Who could possibly know? It seems like a very speculative question about someone who prefers to maintain some mystery.
Why God is Not in Time is not a question, itâs the explanation of a conclusion.
There is definitely mystery involved â how does a timeless or âtimefulâ God relate to those of us in sequential time. I know that he does in my life, and it is very cool, but I donât know how he does it. The word âinscrutableâ is used in translations in two places in the Bible.
I like the idea that all of Godâs interactions with us are through a single act, which generates the cosmos, an idea which I term the Logos principle, based on Philo of Alexandria. In this way, God can still interact with us whilst not acting at a âparticularâ point in time.
The title of this this thread is mired in the antiquated idea of absolute time which is no longer supportable in modern physics. This is apparent in the talk of time as if it were something singular. Otherwise the question/statement would instead be⌠why God is not bound within the measure of space-time of the physical universe. Not only is the presumption of a singular measure of time invalid, but you cannot even separate the measure of time in the physical universe from the measure of space. I am sorry, but the philosophical and theological speculations of Aquinas are completely out of date and rendered invalid by the discoveries of modern physics.
The linked article poses the question of whether God is a temporal being? The false presupposition here is that beings must fall into one of two categories: those bound with this fantasy of absolute time and those things which are not. Of course God is not bound within the space-time of the universe which He created. But at same time, the very fact that God created the universe means that God most certainly is capable of giving events and actions a temporal ordering. Therefore the attempt to make God incapable of temporally ordered thoughts and actions has no logical support and this attempt to make God incapable of the things any person can do such as thought and action is absurd.
The article also relies on the antiquated dichotomy of A&B theories which is also made invalid by the discoveries of modern physics. Things donât exist in definite states but in superpositions of possible states until a measurement is made. This renders the question of whether the future âexistsâ or not irrelevant. Whether you say it exists or not doesnât change the fact that it is a superposition of many possibilities. That is the very thing which distinguishes it as the future rather than the past. God being outside the space-time of the physical universe has no impact whatsoever on future events. It is only an interaction with a superposition which determines which possibilities are realized. So it is only as God participates in the events of the universe that the superposition of possibilities become the actualities of the past. To say that the future is fixed without any possibilities is to exclude God from any interaction with the universe as well.
The article doesnât talk about absolute time at all â it doesnât even invoke the concept. And what does modern physics teach us about God?
It does not even in the slightest. It says they do not apply.
From what did you infer it says that?
It seems rather clear from reading the total article that the concept of an absolute time is an unstated assumption.
What does modern physics teach us about God? For one thing, if God created this universe, as I believe, then God exists outside of this universe. Since, by modern physics understanding, the space and time dimensions of this universe, the only space and time that we creatures within this universe can observe or experience, are intimately interwoven, inseparably, with the matter and energy in the created universe, God exists outside of the space and time that we observe.
If, as must be the case if God created this entire universe, God is outside of our experience of time, then God has a very different viewpoint on what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen in this universe from what our human viewpoint is. He sees (present tense) all the past, present, and future.
Another critical modern physics fact is that we cannot, by observing within the universe, determine the exact state of even one single subatomic particle, much less the exact state of everything in the universe. Yet God created a universe out of so many very small particles, and created the laws of physics such that the enormous number of very small particles interact with each other in ways such that the behavior of large aggregations can become quite predictable, indeed. (For example, we can design and develop national power grids without knowing where a single electron is!)
The combination of these two significant modern physics descriptions of the universe in which we live suggests to me that God can indeed allow us as individuals to have free will, to choose to do things that have real consequences (intended and unintended), and yet put together (with a relatively minimal additional direct intervention) a world that functions exactly as He wants it to function.
Nothing can be done outside of time, for as soon as something is, there is automatically a before and after that something. A timeless state must be a closed system of nothing and it must be located nowhere. In other words, timelessness cannot exist.
You show me a timeless state and Iâll show you a point in time that you revealed that state to me, thus it never was timeless.
As for what God was doing in the resulting infinite regress of events, even just One Hundred Billion, Trillion years before I typed this response, good luck wrapping your head around that.
Good luck detecting the passage of time before anything existed to change. Space, matter, energy and time all began together. You limit God to time, but he is independent of it.
We know it must have been there though, because things began to change at one point. And that creates an infinite regress into the past before that change.
What âitâ?
Time! Of course.
No, we donât know that âtime was thereâ before there was anything there to change. Admittedly, that is not an easy concept to accept, but I think physicists and cosmologists will tell you that the math can prove it.
Youâve heard of Stephen Hawking?
https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/the-beginning-of-time
Somehow you believe that you can subject God to the constraints of time, just based on your intuition and ability to understand. It doesnât work that way.
But you see my point, right? If I scratch my eyebrow, then there is automatically an eternity before, leading up to the act.
I can start counting the years back now⌠The eyebrow scratch occurred 35 years after 1987⌠65 Million years after the Dinosaurs were wiped out⌠14 Billion since the Big Bang⌠And every year before the Big Bang occurred too. Because it is possible to count back from it, as it wasnât always there.
A terrible analogy, but an analogy nonetheless, is that when you cause an action like scratching your eyebrow, you causing it is an unobservable event.
This is similar to how God acts, and how the immediate action or effect from him would appear to come from nothing. As science goes looking for the ultimate cause without the eyes of faith, the results will be confounding, possibly being confronted with a cause of the universe that is not aware or not yet aware of its action.
- What? Like a clock that is not aware or not yet aware of its moving hands and ticking?
Clocks donât move their hands 
- Clocks donât have hands nor feet to move, and yet they run, but never go anywhere by their own power, and all the while are not aware of what is going on inside them or around them.