I think there is rarely, if ever, a satisfactory answer to God “why?” questions, at least on this side of eternity.
I would comment on this question the same way I would to the question: “Why does God use gravity, rather that the direct decree, to move the planets in their orbits?” I would say this: Circumstantial evidence suggests that God has a preference, or at least a fondness, for employing secondary means. In terms of creating the diverse species, all the physical evidence suggests that God used evolution to do so. Theistic evolution merely adds (in my definition) two untestable (and as far as science is concerned, irrelevant) theological assumptions to “secular” evolution: 1) It was God’s chosen method to diversify life, and 2) It was never out of God’s control.
So I guess my answer to your question is a resoundingly boring guess: Because it pleased him to do so.
God is outside of time, eternal and infinite, a state we cannot even describe. In that eternal state he has had opportunity to create millions of universes, perhaps with different methods and results. Theologians tend to think in terms of our universe being the only one. And it seems absurd that a human could accurately describe the infinite for whom there is no before or after. Herb Spencer.
The key thing to realize is that time to God is nothing. God is in “now time” always. So to God’s point of view he did create everything in now time. It is only mankind’s observation of time that makes it appear not to be so. Even physics teaches us that time is relative. So this is really not so hard to accept in my way of thinking.
Well said, heiresnt and Hspencer. I was just about to say something similar. Most people’s concept of God is way too small! Not only does he see the end from the beginning, He sees the beginning from the end. No need even to tweak the formation of the universe or the evolution of life as it went along. It was all there when He designed the Big Bang. “The Big Story from Stardust to the New Creation” video in the Biologos Resources section is an inspiring description - although I really don’t think God needed to be “delighted” about how things were turning out. There were no surprises!
As to whether this is the “best of all possible worlds” - that is a separate question, to which I’d say no, it isn’t. With all its wonders and beauty it also entails suffering, decay and death – and theologically speaking, reflects a “fallen” state…but that is another huge topic!
A god without time is an inanimate object and nothing like a personal God. You might as well be pantheist like Einstein equating God to natural law. And no, this “beyond our comprehension rhetoric” is a feeble excuse for pushing irrational nonsense. The inanimate and dreamer gods are way too small for me.
This absolute Euclidean notion of time is antiquated and obsolete, discarded by science. Time is simply an ordering of a set of events. Yes God is obviously outside the temporal structure of the universe He created. But there is no rational reason to think that being outside that temporal structure of the physical universe means being without any temporal ordering whatsoever.
Everything God does in the Bible whether on earth or in heaven has always been temporal because the God of the Bible is a personal God and not some inanimate thing. He has temporal thoughts and actions not just on the earth but also in heaven. This is not consistent with this atemporal notion of God, which would be incapable of a personal relationship.
wait for it…
Dale is about to shout “omni-temporal” pretending that his made up word somehow makes sense of his claims. But it doesn’t. A rock everywhere in time is still just a rock. And a book which hasn’t been completely written remains so whether you are in the book or not.
From Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology: “God’s eternity may be defined as follows: God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time, and he acts in time.”
To maybe characterize the term ‘omnitemporal’ a little differently, think of the old sci-fi idea of time traveling in an elevator in time (not unlike Asimov’s “kettle” as an elevator car perhaps, in his The End of Eternity) – God wouldn’t need an elevator since he would be omnipresent in time.
Thoughts and actions require an ordering of events. You cannot even coherently describe thoughts and actions without it. You can only mumble that excuse about God being beyond our comprehension. A thing without an ordering of events has no thoughts and actions and is thus not personal being at all but an inanimate object.
No I don’t see anything of the kind… I see the Hebrew word “ad” meaning forever, without end, or everlasting, and the Greek word aionos meaning an age,
Time travel is a device of fantasy for entertainment. The idea is fundamentally incoherent and it certainly has nothing to do with reality.
And why do you speak as if time is some singular absolute thing???
Yes God acts and sees events in both the temporal ordering of the physical world and in other temporal orderings. That is the whole point. These things require a temporal ordering.
Surely you don’t think God needs his creation in order to act or participate in any events.
Perhaps describing thoughts and actions is peripheral to what is always present. It would be hard to always be present in the moment if your attention was on packaging impressions for the future use of others, an activity much more useful to a social, cultural species like ourselves. While it must be uplifting to fancy ourselves to be image bearers, it probably doesn’t work so well in reverse to imagine the quality of experience of what has always been present as having all the characteristics of an embodied hominid.
Mumbling and shouting… I don’t know about that. This verse has long been a favorite of mine when it comes to understanding the sovereignty of God and the free action of conscious beings.
“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.”
When we set our aim for becoming, it is better to aim higher than lower, to what can do all that we can do and more rather than something that cannot even do the things we can do. The appreciation of a beautiful stone is different than the admiration of someone to follow and emulate.
I see nothing in Psalm 139 about a God who is either timeless or controlling. To be sure, it is a God who knows us better than we know ourselves – one pointless to flee and fruitful to follow. And I don’t see jumping on this passage as an excuse to spurn knowledge and rationality as being very admirable. I see more to admire in the scientist who seeks what knowledge and understanding he can find, both about ourselves and about the nature of things we experience.
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable.
God has revealed a lot about himself in scripture and in creation, so we are way better off than the blind men and the elephant, but Mitchell seems to insist on trying to get the elephant inside his head.
But you believe in God’s providential interventions into the lives of his children. How do you explain his orchestration of events, including people’s actions, without him being sovereign over both? You can’t, yet he violates neither the laws of nature nor any individual’s free will. There is a wondrous instantaneous and ‘cooperative’ dynamic between his will and ours, yet our wills our not bound. (Cooperative is in scare quotes because we are way less than cooperative to his revealed will so much of the time!) It would have been better for Judas to have not been born, yet he was also responsible for his actions. That dynamic is also both awesome and fearsome, especially if we are not childlike before him.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.Hebrews 10:31
The laws of nature are not causally closed. The majority of events are not determined by pre-existing condition, and the non-linear nature of the mechanics means an extreme sensitivity to these events. This is a back door through which God can influence events, allowing Him to do miraculous things without breaking any of the laws of nature He created to support the very process of life itself.
I just did.
correct. We have free will because the God does not control everything and the future is not written. And one of the reasons it is not written is because God Himself is a participant in events and in a real interactive relationship with us responding to our choices with choices of His own. He is not the Deist God who simply plans everything and sets it all in motion to watch with satisfaction how everything works according to His prearranged design.
No disagreement there.
It is only a fearful thing because when we insist on control of our own – trying to manipulate people and events for our own desires. For God will not do things according to our judgement of what should be done or how they should be done, but according to His superior understanding of reality. I certainly agree with that! I just don’t use that as justification for irrationally incoherent theology.