Here's How God Crossed An Actual Infinity: The Past

Jefferson

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Super Moderator
Here's How God Crossed An Actual Infinity: The Past

This is the show from Tuesday January 6th, 2014

Summary:

* Age Old Philosophical Question Answered: Bob Enyart answers the age old philosophical objection to countless Bible passages that present God as having existed throughout eternity past. Because of the impossibility of time itself being created, and by the many, many Scriptural teachings at kgov.com/time showing that God exists in time, therefore we teach that God has not existed atemporally outside of time and then entered time, but rather, that His goings forth are from of old, from everlasting, from ancient times, the everlasting God who continues forever, from before the ages of the ages, He who is and who was and who is to come, who remains forever, the everlasting Father, whose years never end, from everlasting to everlasting, and of His kingdom there will be no end.

* Read Along To Better Follow Today's Program: The addendum to our kgov.com/time article points out that we human beings have difficulty thinking even about simple, let alone more complex, aspects of time. Consider these corrections to three other popular misconceptions.

Misconception 1: Measurement of time equals time itself. Simply pointing out this nearly ubiquitous error should suffice to correct it. Secular folks and believers alike frequently assume this non sequitur with Christians suggesting that there could be no time prior to the Earth's orbit or it's rotation, with their confusion resulting from an assumption that if man possessed no scale then there could be no mass, or no ruler then there could be no length, or no speedometer then there could be no velocity, or no clock then there could be no time. The measurement of something does not equate to the thing itself and neither does the the ability or lack thereof to measure something equate to the thing itself.

Misconception 2: Time flows toward the future. Time's arrow is almost universally described as pointing from the past to the future such that the current of time flows forward. Of course this is a metaphor, yet this widespread impression is unintentionally exactly wrong. The truth is the reverse. For to whatever extent way we may speak of time flowing, then to that extent time flows from the future into the past. The current of time brings the future into the present and the present into the past. Using the metaphor of a river, while docks and anchors resist the flow, other things readily float along with the current. Regarding time, what is it that resists its flow, and what rides in its current? Dates, for example, ride the current of time keeping pace perfectly with its flow. Tomorrow's date, yielding no resistance, suspended perfectly in time, readily moves with the current and will eventually arrive, not at a point further into the future, but, being carried by time, will eventually arrive at the present, and then recede into the past. Even entire books written on the topic, like Coveney and Highfield's atheistic Arrow of Time inaccurately speak of "time's forward movement." Incorrectly men assume that the current of time sweeps us from birth to death (which would be moving us toward the future). But more accurately, the current of time eventually sweeps our entire earthly lives into the past. Time does not carry our birth forward into the future, nor (as it might if time flowed forward) does it forever postpone our physical death nudging it later and later. Rather, "I" am like a floating buoy anchored to the river bed bobbing and resisting the flow of time. Contrariwise, the "events" that I experience are not similarly anchored and so being vulnerable to the flow of time, as sediment suspended in a river current, they are whisked into the past. So things can resist the flow fo time, so to speak, but events cannot. And like events, pointers, or markers, to moments in time flow perfectly with the current of time. Thus at the time of this writing, the "date" of January 1, 2020 is floating toward the present, caught up as it is perfectly in the current of time, and will eventually reach the present, and then, as age piles on top of age, greatly recede, with the flow of time carrying it forever further and further into the distant past.

Misconception 3: God cannot cross an actual infinity: (Send any comment to bob@kgov.com.) God has existed through the "beginningless past" (Morriston, 2010, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 439-450). Christian theologians who object to this typically do so by being inconsistent, and thus, their objection is easily neutralized, and then answered. For example, William Lane Craig denies that God has existed throughout time immemorial, infinitely into the past, because he claims that even God cannot cross an actual infinity. (Aristotle, for example, claimed that the infinite is never actual; he however, did not know God.) Yet while Craig doesn't admit it, he himself believes that God has crossed an actual infinity. His belief that God has exhaustive foreknowledge of a kingdom that never ends requires divine knowledge of an infinite future, with this knowledge comprised of actual thoughts in God's mind. (This would be like God having counted to infinity.) Further, because Craig happens to hold the untenable and rather grotesque belief that God knows every possible future, that philosophical claim requires God to cross an infinite number of actual infinities. Instead, in actuality, God has crossed the single infinity of the beginningless past. Using a typically unstated assumption, an argument against God's "beginningless past" insists that He could not have crossed an infinite past because regardless of how much time has actually passed, "infinity" would require passage of even more time to arrive at any given moment. The unstated assumption in this objection however is that it assumes its conclusion, namely, that this past period must have had a beginning (for this objection asserts that this past period is of finite duration). If there is a valid systematic theology against God crossing an actual infinity, it would not support a philosophical claim that contradicts its own system, and it will not merely assume its conclusion. Let's consider an analogy from geometry and then an excuse from mathematics. Using an analogy, not as a proof but as an illustration, a geometrical line is infinite in both directions, whereas a ray has a terminal point yet is infinite in one direction. For our analogy, the ray extends through eternity past and is terminated in God's present, which is where God lives (in the fullness of time, so to speak). Relatedly, perhaps there is an excuse for theologians who failed to understand all this, who lived prior to mathematician Georg Cantor (d. 1918), who taught the world that it was possible to form infinite sets greater than other infinite sets. So, if God had already existed for eternity past at the moment of creation (an infinite set of moments), by the time of the Incarnation, He had then existed for an even longer infinite set of moments. For, He must increase. (Prior to Cantor the world of mathematics never accepted the concept of greater infinity.) And finally, God put eternity into our hearts. Yet unlike God, our life is not endless in two directions but only in one, namely, into the future. So you are like a "ray" that begins at a point (of conception) and then proceeds forever (Eccl. 3:11). Therefore, our eternal soul provides for us a context in which we can develop a gut feel for what it means to live forever (throughout eternity future). Yet we lack the divine intestinal fortitude, so to speak, which we would need in order to relate to His beginningless past. Thus, by the Scriptural teachings regarding time (see above) and because time could not have been created (see above), therefore we teach that God's goings forth are from of old, from everlasting, from ancient times, the everlasting God who continues forever, from before the ages of the ages, He who is and who was and who is to come, who remains forever, the everlasting Father, whose years never end, from everlasting to everlasting, and of His kingdom there will be no end.



Today's Resource: We HIGHLY RECOMMEND our interview with Liberty University's assistant Prof. of Theology Richard Holland on his groundbreaking book, God, Time and the Incarnation. To order Dr. Holland's book, and receive with it a CD of Bob Enyart's complete interview with Richard, please either call 1-800-8Enyart, that's 1-800-836-9278, or just click here. As always, BEL offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, and for repeat customers, if you don't love the book, we'll double that, for a double-your money guarantee! That's how much we love this book and think that you will be blessed if you read it also!

* A Significant Broadcast Event: Also, via the amazing KGOV archives, you can listen to the entire Holland series. In this broadcast event, KGOV aired what we believe is the most important series of author interviews ever produced in the 24-year history of Bob Enyart Live. God, Time, and the Incarnation explores the impact of God the Son becoming a man on the philosophical doctrines of divine timelessness and utter immutability.
 
Top