I have grown used to the presupposition that God exists outside of time. Most of the classical theologians affirm in one form or fashion that God in fact created time and therefore exists outside of it, sort of like someone window shopping at the boutique, peering in through the window glass at the breadth of time sitting there on display.

But is this assumption even correct? Where did the assumption of the timelessness of God come from, the Bible or elsewhere? And if the Bible indicates that God is not bound by time, where exactly in the Bible are we given this indication? Additionally, if God exists outside of time, is He just a cosmic window gazer, peering in at His creation knowing beforehand our every action because He set all the details of every man and woman’s life at the very beginning of the time that He created?

In reading through Predestination and Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom I have been challenged with some of my own presuppositions. The first two views presented were those of John Feinberg of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Norman Geisler of Southern Evangelical Seminary. Both represent the Reformed view, albeit in differing ways. Feinberg  considers himself a compatibilist, although his views seemed very akin to classical Calvinism to me. I must admit that I really couldn’t follow all of Geisler’s reasoning. He affirms determinism but tries to assert that he is only arguing for Gods foreknowledge and not for predestination in a classical Reformed sense. Like I said, I had difficulty in following his train of thought.

The crown jewel thus far in the book however has been the writing of the late Clark Pinnock (note: I still have yet to read the essay of Bruce Reichenbach of Ausburg College). In both his responses to Feinberg and Geisler as well as  his essay on the topic I was forced to think about predestination, free will and the nature of God in ways unfamiliar to me. Pinnock was a supporter of Open Theism, a school of thought which, prior to reading this book, I have only a passing knowledge of. One of the main ideas in Open Theism is that God does not exist outside of time and that the future is in fact open to Him.

Peppered throughout his responses to the other writers as well as in his own essay Clark questions the merit of Augustinian and Thomistic theology and asserts that it is from these two (Augustine and Thomas Aquinas) that many of our presuppositions about predestination, free will and the nature of God have originated. They in turn heavily relied on the metaphysics of Aristotle and Plato.

I don’t have a problem with that.  I am not a great fan of Augustine and I personally think that his early Manichean (gnostic) influences ever quite left him. Additionally, it is no secret that he was an avid student of Neoplatonism.  I find his theology to be a blend of those gnostic and Neoplatonistic beliefs mixed in with orthodox Christianity. And in my opinion Calvinism is really nothing more than Augustinianism with a twist with Evangelical theology leaning heavily on both. I must admit that I am not nearly as familiar with Aquinas’ writings and thought as I am of Augustine, but I know that he was also heavily influenced by the Greek philosophers.

In responding to Geisler, Pinnock writes:

Bringing Plato’s view of time into theology only succeeds in making things worse. On the one hand, how is a timeless God supposed to act the way the biblical God is said to act? A timeless being cannot deliberate or anticipate or remember. It cannot do anything or respond to anything. There cannot be any before or after. In short it cannot be the Divine agent we love and worship. And even worse for Geisler’s proposal is the fact that timelessness destroys temporal distinctions and rules out genuine novelty which results from true freedom.

Can’t say I ever thought of it like that.

As I have previously alluded to, I find the Augustinian model to be deeply flawed. Determinism by any other name is simply slavery and  I do not believe that God created us as mere puppets without free will. I also tend to largely agree with Pinnock in another statement that he made in one of his responses concerning “soft” determinism. Essentially Pinnock said that there can be no such thing as soft determinism because determinism in any form or fashion still has the net effect of making human free will nothing more than an illusion.

So, can a timeless God really grant free will?

I don’t see how a timeless God could possibly grant free will in the traditional Augustinian model. In the Augustinian model free will is at best an illusion. I really think that the only way that one can envision a God who exists outside of time and yet still retain human free will would more than likely be through accepting Molinism, or middle knowledge. And although I am attracted to the middle knowledge theological model, I still have yet to make it part of my own personal theology.

As to whether or not the idea of God’s timelessness is biblical, I must admit that the evidence appears to be rather flimsy. Although the bible tells us that God is everlasting, without beginning or end, I have never uncovered a verse that asserts that God does indeed exist outside of time. It really seems that the influences of Greek philosophy on the early Christian writers had a heavy hand in the development of the whole idea of a God existing outside of time. In fact, I have difficulty in understanding in how a God who exists outside of time could ever interact with his creation or even answer prayers.

In the final analysis, it seems that most of the classical theological models have a great deal of difficulty in reconciling the sovereignty of God and human free will. It seems to me, at least with my current understanding, that one must either agree to live with the tension as so many of the advocates of classical Christian theology like to advise, or perhaps accept an alternate theological model. I have already spent a good deal of time tinkering with Molinism, although I have yet to fully accept the theological and epistemological merit of Molinism. I suppose another area to explore would be Pinnock’s open theism. As always, I come away from this with more questions than answers, but at least it seems that my questions are getting more interesting.