Questions and Reflections
If, it is as Bill Craig argues, God is timeless prior to
creation and temporal with creation, how precisely is it that God can be
temporal? Did He already possess the properties necessary to be temporal prior
to creation? What are those properties? How are we to understand God being
temporal and yet immutable (without falling into a minimalist position)? Did
God in His essential nature change with creation? Why not postulate a model
similar to the incarnation with Christ’s hypostatic union? Is it logically
possible that God has two eternal natures: one essential the other contingent?
If such a view is even logically possible, then wouldn’t this model affirm both
God is timeless (in one nature) and temporal (in another)? What would such a
view even look like? God would have two natures, like the incarnation, in which
God would exist with all the properties of both natures attributed to the
three persons without confusing the two natures. But what would these natures
and properties be? The first
nature, that is uncontroversial, would be the traditional understanding of
God’s essence with all the properties that should properly be attributed to God
(which would include timelessness). The second nature, somewhat controversial,
would be, in some sense, spatial and therefore temporal. The nature need not be
thought of as physical. It could be similar to that of angelic beings who are some how incorporeal, spatial, and temporal.
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