewed simultaneously
This classic synthesis attempts to solve the
pychro problem by saying God knows everything
simultaneously, but that everything includes
the past, present, and future sequence, which
he sees all at once without having to wait for
the future or recall the past. But wait a second.
If they combine simultaneous experience with
unending duration, doesn't that just push the
Le Fleur problem of interaction to the side?
If God is fundamentally non -successive in experience,
how is that temporal bridge ever crossed? That
is the hardest knot to untie in classical theology,
and critics like Le Fleur would argue it ultimately
fails. If God is truly static and non -successive,
then any interaction, any act of providence or
response, it must be understood as God acting
through time, but not in time. What does that
mean? It means that God wills the entirety of
the timeline, including his response to your
prayer, all at once from his timeless state.
So your prayer doesn't change God's mind, because
God doesn't change, but your prayer is part of
the sequence that he eternally willed into. being.
Ah, so that brings us right back to the foreknowledge
issue. It means my prayer is necessary and my
freedom is still compromised, even if the definition
is very elegant. It does. This just shows that
the philosophical tension isn't simply resolved
by historical consensus. It's just. It is managed
with a complex conceptual structure, but the
core issue of coherence remains. Which model
makes God's attributes and his recorded actions
most logically compatible? That's really the
question that's still on the table. Okay, let's
pull it all together. Let's synthesize for the
final time. What is the essential tension for
you, the listener, to take away from this really
complex deep dive? I think the choice is between
two profound models of existence. On one side,
you have timelessness or atemporality. This model
prioritizes God's utter perfection, his simplicity,
his immutability, and it acts as that safeguard
against theological heresy. But the cost is internal.
A huge internal cost. It creates these severe
philosophical difficulties regarding knowing
the temporal now and engaging in genuine relationship
and interaction with humanity. And then on the
other side, we have everlastingness or omni -temporality.
And this one prioritizes God's relational nature.
It makes sense of the biblical narratives of
response, interaction, and providence. But the
cost there is that it skirts dangerously close
to implying mutability or change in God, which
risks that slide toward process theology. So
we've seen the philosophical heavyweights Pike,
Rowe, Sutherland, highlighting that timelessness
undermines knowledge of now, which paradoxically
allows for human freedom. Then we saw Le Fleur
arguing that this very distance renders God religiously
irrelevant. And we noted Feinberg's theological
preference for the relational omnitemporal model,
even while he confirms that both models are completely
orthodox. It's a debate where the definition
of one single word, eternity, has these staggering
foundational implications for everything from
free will and the nature of causation to the
effectiveness of personal prayer. Absolutely.
Yeah. And if you consider Feinberg's final caveat,
that the only definitive advantage of embracing
the timeless model is avoiding the external consequence
of sliding into the heresy of process theology,
this raises a really important final question
for you to mull over or explore on your own.
It does. So what's that final provocative thought?
In other words. If the only way to protect God's
perfect nature makes God seemingly incapable
of knowing our now or responding to our pleas,
is that external benefit worth the internal cost
to our theology of relationship? So you need
to think about how you define the infinite and
what costs you're willing to accept for that
definition.