Evangelical Outpost has joined a debate I've been having on intermediate state debate (cf. my contribution to that discussion here). The views on the table were cessation of existence and then resurrection, an intermediate state of complete consciousness, and my own tentative suggestion that there's a conscious intermediate state but not fully conscious and not involving much of what we normally consider to go along with our conscious states now. Since it was mostly scriptural interpretation, I was keeping it at my own blog, but now that it's philosophical I'm cross-posting it at Prosblogion.
Joe says that he's surprised not to see a fourth view, that we simply cease to exist in time but don't cease to exist altogether. We live in time until we die, and then we leave time to go be with God in eternity, a timeless existence. He says he doesn't think his view conflicts with Christian scripture. I agree that his view need not conflict with scripture, but I don't think it can make any sense philosophically without conflicting with one of the most crucial Christian beliefs about God's creation of the universe.
I don't think any scripture says anything clear about this in any direct way, but the view he seems to be advocating, in its strict literal interpretation, doesn't make sense philosophically. I do want to point out that a number of theologians have said things like this, so Joe is in good company, but the view doesn't hold up philosophically.
Craig's view, as he usually states it, is that God was timeless and then entered time after creating it. This makes absolutely no sense. How can God be not at any time and then become at a time. The succession in that sentence seems to move from one time to another. At one time God is not at a time, and then at a later time God is in time. I can't see any way to make sense of that if it's taken in the way sentences like that are normally taken.
Craig is aware of this problem with the most straightforward interpretation of the way he usually words his view. When he's being more careful, he describes atemporality or eternity as a point dimension of time. There's the temporal order, which is a timeline from start and going forever without end. Then there's the atemporal dimension, which is a point, and that point is related to all time because God in that atemporal point dimension is simultaneous with the whole timeline. Apart from time, therefore, God is timeless. At the beginning of time, which causally stems from God's timeless existence and timeless act of creation, God is also in time. This is the more careful view. So God is both in time and apart from time, because God is in both realms.
I think there are still problems here, because Craig's claim now seems to me to be completely trivial. God is in time with respect to time and atemporal without time. Every time I think about that sentence I get lost in what significance it's supposed to have. I'm spatial with respect to space but not spatial when you ignore my spatial aspects. It's not Craig I'm interested in here, though, so let's get back to Joe's view.
Joe isn't saying that God was outside time and then entered it. He's saying that we're in time and then leave it. It amounts to the same thing in terms of the issue I raised above. It doesn't make any sense to say that at one time someone is in time and then at a later time is not in time. That's what Joe's view amounts to. How can it be later if it's not later but rather outside time? So what is it supposed to mean that you leave time?
Here is a view that makes more sense. We are in time until we die, and then we cease to exist in time. Later on, we will be recreated, and thus in time we are gappy beings. There's an interval in time between when we exist and when we exist again. Then you add to that a parallel time dimension that's not a line but a point. We're in that time dimension too. That's eternity.
Of course, if you hold this view then we're timeless with God and we exist apart from creation. Joe wanted to avoid a view that conflicts with Christian scripture, and this seems to have us with God apart from creation. I can't say "before creation" because nothing is before creation, but we're present in our timeless state apart from the temporal realm and thus there as God acts atemporally to create. Still, this makes more sense philosophically than the idea that we somehow are in time and then at a later time are not in time. That's self-contradictory.
Think about the creation of the universe as not happening in the past but in the present moment. The past and future eminate from this moment----now-----like ripples in a pond. The intermediate state resides here and/or is the source of being. That which is before our birth and continues past physical death is always here.
The Creation story is always ongoing then.....its now.....now......now.....
Meister Eckart said you have to get past any preconceived ideas you have of what religion and God is to find the true GOD. Smart man!
TIME AND GOD
This present blog is fascinating .
I'm a newcomer to this blog, but I'd like to comment .
The notion that God is Timeless and the concurrent notion that Time is something inferior or unspiritual is a false notion . It is a notion incompatible, moreover incompatibe with the conceptual framework of the Judeao-Christian Bible .
It is apparently Augustine of Hippo that has polluted the mindset of much of the Western Christian world with the notion that Time is contrary to God . Much of Calvinism has also propagated that error . The book of Daniel does NOT hesitate to ascribe Time to God The Creator the title : 'Ancient of Days' . (Some might call that title a figurative hyperbole--but why consider it figurative? ) .
It is interesting to note that though Genesis mentions the creation of heavens and Earth it does NOT say that time was created at one point in time . Consider that Time is a perpetual creation of God--that God has always been creating Time . As to what God was doing withn Time before this present universe in which we live was created , I don't presume to know--and it would be presumptuous to say. However, given the premise that the intrinsic attributes of God have always existed --it follows that the attribute of Creativeness has always existed . It , furthermore, makes little sense to think that attribute of Creativeness lay dormant and then was at once instantiated . And whenever you have Activity of any sort --whenever you have befores and afters you have sopme sort of Time .
The Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel wrote, "a world without Time would be a world without God" . He was aware of the essential sacredness and numinousness of Time. Man of course has corrupted much of the experiental aspect of Time with his fast living/fast talking/fast living paradigm . Yet Time itself is NOT intrinsically corrupt .
It is interesting that St.Paul in one of his epistles wrote of 'redeeming the Time because, the days are evil' during the era he had lived. It would have been good if he had elaborated on that in the epistle. Perhaps he himself only had the beginning intuition of a deeper conceptual pattern that could have been developed more fully .
It makes sense to speak of God as experiencing Time, but experiencing a more amplified form of Time :an omni-time where all possible Timelines including some which are less fully existent --or less fully ontologically stable--are laid out for Him . This I believe is what is meant by the Insight of the book of Isaiah, that He knows the end of a thing from the beginning .
There is an astounding verse in Matthew 18:18 where Jesus tells his disciples, ' what you bind on Earth is bound in heaven, what you loose on Earth is loosed in heaven' . That apparently alludes to another dimension of Time, then the one we normally experience.' . It might be asked, what sorts of items are bound in heaven before being loosed by the actions of the discples on Earth ? Can the disciples by loosing an item on Earth and thus loosing it in heaven, later bind that same item that was loosed back up at a later time ?
As for the matter of whether the mind of a person leaves Time in the afterlife or not, the notion --as you point out-- of the person leaving time makes little sense. It makes more sense to suppose that they experience perhaps other dimensions of Time .
I would have thought the title Ancient of Days to be one of the better ways to try to communicate the notion of timelessness to those who don't have the conceptual framework to deal with this kind of philosophical distinction. Many of the biblical statements that seem literally to support a temporal God can be seen that way.
I'm not sure why believing in an atemporal God requires believing that time is inferior or unspiritual. That doesn't seem to me to come even close to following from divine atemporality.
Paul makes an ethical claim. He says that we're living in a period of time when we need to make the most of every opportunity, because we'll never know how much time we have left. Taking that as some sort of ontological statement seems to me to be at the height of interpretive fallacies.
The Isaiah quote makes much more sense in its plain meaning than anything involving multiple dimensions of time, something Isaiah would certainly not have had the conceptual framework to have in mind. God knows the end from the beginning. He knows the entire run of things, from beginning to end. That's perfectly consistent with being atemporal, and indeed that makes great sense of things. This is simply a statement about God's knowledge of things from their beginning to their end.
I'm having trouble understanding how the Matthew statement has to do with time. It's about authority granted to Jesus' disciples to do something that has spiritual significance. I'm not seeing anything about temporal dimensions there. If you want to take it literally (which probably isn't what Jesus intended anyway), then you can see it as spiritual forces that come to bear on things in the natural world, and Jesus grants his disciples the ability to unbind those spiritual forces on the natural things. This has absolutely nothing to do with things existing in the spiritual world that correspond to things in the natural world but aren't identical with them. The assumption is that it's the same thing that has a spiritual significance and a physical being. Even if you did think of it as duplicates in different realms, it wouldn't show that one of those realms is in a different time dimension.
Dear Mr.Pierce ,
How would the author of the book of Daniel convey the notion of supposed Divine Timelessness by means of an expression that is characteristic of that which has been around a long time (e.g.the adjective 'ancient') ?
That would be like unto trying to convey the notion of that which has NO spatial size (that which is neither large nor small) , by using the ajective 'vast or 'big' .
If God was timeless-- existing in static permanent now (what some theologians have called a nunc stans) He would NOT be rightly described as ancient as in the book of Daniel's 'Ancient Of Days '--he would be neither young nor old .
Of course I believe God's essence is timeless--like principles and axioms of logic anfd geometry are--yet the best case can be for His Experience experiencing Time --though Time of an amplified sort (i.e.omni-time) .
As for a disparagement of Time coming from the belief that God is Timeless, much of the conceptualization of God as timeless, apparently is predicated on the notion that Time is somehow a limitation incompatible with the Transcendence of God, that time is somehow a limitation that characterizes creatures whose faculties of thought are somehow inferior. It is that premise that time is a milleu characteristic of beings who have flawed cognition is a misleading premise that is often incorporated in a rather murky theology --regarding the role of time .
As for the reference to St. Paul in one of the epistles to 'redeeming the Time because the days are evil'--it could be that what you argue for is what he meant. That alternate interpretation is plausible . Yet it is somewhat possible that Paul may have had some watered down version of the esoteric Jewish notion of tikkun . Tikkun is a concept within Judaism, that maintains there are emanations of God that are scatterred into the phenomenonal world and it is the duty of man to help God in redeeming them . Granted Paul-- IF he had such a conception in mind did NOT develop it much as a theological theme within the epistles . Yet it is possible he may have had some vestige of this belief . According to esoteric Judaism there is a tikkun for some physical objects including plants and animals and even a tikkun for dreams (according to some) .
How do we know that it is so historically unlikely that the prophet Isaiah would have NOT have had the conceptual framework when he wrote (or said) that God "knows the end of a thing from the beginning"--? It has been claimed by some that ancient Old Testament Judaism did not have a greatly abstract ontology--but do we know that is the case. Granted the burden of proof would be on the person who argues they did, however, it is interesting to note that I recall reading that one early Christian church father (Justin Martyr--if I recall rightly) believed that the ancient Greeks borrowed much learning of abstract ontology from a tradition that allegedly went back to Moses. Usually, the claim is made by historians that the Israelites got the abstract ontology from the Greeks--but there is a claim made in antiquity that the reverse was the case . It would be interesting to find out if that alternate claim can find much corroborating evidence. (There are several verses in the Old Testament that do seem to indicate a more abstract ontology in Old Testament times than is often presumed ). One astounding example is the cosmological idea of an expanding cosmos that one finds in Isaiah 42:5 , which refers to God as 'he that created the heavens, and strecheth them out' (KJV) .
As for the interpretation of the concept in Isaiah , that 'He knows the end of a thing from the beginning', the interpretation of that as involving only one future being in the foreknowledge of God has a lot of major theological problems as an interpretation .
Especially, when one considers several verses in the Bible that portray God as deliberating on whether to take one course of action, such as in the New Testament parable where the Lord tells his hierling to wait until it is evident whether or not the barren fig tree (which is said to symbolize Israel in the time of Jesus) will bear fruit --and IF not then to cut it down , and also verses that show God as relenting and not going ahead with a tenative plan to destroy the Isrealites when someone like Moses interceeded an presented arguments on their behalf .
The notion that there are many futures and , hence, even many timelines known to God; some of which have an equal chance of being considered probable by God makes more sense from an ontological and epistemic standpoint . Whether that is on the conceptual horizon of Isaiah when he wrote what he did should be further investigated. Perhaps more arguments could be presented as to the one future interpretation .
As to the statement in Matthew 18:18 where Jesus tells the disciples that 'what you bind on earth is bound in heaven, what you loose on earth is loosed in heaven' ; if one interprets that verse as merely involving Jesus giving the disciples the ability to unbind spiritual influences on items in the "physical world", then what about the part of binding that which was aforehand loosed in heaven? Would (given that tenative interpretation) the converse apply , meaning that the spiritual influences that were formerly not bound to items in the physical world could thus be bound to items in the "physical world"?
And if the statement of Jesus indicates a duplication or parallel operation of items in the spritual and "physical realms" and such a statement does soundly describe what's going on , then (IF such an interpretation is right) wouldn't there be a different time frame in that spiritual realm in which a *change* in that spiritual realm caused by a disciple acting in the "physical realm" , would then have to arrange itself into a relation with the states of affairs *that had been extant before within the spiritual realm* prior to that change taking place as a result of the disciples acting in the "physical realm" ? And wouldn't that shuffling of the states of affairs in the spiritual realm, which is caused by the disciples binding and loosing in the "physical realm", be a temporal series even in that spiritual realm ?
Moreover , if there are changes of events in the spiritual realm, wouldn't there be some fixed reference points where it would be, in principle, possible to guage the degree of soonness and lateness ?
If you have no concept of timelessness, how do you convey the ability to act at any time all at once? One way is to describe God as having a completely different take on time (a hundred years is as a thousand and vice verse). Another is to describe God as being the same across time or as being from of old as much as from now. I'm not saying these passages entail that. It's just that there's no reason to think they must describe a temporal God any more than the passages describing God changing his mind involve a God who doesn't know the future (especially in light of one such passage being right up against a statement that God doesn't change his mind).
As for your space analogy, it's not parallel. It would be like describing someone whose power acts at every spatial point as being omnipresent, which is literally false if God is spirit and not physical but is exactly how the Bible describes God. The parallel between a spaceless God and a timeless God shows that the way the Bible speaks of God and time is very similar to the way it speaks of God and space.
Being essentially timeless isn't equivalent with having an essence that is timeless. Being essentially timeless is defined as being timeless in such a way that it is impossible that one not be timeless.
I just looked at three of the most important and current commentaries on Ephesians, and this view you're proposing isn't even mentioned. If any background from Judaism is plausible, it would likely be the appearance of a very similar metaphor in the Hebrew Bible itself and not something we're not even sure if Paul was aware of, but standard use of buying language in the marketplace of the ancient Roman world explains sufficiently what's going on here. I quote Peter O'Brien:
You also have to keep in mind that Ephesians was written to a largely Gentile audience, who would have been clueless about such an obscure reference.
Passages that teach a change in policy from one period of time to another do not entail a change in mind as if God did not intend to do this from the beginning. There are statements that seem at first blush to mean that, but there are plenty of statements that teach exactly the opposite, and sometimes they appear in the same passage as in the I Samuel case I mentioned above. There are enough clear statements in Isaiah that God had a definite plan that would happen are already a problem for the open theistic intepretation, especially given that Isaiah makes quite clear that this plan can involve fully free and fully immoral actions by human beings. This is most clear in ch.10, but it's throughout the book (as well as throughout the Bible). Isaiah was most assuredly what contemporary philosophers call a compatibilist about free will and a strong view of God's sovereignty over human actions.
As for deliberation, it's quite easy to make sense of this if God is atemporal. Deliberation simply doesn't take time. Deliberation is a consideration of various options and a choice for one of them. This is fully consistent with one of those choices being the obvious one once all the information is clear, and someone who is fully predetermined to make a choice may well have deliberated through various options to reach the final one that is chosen. This is how it indeed happens with creatures in time. Now why would the consideration of various options and choice of one have to be in time? It's basically a logical process, and the laws of logic affect what choice will be made given certain considerations, including moral ones. If that happens in one timeless act but with logical progression from one element of the timeless deliberation to another, then it makes sense to speak of it as deliberation.
The loosing is parallel to the binding. If spiritual forces are controlling something, and Jesus' disciples bind them, then they won't control the thing in the physical world in spiritual ways. If spiritual forces are preventing something in the physical world, and Jesus' disciples loose that thing, then the spiritual forces no longer bind it. These are two sides of one coin.
I still don't understand why you need to bring different time frames into it. This is what we might call simultaneous causation. This happens all the time. Masses coming to be in certain locations simultaneously cause a change in the magnitude of gravitational attraction with other masses that are now at a different distance. When a photon enters spin up state, it simultaneously causes another photon to enter spin down state. This makes even more sense when the two events are really the same event manifested in two ways in a spiritual and physical realm, as I would have thought Jesus meant to begin with.
Fixed reference points? If I understand what you mean, then I think science has shown that there can't be such things with respect to time. I'm not sure what you're getting at, but if you're suggesting that temporal events in a spiritual dimension mean that God is atemporal, I just don't see how that follows. Why couldn't time simply be time, and angelic beings experience it the way we do but God is apart from it all?
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