God Is Not Atemporal

From a Christian perspective, I think we can affirm the following things that, I believe, ought to frame our theological inquiry, and though the affirmations raise questions (e.g., 'How was it possible for God to know that an intimate acquaintance of Jesus would betray Jesus?' or 'How was God able to know that there would be a man named Cyrus who would overthrow the Chaldean empire?' if there is no phenomenal future (see below) for God to survey), I believe we can answer them without contradicting Biblical teachings that affirm God's Universal Sovereignty, Righteousness/Justice, Love, Wisdom, and Holiness. The affirmations I have in mind are as follows:

1. There is no Second Principle operative in Reality, no Principle that God must consult or "deal with" in order that He might discover that which He may accordingly predestine to become Real, and that which He, in keeping true to His character, cannot predestine to become Real.

2. There is no phenomenal future, just as there is no phenomenal past.

3. God is not timeless, that is to say, God is not outside time, but is our contemporary; He is not a static Being.

4. There is free will in God's rational creatures.

5. God is omniscient not in the strong sense of the term, but in the following way: God could get to know all that is knowable, all that is Real, if such an extent to His knowledge were a thing agreeable to His will.

6. God knows all possibilities, that is to say, God knows all things X that are conceivably possible of becoming Real, and accordingly (a) He may elect to let some X happen as they might; and (b) He may elect to act in such a way as to block some X from any longer even being possible of becoming Real; and (c) He may so purpose -- He may act in a such a manner -- that some X no longer remain as mere possibilities, and that because He may predestine some X to become Real at the time He chooses to act sufficiently for them to become Real, and not at a time either before or after the time He has chosen to act sufficiently for them to become Real.

7. God can get to know any creature so very well that it would be a psychological miracle -- a psychological impossibility -- for the creature to choose freely to act in some way contrary to what God has learned is true of their moral and spiritual character. God can sovereignly act in such a way as must serve to enable a creature to express himself according to a manner that is in accordance with the way he has made himself morally and spiritually. It is possible for a free moral agent to train himself in such a way that it must become a psychological impossibility for him to act contrary to his freely-elected training.

Biblical revelation (as to the kind of Being (Person, Subject) that God is) is sufficient for us Christians to conclude that the God of the Bible is not timeless, not a static Being. I would like to add a note about timelessness. Often the adjective "timeless" is used as a term synonymous with "unchanging, incorruptible, not ageing in the sense of suffering some debilitation." Of course, we all agree that the God of the Bible is not corruptible, and suffers no diminution or debilities whatsoever. But "timelessness" in context can go for the meaning that God has never been a person Who is Himself immersed in the stream of time as the contemporary of any other persons. That is not Biblical theology. Maybe I should make this point about God and the stream of time. God is not essentially outside time; we cannot in keeping with Biblical revelation logically view Him as One Who introduced Himself to the stream of time as though He were One Who is timeless but nevertheless may freely choose on occasion to step into the stream, as it were. (We should then have serious problems as to how we are to think of God as a personal being.) No, but time owes its existence as a necessary corollary to the mind of God; therefore, inasmuch as Christians are able to argue that it is logically necessary to conclude that a personal Supreme Being (God) has always been alive as a thinker and has always been thinking, then time necessarily exists because God as a person has always had ability not only to think but also to remember what He has been thinking. Thus time is necessarily coeval with God's lifetime.

Referring to the clause "for, indeed, the Father is looking for suchlike ones to worship him," do we not see that this is another text that shows us that time wise, God is in lockstep with us; He is our contemporary? God is not alive and present in a space-time continuum that, merely because He is in it, allows Him to discover without analytical effort what men must come to experience as their present time in, say, a 1000 years from now. (Of course, God can easily accomplish within a day what we might similarly accomplish were we to have the luxury of working a 1000 or more years at it.) God, then, is actively on the lookout in order that He might learn who they are who are disposed to worshipping Him in spirit and truth so that He might then draw closer to them (cf. Acts 17:27).

This does not mean that God cannot know what things will occur in the future, but it means that as respects such things that He foreknows, then He foreknows some of them because (a) He has purposed that He will cause some of them to come into existence at some future time, and He knows the other of them because (b) He knows what things must eventuate in a chain of causes and effects (should He choose not to intervene, and choose also not to let anything else intervene), this so that we ought not to conclude that God is gratuitously given knowledge of them through some relationship with a Second Principle, and thus apart from His need to analyze the interrelationships of things that really exist, that are presently Real.

In looking at the matter of Judas' betrayal, may we not say that it was the only kind of route that the Devil saw that he had open to him in order to get at Jesus, this because Jehovah was determined not to let any other kind of route succeed for taking Jesus into death? The Jews had tried previously to hurl Jesus from a cliff, and, on another occasion, to stone Jesus; however, those efforts did not accord with how Jehovah was steering matters, He steering them to the point where Satan realized that the only way he might get at Jesus was through use of a greedy, proud, or disaffected person present somewhere in Jesus' body of disciples, preferably someone close to Jesus. Satan, then, early on hit on the idea of working on and with men from among Jesus' followers. He began to have success with Judas Iscariot.

Judas began to develop greed in his heart, and he became a thief. When that happened, then neither Jehovah nor Jesus chose to intervene in a way that would have put an end to Judas' involvement in Jesus' death. But it was Judas' own unrepentant greed whereby he became a willing tool of Satan; Judas led himself into sinning against holy spirit. Sometime well before the actual act of betrayal had been arranged and paid for by the religious leaders, Jesus was able to know the identity of the man who would betray him. No doubt there were other disciples much too occupied with material things, and from among whom Satan might have easily found (other) willing accomplice(s); however, he soon enough found a promising prospect in one of Jesus' disciples who was among the Twelve apostles, no less. Satan must have made himself very busy with Judas so that early on it became evident to Jehovah and Jesus which one of Jesus' many intimate acquaintances had let himself become so trained by greed and Satan's machinations that he was soon enough willing to plot against Jesus for monetary gain. But supposing that Judas had early on repented before he had brought himself to the point where he was
sinning against holy spirit, then we should conclude that Satan would likely have continued his efforts with other of Jesus' disciples so that they, too, might stand willing to involve themselves in plotting Jesus' death for monetary gain.

Jehovah knows the mind of Satan better than Satan knows himself. It was no difficult thing for Jehovah to predict infallibly the route that Satan should have to use for his finally succeeding in murdering Jesus; moreover, there is no doubt that Satan was so caught up in a murderous spirit that it would have been a psychological miracle/impossibility for him to desist his efforts against Jesus. Jehovah had infallibly read Satan's mind so that Jehovah knew that it would be a psychological impossibility for Satan not to try to get at Jesus through one of Jesus' disciples. He knew that Satan would certainly take such a route, and that Jehovah would let it succeed, whereas Jehovah knew that He would not let any other route succeed. This does not make Jehovah an accomplice in the betrayal of His Son.

May we not look at Peter's thrice disowning Jesus before the morning crowing of a cock as evidence of God's sovereign power at work, and as evidence that God knows the mind of a man better than the man knows himself? May we not hold that Jehovah revealed to His Son that Peter, when put under pressure,would disown Jesus? Jehovah knew that He was certainly going to cause three different witnesses to say in Peter's presence, while Peter was in the midst of a hostile crowd, that Peter was a disciple of Jesus. Jehovah knew that it would have been a psychological impossibility for the too-fearful Peter not to disown Jesus after the first witness had spoken, and then disown him again after the second witness had spoken, and then disown him yet again after the third witness had spoken. Jehovah chose to reveal some of the details to His Son about what was to transpire with Peter, and then Jesus told them to Peter.

Now, as far as Jehovah's choosing the Twelve, He chose them at a time when He did not know that it would be Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus, and it was not necessary to fulfillment of the prophecy that any one of the Twelve be the one to betray Jesus. One of Jesus' intimate acquaintances might have come forth out of other quarters from among Jesus' disciples. As far as "weakness" among Jesus' disciples and apostles goes, any weaknesses that they had at the time that God's spirit was working with them (cf. John 6:44) does not mean that any such weaknesses necessarily predisposed the owners of those weaknesses towards a betrayal of Jesus for monetary gain. But if and when a certain kind of weakness, namely, greed, might manifest itself among any of Jesus' disciples, then we can be sure that Satan, being a keen student of human behavior, would have been "Johnny on the spot" to exploit it in an endeavor to have Jesus become betrayed through the greed of the one Satan might find to be so willingly manipulated. Lo and behold, that kind of weakness in time did turn up in Judas Iscariot, and Satan began grooming him for the role he wanted Judas to play.

If we look for some text that expressly states that God can or has foreseen the future, will we find one? Well, there is the verse where Paul stated, ". . . as God foresaw something better for us." Must we construe the meaning of the verse as statement that God had direct vision of something gratuitously given to Him? May we not rather read it as reference to that which God knew would become reality according to His will, wisdom, and power to have it so, but not as reference to something of which God was but gratuitously given direct vision thereof? With His mind's eye, God could "see" (foreknow) what must become a reality for the anointed ones per His will, wisdom, and dynamic power (almightiness). And oh how instructive a read the book of Isaiah becomes for us as we read in the book the many expressions of just how it is so that God foreknows the future. There is nothing in the book or elsewhere in the Bible that should cause us to look for solutions by recourse to questionable metaphysics.

We may find it helpful on occasion (when witnessing to unbelievers who are universal predestinarians) for us to make references (1) to God's great power manifested in His specially programming the genome of a certain child in the womb -- as well, then, of course, to His ability to read the genome of a child while yet in the womb (Psalm 139:15, 16), and (2) to His ability to know the parents -- or the prospective parents -- so well (this so that He may foreknow what sort of spiritual nurturing and environment the child will receive after his birth); yes, we may find it helpful to make references to such things in order that we might offer answers to proponents of universal predestinarianism when they would direct us to what is in the Bible (a) about Jacob and Esau while they were yet in the womb (see Romans 9:11-13), (b) about Jeremiah before he was conceived -- or else immediately after he was conceived -- (Jeremiah 1:5), (c) about John the Baptist for a certain time even before he was conceived (Luke 1:13-17, 24), and (d) about how Jesus was conceived apart from any inheritance of sin (Luke 1:35). God's great power (dynamic energy), His unfathomable powers of discernment (so as to know all that is even possible of becoming real), and His ability to read so thoroughly "the hearts and the kidneys" of his creatures mean that He can never be taken aback by some ugly, surprising development that must then unravel His purposes and put them beyond fulfillment. Moreover, those aforementioned attributes in Jehovah mean that He can never be mistaken as to any of His prophecies about what some creature will do.

There are questions that challenge the presentation given above. Let us see what some of them are.

1) How does God know future contingents (which are ontologically indeterminate)with 100% certainty?

There is no phenomenal future, so there are no things yet to occur that may be described as having any manner of non-ideational ontology whatsoever.

2) How do we reconcile divine foreknowledge with human free will? What does it mean for God to put a certain thought in someone's heart, if that is what God does? If God does maneuver someone to accomplish the divine will or puts a thought in someone's heart, can that person be held completely responsible for his/her/its actions?

As we well know, Jehovah is not the author of anything that is bad (immoral, wicked). Still, Jehovah can manipulate men and armies of men to do His will. For example, it was according to God's will that He "sent his [Roman] armies and destroyed those [Jewish] murderers and burned their city [Jerusalem" (Matthew 22:7). Any rapes of Jewish women by Roman soldiers and any acts of idolatry by the Roman soldiers involving their military emblems were not willed by God, though such things are no surprise when pagan armies are involved (cf. Isaiah 13:16; Ezekiel 21:22, 23). Men's acts of badness are their own, and very often they perform them under Satan's influence. Jehovah knew that an exasperated, frustrated Satan the Devil, if finally allowed to get his murderous hands on the Logos become flesh, would certainly not hesitate to have the Logos killed. It was according to God's will for Him to allow Satan only a certain way for him to succeed in killing God's Son, because it not only and chiefly would serve to vindicate Jehovah's sovereignty, justice, and demonstrate His wisdom, but the Son's integrity unto death by impalement would also be the way that a sin-atoning, ransom sacrifice could be made that would satisfy God's justice so that the release of mankind from sin and death should occur.

How do we handle what philosopher/metaphysician Ockham has written? (She stated, “I maintain that it is impossible to express clearly the way in which God knows future contingents. Nevertheless, it must be held that He does so, but contingently." She certainly viewed explaining how God knows future contingents contingently as a Herculean task.)

Ockham is mistaken. The statement "God knows future contingents" is oxymoronic; there is no foreknowledge that God has of "future contingents." Moreover, if God foreknows a thing as a thing that is yet to occur, then its occurrence will happen because either (1) God has predestined it to become Real at only the time He has chosen to act sufficiently for it to become Real, and thereby has disallowed any possibility that He might merely learn that the thing became Real at some point in time before the time He had chosen to act sufficiently for it to become Real; or (2) God knows by an analysis of the interrelationships of presently existing things what must eventuate should He not act to disallow it. For example, God can get to know any creature so very well that it would be a psychological miracle -- a psychological impossibility -- for the creature to choose freely to act in some way contrary to what God has learned is true of their moral and spiritual character. God may act in such a way as must unfailingly serve to enable a creature to express himself according to a manner that is in accordance with the way he has made himself morally and spiritually. It is possible for a free moral agent to train himself in such a way that it must become a psychological impossibility for him to act contrary to his freely-elected training. For example, we may refer once again to what Jehovah learned about the things that Satan would surely not hesitate to bring about if allowed opportunity and sufficient resources to accomplish them. If Jehovah's will was to allow such for the Devil, then Jehovah was able to have foreknowledge that His Son, after being sent to earth, would be murdered. On a more positive note, by the time God would administer the final sealing to an anointed one and translate him into immortal, heavenly life, God has by that time learned that the anointed one getting the final sealing is one who has so availed himself of training by holy spirit that it has become impossible for him to rebel. So, some things that God knows will occur are things He has predestined to occur, whereas some of the things that God knows will occur are things He knows will certainly occur if He chooses to permit them to occur. In either event, the things God knows as things that are yet to occur are not "future contingents."

Time originates in the mind of God. The mind of God has always existed; therefore, time has always existed. Space, too, since God has an organism (body) that is not omnipresent. That space we call Heaven has always existed because God has always existed and He has always been aware that there is or are differences in one region/area of His organism, which His heavenly sons can also detect, whenever anyone might compare them to what he finds is so for another region/area of His organism. The first non-ideational, extra-God reality that God brought into existence would mean an expansion in that space-time continuum we call Heaven. God's soliloquy when deciding what He was going to do about whether or not to tell Abraham something about possibility of impending judgment against Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:16-20) again shows us that God experiences the one and only space-time continuum that all His creatures experience. Furthermore, not even God can make what has occurred as something that has never occurred. And whatever thing God knows as something X that will certainly occur is X that either He has predestined, or is X He knows will come to have a cause sufficient enough for X's coming into existence, and will so come into existence except He be the only thing able to block X from coming into existence, i.e., He decides not to let X occur. However, because there is no phenomenological future, then there will occur no extra-God reality X that is both logically and necessarily possible for us to get to know as Real only in our 'here and now,' but which God was already knowing before our 'here and now.' Our 'here and now' is His, too; God is our contemporary. Is there anything in the Scriptures which should force us into holding to an alternative metaphysic?

Whatever is necessarily possible is also logically possible, that is to say, we cannot say that what is necessarily possible may be, conceptually speaking, an absurdity. That, however, is not the same thing as the statement that whatever is logically possible – so that it is not an absurdity-- is also necessarily possible. It is logically possible that Jesus could have sinned, that is to say, there is in the proposition itself no absurdity on its face; the concept as concept is logical, it is ‘thinkable.’ But that does not mean that it was necessarily a possibility that Jesus of Nazareth might have sinned. Jesus had let His Father so train him that it had become impossible for him to rebel against his Father.

“If X obtains, then Y may – though not necessarily so -- obtain because X alone is not sufficient cause for Y’s coming into existence, even though X is logically discoverable as part of the cause of Y.” But then there is this, too: “If X has obtained – and quite possibly it already has – then Y has obtained or is being obtained -- because X is not merely a part of the cause of Y, but is necessarily sufficient cause for Y to obtain.” This proposition levels the epistemological ‘playing field’ on which both God and His rational creatures operate so that if God knows things that His creatures don’t know – and there is certainly plenty of that! --, then that is true not because there are different Realities (Reality = All Things in Existence), but because some of the one and only Reality in existence cannot all of it be known by His creatures, which is true because we have finite minds and resources. So, the following statement is untrue: “Some of the differences between what we know and what God knows may also be attributed to God’s ability to go over to a different playing field (different Reality).” We should hold that that concept is, from the Christian perspective, absurd because it violates the definition that God is that Person who can always get to know all that His creatures get to know because the choice to do so is always there for Him to make at His pleasure; however, those abilities would necessarily not be the case if He were not in the same space-time continuum that His creatures are in. If we creatures were not limited, we could choose to know as much as God knows and we could know it when He knows it, if we wanted it that way. Such a possibility, if given our premise, would then be necessarily so, this because it cannot be the case that any differences in what the persons know should be differences that exist because some person(s) had ability to slip off to a different playing field, as it were.

Should we not reject any metaphysic that carries the meaning `Time Future is a Second Principle, a Principle for Predestinarianism (i.e., Time Future offers God to God's effortless and direct gaze a gratuitous presentation of things to His direct gaze so that He effortlessly learns that some bad things will happen unless He chooses to intervene for thwarting them from becoming Real, from becoming learned or experienced by Real creatures)'? Some say, `God chose to let eventuate a world that He knew would go awry of what He wanted.' Why would He so choose? Well, if we were to imagine that there is a Time Future as a Second Principle independent of the mind of God, then we are imagining the following: `Our world today eventuated either because (1) God freely chose not to gaze upon what the Second Principle was offering in the way of a possible world in order that He might foresee its badness, or (2) He did choose to look, but found that the Second Principle was not offering Him a world any better than this one we now have, so that He chose it because it was the only world that, though not being free of sin, was offering Him a smaller number of sinners who would not come to repentance than was so for what He was seeing in all the other possible worlds, worlds all of which featured a greater number of unrepentant sinners. Well, we Jehovah's Witnesses know our problem isn't in what God can permit, but if we imagine that future time is a Principle that operates independently of the mind of God, then my point is that we unintentionally and unwittingly impugn the sovereignty of God.

How, then, do we answer the question, "Why didn't God choose to foresee whether or not Adam and Eve would, as free moral agents, sin?" Some answer with the words ‘God chose not to foreknow (here with the meaning "foresee") the answer.’ Well, if our holy and just God could have chosen to foreknow the answer merely by foreseeing it --- by directly gazing upon what was in the future -- it could only be that our holy and just God, in the event, had chosen to look at what the future was offering Him. God did not, however, consult with or gaze upon a Time Future's offering(s) because there is no such thing as a real Time Future, nothing to foresee. And certainly our holy God was not going to foreknow that badness would eventuate in the world as result of what He Himself had purposed to happen; a holy God cannot impugn His own holiness. So, if God really did have ability to foresee the future but merely chose not to foresee what was going to happen, then that implies a Second Principle, the existence of which should have to be construed as that which compromises His sovereignty. But if God could have foreknown that Adam and Eve were going to sin, then that implies that God, in the event of His foreknowing it, would have made Himself the author of badness, because He would have been foreordaining their rebellion.

What is the future, ontologically speaking? The future is ideational, not phenomenological. Intelligent mind can have ability to anticipate things, ability to hope for things, and ability to purpose things. Those abilities give us the abstract concept we call the future, because we know the things those abilities enable are not presently real (not present for marking time), but may become real, thus marking time then. Now, so long as God was not purposing to do something in the way of bringing about extra-God things, and thus was not in anticipation of anything becoming present in Reality besides Himself, then for that length of time God was not forming a concept of the future in His mind: He had yet to know what things – things other than His own thoughts – that He would create, for after their creation they would be present (= in the process of marking time), and when they are no longer existing as extra-God things, then God can know that, too, and they become "things" of the past, memories.

What is the past? The past exists only as memory of what no longer exists. God has that kind of past in His mind, too. He tells us in the book of Jonah that He is aware of something in His past, of where He once stood as respects the city of Nineveh: He tells us He was poised to destroy it, but then He "repented" that idea, i.e., He changed His mind and spared the city. He recalls all that for us. He is His creatures' contemporary. If we say, "God has owned that particular concept from the eternal past," then that is just another way that we say, "It is not possible that God has memory of a time when He first came to know that particular concept that He really owns, for He has always known it." If something yet exists, we cannot have memory that it used to exist. If I presently own a certain John Deere tractor X, and have owned it for ten years now, I cannot logically say about it the following: "I have memory of a time when I used to own X."

How could Jesus say that Peter would thrice deny Jesus? Jesus had to have gotten that information by revelation from the Father, Jehovah, Who chose to look into Peter’s “heart and kidneys” so that He learned that Peter was indeed disposed to making a cowardly denial of Jesus, and certainly would if certain pressure were brought against Peter, pressure that would expose Peter as one yet too weak not to make the denial should it appear likely to him that he was about to lose liberty or life. Jehovah saw that Peter was so disposed to making the denial (if certain conditions were to confront Peter) that it would be psychologically impossible for Peter not to make the denial. No creature, with probably the exception of Jesus Christ since his glorification, is able to make such a determination about another creature; Jehovah, however, has the ability to know infallibly what His creatures would do under any set of circumstances. He can freely choose to foreknow how the creature will certainly react under this or that set of circumstances; but Jehovah is not the cause of any bad behavior on the part of a creature. He was not the author of Pharaoh’s wicked heart, but Jehovah knew how Pharaoh would keep on hardening his heart despite the ten punishments that Jehovah brought against Pharaoh’s domain; Jehovah knew how Pharaoh would freely choose to act when Jehovah would cause Pharaoh to become subjected to this or that set of circumstances (the ten plagues). Jehovah can, if He so chooses, also get to know when a creature is on the cusp of sinning against holy spirit; however, He will certainly get to know when one of His anointed ones has happily come to a point in his training whereby Jehovah becomes completely confident that no pressures allowed against that anointed one will induce him to rebel against Jehovah.

Jehovah knew that Peter would thrice deny Jesus, and that was not knowledge that He obtained because He merely chose to discover it, He supposedly knowing that such knowledge would be gratuitously available to Him if He but chose to look ahead into the future, and do so as effortlessly as does a meteorologist when he predicts rain (because he has but merely to look at a Doppler radar screen that shows him rain is approaching). No, but he had to analyze/study Peter’s “heart and kidneys.” The Devil had been demanding an opportunity to sift Peter. It seems safe to say that Jehovah knew that if He allowed the Devil to do so, the Devil would persist in trying to ruin Peter no matter how many efforts it might take him. Surely it was an easy matter for Jehovah, on that night, to allow the Devil to humiliate Peter in only one certain way, though He had determined that He would allow the Devil to repeat humiliating Peter for three times. May we not say that Jehovah put the hook in Satan’s nose that night just as surely as He did to Ahab when He caused him to go up to Ramothgilead in order that Ahab should meet his end (2 Chronicles 18:19-21)? Apparently Jehovah had a way of making Satan aware of what resources he had available to him in his effort to get Peter to compromise, to get Peter to deny Jesus. It was an easy matter for Jehovah to know Satan so well that He knew it was not in Satan to resist using those resources when once he had learned that they were available to him. So, then, may we not say that Jehovah figured all this out (cf. Isaiah 14:24)? Jehovah was also learning that Peter, for whom He continued to have love and affection (John 16:27) throughout all his trial that night, would not come to be on the cusp of sinning against holy spirit because of the evil trial that Jehovah allowed the Devil to bring against Peter. Jehovah allowed it because He had learned something about Peter that Satan could not know about Peter. He had learned that that episode of persecution by the Devil against Peter would teach Peter a valuable lesson, namely, that he should humbly and meekly learn to rely on God’s spirit, and not proudly imagine that he was something more than he was. Jehovah revealed all those things to His Son Jesus so that he, in turn, told Peter what was in store for him.

If God has always been a thinker, then it seems to me that God, even before He created His only-begotten Son, must already have had a memory of His thoughts that He could know as thoughts about, for example, subject X that occurred before He had thoughts about subject Y, and all this as just some of a store of memories, some of which have existed from the eternal past, thus before He created any extra-God things. Those subject matters X and Y would be organized in His memory as some of the subjects He knew as subjects He was intensively entertaining in His mind, for surely He has so entertained thoughts on different subjects, He doing so from the eternal past. As I stated earlier, we probably cannot get to know what any of those subject matters were.

It is possible we cannot think meaningfully about the nature of those thoughts/subject matters because we may have been created without that ability, just as it is with irrational creatures when it comes to our comparing their mentational abilities against ours. We have ability to think about -- even to plan -- travel to the planets; animals, as we well know, cannot think about travel to the planets. (I once had a dog, though, that thoroughly enjoyed traveling in a car with his head poked out a window.) If that is a reasonable surmise we make of God as a thinker, then He never created a concept of past time (memory) for Himself. Memory/the past has always been in the "fabric" of His mind, so to speak. I know no other way to make sense of the Scriptures that show us that God is a person from everlasting to everlasting. I don't see any need not to think that His memory stretches back into the eternal past, meaning that I don't see where we need a different concept for God's mind as though without that concept we have left something broken that needs fixing. I cannot conceive of a God Who knows when memory became a new property in His mind. I can, however, easily come to the conclusion that if God has always had concept of the future, then it did not always have to include anticipation of when He might create extra-God things; however, it seems to me that more than that we finite creatures here on planet Earth cannot meaningfully say.

As far back as I have memory, I have always preferred the seat beside the window when traveling in a vehicle; I cannot remember a time when that was not true. Supposing -- just for the sake of argument, mind you! -- a world like our own from the eternal past, and supposing I had always been alive in that world and possessed of a mind able to record memory of every experience I have ever had, and able to make choices about where I would seat myself in a vehicle, then I could remember every episode of my riding in a vehicle as one when I was preferring the seat beside the window. I shouldn’t be able to recall a single occasion when that would not have been true. All my memories would be consonant with that historical fact.

Now, let us consider God, where we do not imagine a scenario true for Him, because He truly has been alive from the eternal past, and He has always from the eternal past known certain things about Himself, too. No matter how far back in time He may wish to push His recollection or recall of what He was thinking about when He was thinking about subject X and then when, either earlier or later than that (namely, His contemplation of X), He was contemplating subject Y, still, He would always recall those thoughts/contemplations as being holy. He would have no other memory of their moral character besides that, namely, remembrance that all His thoughts have always been holy.

The diagram below represents the metaphysic that is urged in this article.


. . . eternal past_________X_____Y_____+______C________P


The horizontal line is a time line, stretching from the eternal past to the present, P.

The part of the diagram that is in red font, which is text up to the character "C," represents that history (the past) in God's lifetime which was from the eternal past up to point "C," which represents "the beginning of creation, extra-God things."

Point "X" represents a time when God first began to think about a certain subject that is unknown and probably necessarily unknowable by us.

Point "Y" represents a time when God, subsequent to the time represented by X, first began to think about another subject that is unknown and probably necessarily unknowable by us.

Point "+" represents a time when God decided to create an extra-God being, namely, the Logos. At the same moment of decision, God may or may not have decided on the creation of other extra-God things (e.g., cherubim, seraphim, angels, humans).

(N.B. A point in time when God has decided to do something is not necessarily the point in time when He implements the decision.)

The diagram is for representing the lifetime of the non-static God, Jehovah. The diagram is stylized, and should not be construed as statement that God had only three thoughts prior to when He created extra-God Reality.

God's existence is not representable by a point on any time line. The time line I diagrammed is for abstract representation of God's lifetime, part of which He has lived before He created any extra-God things.

Unless we have a theology that has it that God has not always existed from an eternity prior to created Reality (Jude 25), then we cannot agree with the thought that God's existence could be abstractly diagramed by "only one DATA POINT." One data point does not a line make, though it may mark an origin. Still, God's existence (lifetime) is not "one event." To place God as a data point for representation of His existence as "one event" is not Scriptural; God's existence is not an event, for God never eventuated.

We cannot place on a time line any such event, because there never was such an event, and never was there any event that gave rise to the existence of time. Time has always existed because God as thinker has always existed.The time line above uses a red font for representing any point in time prior to existence of created Reality. At any point in God's lifetime prior to when He created extra-God things, you will find that the diagram represents that God was already then in existence as a thinker: the diagram must accordingly have a means for representing the eternal past, for we cannot reference any time when God was not in existence as a thinker. The very fact that God has always been alive as a thinker means that God did not create time, for surely His mind has never been without the property of memory, lest our logic lead us to state the unscriptural thing that God is a static God, or was a static God before (up until) He created extra-God things. Time is part of the very fabric of God's mind, and it is so for us, too.

We cannot, without being parasites on meaning, speak metaphysically of God's mind by our trying to leave time out of the picture . . . and that for any point in time to which we may refer. The statement ‘God was already in existence from before the beginning of time,’ – that God is the Originator of time -- is a statement that is a parasite on meaning, for it begs us to ask "When did time come into existence?" because "when" in that question means that you are using the concept of time in a contradictory fashion, for if it had yet to be created, then what sense would the question make about "When did time come into existence?" Time Future for God is like Time Future for us in that in both cases we are referencing what is ideational, not phenomenological, not non-ideational. Because of that, there is no Time Future that can be described as an infinity gap interposed between God's existence before creation of extra-God Reality up until the time where He takes on relationship with rational creatures, i.e., at the time He creates them. So, let us avoid the fallacy of the misplaced concretion by not imagining that there really exists in some divine Time Future that which can mark events outside God's creation of extra-God Reality. Time Future is anticipation; history (Time Past) is memory. Le us not hold that the future is something that is more than ideational, something more than God's foreknowledge that is His by virtue of what He figures out He will cause to occur, or let occur, or not let occur. If God, though, knows that some event is bound to occur, it did not come to Him from out of the future, but it was altogether the product (a) of what He is presently willing/purposing to serve as its cause, or (b) of what He is willing/purposing to let happen without His intervention, or (c) of what He is willing/purposing to serve as a sure block against as respects an event that otherwise would take place should He choose not to intervene against a chain of causes and effects that He knows will come to be in place, which is again knowledge He has because He knows how that chain will unfold should He choose, for example, to intervene here but not to intervene there, though such interventions and non-interventions will logically result in their own effect(s) that God discerns will happen. All of this makes for Him an ideational (anticipatory) future, but not a future that, as future, can give God new thoughts, as though God has but effortlessly to read and discover/learn the future much as a weatherman does when reading a Doppler radar screen. God doesn't receive any knowledge from the future, but the knowledge He has now -- presently -- about how He will act is how He makes an ideational future, a future He foreknows.

We see from the Scriptures that God can be of a mind to do something (e.g., He was of a mind to destroy Nineveh in the time of Jonah), but then He may later change His mind (e.g., He changed His mind so that His ideational future for that city Nineveh, which as future would have persisted in God's mind until He might have destroyed that city, was, as ideational future, a thing erased from God's mind when the city's inhabitants repented their sins).

When God generates a new thought, He has ability to correlate it with thoughts that were previously generated in His mind, and the flow of time is there, in His mind, His consciousness, for He knows when He first generated the thought, or first learned some information, and that moment by Him either of generation or of learning He knows as something that occurred either simultaneously to occurrence of other information reaching His awareness, or else after acquisition of other (earlier acquired) information.

When we speak of the flow of time, let us avoid speaking in reificational terms, but say rather that time as a "flow" is a mentational construct, and in God's mind, because He may choose to become aware of what has happened in, or is happening in/to, extra-God Reality, or because He marks a sequence in His thoughts about extra-God Reality, and prior to then He was having.