Appendix C
A Topical Index
Throughout this book, I have argued that the God of the Bible is genuinely temporal — that He experiences a real sequence of before and after, that He acts and responds in time, and that He is not frozen in some static, timeless “eternal now.” At the same time, I have argued that God is not trapped in the present moment the way we are. He has what I have called “transcendent temporal access” — the capacity to see and know all of time without being locked into any one slice of it. This dynamic omnitemporalist position is, I believe, the position that best fits the biblical portrait of God from Genesis to Revelation.1
But arguments for a theological position are only as good as the biblical evidence that undergirds them. This appendix exists to provide the reader with a single, organized reference work — a topical index of the key Scripture passages that bear on the God-and-time question. I have organized these passages into twelve thematic categories, each with a brief introduction, the relevant passages quoted in full from the English Standard Version,2 and a short analytical note on why each passage matters for the debate.
A word about methodology is in order. I am well aware that no passage of Scripture, taken in isolation, settles the God-and-time question all by itself. The Bible was not written as a philosophical treatise on the metaphysics of time. The biblical authors were not analytic philosophers debating the A-theory against the B-theory. They were prophets, poets, historians, evangelists, and apostles — and they wrote in ordinary human language, often in ways that draw heavily on what philosophers call “accommodative” speech (speech that adapts divine realities to human understanding).3 Paul Helm and other defenders of divine timelessness have rightly reminded us that we cannot simply read metaphysics off the surface of a single verse.4
But this cuts both ways. If the biblical authors are given permission to speak of God in thoroughly temporal terms — God remembering, God responding, God relenting, God grieving, God planning, God acting “now” — and we are told that this is all just accommodation to our limited minds, then we have essentially ruled out the possibility that God actually is this way. We have decided in advance, on extra-biblical grounds, that God cannot be temporal, and we have then reinterpreted every temporal passage in light of that prior commitment. R. T. Mullins has made this point forcefully and, I think, decisively: the sheer weight of temporal language in Scripture is not the kind of thing we should explain away unless we have very strong reasons indeed.5
So what I am doing in this appendix is not claiming that any single passage “proves” divine temporality. I am claiming something more modest but, I think, more devastating to the timelessness position: the cumulative weight of Scripture points overwhelmingly toward a genuinely temporal God. When you read all of these passages together — the creation narratives, the covenant stories, the nacham passages, the prophetic oracles, the Christological texts, the eschatological visions — a single portrait emerges. God speaks, acts, responds, plans, remembers, grieves, rejoices, anticipates, and intervenes. He has a past with His people and a future He is bringing about. He hears prayers “now” and answers them. He entered time at the Incarnation and will return at the consummation.
That is not the portrait of a timeless “eternal now.” That is the portrait of the living God.
How to Use This Appendix
Each of the twelve categories below opens with a brief orientation to the theological issue at stake. The Scripture passages are then listed with their reference, the ESV text (or a portion of it, for longer passages), and a short analytical note. Where a passage is treated at length elsewhere in this book, I have indicated the relevant chapter for cross-reference. This appendix is intended as a resource for study, sermon preparation, and further research — not as a substitute for careful, context-sensitive exegesis of the passages in their canonical setting.
One final note before we begin. I am a conservative evangelical Christian who affirms the full inspiration and authority of Scripture in both Testaments.6 I do not pit one passage against another, and I do not believe that the Bible contradicts itself. When Scripture says “God is not a man, that he should change his mind” (Num 23:19) and also says that God “was sorry that he had made man on the earth” (Gen 6:6), both statements are true. The question is not which one is right. The question is how to read them together faithfully. My conviction — developed throughout this book — is that the immutability passages refer to God’s essential character and covenantal faithfulness, while the temporal-responsiveness passages refer to God’s genuine relational and emotional life. A robust doctrine of divine temporality can honor both. A strict doctrine of timelessness, I have argued, cannot.
Let us now turn to the passages themselves.
We begin with passages that affirm God’s eternity — His existence “from everlasting to everlasting.” The key question for our purposes is how to interpret this biblical language. Does “eternal” mean timeless (existing outside of time altogether, with no before and after) or everlasting (existing through all time, without beginning or end)? The Hebrew word olam (עוֹלָם) and the Greek word aiōn (αἰών), which the ESV often renders as “eternal” or “everlasting,” do not carry the metaphysical freight of Platonic timelessness. Their basic meaning is long duration — an age, an era, a stretch of time that extends beyond the horizon of ordinary human experience.7 As I argue in Chapter 3, the biblical vocabulary of eternity is fundamentally temporal, not atemporal.
Psalm 90:2
“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”
This is perhaps the most important single verse in the Old Testament on divine eternity. The Hebrew phrase me-olam ad-olam (“from everlasting to everlasting”) expresses God’s existence across the widest possible stretch of time — before creation and continuing into the endless future. Note the temporal markers: “before,” “were brought forth,” “formed,” “from... to.” The verse does not say God is outside of time; it says His existence extends endlessly in both temporal directions. (Treated in depth in Chapter 19.)
Psalm 102:25–27
“Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.”
Hebrews 1:10–12 applies this passage directly to Christ. The contrast here is not between timeless God and temporal creation, but between perishable creation and imperishable God — between a God whose “years have no end” (plural, temporal!) and a world that wears out and passes away. The psalm affirms that God endures through time, not that He exists outside of it. (Treated in depth in Chapter 19.)
Isaiah 40:28
“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.”
The Hebrew phrase here is Elohei olam — literally “God of the age” or “everlasting God.” The same phrase appears in Genesis 21:33, where Abraham calls on the name of “the LORD, the Everlasting God.” In its prophetic context, Isaiah 40 is addressed to exiles who wonder whether God has forgotten them; the answer is not that God is timeless and therefore unconcerned with their plight, but that God endures through their long suffering and will act for them in time. (Treated in depth in Chapter 3.)
Deuteronomy 33:27
“The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. And he thrust out the enemy before you and said, ‘Destroy.’”
“The eternal God” here renders Elohei qedem — “the God of old” or “the ancient God.” The word qedem refers to antiquity, to the remote past. What makes this God reliable is not that He is outside of time but that He has been there, with His people, from ancient days, and He will be there in the future. His arms are “everlasting” — they extend endlessly across time. (Treated in depth in Chapter 3.)
Genesis 21:33
“Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God.”
The Hebrew is YHWH El Olam — “the LORD, the God of the Age” or “the LORD, the Everlasting God.” This is the patriarch’s confession in the face of a long covenantal future. Abraham does not invoke a Platonically timeless deity; he calls on the God whose covenant faithfulness extends across generations. (Treated in depth in Chapter 3.)
1 Timothy 6:15–16
“...he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.”
Paul affirms that God “alone has immortality” — not that He is metaphysically outside of time, but that He alone possesses inherent, underived, unending life. “Eternal dominion” (kratos aiōnion) again uses the temporal vocabulary of ages. This passage is fully compatible with divine temporality: God is the everlasting Sovereign, the only one whose life is inherently unending. (Treated in depth in Chapter 22.)
James 1:17
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
This verse is frequently cited in support of divine immutability, and rightly so — but not in support of divine timelessness. The context is God’s moral consistency and generous character. The astronomical metaphor (“lights,” “shadow due to change” — tropē aposkiasma) refers to the shifting of heavenly bodies; God, unlike the sun and stars, does not flicker, dim, or turn away. His generous character is constant. This is consistent with the qualified immutability I defend in Chapter 30. (Treated in depth in Chapter 19.)
Romans 16:26
“...but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith.”
Paul refers to “the eternal God” (tou aiōniou theou) in a context where He has now disclosed the gospel mystery. The eternality of God does not preclude His acting at particular points in salvation history — the eternal God has acted now, in time, to reveal the mystery kept secret for long ages.
Isaiah 57:15
“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’”
“Inhabits eternity” (Hebrew shokhen ad) is a striking phrase. God “dwells” in the eternal — a metaphor of ongoing habitation, not of standing outside time. Remarkably, in the same breath, this God who inhabits eternity also “dwells” with the contrite and lowly in their temporal distress. The passage affirms both God’s transcendence and His immanent, temporal presence with His people.
Daniel 7:9
“As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire.”
Daniel’s vision of “the Ancient of Days” (Aramaic Attiq Yomin — literally “the one advanced in days”) is a striking temporal portrayal of God. He is not pictured as existing outside of time but as the one whose days extend backward into the remote past. This is everlastingness, not timelessness.
Key Point: The Biblical Vocabulary of Eternity Is Temporal
The Hebrew word olam and the Greek word aiōn do not denote Platonic timelessness. They denote long duration — an age, an era, a stretch of time extending beyond the horizon of ordinary human experience. The “eternal God” of Scripture is the God whose existence extends backward into the unimaginable past and forward into the unending future. When we read passages like Psalm 90:2 with Platonic assumptions, we impose on the text a metaphysical framework that is foreign to its authors. As Oscar Cullmann argued decades ago, biblical “eternity” is best understood not as the negation of time but as its fullness — time without beginning or end.8
One of the most powerful biblical arguments for divine temporality is the creation narrative itself. When God creates, He creates in a sequence: first this, then that. He speaks, and something that was not comes to be. He evaluates His work and calls it good. He rests. None of this makes sense on a strict atemporalist reading, where all God’s acts are “a single eternal act” without any real before and after.9 Mullins has made the point with particular force: creation ex nihilo itself requires a real before (when the world did not exist) and a real after (when it does).10 If God is strictly timeless, then either creation is eternal (which contradicts creatio ex nihilo) or God has no real relation to His creation (which contradicts His providential care).
Genesis 1:1–2:3
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth... And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light... And there was evening and there was morning, the first day... And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.”
The creation narrative is saturated with temporal language: “in the beginning,” “evening and morning,” “first day,” “second day,” “finished,” “rested.” Whatever view one takes of the days (literal, literary, or theological), the text presents God’s creative work as occurring in sequence. God speaks, evaluates (“and God saw that it was good”), separates, names, blesses — all actions that require temporal sequence. Even if one insists on reading the days as a literary framework rather than chronological periods, the framework itself is temporal: a literary device that portrays God as acting in sequence. (Treated in depth in Chapter 17.)
Genesis 2:2–3
“And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”
God’s Sabbath rest is pointedly temporal. He rested on a specific day, after a specific work, from a specific sequence of creative acts. The theology of Sabbath — which pervades the whole of Scripture and ultimately grounds the doctrine of eschatological rest in Hebrews 4 — depends on a real temporal distinction between work and rest in the divine life. (Treated in depth in Chapter 17.)
John 1:1–3
“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 were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
John deliberately echoes Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning” (en archē) locates the Word at the inception of created time. The Word was “with God” — a relational pros ton theon, suggesting personal communion. All creation is made through Him. This text is as much about the temporality of divine creative action as it is about the deity of Christ. (Treated in depth in Chapter 21.)
Colossians 1:16–17
“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Christ is “before all things” — a temporal priority, not merely a metaphysical one. He is also the one “in” whom all things hold together now. The preservation of creation is an ongoing, temporal act. (Treated in depth in Chapter 22.)
Hebrews 1:2
“...but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.”
The author of Hebrews locates divine speech-acts in temporal sequence: “long ago” (v. 1) God spoke by the prophets; “in these last days” He has spoken by His Son. God’s revelation unfolds in time, climaxing in the incarnate Son. The creator Son is also the incarnate Son who speaks at a specific temporal moment.
Hebrews 11:3
“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”
The universe was “created” — an action in time, with a before (nonexistence) and an after (existence). The doctrine of creation ex nihilo requires a real transition from nothing to something, which cannot be intelligibly predicated of a strictly timeless God. This is one of Mullins’s central arguments against classical theism.
Psalm 33:6, 9
“By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host... For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.”
Creation proceeds by divine speech-act. Speaking is a temporal action: there is a before the utterance and an after. The psalm presents a God who speaks and whose speech brings worlds into being. This is the portrait of a temporal creator.
Psalm 104:5–9, 30
“He set the earth on its foundations... You cover it with the deep as with a garment... When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.”
Psalm 104 depicts not only primordial creation but continuous creation — God “renews the face of the ground” as an ongoing temporal activity. Creation is not a single timeless act but a sustained engagement with the creaturely order.
Proverbs 8:22–31
“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth...”
Wisdom speaks as one who was “brought forth” (v. 24) before creation. Whatever the precise Christological implications, the text presents divine wisdom as occupying a position before the creation of the world — a temporal “before” that anchors the divine life itself in sequence.
The Bible’s most distinctive contribution to our understanding of God is its portrait of a deity who acts in history. Unlike the impersonal Absolute of the philosophers, the God of Israel enters the stream of human events, delivers His people from slavery, speaks through prophets, establishes covenants, sends judgment, and raises up deliverers. Every one of these acts requires a real temporal “now” — a moment at which the act occurs, before which it was not yet, and after which it has been accomplished. Garrett DeWeese puts the point plainly: divine action in history is the most pervasive biblical datum on God and time, and it presupposes divine temporality.11
Exodus 2:23–25
“During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.”
Four verbs describe God’s temporal engagement: He heard, He remembered, He saw, He knew. Each occurs at a specific narrative moment — “during those many days.” The exodus narrative begins with God entering the temporal experience of His suffering people. “Remembering” is not a cognitive retrieval after forgetting (as if God had forgotten); it is a covenantal act of bringing the covenant to bear on the present situation — a decidedly temporal action.
Exodus 3:7–8
“Then the LORD said, ‘I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them...’”
God says, “I have come down.” This is an act with a “before” (when God had not yet come down) and an “after” (when the deliverance will be accomplished). A strictly timeless God cannot “come down” — the phrase itself requires temporal movement. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
Genesis 15:12–16
“...Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years... And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
God’s covenant with Abraham involves a detailed temporal prediction: four hundred years of affliction, return in the fourth generation. The reason given for the delay is remarkable — “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” God is waiting for something to happen in time before acting. This is not the behavior of a timeless Absolute.
Genesis 18:20–21
“Then the LORD said, ‘Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.’”
God says, “I will go down to see” and “I will know.” Read at face value, this is strikingly temporal language — investigation, verification, discovery. Even if we take the language as accommodative, it is accommodative of a reality: God is genuinely engaged with this situation in real time.
Exodus 14:21–31
“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided...”
The parting of the Red Sea happens “all night.” It has duration. It occurs at a specific moment in history. God’s saving act is anchored in time, space, and physical process. The redemption of Israel is not a timeless transaction; it is a night of wind and water and terror.
2 Chronicles 7:14
“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
The conditional structure — “if... then” — places God’s response genuinely downstream of human action. This is not a timeless divine decree being projected onto human time; it is a promise of temporal responsiveness. God’s hearing, forgiving, and healing follow the people’s humbling, praying, seeking, and turning.
Daniel 9:20–23
“While I was speaking and praying... Gabriel, the man whom I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, ‘O Daniel... At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a word went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are greatly loved.’”
This is a remarkable passage for divine responsiveness. “At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a word went out.” God heard Daniel’s prayer as he began to pray. The angelic response is temporally sequenced to the prayer itself. God is hearing in real time.
2 Kings 20:1–6
“In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, ‘Thus says the LORD, Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’ Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD... And before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the LORD came to him: ‘Turn back, and say to Hezekiah the leader of my people, Thus says the LORD... I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you... I will add fifteen years to your life.’”
One of the most striking narratives in the entire Old Testament. God’s word to Hezekiah through Isaiah is “you shall die.” Hezekiah prays. God’s word comes again: “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears... I will add fifteen years to your life.” The temporal sequence is clear: prophecy, prayer, reversal, extended life. A strictly timeless God, on whose eternal decree all of history is already fixed, cannot intelligibly “add fifteen years” to anyone’s life.
Acts 17:26–27
“And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God...”
God “determined allotted periods” — specific spans of time allocated to human nations. The divine governance of history is fundamentally temporal. Nations rise and fall within the periods God has set. The Athenians to whom Paul is speaking live within such a period, at such a boundary, at such a moment.
Acts 17:30–31
“The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed...”
Paul’s kerygma on the Areopagus is saturated with temporal markers: “times of ignorance,” “now,” “a day,” “has fixed,” “has appointed.” God’s action in redemptive history is essentially sequenced. The “now” of apostolic preaching is distinguished from the prior “times of ignorance” and from the future “day” of judgment.
Perhaps no body of biblical texts has been more theologically contested than the passages that describe God “relenting,” “changing His mind,” or “being sorry” about something He had planned to do. The Hebrew verb nacham (נָחַם) — often rendered “repent,” “relent,” or “be grieved” — appears in a cluster of texts where God appears to alter His course of action in response to human behavior. Classical theists, following Augustine and Aquinas, have typically interpreted these passages as anthropopathic: God seems to change, but really does not. Mullins and others have challenged this reading, arguing that the nacham passages are too numerous, too integral to the narrative, and too theologically significant to be dismissed as merely figurative.12 David Lamb has argued that these passages reveal the genuine emotional life of God — a God who feels, responds, and enters into real relational give-and-take with His people.13
Genesis 6:6
“And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”
The Hebrew says God was nacham — grieved, regretful, sorry. The intensification “to his heart” underscores the depth of divine emotional response. This is not the equanimity of a timeless Absolute; this is the grief of a Creator whose creatures have gone wrong. The passage is a cornerstone of divine passibility and, by extension, of divine temporality: genuine emotional response requires temporal sequence. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
Exodus 32:14
“And the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.”
In response to Moses’s intercession after the golden calf incident, God “relented” (wayyinnachem). God had spoken of bringing disaster; Moses interceded; God relented. Whatever one makes of the metaphysics, the narrative requires a real sequence: threat, intercession, relenting. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
1 Samuel 15:11
“‘I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.’ And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the LORD all night.”
God says, “I regret” (nichamti) — “I have been sorry.” The divine regret is the response to Saul’s apostasy. This is a clear, first-person divine statement of temporal emotional response. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
1 Samuel 15:29
“And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret.”
In the same chapter that begins with God “regretting,” Samuel now says that the Glory of Israel “will not... have regret.” The juxtaposition is famous. My reading (developed in Chapter 18) is that these statements operate at different levels: God genuinely regrets at the level of emotional response to particular events, but He does not change His mind in the sense of breaking His covenantal promises or altering His fundamental purposes. The classical appeal to this verse to eliminate all divine change proves too much; it contradicts the same chapter. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
1 Samuel 15:35
“And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the LORD regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.”
The chapter closes as it began, with divine regret. This narrative framing is not incidental. The author of 1 Samuel wants us to see divine regret as a real feature of God’s engagement with the Saul narrative. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
Jonah 3:10–4:2
“When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it... ‘O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.’”
Jonah’s theological complaint is stunning: he ran from God precisely because he knew God relents. God’s relenting is not a philosophical embarrassment to the Hebrew Bible; it is part of the divine character. “Gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, relenting from disaster” — this is the classic character formula that runs from Exodus 34 through the Minor Prophets, and it includes divine relenting as an essential divine attribute. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
Jeremiah 18:7–10
“If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.”
Jeremiah’s potter-and-clay oracle articulates the theological principle behind divine relenting. God’s announcements of future judgment or blessing are genuinely conditional: they depend on how the nation responds. This is not a strict, unchangeable decree; it is a real relational conditionality. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
Amos 7:3, 6
“The LORD relented concerning this: ‘It shall not be,’ said the LORD... The LORD relented concerning this: ‘This also shall not be,’ said the Lord GOD.”
Amos sees visions of divine judgment, intercedes, and sees God relent — twice. The prophet’s intercession matters. It affects what God does. The biblical authors present divine relenting not as a failure of divine constancy but as an expression of divine mercy. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
Joel 2:13–14
“...return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent...”
Again, the classical character formula includes divine relenting. The prophet calls the people to repentance precisely because God is the kind of God who might relent — not because this is philosophically tidy, but because it is who God is. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
2 Samuel 24:16 / 1 Chronicles 21:15
“And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, ‘It is enough; now stay your hand.’”
In the David’s-census narrative, God relents mid-judgment. The angel’s hand is stretched out; the LORD says “enough.” Divine mercy interrupts divine judgment within the temporal flow of the event itself. This is as vivid a picture of temporal divine action as one could want.
On Reading the Nacham Passages Faithfully
I am not claiming that these passages teach open theism — the view that God did not know what the people would do. My position (developed in Chapter 25) is that God knows all of time, including how human beings will freely respond. What the nacham passages do teach, however, is that God’s engagement with human beings is genuinely temporal and responsive. He does not relate to us as a timeless Absolute who has eternally decided everything; He relates to us as a living Person who truly interacts, truly responds, and truly shares in the drama of salvation history. This is the God of the burning bush, not the God of the philosophers.
If we affirm divine temporality, we must face the question of how a temporal God knows the future. The open theists, who share our commitment to divine temporality, have concluded that the future is genuinely open and that God does not exhaustively know future free choices.14 I reject this conclusion — as do most evangelical temporalists. My own position (developed in Chapter 25) is that God has exhaustive definite foreknowledge by way of what I call “transcendent temporal access”: God is genuinely in time, but He is not locked into the present the way creatures are. He can see the future as clearly as He sees the present and past. The biblical evidence for exhaustive divine foreknowledge is overwhelming.
Isaiah 46:9–10
“...remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’”
This is perhaps the most important single text on divine foreknowledge in the Bible. God “declares the end from the beginning.” He speaks of “things not yet done.” The Hebrew phrase maggid me-reshit acharit literally says “declaring from the beginning the end.” The text requires a God who knows what will happen, not merely what might happen. Importantly, God knows these things “from ancient times” — that is, prior to their occurrence. (Treated in depth in Chapter 20.)
Isaiah 41:21–24
“Set forth your case, says the LORD; bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring them, and tell us what is to happen. Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome; or declare to us the things to come. Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods...”
Isaiah’s polemic against the idols turns on the criterion of prophetic accuracy. The true God is distinguished from the false gods precisely by His ability to declare future events. If divine foreknowledge is negotiable or limited, Isaiah’s entire apologetic collapses. (Treated in depth in Chapter 20.)
Isaiah 44:6–8
“Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me, since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen...’”
The claim to be “the first and the last” is not a claim to timelessness but to primordial priority and final endurance. God has been there from the beginning, and He will be there at the end. He knows what is to come because He has the perspective to know it. (Treated in depth in Chapter 20.)
Isaiah 48:3–5
“The former things I declared of old; they went out from my mouth, and I announced them; then suddenly I did them, and they came to pass. Because I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brass, I declared them to you from of old, before they came to pass I announced them to you, lest you should say, ‘My idol did them...’”
God announces events “before they came to pass” so that when they happen, His people will know He is God. The logic of the passage requires that God genuinely knows what has not yet occurred. Simple foreknowledge is affirmed; theological determinism is not required (God knows what He Himself will do, but He also knows what free agents will do). (Treated in depth in Chapter 20.)
Psalm 139:1–6, 16
“O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar... Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether... Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
David’s meditation on divine omniscience includes the striking affirmation that God knew his “days” before a single one of them came to be. God’s knowledge of the psalmist’s life is not merely of the present; it encompasses the entire temporal arc of his existence. (Treated in depth in Chapter 19.)
Acts 2:23
“...this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”
Peter’s Pentecost sermon affirms that Christ was delivered up according to God’s “definite plan and foreknowledge” (hōrismenē boulē kai prognōsei). Foreknowledge (prognōsis) here is not mere foresight of what humans would do; it includes God’s purposive orientation toward the cross. Yet the agents are responsible — “you crucified and killed.” Divine foreknowledge does not cancel human accountability. (Treated in depth in Chapters 20 and 25.)
Romans 8:29–30
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son... And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
Paul’s “golden chain” begins with foreknowledge (proegnō). Whatever one’s precise soteriological reading, Paul affirms that God knew His people before He predestined, called, justified, and glorified them. The sequence itself is temporal; foreknowledge is temporally prior to the other divine acts. (Treated in depth in Chapter 22.)
1 Peter 1:1–2
“...elect exiles... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood...”
Peter locates election “according to the foreknowledge” (kata prognōsin) of God. Foreknowledge is foundational to God’s saving plan. This is a temporal process: foreknowledge precedes sanctification, which precedes obedience and sprinkling.
Daniel 2:28–29
“But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days... he who reveals mysteries has made known to you what is to be.”
Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream rests on the premise that God knows “what will be in the latter days.” The stone kingdom, the succession of empires, the final establishment of God’s kingdom — all of this is foreknown and revealed. The apocalyptic tradition of which Daniel is a charter depends on exhaustive divine foreknowledge.
Ephesians 1:4–5
“...even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ...”
The choice of God’s people is located “before the foundation of the world” — a temporal prior-to-creation reality. Whatever we make of pre-creation divine time, Paul clearly places God’lection in a “before” that precedes the “beginning” of Genesis 1:1. This fits Mullins’s argument that the Trinity’s perichoretic life generates a form of divine temporality even apart from creation.
Scripture does not present divine temporality as simply identical to creaturely temporality. God’s experience of time is richer, fuller, and different in ways we can only gesture at. Two passages in particular capture this difference. Importantly, these texts do not teach divine timelessness; they teach that God’s relationship to time is qualitatively different from ours — which is exactly what the dynamic omnitemporalist position affirms.
Psalm 90:4
“For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.”
This verse has often been pressed into service for divine timelessness. But read carefully: the comparison is between “a thousand years” and “yesterday” or “a watch in the night.” Both terms are temporal. Moses is not saying that God exists outside of time; he is saying that human temporal measurements appear very small from God’s vantage point. A thousand years, which seems vast to us, is a brief moment to the everlasting God. This is the language of relative temporal perspective, not metaphysical timelessness. (Treated in depth in Chapter 19.)
2 Peter 3:8
“But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
Peter echoes Psalm 90:4 but adds a reverse term: a thousand years is as one day. The context is eschatology — scoffers are complaining that Christ has not returned. Peter’s point is that God’s temporal perspective is not constrained by human impatience. Again, this is temporal relativity, not timelessness. Note that Peter does not say time is irrelevant to God; he says time is perceived differently by God. (Treated in depth in Chapter 22.)
Job 10:4–5
“Have you eyes of flesh? Do you see as man sees? Are your days as the days of man, or your years as a man’s years...?”
Job poses a rhetorical question: are God’s days like human days? The implied answer is no — but note that Job affirms God has days and years. It is their extent and quality that differ, not their temporal character as such.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”
God has set olam (“eternity” or “the age”) in the human heart. This is a remarkable anthropological claim: human beings have a temporal horizon that extends beyond any particular moment. Yet we cannot grasp “what God has done from the beginning to the end.” The verse affirms both our temporal creatureliness and God’s superior temporal vantage. (Treated in depth in Chapter 19.)
If there is a single biblical event that decisively rules out strict divine timelessness, it is the Incarnation. The Son of God, who is fully God, entered time at a particular moment, was born of a particular woman, grew, hungered, slept, suffered, died, and rose again. As Mullins argues at length in God, Time, and the Incarnation, the Chalcedonian confession of Christ as fully God and fully human is extremely difficult — perhaps impossible — to square with the doctrine that the divine nature is strictly timeless.15 If the Son is fully God and God is strictly timeless, how can the Son also be fully human with a genuinely temporal human life? The Incarnation is the temporal entry of the eternal God into the stream of creaturely time.
John 1:14
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The Word “became” (egeneto) flesh. “Becoming” is a temporal act. There was a time before the Word became flesh (though He always was God) and a time after. The Incarnation is a temporal event in the divine life. Mullins argues that this “becoming” is unintelligible if the divine nature is strictly timeless. (Treated in depth in Chapter 21.)
Galatians 4:4–5
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law...”
“When the fullness of time had come” (hote de ēlthen to plērōma tou chronou) — an unmistakably temporal marker. God did not send the Son “timelessly”; He sent Him at a particular moment in salvation history, when the preparatory work of covenant, law, prophets, and Gentile culture was ready. (Treated in depth in Chapter 21.)
Philippians 2:5–8
“...Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
The Christ-hymn describes a series of temporal acts: emptying, taking, being born, humbling, becoming obedient, dying. Each is a distinct moment in the story of the Son. Whatever one makes of the kenosis, the passage requires a real temporal succession in the divine Person’s experience. (Treated in depth in Chapter 21.)
Hebrews 1:1–2
“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.”
“Long ago... in many times... in these last days” — the author of Hebrews locates divine revelation in temporal sequence, culminating in the Son. God’s speaking is an ongoing, temporal activity.
Hebrews 5:7–8
“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”
“In the days of his flesh” (en tais hēmerais tēs sarkos autou) — a temporal period in the incarnate life of the Son. He “learned obedience.” A timeless divine person cannot learn, since learning requires temporal sequence. The author of Hebrews does not consider this a problem; he presents it as essential to our salvation. (Treated in depth in Chapter 21.)
Luke 2:52
“And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.”
Jesus “increased” — He grew. This is temporal change in the life of the incarnate Son. Classical accounts of the Incarnation have often tried to isolate this growth entirely within the human nature, leaving the divine nature untouched. But Chalcedonian orthodoxy insists that the Person who grew is the divine Son. Mullins has argued that such maneuvers fail; the growth of the Son is genuinely a temporal process in the divine life. (Treated in depth in Chapter 21.)
Mark 13:32
“But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
A notoriously difficult passage. The Son, in His incarnate mission, does not know the day or hour. If all of God is strictly timeless and omniscient with no temporal acquisition of knowledge, how can the Son not know? The passage suggests that in the Incarnation, the Son’s conscious knowledge is temporally mediated. This is further evidence that divine temporality is compatible with — indeed, required for — genuine Incarnation. (Treated in depth in Chapter 21.)
John 11:35
“Jesus wept.”
The shortest verse in the Bible, and one of the most theologically significant. Jesus — fully God, fully human — weeps at the tomb of Lazarus. This is a real temporal event: the tears of God in the flesh. If the divine nature is strictly impassible and timeless, the weeping is merely human and thus not properly divine. But Chalcedon insists that what the Son does, God does. God weeps in Christ. (Treated in depth in Chapter 28.)
John 17:5
“And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”
Jesus’s high-priestly prayer refers to a glory He had “before the world existed.” This is a pre-creation temporal reality in the relational life of Father and Son. The Son looks back to a pre-creation “before” — which requires some form of divine temporality prior to creation. (Cf. Mullins on perichoresis and divine time, treated in Chapter 26.)
1 John 1:1–2
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and made manifest to us...”
John links “that which was from the beginning” with that which was seen, heard, and touched. The eternal life was made manifest in flesh. The Johannine insistence on physical, temporal contact with the incarnate Word is an anti-docetic polemic — and it is also an anti-timelessness polemic. The eternal God has entered the world of touch and time.
The Incarnation and the Death of Strict Timelessness
Mullins’s argument in God, Time, and the Incarnation can be summarized as follows: the doctrine of the Incarnation requires that the Son, who is fully God, is the subject of a genuinely human, temporal life. A strictly timeless divine nature cannot be the nature of a subject who experiences temporal succession. Therefore, either the divine nature is not strictly timeless, or the Son does not share the full divine nature (contrary to Nicene orthodoxy), or the Son is not truly the subject of the human experiences attributed to Jesus (contrary to Chalcedonian orthodoxy). Since the orthodox horns of this trilemma cannot be surrendered, it is strict timelessness that must go.16
The author of this book affirms qualified divine immutability — the doctrine that God’s essential nature, moral attributes, and covenantal purposes do not change, even though His relational states, emotional responses, and temporal actions do change. The following passages support this qualified immutability, not the strict immutability of classical theism that rules out all intrinsic change whatsoever. As argued in Chapter 30, strict immutability entails strict timelessness (since a strictly immutable being cannot undergo any temporal succession, even of accidental or relational properties), and both must be rejected in their classical forms.
Malachi 3:6
“For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.”
Often cited as a proof-text for strict immutability. But the context is covenant faithfulness, not metaphysical changelessness. The logic is: because God does not change, Israel is not consumed. God’s unchanging covenant loyalty explains why His people survive their own unfaithfulness. This is moral and covenantal constancy, not the impossibility of any change whatsoever. (Treated in depth in Chapter 19.)
Hebrews 13:8
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
A beloved verse, and rightly so. But note the temporal language: “yesterday... today... forever.” The sameness of Christ is affirmed across time, not outside of it. Jesus is the same person, with the same saving character and the same commitment to His people, throughout all of history. This is constancy-through-time, not timelessness. (Treated in depth in Chapter 22.)
James 1:17
“Every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
As noted earlier in Category 1, this verse affirms God’s moral and relational constancy, using the metaphor of heavenly lights. The Father of lights does not flicker or turn away. His generosity is reliable. (Treated in depth in Chapter 19.)
Numbers 23:19
“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”
Balaam’s oracle affirms that God does not lie and does not “change his mind.” Read alongside the nacham passages, this must be taken as referring to God’s covenantal faithfulness — His commitment to keep His promises. The immediate context concerns a specific divine promise that will not be revoked, not the metaphysical impossibility of any change. (Treated in depth in Chapter 19.)
1 Samuel 15:29
“And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret.”
As noted under Category 4, this verse sits within a chapter that begins and ends with divine regret. My reading is that v. 29 affirms that God’s basic character and covenantal purposes are not subject to the kind of fickle regret that marks fallen humans. He does not flip-flop. But God does genuinely respond emotionally to human sin and faithfulness. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
Psalm 102:26–27
“They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.”
God’s endurance contrasts with the perishability of creation. “You are the same” (Heb. attah hu) and “your years have no end” — both phrases affirm temporal constancy, not timelessness. God endures unchanged in essential character across all the changes of creation. (Treated in depth in Chapter 19.)
Isaiah 46:4
“...even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.”
God’s self-identification “I am he” (Heb. ani hu) is accompanied by a temporal commitment: throughout all the ages of His people, He will carry them. The same God carries across time.
If God is genuinely temporal, then the biblical hope is genuinely future. Christ really will return at a moment that has not yet arrived. The dead really will be raised. The new creation really will dawn. On the strict timelessness view, all these events are already “there” from God’s perspective, and the biblical language of futurity is merely creaturely perspective — a claim that (I have argued throughout) trivializes the drama of salvation history. The dynamic omnitemporalist view preserves the reality of the future while affirming that God, from His transcendent position, knows what is to come.
Acts 1:11
“...‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’”
The parousia is genuinely future. Christ “will come” — a future tense that presupposes a real sequence from ascension to return. The early church’s hope was not for a timeless encounter but for a real, future, bodily return. (Treated in depth in Chapter 23.)
Revelation 1:8
“‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’”
The divine self-designation includes all three tenses: who is, who was, who is to come. This is not a timeless formula; it is a temporal formula that encompasses past, present, and future. God’s eternity, on the Apocalypse’s own terms, is not the negation of tense but its fullness. (Treated in depth in Chapter 23.)
Revelation 1:4
“...Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come...”
John’s greeting reinforces the threefold temporal formula. The God who sends grace and peace is the God of past, present, and future. (Treated in depth in Chapter 23.)
Revelation 21:1–5
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away... Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people... He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more... And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’”
The new creation is a future reality. God declares, “I am making all things new” — an ongoing, temporal action, not a timeless fiat. The new heavens and new earth are not a static eternity but a glorified temporal order. (Treated in depth in Chapter 23.)
Revelation 22:2
“...through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
Remarkably, the new creation has temporal cycles: the tree of life yields fruit “each month.” The glorified order is not timeless; it is a redeemed temporal order. This is crucial for eschatology: our eternal life is not the dissolution of time but its perfection. (Treated in depth in Chapter 23.)
Revelation 22:12–13
“‘Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.’”
Christ’s self-designation as “the Alpha and the Omega” is paired with the announcement “I am coming soon.” The divine identity and the divine future are linked. “Soon” (tachy) is a genuinely temporal adverb; from God’s perspective, the parousia is near, but it is a real futurity. (Treated in depth in Chapter 23.)
1 Thessalonians 4:16–17
“For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.”
Paul’s eschatology is saturated with temporal markers: “will descend,” “will rise first,” “then,” “will be caught up,” “so we will always be with the Lord.” The resurrection and rapture are future events with their own temporal sequence.
1 Corinthians 15:22–28
“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet... When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.”
Paul’s resurrection theology has a rich temporal architecture: “each in his own order,” “firstfruits,” “then... then... until... when.” The consummation is genuinely future, and the sequence within the consummation itself is ordered. Even “God may be all in all” is the telos of a temporal process.
Matthew 24:36–44
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only... Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”
The Olivet Discourse presents the eschaton as a future “day and hour” — a specific moment in time, not a timeless truth. Christ calls for temporal readiness: watching, waiting, being prepared.
Romans 8:18–25
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us... For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
Christian hope is explicitly future-directed. We “wait” for what is “to be revealed.” The whole creation groans in temporal anticipation. If the future is already “there” in a timeless block, this language of waiting and hoping becomes strangely hollow.
I have argued at length (in Chapter 28, and in the companion volume The Heart of God) that divine passibility — God’s genuine emotional responsiveness to His creatures — requires divine temporality. You cannot genuinely respond emotionally to an event if you exist timelessly; response requires a before (the event) and an after (the response). Mullins’s argument about divine wrath is especially compelling: if God timelessly and immutably has wrath toward a particular sinner, then God’s wrath precedes the sinner’s sin, which seems unjust.17 David Lamb’s book The Emotions of God develops the pastoral significance of a genuinely emotional God.18
Genesis 6:6
“And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”
Divine grief over human wickedness. The Hebrew wayyinnachem and wayyit‘atzev el libbo together express deep emotional disturbance. The timeless God of classical theism cannot grieve; the God of Genesis does. (Treated in depth in Chapter 18.)
Exodus 4:14
“Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses...”
God’s anger is “kindled” — a temporal event. The Hebrew wayyichar af literally says “his nose/face burned.” God’s anger rises in response to Moses’s reluctance. The emotion is real and temporally located.
Zephaniah 3:17
“The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”
One of the most joyful pictures of God in all of Scripture. God rejoices, quiets, exults, sings. Each of these is a temporal, emotional action toward His people. A timeless, impassible Absolute cannot sing over His people; the God of Zephaniah does.
Hosea 11:8–9
“How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?... My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.”
The divine anguish reaches its climax in Hosea 11. God’s heart “recoils” (the Hebrew nehpakh alay libbi is remarkably vivid — “my heart is turned upside down within me”). Compassion “grows warm and tender” — a temporal development. Remarkably, the reason God does not destroy is precisely because He is God and not a man: divine mercy here exceeds what human anger would demand.
Jeremiah 31:20
“Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, declares the LORD.”
Divine yearning (Heb. hamu me‘ai lo — literally “my bowels/inward parts rumble for him”) is an emotionally charged temporal response. God’s heart reacts to His erring child.
John 11:35, 38
“Jesus wept... Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb.”
The Greek embrimōmenos (often translated “deeply moved,” but carrying the force of “groaning” or “indignation”) describes Jesus’s emotional state. God in the flesh weeps and groans at the tomb of His friend. (Treated in depth in Chapter 28.)
Ephesians 4:30
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
The Holy Spirit can be grieved. This is not a metaphor we can safely discard without losing something central to Paul’s pneumatology. The Spirit has an emotional life that responds to the moral state of God’s people. (Treated in depth in Chapter 28.)
Luke 15:7, 10
“Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance... Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Heaven’s joy arises in response to a specific, temporal event — a sinner repenting. The joy is “over” (concerning) this event, implying temporal responsiveness. A strictly timeless heaven could not celebrate a temporal repentance.
Isaiah 63:9–10
“In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit; therefore he turned to be their enemy, and himself fought against them.”
“In all their affliction he was afflicted” — the divine sharing in Israel’s suffering is a classic text of divine passibility. Rebellion “grieved his Holy Spirit,” and God “turned to be their enemy” — a temporal, emotional, and relational reversal.
Deuteronomy 32:36
“For the LORD will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone...”
Divine compassion arises “when he sees” — a temporal trigger. God’s compassion is temporally responsive to the plight of His people.
Why Divine Emotion Requires Divine Temporality
If God is strictly timeless and impassible, then the many scriptural accounts of God’s grief, joy, anger, compassion, and yearning must be read as either (a) mere figures of speech that attribute to God what He does not literally have, or (b) “Cambridge changes” — changes in how creatures relate to God rather than changes in God Himself. Both strategies face severe problems. Strategy (a) effectively empties the biblical portrait of God of its relational substance, replacing the living God with an emotionally bland Absolute. Strategy (b) makes divine “response” a linguistic fiction; the impassible God does not really respond to anything. As Mullins argues, genuine divine emotion — the kind Scripture attributes to God on nearly every page — requires genuine temporal responsiveness.19
As a substance dualist who affirms the conscious intermediate state — the position that at death, the immaterial soul continues to exist consciously with Christ while awaiting the resurrection of the body — I am particularly interested in how Scripture portrays temporal experience after death.20 The key passages all suggest that the departed dead have some form of temporal experience. They are not locked into timeless contemplation; they anticipate, remember, cry out, wait, and interact. Whether or not their temporal experience is identical to ours, it is clearly temporal in some sense. This has important implications for our understanding of divine time, since God is personally present to the departed saints in a mode that preserves their temporal awareness.
Luke 16:19–31
“The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me...’”
The parable of the rich man and Lazarus (which most interpreters take, whatever the literary genre, to reflect something real about postmortem experience) presents the departed as conscious, communicating, and experiencing temporal sequence. The rich man remembers his brothers, worries about their future, dialogues with Abraham, experiences torment. None of this fits a strictly timeless existence. (Treated in depth in Chapter 34.)
Revelation 6:9–11
“I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.”
The souls under the altar cry “How long?” (heōs pote). They are told to “rest a little longer.” Their experience has duration; they anticipate a future judgment; they wait in temporal relation to the ongoing drama on earth. This is a profoundly temporal portrayal of the intermediate state. (Treated in depth in Chapter 34.)
Luke 23:43
“And he said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”
“Today” (sēmeron) — a temporal marker. Christ promises the penitent thief a day of conscious reunion in Paradise. This both establishes the conscious intermediate state and anchors it in temporal terms. (Treated in depth in Chapter 34.)
Philippians 1:21–23
“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain... My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”
Paul anticipates a conscious post-death experience: departing to “be with Christ.” This “being with” is relational and, presumably, temporal. Paul does not imagine that at death he will enter a timeless beatitude; he imagines being personally, consciously, relationally with the risen Lord. (Treated in depth in Chapter 34.)
2 Corinthians 5:6–8
“...we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”
“Away from the body, at home with the Lord” — the classic Pauline formulation of the intermediate state. The dualism is clear; the person continues to exist, conscious and relationally engaged with Christ, after bodily death. (Treated in depth in Chapter 34.)
Hebrews 12:22–24
“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant...”
“The spirits of the righteous made perfect” — the departed saints are pictured as a present, conscious assembly. They have been “made perfect” (perfect passive participle — they have undergone a process, temporally). They are not in timeless stasis but in glorified, perfected life.
1 Samuel 28:13–15
“The king said to her, ‘Do not be afraid. What do you see?’ And the woman said to Saul, ‘I see a god coming up out of the earth.’ He said to her, ‘What is his appearance?’ And she said, ‘An old man is coming up, and he is wrapped in a robe.’ And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground and paid homage. Then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?’”
However one interprets the En-Dor narrative, the text presents Samuel, after death, as a conscious being capable of being “disturbed” and of speaking coherently about temporal events. His postmortem awareness is temporally engaged.
Matthew 17:1–8 (the Transfiguration)
“...and behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.”
Moses and Elijah, long dead, appear with the transfigured Christ and engage in conversation. Luke 9:31 specifies that they were speaking “of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” The departed saints are conscious, aware of temporal events on earth, and capable of theological conversation about the unfolding drama of redemption.
Finally, we turn to the divine name — the revelation of who God is. The Tetragrammaton YHWH, revealed at the burning bush, has been interpreted for millennia as signifying God’s eternal, unchanging being. Classical theists have often read it as a statement of divine timelessness: “I AM” as a timeless, tenseless existence. But the Hebrew verbal system does not straightforwardly support such a reading. The imperfect ehyeh is better rendered “I will be” or “I am being” — a dynamic, active, temporally engaged form.21 The God of the burning bush is the God who has been with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and who will be with Moses and Israel. His name is a name of temporal presence.
Exodus 3:13–15
“Then Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “I AM has sent me to you.” ’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.’”
The revelation of the divine name. The Hebrew ehyeh asher ehyeh is linked immediately to historical presence: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God’s identity is not a metaphysical abstraction; it is a covenantal, historical presence. The phrase “this is my name forever” (le-olam) and “throughout all generations” locates the divine name in an ongoing temporal relationship with God’s people. (Treated in depth in Chapter 16.)
Revelation 1:4, 8; 4:8
“...from him who is and who was and who is to come... ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’... ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!’”
The Apocalypse’s threefold temporal formula (ho ōn kai ho ēn kai ho erchomenos — the one who is, the one who was, and the one who is coming) is the Septuagint-inflected expansion of the divine name. This is a radically temporal formula. God is not “the Eternal Now”; He is the God of past, present, and future. (Treated in depth in Chapter 23.)
Isaiah 41:4
“Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he.”
“I am he” (ani hu) — the divine self-identification. The LORD is “the first” and is “with the last” — temporal designations that affirm God’s presence through the whole sweep of history.
Isaiah 43:10–11
“‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the LORD, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior.’”
“Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me” — again, temporal priority and temporal posterity. The monotheism of Isaiah is articulated in thoroughly temporal categories.
Matthew 28:20
“...teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The Great Commission closes with a promise of temporal presence: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (pasas tas hēmeras heōs tēs synteleias tou aiōnos — “all the days, until the consummation of the age”). This is not a timeless presence; it is a continuous, temporal, covenantal accompaniment.
We have surveyed roughly one hundred Scripture passages spanning both Testaments and every major genre: law, narrative, prophecy, psalmody, wisdom, Gospel, epistle, and apocalypse. What do we find? A consistent portrait of a God who is genuinely temporal — who acts, speaks, responds, remembers, plans, grieves, rejoices, anticipates, and intervenes. We find a God whose eternity is not the negation of time but its fullness. We find a God who knows the future exhaustively and who is present to the past, yet whose primary mode of engagement with His creatures is temporal and present-tense. We find a God who became flesh at a specific moment and who will return at a specific moment. We find a God whose emotional life is real and whose promises hold throughout all generations.
Is any single one of these passages decisive, all by itself, against divine timelessness? Probably not. Classical theists have developed sophisticated hermeneutical strategies for dealing with temporal language about God — strategies that go back to Augustine and Aquinas and that are developed today by defenders like Helm and Leftow.22 I have argued throughout this book that these strategies, while sometimes plausible for individual texts, buckle under the cumulative weight of the biblical witness. When nearly every chapter of Scripture requires us to explain away temporal language about God, we should pause and ask whether we have started from the wrong metaphysical commitments.
Here is my own procedure — the methodology that has shaped this appendix and the book as a whole. I take the Bible as the normative witness to who God is. I read it canonically, with attention to genre and context, and I seek to hear what the biblical authors actually wanted to communicate. I recognize that theological reflection must engage with philosophical questions that the Bible does not directly address. But when the cumulative biblical portrait pulls strongly in one direction — as it does on the question of divine temporality — I do not think it is faithful to let a philosophical tradition override that portrait. My position of “dynamic divine temporality with transcendent access” is my best attempt to honor both the biblical witness (which portrays a genuinely temporal God) and the classical intuitions that motivated the timelessness tradition (which wanted to preserve God’s transcendence, exhaustive foreknowledge, and perfect providence).
The God we meet in these passages is not the timeless Absolute of the philosophers. He is the living God. He acted in Egypt. He spoke to the prophets. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He hears your prayers now. He is with you today. He will return at a day and hour that has not yet come. And when He finally makes all things new, the new creation will not be a timeless heaven but a glorified temporal order — a place where the tree of life yields fruit each month, and where His people dwell with Him, world without end.
This is the God of Scripture. This is the God beyond the clock.
A Pastoral Word
I want to close this appendix with a pastoral word. The doctrine of divine temporality is not merely an abstract philosophical claim. It is the theological foundation for the conviction that God is really present with you, right now, in whatever you are facing. The timeless God of classical theism “observes” your suffering from an eternal, unchanging, undisturbed vantage point. The temporal God of the Bible enters your moment. He hears your prayer as you pray it. He grieves with you as you grieve. He rejoices with you as you rejoice. He is the God who said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people... I have come down to deliver them” (Exod 3:7–8). That same God, in Jesus Christ, came all the way down — into your world, your time, your pain, your story. He did not remain in a timeless heaven. He became flesh and dwelt among us. And He is with us still, to the end of the age.
1 This appendix serves as a reference companion to the book’s argument. The position of dynamic divine temporality with transcendent access is developed in depth in Chapters 7, 25, and 36. For the cumulative case from the biblical data, see especially Chapters 16–23, which treat the scriptural witness category by category. For complementary systematic and philosophical treatments, see Ryan Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), chap. 1, “Classical Theism, Perfect Being Theology, and Theological Methodology”; Ryan Mullins, From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker, Routledge Studies in Analytic and Systematic Theology (London: Routledge, 2025), chap. 3, “Timemakers.” ↩
2 All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the English Standard Version (ESV). The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001, 2016). The ESV is used for its combination of textual accuracy and readability in contemporary English. ↩
3 On accommodationist interpretation, see Paul Helm, Eternal God: A Study of God without Time, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), chap. 2, “Accommodation.” Helm’s discussion is the best contemporary defense of the view that temporal language about God is divine accommodation to human limitations. I engage Helm’s accommodationism extensively in Chapter 6 and find it finally unpersuasive, but it is a serious position deserving careful engagement. ↩
4 Helm, Eternal God, chap. 2, “Accommodation”; see also chap. 1, “Timelessness,” where Helm frames the methodological stakes. ↩
5 Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 2, “Divine Timelessness Defined and Defended,” and chap. 6, “The Problem of Divine Action.” See also Mullins, From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker, chap. 4, “Creationism,” for a comprehensive response to the timelessness tradition’s treatment of temporal language. ↩
6 For the book’s theological framework and commitments, see the introductory matter and Chapter 1, “Introduction: Why God’s Relationship to Time Matters.” ↩
7 The philological case is treated in Chapter 3, “The Biblical Language of Time and Eternity.” The Cullmann–Barr exchange on Hebrew and Greek words for time is the methodologically crucial conversation. See Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History, rev. ed., trans. Floyd V. Filson (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964), for the classic argument that biblical eternity means endless time rather than Platonic timelessness. For Barr’s methodological critique, see James Barr, Biblical Words for Time, 2nd ed., Studies in Biblical Theology 33 (London: SCM, 1969). Barr is right that we cannot settle theological questions by word studies alone, but Cullmann is right that the biblical vocabulary of eternity simply does not carry the Platonic freight that the classical tradition has often read into it. ↩
8 Cullmann, Christ and Time. Cullmann’s position is sometimes overstated (as Barr pointed out), but his basic contention — that biblical eternity is not Platonic timelessness — has stood up well under scrutiny. For a careful reassessment of the debate, see Natalja Deng, God and Time, Elements in the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), sec. 2, “God in Time.” ↩
9 The classical formulation is Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, q. 14, art. 5–9, where God’s knowledge of all things in His single eternal act is defended. For contemporary defenses of this kind of position, see Paul Helm, Eternal God, chap. 1, “Timelessness,” and chap. 5, “God and Creation”; and Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). ↩
10 Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 5, “Presentism, Creation, and the Timeless God,” under “The Problem of Creation Ex Nihilo Initially Stated.” This is one of Mullins’s signature arguments: a strictly timeless God cannot create ex nihilo without inconsistency, because creation requires a real before (when creation did not exist) and after (when it does). ↩
11 Garrett J. DeWeese, God and the Nature of Time, Routledge Philosophy of Religion Series (London: Routledge, 2004), chap. 10, “God’s Relation to Creation.” DeWeese develops this argument in dialogue with the classical tradition and with Craig’s hybrid view. ↩
12 Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 7, “Strict Immutability”; Mullins, From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker, chap. 5, “Immutabilism and Presentism.” ↩
13 David T. Lamb, The Emotions of God: Making Sense of a God Who Hates, Weeps, and Loves (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2022), 17–20, 45–48. Lamb’s treatment of divine regret and relenting is especially helpful for the pastoral dimension of these passages. ↩
14 Classic open theist treatments include Clark Pinnock et al., The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1994); Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000); and John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence, rev. ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007). For a self-consciously open-theist philosophical treatment interacting directly with the temporality debate, see Luis R. Scott, The God of Time: How God’s Foreknowledge Protects Freewill (2018), chap. 3, “Prophecy and the Open View.” I reject the open theist conclusion but share their commitment to divine temporality; see Chapter 32 for my full engagement. ↩
15 Ryan Mullins, God, Time, and the Incarnation (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 21–26, 42–48, 87–94. The argument from the Incarnation to divine temporality is among the strongest in Mullins’s corpus and is developed at length in Chapter 27 of this book. ↩
16 Mullins, God, Time, and the Incarnation, 53–68. ↩
17 R. T. Mullins, God and Emotion, Elements in the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), §5.2, “Divine Wrath.” The wrath argument is, in my view, one of the most important analytic arguments for divine passibility in recent literature. ↩
18 Lamb, The Emotions of God, esp. chaps. 1–3 on divine hatred, weeping, and love. ↩
19 Mullins, God and Emotion, §2.1, “Locating Impassibility Within Classical Theism,” and §3.2, “Emotions and Time.” See also Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 8, “Impassibility,” for the fuller argument that divine emotional responsiveness requires divine temporality. ↩
20 On substance dualism and the conscious intermediate state, see John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism–Dualism Debate, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000); and J. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2000). For the near-death experience literature that bears on postmortem temporal awareness, see Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperOne, 2010); Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond (New York: St. Martin’s, 2021); and Jeffrey Long with Paul Perry, Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences (New York: HarperOne, 2010). The temporal anomalies in NDE reports are treated at length in Chapter 33, and the implications for the intermediate state in Chapter 34. ↩
21 On the philology of ehyeh asher ehyeh, see the discussion in Chapter 16, “An Overview: What Does the Bible Actually Say About God and Time?” The classical reading (following the LXX’s egō eimi ho ōn) emphasizes the participial “I am the one who is,” which has been taken to support timelessness. The Hebrew imperfect, however, admits of a more dynamic rendering: “I will be who I will be” or “I am being who I am being.” ↩
22 Helm, Eternal God, chaps. 1–4; Leftow, Time and Eternity, esp. chaps. 7–12. For the classical defense, see Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, q. 10, on the divine eternity, and Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy V, prose 6, where the famous definition of eternity is given: aeternitas est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio (“eternity is the complete, simultaneous, and perfect possession of unending life”). ↩
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