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Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time Paperback – March 1, 2001

4.4 out of 5 stars 25 customer reviews

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Crossway; F First Edition edition (March 1, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1581342411
  • ISBN-13: 978-1581342413
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #318,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Format: Paperback
In this fascinating treatment of God's relationship to time, William Lane Craig argues that God, though timeless without the universe, is in time since the creation of the universe. This detailed study encompasses a wide variety of issues, including the biblical conception of God, the nature of time, relativity theory, the linguistic account of tensed facts, and a slew of other topics.

Near the beginning of the book, Craig considers arguments in favor of God's timelessness. He first considers arguments that God's immutability or simplicity necessitate a timeless nature. Craig points out that these doctrines, however, are more controversial than the doctrine of divine timelessness itself, and therefore cannot be used to support timelessness. Moreover, both of these doctrines have conceptual difficulties and lack a clear scriptural basis (verses discussing God's immutability only entail that God's character does not change).

The next argument leads into some exciting territory. Defenders of divine timelessness sometimes argue that Einstein's relativity theory supports their view. Since the special theory of relativity implies that there is no absolute "now" but rather a plethora of inertial frames, we must reject the idea that God is in time. For if God is in time, then He is either in a specific inertial frame (according to which He is ignorant of real facts concerning all the other reference frames) or He is in multiple inertial frames (which leads to a radical splitting of God's consciousness). Since both of these alternatives are untenable, we are forced to reject God's temporality.
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I just finished reading the book Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time by William Lane Craig. This is, in my opinion, a very worthwhile read, though one that will most likely take time. The primary question of the book is: Can God rightfully be considered timeless or temporal?

To answer the question, Professor Craig begins with a very brief survey of the biblical contribution. Does the Bible prescribe to one view over the other? His answer: no. The Bible, according to Craig is not a philosophical treatise on the nature of time and offers nothing sophisticated enough for us to make a definite conclusion. Concluding that the Biblical data is insufficient he asserts that the issue requires philosophical exploration to consider the issue clearly.

He begins by analyzing the arguments for a timeless view of God. Rejecting arguments from the `simplicity and immutability of God (mostly on the grounds that these doctrines are controversial), he moves on to arguments from relativity theory. He starts by detailing a brief history of time (even briefer than Hawking's) and the Special and General theories of Relativity. This is a good and, for the purposes of the book, invaluable overview of the theories and their development, but I'm not positive that it would be sufficient for a full understanding of these developments in theoretical physics. This is by no means a flaw of the book, he did an excellent job making the relevant concepts accessible, but I would recommend looking at other sources to supplement if one is interested in this area. Hawking's book, which I linked above, is excellent. Also noteworthy would be Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. It is worth praising Craig for his critical evaluation of Relativity theory.
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In Nicolas Tomalin's "The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst", a participant in the first solo round the world sailing race, circling aimlessly around the north Atlantic while trying to convince race organizers that he was in fact leading the race by calling in clever but false position reports, goes insane contemplating the nature of time, and holding the ships clock steps off his boat and disappears under the waves.

It is hard not to be sympathetic to Mr. Crowhurst as time, like water to a fish, surrounds and dominates our existence yet is extraordinarily difficult to define and understand. William Craig's book, Time and Eternity, takes on the problem of time and how God must relate to time and makes the topic as intelligible and accessible as I think possible, even while thoroughly discussing and evaluating the different theories of time.

As Craig notes in his foreword, this is a book for Christians, and it is clear that some reviewer's presuppositions about the impossibility or silliness of the existence of God have prevented them from appreciating the depth of Craig's arguments. They missed a lot as Craig carefully presents the philosophical and logical arguments for understanding time as dynamic, with a constantly emerging 'Now', or as static with all 'moments' simply being slices of a 4 dimensional static block of spacetime that only gives the appearance of movement to observers. The author concludes that the arguments in favor of dynamic time have much the more defensible and coherent position. He arrives, as noted, by a careful and exceedingly thorough and fair presentation of the arguments for and against these two theories (sometimes referred to as the 'A' theory of time - dynamic - or the 'B' theory of time, that is, static.
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