If God has always been, he must have been lonely for a long time.

[cardw]

Now if God is eternal and has always been and no other being is present without being created that means that God was alone for an eternity.

One eternity plus another eternity doesn't equal 2 eternities because you can only have one eternity.

This is the reason that Hinduism and Buddhism have postulated a far different cosmos than Christianity. This problem is the main reason that various religions believe that the soul is eternal and that the universe has been going like it is now forever.

I think Christianity teaches its followers to so focus on their own personal salvation that to think of the experience of the god they worship doesn't really come up that often.

What do you think God did for an eternity?

How does Christianity address this?

[phkrause]

Interesting question, even though I do agree with dgrimm for certain reasons. It doesn't really answer the question for me. I've also thought about that every once in a while. But from my understanding there are other planets that are populated as ours is. But again how long has this been going on. Its one of those questions which will never be answered until Jesus comes and gets us and we can asked him face to face.

pk

[Tom Wetmore]

This has been a nagging thought for me for years. It is very much like wrestling with the concept of infinity both in terms of time and space. These are the things that we conceive of as without beginning or ending.

The epiphany of sorts for me was while looking at a map of the known universe produced by the National Geographic. I looked at the edge of the map and wondered what was beyond that. I suddenly realized that it was easier for me to see no outside boundary to space than for there to be a end of space. Even empty nothingness is something. If there was an end of space, would it be a wall? How thick would it be? What would be on the other side of the wall? Absolutely anything at the edge of the universe would merely extend it further by the substance of whatever that would be. If you suggest a wall of any thickness at the edge of the universe, that implies another side of that wall beyond which there has to be something else. What is that? Another universe? If there is one universe beyond are there more? If our universe is within another, is that other universe inside another ad infinitum?

I see space, time and God as essentially the same mystery. I am more comfortable with infinity for all three than outer limits of any of them. If time and space have no limits, a god with limits is too small for the universe. God must be greater still or it is not God but merely a demigod.

A god I can understand is no greater than I am - too small to be God!

[oldsailor29]

Yes Tom, I also have mentally wrestled with these concepts for years. Most people seem settled in their opinions, where I am not. I still ask, is time and space infinite and just unmeasured, or are there borders beyond which there is no time or space? Conventional wisdom seems to accept the latter, that there is no unmeasured time or space, and all time and space is finite. But I still do not know. I have to wonder if Genesis one says God created time and space, or not. If God did create time and space, then He stands outside of both. But if time and space are infinite, then they must be revelations of God, something like the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

I am still learning.

[Bravus]

Amen to both the attitudes and comments of Tom and oldsailor.

If God (as I believe) transcends spacetime, then thinking of Him as moving through time in the same way as we do, one second per second, is a category error. To Him, all times are the same. His name is 'I am', not 'I was' or 'I will be'. He lives in the eternal present...

[Dr. Shane]

God knows the beginning from the end. He obviously relates to time differently than we do. God knew me before I was born.

The only way I have been able to wrap my mind around it is to think about reading a book. Each chapter has its only storyline and set of characters. They die and new ones are born. As a reader, I am outside of the book. The characters are all contained to the book. As a reader I can flip the pages. In one moment I can be spending time with Jack in chapter 12 and the next moment be with Sarah in chapter 225. This analogy is imperfect because God can be reading all the chapters, spending time with all the characters, all at the same time.

Was there a time that God was lonely? No. Of course not. Because God can see the beginning from the end. The "book" was already written.

[nuff sed]

Why is it always about "Us"???????????? Do we really believe that there were no other planets created before we were and that God was just sitting around lonesome and looking for something to do so He created Us??? I seriously doubt it. It is more likely that we were the "last" he created. IMO when this 'great experiment' is over and 'sin and sinners' are no more... the universe will continue to operate just like it was before the earth was created. 'nuff sed

[phkrause]

You didn't read all the posts 'nuff sed? did you? Because I mentioned something to that!

pk

[Christopher]

Christianity turns to the Scriptures for the answer if there is one

Others have said that there has always been the Father,Son and Holy Spirit, which i belive to be true also

Was there a time that God was lonely?

which i think goes with your question,yes?

Since according to Scripture God has always been and always will be, then when did God start time? My answer to that would be when He first created someone or something that is affected by time.

I see that time beginning in Proverbs 8, I believe it was an actual person He created from himself (hence adam and eve being an example of how)While seeing that scripture as metaphorical is a valid belief i believe it can also being seen as literal :)Plus it helps make sense of genesis 1 were we are made in his likeness male and female if he was actually talking to a female person,don't you think?

And so Yes God was eithier lonely or saw that He would be and created Her as an answer to that possible loneliness.

Christopher

[nuff sed]

I think that somebody has been reading Jonathan Weldon's "God's Trombones" too much because that is the only place that I have ever read that "God was lonely"............'nuff sed

[Ellen]

What makes you think we are the last world created?

[D. Allan]

When did God create the angels? Were they always around the throne singing for God? I wonder what the popular opnion is about that.

[cardw]

The point is that if God is infinite and all knowing then at some point in time there was nothing except God. And this time period would extend back infinitely.

The side point of this would be that if God is all knowing then He must get pretty bored.

[D. Allan]

This is assuming that time can extend both backward and forward at the same moment. A backward arrow : and a forward arrow as we now presume it moving forward. If time has no beginning and no end then eternity/time is circular? Spherical?

Personally I think that just possibliy God and Space, Time and the Universe began all at the same time some 15,000,000,000 yrs. ago, or so. He has been evolving just has everything else is what Norman Mailer said.

[John317]

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity, together with the statement, "God is love," really answers it. God is indeed a Trinity. Therefore He has always loved, and His love is not dependant on His creating other beings. In other words, God's love doesn't require Him to make creatures for Him to love. If it did, it would mean God is less than perfect without his creation. God didn't have to create us in order for Him to be perfect. He created us for one reason: because He chose to out of love, not out of necessity or from need.

God must be a Trinity since He is love because love is shared among equals and among one's peers, not only for one's inferiors.

If all we loved were the animals, we wouldn't be able to say that we really love. Our love is shown by loving each other-- that is, others like ourselves-- not primarily in our love for other forms of life. The same applies to God.

[John317]

So good to see you, D. Allen.

Your post hints that you might have an affinity for what is called "Process Theology," which was influenced by the evolutionary theory. Have you read anything about it? It had an influence on the Openness of God.

[John317]

Yes, [at some point God being alone] is true-- provided God is not a Trinity.

On the other hand, if God is a Trinity, then God has never been alone.

But I do agree that if God is a single, solitary Being, then He was alone for an eternity before He either "begot" or "created" the Son. Why? Because the Bible teaches that nothing was created apart from the Word. Therefore, no matter when Christ, the Word, came into being-- assuming for the sake of the discussion that non-Trinitarians are correct-- God was all alone for an eternity.

I think this is one of the strongest arguments for the Bible doctrine of the Godhead-- the Trinity-- quite apart from all the Scriptural evidence that supports it, such as, among many others, 2 Cor. 13: 14; Acts 5: 3,4; Acts 13: 2; John 1: 1-3; Heb. 1: 1-3, 6, 8, 10; 2 Peter 1: 1; Titus 2: 13; Co. 1: 17; 2: 9; Romans 9: 5; 1 Cor. 10: 9; John 8: 58; Is. 9: 6; Micah 5: 2; John 20: 28; Rev. 22: 13; John 16: 13.

My answer [to your side point] is that this is assuming that there's no difference between the future and the present, or between what's not-yet and what-is. There's no reason to believe this assumption.

God is not bored, however, because "boredom" is a type of incompleteness and implies a need, but God is complete and has no "needs" in that sense.

[D. Allan]

Also I suppose that God has within himself sufficient to make loneliness impossible. Just as a yogi in while in his meditation is unaware of his surroundings yet he is filled with unsurpassable joy.

[SivartM]

Mathematically speaking, infinity has no need of numbers. You can't add anything to it to make it more complete.

[Tom Wetmore]

I think that to conclude that God might be bored, one also has to assume that God's complete knowledge is static, that he has figured everything out, knows every fact in the universe and that he does not have anything new to develop, learn or discover or create in terms of his knowledge.

That is akin to the question I asked sometime ago whether it is possible to surprise God.

I don't think God would get bored because I also think God can be surprised and can experience something new and different to Him. He is The Creator which is to say he is creative. To understanding the creative process, compare it with the production by a master technician. The technician can produce/copy the same thing over and over again perfectly. The creator makes new and different things in endless infinite variety. That assumes a process of coming up with something new that is outside of knowledge before it is created. Otherwise God's "creative" process is merely replicating what he has in his mind until he has done everything he had in mind. Then what? He is done? What next?

If space and time are infinite, possibilities are likewise infinite, which would make knowledge and learning infinite. An infinite God could not get bored because his creative work is never done.

But then I can far better understand time without end better than I can understand time without a beginning. At what corner of the universe did God start? If God had no beginning what was the first thing he ever did?

Go back to the original idea that spawned this forum.

[abelisle]

All of this is way too anthropomorphic for me!

It's humorous in a way how we all speak about God like He's one of us.

Hmm . . . He was though, wasn't he?

Alex

[cardw]

The anthropomorphic tendencies of the whole Christian view are one of the reasons that I choose to be an agnostic. The paradoxial nature of the whole god enterprise really argues against the confident claims of true believers.

It is quite evident that we have created god in our own image and all worship given to this god is really a worship of ourselves.

[John317]

You say, "He was," but actually Christ still is a man. He returns as one of us, our elder brother, a glorified human being, the Son of Adam.

[John317]

You don't believe that God loves human beings enough to become one of us?

Without God and what Christ did to save us, what do you believe will eventually happen to this world and the human race? What's the most positive scenario you have to offer?

[cardw]

John,

The beauty is that we just don't know what will happen. I think we make stuff up because we are afraid of the unknown. It's the ultimate control issue.

As far as a different scenario I think I could make up one that works out better for everyone.

How about we can do whatever we want with no negative consequences and no one gets hurt?