Derek, a commentator on my blog, has asked me some about whether essential divine relationality (as implied in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity) entails essential divine temporality. In other words, would God’s being essentially an active, loving, multi-personal unity require that God experience continued change and hence divine temporality?
In response, I submit “no” as the correct answer. My reasoning is as follows:
First, I assume that time requires change. No change; no time. That is a controversial assumption (It has been questioned, for example, by Sidney Shoemaker and W.H. Newton-Smith.), but I think it’s right. If so, then divine temporality requires divine change, and essential divine temporality requires essential divine change.
Second, I assume that creation is a free (i.e., unnecessary) act on God’s part. Hence, it is not essential to God that he be a creator.
Third, I assume that whatever is not God or part of God, is created by God. It follows that any essential divine change has to be purely internal to God.
Fourth, and crucially, I don’t see how there could be change internal to God independent of his decisions vis-a-vis creation. Suppose that God is a tri-personal society of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit essentially loving each other. For this internal divine relationality to imply divine temporality requires either that one of the relata (Father, Son, or Holy Spirit) changes, or that one of the relations (F-S, S-HS, F-HS, F-S-HS) changes. But if God is essentially a Trinity of F-S-HS, then the relations are fixed (unless, somehow, the relata could, say, swap places – but is that coherent?), so any purely internal change in God would have to be a change in the relata.
How, then, could the relata change? Could the Father change in knowledge of the Son or Holy Spirit? Given God’s essential omniscience, the answer must be no, unless the members of the Trinity could change in some other respect. And what would that be? Could the Father change in will for the Son or Holy Spirit? It is hard to see how. If the Father is perfectly loving and essentially omniscient, then he necessarily knows and wills the true good of the others, and it is not at all clear why their true good would change. Nor is it clear how there could be any new way for the Father to express love for the Son, or vice-versa. After all, if the intra-Trinitarian love is infinite and perfect, then how could it fail to be fully expressed? And if, necessarily, it is fully expressed, then there is nothing more that Father, Son, or Holy Spirit could do merely with respect to each other?
I have no problem understanding how God could change in relation to creation, in particular to libertarianly free creatures, nor do I have a problem with God’s changing in himself by making a free decision to create or not to create. Nor do I have a problem with the intra-Trinitarian relationship changing on account of differential responses on the part of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to a changing creation. But all of those types of changes concern creation and not just intra-Trinitarian relationality.
So I guess I’m just not sure what it would look like for God to be changing purely in virtue of being a Trinity. Perhaps Derek or someone else can help me out with that one.
I wonder why you assume (#3) that whatever is not God (or part of God) is created by God? Basically, I don’t see how it is necessarily the case that the person of God would feel completely justified in believing that there was definitely no other stuff in existence. We might define “God” so that it included all uncreated stuff, but surely that would be inappropriate if the Creator (of this world) was a person (or Trinity etc.).
Interesting question, Enigman. I’m basically working with a classical (Anselmian) concept of God. According to such a concept, God is the greatest possible being. As such it seems to follow that God is essentially omniscient. If that is right, then there could not be “other stuff” in existence without God knowing about it.
Alan,
Hey this is derek. I have to say that i’m flattered that you would consider my ideas worthy of a post! I really appreciate your willingness to continue this discussion.
After reading your post, i initially have to say that i still find myself in disagreement with your view. However, I think that maybe i need to clarify my terms better. You have caused me to do some rethinking, and i’m not sure i’m ready to give a full response to your post just yet. Hopefully in a couple days, maybe next week, i can give a full response.
I’m in youth ministry right now, and this week is very hectic, so not much time for thinking through the relationship, between the economic and imminent Trinities, and how that affects God’s relationship to time! I will either comment here or let you know when i have posted on this on my own blog. Thanks again Alan!
Derek
Alan, this is Derek again. It has been a long time since i last discussed this with you. If you are game, i would love to return to this discussion. To me, everything turns on your fourth point.
I don’t see how God “needs” creation for there to be relating taking place, thus implying temporality. Even if love is being fully expressed within the F-S-HS relationship, that full expression still requires temporality. The idea of “expressing” something requires temporality i would think. If God has always been a Trinitarian God, then he has always been relating within himself, expressing love within/among Himself.
One more thought here: I think that change is possibly a bad word to use in this discussion. I don’t believe that God necessarily has to experience a fundamental internal change within Himself, but only that if God has always been triune, then merely the experience of the same constant, consistent love between the F-S-HS requires that temporality is present in that relationship, which was happening before creation.
Hello Derek,
I hope all’s well with you. Happy new year!
Couple thoughts:
1) I don’t know what sense to make of temporality apart from change. No change, no time, it seems to me.
2) In line with (1), I don’t think that intra-Trinitarian expression of love is enough to establish temporality unless one can show how such expression implies change. To do that one would have either to argue (a) that it is essential to the nature of an expression of love that it have a beginning and thus there must be a change from a “not having expressed” state to a “having expressed” state, or (b) argue that it is essential to the nature of an expression of love that the expression have an ending and thus that the content expressed must change if there is to be continued expression. On this idea, love cannot be expressed “once and for all” but must regularly be re-expressed in diverse and sundry ways.
I’m skeptical of both of these approaches. Regarding (b) I don’t see why the Father can’t give a full a complete expression of love once and for all to the Son. Regarding (a), I’m worried that it imply a beginning to the Trinity and hence the contingency of the Trinity. After all, how can the Father’s expression of love for the Son have a beginning if the Son is eternal? And if it does have a beginning, then doesn’t that imply that the Son has a beginning too? Or did the Father wait for eons before expressing love for the Son? Given these worries, I think (b) is more plausible than (a), but, for the reason given above, I don’t find (a) very convincing.