Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time

Rating:
Summary: Accidental Temporalism
Review: This book is actually a condensation of four of Craig's technical works: Time and the Metaphysics of Relativity; God, Time, and Eternity; The Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination; and The Tenseless Theory of Time: A Critical Examination. As a result, some of the issues in this book may remain difficult to those new to the subject, especially the treatments of the Special Theory of Relativity, tensed facts, and the extent of the present. Nevertheless, Craig explains these about as well as could be done in the space available.
The book is divided into five sections. First, he considers arguments in favor of God's being timeless, focusing on those originating from divine simplicity and immutability, relativity, and the incompleteness of temporal life. He concludes that only the last holds any weight. Thomists are likely to find Craig's rather brief dismissal of simplicity and immutability frustrating (W. Norris Clarke has argued that immutability is the best argument in favor of timelessness), but Craig's point remains that we have even less reason to think that God is simple or immutable than we do to think he is timeless.
Section two considers arguments in favor of divine temporality: the impossibility of atemporal personhood, divine relations with the world, and divine knowledge of tensed facts. He rejects the first, but considers the other two to be powerful arguments in favor of God's being temporal.
However, the defender of timelessness still has a way out if he adopts the static theory of time. Thus, Craig devotes the next to sections to the nature of time. In arguments for and against the dynamic conception, he considers the ineliminability of tense from language and our experience of tense. Arguments against include McTaggart's Paradox and the so-called myth of passage. Section four is arguments for and against the static conception: relativity theory, the mind-dependence of becoming, spatializing time, the illusion of becoming, the problem of intrinsic change, and creation out of nothing. Craig concludes that the dynamic conception of time is superior, and thus, God is temporal.
However, this leaves unresolved the question of whether God is temporal without creation. Thus, section five considers arguments for and against the infinitude of the past. Craig makes a very strong case for the finitude of the past. But if time began, how can God be temporal if he never began to exist? There are two options: the first, which Craig argues against, is that temporally before creation, there was an undifferentiated moment, a now with no temporal metric, which was followed by our time with its metric. God existed in this primal before, and now is in our time just like us. The other option is accidental temporalism, the position that God is timeless without creation and temporal with creation. This must not be construed to be saying that God has two phases, a timeless and a temporal, one being temporally before the other. Rather, they are not temporally related to each other at all. Craig gives the analogy of the Big Bang singularity not being before time, but lying on the boundary of time. God's timeless existence may have been something like that.
This is an excellent book, being both thorough and persuasive. Any defender of divine timelessness must attempt to answer Craig's detailed arguments against their position.
In response to the previous reviewer, it must be pointed out that his argument is clearly ridiculous. By no means must we predicate all of God's properties necessarily. This leads to all sorts of obviously false conclusions. For example, God possesses the property of knowing that I will read a book after finishing this review. But if we must predicate that property to God necessarily, then I have no free will. God's necessarily, rather than contingently, knowing that fact requires that I not have the ability to not read that book. If I am free, then God knows that fact contingently. But if he knows it of necessity, then I am not free. Worse, such a position removes God's freedom as well. For example, God possesses the property of being the creator of this universe. But if he possesses it necessarily, then he couldn't have chosen not to create, or to have created a different universe. It is completely theologically unacceptable to say that God could not have created a universe that lacked, say, Pluto, or Alpha Centauri, rather than ours. Thus, if all of God's properties must be predicated necessarily, then that constitutes good grounds for thinking that the concept of God is incoherent. This is not to say that God is not a necessary being. Of couse God is. But being necessary means that God could not fail to exist. In other words, God exists in all possible worlds. But since God is free, he must possess some properties contingently, since there are innumerable possible worlds he could have created.
In conclusion, Craig's position has yet to be refuted. Accidental temporalism wins the day!

Rating:
Summary: Craig takes a complicated topic and makes it readable
Review: This was a fairly good basic intro book for the issues of God/time and God's knowledge/future contingents. While this issue is usually discussed in philosophical journals and in books which cost an arm and a leg to purchase, Craig has brought the issue to the lay persons and scholars alike.

Before I review this book, it must be noted that I disagree with Craig's position. However, I think that Craig has done a noble job in defending his position, and I respect him for that. If I was able, I would have given Craig's book three and a half (3 1/2) stars for my own disagreements with Craig's overall assertions and some of the misunderstanding Craig had regarding certain philosopher's and their assertions (i.e. Aquinas being one which was mentioned below).

Craig's position in this book is that God is temporal (or omnitemporal) due to relations which occurred with the created universe (relations which were not present w/o creation). Craig argues his point based on several elements. First, Craig believes that God cannot remain untouched by the created order's temporality. In other words, according to Craig, God comes into (so to speak) new relations which were not present without the created universe. Second, Craig believes that once time begins at the moment of creation, God becomes temporal by virtue of His real relation to the temporal world. Third, thus God, at least, according to Craig, undergoes some type of extrinsic change due to this new real relation with the created world. These are Craig's underlying assertions regarding God and time.

Also, in this book, Craig rejects Einstein's interpretation of the Special Theory of Relativity (STR). Note, I did not say that Craig denies STR, rather he agrees with the Lorenzian interpretation of the theory over and against Einstein's interpretation. You can read why Craig believes this, since he details it in several chapters of this work.

I believe Craig's overall assessment of the issues is misdirected and wrong in several areas. First, He univocally predicates to God relations which occur between one human and another. This predication occurs via God's new relations with the universe. However, if God is a necessary being (which I think Craig would agree that God is), then any properties predicated of that Being must be predicated necessarily. However, if God is omnitemporal (as Craig asserts) then these properties must be predicated necessarily. By Craig's univocal predication, he does not predicate of God necessarily as he should. This is so because Craig declares that God "changes" from a being who is eternal to a being who is omnitemporal. This is, via Craig's view, an ontological change in God's nature and this is, I believe, metaphysically impossible. Either God is necessarily eternal or God is necessarily omnitemporal. He cannot move from one state to the other and remain a necessary being.

Another problem I had with this book was Craig's misunderstanding of Thomas Aquinas' assertions about God and real relations. In chapter three (3), "Divine Temporality," part II. "Divine Relations With the World," Craig asserts, "Thomas [Aquinas] escapes the conclusion that God is therefore temporal by denying that God stands in any real relation to the world." This could not be more inaccurate and wrong. Aquinas does not deny that God stands in any real relation to the world. In fact, Aquinas declares just the opposite. Aquinas asserted three types of relations: one where both terms are ideas, one where both terms are real, and one where one is real and one idea. That which is created, according to Aquinas, is really dependent upon God, but God is not really dependent upon the created. Thus, they are related as real to an idea. God knows about the relationship of dependence but He does not actually have it. The relationship between God and the world is very real, but God is not dependent in that relationship. In other words, Aquinas is only denying dependent relations between God and the world, not all real ones. Aquinas treats this issue in the Summa Theologiae, 1a. 13, 7, ad. 2. (Also, for an easy explanation of this issue see Norman Geisler's book titled "Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal" I briefly summarized this position based upon those two works).

Overall, Craig's book is pretty good, but it is wrought with several problems. I appreciate Craig's work to bring this issue to the non-philosopher, so to speak, but I would recommend reading Craig's book in light of Brian Leftow's book titled "Time and Eternity," and Paul Helm's work titled "Eternal God." Both of these books are available here at Amazon.com.