Predestination - Predestination and Time

Predestination and Time

A number of speculative ideas have appeared that attempt to explain the relationship between time and eternity, which have bearing on the subject of predestination. Some regard all speculation about predestination and its implications as all alike, pernicious, and offensive to God.

A common pre-Kantian idea of time and eternity, describes "eternity" as a trans-temporal mode of being - such that all the moments of time are in some sense present in eternity. God looks into the realm of temporal reality from outside of it, as though it were a surface or a line stretched out: the edges or ends of which are fully "visible" to God, so that He is in a somewhat spatial sense "omnipresent" with regard to time. In such a speculative view, the past, present and future are all in some sense simultaneously present in the eternal perspective of God. From a temporal point of view, the past seems to disappear and the future doesn't yet exist, and God always appears to act from moment to moment. But from an eternal perspective, there is nothing temporal about time. Non-determinism is not possible on such a view, but predestination may be excluded if the belief system does not permit the direct interference of the non-temporal God and the temporal plane of existence.

Some belief systems allow for the possibility that only God and the present moment are the sum of what is "real". The past persists only in its effects, and the future does not yet exist, and thus only the present is directly knowable. Further, the "eternity" of God is presumed by some not to be accessible to understanding, and therefore no speculation can be meaningfully based upon it.

Nevertheless, these belief systems may retain an idea of God's decision eternally determining the present or future, in the sense of God's decision being logically prior, or "transcendentally necessary" to all existence. Time is not a "thing", but rather, a succession of the intersections of God's manifold purposes being revealed in the creation. Time is the succession of events, identified as moments by an intentional, mental act of setting one event apart from another and noticing their relation to one another - but, otherwise time does not exist as irreducible, discrete moments. Time is coherent, because God consistently acts according to his own character.

Strong predestinarian views are basically undisturbed by these assumptions, because strong predestination is based upon God's knowledge of Himself and of His own purposes. The effect of these new views of time are more clearly seen among those who reject strong predestinarian views, because those views classically share a comparable conception of the relation between time and eternity.

Predestinarian version: God, in comparison to temporality, always is. Temporal things however, exist from each fleeting moment of being to the next, only in the present. Such a conception of reality may be thoroughly predestinarian, if God is the personal cause of continued existence and the orchestrator or determiner of the relationship between each present event and each subsequent present event; but, it is only predestination if in this conception God acts with absolute freedom and entire knowledge of Himself. God brings to pass each moment in its turn by a continuous, timeless act of self-revelation. God sustains the effectiveness of all secondary causes and choices, and so on. Thus, each moment is a disclosure of God's character. The meaning of time and experience is disclosed not in the subjective relation of the present to the past and the future, but rather, because of the relation of all created things, in every aspect, to the will of God. As a logical consequence, the meaning of history is known only through the knowledge of God (an idea similar to this can be found in the speculations of Augustine of Hippo and some Calvinist philosophers, such as Herman Dooyeweerd).

Anti-predestinarian version: If the idea of absolute freedom and entire self-knowledge is absent from this kind of idea of God's acts in time, then God Himself is (to express the idea anthropomorphically) becoming something new, or discovering something new about Himself with each new moment, just as we are. It's as though God is waking up to the possibilities that are inherent in temporally limited acts, and like an artist developing his ideas in dynamic interaction with an ever-changing medium, He is making new discoveries about himself every day. A summary of such a view might be that, the present is an encounter "in God" with new possibilities (where "God" is sometimes not understood "theistically", in the sense of a "person"), and the past is thus a record or remembrance "by God" of the experiences of existent beings. Or, put another way, the past is what God has thus far become in the process of all experience, and the future is pure possibility. Predestination is completely excluded from such a system, except possibly in the most broad outlines of God's intentions. God's decision, on such a view, is an inventive experience, almost precisely equivalent to the unfolding process of historical events (thinking like this can be found in modern process theology and open theism).

There are other types of Christian or Christian-influenced belief, which exclude the personality, or the volitional aspect of the personality of God, so that even if they express some form of determinism, it is not predestination in a theistic sense.