A timeless being cannot create

[The Grand Nudger]

Bel is working from the -pagan- philosophy that was cribbed and modified to provide a tenuous basis for Christian philosophy, amusingly unaware that they are not interchangeable.

Your god, in that order of things, is demiurge ( or less). Lower in order, mutable, something that does things and can be pleaded with and, in fact... can change its mind.

You see, you can’t pray to the classical pagan all. It isn’t a being and it doesn’t directly create or effect or intervene or even know. It doesn’t -do- anything... it simply is.

It isn’t exactly a secret that the “god of the philosophers” isn’t the Christian god. Frankly, it plays out more like raw secular nature than anything else.

Even Saint Tom knew that. That was why special revelation was required. Why natural theology could not provide for or establish either the Christian god or Christian Christ. To get from, there....to where you are ( and don’t worry your pretty little head about the issues covering that distance creates).

[mcc1789]

I haven't had many in person interactions with Christians on theology, so no probably not. So what? I haven't claimed to, and I'm unsure why that's relevant. However, it has been advocated by Christians from Boethius to C. S. Lewis, among others. In fact it's been a major pillar of how they strive to reconcile free will with God's foreknowledge (I don't think it works, but no matter). This seems like a slightly unusual definition of eternal (I'd call it "existing forever") but fine. I don't really want to get into another issue though (i.e. personal and eternal).

I was thinking on the bus ride home today how I could describe this...

@tackattack, I'm going to be tough on you and argue against your position here, at least insofar as it conforms with traditional Christian theology. I don't think that any of the big names would agree with you that God, as an eternal being, is eternally changing. 

I agree with @mcc1789 here, that all the theologians (Boethius [and before] to Lewis) think of God as completely unchanging and unchangeable. I can't say when this was decided among Christians, exactly. I know that the clearest formulation I have read is in Plotinus, who was 3rd century AD. He was not Christian, but his ideas developed in parallel with Christian thinkers, and were certainly adopted and adapted into Christian thinking later on. 

"Outside of time and space" is probably a misleading English formulation, because we tend to picture time and space as a sort of box, and we are in it and God isn't, in the way that the cats are in the house but the raccoons aren't. This is wrong. 

To think of it better, I suppose we could start with the assertion that God is entirely simple. He has no parts and no divisions. There are elaborate arguments to demonstrate why this must be so, but we have to start sort of in the middle here. 

Related to his simplicity, are the following points: 

~ God is identical with his essence. He has no contingencies. Material things, on the other hand, are not identical with their essences, because their existence is always dependent on more fundamental forces (e.g. the laws of nature). Because they are dependent on other things, they can be changed. 

~ God is entirely being, with no becoming. Change requires becoming. 

~ God is entirely activation, with no potentiality. A being which changes always begins with the potential to change. 

The above three points are different ways of stating the same thing. 

This helps us understand the special ways in which God is said to be omnipotent and omniscient. 

God's omnipotence doesn't mean that he can do anything. In fact he takes no action, because that requires change. Omnipotence here means that he causes all potencies in the world to move toward actualization. 

God's omniscience doesn't mean that he knows everything. In fact it is false to say that God knows things. This is because knowledge requires duality -- there has to be a) a thing that knows and b) a thing that is known. People know things in this way. But theologians say that as the knower and the thing known draw closer together, they approach identity. As we "take in" or "digest" knowledge, it begins to merge with us. Perfect knowledge -- or more accurately, the state beyond knowing -- means perfect identity between knower and known. This is what they mean when they talk about God's omniscience. It means that whereas you and I remain distinct from the true things we know, God, being entirely simple, is identical with this truth. 

Moving from ignorance to knowledge, or from fuzzy knowledge to clear knowledge, is a form of actualizing potential. And since God's omnipotence means entire actualization with no potential, it means that God's omnipotence and his omniscience are not only compatible, but different ways of saying the same thing. 

As always, lots of Christians don't know about or agree with any of this, but it is the foundation of mainstream traditional Christian theology.

I'm at a loss to see how creation can occur with no act from God. Nor what actualization of potency means if the actualizer is "pure act". That seems like he has potential to act, which contradicts being "pure act" too. I think it also has to be pointed out that to my knowledge this is the classical theist view solely. Theistic personalism does not hold to many of these attributes.

[Belacqua]

nor have you cited anywhere where it is stated as you have stated it.

I'll get back to the rest of your post later. 

For now I can list some sources.

David Bentley Hart: The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss

Christian Moevs: The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy

Edward Feser: Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction

John Deck: Nature, Contemplation, and the One

I understand that Christians who think of a personal God view things differently. Can you point me to a good book so I can learn about their ideas?

[BryanS]

And which dimension, precisely, is god's dimension?

I don't know. But I believe it is higher than ours.

You could have stopped at "I don't know". What you believe is irrelevant. What you "know" is what matters. 

Besides that, your description of this dimension is void of any meaning. What does "higher" mean in this context?

---

Personally, I believe that it's beyond our brain capacity.

You provide an answer to what you mean by "higher", but only to re-iterate that you do not know what you mean. More precisely you suggest it is unknowable. How do you know that it cannot be known? Where is your proof that this dimension cannot be known? You cannot make such a claim without proof or evidence. Yes, it is possible to prove something unknowable (Fermat's last theorem is a famous example). But you are only guessing at and dreaming of answers.

[Belacqua]

4. It's a little ridiculous to say "it's false to say God knows things". That's a bit of word salad you are concocting there. I'll just give you a reference https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_...rt_359.cfm

It's not word salad, but it is unfamiliar. I found it difficult to grasp at first. 

I looked at the Blue Letter Bible web site. No doubt you're correct: most Christians probably think of omniscience in the way he describes, if they bother to think about it at all. 

If they went on to get a doctorate in Thomist epistemology, they would react to that web site's description by saying, "That's OK as far as it goes," or "That's right in a manner of speaking." Most Christians probably don't think about the difference between uni-vocal, equi-vocal, and analogous words, so they would just assume that the verb in "God knows X" and the verb in "I know X" refer to exactly the same activity.

---

I'm at a loss to see how creation can occur with no act from God. 

Yeah, I can't give a good answer to this either. I suspect that there are certain prerequisites necessary to grasp the explanation, and I don't have them yet. I'm no expert.

At this point I only know some analogies and some warnings about what NOT to say. Those might be useful while we hunt down more complete explanations. 

First, it's wrong to think of God making the world by analogy to a watchmaker making a watch, or an artist painting a portrait. 

An artist will spend a certain amount of time making the portrait, and after it's finished the artist and the picture have separate existences. The painting can exist long after the painter dies. 

A better analogy is to your face in a mirror. Your face creates an image in the mirror, but as soon as you go away, the image disappears. We could say that the presence of your face sustains the existence of the image in the mirror. This is how God is said to create world. The beginning point -- if there was one -- is not the important thing. The continued reflection is what matters. 

As for if God can be said to act, or to do something, this may be just a language issue. 

Currently I have a vase of lilies in my entry hall. The hall smells nice, thanks to the lilies. Is it appropriate to say that the lilies acted, or did something, to make the hall smell nice? Or is it better to say that the hall just smells nice because of the way the lilies are? If you want to say that the lilies acted (in some way) then I'd be more willing to accept that God acted. 

Similarly, does the sun illuminate the earth because of an act it takes? Or just because of the way the sun is? If it's OK to say that the sun acts to illuminate the earth, then it's probably OK to say that God acts to create the world. Analogically. 

With these images in mind, we can think of our old friend Bonum est diffusivum sui -- the good spreads itself. 

Remember that God is said to be the Good. Goodness itself, the Form of the Good. But a goodness that keeps to itself is a contradiction in terms. You can't have a good which is selfish. So by its nature, the Good must diffuse, or emanate, goodness. Not by grabbing handfuls and throwing it out, or by looking around, feeling sorry for people, and divvying it out, but by an impersonal emanation.

[WinterHold]

I don't know. But I believe it is higher than ours.

You could have stopped at "I don't know". What you believe is irrelevant. What you "know" is what matters. 

Besides that, your description of this dimension is void of any meaning. What does "higher" mean in this context?

---

If our dimension is 3D, a higher dimension would be 5D, 1000D, 10000000D, etc.
Some place our minds cannot even comprehend; making God worthy of the title "the greatest".

Personally, I believe that it's beyond our brain capacity.

You provide an answer to what you mean by "higher", but only to re-iterate that you do not know what you mean. More precisely you suggest it is unknowable. How do you know that it cannot be known? Where is your proof that this dimension cannot be known? You cannot make such a claim without proof or evidence. Yes, it is possible to prove something unknowable (Fermat's last theorem is a famous example). But you are only guessing at and dreaming of answers.

In higher dimensions, thing get really crazy. Imagine needing 100000 coordinates to specify a single point on it.

[Bucky Ball]

I wonder if this is so...

If there is no space and time yet, then there can be no change in space and time. So creation doesn't change space and time -- it makes space and time. 

I don't think it makes sense to imagine a big blank space hanging around in time waiting for creation, and then changing. There was no blank space and no hanging-around time.

No one says there is a change in space-time. The language used to describe what is going on is incoherent. 
"Makes" is a *temporal process*. Time is assumed in the process. Creation is a process. Time is assumed. 
There is no "waiting for creating". Waiting assumes time. 
Virtually every concept and statement theists use to talk about and describe things about their gods, assumes time, and a temporal environment. 
"Doing" anything, (including a sentient being having "thoughts") requires time. The only thing we have any evidence of here is space-time.

"Outside" space-time is a SPATIAL concept, and there is no "outside" if space does not exist. It's yet another example of a concept borrowed from an environment WITH space-time, slapped onto one they claim oes not have it.

[Belacqua]

No one says there is a change in space-time.

The sentence I replied to said there was a change in space and time. Here it is:

mcc1789 Wrote: 

A creation involves a change in space and time.

[Bucky Ball]

I was replying to exactly what I quoted and replied to. I was replying to what you said, not to what you were replying to.

[Belacqua]

I was replying to exactly what I quoted and replied to. I was replying to what you said, not to what you were replying to.

And I was replying to what you said, which was, "No one says there is a change in space-time."