dfsiemensjr@juno.com wrote:
>
> On Mon, 10 Jan 2000 21:37:34 -0500 "James W Stark"
> <stark2301@voyager.net> writes:
> >
> > Could someone explain the logic of interpretation that asserts time
> > was
> > created? "In the beginning" implies the beginning position of a
> > sequence of
> > events in time. It does not appear to assert that the position has
> > to be
> > zero for time. What was created was space and matter. Does the act
> > of
> > creation, itself, not imply the necessity of time before creation
> > and a time
> > after creation? What am I missing in that logic?
> >
> > Here too I see no logic that says God is outside of time. Time could
> > have
> > always existed along with God.
> >
> > Jim stark
>
> The basic reason for separating God's existence from time is that time
> requires change. In all our experience, time, space and matter are
> concomitant, because we are created in a space-time continuum with
> mass-energy the area where we notice change. The Eternal is not part of
> this universe, being its creator. Otherwise we get into some version of
> pantheism, such as the Whiteheadian process theology which is currently
> popular among liberal "theists." Theirs is a god who (which ?) can be
> surprised by events he (it ?) did not foresee.
>
> George Murphy will not agree with my view, for he thinks that the
> crucifixion changed God. I think this view is one product of
> Melanchthon's Aristotelianism which spoiled Lutheranism. (I hold that
> Aristotle loused up Plato, as Thomas did Augustine. Calvin stuck with
> Plato and Augustine, but Luther's Augustinianism was diluted.) I hold
> that Malachi 3:6 is unconditional. The crucifixion changed our
> relationship with the deity because we are in time, but did not change
> God's eternal purpose. The problem in communicating this to us is that we
> are so totally temporal that we do not have language to match
> timelessness. The use of the past tense and "beginning" in the first
> verse of John reflects the eternal Sonship, not a time before the
> creation.
> Hebrew scholars tell me that Genesis 1:1 may be translated either "in the
> beginning God created" or "when God began to create." So it does not
> prove _creatio ex nihilo_. Hebrews 11:3 does better. But what I am giving
> is not based on a simple exegesis of scripture, but on a theological and
> philosophical construction within strict orthodoxy.
Let me tie a couple of things on this theme together, beginning with Dave's
pre-emptive strike. Yes, the Incarnation, including the cross, changed God in the
sense that God assumed the history of Jesus, and thus the history of the world,
and thus the temporality of the world. How this is supposed to be due to Melanchthon's
Aristotelianism is not clear to me. It's a result of taking with utmost seriousness
the claim that "the Word was made flesh" and the communication of attributes in the
hypostatic union, as Luther did. But it is hardly original with Luther: The statement
that "one of the Trinity was crucified for us" was approved by the Fifth Ecumenical
Council.
Statements about the suffering of God, death in God &c have been problems for
Christians because they have begun their understanding of God with the assumptions of
Greek philosophy that the ideal Being is unchanging, impassible &c, and have assumed
that God must have those attributes. It is then hard to see how one can speak about
"the passion of my God" (as Ignatius of Antioch did). What is needed instead of that
supposed "orthodoxy" of the God who can't love, suffer, &c is to start with God's own
revelation of who God is in Christ instead of the God of the philosophers.
(I am not endorsing process theology, which has problems. But divine
temporality isn't one of them.)
To pick up on the original question - the idea that time is part of creation
is stated clearly by Augustine: "The world was not made in time but with time." That
means, as the whole course of Scripture makes clear, that time, change, & history are
parts of God's intention in creation. I.e., they are _good_, & our goal is not (like
that of Greek philosophers) to escape from an inferior realm of becoming to a superior
realm of being, or for the world to be brought back to some ideal primordial state. &
God ties himself permanently to the history of the world in the Incarnation.
Theologia naturalis delenda est!
George
-- George L. Murphy gmurphy@raex.com http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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