God and Time: The aeon and the pre-aeonial state

Before the formation of the world, when there was no sun dividing day from night; there was only the aeon that is coextensive with the things that are eternal like some temporal movement or interval. In this sense there is a single aeon, in according with which God is said to be aoenial, but also pre-aeonial, for he himself also made this aeon. (John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith, 97-98)

What is before creation? It seems that, in the history of Christian thought, the idea of "time" before creation was explored in the concept of the "aeon" (αἰων), a Greek term normally translated as "age." John of Damascus explored this concept of the "aoen" as God's first "creation" (in Section 15) before the actual creation of the universe in Section 16, which were followed by discussions of the "invisible world" (Sections 17 and 18), the visible creation (Section 19), then the various frames and elements of the material world as understood at that time (Sections 20 to 24b). Therefore, the idea of "time" before creation, even an eternal "time" before creation, was held at least by John of Damascus. The "aeon" is made by God, yet it has a derivative "eternity" not linked to the essence of the eternal God.

It is this manner of talking that is interesting for our modern times, if only for the fact that much of the polemics coming from modern classical theists imply that anything that is eternal must be linked with God's essence. Yet, as we can see, this does not seem to be the view held to by John of Damascus, who is considered one of the later church fathers. We can speak of an "eternity" that is "aeonic" in nature, and this is not a heretical or heterodox position but a perfectly orthodox one.

Book review: Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science

With the reflections done on various passages in the book, I have compiled and rewrote some of the reflections and joined them together in a review of the book. Here is my review of Edward Feser's book Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science. An excerpt:

How should we understand the world and how it works? What is the nature of reality itself? In the modern era, the natural sciences are taken to be the study of reality. The success of the natural sciences is due to the correspondence their theories have to how reality seems to function, and the ability to apply the knowledge gained from the natural sciences for the betterment of humanity. While the natural sciences are always developing, their explanatory power and technological advancement has gained our trust that they do in fact teach us what reality is and how reality functions.

The philosopher Edward Feser however demurs from this depiction of reality. Rather, he asserts that Aristotelian philosophy is properly basic and that the operation of science presupposes Aristotelian categories and terms. ... [more]

Time, time dilation, and the Aristotelian view of time

In particular, that spacetime appears curved could be interpreted as evidence that it really is curved, but it could also be interpreted instead as evidence that some force is affecting our measuring devices (Kosso 1998, pp. 102-3; Rickles 2016, pp. 83-90; Sklar 1992, pp. 53-69). (Edward Feser, Aristotle's Revenge, p. 305)

When one has an a priori system, it can be really astonishing where one can end up. In this particular instance, it is astonishing that Edward Feser thinks it is a plausible interpretation of the special theory of relativity that time dilation does not exist. Rather, in Feser's interpretation, the measurement of time is dilated, but time itself is perfectly fine. Given how everything in the material world including the human body runs on physical and chemical and biological processes that proceed in time, what Feser is advocating for here is a split between the clock and processes in time. But since the clock keeps time through mechanical or other processes (e.g. computer chip), how is that supposed to work out?

Feser's proposed interpretation is therefore unscientific. It fails to notice how the human body itself depends on the flow of time to function. The moving of muscles, the transmission of nerve signals — all of these depend on physiological processes that are similar to how clocks keep time. It is simply inconceivable that something that affects "our measuring devices" will not affect us also. If something affects "our measuring devices," then it will affect our perception and engagement with time as well. Electrical impulses will travel slower if time is slowed and so on, and one does not have to be a materialist to hold that to be true.

It is hoped that philosophers actually understand science if they want to propose interpretations of that science. Otherwise, they will appear foolish, as Feser does in this statement of his.

On the "spatialization" of time - Definition of time, as spatial dimension?

This suggest a further argument against any attempt to spatialize time, which is that it can never be completely carried through. Again, time is the measure of change within space. If we think if space as three-dimensional, then time is the measure of change within three-dimensional space, but if instead we say that what common sense conceive of as time is “really” just a fourth spatial dimension, then what this implies – again, for all the defender of the spatialization of time has shown – is that time ought really to be thought of as the measure of change within four-dimensional space. If the defender of the spatialization of time now claims that time so understood is really just a fifth spatial dimension, then the response will be that in that case time turns out to be the measure of change in five-dimensional space. And so on ad-infinitum. (Edward Feser, Aristotle's Revenge, p. 290)

According to Aristotelianism it seems, time is defined as the "measure of change within space." Using this definition, Edward Feser argued that time cannot be taken as another dimension like space. However, is that truly an acceptable definition of time?

This definition of time implies that change must happen when time progresses. In other words, if there is an instance in which change does not occur, then time cannot be said to have occurred. This is problematic on many levels. First of all, there are many examples in which change does not occur even though it cannot be said that time has not passed. Hydrogen atoms in the inter-galatic medium are perhaps the best example of something that will not be undergoing any changes for the next few hundred years (unless Christ comes again, but that is a different thing altogether). Most atoms will not undergo any form of nuclear reaction so they would be considered "timeless" as well according to this definition. Bacteria locked in ice are also "timeless" during their "time" frozen in ice, as they do not change. All such examples should be sufficient to show that time can pass without any change happening. Therefore, the Aristotelian definition of time is falsified.

Feser is also in error in understanding what "spatialization" of time in the context of modern science actually mean. It does not mean time becomes another spatial dimension (although some may give that impression). It just means that time is analogous to space in the sense of its quantifiability and ability to be manipulated (time dilation and gravitational dilation). It does not mean that time is a spatial dimension in an eternalist 4-dimensional block that we (3-dimensional beings) perceive as time. Rather, time is qualitatively different from space. It is theoretically possible that we might discover infinite dimensions of space, yet time is still the (א +1 ) dimension, a separate dimension from all other spatial dimensions.

As such, it seems that there is no reason why time cannot be seen to be analogous to space. While we currently know of only one temporal dimension, there is theoretically no reason why there cannot be more than one temporal dimension either. Feser's and the Neo-Aristotelian argument on the nature of time is flawed and based upon an errant understanding of the world, and thus should be rejected, whether it is seen in philosophy, or in theology (Classical theism).

On the "spatialization" of time - Abstraction and mathematization

All these puzzles disappear when we realize that the mathematics just is an abstraction rather than anything concrete. In particular, it is abstracted from a concrete physical reality whose nature outruns anything captured by the mathematics, rather than being exhaustively constitutive of concrete physical reality. (Edward Feser, Aristotle's Revenge, p. 279)

The idea of space as a kind of receptable or container can be elucidated by noting what it rules out, such as the views of Descartes and Leibniz (Cf. Bittle 1941, p. 152). If space is what contains extended physical substance, then (contra Descartes) it cannot be identified with extended physical substance itself. Space qua container can either be filled or empty in a way a physical substance itself cannot be. (p. 199)

Is space and time merely mathematics? It would seem rather reductionistic to reduce things to mathematical formulae. But the problem is that this question is not actually important for whether time can be considered space-like with coordinates in space-time. For some reason, Edward Feser seems to think that the opposing view reduces everything to mathematics. Generally for most people with some version of a scientific worldview, that reductionistic approach is not taken. Rather, if the mathematics are true, then what we are saying is that the nature of space-time must reflect the mathematics we have found that describe reality.

It is this view of reality, rather than Feser's reductive picture, that informs scientific worldviews of reality. We do not spatialize time just because the math demands it, but rather because the math reflects the nature of reality. If reality does not spatialize time, then the math will not reflect it.

This is not to say that we must necessarily take 'time' to be just another spatial dimension, but rather that arguments against seeing 'time' as being different from 'space' cannot be argued from the fact that 'time' is 'space-like.' Whatever time is, it is space-like. It may have many dissimilarities to 'space,' but that is another argument altogether.

The reason why Feser thinks current understanding of space is insufficient is because he defines "space" in an Aristotelian manner. This is not however how "space" is defined scientifically, which is why there is nothing wrong with the spatialization of time.

On the "spatialization" of time - Geometry and the Cartesian plane

A second problem is that there are serious questions about how coherent is the description of space and its occupants that results when we conflate physical space with geometry, and geometry in turn with a system of numbers. Neither points (since they lack any extension at all), nor lines (since they lack width and depth), nor planes (since they lack depth), can be said to occupy space. (Edward Feser, Aristotle's Revenge, p. 278)

No, they do not occupy space. They constitute space.

Next!

On the "spatialization" of time - Events in space and in time

Events always also stay the same distance apart in space. An object located at a certain region of space exclusively occupies that region. Two physical objects cannot be in the same place at once. By contrast, an event located at a certain point in time is not the exclusive occupant of that point in time. Many events are occurring at any particular moment. (Edward Feser, Aristotle's Revenge, p. 275)

Are events in space analogous to events in time? Edward Feser does not think so. For him, while two physical objects cannot be in the same place at once, many events are occurring at any particular moment. However, here again Feser does not adequately represent the issue, as I will show.

When we mention that two physical objects cannot occupy the same place at the same time, it is evidently clear that there are two factors in play - "not same place," and "not same time." Two objects can occupy the same place at different times, or they can occupy two different places at the same time. Likewise, if we move forward with the analogy, two events cannot be occurring at the same time at the same place. Two events can occur at the same time but different places, or they can occur at two different times at the same place. Notice that I have just swapped the "place" and "time" in the sentences to show that events in time are analogous to events in space, contra Feser's assertion to the contrary.

When Feser said that "many events are occurring at any particular moment," that is true but it is not the whole picture. If two objects cannot be in the same place at once, then we must add the same qualifier analogously and then we will note that it is false that "many events are occurring at any particular moment" at the same place. Feser's objection only works if the analogy is not played out in full, for once it is played out, the analogy between space and time does work.

Self-referentiality, time and tenseless sentences

A second problem is that the theory cannot account for sentences of which there are no tokens or instances. Consider a sentence like “There are now no tokens or instance of any sentences,” which could be true at a time when no one happens to be uttering any sentences. The new tenseless theory entails that the truth condition for this sentence would be that it is uttered at a time when there are no tokens or instance of any sentences. But of course, it never could be uttered when there are no tokens or instances of any sentences (since for someone to utter it would just be to produce a token or instance of a sentence). The new tenseless theory thus implies that the sentence could never be true. Thus, since the sentence could in fact be true, the theory is false. (Edward Feser, Aristotle's Revenge, pp. 241-242)

The rendering of tensed sentences into tenseless sentences is not necessarily easy. This is especially the case when the sentence can be rendered into a self-contradiction. The sentence offered by Edward Feser is one such example, for the sentences "there are now no tokens or instances of any sentences" when uttered contradicts itself. Since that is the case, the question must first be asked whether and in what situations such a sentence could be true. This particular sentence is true when no one is uttering any sentences, including this sentence. In other words, the only time this sentence could be said to be true is when it is not uttered. Therefore, if the sentences is to be translated into a tenseless statement, the scenario itself must be translated for it to make sense.

It is rather surprising that Feser did not seem to attempt a translation of the sentence unlike his previous example, so let me offer a translation here for this sentence. The offered translation is this:

"There is at time t (e.g. 8am, December 1st 1999) no tokens or instances of any sentences, with this sentence at time u."

This translation after all is the sense of the sentence in tensed form, and therefore the tenseless form would be thus.

Whether tenseless sentences are basic for one's philosophy of time, it seems rather apparent that the language of tenses should not be an issue. If there are problems with one's view of time, the realities of tenses (of which some languages do not have any) do not seem to be helpful in resolving the discussion.

A-theory and B-theory of time: An error in reasoning

In any event, the new tenseless theory concedes that the old theory fails, but denies that this gives any support to the A-theory. According to the new theory, though the meaning of a tensed sentence is not captured by a tenseless sentence, its truth conditions are nevertheless captured by the latter. (Edward Feser, Aristotle's Revenge, p. 241)

However, this approach too faces grave problems (Craig 200a, Chapter 3; Craig 2001, pp. 119-29). One such problem is logical. Supposed that Bob and Fred each utter a token or instance of the sentence “Socrates drank hemlock.” Let’s label Bob’s utterance of the sentence B, and Fred’s utterance of the sentence F. According to the new tenseless theory, B is logically equivalent to the sentence “Socrates is drinking hemlock earlier than B,” which gives B’s truth conditions. Similarly, F is logically equivalent to the sentence “Socrates is drinking hemlock earlier than F,” which gives G’s truth conditions. Now, B and F are also logically equivalent to each other. In other words, what Bob says when he says “Socrates drank hemlock” is true if and only if what Fred says when he says “Socrates drank hemlock” is also true. So, the sentences “Socrates is drinking hemlock earlier than B” and “Socrates is drinking hemlock earlier than F,” since they are logically equivalent to B and F respectively, should be logically equivalent to each other as well. However, they are not logically equivalent, because it could have turned out that Bob uttered his sentence while Fred did not, or vice versa. So, the new tenseless theory’s analysis fails. (p. 241)

The "new tenseless theory" propped up by B-theorists in the philosophy of time asserts that the truth conditions of a converted tenseless sentence if equivalent to the truth conditions of a "normal" tensed sentence. Feser, as an advocate for a traditional understanding of time (A--theory presentism), rejects that tensed sentences can be so converted into tenseless sentences. At this moment, I am not taking a stand on A- or B-theories of time, but just to note whether Feser has proven his case.

With regards to the "new tenseless theory," Feser asserts that if the same sentence ("Socrates drank hemlock") is said separately by Bod and Fred, their two utterances if converted into tenseless sentences would not have the same truth conditions and therefore are not equivalent to each other, thus the new tenseless theory is false. However, did Feser adequately present that theory? It does not seem to me to be the case. Feser converted Bob's utterance to "Socrates is drinking hemlock earlier than B," where "B" is the act of utterance. However, is that the correct way to render Bob's utterance into a tenseless sentence? I would suggest not.

When Bob utter "Socrates drank hemlock," he was stating that, from his vantage point at his time and space, Socrates' act of drinking hemlock was in the past. The sentence "Socrates is drinking hemlock earlier than B" however suggests something different, in that Bob was being self-reflective in his thought and uttered something like "Socrates drank hemlock earlier than this utterance of mine." In other words, the problem with Feser's argument against the "new tenseless theory" is that he did not properly render the utterance tenseless. Rather, the proper tenseless rendering of Bob's utterance is "Socrates is drinking Hemlock earlier than December 1st, 1999," assuming Bob had uttered that sentence in the date of December 1st, 1999.

Such a way of rendering propositions tenseless would render Feser's argument moot. Whether it is adequate to render tensed sentences into tenseless sentences is a separate question which I am still mulling over, but at least on this point, Feser's argument against tenseless sentences is singularly unconvincing.

The issue of time and (one of) Zeno's Paradox(es)

One of the problems with the whole ESS fiasco, and the so-called recovery of the historic doctrine of God by people like Reformed Baptist James Dolezal, is its uncritical appropriation of Aristotelianism as mediated by Thomas Aquinas. To put it bluntly, these "confessional scholars" are philosophically stuck in the 16th century. They are reasonably well-versed in the Scholastic literature during the Reformed and Post-Reformed period, but they ignore or downplay the reasons why philosophy has dumped Aristotelianism as a whole.

One major issue has to do with the problem of time. Time is something that is hard to grasp, only because we are creatures of time. How do we go about thinking about time when we are bound by time itself? There is no place whereby we can be "objective" about time and the passage of time. It seems prima facie that time progresses, does it not? We can conceive of time moving faster or slower, because time can appear to move faster or slower (even when it does not do so objectively) when we labor at things we enjoy or things we dread. But to conceive of a stoppage of time, or timelessness, or reversal of time, or time loops, all of these are conjectures not available to us except by extrapolation and guesswork. We can deal with it mathematically, but numbers are abstract things which we cannot conceived how it may or may not work out in real life.

One ancient paradox concerning the issue of time in general is Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Hare. In this paradox, the hare is ahead of Achilles by a certain distance (let's say 1 meter). As they race, both Achilles and the hare moved a certain distance in a certain time. In order for Achilles to overtake the hare, he must first cover the distance from him to the initial point of the hare. But during that time, the hare would have moved a certain distance (e.g. 0.1m). Achilles would then still be behind the hare, and must now race to where the hare is currently at. But at distance 1.1m, the hare would have moved 0.01m which Achilles needs to cover, but then the hare would move 0.001m, and so on. The paradox here asserts that if motion is possible, then Achilles would need to cover an infinite series of distances in order to catch up and overtake the hare. Since it is not possible to cover an infinite series of motions, the fact that Achilles can actually overtake the hare suggests that motion and change does not truly exist—they are illusionary.

For those from a scientific background, the "solution" to Zeno's Paradox of Achilles and the hare seemed easy enough. After all, it is a mere addition of a set to infinity of (1 + 0.1 + 0.01 + 0.001 +...). Or rather it can be expressed as follows:

Therefore Achilles will pass the hare at distance 1-1/9m. There, problem solved, but has the paradox actually been resolved?

We must remember that the key point of the paradox is not that Achilles will not overtake the hare. Rather, the key point of the paradox is that true motion, true change, cannot exist. The argument is a philosophical reductio ad absurdum concerning the nature of motion and time. It is not an empirical question at all. Just as in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, just because something is empirically seen does not necessarily imply that what is seen and what is perceived is indicative of true reality. Zeno's paradox is a question on reality itself, not empirically how things work. One might as well "disprove" Zeno by merely arranging a race between Achilles and a hare and showing that Achilles does in fact overtake the hare, easily, and it would still prove nothing. Why is the overtaking not a mere illusion, and that actually change is not real, but everything merely exists? Already, in modern physics under a B-series interpretation of space-time, time itself is a dimension and therefore nothing really changes, since the 4-D tesseract of space-time is "fixed" (in a universe without any higher dimensional beings or gods/God), and therefore space-time is determined right from "the start."

Science therefore cannot address Zeno's paradox. Since it deals with empirical reality, it cannot, until and unless there is a way to get us time-bound creatures out of the dimension of space-time (and I do not mean tunneling from one point of space-time to another point in space-time, but to be independent of space-time altogether). So how then should we deal with this paradox, but by rational philosophical inquiry?

One way, the way I think would address this paradox, is to point out how, as Achilles reached the next place of the hare, the time taken for each part in the series gets shorter and shorter. Let's say Achilles took 1 second to reach the hare's first position. He will then take 0.1 seconds to reach the hare's second position, and 0.01 seconds to reach the hare's third position. One would get a decreasing infinite series for the time traveled for Achilles to overtake the hare, and therefore it seems that we will never reach the "point" in time whereby Achilles overtake the hare. However, since there are two infinite series of time and distance, dividing the two infinite series gives us a finite (non-serial) speed of 1 m/s. One can therefore assert that the "infinite" aspect of the paradox is illusionary, since motion in terms of speed is not an infinite series but a finite number. Therefore, following Aristotle, I would say that seeing motion as a continuum instead of moving from point to point in space-time would solve the paradox quite nicely.

However Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the hare is solved, Zeno's paradox (not by itself) points to an even deeper issue concerning the nature of time itself (and thus indirectly opens the paradox again to mystery). We talk about time as "here," "before," and "after," or "now," "yesterday," and "tomorrow." But what exactly is this thing called "now"? John McTaggart has given an argument why time itself is not real. This is reflected in Zeno's paradox as one considers the infinite series of temporal instances Achilles must cover to overtake the hare. So while we can perhaps prove that motion seems real (since speed is a finite non-serial number), how do we, or can we, prove the reality of time? And if time is not real, then space is not real and motion becomes a mere mathematical number depicting the relation of two unreal things.

As with time, thus goes the notion of "eternity." "Eternity" is defined as an "infinity" with regards to time. When we say God is "eternal," what we mean is that God is infinite with respects to time But what does this mean when the notion of "time" itself gets questioned?

To untangle all these will not be easy, and this article is not meant to give all the answers to these questions, although I have suggested a preliminary approach here. The main point of this post rather is to show, by appeal to Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Hare, that issues concerning time and eternity are so much more complicated than our modern "confessional theologians" make it out to be. Adopting Thomism as orthodoxy is not a virtue but a step backward in the wrong direction. If we are to be interested in truth, then we should wrestle with the actual issues involved when we talk about terms like "time" and "eternity," or even "temporal attributes," instead of going back to the "Golden Age" of "Reformed Scholasticism," which definitely has its strengths but many weaknesses also, chief among them its wholesale embrace of Aristotelianism.

Eternity as timelessness and the issue of interacting with the world

[continued from here]

God is eternal. The view that eternity is timelessness however is a hypothesis, not something that the Bible teaches. The eternity of God can either be one of divine timelessness, or one of everlasting time, or a mixture of both. In this article, I will like to deal with the problem timelessness has with the issue of divine interactions in time.

For anyone who reads Scripture, it cannot be denied that God interacts with people in time. Call it anthropomorphism or whatever you wish to call it, that interaction is a real interaction. God had actually talked with Moses on Mount Sinai, and Moses was not dreaming. God personally bargained with Abraham over the fates of Sodom and Gomorrah, even though we know from a canonical reading of the passage that God had already determined to wipe them out and that Abraham did not really have any 'bargaining power" with God. Yet, the bargaining dialogue did in fact take place! Over and over again, the Bible is explicitly and abundantly clear that God truly and really interacts with His people. They did not hallucinate about God, neither were they talking to themselves or anything of that matter.

Since such interaction that God has with His people is clear, any theory that prohibits God from interacting with His creatures personally must be rejected as contrary to Scripture. Now, if the eternity of God is timeless, then how does a timeless God interact with time-bound creatures? We must remember here that we are not talking about the Incarnate Son, who due to His human nature, is not timeless ("after" His incarnation). Prior to the Incarnation though, even the Son is timeless so He cannot interact with His creatures, can he? But even if we were to say that the Son was "eternally incarnate" in the sense that after His incarnation the dual natures mean that He can interact (in time) throughout time (timelessness), that only solves the problem of creaturely interaction with the Son. But God the Father also interacts with His people, not to mention God the Holy Spirit, so we are not closer to solving the problem of divine interaction with the creation, are we?

Let's suppose that the Triune God is timeless. Now, to interact in time means that at a punctiliar "time," God interacts with the world. Let's put it as point t₁. Now, if we say that God is always timeless, then point t₁ must be of infinitesstimal "width," such that the "time before" the interaction is the same as the "time after" the interaction. Thus, before God interacts, it was point (t₁ - ε₀), and after God interacts, it is point (t₁ + ε₀). Thus, for all intents and purposes, God remains "timeless." For all other interactions, we can state them as t₂ to t_n, where (t_n = t₁ + nε₀). Thus, in this manner, for any number of interactions God has with this finite creation, the "time" remains the same at t₁, regardless of how many interactions God has had with His creation.

Such a solution would indeed seem to solve the problem of how God can interact with His creation. But it does not exactly cohere with timelessness. For an infinitesstimal is still a quantity of some sorts, no matter how infinitely tiny it might be. t₁ is always bigger than (t₁ - ε₀), while (t₁ + ε₀) is always bigger than t₁. Such a solution is congruent with a relative timelessness, but not absolute timelessness, which classical theism demands.

It can be seen therefore that, upon the supposition of an absolute timeless God, divine interaction with the creation is impossible. Therefore, absolute timelessness is not congruent with Christianity. And if one wants to go for relative timelessness, then I do not see much difference (besides that of emphasis) between that theory and the theory of everlasting time. After all, in relative timelessness, we are comparing infinitesstimal "time" with time t₁, while in everlasting time we are comparing normal time with infinite duration, t_(infinity).

The "Eternal Creator," and the issue of necessity and contingency

Third, the older tradition taught that creation is an external act of God that produces a temporal effect. God's act of creating is eternal. The thing created is temporal. ... The divine act of creation is nothing other than the eternal action of God's immutable will. Thus, there is no distinction in agency between God's will to create and the act of creating (see Rev. 4:11). They are the same act in God. (James E. Dolezal, All that is in God, 100)

One particularly disturbing error in Dolezal's attempted defense of classical theism is his claim that God is the eternal Creator. We note here that when Dolezal claims God is the eternal Creator, he is not claiming that creation is eternal, or that God's act to create is eternal, only that the the decree to create is eternal. In other words, in all fairness to Dolezal, he is not claiming that creation partakes of eternity in any way. The act of creation lies outside of God, and it is something God does in time.

Dolezal's assertion of God as the eternal Creator is a reaction against the view of theistic mutualism, most clearly in its statement that God "takes on temporal properties" (K. Scott Oliphant, God with Us, cited in Dolezal, 95) when He created the world. We must therefore understand Dolezal to mean that God was always the Creator in the sense that God does not change when He creates the world, and does not take on additional (temporal) properties in doing so. The creatorhood of God is always present, and therefore God does not take on additional properties in order to create the world.

Without actually reading what Oliphant has said, the idea that God must take on temporal properties in order to create strikes me as errant. At the same time, Dolezal's swing to claiming that God is eternally the Creator provokes a different sort of questions and veers towards a different sort of error. Since Creation is separate of God the Creator, the idea that "creatorhood" is eternal seems to be a claim that the act of creating is necessary to God. For if God does not initiate the act of creating (as opposed to producing the fact of creation), then how can it be said that God is the Eternal Creator? But if the act of creating is necessary to God, then Creation, the product, is necessary, not contingent. Is Dolezal seriously arguing that creation is necessary to God?

We can extrapolate that also to God as Redeemer. Does God have to save anyone, for a redeemer who does not redeem anyone cannot be called a redeemer? So is redemption therefore necessary to the being of God? If God is the Justifier who has decreed to justify the elect from eternity, is justification necessary to the being of God? Is God the eternal justifier, the eternal redeemer? For surely Christ is the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8 alternate)!

I do not believe Dolezal has actually thought through the implications of what he is saying. Instead, he is relying on a flawed metaphysics and a flawed view of time, in his reaction against theological mutualism. But just because mutualism as it is presented is wrong, it does not mean that classical theism as mediated by Dolezal is right. Claiming that God is "Eternal Creator" may seem to resolve the problem of God's relation to Creation, but it creates a whole different set of problems with regards to the nature of God in making the opera ad extra indicative of the ens ad intra, making what should be things contingent into things necessary.

What actually is time?

When we speak of time as a realm, ... we denote simply the created order which is populated by beings that are subject to and undergo change and thus are measured temporally. (James E. Dolezal, All that is in God, 79 footnote 2)

Accordingly, the essential nature of time is ... that it encompasses a succession of moments, that there is in it a period that is past, a period that is present, and a period that comes later. (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:163, as cited in Dolezal, 88)

... time is indeed the numbering of change or motion... (Dolezal, 88)

If God should be in time, then the full actuality of His life would be built up out of temporal parts ... (Dolezal, 88)

Temporal beings must necessarily exhibit a variety of existential states since time is the measurement of movement between these states. (Dolezal, 89)

What actually is time? In these excerpts, we can see a certain philosophy of time at work, perhaps something that Dolezal himself is not aware. These statements reflect a view of time that sees time as a dimension, time as a B-series. This is seen most explicitly when Dolezal states that the "full actuality of [God's] life would be built out of temporal parts" if God were in time. The image that should come to mind is as if God is spread out through the time dimension so that one can cut a slice of time with a little of the divine in it. If that is sacrilegious, then of course it is! Another revealing part is the citation of Bavinck's Dogmatics whereby time is stated as having within it "a period that is past, a period that is present, and a period that comes later," which bring to mind the image that someone outside time can see all periods happening simultaneously. Now, if that were the view of time a person holds, then obviously God must be timeless, totally out of time, and classical theism would be absolutely right.

The problem of course is that it is by no means the case that this is the only theory and view of time. Treating time as a dimension seems to lend itself to the view that time itself is unreal (McTaggart's argument, as cited in Paul Horwich, Asymmetries in time: Problems in the Philosophy of Science, 18). Alternatively, one can see time as a dimension while allowing for there to be the possibility of counter-intuitive things like time travel, changing the past, and backward causation, which is what philosopher Paul Horwich argues for. I have yet to take a firm position on the nature of time, but it seems to me that the idea of seeing time as a dimension is wrong.

Instead of seeing time as a dimension, it should be seen as just movement of duration or succession. It should not be tied down to any physical or material thing for a very simple reason: Can we use time words for non-physical and non-material things? If we can do so, then time should not be tied to space. So although there is a sense in which time and space are related (i.e. special and general relativity), it seems to me to be reductionistic to reduce time to space alone.

Perhaps something that would aid us is the following question: Did God exist before the creation of the universe? The orthodox answer should be yes. But think about the question again. WE are asking if God exists (state) before (temporal term) the creation of the universe (along with what we normally call time). So how can we apply a temporal term ("before") to God when time did not exist ("before" the creation of the world)? If we are to be consistent with the idea that all manner of time begins at creation, then we cannot say that God existed before the creation of the universe, because that would be a nonsense sentence. There cannot be anything before creation, because there was no time *before* creation. And now we end up tying our sentences in knots because even our language cannot conceive of what this actually means.

It would be really helpful for those who insist that time must only begin at creation to amend their statements. Stop talking about time events before creation, or time states either, because that would be false if time only began then. Stop saying that God exists before creation, and perhaps just say that God exists outside time. Stop saying that God ever hates the elect prior to them coming to faith (in contradiction of Ephesians 2), because God's love for the elect is eternal and thus timeless and unchanging. Stop teaching that the Covenant of Redemption was present before God created the world, because the eternal covenant as an eternal covenant must be likewise timeless and not subject to "before, now, and after." Be consistent with your talk about God and eternity, at the very least.

Time travel and the issue of autoinfanticide

In the first place, it is quite obvious that there are constraints on the timelike curves may act as loci for particular sorts of causal chain. The spatiotemporal interval between distinct events of a type of causal process if commonly determined by laws of physics. Second, any causal chain must be consistent with those chains which are located along intersecting lines.... Such systems [of self-defeating systems -DHC] are excluded by just those restrictions on causal chains and their interrelationships that ordinarily apply in open time. [Paul Horwich, Asymmetries in Time: Problems in the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 118-9]

The problem with the possibility of time travel is that it opens up paradoxes. In particular, if one can travel to the past and alter history, could one kill one's infant self, thus result in an unresolvable contradiction? Or one can cause any change in world history, resulting in one not being born at all. There are a couple of possible ways such time paradoxes could be resolved. One way is for one to be threatened to be erased from time (and would be erased from existence) if one attempts to kill one's infant self or do anything which prevents one's being born (as seen in Back to the Future). Another way is one can kill "one's infant self" and realize when one returns that one has a different pedigree altogether (because of actions committed in the past), with perhaps even a different set of memories and life experiences when one returns (or having both sets simultaneously). Since nobody has ever witnessed time travel neither it is at present feasible to attempt time travel, anything we have now about time travel is mere speculation.

As a thought experiment however, thinking about time travel tells us more about one's philosophy of time. The philosopher Paul Horwich, in dealing with the problem of time travel and the problem of autoinfanticide, suggests that the nature of causal chains make it such that overlapping and contradictory timelike causal chains are impossible since "any causal chain must satisfy consistency conditions imposed by its surroundings" (p. 119). In other words, paradoxes such as autoinfanticide are impossible because consistency in spacetime conditions must be maintained, and therefore a subsequent causal chain cannot disrupt the former conditions in the spacetime environment, laid out in the causal chains that are already present there. When one attempts to kill one's infant self, circumstances will ensure that that would not be possible no matter how hard one tries to do so.

My question to such a solution to the paradox however is why we must state that circumstances must prevent autoinfanticide from happening, instead of conceding that a genuine paradox might occur in the timeline of the world. Postulating that a subsequent causal chain cannot disrupt previous chains because of "consistency conditions" is merely to answer the question with a restatement of the question in the form of an answer. "Why must another causal chain NOT disrupt previous chains," when analyzed, is the essence of the question "Why must one not be able to murder one's earlier self," which is our initial question. Horwich's claim that autoinfanticide is impossible it seems boils down to the assertion that it is impossible, which is not a good answer at all.

Subsequently, speculations about the physical and technological possibility of time travel are stated, and that might be true impediments to time travel. But arguments based upon human psychology (why would one wants to kill one's former self), and the strange physical inability to kill oneself, are unconvincing. Unless one rejects that man has free agency, man is naturally able to choose to do what one desires to do. It does not matter whether one wants to do action X or not. If man has the natural ability to choose action X, then the paradox remains. Likewise, postulating all manner of circumstances (gun misfire, fall ill on the day when one will try to kill one's former self) does not solve the problem because these contingent factors can be resolved to satisfaction in other possible worlds, and therefore the paradox remains.

It seems therefore that the paradoxes of time travel has not been well resolved in Horwich's book. The autoinfanticide paradox, as well as the time travelers' paradox, remain problems that seem to suggest the impossibility of time travel in this universe.

McTaggart and Time

1. Events are located in a B-series, only if time exists. In order to see that McTaggart's first premise is correct, one must remember that it is not time in the Newtonian sense—an array of thinglike instants—whose reality is in question. Rather, the consequent of (1)—time exists—is supposed to be construed in a very broad way, as something like "the world exhibits temporality'. And in that case, premise 1 becomes a trivial truth. [Paul Howrich, Asymmetries in Time: Problems in the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 18]

The puzzling thing about the philosophy of time to me is why it is thought that a B-series is ontologically necessary. The idea of "earlier than," "later than" does not need a real B series to function, but rather they could be seen in a B series that is the projection of the movement of an A series. In other words, rather than looking at events according to "earlier than" or "later than," shouldn't it rather be looking at two events on the A series line, project them onto a B series, and only then can it be seen which is earlier and which is later? In other words, events are not located in a B-series, but projected onto a B-series.

Along the same path of understanding, the time words of "now," "past," "present," "future" should be understood as descriptive words not properties of any instance in time. It should be false to describe moment A as having the property "present" or "past" or "future," since whatever descriptor is applicable depends on the relation of moment A to the current "now." Since any one moment does not possess temporal properties of any sort, but rather everything is merely relation, the whole idea of any one moment A acquiring simultaneously the "properties" "past," "present," "future" as the "moving now" passes through that moment is without merit.

Time and fatalism

... By the same token, a thorough criticism of the 'moving now' conception must eventually deal with the tree model of reality. Let us therefore examine the reason that, following Aristotle, is most often cited as motivating this ontological asymmetry: the avoidance of fatalism.

The case for fatalism goes something like this: What was true in the past logically determines what will be true in the future; therefore, since the past is over and done with and beyond our control, the future must also be beyond our control; consequently, there is no point worrying, planning, and taking pains to influence what will happen. [Paul Horwich, Asymmetries in Time: Problems in the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1987), 28]

In his book on the issue of time, Paul Horwich attempts to show how we can understand time, which is seemingly unidirectional, as being a non-directional dimension that has inherent properties that result in the emergence of the flow of time as we know it. The book is an exercise in how time can be understood to exist in the universe if time is to be understood as a dimension of the universe, but in my reading I have not seen any reason stated why time is to be understood thus.

Horwich in the first main chapter (the second chapter of the book) attempts to deal with the issue of the directionality of time. Time moves forward for all of us, and thus it is taken as common sense by most people that the future is undetermined while the past which is already past cannot be changed. However, Horwich sought to undermine the concept that the past is actually fixed. The argument in this chapter is not that the past MUST be mutable, but that it CAN be changed, which is a weaker argument. To do this, Horwich extends the argument for fatalism from the premise that the past is fixed to the conclusion that either some act R's "future truth is now fixed and beyond our control, or R's future falsity is fixed and beyond our control" (p. 29). In other words, if the past is fixed, then logically, it means that the future is fixed as well. Horwich accomplishes this with a key step stating that the truth value of the statement "It was the case at past time p that S will be true at future time f" is necessarily the same as the truth value of the statement "It is the case that S will be true at future time f." Thus, given a B series, the end result is fatalism. Therefore, there are three choices Horwich gives to us:

1. Abandon the plausible sounding view that the past is already determined and beyond our control ...
2. Follow Aristotle by giving up the idea that all statements about the future have a present truth value ...
3. Invite fatalism by agreeing that even future events are presently beyond our control

(Horwich, 29)

The first problem with Horwich's approach it seems is that there does not seem to be any recognition of the difference between determinism and fatalism. Fatalism is the view that everything happens regardless of what you or anyone does. In other words, in fatalism, if it is predetermined that person X will be walking along the road and be hit by a car at 11 pm and die, that will happen even if person X attempts to stay home at 11 pm and so avoid his fate. Determinism however only state that such and such a thing would happen. But one variation of determinism could state that the actions of individuals are factored into the future. In other words, if it is determined that person X have the same fate, person X will want to walk on that road and then he will be hit by the car on 11 pm and die. If person X learned that he might die and thus stayed home, the actual determined future is that person X stayed home and live. Fatalism allows for no personal agency of any actor to interfere with its determined future, while determinism factors in the personal agencies of all actors in its determined future.

Since such is the case, Horwich's aversion to fatalism and his rejection of it in favor of a mutable past does not seem wise. There is no reason why we must be open to the idea that the past is mutable, and fatalism is just as false as it always has been.

Time dilation, movement and eternity

Relativistic time dilation formula:

, where t_S is Stationary Time, t' is relativistic time, v = subject's velocity, c = speed of light = 3 x 10⁸ m/s

The theory of special relativity states that time is not fixed but rather relative to the speed of light. As an object moves closer to the speed of light, time slows down from their perspective, alongside other interesting effects. For example, someone traveling at the 0.8 times the speed of light for 180 seconds (from his perspective) will find that 300 seconds has passed in real life (i.e. the stationary observer). Time around him seems to slow down such that 1 of his seconds is longer than the 1 second of the observer. If he moves even faster, time around him will slow more and more. When he accelerates to 2.999 x 10⁸ m/s, more than 0.99 times the speed of light, only about 7.7 seconds has passed while 300 seconds have passed for the observer.

Albert Einstein's theories of relativity (both special and general) show that time is not a fixed quality. Furthermore, if time is not a fixed quality, then perhaps time is a dimension just like our three-dimensional space (thus 4-dimensional space-time). Regardless of whether time is a dimension or not, I would like to look here at the implications of Special Relativity on the issue of eternity.

According to the relativistic formula of time dilation, the faster the speed of the object, the slower time flows around the object. Due to the Lorentz transformation, it is impossible for any object with mass to reach light speed, since any object approaching light speed will approach infinite mass and will require infinite energy to do so. But suppose an object were to reach light speed. What happens then? Well, the object will have infinite mass so it will collapse into a black hole. But as the object reaches light speed, the flow of time around the object stops. The object at the speed of light has reached timelessness, where t' equals 0. Time as perceived by the object has essentially stopped, and he can "travel" whatever distance he desires without time moving at all.

What does this have to do with movement and eternity? Well, actions involves movements, which means there is change over time. Timelessness and spontaneity in the physical world occurs for objects at the speed of light. However, if the object is timeless, then the object is stuck at that time (frozen in time). For any action done to take effect, the object has to exit the state of timelessness.

To speak of God as being "timeless" therefore is to create a deistic god, where the world is wound up and all the actions began at the singularity that is the beginning of the world. Something that is eternally timeless can only interact with time at the point of singularity, and anything that becomes timeless at time t₁ can only interact with the world at time t₁. Surely a god who is timeless, if he is to preserve timelessness, cannot cease being timeless even for an instant. Therefore, the only logical conclusion for a god who is timeless is that he does not interact with the world except to wind it up. Providence in this model is merely the unfolding of the decrees inbuilt within creation. There cannot be miracles, except the miracles that have been decreed to be worked out from creation. God cannot hear prayers, for a timeless god cannot be in time.

Needless to say, this is not the God of the Bible. Thus, the biblical God cannot be timeless, or at least he cannot be timeless in his interaction with the world. Timelessness can only be attributed to God's essence since His essence does not deal with us, but it cannot be attributed to God in His three persons, since Father, Son, and Spirit interacts with the world and with us. It is because of this that we must reject the classical theistic view of timelessness. God is eternal yes, and eternal time in his essence can be said to be "timeless." But God in His persons is not timeless neither does that even make sense. We are not supposed to be deists after all! The God of the Bible is portrayed as one who hears our prayers and acts on behalf of His people, whereas in a deistic system one can only say that this god began a process at creation to seemingly answer prayer even before the prayer has been uttered, and thus give an illusion that prayer has been answered.

It is because of this that God's eternity in His persons is everlasting "time," and not "timelessness." The Son in everlasting "time," in eternity past, submits to the Father in the Pactum Salutis to save His people. "Time" did not begin for God with the Incarnation, but it has always been present, as long and as eternal as the persons of the Trinity have their fellowship one with another.

Time, and the idea of the Time Stone

... he denies, like Leibniz does, that time is any sort of substantival entity over and above the phenomena that are located in time. [Paul Horwich, Asymmetries in Time: Problems in the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 47]

In sci-fi/ fantasy movies, certain exotic scientific concepts are explored. Time travel is one such exotic concept, which is based upon a certain view of time (i.e. time is a dimension just like our three dimensions of space). But even more exotic concepts have to do with time manipulation in the here and now, including reversing time with everything going in reverse (e.g. raindrops gathering from the ground and moving up to the clouds). We see those concepts in play in Marvel movies like Doctor Strange and Avengers: Infinity War. In Doctor Strange, Doctor Strange uses the Time Stone to reverse time in an attempt to prevent Dormammu from entering the "Earth dimension," and when he was stopped from completing the time reversal, he used time loops to force Dormammu to retreat from the Earth . In Infinity War, the mad Titan Thanos used the Time Stone to reverse time in a small circle around the place where Vision was destroyed, reversing the Mind Stone's destruction so that he could take it from Vision and complete his Infinity Gauntlet. In both of these movies, we see the use of an artifact that uses energy to manipulate time. Time is depicted as a dimension that can be manipulated by someone, and that person must be situated outside of time when he manipulates time in whatever manner he desires.

The manipulation of time is somewhat problematic when one actually thinks about it. We are creatures of time, in that time moves all around us. We are born in time, grow up in time, age in time, and die in time. The movement of time is essentially movement. Without the movement of time, nothing moves in the world, for movement is after all change of position over time (e.g. meters PER second). Therefore, to say that one can manipulate time would mean that one must be outside of time. For otherwise, if one reverses time, does the process of reversing time reverses the action of the person who is trying to reverse time? Thus, in order to manipulate time, if it were possible, one must be at a position outside time.

But, if one is outside of time, then how can we speak of action at all? For timelessness implies a cessation of any and all actions. Thus, the purported time manipulator would be frozen in eternal timelessness and unable to manipulate time as he had intended (or was it "has" or "will be") [As an aside, this is why I reject timelessness as an understanding of God's eternity]

The only way to allow time manipulation, which comes from a 'B-series' view of time, is to see time as just another dimension of physics. In Einstein's special theory of relativity, space and time are relativized while the speed of light remains constant. In General Relativity, gravity is predicted to distort both space and time, such that time slows down near objects of great gravitational potential like black holes. Now, I do not know if Einstein's theories necessitates a 'B-series' view of time, but they certainly make it easy to see time as just another dimension that could be manipulated. If time is seen to be just another dimension, then the whole concept of time manipulation is at least plausible. But surely that does not solve the problem of time manipulation by an agent like Doctors Strange or Thanos, does it? No, it does not. Reversing time would be possible, but not having a person standing in the midst of a city while everything around him gets reversed except for him and Wong. Reversing time would be possible, but reversing time in a arbitrarily chosen sphere around Vision while time flows forward all around that invisible sphere, without a massive rupture of the space-time continuum around the sphere, is not.

But before we just say that movies are not meant to be taken as serious science, consider as a thought experiment whether such time manipulation can be conceived philosophically. If one holds to a 'B-series' view of time, then perhaps such specific time manipulation is philosophically plausible if one holds to more than one axis of time. What does this mean? Just as space has three dimensions (x, y, z), so likewise if time has more than one time dimensions, then perhaps time manipulation is plausible. Having three space dimensions means that if everyone has to move 3 spaces, someone can appear to be stationary along the x-axis because he moved three spaces in the y-axis, or he moved 2 spaces on the y-axis and 1 on the z-axis. The point here is that having more than one dimension means that one can be actually moving while appearing stationary in one particular axis.

Since action requires movement, and manipulation of time is an action, therefore time must move forward while time manipulation is happening. But if there are more than one time dimension, then the time manipulator can seemingly appear stationary while time all around him is reversed. Assume two temporal dimensions: t1 and t2, with t1 being the one we see. Everyone must move forward "in time" 2 minutes. With time manipulation, the entire earth could be moving forward 4 minutes in t2 while moving back 2 minutes in t1, whereas the manipulator moves +2 on the t1 axis and 0 on the other. Likewise, when Thanos reverse Vision's first death, all the molecules and whatever the Mind Stone is made up of shifts -10 on the t1 axis and +14 on the t2 axis.

This does not imply whatsoever that time manipulation is even remotely possible, but rather how one must understand time to operate if time manipulation is a possibility. Remember that we are not talking about merely slowing the passage of time, but about reversing time, and on a small scale without event horizons.

[Yes, I know that t1 and t2 would probably be vectors and are not be added and subtracted like scalars. The numbers are just there for illustration]