St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (Mar 2024)
God and Philosophy of Time
Abstract
What Christians call ‘creation’ is fundamentally, inescapably, and entirely temporal. Humans, too, are temporal beings. As such, understanding the nature of time has been a philosophical pursuit since the pre-Socratic philosophers. Theologians have not been exempted from this interest, and thus, unsurprisingly, reflection on God’s relation to time similarly spans back many hundreds of years. In fact, one might argue that the topic ‘God and Time’ underlies almost all key theological debates, for two reasons. First, because the nature of God’s relation to time concerns the relationship between creator and creation, a core component of the bedrock of theology. Second, because understanding whether God is temporal or atemporal enables insight into what the mind of God might be like. Determining God’s temporal status can inform us about issues ranging from incarnation to omniscience, from divine action to omnipotence. Thus, understanding the topic ‘God and time’ is integral for many (arguably most) important theological pursuits. This article sets out the main points of interest in this intellectual terrain. Each half of the conjunction ‘God and time’ will be defined, and then the various ways of framing the relationship will be explored. The article will begin by setting out the kind of ‘God’ upon which God and time discourse is focused. Then, it will turn to ‘time’ by briefly introducing temporal metaphysics, with a focus on debates between the A-theory, B-theory, and C-theory of time. This terminology serves as the conceptual architecture within which much contemporary God and time discourse takes place. Following this, the ways that contemporary physics shapes our understanding of temporal reality will be set out. Then, the article will sketch the key arguments for divine atemporality and divine temporality in turn, examining how each of these models of God’s relationship to time impacts our understanding of both the divine nature and the ways God might relate to the world and its inhabitants. The article will close with a few reflections on the implications of the preceding discussion for our understanding of human nature. In so doing, the article provides an up-to-date survey of this highly important topic.
