Dynamic and static views of time

Robert Lawrence Kuhn (host of PBS’ “Closer to Truth”) asks William Lane Craig about God’s personal relationship with time. Questions explored: If God is timeless how can He be active in the temporal world? Who is Soren Kierkegaard? Kierkegaard argued that the idea of God in time was absurd. Does it makes sense to talk about a timeless person? Does time affect God? If God doesn’t have a past can God be real? Are the horrors of history still real to God if God is timeless?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3N_RAvksP4?rel=0]

If God is both timeless and temporal you have to qualify it in some way – otherwise it is absurd. It seems to depend on the nature of time itself – two views exist, the dynamic idea that past present and future are objective, and the second view that temporal becoming is an illusion of human consciousness. If there is a tenseless reality it doesn’t affect God in his eternal dimension. So Craig sees this second view as part of a four dimensional block, with God outside the block and sustaining it in being. God can interact with any part of the space time block – but is outside it. For God the whole block exists in one timeless ‘moment’. On this view change means an earlier point in the block is different, but each are equally real.

God has one single, tenseless omniscient consciousness, suggests Craig. But he goes on to argue that this view is full of philosophical difficulties. Craig believes God is himself in process, constantly active in a dynamic model of time. To Craig, God is ‘in time’. This is the first view suggested above.