A timeless being cannot create

[tackattack]

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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.

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Ok that's fair, we can discuss. I hope this explains it better.
1. Are you not entirely yourself? You are simply Belaqua. That doesn't change with how much knowledge you acquire, or what affects your physical body goes through. Even if we lobotomized you, you would still be you, identified from the outside and inside. Observers might detect that you are different because someone punched you in the eye and gave you a shiner, but they could still identify you as Belaqua. Even if we could somehow change every identifiable thing about you, internally you would still identify, abstractly at the least, as yourself. That, I believe is what you meant by simple and unchanging. We people, reflect that about His nature. We may not see clearly exactly all the attributes of what we call God, but they're there to us. We then assume that He is a simple entity in that He is one thing. Christianity is fairly united on that point, and I agree that God is just one thing, on a basic and scriptural level. This being said, I can know God exists, just as I know Belaqua exists.

2. I'm a little lost on your definition of omniscience. Just as you can be changed from the outside, God can be changed. Not His nature, but His heart. If you don't believe that you can throw out prayer, and every verse on petition and pleading with God. Every Christian I know believes that God can answer prayer, meaning our circumstance can change in relation to God's will for us, in our time. This proves that from God's perspective, He may already know what will happen in every eventuality (my common definition of omniscience), from our perspective His will has changed for us or He has enacted a plan that we were not knowing about.

3. Knowledge isn't a duality because it there is an observer and an object. Knowledge is a duality because there is a known and an unknown. The duality of the Human brain is organized that way. As I don't believe God has a brain, there is no duality of knowledge and all is simply known (another version of my definition of omniscience).

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

To admit than I can't fully explain every aspect of you or God, isn't wrong, because it's actually so complex. People are complex, how much more complex must the creator be? I believe your discussion here of potential is relevant. Look at it this way. God is God eternally, and He has the potential to change. If He is a personal God and can be swayed or petitioned than He has the potential for change from our perspective. Lots of Christians don't know about or agree with your exegesis because it is [b]not/b] the foundation of mainstream traditional Christian theology, nor have you cited anywhere where it is stated as you have stated it.