Question I'm confused by the saying "God transcends time" . To me it seems time is change ( thoughts, actions , and any other form of change ) So transcending time doesn't make any sense as you would need to change in some way to create the universe ,because To be timeless ( due to transcending time not making sense )would mean to be forever timeless if there is no form of change to cause you to change yourself. With this in mind wouldn't god creating the universe mean god exists within time? This would restrict god with the question of "where did it come from" due to it also being a timed being with a required beginning to initiate change. So what i'm trying to ask is, am i missing something? is it just that i'm not taking something into account that lead me to deduce this as impossible? I'm only 17 and i always hear this from many adults who have faith in god and i just ponder in my head how they could think this to be true. I'm not stating no god exists, nor that one does, i simply think this idea of transcending time should be either explained in detail or not spoken of at all ( sorry for writing so much )

Accepted:
September 22, 2012

Comments

Great observations and great questions! There are three views that are defended today by philosophers in the theistic tradition (the tradition that holds that there is a God who exists necessarily, is all good, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and the creator and conserver of the whole cosmos). On a traditional view (going back to Boethius and Aquinas) God is eternal in the sense that there is not before, during, or after for God. God's creating the cosmos as well as all God's acts are timelessly willed. On this model, God timelessly wills successiveness (the origin and sustaining of a changing cosmos) but God does not successively will (God wills at one time to do X and then do Y). This position is defended by many philosophical theists such as Brian Leftow at Oxford University. He is the author of the book Time and Eternity, which you might check out. Then there is the view called Open Theism which holds that God is in time God is present throughout all the created order NOW and is everlasting (that is, God has no beginning and no end). I do not think that if something is in time, it follows that it had a beginning or origin. I bet this sounds crazy to you, but some philosophers (like myself) think there are abstract objects like numbers that exist necessarily and never had an origin and will have no end. There is a third view championed by W.L. Craig which is quite interesting: he holds that God was timelessly eternal until creation, after which God is temporal. You can do a google to find Craig's home page in which he has posted various papers on this and other topics.

I want to encourage you in your questions and inquiry!!!!!!!! The intersection of the philosophy of time and philosophy of God is fascinating. You might look to the free Stanford Encyclopedia entry on philosophy of religion and entries on time.