III. The Incompleteness of Temporal Life
“WHATEVER INCLUDES AND possesses the whole fulness of interminable life at once and is such that nothing future is absent from it and nothing past has flowed away, this is rightly judged to be eternal,” wrote the medieval theologian Boethius.1 On such an understanding of divine eternity God transcends time altogether. But what reasons can be given for adopting such an understanding of God’s eternity? In the next two chapters we shall examine what I consider to be the most important arguments for divine timelessness and for divine temporality. In this chapter we shall look at what I deem to be the most important arguments on behalf of the view that God is timeless.
EXPOSITION
Traditionally, Christian theologians such as Thomas Aquinas argued for God’s timelessness on the basis of His absolute simplicity and immutability. The argument can be easily formulated. As a first premise, we assume either
1. God is simple
or
1’. God is immutable.
Then we add
2. If God is simple or immutable, then He is not temporal,from which we can logically deduce
3. Therefore, God is not temporal.
Since temporality and timelessness are, as we have seen, contradictories, it follows that
4. Therefore, God is timeless.
Since this is a logically valid argument, the only question to consider is whether the premises of the argument are true.
CRITIQUE
Consider premise (2) above. The doctrine of divine simplicity states that God has absolutely no composition in His nature or being. Thus, the notion of simplicity operative here is the polar opposite of complexity. God is said to be an absolutely undifferentiated unity. This medieval doctrine is not popular among theologians today, and even when Christians do give lip service to it, they usually do not appreciate how truly radical the doctrine is. It implies not merely that God does not have parts, but that He does not possess even distinct attributes. In some mysterious way His omnipotence is His goodness, for example. He stands in no relations whatsoever. Thus, He does not literally love, know, or cause His creatures. He is not really composed of three distinct persons, a claim notoriously difficult to reconcile with the doctrine of the Trinity. His nature or essence is not even distinct from His existence, an assertion which led to the very difficult doctrine that God’s essence just is existence; He is, Thomas Aquinas tells us, the pure act of existing.
Now if God is simple in the way described, it obviously follows that He cannot be temporal, for a temporal being is related to the various times at which it exists: It exists at t1 and at t2, for example. But a simple being stands in no real relations, as we have seen. Moreover, a temporal being has phases of its life which are not identical but rather are related to one another as earlier and later. But an absolutely simple being could not stand in such relations and so must have its life, as Boethius put it, “all at once” (totum simul).
Similarly, if God is immutable, then even if He is not simple He still cannot be temporal. Like simplicity, the immutability affirmed by the medieval theologians is a radical concept: utter immobility. God cannot change in any respect. He never thinks successive thoughts, He never performs successive actions, He never undergoes even the most trivial alteration. God not only cannot undergo intrinsic change, He cannot even change extrinsically by being related to changing things.2 But obviously a temporal being undergoes at least extrinsic change in that it exists at different moments of time and, given the reality of the temporal world, co-exists with different sets of temporal beings as they undergo intrinsic change. Even if we relax the definition of “immutable” to mean “incapable of intrinsic change,” or the even weaker concept “intrinsically changeless,” an immutable God cannot be temporal. For if God is temporal, He at the very least changes in that He is constantly growing older—not physically, of course, but in the purely temporal sense of constantly adding more years to His life. Moreover, God would be constantly changing in His knowledge, knowing first that “It is now t1” and later that “It is now t2.” God’s foreknowledge and memory must also be steadily changing, as anticipated events transpire and become past. God would constantly be performing new actions, at t1 causing the events at t1, and at t2 causing the events at t2. Thus, a temporal God cannot be changeless. It follows, then, that if God is immutable, He is timeless.
Thus, God’s timelessness can be deduced from either His simplicity or His immutability. Is this a good reason for thinking that God is timeless? That all depends on whether we have any good reason to think that God is simple or immutable. Here we run into severe difficulties. For the doctrines of divine simplicity and immutability are even more controverted than the doctrine of divine eternity. To try to prove divine timelessness via divine simplicity or immutability, therefore, takes on the air of trying to prove the obvious via the less obvious. More specifically, the doctrines of divine simplicity and immutability as explained above find absolutely no support in Scripture, which at most speaks of God’s immutability in terms of His faithfulness and unchanging character (Mal. 3:6; Jas. 1:17). Philosophically, there seem to be no good reasons to embrace these radical doctrines, and weighty objections have been lodged against them.3 These need not be discussed here; the point is that premises (1) and (1’) above are even less plausible and more difficult to prove than (4), so that they do not constitute good grounds for believing (4). Thus, while we may freely admit that a simple or immutable God must be timeless, we have even less reason to think God simple or immutable than to think Him timeless and so can hardly infer that He is timeless on the basis of those doctrines.
EXPOSITION
The branch of physics most directly concerned with the analysis of the nature of time and space is Relativity Theory, the brainchild of Albert Einstein. There are two theories of relativity, the restricted or Special Theory of Relativity (STR), which Einstein formulated in 1905, and the General Theory of Relativity (GTR), which he completed in 1915. According to physicist Hermann Bondi, “there is perhaps no other part of physics that has been checked and tested and cross-checked quite as much as the Theory of Relativity.”4 The predictions of both STR and GTR have been verified without fail to a fantastic degree of precision. Any adequate theory of God’s relationship to time must therefore take account of what these theories have to say about the nature of time. When we explore what STR has to say about the nature of time and particularly about simultaneity, however, a significant objection to divine temporality arises.
In order to grasp this objection, we need to have some understanding of STR. Although the mathematics of STR are not highly sophisticated, nonetheless the concepts of time and space defined by the theory are so strange and counterintuitive that most people, I venture to say, find them nearly inconceivable. Undaunted, I shall attempt to explain in as simple a way as possible what Einstein’s theory holds with regard to the nature of time and space, so that we may then understand what impact this has on our conception of divine eternity.
Isaac Newton
Let us begin with a historical retrospect. The physics which prevailed up until the reception of Relativity Theory was Newtonian physics, whose foundations were laid by Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist of all time, in his epochal Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687). In the Scholium to his set of Definitions leading off the Principia, Newton explains his concepts of time and space. In order to clarify these concepts, Newton draws a distinction between absolute time and space and relative time and space:
I. Absolute . . . time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration: relative . . . time, is some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by the means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a year.
II. Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces; which our senses determine by its position to bodies; and which is commonly taken for immovable space; such is the dimension of a subterraneous, an aerial, or celestial space, determined by its position in respect of the earth.5
Fundamentally, Newton is here distinguishing between time and space themselves and our measures of time and space. Relative time is the time determined or recorded by clocks and calendars of various sorts; relative space is the length or area or volume determined by instruments such as rulers or measuring cups. As Newton says, these relative quantities may be more or less accurate measures of time and space themselves. Time and space themselves are absolute in the sense that they just are the quantities themselves which we are trying to measure with our physical instruments.
There is, however, another sense in which Newton held time and space to be absolute. They are absolute in the sense that they are unique. There is one, universal time in which all events come to pass with determinate duration and in a determinate sequence, and one, universal space in which all physical objects exist with determinate shapes and in a determinate arrangement. Thus Newton says that absolute time “of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external,” and absolute space “in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable.” Relative times and spaces are many and variable, but not time and space themselves.
On the basis of his definitions of time and space, Newton went on to define absolute versus relative place and motion:
III. Place is a part of space which a body takes up, and is according to the space, either absolute or relative. . . .
IV. Absolute motion is the translation of a body from one absolute place into another; and relative motion, the translation from one relative place into another.6
By “translation” Newton means “transporting” or “displacement.” Absolute place is the volume of absolute space occupied by an object, and absolute motion is the displacement of a body from one absolute place to another. An object can be at relative rest and yet in absolute motion. Newton gives the example of a piece of a ship, say, the mast. If the mast is firmly fixed, then it is at rest relative to the ship; but the mast is in absolute motion if the ship is moving in absolute space as it sails along. Thus, two objects can be at rest relative to each other, but both moving in tandem through absolute space (and thus moving absolutely). Similarly, two objects—say, two asteroids—could be in motion relative to each other and yet one of them at rest in absolute space.
In Newtonian physics there is already a sort of relativity. A body which is in uniform motion (that is, no accelerations or decelerations occur) serves to define an inertial frame, which is just a relative space in which a body at rest remains at rest and a body in motion remains in motion with the same speed and direction. Newton’s ship sailing uniformly along would thus define an inertial frame. Although Newton postulated the existence of an absolute inertial frame, namely, the reference frame of absolute space, nevertheless it was impossible for observers in inertial frames which were moving in absolute space to determine experimentally that they were in fact moving. If someone’s relative space were moving uniformly through absolute space, that person could not tell whether he was at absolute rest or in absolute motion. By the same token, if his relative space were at rest in absolute space, he could not know that he was at absolute rest rather than in absolute motion. He could know that his inertial frame was in motion relative to some other observer’s inertial frame (say, another passing ship), but he could not know if either of them were at absolute rest or in absolute motion. Thus, within Newtonian physics an observer could measure only the relative motion of his inertial system, not its absolute motion.
This sort of relativity was known long before Newton. Galileo, for example, understood it and provided a delightful illustration of it:
For a final indication of the nullity of the experiments brought forth, this seems to me the place to show you a way to test them all very easily. Shut yourself up with some friend in the main cabin below decks on some large ship, and have with you there some flies, butterflies, and other small flying animals. Have a large bowl of water with some fish in it; hang up a bottle that empties drop by drop into a wide vessel beneath it. With the ship standing still, observe carefully how the little animals fly with equal speed to all sides of the cabin. The fish swim indifferently in all directions; the drops fall into the vessel beneath; and, in throwing something to your friend, you need throw it no more strongly in one direction than another, the distances being equal; jumping with your feet together, you pass equal spaces in every direction. When you have observed all these things carefully (though there is no doubt that when the ship is standing still everything must happen in this way), have the ship proceed with any speed you like, so long as the motion is uniform and not fluctuating this way and that. You will discover not the least of change in all the effects named, nor could you tell from any of them whether the ship was moving or standing still. In jumping, you will pass on the floor the same spaces as before, nor will you make larger jumps toward the stern than toward the prow, even though the ship is moving quite rapidly, despite the fact that during the time that you are in the air the floor under you will be going in a direction opposite to your jump. In throwing something to your companion, you will need no more force to get it to him whether he is in the direction of the bow or the stern, with yourself situated opposite. The droplets will fall as before into the vessel beneath without dropping toward the stern, although while the drops are in the air the ship runs many spans. The fish in their water will swim toward the front of their bowl with no more effort than toward the back, and will go with equal ease to bait placed anywhere around the edges of the bowl. Finally the butterflies and flies will continue their flights indifferently toward every side, nor will it ever happen that they are concentrated toward the stern, as if tired out from keeping up with the course of the ship, from which they will have been separated during long intervals by keeping themselves in the air. And if smoke is made by burning some incense, it will be seen going up in the form of a little cloud, remaining still and moving no more toward one side than the other. The cause of all these correspondences of effects is the fact that the ship’s motion is common to all the things contained in it, and to the air also.7
In this case, so long as the ship continues in uniform motion, the relative space occupied by the ship’s cabin defines an inertial frame which may or may not be at absolute rest and relative to which the butterflies and fish and smoke move as though it were at absolute rest. There is no way to tell. In honor of Galileo, this sort of relativity is usually called Galilean Relativity.
Although Galilean Relativity was enunciated more than 400 years ago, most laymen still have not absorbed it (much to the dismay of science teachers!). People still puzzle over whether they could save themselves from being smashed to death in a freely falling elevator by leaping into the air just before it hits the ground—forgetting that even if they reverse their motion relative to the inertial frame of the elevator, they are still plunging downward relative to the inertial frame of the ground!
Newtonian physics prevailed all the way up through the end of the nineteenth century. The two great domains of nineteenth-century classical physics were Newton’s mechanics (the study of the motion of bodies) and James Clerk Maxwell’s electrodynamics (the study of electro-magnetic radiation, including light). The quest of physics at the end of the nineteenth century was to formulate mutually consistent theories of these two domains. The problem was that although Newton’s mechanics was characterized, as we have seen, by relativity, Maxwell’s electrodynamics was not. It was widely held that light (and other forms of electro-magnetic radiation) consisted of waves, and, since waves had to be waves of something (for example, sound waves are waves of the air; ocean waves are waves of the water), light waves had to be waves of an invisible, all-permeating substance dubbed “the aether.” As the nineteenth century wore on, the aether was divested of more and more of its properties until it became virtually characterless, serving only as the medium for the propagation of light. Since the speed of light had been measured and since light consisted of waves in the aether, the speed of light was absolute; that is to say, unlike moving bodies, light’s velocity was determinable relative to an absolute frame of reference, the aether frame. To be sure, in the Newtonian scheme of things, moving bodies possessed absolute velocities relative to this frame, but within an inertial frame there was no way to measure what it was. By contrast, since waves move through their medium at a constant speed regardless of how fast the object which caused them is moving, light had a determinable, fixed velocity. So electrodynamics, unlike mechanics, was not characterized by relativity.
But now it seemed that one could use electrodynamics to eliminate Galilean Relativity. Since light moved at a fixed rate through the aether, one could, by measuring the speed of light from different directions, figure out one’s own velocity relative to the aether. For if one were moving through the aether toward the light source, the speed of light should be measured as being faster than if one were at rest (just as water waves would pass you more rapidly if you were swimming toward the source of the waves than if you were floating motionless in the water); whereas if one were moving through the aether away from the light source, the speed of light would be measured as being slower than if one were at rest (just as the water waves would pass you less rapidly if you were swimming away from the source of the waves than if you were floating). Thus, it would be possible to determine experimentally within an inertial frame whether one is at rest in the aether or how fast one is moving through it.
Imagine, then, the consternation when experiments, such as the Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887, failed to detect any motion of the earth through the aether! Despite the fact that the earth is orbiting the sun, the measured speed of light was identical no matter what direction their measuring device was pointed. Some scientists hypothesized that perhaps the earth dragged the aether along with it, rather like an atmosphere, so that the aether seemed to be at rest around the moving earth. But this explanation was ruled out by a well-established phenomenon called the aberration of starlight, which was incompatible with aether drag.
It needs to be underlined how weird the situation was. Waves travel at a constant speed regardless of the motion of their source and in this sense are unlike projectiles, which travel at a velocity which is a combination of the speed of their source plus their speed relative to the source. For example, a bullet fired ahead from a speeding police car travels at a combined speed of the car’s speed plus the bullet’s normal speed, in contrast to sound waves emitted from the car’s siren, which travel through the air at the same velocity whether the car is stationary or in motion. Consequently, an observer who is moving in the same direction as a sound wave will observe it passing him at a slower speed than if he were at rest. If he goes fast enough, he can catch the wave and break the sound barrier. But light waves are different. Light’s measured velocity is the same in all inertial frames, for all observers. This implies, for example, that if an observer in a rocket going 90 percent the speed of light sent a light beam ahead of him, both he and the recipient of the beam would measure the speed of the beam to be the same, and this whether the recipient were standing still or himself moving toward or away from the light source at 90 percent the speed of light.
Desperate for a solution, the Irish physicist George FitzGerald and the great Dutch physicist Hendrick A. Lorentz proposed the remarkable hypothesis that one’s measuring devices shrink or contract in the direction of motion through the aether, so that light appears to traverse identical distances in identical times, when in fact the distances vary with one’s speed. The faster one moves, the more his devices contract, so that the measured speed of light remains constant. Hence, in all inertial frames the speed of light appears the same. With the help of the British scientist Joseph Larmor, Lorentz also came to hypothesize that one’s clocks slow down when in motion relative to the aether frame. One thus winds up with Lorentzian relativity: There exists absolute motion, absolute length, and absolute time, but there is no way to discern these experimentally, since motion through the aether affects one’s measuring instruments. Lorentz developed a series of equations called the Lorentz transformations, which show how to transform one’s own measurements of the spatial and temporal coordinates at which an event occurs into the measurements which would be made by someone in another inertial frame. These transformation equations remain today the mathematical core of STR, even though Lorentz’s physical interpretation of STR was different from the most commonly accepted interpretation today.
Hendrick A. Lorentz
In 1905 Albert Einstein, then an obscure clerk in a patent office in Berne, Switzerland, published his own version of relativity. At this time in his young career, Einstein was still a disciple of the great German physicist Ernst Mach. Mach was an ardent empiricist, who detested anything that smacked of metaphysics and who thus sought to reduce statements about entities such as time and space to statements about sense perceptions and the connections between them. The young Einstein took what he called his “epistemological credo” from Mach, holding that knowledge is made up of the totality of sense experiences and the totality of concepts and propositions, which are related in the following way: “The concepts and propositions get ‘meaning,’ viz., ‘content,’ only through their connection with sense experience.”8 Any proposition not so connected was, according to Einstein, literally without content, meaningless. Given such a verificationist criterion of meaning, Lorentz’s absolute time, space, and motion were “metaphysical” notions and therefore meaningless.
Einstein’s 1905 article in the Annalen der Physik has been called “the most profoundly revolutionary single paper in the history of physics.”9 He opens his article by jettisoning the aether as superfluous, since, he says, it will not be necessary for the purposes of his paper. In order to talk about motion in a physically meaningful way, Einstein claims, we must be clear about what we mean by “time.” Since all judgments about time concern simultaneous events, what we need is a way to determine empirically the simultaneity of distant events. Einstein then proceeds to offer a method of determining, or rather defining, simultaneity for two spatially separated but relatively stationary clocks, that is, two distant clocks sharing the same inertial frame. This procedure will in turn serve as the basis for a definition of the time of an event. He asks us to assume that the time required for light to travel from point A to point B is the same as the time required for light to travel from B to A. Theoretically, light could travel more slowly from A to B and more quickly from B to A, even though the round-trip velocity were always constant. But Einstein says we must assume that the one-way velocity of light is constant. Having made this assumption, he proposes to synchronize clocks at A and B by means of light signals from one to the other. Suppose A sends a signal to B which is in turn reflected back from B to A. If A knows what time it was when he sent the signal to B and what time it was when he received the signal back from B, then he knows that the reading of B’s clock when the signal from A arrived was exactly half-way between the time A sent the signal and the time A got the return signal. In this way A and B can arrange to synchronize their clocks. Events are declared to be simultaneous if they occur at the same clock times on synchronized clocks. Using clocks thus synchronized, Einstein defines the time of an event as “the reading simultaneous with the event of a clock at rest and located at the position of the event, this clock being synchronous . . . with a specified clock at rest.”10 Now so far, the use of light as the signal plays no special role; one could have used bullets to synchronize distant clocks, so long as the bullets traveled with a uniform velocity.
All this may seem quite unobjectionable and even humdrum. But if you think so, then you have been taken in. The very foundations of the world have just moved! It is with good reason that Banesh Hoffmann advises,
Watch closely. It will be worth the effort. But be forewarned. As we follow the gist of Einstein’s argument, we shall find ourselves nodding in agreement, and later almost nodding in sleep, so obvious and unimportant will it seem. There will come a stage at which we shall barely be able to stifle a yawn. Beware. We shall by then have committed ourselves and it will be too late to avoid the jolt; for the beauty of Einstein’s argument lies in its seeming innocence.11
Albert Einstein
Its seeming innocence! For under the euphemism of disregarding the aether as unnecessary, Einstein thereby abandoned not merely the aether, but, more fundamentally, the aether reference frame, or absolute space. Without absolute space there can be no absolute motion or absolute rest. Bodies are moving or at rest only relative to each other, and it would be meaningless to ask whether an isolated body was stationary or uniformly moving per se.
So now suppose that we have inertial frames which are moving with respect to one another, for example, a rocket ship passing near the earth on its way to a distant planet. Suppose that when the rocket ship is close to the earth, its clock agrees with the clock of an earth observer. At that moment the observer on earth sends a light signal to the planet, and an observer on board the rocket does the same. Here the fact that light is the signal plays a crucial role. For since light travels at the same speed relative to all inertial frames, the ship’s signal does not travel any faster than the earth’s signal, but the two signals travel in tandem and reflect back from the planet together. But in the meantime the rocket ship has moved closer to the planet and so receives the return signal first. Because light’s speed is the same for all inertial frames, the observer in the rocket ship cannot detect his own velocity by receiving the signal. The same is true for the earth observer when his signal is then received. But when the rocket and the earth observers divide the light signals’ travel times in half, they will get different times for when the signals reached the planet. It might be protested that the rocket ship’s measurements are distorted because it was moving toward the planet. But relativity demands that the rocket ship could with equal justice be regarded as at rest, with the planet approaching it and the earth receding away! Remember, on Einstein’s theory there is no absolute space and so no absolute rest. Hence, given Einstein’s definition of simultaneity, different events are calculated to be simultaneous in different inertial frames, and none of these is the preferred frame giving the correct time. All of the various measurements in various frames are correct for each respective frame.
We now see why Einstein entitled his paper, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” Given the constancy of the speed of light in all inertial frames, bodies in motion will be related to each other electrodynamically in such a way that the use of electromagnetic signals to establish synchrony relations between them will play havoc with what we normally mean by “simultaneity.” What happens is that simultaneity becomes relative. Einstein writes, “Thus we see that we can attribute no absolute meaning to the concept of simultaneity, but that two events which, examined from a co-ordinate system, are simultaneous, can no longer be interpreted as simultaneous events when examined from a system which is in motion relatively to that system.”12 What this means is that events which are simultaneous as calculated from one inertial frame will not be simultaneous as calculated from another. An event which lies in A’s future may be already present or past for B! In fact, events which are not causally connected can even be measured to occur in a different temporal order in different inertial frames!
Einsteinian time and space have many other weird properties, such as time dilation, according to which moving clocks (and all physical processes) run slower and slower as their velocity increases; and length contraction, according to which moving bodies contract in the direction of motion. These were also characteristic of Lorentz’s theory, it will be recalled; but the key difference with Einstein’s theory is that, since he denies an aether frame, these phenomena are reciprocal: For two relatively moving identical rockets A and B, B is shorter than A and his clock runs slower than A’s relative to A’s inertial frame; but A is shorter than B and his clock runs slower than B’s relative to B’s inertial frame. Since no inertial frame is preferred, there is no true length or true time per se, only lengths and times relative to different frames.
Now, as I said, the Einsteinian world is extraordinarily difficult to conceive. We intuitively think that there is a unique and universal time in which all events, however distant from one another, occur, and a unique and universal space in which all physical objects exist. But Einstein’s theory tells us to substitute for absolute space an infinite number of different spaces, each associated with a different inertial frame, and for absolute time an infinite number of different times, each associated with a different inertial frame. Reality thus is radically fragmented on Einstein’s view. Only observers sharing the same inertial frame (that is, at relative rest) have the same time and space. Observers in other inertial frames (that is, in relative motion) live in a different time and space. It is, I think, no exaggeration to say that on Einstein’s theory relatively moving observers literally inhabit different worlds which may intersect only at a point. It is no wonder that Einstein’s paper is considered revolutionary!
What impact does STR have on the nature of divine eternity? Well, if God is in time, then the obvious question raised by STR is: Whose time is He in? For according to Einstein, there is no unique, universal time and so no unique, worldwide “now.” Since none of the infinitely many inertial frames is privileged or preferred, no hypothetical observer can justifiably claim that his “now” is the real or true “now.” Each inertial frame has its own time and its own present moment, and there is no overarching absolute time in which all these diverse times are integrated into one. So the question is, which is God’s “now”?
The defender of divine timelessness maintains that there is no acceptable answer to this question. We cannot plausibly pick out some inertial frame and identify its time as God’s time because God is not a physical object in uniform motion, and so the choice of any such frame would be wholly arbitrary. Moreover, it is difficult to see how God, confined to the time of one inertial frame, could be causally sustaining events that are real relative to other inertial frames but are future or past relative to God’s frame. Similarly, God’s knowledge of what is happening now would be restricted to the temporal perspective of a single frame, leaving Him ignorant of what is actually going on in other frames. In any case, if God were to be associated with a particular inertial frame, then surely, as God’s time, the time of that frame would be privileged. It would be the equivalent of the classical aether frame. But then we are back to Lorentzian relativity, not Einsteinian relativity. So long as we maintain, with Einstein, that no frame is privileged, then we cannot identify the time of any inertial frame as God’s time.
Nor can we say that God exists in the “now” associated with the time of every inertial frame, for this would obliterate the unity of God’s consciousness. In the words of one philosopher of science, “God would have an infinitely split personality, each sub-personality evolving in monad-like isolation from the others”—a hypothesis in which he detects the “faint scent of polytheism.”13 In order to preserve God’s consciousness as the consciousness of one being, we must not allow it to be broken and scattered among the inertial frames in the universe.
But if God’s time cannot be identified with the time of a single frame or of a plurality of frames, then God must not be in time at all; that is to say, He exists timelessly. We can summarize this reasoning as follows:
1. STR is correct in its description of time.
2. If STR is correct in its description of time, then if God is temporal, He exists in either the time associated with a single inertial frame or the times associated with a plurality of inertial frames.
3. Therefore, if God is temporal, He exists in either the time associated with a single inertial frame or the times associated with a plurality of inertial frames.
4. God does not exist in either the time associated with a single inertial frame or the times associated with a plurality of inertial frames.
5. Therefore, God is not temporal.
CRITIQUE
What can be said in response to this argument? Although it may come as something of a shock to many, it seems to me that the most dubious premise of the above reasoning is premise (1). In order to understand why I say this, let us recur to Newton’s distinction between absolute and relative time. While it is easy to find statements by prominent physicists and philosophers to the effect that STR destroyed the concept of absolute time and so forces us to abandon the classical concept of time, such verdicts are almost invariably based upon a superficial understanding of the metaphysical foundations of Newton’s doctrine of absolute time (and space).
We have already seen that Newtonian time is absolute both in the sense that time itself is distinct from our measures of time and in the sense that there is a unique, all-embracing time. But as is well-known, Newton also conceived of time as absolute in yet a third, more profound sense, namely, he held that time exists independently of any physical objects whatsoever. Usually, this is interpreted to mean that time would exist even if nothing else existed, that we can conceive of a logically possible world which is completely empty except for the container of absolute space and the flow of absolute time.
But here we must be very careful. Modern secular scholars tend frequently to forget how ardent a theist Newton was and how central a role this theism played in his metaphysical outlook. Noting that Newton considered God to be temporal and therefore time to be everlasting, David Griffin observes that, “Most commentators have ignored Newton’s heterodox theology, and his talk of ‘absolute time’ has been generally misunderstood to mean that time is not in any sense a relation and hence can exist apart from actual events.”14 In fact, Newton makes quite clear in the General Scholium to the Principia, which he added in 1713, that absolute time and space are constituted by the divine attributes of eternity and omnipresence. He writes,
He is eternal and infinite . . . ; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity. . . . He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present. He endures forever, and is everywhere present; and, by existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space. Since every particle of space is always, and every indivisible moment of duration is everywhere, certainly the Maker and Lord of all things cannot be never and nowhere.15
Because God is eternal, there exists an everlasting duration, and because He is omnipresent, there exists an infinite space. Absolute time and space are therefore relational in that they are contingent upon the existence of God.
In his earlier treatise, “On the Gravity and Equilibrium of Fluids,” Newton argued that space (and by implication time) is neither a substance, nor a property, nor nothing at all. It cannot be nothing because it has properties, such as infinity and uniformity in all directions. It cannot be a property because it can exist without bodies. Neither is it a substance: “It is not substance . . . because it is not absolute in itself, but is as it were an emanant effect of God, or a disposition of all being. . . .”16 Contrary to the conventional understanding, Newton here declares explicitly that space is not in itself absolute and therefore not a substance. Rather it is an emanent—or emanative—effect of God. By this notion Newton meant to say that time and space were the immediate consequence of God’s very being. God’s infinite being has as its consequence infinite time and space, which represent the quantity of His duration and presence. Newton does not conceive of space or time as in any way attributes of God Himself, but rather, as he says, concomitant effects of God.
In Newton’s view God’s “now” is thus the present moment of absolute time. Since God is not “a dwarf-god” located at a particular place in space,17 but is omnipresent, there is a worldwide moment which is absolutely present. Newton’s temporal theism thus provides the foundation for absolute simultaneity. The absolute present and absolute simultaneity are features first and foremost of God’s time, absolute time, and derivatively of measured or relative time.
Thus, the classical, Newtonian concept of time is firmly rooted in a theistic worldview. What Newton did not realize, nor could have suspected, is that physical time is not only relative but also relativistic, that the approximation of physical time to absolute time depends not merely upon the regularity of one’s clock but also upon its motion. Unless a clock were at absolute rest, it would not accurately register the passage of absolute time. Moving clocks run slowly. This truth, unknown to Newton, was finally grasped by scientists only with the advent of Relativity Theory.
Where Newton fell short, then, was not in his analysis of absolute or metaphysical time—he had theological grounds for positing such a time—but in his incomplete understanding of relative or physical time. He assumed too readily that an ideal clock would give an accurate measure of time independently of its motion. If confronted with relativistic evidence, Newton would no doubt have welcomed this correction and seen therein no threat at all to his doctrine of absolute time.18 In short, relativity corrects Newton’s concept of physical time, not his concept of absolute time.
Of course, it hardly needs to be said that there is a great deal of antipathy in modern physics and philosophy of science toward such metaphysical realities as Newtonian space and time, primarily because they are not physically detectable. But Newton would have been singularly unimpressed with this verificationist equation between physical undetectability and non-existence. The grounds for metaphysical space and time were not physical but philosophical, or more precisely, theological. Epistemological objections fail to worry Newton because, as Oxford philosopher John Lucas nicely puts it, “He is thinking of an omniscient, omnipresent Deity whose characteristic relation with things and with space is expressed in the imperative mood.”19 Modern physical theories say nothing against the existence of such a God or against the metaphysical time constituted, in Newton’s thinking, by His eternity. What relativity theory did, in effect, was simply to remove God from the picture and to substitute in His place a finite observer. “Thus,” according to historian of science Gerald Holton, “the RT [Relativity Theory] merely shifted the focus of space-time from the sensorium of Newton’s God to the sensorium of Einstein’s abstract Gedankenexperimenter—as it were, the final secularization of physics.”20 But to a man like Newton, such a secular outlook impedes rather than advances our understanding of the nature of reality.
What Einstein did, in effect, was to shave away Newton’s absolute time and space, and along with them the aether, thus leaving behind only their empirical measures. Since these are relativized to inertial frames, one ends up with the relativity of simultaneity and of length. What justification did Einstein have for so radical a move? How did he know that absolute time and space do not exist? The answer, in a word, is verificationism. According to verificationism, statements which cannot be in principle empirically verified are meaningless. Historians of science have demonstrated convincingly that at the philosophical roots of Einstein’s theory lies a verificationist epistemology, mediated to the young Einstein chiefly through the influence of Ernst Mach, which comes to expression in Einstein’s analysis of the concepts of time and space.21
The introductory sections of Einstein’s 1905 paper are predicated squarely upon verificationist assumptions. These come through most clearly in his operationalist redefinition of key concepts. Einstein proposes to define concepts such as time and simultaneity in terms of empirically verifiable operations. The meaning of “time” is made to depend upon the meaning of “simultaneity,” which is defined locally in terms of occurrence at the same local clock reading. In order to define a common time for spatially separated clocks, we adopt the convention that the time which light takes to travel from A to B equals the time it takes to travel from B to A—a definition that presupposes that absolute space does not exist. For if A and B are at relative rest but moving in tandem through absolute space, then it is not the case that a light beam will travel from A to B in the same amount of time it takes to travel from B to A, since the distances traversed will not be the same (Fig. 2.1).
Fig. 2.1: Clock synchronization of relatively stationary clocks in absolute motion. A light signal is first sent from A toward B. By the time the signal reaches B, both A and B will have moved together some distance from the point where A first released the signal. Finally, by the time the reflected signal from B reaches A again, both A and B will have moved still farther from the release point. Since the signal traveled farther from A to B than from B back to A, the time it took to travel from A to B is greater than the time it took to travel from B to A.
That is why Einstein’s theory, far from disproving the existence of absolute space, actually presupposes its non-existence. All of this is done by mere stipulation. Reality is reduced to what our measurements read; Newton’s metaphysical time and space, which transcend operational definitions, are assumed to be mere figments of our imagination.
How, then, shall we assess the claim that STR has eliminated absolute time and space? The first thing to be said is that the verificationism which characterized Einstein’s original formulation of STR belongs essentially to the philosophical foundations of the theory. The whole theory rests upon Einstein’s redefinition of simultaneity in terms of clock synchronization by light signals. But that redefinition assumes necessarily that the time that light takes to travel between two relatively stationary observers A and B is the same from A to B as from B to A in a round-trip journey. That assumption presupposes that A and B are not both in absolute motion, or in other words that neither absolute space nor a privileged inertial frame exists. The only justification for that assumption is that it is empirically impossible to distinguish uniform motion from rest relative to such a frame, and if absolute space and absolute motion or rest are undetectable empirically, they do not exist (and may even be said to be meaningless).
In a clear-sighted analysis of the epistemological foundations of STR, University of Michigan philosopher of science Lawrence Sklar underlines the essential role played by this verificationism:
Certainly the original arguments in favor of the relativistic viewpoint were rife with verificationist presuppositions about meaning, etc. And despite Einstein’s later disavowal of the verificationist point of view, no one to my knowledge has provided an adequate account of the foundations of relativity which isn’t verificationist in essence.22
It would be desirable to do so, muses Sklar, but “what I don’t know is . . . how to formulate a coherent underpinning for relativity which isn’t verificationist. . . .”23
But if verificationism belongs essentially to the foundations of STR, the next thing to be said is that verificationism has proved to be completely untenable and is now outmoded. The untenability of verificationism is so universally acknowledged that it will not be necessary to rehearse the objections against it here.24 Richard Healey observes that verificationism “has come under such sustained attack that opposition to it has become almost orthodoxy in the philosophy of science.”25 Verificationism provides no justification for thinking that Newton erred, for example, in holding that God exists in a time which exists independently of our physical measures of it and which may or may not be accurately registered by them. It matters not a whit whether we finite creatures know what time it is in God’s absolute time; God knows, and that is enough.
Contemporary physics has in any case ignored the constrictions of verificationism. When the contemporary student of physics reads the anti- metaphysical polemics of the past generation, he must feel as though he were peering into a different world! George Gale, in surveying some of “the metaphysical perplexities abounding in today’s physics,” contends, “. . . we are entering a phase of scientific activity during which the physicist has out-run his philosophical base camp, and, finding himself cut off from conceptual supplies, he is ready and waiting for some relief from his philosophical comrades-in-arms.”26 In various fields such as quantum mechanics, classical cosmology, and quantum cosmology, debates rage over issues that are overtly metaphysical in character. Take quantum mechanics, for example. One recent expert has said, “In an effort to understand the quantum world, we are led beyond physics, certainly into philosophy and maybe even into cosmology, psychology and theology.”27 Cosmology has become grandly metaphysical. “Cosmology, even as practiced today,” says Gale, “is science done at the limit: at the limit of our concepts, of our mathematical methods, of our instruments, indeed, of our very imaginations. . . . it is clear that metaphysics continues to play an honorable role in cosmology. And, to the extent that it is an honorable role, it is no dishonor to use metaphysics in one’s cosmologizing.”28 Noting that in recent years such “metaphysical conundrums” as creatio ex nihilo “have entered the mainstream of scientific discussions,” John Barrow remarks, “Traditional dogmas as to what criteria must be met by a body of ideas for it to qualify as a ‘science’ now seem curiously inappropriate in the face of problems and studies far removed from the human enterprise.”29 The verificationist, anti-metaphysical view of physics which dominated the first two-thirds of the twentieth century is simply outmoded in light of contemporary theoretical physics.
It is difficult, therefore, to understand how many contemporary philosophers and physicists can still speak of STR’s “forcing” us to abandon the classical concepts of space and time or of STR’s “destruction” of Newtonian absolute time. Lawrence Sklar concludes,
The original Einstein papers on special relativity are founded, as is well known, on a verificationist critique of earlier theories. . . . Now it might be argued that Einstein’s verificationism was a misfortune, to be encountered not with a rejection of special relativity, but with an acceptance of the theory now to be understood on better epistemological grounds. . . .
But I don’t think a position of this kind will work in the present case. I can see no way of rejecting the old aether-compensatory theories, originally invoked to explain the Michelson-Morley results, without invoking a verificationist critique of some kind or other.30
With the demise of verificationism, the philosophical underpinnings of STR have collapsed. In short, there is no reason to think that premise
1. STR provides the correct description of time
is true.
Now let me be very clear that I am not here endorsing Newton’s view on divine eternity; but I am saying that the theologian who, like Newton, believes God to be temporal need not feel threatened by STR, because STR’s claim that absolute time does not exist is founded essentially upon a defunct and untenable epistemology.
If we do suppose that God is in time, how then should we understand STR? Henri Poincaré, the great French mathematician and precursor of STR, helped to point the way. In a fascinating passage in his essay “The Measure of Time,” Poincaré briefly entertains the hypothesis of “an infinite intelligence” and considers the implications of such a hypothesis. Poincaré is reflecting on the problem of how we can apply one and the same measure of time to spatially distant events. What does it mean, for example, to say that two thoughts in two people’s minds occur simultaneously? Or what does it mean to say that a supernova occurred before Columbus saw the New World? Like a good verificationist, Poincaré says, “All these affirmations have by themselves no meaning.”31 Then he remarks, We should first ask ourselves how one could have had the idea of putting into the same frame so many worlds impenetrable to one another. We should like to represent to ourselves the external universe, and only by so doing could we feel that we understood it. We know we can never attain this representation: our weakness is too great. But at least we desire the ability to conceive an infinite intelligence for which this representation could be possible, a sort of great consciousness which should see all, and which should classify all in its time, as we classify, in our time, the little we see.
This hypothesis is indeed crude and incomplete, because this supreme intelligence would be only a demigod; infinite in one sense, it would be limited in another, since it would have only an imperfect recollection of the past; it could have no other, since otherwise all recollections would be equally present to it and for it there would be no time. And yet when we speak of time, for all which happens outside of us, do we not unconsciously adopt this hypothesis; do we not put ourselves in the place of this imperfect God; and do not even the atheists put themselves in the place where God would be if he existed?
What I have just said shows us, perhaps, why we have tried to put all physical phenomena into the same frame. But that cannot pass for a definition of simultaneity, since this hypothetical intelligence, even if it existed, would be for us impenetrable. It is therefore necessary to seek something else.32
Poincaré here suggests that, in considering the notion of simultaneity, we instinctively put ourselves in the place of God and classify events as past, present, or future according to His time. Poincaré does not deny that from God’s perspective there would exist relations of absolute simultaneity. But he rejects the hypothesis as yielding a definition of simultaneity because we could not know such relations; such knowledge would remain the exclusive possession of God Himself.
Clearly, Poincaré’s misgivings are relevant to a definition of simultaneity only if one is presupposing some sort of verificationist theory of meaning, as he undoubtedly was. The fact remains that God knows the absolute simultaneity of events even if we grope in total darkness. Nor need we be concerned with Poincaré’s argument that such an infinite intelligence would be a mere demigod, since there is no reason to think that a temporal being cannot have a perfect recollection of the past. There is no conceptual difficulty in the idea of a being that knows all past-tense truths. His knowledge would be constantly changing, as more and more events become past. But at each successive moment he could know every past-tense truth that there is at that moment. Hence, it does not follow that if God is temporal, He cannot have perfect recollection of the past.
Poincaré’s hypothesis suggests, therefore, that if God is temporal, His present is constitutive of relations of absolute simultaneity.33 On this view, the philosopher J. M. Findlay was wrong when he said, “the influence which harmonizes and connects all the world-lines is not God, not any featureless, inert, medium, but that living, active interchange called . . . Light, offspring of Heaven firstborn.”34 On the contrary, the use of light signals to establish clock synchrony would be a convention which finite and ignorant creatures have been obliged to adopt, but the living and active God, who knows all, would not be so dependent. Inviting us to “imagine a superhuman observer— a god—who is not bound by the limitations of the maximum velocity of light,” Milton K. Munitz notes,
Such an observer could survey in a single instant the entire domain of galaxies that have already come into existence. His survey would not have to depend on the finite velocity of light. It would not betray any restriction in information of the kind that results from the delayed time it takes to bring information about the domain of galaxies to an ordinary human observer situated in the universe, and who is therefore bound by the mechanisms and processes of signal transmission. The entire domain of galaxies would be seen instantaneously by this privileged superhuman observer. His observational survey of all galaxies would yield what Milne calls a “world map.”35
In God’s temporal experience, there would be a moment which would be present in absolute time, whether or not it were registered by any clock time. He would know, without any dependence on clock synchronization procedures or any physical operations at all, which events were simultaneously present in absolute time. He would know this simply in virtue of His knowing at every such moment the unique set of present-tense truths at that moment, without any need of physical observation of the universe.
So what would become of STR if God is in time? From what has been said, God’s existence in time would imply that Lorentz, rather than Einstein, had the correct interpretation of Relativity Theory. That is to say, Einstein’s clock synchronization procedure would be valid only in the preferred (absolute) reference frame, and measuring rods would contract and clocks slow down in the customary special relativistic way when in motion with respect to the preferred frame. Such an interpretation would be implied by divine temporality, for God in the “now” of absolute time would know which events in the universe are now being created by Him and are therefore absolutely simultaneous with each other and with His “now.” This startling conclusion shows that Newton’s theistic hypothesis is not some idle speculation but has important implications for our understanding of how the world is and for the assessment of rival scientific theories.
Lorentzian relativity is admitted on all sides to be empirically equivalent to Einsteinian relativity, and there are even indications on the cutting edge of science today that a Lorentzian view may be preferable in light of recent discoveries. In fact, due to developments in quantum physics (the physics of the subatomic realm), there has been what one participant in the debate has called a “sea change” in the attitude of the physics community toward Lorentzian relativity.36
For example, the best explanation of the experimental evidence concerning what is called Bell’s Theorem seems to be that relations of absolute simultaneity do exist. First a bit of background: Between 1927 and 1935 Einstein pursued a running argument with the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, the father of quantum physics. Bohr believed that elementary particles do not have intrinsic, determinate properties such as momentum and location. Such properties are possessed only in relation to some measuring apparatus. Retorting that “God does not play dice,” Einstein repeatedly sought to concoct thought experiments which would show that, contrary to Bohr, the subatomic world is not characterized by indeterminacy. The most celebrated of these was a thought experiment jointly proposed with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen in 1935, which thus came to be known as the EPR experiment.37 The idea was to split a beam of light into two particles traveling in opposite directions. If we measure the velocity of one of the particles, quantum physics requires that the other particle instantaneously take on a similar value. Since no causal influence can travel faster than the speed of light, there is no way in which our measuring one particle could influence the other particle. Thus, the particles must possess an intrinsic, determinate velocity even before they are measured—in contradiction to Bohr’s claim. In 1964 John Bell showed that if Einstein were right, then such an experiment would have testable consequences which disagree with the predictions made by quantum theory.38 Tests were run, and, lo and behold, the predictions of quantum physics were fully vindicated.
The implications were enormous. In order to explain the results, one must either postulate faster-than-light causal influences between the particles or hold that the particles are somehow non-causally correlated so that both particles instantaneously take on certain determinate properties. In either case, the relativity of simultaneity posited by STR will have to be given up. Bell himself, pondering the implications of the experimental data, mused,
I think it’s a deep dilemma, and the resolution of it will not be trivial; it will require a substantial change in the way we look at things. But I would say that the cheapest resolution is something like going back to relativity as it was before Einstein, when people like Lorentz and Poincaré thought that there was an aether—a preferred frame of reference—but that our measuring instruments were distorted by motion in such a way that we could not detect motion through the aether. . . . that is certainly the cheapest solution. Behind the apparent Lorentz invariance of the phenomena, there is a deeper level which is not Lorentz invariant. . . . what is not sufficiently emphasized in textbooks, in my opinion, is that the pre-Einstein position of Lorentz and Poincaré, Larmor and Fitzgerald was perfectly coherent, and is not inconsistent with relativity theory. The idea that there is an aether, and these Fitzgerald contractions and Larmor dilations occur, and that as a result the instruments do not detect motion through the aether—that is a perfectly coherent point of view. . . . The reason I want to go back to the idea of an aether here is because in these EPR experiments there is the suggestion that behind the scenes something is going faster than light. Now if all Lorentz frames are equivalent, that also means that things can go backward in time. . . . [This] introduces great problems, paradoxes of causality, and so on. And so it is precisely to avoid these that I want to say there is a real causal sequence which is defined in the aether.39
In light of the above, it is little wonder that the great philosopher of science Karl Popper considered the experiments run on Bell’s Theorem as the first crucial experiments between Lorentz’s and Einstein’s interpretations of relativity. He remarks,
The reason for this assertion is that the mere existence of an infinite velocity entails that of an absolute simultaneity and thereby of an absolute space. Whether or not an infinite velocity can be attained in the transmission of signals is irrelevant for this argument: the one inertial system for which Einsteinian simultaneity coincides with absolute simultaneity . . . would be the system at absolute rest—whether or not this system at absolute rest can be experimentally identified.40
If there is action at a distance, advises Popper, “it would mean that we have to give up Einstein’s interpretation of special relativity and return to Lorentz’s interpretation and with it to Newton’s absolute space and time.”41 Popper goes on to observe that none of the mathematical formalism of STR need be given up, but only Einstein’s interpretation of it. “If we now have theoretical reasons from quantum theory for introducing absolute simultaneity, then we would have to go back to Lorentz’s interpretation.”42
Moreover, in a truly astonishing development in twentieth-century cosmology, we may even have a good idea as to what is the preferred reference frame. For the cosmic microwave background radiation first predicted by George Gamow and then discovered in 1965 by A. A. Penzias and R. W. Wilson is at rest with respect to the expanding space of Big Bang cosmology. It is therefore a sort of aether, serving to distinguish a universal rest frame.43 Recent tests have even detected the earth’s motion relative to this background radiation, thus fulfilling the dream of nineteenth-century physics of measuring the aether wind!44 What nineteenth-century physics could not detect using visible light radiation, twentieth-century physics has discovered using microwave radiation. Philosopher of science James Cushing connects the universal preferred frame defined by the microwave background radiation with the unique frame in which absolute simultaneity is required by the experimental results of Bell’s Theorem, proclaiming, “Today . . . the aether has re-emerged through quantum phenomena!”45 One can only speculate whether, had these facts been known in 1905, Einstein would have ever suggested that absolute space and time do not exist.
Again, none of this proves that Newton was right in thinking that God is in time; but it doesundercut the claim that STR has proven Newton to be wrong. The defender of divine temporality can plausibly reject the first premise of the argument for divine timelessness based on the Special Theory of Relativity.
But what about the second premise?
2. If STR is correct in its description of time, then if God is temporal, He exists in either the time associated with a single inertial frame or the times associated with a plurality of inertial frames.
Is this premise true? The difficulty with this premise is that it fails to take into account the fact that STR is a restricted theory of relativity and therefore is correct only within prescribed limits. It is a theory which deals with uniform motion only. The analysis of non-uniform motion, such as acceleration and rotation, is provided by the General Theory of Relativity (GTR). STR cannot therefore be expected to give us the final word about the nature of time and space; indeed, within the context of GTR a new and important conception of time emerges.
Let us therefore offer a brief word of explanation of GTR. As in Newtonian physics, so in STR accelerated or rotational motion is not relative but absolute. If a reference frame is accelerating, rather than moving uniformly, there are discernible effects within the frame. For example, a space traveler feels himself pressed back into his seat as his rocket accelerates; by the same token, deceleration causes him to pitch forward in his seat. Troubled by the non-equivalence of inertial and non-inertial frames, Einstein endeavored in his GTR to enunciate a General Principle of Relativity which would serve to render physically equivalent all inertial and non-inertial frames alike. In his article “The Foundations of General Relativity Theory” (1915), he boasted that his theory “takes away from space and time the last remnant of physical objectivity.”46 It was, in effect, intended to be the final destruction of Newton’s absolute space and time.
What Einstein saw was that the effects of acceleration were exactly equivalent to the effects of gravitation. A space traveler in a capsule suddenly pressed back into his seat would not know the difference between his rocket’s accelerating or an increase in the force of gravity behind him. (Hence, today we often speak of an astronaut’s feeling a force of several G’s [several times the normal force of gravity] as his rocket blasts off.) Perhaps, then, gravity and acceleration could be regarded as equivalent.
In order to carry out this idea, Einstein proposed that gravity be analyzed, not as a force that somehow affects objects at a distance, but rather as the acceleration of objects in space-time. A physical object bends or warps space-time, just as a heavy ball resting on a cushion warps the cushion, so that objects that appear to be under another object’s gravitational influence are not in fact being pulled toward the larger object, but are rather, to put it crudely, coasting downhill toward it. A two-dimensional analogy would be a taut rubber sheet with balls of various mass placed on the sheet, causing depressions around them of various depths. If a ball bearing were rolled across the sheet and hit a depression, it would be deflected from its path and maybe even “pulled” into the object causing the depression. Although the three-dimensional analogue of this is not visualizable, Einstein worked out an incredibly complex mathematical theory for it which came to replace Newton’s theory of gravitation.
In fact, however, Einstein was only partially successful in achieving his aims. He did not succeed in enunciating a tenable General Principle of Relativity, nor was he able to show the physical equivalence of all reference frames.47 Acceleration and rotation are still distinguishable from uniform motion in the context of GTR. He did succeed in drafting a revolutionary and complex theory of gravitation, which has been widely hailed as his greatest intellectual achievement. The so-called General Theory of Relativity is thus something of a misnomer: It is really a theory of gravitation and not an extension of the Special Theory of Relativity from inertial reference frames to all reference frames.
It might appear, therefore, that GTR has nothing more to contribute to our understanding of time than STR. The two theories appear to differ simply over whether space-time is curved; if one adds a condition of flatness of space-time to GTR, then STR results. Such a conclusion would be mistaken, however. For GTR serves to introduce into Relativity Theory a cosmic perspective, enabling us to draft cosmological models of the universe governed by the gravitational field equations of GTR. Within the context of such cosmological models, the issue of time resurfaces dramatically.
Einstein himself proposed the first GTR-based cosmological model in his paper, “Cosmological Considerations on the General Theory of Relativity,” in 1917.48 The model describes a universe whose temporal dimension is infinite but whose spatial dimensions are finite and invariable. Thus, four-dimensional space-time has the form of a cylinder, time represented by the length of the cylinder and space by its cross-sections. The German philosopher of science Bernulf Kanitscheider draws our attention to the time coordinate which shows up in Einstein’s model:
It represents in a certain sense the restoration of the universal time which was destroyed by STR. In the static world there is a global reference frame, relative to which the whole of cosmic matter finds itself at rest. All cosmological parameters are independent of time. In the rest frame of cosmic matter space and time are separated. For fundamental observers at rest, all clocks can be synchronized and a worldwide simultaneity can be defined in this cosmic frame.49
Thus, cosmological considerations prompt the conception of a cosmic time which measures the duration of the universe as a whole.
Nor is this cosmic time limited to Einstein’s model of a static universe. Models of an expanding universe, which trace their origin to Willem de Sitter’s 1917 model,50 may also involve a cosmic time. All contemporary expansion models derive from Russian physicist Alexander Friedman’s 1922 model of an expanding, material universe characterized by ideal homogeneity and uniformity.51 Several features of the cosmic time in Friedman models merit comment. First, although one may slice space-time into various spatial cross-sections wholly arbitrarily, certain space-times have natural symmetries that guide the construction of cosmic time.52 GTR does not itself mandate any formula for how to slice up space-time; it has no inherent “layers.” Theoretically, then, one may slice it up at one’s whim. Nevertheless, certain models of space-time, like the Friedman model, have a dynamical, evolving spatial geometry, and in order to ensure a smooth development of this geometry, it will be necessary to construct a time parameter based on a preferred slicing of space-time.
To borrow an illustration from Sir Arthur Eddington, we may think of space-time on the analogy of either a stack of paper or a solid block of paper. The solid block could theoretically be sliced in any way into a series of sheets. But suppose that on each page in the stack of paper, there is drawn a cartoon figure, such that by flipping through the pages successively, one sees the figure animated into action. Any other slicing of the block would result merely in a scrambled series of ink-marks. In such a case it would be fanciful to think that any arbitrary foliation is just as good as that which treats the block as a stack of pages (Fig. 2.2). Analogously, the evolving geometry of space over time in Friedman models discloses the natural foliation of space-time in such a universe. The evolving, dynamic geometry of space, like the cartoon figure, would be destroyed by just any arbitrary slicing up of space-time (Fig. 2.3). In a Friedman universe, then, there is a preferred slicing of space-time along a cosmic time parameter in line with certain natural symmetries.
Now as a parameter, cosmic time measures the duration of the universe as a whole in an observer-independent way; that is to say, the lapse of cosmic time is the same for all observers. Nevertheless, cosmic time is related to the local times of a special group of observers called “fundamental observers.” These are hypothetical observers who are at rest with respect to the expansion of space itself. It is important to realize that despite potentially misleading expressions such as “the Big Bang,” the expansion of the universe should not be thought of as the explosion of material into a previously existing empty space. Rather in Friedman models it is space itself which is expanding, and the galaxies are fixed in space and are simply “riding along” with the expanding space. The easiest way to envision this is to imagine a balloon with buttons glued to its surface. As you blow up the balloon, the buttons, though stuck in place, move away from each other because the balloon itself is expanding. The surface of the balloon is the two-dimensional analogue to space, and the buttons are like the galaxies. As space expands, the galaxies recede from each other, even though they are fixed in space. Now fundamental observers are hypothetical observers associated with the galaxies. As time goes on and the expansion of space proceeds, each fundamental observer remains in the same place, though his spatial separation from fellow fundamental observers increases. Cosmic time relates to these observers in that their local times all coincide with cosmic time in their vicinity. Because of their mutual recession, the class of fundamental observers do not serve to define a global inertial frame, technically speaking, even though all of them are at rest. But since each fundamental observer is at rest with respect to space, the events which he calculates to be simultaneous will coincide locally with the events which are simultaneous in cosmic time. What this implies is that, contrary to premise (2), it does not follow from the correctness of STR that if God is in time, then He is in the time of one or more inertial frames.53 For if God exists in cosmic time, there is no universal inertial frame with which He can be associated.
Fig. 2.2: Arbitrary slicing of a solid paper block contrasted with a stack of sheets of paper.
Fig. 2.3: Preferred slicing of space-time as disclosed by the natural geometrical symmetries in the Friedman model. The geometry of space (dr2) evolves over time (-dt + R2[t]).
Thus, on a cosmic scale, we seem to have that universality of time and absolute simultaneity of events which the Special Theory had denied. G. J. Whitrow of London’s Imperial College of Science and Technology asserts, “in a universe that is characterized by the existence of a cosmic time, relativity is reduced to a local phenomenon, since this time is world-wide and independent of the observer.”54 Based on a cosmological rather than a local perspective, cosmic time serves to restore to us our intuitive notions of universal time and absolute simultaneity which STR denied.
The question, then, becomes an empirical one: Does cosmic time exist? Do we live in a Friedman universe? The evidence strongly suggests that we do. According to the British Royal Astronomer Martin Rees, “The most remarkable outcome of 50 years of observational cosmology has been the realization that the universe is more isotropic and uniform than the pioneer theorists of the 1920’s would ever have suspected.”55 The recent findings of the COBE satellite, which has measured the uniformity of the cosmic background radiation to one part in 100,000, have dramatically underscored this conclusion. “We have strong evidence that the universe as a whole is predominantly homogeneous and isotropic,” states Whitrow, “and this conclusion . . . is a strong argument for the existence of cosmic time.”56 Thus, far from “taking away from space and time the last remnant of physical objectivity,” as Einstein thought at first, GTR through its cosmological applications appears to give back what STR had removed.
The defender of divine temporality may accordingly hold that God exists in cosmic time. Already in 1920, on the basis of Einstein’s and de Sitter’s cosmological models, Eddington hinted at a theological interpretation of cosmic time:
In the first place, absolute space and time are restored for phenomena on a cosmical scale. . . . The world taken as a whole has one direction in which it is not curved; that direction gives a kind of absolute time distinct from space. Relativity is reduced to a local phenomenon; and although this is quite sufficient for the theory hitherto described, we are inclined to look on the limitation rather grudgingly. But we have already urged that the relativity theory is not concerned to deny the possibility of an absolute time, but to deny that it is concerned in any experimental knowledge yet found; and it need not perturb us if the conception of absolute time turns up in a new form in a theory of phenomena on a cosmical scale, as to which no experimental knowledge is yet available. Just as each limited observer has his own particular separation of space and time, so a being co-extensive with the world might well have a special separation of space and time natural to him. It is the time for this being that is here dignified by the title “absolute.”57
Notice that Eddington is quite willing to call cosmic time “absolute” in view of its independence from space, that is to say, its status as a parameter. Relativistic time is only a local time, whereas cosmic time, being non-local, is the true time. Although in 1920 there was no empirical evidence for cosmic time, within a few short years astronomical evidence confirmed the prediction of the Friedman model of a universal expansion and, hence, of cosmic time. This cosmic time would, says Eddington, be the time of an omnipresent being. Cosmic time is not merely the “fusion” of all the local times recorded by the separate fundamental observers, but, even more fundamentally, it is the time which measures the duration of the universe. As the measure of the proper time of the universe, cosmic time also measures the duration of and lapse of time for a temporal being coextensive with the world. For Eddington, it is the time of this being that deserves to be called “absolute.”
Such an affirmation will be typically met with passionate disclamations. Any equivalence of cosmic time with Newton’s absolute time is usually vigorously repudiated by relativistic scientists. But here one must not confuse the various senses of “absolute.” Eddington is not claiming that cosmic time is metaphysically necessary or independent of physical measures. Rather he is saying that cosmic time is not tied to inertial frames and so is privileged. One of the most intriguing indications that cosmic time does represent the physical equivalent of Newton’s absolute time is the surprising demonstration by E. A. Milne and W. H. McCrea that all the results of GTR-based Friedman cosmology can be recovered by Newtonian physics and in a way that is simpler than Einstein’s cumbersome mathematics! Milne and McCrea were able to reproduce all the results of Big Bang cosmology by means of a material universe expanding in empty, classical space through classical time.58 Comparing relativistic and Newtonian cosmology, Kerszberg observes, “as far as the prediction of the overall history of the universe is concerned, the equivalence seems to be total.”59 This implies, in Bondi’s words, that GTR “cannot be expected to explain any major features in any different or better way than Newtonian theory.”60 In particular the concept of cosmic time in GTR-based models corresponds to absolute time in the Newtonian model. Schücking points out that the main asset of the Milne-McCrea formulation was that it gave exactly the same equations for the time development of the universe as the Friedman theory and yet allowed a much simpler derivation.61 This is not to suggest that Newtonian theory is correct after all; we have already seen how Lorentz was forced to modify Newtonian physics on the local level. But the equivalence of Milne-McCrea Newtonian cosmology with GTR-based Friedman cosmology is a convincing demonstration that cosmic time is, indeed, the physical equivalent of Newtonian absolute time. Thus, Bondi likens cosmic time with Newton’s uniform, omnipresent, and even-flowing time, which enables all observers to synchronize their clocks to a single time.62 Kerszberg concludes, “On the whole, the equivalence between Newtonian and relativistic cosmology only reinforces the conviction that cosmic time is indeed a necessary ingredient in the formalisation of a relativistic cosmology, however alien to general relativity and congenial to Newton’s theory the notion of universal synchronisation might seem.”63
Now at this point the advocate of divine timelessness may think that he has just been inadvertently delivered the trump card. For cosmic time had a beginning; the Big Bang event represents not just the origin of all the matter and energy in the universe, but the origin of space-time itself. There is no moment “before” the Big Bang, since time originated at the Big Bang. So if God is temporal and time had a beginning, God must have had a beginning. But obviously, God did not come into existence with the Big Bang, or at any other time, for His existence is beginningless and endless. God must therefore transcend time and is thus timeless.
The Newtonian will be unfazed by this objection, however, for he may plausibly construe cosmic time as but an empirical measure of God’s time since the moment of creation. Newton himself implies such an interpretation when he writes:
Absolute time, in astronomy, is distinguished from relative [time], by the equation or correction of the apparent time. For the natural days are truly unequal, though they are commonly considered as equal, and used for a measure of time; astronomers correct this inequality that they may measure the celestial motions by a more accurate time. It may be, that there is no such thing as an equable motion, whereby time may be accurately measured. All motions may be accelerated and retarded, but the flowing of absolute time is not liable to any change. The duration or perseverance of the existence of things remains the same, whether the motions are swift or slow, or none at all: and therefore this duration ought to be distinguished from what are only sensible measures thereof; and from which we deduce it, by means of the astronomical equation.64
Cosmic time provides an approximate measure of God’s absolute time and of His co-existence with the universe since the moment of creation. While this empirical measure of time had a beginning in the Big Bang, time itself did not. Thus God existed literally before the Big Bang event in absolute time. Newton believed that the “flow” of absolute time would exist even in the utter absence of events—as he says, “whether the motions are swift or slow, or none at all.” For time, on His view, is the immediate effect of God’s merely existing. Thus, even if there were no events prior to creation, time would still exist as the duration of God’s being.
It ought to be noted, however, that the view that time existed prior to creation does not depend upon adopting Newton’s belief that time can exist in the absence of events. The seventeenth-century German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz opposed Newton in this regard, maintaining that time is a relation between events and so could not exist if there were no events. Leibniz therefore held that time began at the moment of creation with the occurrence of the first event. But even granted a Leibnizian relational view of time, it can still make sense to talk about time prior to creation. For the events which serve to generate time need not be physical events; a sequence of mental events would suffice. Suppose, for example, that God were to be counting down toward the moment of creation: “ . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . Let there be light!” In such a case the mental events of counting would generate a temporal succession of moments. Or God could have created angelic beings prior to the Big Bang which were undergoing a succession of mental states. Thus, whether one adopts a Newtonian (substantival) or Leibnizian (relational) view of time, it makes sense to talk about time prior to the inception of physical, cosmic time, which is but an empirical measure of time itself. Indeed, I take the coherence of this thought experiment to be a knock-down argument that STR, or any other scientific theory, does not furnish a correct description of time itself. At best, scientific accounts describe our measures of time, but not time itself.
In conclusion, Relativity Theory does not provide good grounds for thinking that God is timeless. The Einsteinian interpretation of STR is based essentially upon an untenable and obsolete verificationist epistemology and so cannot force abandonment of the classical concept of time. Moreover, GTR in its cosmological application furnishes us with a cosmic time parameter which may be plausibly interpreted as the appropriate measure of God’s time since the moment of creation. The past finitude of cosmic time does not imply the finitude of God’s time, for whether one adopts a substantival or a relational view of time, it is coherent to speak of God’s existing temporally prior to the creation of the universe and the beginning of cosmic time.
EXPOSITION
An important argument in favor of divine timelessness rests on the claim that the fleeting nature of temporal life is incompatible with the life of a most perfect being such as God is. For example, in his study of time and eternity, the Fordham University philosopher Brian Leftow draws upon Boethius’s characterization of eternity as complete possession all at once of interminable life in order to argue for the defectiveness of temporal existence.65 Leftow points out that a temporal being is unable to enjoy what is past or future for it. The past is gone forever, and the future is yet to come. The passage of time thus renders it impossible for any temporal being to possess all its life at once. Even God, if He is temporal, cannot reclaim the past. Leftow emphasizes that even perfect memory cannot substitute for reality: “the past itself is lost, and no memory, however complete, can take its place—for confirmation, ask a widower if his grief would be abated were his memory of his wife enhanced in vividness and detail.”66 By contrast, a timeless God lives all His life at once because He literally has no past or future and so suffers no loss. Therefore, since God is the most perfect being, He is timeless.
We can formulate this argument as follows:
1. God is the most perfect being.
2. The most perfect being has the most perfect mode of existence.
3. Temporal existence is a less perfect mode of existence than timeless existence.
4. Therefore, God has the most perfect mode of existence.
5. Therefore, God has a timeless mode of existence.
CRITIQUE
Here I think we have an argument for divine timelessness which is really promising. The premises of the argument rest on very powerful intuitions about the irretrievable loss that arises through the experience of temporal passage, a loss which intuitively should not characterize the experience of a most perfect being. The fleeting nature of temporal life was brought home to me unexpectedly and powerfully as I read aloud to our children Laura Ingalls Wilder’s account of life in the American Midwest during the late 1800s in her Little House in the Big Woods. Here are the final paragraphs of that book:
The long winter evenings of firelight and music had come again. . . . Pa’s strong, sweet voice was softly singing:
“Shall auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Shall auld acquaintance be forgot,
And the days of auld lang syne?
And the days of auld lang syne, my friend,
And the days of auld lang syne,
Shall auld acquaintance be forgot,
And the days of auld lang syne?”
When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”
“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.”
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.
She thought to herself, “This is now.”
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.67
What makes this passage so poignant is that as we read it today we realize that the time which for Laura Ingalls was so real, which was “now,” is no longer now, but is gone forever. Pa and Ma are gone, the American frontier they struggled to win is gone, the years Laura Ingalls called “those happy golden days” are all gone, gone forever, never to be reclaimed. Time has a savage way of gnawing away at life, leaving it transitory and incomplete, so that life in its fullness can never be enjoyed by any temporal being.
The force of these considerations is such that Stump and Kretzmann, whose 1981 article “Eternity” in the Journal of Philosophy sparked a revival of interest in the doctrine of divine timelessness, have rested their case for God’s atemporality solely on the shoulders of this argument. They comment,
No life . . . that is imperfect in its being possessed with the radical incompleteness entailed by temporal existence could be the mode of existence of an absolutely perfect being. A perfectly possessed life must be devoid of any past, which would be no longer possessed, and of any future, which would be not yet possessed. The existence of an absolutely perfect being must be an indivisibly persistent present actuality.68
Their claim that the life of a most perfect being must be an indivisible actuality has, I think, a good deal of plausibility.
Some philosophers of time might try to avert the force of this argument by adopting a view of time—of which we shall have more to say later—according to which things and events do not in fact come to be or pass away. According to this view of time, often called the “tenseless” or “static” view of time, the past and future are just as real as the present. The difference between past, present, and future is usually explained as just a subjective illusion of human consciousness. For the people located in 1868, for example, the events of 1868 are present, and we are future; by the same token, for the people living in 2050 it is the events of 2050 that are present, and we are past. Time is akin to a spatial line, and all the points of the line are equally real. On such a view of time, if something has a finite lifetime, it does not come into being at a certain point and go out of being at a later point. Rather it just exists at those two points and all the points in between. The longer a thing’s temporal extension, the longer its lifetime. If the temporal extensions of two persons overlap, then they will regard themselves as both present during that period of overlap. If one has a longer time line than the other, then the person with the longer time line will regard the other as at some point no longer present; but, say the philosophers who hold this view, if that person is philosophically informed, he will not regard his fellow as non-existent. Albert Einstein, who came to adopt this view of time, took this idea so seriously that when his lifelong friend Michael Besso died, he tried to comfort Besso’s surviving son and sister by writing, “This signifies nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.”69 On this view of time no temporal being ever really loses its past or has not yet acquired its future. Just as things are extended in space, so they are also extended in time. A temporal being has nothing to lose and nothing to gain; it just exists tenselessly at its temporal locations. Thus, a temporal God would exist at all temporal locations without beginning or end to His temporal extension. On this view of time God does not lose or acquire portions of His life.
The problem with this escape route is that it fails to appreciate that the argument is based on the experience of temporal passage, rather than on the objective reality of temporal passage itself. The flow of time is an ineradicable part of the experience of a temporal being. Even if the future never becomes and the past is never really lost, the fact remains that for a temporal being the past is lost to him and the future is not accessible to him. AsH. G. Wells’s celebrated Time Traveler, who believed that time was a fourth dimension of space, remarked, “Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave.”70 Even if the cradle and the grave are just as real as the present, we still find ourselves experientially at some point in between, and events which are located at times earlier than that point are irretrievably lost to us, and events later than that point can only be anticipated. For this reason a tenseless or static theory of time does nothing to alleviate the loss occasioned by our experience of temporal becoming. I dare say that the bereaved find little comfort in the thought that a deceased loved one exists tenselessly at earlier temporal coordinates than those which they occupy. Time’s tooth gnaws away at our experience of life regardless of the tenseless existence of all events making up one’s life. For this reason, it would be futile to attempt to elude the force of this argument by postulating a temporal deity in a tenseless time.
Other philosophers, observing that this argument concerns, not temporal passage itself, but our experience of temporal passage, have suggested a different way around the argument. The fleetingness of our experience derives from the limits of what psychologists call our “specious present,” that is to say, our subjective awareness of what is “now.” The average person’s now-awareness is just a fraction of a second. But the longer one’s specious present, the less fleeting one’s experience of life would be. If we could imagine someone who experienced a specious present which had the same duration as his entire life, such a person would experience his life all at once. These considerations have led William Alston, a noted Christian philosopher of the University of Syracuse, to claim that God’s specious present has the same temporal extension as the whole of time, so that God has, indeed, at least experientially, complete possession all at once of interminable life. He writes,
Just expand the specious present to cover all of time, and you have a model for God’s awareness of the world. . . . a being with an infinite specious present would not, so far as his awareness is concerned, be subject to temporal succession at all. There would be no further awareness to succeed the awareness in question. Everything would be grasped in one temporally unextended awareness.71
Such a model would enable us to hold to God’s being temporal and yet experiencing His entire life at once as a whole.
Nevertheless, a little reflection reveals that this model exacts far too high a price for the benefits it offers. (i) The reason we human beings have a specious present is due to our physical limitations, particularly the finite velocity of the transmission of signals along our nervous system. Because we do not have instantaneous transmission of such signals, there is a minimum threshold of the psychological present, so that events which occur too quickly cannot be experienced by us as consecutively present. But God, as unembodied Mind possessing maximal cognitive excellence, should possess no minimal, finite psychological present at all, much less an infinitely extended one. He is not dependent upon finite velocity neural processes which would slow down His apprehension of present events. And being maximally excellent cognitively, we should rather expect that He be able, rather than unable, to distinguish discrete, consecutive events as present. As one commentator has remarked, a God with an everlasting specious present would be infinitely slow on the uptake!72 In a literal sense, He would be mentally retarded. (ii) The specious present gathers into one now-awareness a period of time up to the present moment. Thus, if God had a specious present covering the whole of time, He would not experience His specious present until He had endured to the end of time. But then, although God at that instant becomes aware of the succession of all events, it is too late for Him to do anything about them, for they are already past by that point. Thus, God could not respond to individual events in time. God’s providence is therefore obliterated by such a model. Worse, God could not even know what He Himself had done throughout history until it was over. How He could even act in history without any consciousness of what was happening at the time the events occurred remains a mystery. A sort of backward causation would seem to be necessary to explain God’s acts in time. All these untoward consequences result if time in fact has an end. But if time has no end, as the Christian doctrine of the afterlife teaches, then God never becomes conscious. There is no point at which all His cognitions of individual events can be gathered into a specious present, since there will always be time after that. Thus, the model becomes self-contradictory, for in order to have a specious present which takes in all of unending time, God’s becoming conscious is indefinitely postponed such that He never has a specious present. (iii) It might be suggested that we loose the model from its physical basis in neurology and interpret God’s specious present merely on the analogy of our specious present. God just has at every point in time a specious present which takes in the whole of time. But as recent studies in the philosophy of language have shown, the ability to apprehend tenses, that is to say, the ability to know what is happening now, is essential to timely action. If God has the same specious present at every moment of time, then He has neither memory nor foreknowledge nor changing now-awarenesses. Thus, He is rendered utterly impotent to act in a timely fashion, since He never knows what time it is. Instead of a variety of now-awarenesses at different times, He has at each time the same now-awareness. Hence, He is incapacitated to effect something at the time at which He is located. In short, it seems to me that the theory of God’s having an everlasting specious present is utterly inept and so affords no escape from the present argument.
Perhaps, however, the realization that the argument for divine timelessness from the incompleteness of temporal life is essentially experiential in character opens the door for a temporalist alternative. When we recall that God is perfectly omniscient and so forgets absolutely nothing of the past and knows everything about the future, then time’s tooth is considerably dulled for Him. His past experiences do not fade as ours do, and He has perfect recall of what He has undergone. To be sure, the past itself is gone (given a tensed or dynamic view of time), but His experience of the past remains as vivid as ever. A fatal flaw in Leftow’s analysis is his assumption that God, like the widower, has actually lost the persons He loves and remembers. But according to Christian theism, this assumption is false. Those who perish physically live on in the afterlife, where they continue to be real and present to God. At worst, what are past are the experiences God has enjoyed of those persons, for example, Jones’s coming to faith in Christ. But in the afterlife Jones lives on with God, and God can recall as though it were present His experience of Jones’s conversion. So it is far from obvious that the experience of temporal passage is so melancholy an affair for an omniscient God as it is for us.
Moreover, it needs to be kept in mind that the life of a perfect person may have to be characterized by the incompleteness which would in other contexts be considered an imperfection. There is some evidence that consciousness of time’s flow can actually be an enriching experience.73 R. W. Hepburn cautions against downplaying the importance of the flow of consciousness in awareness of music, for example. Music appreciation is not merely a matter of apprehending tenselessly the succession of sounds. Quoting Charles Rosen to the effect that, “The movement from past to future is more significant in music than the movement from left to right in a picture,” Hepburn believes that the phenomenon of music calls into question any claim that a perfect mode of consciousness would be exclusively atemporal. All this goes to call into question premise
3. Temporal existence is a less perfect mode of existence than timeless existence
of the argument for divine timelessness from the incompleteness of temporal life. Timeless life may not be the most perfect mode of existence of a perfect person.
Still, I think that we must admit that the argument has some force and could motivate justifiably a doctrine of divine timelessness in the absence of countermanding arguments. The question then will be whether the reasons for affirming divine temporality do not overwhelm this argument for divine timelessness.
Conclusion
In summary, we have seen that the arguments for divine timelessness are inconclusive. While God’s timelessness does follow from divine simplicity or immutability, those doctrines are even more controversial than the doctrine of divine timelessness and so furnish no grounds for adoption of the view that God is timeless. The appeal to the Special Theory of Relativity in order to ground belief in God’s atemporality is unpersuasive, since the defender of God’s temporality may justifiably challenge the verificationist epistemological underpinnings of the theory and so distinguish between time itself and our physical measures thereof. Our inability to detect empirically relations of absolute simultaneity is no reason to think that such relations do not exist. Indeed, such relations may be plausibly grounded in a preferred reference frame associated with God’s “now” in absolute time. Finally, the argument based on the incompleteness of temporal life is essentially an experiential argument, whose force is mitigated in the case of God. Still, this last argument does have some force and so needs to be weighed against whatever arguments can be offered on behalf of divine temporality.
Recommended Reading
DIVINE SIMPLICITY AND IMMUTABILITY
Hughes, Christopher. On a Complex Theory of a Simple God. Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989.
Morris, Thomas V. Anselmian Explorations, pp. 98-123. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987.
RELATIVITY THEORY
Newton, Isaac. Sir Isaac Newton’s “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” and His “System of the World,” 2 vols., Scholium to the Definitions (1:6-11) and General Scholium (2:544-546). Translated by Andrew Motte. Revised with an appendix by Florian Cajori. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966.
_____. “On the Gravity and Equilibrium of Fluids.” In Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton. Edited by A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall.
ambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.
McGuire, J. E. “Newton on Place, Time, and God: An Unpublished Source.” British Journal for the History of Science 11 (1978): 114-129.
Einstein, Albert. “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” Translated by Arthur Miller. Appendix to Arthur I. Miller, Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1981.
_____. Relativity: The Special and General Theories. London: Methuen, 1954.
Miller, Arthur I. Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1981.
Taylor, J. G. Special Relativity. Oxford Physics Series. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975.
Eddington, Arthur. Space, Time and Gravitation. Cambridge Science Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920; rep. ed.: 1987.
Norton, John D. “Philosophy of Space and Time.” In Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, pp. 3-56. Edited by Merilee Salmon. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1992.
Holton, Gerald. Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973.
_____. “Mach, Einstein and the Search for Reality.” In Ernst Mach: Physicist and Philosopher, pp. 165-199. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 6. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1970.
_____. “Where Is Reality? The Answers of Einstein.” In Science and Synthesis, pp. 45-69. Edited by UNESCO. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1971.
Zahar, Elie. “Why Did Einstein’s Programme Supersede Lorentz’?” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 24 (1973): 95-123, 223-262.
Illy, Jozsef. “Einstein Teaches Lorentz, Lorentz Teaches Einstein. Their Collaboration in General Relativity, 1913–1920.” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 39 (1989): 247-289.
Sklar, Lawrence. “Time, Reality, and Relativity.” In Reduction, Time and Reality,pp. 129-142. Edited by Richard Healey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Fitzgerald, Paul. “Relativity Physics and the God of Process Philosophy.” Process Studies 2 (1972): 251-276.
Misner, Charles W., Kip S. Thorne, and John Archibald Wheeler. Gravitation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973.
A Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. S.v. “Theism and Physical Cosmology,” by William Lane Craig.
THE INCOMPLETENESS OF TEMPORAL LIFE
Leftow, Brian. Time and Eternity, pp. 278-279. Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Gale, Richard M. “The Static vs. the Dynamic Temporal: Introduction.” In The Philosophy of Time: A Collection of Essays, pp. 169-178. Edited by Richard M. Gale. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1968.
Craig, William Lane. “On the Argument for Divine Timelessness from the Incompleteness of Temporal Life.” Heythrop Journal 38 (1997): 165-171.
1 Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 5. pr. 6. 25-31.
2 An intrinsic change is a non-relational change, involving only the subject. For example, an apple changes from green to red. An extrinsic change is a relational change, involving something else in relation to which the subject changes. For example, I become shorter than my son, not by undergoing an intrinsic change in my height, but by being related to him as he undergoes intrinsic change in his height. I change extrinsically from being taller than John to being shorter than John because he is growing.
3 Thomas Aquinas’s famous argument for God from contingent beings (beings whose essence is distinct from their existence) leads at best, I think, to a being whose essence is such that it is necessarily instantiated, a metaphysically necessary being. But to say that God does not have distinct properties seems patently false: Omnipotence is not the same property as goodness, for a being may have one and not the other. To respond that these properties differ in our conception only, as manifestations of a single divine property, just as, say, “the morning star” and “the evening star” have different senses but both refer to the same reality (Venus) is inadequate. For being the morning star and being the evening star are distinct properties both possessed by Venus; in the same way, being omnipotent and being good are not different senses for the same property (as are, say, being even and being divisible by two) but are clearly distinct properties. To say that God is His essence seems to make God into a property, which is incompatible with His being a living, concrete being. Moreover, if God is not distinct from His essence, then God cannot know or do anything different than what He knows and does, in which case everything becomes necessary. To respond that God is perfectly similar in all logically possible worlds which we can imagine but that contingency is real because God stands in no real relations to things is to make the existence or non-existence of creatures in various possible worlds independent of God and utterly mysterious. To say that God’s essence just is His existence seems wholly obscure, since then there is in God’s case no entity that exists; there is just the existing itself without any subject. For further critique, see Christopher Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God, Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989); Thomas V. Morris, Anselmian Explorations (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), 98-123.
Divine immutability is sometimes said to be a necessary correlate of divine perfection. But this seems clearly incorrect. A perfect being need not change “vertically,” so to speak, on the scale of perfection and, hence, for the worse, but could change “horizontally,” remaining equally perfect in both states. For example, for God to change from knowing “It is now t1” to knowing “It is now t2” is not a change for the worse in God; on the contrary, it is a sign of His perfection that He always knows what time it is. It is also not clear that divine immutability (as opposed to mere changelessness) is compatible with divine freedom—suppose God wanted to change?
4 Hermann Bondi, Relativity and Common Sense (New York: Dover, 1964), 168.
5 Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac Newton’s “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” and his “System of the World,” trans. Andrew Motte, rev. with an appendix by Florian Cajori, 2 vols. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), 1:6.
6 Ibid., 1:6-7.
7 Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems—Ptolemaic and Copernican., trans. Stillman Drake (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 186-188.
8 Albert Einstein, “Autobiographical Notes,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Library of Living Philosophers 7 (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1949), 13.
9 James T. Cushing, Philosophical Concepts in Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 232.
10 Albert Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” trans. Arthur Miller in Arthur I. Miller, Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1981), 394.
11 Banesh Hoffmann, cited in Miller, Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, 192.
12 Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” 396.
13 Paul Fitzgerald, “Relativity Physics and the God of Process Philosophy,” Process Studies 2 (1972): 259, 260.
14 David Ray Griffin, “Introduction: Time and the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness,” in Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time, ed. David R. Griffin (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1986), 6-7.
15 Newton, Principles of Natural Philosophy, 2:545.
16 Isaac Newton, “On the Gravity and Equilibrium of Fluids,” [De gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum], in Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton, ed. A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 132.
17 Isaac Newton, “Place, Time, and God,” in J. E. McGuire, “Newton on Place, Time, and God: An Unpublished Source,” British Journal for the History of Science 11 (1978): 123.
18 John Lucas emphasizes, “The relativity that Newton rejected is not the relativity that Einstein pro-pounded; and although the Special Theory of Relativity has shown Newton to be wrong in some respects, . . . it has not shown that time is relative in Newton’s sense, and merely some numerical measure of process” (J. R. Lucas, A Treatise on Time and Space [London: Methuen, 1973], 90).
19 Ibid., 143.
20 Gerald Holton, “On the Origins of the Special Theory of Relativity,” in Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 171. The sensorium was conceived to be that aspect of the mind in which mental images of physical objects are formed. Newton said that because physical objects exist in space and God is omnipresent, they literally exist in God and thus are immediately present to Him. Absolute space is, as it were, God’s sensorium in the sense that He has no need of mental images of things, since the things themselves are present to Him. Einstein’s Gedankenexperimenter (thought experimenter) is the hypothetical observer associated with any inertial frame, for whom time and space are purely relative quantities.
21 See especially Gerald J. Holton, “Mach, Einstein and the Search for Reality,” in Ernst Mach: Physicist and Philosopher, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 6 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1970), 165-199; idem, “Where Is Reality? The Answers of Einstein,” in Science and Synthesis, ed. UNESCO (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1971), 45-69; and the essays collected together in idem, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought.
22 Lawrence Sklar, “Time, Reality, and Relativity,” in Reduction, Time and Reality, ed. Richard Healey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 141.
23 Ibid.
24 See the excellent survey in Frederick Suppe, “The Search for Philosophical Understanding of Scientific Theories,” in The Structure of Scientific Theories, 2d ed., ed. F. Suppe (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 3-118. Verificationism was far too restrictive a theory of meaning to be plausible, for it would force us to dismiss as meaningless vast tracts of human discourse, including not just metaphysical and theological statements but also aesthetic and ethical statements, as well as many scientific statements (e.g., the postulate of the constancy of the one-way velocity of light, an unprovable assumption which lies at the heart of STR). Worse, verificationism turned out to be self-refuting. For the statement “Only sentences which can in principle be empirically verified are meaningful” is itself not an empirically verifiable sentence and so is by its own standard meaningless!
25 Richard Healey, “Introduction,” in Healey, ed., Reduction, Time and Reality, vii.
26 George Gale, “Some Metaphysical Perplexities in Contemporary Physics,” paper presented at the 36th Annual Meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, Vanderbilt University, March 14-16, 1985.
27 Euan Squires, The Mystery of the Quantum World (Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1986), 4.
28 George Gale, “Cosmos and Conflict,” paper presented at the conference “The Origin of the Universe,” Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, Colorado, September 22-25, 1988.
29 John Barrow, The World within the World (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 2, vii-viii.
30 Sklar, “Time, Reality and Relativity,” 132.
31 Henri Poincaré, “The Measure of Time,” in The Foundations of Science, trans. G. B. Halstead (Science Press: 1913; rep. ed.: Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982), 228.
32 Ibid., 228-229.
33 Cf. Lorentz’s illustration in a letter to Einstein in January of 1915 in response to the latter’s paper “The Formal Foundations of the General Theory of Relativity.” In a passage redolent of the General Scholium and Opticks of Newton, Lorentz broached considerations whereby “I cross the borderland of physics”:
“A ‘World Spirit’ who, not being bound to a specific place, permeated the entire system under consideration or ‘in whom’ this system existed and who could ‘feel’ immediately all events would naturally distinguish at once one of the systems U, U’, etc. above the others” (H. A. Lorentz to A. Einstein, January, 1915, Boerhaave Museum, cited in Jozsef Illy, “Einstein Teaches Lorentz, Lorentz Teaches Einstein. Their Collaboration in General Relativity, 1913–1920,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 39 [1989]: 274).
Such a being, says Lorentz, could “directly verify simultaneity.”
34 J. M. Findlay, “Time and Eternity,” Review of Metaphysics 32 (1978–1979): 6-7.
35 Milton K. Munitz, Cosmic Understanding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 157. Kanitscheider concludes that only an omnipresent, cosmic observer who sees the world sub specie aeternitatis (from the perspective of eternity)can be in the position to draw up a world map (Bernulf Kanitscheider, Kosmologie [Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, Jun., 1984], 193).
36 John Kennedy in a paper delivered to the American Philosophical Association, Central Division Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pa., April 23-26, 1997. Compare the passing remark of Balashov, “the idea of restoring absolute simultaneity no longer has a distinctively pseudo-scientific flavor it has had until very recently” (Yuri Balashov, “Enduring and Perduring Objects in Minkowski Space-Time,” Philosophical Studies 99 (2000): 159).
37 A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, “Can Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” reprinted in Quantum Theory and Measurement, ed. John Archibald Wheeler and Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Princeton Series in Physics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 138.
38 J. S. Bell, “On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox,” reprinted in Quantum Theory and Measurement, 403-408.
39 “John Bell,” interview in P. C. W. Davies and J. R. Brown, The Ghost in the Atom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 45-47. Even if one does not postulate faster-than-light causal influences, the fact remains that the indeterminacy in each particle collapses instantly and simultaneously, which cannot be accounted for within an Einsteinian interpretation of STR, as is lucidly explained by Tim Maudlin, Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity, Aristotelian Society Series 13 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
40 Karl Popper, “A Critical Note on the Greatest Days of Quantum Theory,” in Quantum, Space and Time—The Quest Continues, ed. Asim O. Barut, Alwyn van der Merwe, and Jean-Pierre Vigier, Cambridge Monographs on Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 54.
41 Karl Popper, Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics, ed. W. W. Bartley III (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982), 29.
42 Ibid., 30.
43 Michael Heller, Zbigniew Klimek, and Konrad Rudnicki, “Observational Foundations for Assumptions in Cosmology,” in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data, ed. M. S. Longair (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974), 4. Kanitscheider remarks, “The cosmic background radiation thereby furnishes a reference frame, relative to which it is meaningful to speak of an absolute motion” (Kanitscheider, Kosmologie, 256).
44 G. F. Smoot, M. Y. Gorenstein, and R. A. Muller, “Detection of Anisotropy in the Cosmic Blackbody Radiation,” Physical Review Letters 39 (1977): 899.
45 James T. Cushing, “What Measurement Problem?” in Perspectives on Quantum Reality, ed. Rob Clifton, University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science 57 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), 75. So also Popper, Quantum Theory, 30.
46 A. Einstein, “The Foundations of General Relativity Theory,” in General Theory of Relativity, ed.C. W. Kilminster, Selected Readings in Physics (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1973), 148.
47 See Michael Friedman, Foundations of Space-Time Theories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 204-215; also Hermann Bondi, “Is ‘General Relativity’ Necessary for Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation?” in Relativity, Quanta, and Cosmology in the Development of the Scientific Thought of Albert Einstein, ed. Francesco De Finis, 2 vols. (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1979), 179-186.
48 Albert Einstein, “Cosmological Considerations on the General Theory of Relativity,” in The Principle of Relativity, by Albert Einstein, et al., with notes by A. Sommerfeld, trans. W. Perrett and J. B. Jeffery (reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1952), 177-188.
49 Kanitscheider, Kosmologie, 155. See also G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 283-284.
50 Willem de Sitter, “On the Relativity of Inertia,” in Koninglijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen Afdeling Wis. en Natuurkundige Wetenschappen, Proceedings of the Section of Science 19 (1917): 1217-1225.
51 A. Friedman, “Über die Krümmung des Raumes,” Zeitschrift für Physik 10 (1922): 377-386.
52 See Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation (San Francisco:W. H. Freeman, 1973), 713-714; Kanitscheider, Kosmologie, 182-197.
53 In the sense that God exists in the time of the inertial frame of each fundamental observer, there is no objection, since all their local times fuse into one cosmic time.
54 Whitrow, Natural Philosophy of Time, 371; cf. 302.
55 Martin J. Rees, “The Size and Shape of the Universe,” in Some Strangeness in the Proportion, ed. Harry Woolf (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1980), 293. Isotropy is the property of being the same in all directions.
56 Whitrow, Natural Philosophy of Time, 307.
57 Arthur Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation, Cambridge Science Classics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920; rep. ed.: 1987), 168.
58 E. A. Milne, Relativity, Gravitation and World Structure (Oxford: Clarendon, 1935); idem,“A Newtonian Expanding Universe,” Quarterly Journal of Mathematics 5 (1934): 64-72; W. H. McCrea, “On the Significance of Newtonian Cosmology,” Astronomical Journal 60 (1955): 271-274.
59 Pierre Kerszberg, “On the Alleged Equivalence between Newtonian and Relativistic Cosmology,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (1987): 349.
60 Hermann Bondi, Cosmology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), 70-71.
61 E. L. Schücking, “Newtonian Cosmology,” Texas Quarterly 10 (1967): 274.
62 Bondi, Cosmology, 70-71.
63 Kerszberg, “Equivalence,” 376.
64 Newton, Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1:7-8.
65 Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity, Cornell Studies in Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 278.
66 Ibid.
67 Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods (New York: Harper & Row, 1932), 237-238.
68 Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Prophecy, Past Truth, and Eternity,” Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991): 395; cf. idem, “Eternity, Awareness, and Action,” Faith and Philosophy 9 (1992): 463.
69 Letter of Albert Einstein, March 21, 1955, cited in Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel, Banesh Hoffmann with Helen Dukas (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1972), 258.
70 H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (New York: Berkeley, 1957), 10. Of course, the “passing along” must have reference to our experience of time’s flow; contrary to Wells, psychological time passes at various rates.
71 William P. Alston, “Hartshorne and Aquinas: A Via Media,” in Existence and Actuality, ed. John B. Cobb, Jr. and Franklin I. Gamwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 91. In all fairness to Alston, it must be admitted that he is using the specious present as “an intelligible model for a nontemporal knowledge of a temporal world” (p. 90, emphasis added). For a literal affirmation of God’s having an everlasting specious present, see Grace M. Jantzen, God’s World, God’s Body, with a foreword by John MacQuarrie (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1984), 65.
72 Fitzgerald, “Relativity Physics and the God of Process Philosophy,” 267. Fitzgerald goes on to say, “This makes God out to be a sort of infinitely sluggish observer of the passing scene. . . . Contrary to what appears at first, it is a defect rather than a merit to have a specious present which is all inclusive.”
73 See the very interesting piece by R. W. Hepburn, “Time-Transcendence and Some Related Phenomena in the Arts,” in Contemporary British Philosophy, 4th series, ed. H. D. Lewis, Muirhead Library of Philosophy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1976), 152-173.