Does God exist outsite of time?

[fccool]

Does God exist outsite of time? Or is he bound to the physical constraints of time like we are... and merely foresees the future?

I.E. can he look at the time as a parallel happenings from his perspective?

[abelisle]

Yes and No.

I just spoke with Him today about this and His response was "Why are you bothering me with these trivial matters, you silly man!"

Seriously, since we can only make sense of God from our human state of existence (anthropomorphism) and time was invented by us to make sense of Nature and since God created Nature, it's only logical that we think He is bounded by time.

God is Logos - the "ground of all being" - the essence of infinity, so why does He need time? We surely do. Just look how crazy we as Adventists are getting about the threat to literal time that theistic evolution is positing!

Come to think of it, "Yes, Creation" is sponsoring half-hour talks at the GC session all this week on Creation but I can't find any link to either audio or video of any of these sessions.

Sorry for the facetiousness but all this emphasis on literalness is driving me buggy. Maybe it's "time" for me to figure out if Adventism is the place for me? - Christianity sure is!

Alex

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

If God is outside of time, then He could be watching Christ being crucified right now. Or talking with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Or watching the 2nd Coming of Christ.

[abelisle]

Pam,

Yes he could but we probably won't know for sure till He decides to explain this to us if He does?

Alex

[abelisle]

dgrimm,

This is the most profound post I've read that you've written since I've been here!

How about some more stuff like this?

Alex

[phkrause]

dgrimm I like your post, right on target.

[Bravus]

I believe He does, although 'outside time' might not be the best way to put it. How about saying time exists 'inside God'?

[doug yowell]

It seems to me that time, in order to exist, must have a beginning, at least, and maybe an end in order to identify it as time.If God is infinite, He has neither a beginning or an end. Thus, time to God is irrelevent. Furthermore, after the 1000 years following the second coming there will be no end for those who exist (unless you believe in that eternal burning stuff)rendering the consideration of time, to them,a waste of time. On the other hand, I may have no idea what I'm talking about!

[Tom Wetmore]

Doug, on that final point you are in excellent company. Some of the most brilliant minds readily admit that we actually do not understand time. It is a reality of our life less understood than gravity. We can at least understand what happens in zero gravity. But can we imagine existing in zero time? Of the 4 dimensions we can more easily comprehend the absence of any one of them or even the possibility of dimensions beyond our own perception.

Life and time are so integrally linked that I believe they are one and the same. Life and time cannot be separated. If time is removed, life as we know it ceases to exist. One cannot describe the existence of life without the element of time.

I would propose that putting God outside of time would be to deny his existence, His life. God is the source of time and life. He is not outside of time - time is within Him, as Bravus suggests.

And that brings us back to the point that we understand time as we understand God. When we speak of God we just don't know what we are talking about. We presume we can tell time. But time will tell.

[fccool]

I think [the idea of time existing inside of God instead of God being outside of time] is a pretty good way to put it, although the more I thought about it, then time is indeed construct that was thought of for measurement. It only exists with motion. So, in essence we are measuring intervals of motion, and not the "time passing".

In that sense, the time does not really exist... just relative motion.

What does clock measure? It measures the movement of it's hand driven by the springs or electronics inside... in which case it measures relative motion at a constant speed.

1 sec is an interval that something does something at constant speed.

The only reason that we have some kind of frame reference like time... is because there are constants in the universe...

i.e., the second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.

But let's say that these were not constants and would fluctuate randomly. Our idea of time would be lost in an absolutes sense...

Just pointing out that time is merely a practical concept.

[Tom Wetmore]

One must distinguish the measure of time from the question of what time is.

Time exists apart from any marker of time or even our own awareness of it or its passage.

All measure of time is arbitrary and relative to something known and observable. Even the natural markers of the passage of earth time are relative to our planet and solar system and arbitrary relative to other parts of the universe.

If all of the varibles of those time markers or measures of time changed in sychrony would time itself change? And would we even be aware of the difference?

[abelisle]

And then there is "kronos" time = past, present, future in order and then there is "kairos" time = the opportune moment, e.g. prophetic time "in the fullness of time

[fccool]

In essence, I don't think there's chronological order of time. I know it would be awkward to hear, but it does not really exist in terms of past-present-future.

The reality of time is ever-changing NOW. Us... keeping track and recording NOW makes it a "past", and us anticipating NOW makes it a "future" time. Thus, "time travel" does not really makes any sense from that perspective, and is merely a wishful thinking.

Sure, perhaps we can be placed in situation where the relative motion would be faster or slower... thus either speeding up or slowing down the future, but to go back to past - all matter in the universe would have to be re-arranged to the previous state at the same time. Perhaps possible for God, but not something that we can do by jumping through some "worm hole" .

[Bravus]

I was kind of terse in my comment on this before, but it's early Sabbath morning and everyone else in the house is still asleep, so I have time to be slightly more expansive.

My views on time are strongly related to Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which relates space-time to matter-energy. The two are interconnected in ways that mean that if there's no matter-energy there's no space-time. Before our universe existed, this would have been the case, at least from our perspective. So I believe that God, while real - indeed, as C S Lewis has said, far *more* real than this fleeting temporal world - is made of different 'stuff' than our universe. He is not constituted of matter, as we area, and therefore is completely free from the bonds of space and time. That's how he manages to be everywhere and 'everywhen' all at once all the time: because that's his natural state of being. He does not experience time linearly, as we do, but concurrently: it's not that he knows the future, it's that he's there, and here, and in the past, all of it, all the time.

[Dr. Shane]

Absolutely agree with Bravus.

"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." (Rev. 1:8)

He knows the future because He is already there.

[phkrause]

And I agree with Shane who agrees with Bravus. So in essence I agree with Bravus.