Does God Experience the Unfolding of Time?

by Rich Holland

11-27-2023

Abstract: For much of the history of Christian theology, it has been assumed that God exists “outside of” time, in an eternity that contains no temporal sequence or passage of time. Many Christians today accept this traditional atemporal viewpoint without question. When pressed against the biblical descriptions of God, however, the traditional view of God’s relation to time becomes far less tenable. This essay suggests that the traditional atemporal viewpoint conflicts with core Christian doctrines. Further, the essay suggests that the traditional view of God’s relation to time ought to be abandoned in favor of the view that God does experience time.

Keywords: God and time, atemporal, immutability, eternal, Christ, incarnation

1. Introduction

Beginning with Augustine of Hippo (AD 354 – 430), the dominant viewpoint in Christian theology has been that God is “outside” of time, existing in an atemporal eternity, absent any sequence or passage of time. In both academic and local church settings, this traditional view has held dominance in Christian theology; and many have accepted the atemporal view without question and without examining either the core assumptions of the view, or whether the view is consistent with other (more important) doctrines.

Traditional views should not be abandoned lightly; and perhaps there is an underlying fear that if tradition is questioned, the entire enterprise of Christian theology will begin to crumble apart. However, tradition ought not be the primary authority for developing a doctrine of God; and to the extent that tradition creates contradiction, tradition ought to be abandoned. What I want to do here is suggest that the traditional view of God’s relation to time is in conflict with core Christian doctrines, and therefore it should be abandoned in favor of the view that God does experience time.

2. How Did We Get the Traditional View?

Augustine famously pondered the question, “What was God doing before He made heaven and earth?”[1] His response is that the question is non-sensical, because time itself is a feature of the created physical universe. Augustine refers to God as “the Creator of all times,”[2] and argues that time itself began at the moment of creation. Augustine connects this to the concept of God’s immutability. He argues that all of God’s actions take place one atemporal moment, for otherwise we have, “time and change, and not true eternity, nor a true immortality.”[3] If God created time, and if God is immutable in the way Augustine describes, then God cannot be “in” time, nor can he experience time’s sequence or passage.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (AD 477 – 524) is perhaps less well known but is more influential than Augustine on the question of God’s relation to time. In addressing God’s nature, Boethius presents a definition of eternity that came to dominate Christian thought. He writes, “So what does rightly claim the title of eternal is that which grasps and possesses simultaneously the entire fullness of life without end; no part of the future is lacking to it, and no part of the past has escaped it.”[4] In other words, for Boethius, God can only be “eternal” if he has no past, no future, and no passage of time in his life. In the same discussion, Boethius offers his (now famous) illustration of God observing the full spectrum of time at once, “as from one of the world’s lofty peaks.”[5]

Thomas Aquinas (AD 1225 – 1274) is another who has been highly influential. In his discussion on the nature of God, Thomas defends the Boethian model of eternity with an even stronger emphasis on God’s immutability. He argues that the very notion of time arises from change; but since God is completely free of change, then God must be atemporal. He writes that “just as numbering the antecedent and the consequent in change produces the notion of time, awareness of invariability in something altogether free from change produces the notion of eternity.”[6] Thomas thinks that there cannot possibly be any ‘before’ or ‘after’ in God, and that every feature of God’s life must be instantaneously simultaneous with every other feature in his life. This view rules out the possibility of God experiencing the passage of time.

3. An Important Question of Method

Most contemporary defenders of the atemporal view have followed these classical contributions. Prominent contributors such as Eleonore Stump, Norman Kretzmann, Brian Leftow, and Paul Helm all adopt the same basic method to answer the question of whether God experiences time: they begin by assuming the conceptions of eternity and immutability as given in the more ancient sources, and then attempt to reconcile the atemporal view with various other elements of Christian theology. As such, Boethius’ definition of eternity and Thomas’s definition of immutability are treated as the non-negotiables, and everything else must be made to fit. The problem, of course, is that little of the biblical data fits very well with these beginning assumptions, and the history of Christian philosophy is full of various thinkers attempting to make the contradictions disappear.

If we begin with Scripture as the non-negotiable, we find that the traditional view of God and time is in trouble since the Bible only describes God’s life and action in temporal language. God does one thing and then he does another. God promises to act in a certain way in the future and then he acts that way. God meets his people in the present, reminds them of what he has done in the past, and promises what he will do in the future, contingent upon whether they repent or remain faithful to him. Descriptions of an utterly changeless, static atemporal eternity are absent from the Bible.[7] Instead, God is presented as dynamic, acting, and reacting in normal temporal sequence. Perhaps this is best seen in the incarnation: the Second Person of the Trinity taking on human nature and living an ordinary temporal life as Jesus of Nazareth.

4. The Incarnation and Time

The doctrine of the incarnation refers to the fact that God the Son, a person of the Trinity coequal with the other persons, took on human nature and flesh, and was born of Mary as Jesus the Christ. The Bible teaches that in Christ, there is just one single person who exists with two natures; he is thus truly God and truly human. Early Christianity produced clear creedal statements to that effect in an effort to exclude any theology who denies these truths. There are at least three ways in which this central Christian doctrine supports the idea that God experiences temporal sequence and the unfolding of time in his own existence.

4.1 The Incarnation as a Temporal Event in God’s Life

First, it must be noted that the incarnation is an event that occurred within a temporal sequence. The language of Scripture clearly refers to the incarnation as a temporal event, as John 1:14 states, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”[8] Phil 2:7 says that Christ “made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.” These passages and others use the language of temporal sequence in their characterization of what took place in the incarnation. The ancient creeds of the Church bear testimony to this. The Nicene Creed, for example, states that the Son of God “for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.”^[9] What is clear is that the incarnation was a temporal event that separates two non-identical states of affairs. There was the state of affairs that was God the Son not yet being incarnate; then the incarnation occurred; and then subsequent to the incarnation event, God the Son was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. This was an ordinary temporal event, appearing in an ordinary temporal sequence in the life of God the Son. This is strong indication that God himself experienced this temporal sequence.

Contemporary defenders of the traditional atemporal view deny this. Paul Helm, for example, has emphasized his belief that the incarnation was not an event that occurred in time, despite what the Bible and the creedal statements might suggest. He argues that, although humans may have experienced the incarnation as if it were within time from God’s perspective, God is atemporally incarnate in Christ. Helm writes that “there is no time in [Christ’s] existence when he was not incarnate.”[10] He makes the point more emphatic as he writes, “There is therefore no sense in talking of the eternal Son of God apart from the incarnation”[11] and “there is no preexistent Christ with a life history independent of and prior to the incarnation.”[12] Helm’s position entails that the physical human body of Jesus is co-eternal with God. While this may seem strange, Helm is just being consistent. His non-negotiable assumption is that God is atemporal and does not experience the unfolding of time. If this is true, then of course the flesh of Jesus must have existed from before all time, and the incarnation was not an event that took place at a specific time in history. Further, if Helm’s assumptions are correct, biblical and creedal statements to the contrary must be reinterpreted as literally false, but true only in some metaphorical sense. While the creeds of the Church confess that the person of Christ preexisted the incarnation, the atemporal view is committed to the idea that the physical body of Jesus preexisted the incarnation. Since this conclusion seems to contradict a straightforward reading of Scripture and the creeds, this is strong evidence that God does experience the unfolding of time in sequence.

4.2 Temporal Sequence in the Life of Christ

The Christological concepts outlined in the Nicene creed indicate that Jesus is God in the same way and to the same extent as the Father; thus it seems clear that the temporality in the life of Jesus is temporality in the life of God. Writing on the implications of Jesus’ divinity, Anselm of Canterbury (ca. AD 1033 – 1109) argues that the unity of the person of Christ serves as a guiding principle:

And we truly predicate everything, whether regarding God or regarding the human being, of him. For we cannot designate or name the divine Son apart from the human son, nor the human son as a person apart from the divine Son, and the combination of proper characteristics of the Word and the assumed human being is the same.[13]

Anselm was arguing that in the incarnation, the “human son” cannot be divided from the “divine son” in the way Christ’s life is described. This clearly has implications for the present topic because there is no doubt that Jesus lived—and continues to live—a life of temporal sequence. Based on the unity of the natures in the one person, it would seem that the ordinary temporal life of Jesus is an immediate indicator that the life of God is one in which he experiences temporal sequence.

The incarnation can perhaps be considered as a special case—or test-case—of God acting in time. Considered in the abstract, it may be possible for the atemporalist to develop a model that allows for God to make one timeless act that then has its effects spread through various portions of the temporal spectrum.[14] Such models, however, are stretched to their limits when required to account for the incarnation; for in the incarnation, it is not merely the effects of God’s actions that are temporal, but the actions themselves. As Thomas Torrence has said, “Thus it is the faith and understanding of the Christian Church that in Jesus Christ God Himself in His own Being has come into our world and is actively present as personal Agent within our physical and historical existence.”^[15] Since there are two natures united in Christ, and only one person, then it can be concluded that God himself—in that one person—is acting in normal temporal sequence in the life of Christ.

Some, of course, will resist this conclusion. Brian Leftow, for example, admits that the life of Jesus was the life of God the Son. He writes, “So soon as Mary’s egg began to live the life that would be Jesus’, the life being lived was God the Son’s life.”[16] However, in order to avoid the conclusion that God the Son experiences a temporal sequence, Leftow develops a model of the incarnation as a mereological sum[17] and concludes that Christ had only “a part in time.”[18] Leftow does not make this exactly clear, but it seems that what he means is that Christ’s human nature is the part in Christ which exists in time and lives the life of Jesus of Nazareth. However, it seems difficult to understand how a nature could live its own life. Moreover, this would contradict the conviction that the two natures of Christ are united in a single person. However, Leftow’s mereological analysis does little to explain (on the atemporal model) how there can be a single person living both an ordinary temporal and an atemporal life. It seems that it only makes sense to say that the person of Christ lived the life that was Jesus’ life, and that this person is in-time. This strongly suggests that God experiences time.

4.3 Temporal Sequence in the Work of Christ

In addition to the above two factors, the completed work accomplished in Jesus’ earthly life is also significant. Important passages of Scripture, such as Hebrews 10:12–14, highlight the fact that Christ’s earthly mission was accomplished and is now finished: “But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God… For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.” The same idea comes out in the very words of Christ as he hung on the cross: “It is finished.”[19] It is also made clear in the imagery of Jesus sitting down at the right hand of the Father, signifying that he needed perform no other work to accomplish the goal of salvation. Additionally, the completion is seen in the scriptural accounts of the transformed state of the redeemed man, emphasized in passages such as 2 Corinthians 5:17, which says that a believer in Christ is a new creation, and that the old things of the pre-redeemed life have passed away. These passages and others indicate a finality: a transformation achieved through the work of Christ that brings about a new standing before God for the believer. But the very notion of a completed work indicates a sequence of events in the divine life. There existed a state of affairs that was ‘sin having not been paid for’ and ‘a sinner standing under God’s righteous judgment.’ Christ’s completed work made atonement for man’s sins and now individual human beings are transformed permanently in their standing before God. Christ has put away sin in his atoning work on the cross.

It seems, however, that the atemporal model of God’s relation to time cannot account for the work of Christ being completed. In the atemporal model, every moment of God’s life is simultaneous to every other. Each temporal moment—whether past, present, or future—is on par with every other moment; and none has any privileged ontological status or standing before God. Us being dead in our sins and Christ hanging on the cross are ever present before the Father and equally real as any other event or state of affairs in the temporal spectrum. As William Lane Craig points out, “The victory of the resurrection becomes a hollow triumph, for the spatiotemporal parts of Jesus that were crucified and buried remain dying and dead and are never raised to new life.”[20] While we might like to say that the state of affairs that is ‘our sins having been atoned for’ takes some kind of priority over ‘us being lost in our sins,’ the atemporal model provides no basis with to make such distinctions. It is only if God experiences temporal sequence that Christ’s saving work can be accomplished (in past tense). While the ardent defender of the classical atemporal model may not be swayed by an appeal to the atonement, prima facie the atonement requires completion and the actual doing away with sin. This seems a strong indicator of temporal sequence in the divine life.

5. Conclusion

In light of the biblical data and their theological implications, the traditional atemporal model of God seems to be paradoxical at best. At worst, the view seems to contradict the biblical data. However, if we abandon the traditional view, paradox and contradiction disappear, and we are able to follow the biblical teaching to different conclusions. This essay offered one example of such, as it considered biblical teaching regarding the identity of Christ and the temporal sequence reflected in his life. As indicated in this brief survey, it seems clear that it is best to think that God does experience the unfolding of time.

[4] Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, 5.6 (111). All citations from this work are from The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by P. G. Walsh (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Interestingly, Boethius was not driven primarily by questions of immutability or definitions of eternity. Rather, he was attempting to resolve the apparent conflict between God’s foreknowledge and human free will.

[5] Ibid, 5.6 (112).

[6] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: Question on God, ed. by Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1a.10.1 (93).

[7] Paul Helm, a defender of the atemporal view, characterizes the biblical data this way: “But any reader of Scripture is forcefully struck by the language of time and change as applied to God.” In an attempt to defend his view, Helm lists a lengthy collection of passages that speak of God’s knowledge of future free choices of creatures, but no passages that support a static, atemporal eternity. Paul Helm, “Divine Timeless Eternity,” in God and Time: Four Views, ed. by Gregory E. Ganssle (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2001), 42-43. Helm goes on to discuss the pervasiveness of temporal language in Scripture describing God’s activity, especially God’s communication with humans. Helm suggests that this should be read as an accommodation on God’s part, rather than the literal truth of things. He writes, “it is a logically necessary condition of dialogue that each of the partners in the dialogue should appear to act and react in time.” Emphasis added. Ibid., 45. Helm suggests that the atemporal view arises when the biblical data are “coupled with a priori reflection on the ideas of the divine fullness and aseity and on the Creator-creature distinction.” Ibid., 34. In other words, Helm thinks that the biblical data is consistent with the atemporal view, but only when it is read in a metaphorical way. Helm admits that “it would be unwise for the eternalist to claim that divine timeless eternity [the atemporal view] is entailed by the language of Scripture.” Ibid., 31.

[8] All Scripture quotations in this essay are from the New King James Version.

[9] Elliot Ritzema, “Nicene Creed,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

[10] Helm, 54.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid. This idea is presented somewhat less emphatically in Stump and Kretzmann, “Eternity,” 452–453; in which the authors claim that arguing along these lines is a “Boethian account of the compatibility of divine eternality and the Incarnation.”

[13] Anselm, On the Incarnation of the Word, 11 (253), in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)

[14]Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” The Journal of Philosophy 78.8 (August 1981) represents one of the most important works that attempts to construct such a model.

[15] Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time, and Incarnation (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1969), 52.

[16] Brian Leftow, “A Timeless God Incarnate,” in The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 282.

[17] Ibid., 280.

[18] Ibid., 292.

[19] John 19:30.

[20] William Lane Craig, “Response to Paul Helm,” 67 in God and Time: Four Views, ed. by Gregory Ganssle (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2001). Craig limits his comments on the topic and does not develop the idea further in his own account of God’s relation to time.

Dr. Rich Holland is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at GCU’s College of Theology. He earned his Ph.D. and M.Div. degrees from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech. His published works include Good Arguments: Making Your Case in Writing and Public Speaking (Baker Academic, 2017) and God, Time, and the Incarnation (Wipf and Stock, 2012). He and his wife Larissa have been married for over 25 years and have four children together.