Lpioch, I love your question. I would speculate, guess and imagine that before the creation of the universe time did not exist. At that non-time, God was everything. I think we all agree that at this point God was outside of time. When God created the universe a consequence was the creation of time. The question is "what happened to the ever "presence" of God in relation to the universe and the creation of time? Did God remain outside of time as if there were no consequence to God's existence after the creation of time or did God become part of time (perhaps an unintended consequence?) and chooses to experience the thrill ride as it happens.

I like to think that when Jesus was sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane and was asking to remove the cup of death and suffering that the outcome was not predestined. That Mary also was free to chose her destiny without the boost of being sinless or being moot. (which is what I understood was Noel’s point “that Mary's acceptance was a bit of a fiction.”)

Z:

When you say-

...before the creation of the universe time did not exist. At that non-time, God was everything. I think we all agree that at this point God was outside of time. When God created the universe a consequence was the creation of time.

[empahsis mine]

-you demonstrate the problem with talking about God and time. There was no "before" the creation of the universe nor "was" God ever something that He is not now. God has no future into which He is progressing unaware - evolving, developing, and becoming. For God, there was also no "when" (in time) of creation.

I think too often we fall into the Calvinist way of thinking when we confuse foreknowledge with predestination. The two are not the same. God knew us from all eternity including our ultimate end. This in no way limits our free will. We still choose for or against God. Many claim that this is "unfair" of Him and, as such, He must not know how our fate until we ourselves do. This is not our faith. God is omniscient without limit. God is eternal without limit. God IS.

In Christ,
Michael

Loretta

from time to time through nature, whether we have scientific or poetical interests, are hearts are lifted closer to God by nature, as they are by many posts here in CE,

You opened up springs and torrents,
brought dry land out of the primeval waters.
Yours the day and yours the night;
you set the moon and sun in place.

The New American Bible, Ps 74:15,16.

God bless,
Noelfitz.
______________________________________________________________
IN NECESSARIIS UNITAS, IN DUBIIS LIBERTAS, IN OMNIBUS CARITAS.
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I find these statements by Michaelme to be chilling to say the least. I conclude (albeit falsely!) that the god described simply does not exist. Spooky stuff indeed!

Lpioch asks if God can “be” at opposite ends of the universe at the same time? A possible answer to this question might depend on whether God can “be” at all where there is no life. No life, no time…no God. God is the life force. A rock is outside of time. It has no life force. The past, present and future is all the same for a rock. It exists outside of time.

God is time. God is life. Time is a consequence of life, they are intimately connected. Without life there is no time. Without time there can be no life. I offer as possible scriptural support John 1: 1-4.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; …

Did time exist before the first creature cared to measure or acknowledge it? Does time require awareness of itself to become real?

Hi, Z:

I'm not sure what is chilling about my statements above. Nor do I understand how one might conclued from those that God does not exist. If one imagines God as a sheet of paper as large as the universe, "time" is an infinitely small point somewhere on that sheet. God contains both its beginning and its end.

I would have to say that of course God can be where there is no "created" life. God is uncreated and needs noone to fulfill his being - unlike us who need God. A rock exists solidly in time. It cannot exist without time because the rock takes up space - and both space and time are inextricably locked in spacetime. Further, time implies change. I would suggest that you will be unable to find a rock that has not changed since the beginning of the universe. God, however, does not change...as He says of himself, " I AM." Regardless of whether one is around to measure time or space or not is immaterial to its objective existance.

...as it is to God's.

In Christ,
Michael

Z,
I totally get what you're saying. Yet I think it is true only of those that are limited by time.

I have spent far too many years treating time as a 4th dimension. Working it in equations in exactly the same way we do with the 3 spatial dimensions. There is absolutely no difference in treatement of time and space in the equations. One ramification of this is that time extends beyond the "now".

I am not yet to 5pm tonight. I'm "traveling" there on my 4th dimension.
Just like I am not yet downtown - but if I get in my car, I'm "traveling" there on the 1st through 3rd dimension.

Then you throw in time-dilation and Einstein's theory of relativity, and you're statements make less and less sense.

From the point of view of a photon that has been traveling the speed of light since the "creation of the universe", no time has passed.

So I disagree that "the present moment is the last moment in time" because you always have to ask "for whom?" (more technically, "for what frame of reference?")
And when the answer is "for God", the statement falls apart because God is not confined to a particular frame of reference.

Z I wish I could explain to you how messed up what you are saying is.
Your problem is that you are projecting your image of yourself onto God.
Just because YOU can't imagine in your limited expierence a God that matches the God in the Gosphel who is also unchanging and exists outside of time is a really poor reason to assume that is not exactly who God is.

Scripture also teaches that God is unchanging.
And logic demostrates that if God created time he obviously is not controled or dependant on it.

It is very dangerous to assume that any analogy can capture the complete truth or that any 'image' we have of God can capture the infinate reality of he who is.

But to try and demostrate the point consider this.
God is to time as you are to a fishbowl.
you can put your finger into the water , but the water doesn't change you.
You can interact with the fish, but you are outside of the water.

Z:

Congratulations! Great news. Here's to a great summer.

In Christ,
Michael

Long time, no see . . .

(Been a bad 2008 so far, but getting better)

God knows everything - except whatever I'm gonna decide.

Can't buy that -

My free will is there - God just knows what it is my free will is going to choose. He doesn't steer me except as through His ordinary (i.e., revelation, Church, answers to prayers, etc.) channels of grace.

Off-topic, yes, but with beloved babies brought into here:

All you folks whose clans are having babies? Have a MILLION of them. The world needs just how you will have them in mutual embrace with our God.

My daughter has become pregnant with her third - with a thirteen-year-old Rachel, and a ten-year-old Erik, she and her husband Greg are adding a Natalia. MORE, having listened to me expound on how we can less worry affording economically who we so belovedly need to afford familially, they are talking at least two more!

Whoo-hoo! Grandpa is pleased they listened to something from me.

God exists in Eternity, there is no Time.

Everything is Eternally Present our past actions and present and future.

Ask yourself: How can God judge past things? How many have died in their sins? God is Justice. Without Justice there is no punishment.

He says to Adam and Eve you shall toil the Earth, by the sweat of your brows shall you work the Earth. Punishment. God remembers all things
because all things Are Eternally Present. Time does not exist in Heaven.
You are a blade of grass, like grasshoppers before God. Time is of no relevance to God that is why He is able to exercise His will. If God was restrained to Time, He could not correct the Future. Yet He can go back in our time period and recall all things to the smallest detail, thus bringing justice to those who rebelled on the Earth against His will.

Explain how Satan and his commrades live? They are Eternal beings, they live according to their Creation as Angels. Eternally Present.

We are not. We exist in our small time frame before God simiilar to blades of grass, generation after generation. God knows your thoughts. He looks at the heart, He hears your thoughts, cries, pains, sorrow, suffering, and sees your pride, lusts, and so forth. God is Judge.

Without the soul you will die and become lifeless dust. The intellect is part of your soul. Thus your thoughts are always before God.

God creates the soul. No soul no life. End.

Peace