To Tanager - God is a Time Traveller: Part 2

For the love of the pursuit of knowledge

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
Dimmesdale
Sage
Posts: 776
Joined: Mon May 29, 2017 7:19 pm
Location: Vaikuntha Dham
Has thanked: 28 times
Been thanked: 89 times

To Tanager - God is a Time Traveller: Part 2

Post #1

Post by Dimmesdale »

Hey anyone reading this, maybe Tanager.....

I'm wondering if I understand this correctly. God is classically said to be Actus Purus, which means he has no "unactualized potential."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_purus

"God is changeless because change means passage from potency to act."

So for us there is change because we are in time. I have to go from boyhood to puberty then adulthood, etc. But for God whatever is to be "actualized", such as some aspect of his will, is already so, since he is "outside" of time. It is instantaneous.

I have two questions. The first I won't harp on (well, maybe a little) since I think I lost the debate with Tanager, but.... In what sense can time be said to real if for God "now" is already over? I don't want to rehash the same line of thought as before, but it seems to me that if God is changeless, and his will is already actualized, what meaning is there in saying "now" is but not "tomorrow" yet.

I guess time could still have reality. Actually I do believe it does. But for God, well since he's Actus Purus, He is still far-removed from now. So how can "now" really be "now" if God isn't a time-traveller? Anyway, not to beat a dead horse, but a part of me still wonders if God isn't a time-traveller, since he is far removed from us by, well, eternity. Hope this makes sense. If not, well, I tried.

Moving on, my next question is that of free will. Can God, being Actus Purus, have libertarian free will? It does not seem possible because, a decision involves moving from potentiality to actuality. A decision seems to necessitate time. Because, a libertarian decision was once indeterminate. If a decision existed from all eternity, then it couldn't have been "decided upon." It would have been fixed from all time. So how could it be a libertarian free will decision? I'm not saying God had to change his mind. But he would have had to make up his mind. Or else there doesn't seem to be much sense in ascribing to him libertarian free will.

And if we are supposedly made in the image of God, and he doesn't have libertarian free will, then it seems to naturally follow as a corollary that we, at best, have only compatibilist or no free will.

Thanks & look forward to responses.

User avatar
Dimmesdale
Sage
Posts: 776
Joined: Mon May 29, 2017 7:19 pm
Location: Vaikuntha Dham
Has thanked: 28 times
Been thanked: 89 times

Re: To Tanager - God is a Time Traveller: Part 2

Post #2

Post by Dimmesdale »

[Replying to post 1 by Dimmesdale]

Sigh. Reading over what I've written regards the first question it looks like I've just rehashed what I said before.

I assume the response will be that for God time A, B, and C are still "now" but then that commits one to eternalism and I find it counter-intuitive:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time ... eGroUniThe

"One version of Non-presentism is Eternalism, which says that objects from both the past and the future exist just as much as present objects. According to Eternalism, non-present objects like Socrates and future Martian outposts exist right now, even though they are not currently present. We may not be able to see them at the moment, on this view, and they may not be in the same space-time vicinity that we find ourselves in right now, but they should nevertheless be on the list of all existing things."

This doesn't bode well for free will in my mind as well, but, I dunno....

Post Reply