Chapter 5: The Strongest Arguments for Divine Timelessness

In Chapter 4, we met the doctrine of divine timelessness — the classical view that God exists entirely outside of time, experiencing no before or after, no succession, no temporal flow. We saw the vision of a God whose life is, in Boethius's famous words, tota simul — "all at once." We met the towering figures who have defended this view: Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas. And we noted the impressive way this doctrine connects to a whole package of classical divine attributes — simplicity, immutability, impassibility, and aseity.

Now I want to do something that might surprise you. In this chapter, I am going to present the strongest possible case for divine timelessness. I am going to give the atemporalist position every advantage. I am going to lay out its best arguments with full force and maximum clarity. Why? Because I believe intellectual honesty demands it. And because I think you, the reader, deserve to feel the full weight of the atemporalist case before we examine the powerful objections against it in Chapter 6.

This approach is sometimes called "steel-manning" — as opposed to "straw-manning." When you straw-man an argument, you present a weak, distorted version so it is easy to knock down. When you steel-man an argument, you present the strongest version so that your critique, when it comes, is truly convincing. If we cannot answer divine timelessness at its best, we have no business rejecting it. But if we can answer it at its best — and I believe we can — then we have every reason to look for a better view of God's relationship to time.

So here is what we will do. I will present six major arguments for divine timelessness. Each one has been defended by brilliant and devout thinkers. Each one makes a genuinely challenging case. When you finish this chapter, you should feel the pull of these arguments. You should understand why so many great theologians have believed that God must be outside of time. And then, in Chapter 6, we will carefully examine each argument and show why, despite their initial power, none of them ultimately succeeds.

The six arguments we will examine are: (1) the argument from divine simplicity, (2) the argument from divine immutability, (3) the argument from Einstein's relativity theory, (4) the argument from the incompleteness of temporal life, (5) the Stump-Kretzmann model of "ET-simultaneity," and (6) Katherin Rogers's "fifth dimension" proposal. Together, these represent the strongest case that can be made for the claim that God exists outside of time.

A word about how these arguments relate to each other. Some of them are independent — they stand on their own, making the case for timelessness from different starting points. The simplicity argument starts from the nature of God's being. The relativity argument starts from modern physics. The incompleteness argument starts from our intuitions about perfection. But other arguments are more like responses to problems — the ET-simultaneity model and Rogers's "fifth dimension" are attempts to answer the question, "If God is timeless, how can He relate to a temporal world?" So we have both positive arguments for timelessness and defensive models designed to protect timelessness from objections. The total package — positive arguments plus defensive models — makes the atemporalist case stronger than any single argument alone.

I also want to note something important before we begin. Every one of these arguments has been defended by serious, devout Christian thinkers. These are not arguments made by skeptics or atheists trying to make God seem distant or impersonal. They are arguments made by people who love God, who believe in the authority of Scripture, and who are genuinely trying to understand the nature of the God they worship. We owe them the respect of hearing their best case before we respond.

I. The Argument from Divine Simplicity

The first and perhaps the most powerful argument for divine timelessness comes from the doctrine of divine simplicity. This doctrine says that God is absolutely simple — meaning He has no composition, no parts, and no real distinctions within His nature. Everything in God is identical to everything else. His love is His justice, His justice is His mercy, His attributes are identical to His essence, and His essence is identical to His existence. God is, as Thomas Aquinas would say, pure act — the sheer, undiluted act of existing, with no unrealized potential of any kind.¹

Now, this is a truly radical doctrine, and many people — even many Christians — have never heard it stated this clearly. So let me explain why it matters for the question of God and time.

The argument works like this. If God is absolutely simple, then He cannot have any composition — not even the kind of composition that comes from having different phases or stages in His life. Think about your own life for a moment. You at age five were different from you at age twenty, which was different from you today. Your life can be divided into stages, phases, or what philosophers call "temporal parts." The sum of all these temporal parts — your childhood, your teenage years, your adult years — makes up the whole of your life. In other words, your life is a composite of temporal stages.

But a strictly simple God cannot be a composite of anything. If God had temporal stages — if there were a "God at time one" who was different in any way from "God at time two" — then the totality of God's life would be a composite of these temporal parts. And that would violate divine simplicity.²

William Lane Craig presents this argument clearly in his treatment of the classical case for timelessness. Craig explains that if God is simple in the way the medieval tradition described, "it obviously follows that He cannot be temporal, for a temporal being is related to the various times at which it exists" — and a simple being "stands in no real relations."³ A temporal being has phases of its life "which are not identical but rather are related to one another as earlier and later." But a simple being cannot have such relations, and so "must have its life, as Boethius put it, 'all at once' (totum simul)."⁴

R. T. Mullins helps us understand just how far classical simplicity goes. In the medieval tradition, simplicity did not just rule out physical parts. It ruled out all metaphysical complexity of every kind — including what the medievals called "conceptual distinctions." Even making a conceptual distinction between different aspects of God's nature was considered a threat to divine simplicity. As Anselm put it, "What either actually or conceptually has parts can be divided into parts, and this is altogether foreign to God."⁵

Mullins traces this argument through the medieval tradition with great care. He notes that Peter Lombard defined divine simplicity as the view that God has "no diversity or change or multiplicity of parts, or accidents, or of any other forms."⁶ The standard account of simplicity includes several key claims: God cannot have spatial or temporal parts; God cannot have intrinsic accidental properties; there cannot be any real distinction between one essential property and another in God's nature; and there cannot be a real distinction between essence and existence in God.⁷

The connection to timelessness is direct and powerful. As Mullins explains, the classical theists held that "simplicity rules out any kind of intrinsic or extrinsic change in God, and thus rules out any succession in God."⁸ If God cannot have succession — no before and after in His life — then God cannot be temporal. He must exist in one undivided, changeless, timeless present.

This argument from Aquinas deserves special attention. Aquinas argued that God is actus purus — pure act, with absolutely no potentiality. Everything in God is fully actualized. There is nothing in God that could be different, nothing waiting to be realized, nothing that has not yet come about. Now, temporal change involves the actualization of potentials — moving from one state to another, from "not yet" to "now." If God has no potentiality whatsoever, then He cannot undergo any temporal change, and therefore He cannot exist in time.⁹

The power of this argument should not be underestimated. If one accepts classical divine simplicity, timelessness follows virtually by logical necessity. A strictly simple being must be timeless. There is no wiggle room. This is why Mullins, who rejects timelessness, spends so much energy arguing against simplicity — he recognizes that if simplicity stands, timelessness stands with it.¹⁰

Aquinas wove this argument into a comprehensive theological system of extraordinary elegance. God is pure act. Because He is pure act, He is simple. Because He is simple, He is immutable. Because He is immutable, He is eternal (timeless). Each step follows from the one before with a kind of logical inevitability that is genuinely impressive.¹¹

Paul Helm, the strongest contemporary defender of divine timelessness, draws on this same logic. Helm argues that divine simplicity, properly understood, requires not just the absence of physical parts but the absence of even "merely Cambridge" temporal and spatial relations. God, on Helm's view, does not stand in temporal relations of any kind — not even relational changes that happen because of what happens in the world.¹²

It is worth pausing to appreciate the depth of this reasoning. Aquinas and the medievals were not being arbitrary when they connected simplicity to timelessness. Their argument rests on a specific understanding of what "parts" means. For us, "parts" usually means physical components — wheels, gears, atoms. But for the classical tradition, "parts" means any kind of composition whatsoever — including the composition that would exist if God had distinct temporal stages in His life. If God at Monday is even slightly different from God at Tuesday (say, because He now knows "It is Tuesday" instead of "It is Monday"), then God's life has at least two distinguishable stages. And two distinguishable stages means composition. And composition means God is not simple.

The logic is strict, precise, and demanding. It leaves no room for a God who experiences real temporal succession and remains simple in the classical sense. That is precisely why the temporalist — the one who says God does experience succession — must either reject classical simplicity or redefine it. But the classical atemporalist insists that simplicity is non-negotiable, and from that conviction, timelessness follows like night follows day.

Now, I want to be honest with you: I do not accept the doctrine of strict classical divine simplicity (I will explain why in detail in Chapter 30). But I want you to see why this argument is so powerful on its own terms. If you start with the premise that God is absolutely simple — and the greatest theologians in Christian history held exactly this — then timelessness follows as a near-certain conclusion. The logic is tight. The reasoning is elegant. And the conclusion is clear: a simple God must be a timeless God.

II. The Argument from Divine Immutability

The second major argument for timelessness comes from the doctrine of divine immutability — the claim that God does not and cannot change. Like simplicity, immutability has deep roots in the Christian tradition. Scripture itself declares, "I the LORD do not change" (Malachi 3:6), and "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). The question, as we will see, is what kind of unchangeableness these texts are teaching. But the classical tradition took immutability in the strongest possible sense: God undergoes no change whatsoever — not in His nature, not in His knowledge, not in His will, not in His relations, not in anything at all.

Here is how the argument works. If God exists in time, then He must be changing — at the very least, in small ways. Think about it. If God is temporal, then at 3:00 PM He knows "It is now 3:00 PM," and at 3:01 PM He knows "It is now 3:01 PM." That is a change in God's knowledge. He is constantly gaining new knowledge (knowing what time it is now) and losing old knowledge (it was 3:00 PM, but now it is 3:01 PM). Furthermore, if God is temporal, He is constantly growing older — not physically, of course, but in the purely temporal sense of adding more time to His life. He is also constantly performing new actions: at time one He is sustaining the events at time one, and at time two He is sustaining the events at time two.¹³

Craig summarizes this forcefully: "A temporal God cannot be changeless." Whether we are talking about God's knowledge (constantly updating with what time it is now), God's memory and foreknowledge (shifting as events move from future to present to past), or God's actions (causing different things at different times), a temporal God is a changing God. And if God cannot change, He cannot be temporal. Therefore, God is timeless.¹⁴

To understand this argument, we need to grasp a key distinction that philosophers use: the difference between intrinsic changes and Cambridge changes (sometimes called extrinsic or relational changes).

An intrinsic change is a change in what something is like in itself. If an apple goes from red to brown, that is an intrinsic change — something about the apple itself has changed. A Cambridge change is different. It is a change in the relations or properties that a thing has because of what happens to something else — not because of any change in the thing itself. Mullins gives a helpful illustration: if he walks from south of the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity building to north of it, the building itself has not changed at all. It has not moved, aged, or been altered in any way. But it has undergone a "Cambridge change" — it went from being "north of Ryan" to being "south of Ryan."¹⁵

Now, here is the crucial point. Even if we were to say that God never undergoes intrinsic change (His nature, character, and essential attributes never change), a temporal God would still undergo Cambridge changes. As the world changes around Him, God's relations to the world change. Before creation, God was not sustaining a universe. After creation, He was. Before your prayer, God was not hearing that particular prayer. After your prayer, He was. These are relational changes — Cambridge changes — and on the strict classical understanding of immutability, even these are ruled out.

Helm makes this point with special clarity. He argues that divine immutability, in the classical sense, requires that "no temporal or spatial changes apply to that thing, not even temporal or spatial 'merely Cambridge' changes." The creator must be "immutable to the extent that he does not have even 'merely Cambridge' temporal and spatial relations with any other substances."¹⁶ This means, on Helm's view, that God does not stand in any temporal relation to Napoleon's death or your breakfast this morning. He is not temporally nearer to one than to the other because He is not in time at all.

Natalja Deng helpfully frames the underlying question this way: Is simply growing older — even without any physical aging — an intrinsic change? If so, then any being that exists in time for more than an instant undergoes intrinsic change, and the doctrine of divine immutability would directly entail timelessness.¹⁷ Even if growing older is only an extrinsic change, the classical understanding of immutability (which rules out extrinsic changes too) would still require timelessness.

Mullins notes an important connection between simplicity and immutability. The two doctrines reinforce each other. A simple God has no properties at all (in the strict sense) — not even accidental Cambridge properties like "being referred to as Creator" or "being referred to as Redeemer." Classical theists held that while it is true that God is the Creator, what makes this true is "something in reference to the creature, and not any property that God possesses." This is because even referring to God as Creator would, if taken as a property God has, "make God temporal and mutable."¹⁸

The argument from immutability is distinct from, but closely related to, the argument from simplicity. They often travel together. If God is simple, He is immutable. If God is immutable (in the strict classical sense), He is timeless. The two arguments form a mutually reinforcing pair that gives the case for timelessness considerable strength.

I should note here that Craig, despite ultimately rejecting strict immutability, recognizes the force of this argument. He observes that even if we weaken the definition of "immutable" to mean merely "incapable of intrinsic change" or the even weaker concept "intrinsically changeless," a temporal God still cannot meet this standard — because a temporal God is "constantly growing older" and "constantly changing in His knowledge" about what time it is now.¹⁹ This is why Craig himself concludes that immutability, if it holds, entails timelessness.

The question that hangs over this argument — and we will address it head-on in Chapter 6 — is whether the strict classical version of immutability is the correct one. Scripture does declare that God does not change. But does it mean God never undergoes any change whatsoever, including relational changes? Or does it mean that God's essential character, nature, and purposes are rock-solid and reliable — that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever in who He is and what He values? This is a crucial distinction, and we will explore it carefully. But for now, on the classical understanding, the argument is powerful: an immutable God must be a timeless God.

Ryan Mullins draws attention to a further implication of the immutability-timelessness connection. In his study of classical theism's treatment of the Incarnation, he observes that defenders of the classical view understand immutability as something derived not from biblical passages like Hebrews 13:8 but from philosophical reflection on divine timelessness itself. He writes that the classical atemporalist's understanding of immutability goes beyond the biblical meaning: Scripture speaks of God remaining the same through time, which is itself a temporal concept — "yesterday, today, and forever." But the atemporalist takes immutability in a more radical, technical sense: God cannot undergo any change at all because He exists outside of time, just as a number like "two" cannot change because it is a timeless, abstract concept.⁶⁰

This connection between immutability and the absence of sequence is important. Aquinas drew a direct consequence from God's immutability: since God is unchangeable, "there is no before and after in Him...nor can any succession be found in His being." He concluded that God's existence is "simultaneously whole."⁶¹ This is the Boethian tota simul again — God's life, all at once, with no succession, no sequence, no temporal unfolding. The logic chain runs from immutability to the absence of succession and from the absence of succession to timelessness.

I want to be fair about the force of this argument. If you grant that God cannot change in any respect — not even in His relational properties, not even in what He knows about what time it is — then timelessness really does follow. The logic is straightforward. A being that is in time and yet undergoes zero change of any kind is virtually impossible to conceive. Time and change seem to go hand in hand. And if God is truly unchangeable in every sense, He must be outside of time.

III. The Argument from Einstein's Relativity Theory

The third major argument for divine timelessness comes from a surprising source — modern physics. Specifically, it comes from Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (often abbreviated STR), first published in 1905. This argument is newer than the arguments from simplicity and immutability (which go back to the Middle Ages), but it has become increasingly important in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Some thinkers believe it provides scientific evidence that the universe is a "block" — a four-dimensional structure in which past, present, and future are all equally real — and that this block universe picture naturally supports the idea that God exists outside of time, viewing the block from a timeless vantage point.

To understand this argument, we need to understand a few key ideas from relativity theory. I will keep this as simple as I can; the full treatment of relativity and theology comes later in Chapter 31. Here, I just want to present the argument in its strongest form.

One of the most startling discoveries of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is that simultaneity is relative. What this means is that two events that happen "at the same time" for one observer may not happen "at the same time" for a different observer who is moving at a different speed. There is no single, universal "now" that is the same for everyone. Whether two distant events are simultaneous depends on your frame of reference — your speed and direction of motion.

This is not just a strange measurement problem or a trick of perception. According to the standard interpretation of relativity, there really is no objective, absolute "now" that stretches across the entire universe. Different observers moving at different speeds will disagree about which events are happening "right now" — and none of them is more correct than any other.²⁰

Now, recall from Chapter 2 that the A-theory of time says that the present is objectively real and special — that time genuinely "flows" from past through present to future, and that temporal becoming is a genuine feature of reality. The A-theory depends on there being a real, objective "now." But if Einstein's relativity is right, and there is no objective "now," then the A-theory appears to be in serious trouble.

If the A-theory falls, what takes its place? The B-theory of time — the view that all moments of time are equally real, that temporal "flow" is an illusion, and that the universe is a four-dimensional "block" in which past, present, and future all exist together. This is often called the "block universe" model, and it was developed most fully by the mathematician Hermann Minkowski, who in 1908 proposed that we should think of space and time not as separate things but as a unified four-dimensional structure called "spacetime."²¹

Here is how Craig describes the Minkowski interpretation: "Space-time itself never changes. Change takes place in time, that is, along the dimension of the structure which represents time. But there is no change of the structure as a whole." Events do not come into being and pass away. Instead, they are "permanently fixed" at their locations in spacetime. The block universe "neither changes nor becomes; it just is (tenselessly)."²²

Now, if the block universe is the correct picture of reality, divine timelessness becomes very natural. A timeless God can simply "see" the entire block from outside — all events in all times are equally present to Him in one timeless vision. There is no need for God to experience time, because time (as a flowing reality) does not exist. What exists is a four-dimensional structure, and God comprehends the whole of it timelessly. This is remarkably close to the classical picture of divine eternity — God possessing His entire life, and the whole of creation, "all at once."

Craig, despite ultimately rejecting this argument, presents it with great care and fairness. He lays out three reasons why the Minkowskian spacetime interpretation is arguably superior to Einstein's own original interpretation (which preserved a kind of relativized temporal becoming). First, the standard Einstein interpretation struggles to define a plausible relation of "co-existence" between moving objects. If events that are "simultaneous" depend on your frame of reference, it becomes very difficult to say what it means for two objects to exist at the same time. On the Minkowski interpretation, by contrast, all events exist equally, and co-existence can be straightforwardly defined.²³

Second, the original Einstein interpretation leads to what Craig calls "a fantastic fragmentation of reality." If reality depends on one's frame of reference, then different observers literally inhabit different realities — some events that are present and real for one observer are future and unreal for another. The Minkowski block universe avoids this by making all events equally real, regardless of any observer's state of motion.²⁴

Third, the Minkowski interpretation gives a satisfying physical explanation for relativistic phenomena like time dilation and length contraction. On this view, these effects are geometrical features of spacetime itself. They are not mysterious brute facts but natural consequences of the four-dimensional structure of reality.²⁵

Deng notes the force of this argument as well. She explains that "it is an important lesson of relativity theory that there is no such thing as a global now." The idea of a universal, metaphysically significant present moment "becomes hard to sustain" once we accept the relativity of simultaneity.²⁶

I should note that there are significant responses to this argument — most importantly, the "neo-Lorentzian interpretation" of relativity, championed by Craig, which preserves absolute simultaneity and a privileged reference frame. On this interpretation, the mathematical formalism of relativity is fully preserved, but the metaphysical conclusion (the block universe) is not required. We will examine this response in detail in Chapter 31. Deng herself mentions this neo-Lorentzian strategy as one available response.²⁷ But for now, I want you to feel the force of the argument as the atemporalist presents it: modern physics seems to support a picture of reality in which time is not a flowing river but a frozen block — and that picture fits beautifully with divine timelessness.

DeWeese also treats this argument carefully, noting that Einstein's conventionalist definition of simultaneity — the procedure by which two clocks are synchronized using light signals — rests on a crucial assumption: that the speed of light is the same in both directions (from clock A to clock B, and from clock B back to clock A). But as DeWeese points out, this assumption "presupposes that absolute space does not exist." If the two clocks are moving through absolute space, the distances traveled by the light signal in each direction may not be equal, and the assumption fails.²⁸ This is a technical point, but it matters: the case from relativity depends not just on the mathematical formalism but on specific philosophical interpretations of that formalism.

Nevertheless, the argument from relativity is one that any defender of divine temporality must take seriously. If modern physics really does show that time is a static, frozen block rather than a dynamic, flowing process, then the classical atemporalist has powerful scientific support for a very old theological claim.

IV. The Argument from the Incompleteness of Temporal Life

The fourth argument for divine timelessness has deep roots in the thought of Boethius, and it touches on something many of us have felt intuitively. It is the argument from the incompleteness of temporal life.

Here is the basic idea. Think about your own life. At any given moment, your life is incomplete. Part of it lies in the past — gone, no longer possessed, remembered but not lived. Part of it lies in the future — not yet arrived, anticipated but not experienced. You never possess your whole life all at once. You are always in the middle, stretched between a past that has slipped away and a future that has not yet come. As Augustine famously put it, our present is squeezed between what is no longer and what is not yet.

Now, the atemporalist argues, this incompleteness is a genuine limitation — a deficiency. A perfect being should not suffer from such a deficiency. God's life should not be stretched out between a lost past and an unreached future. God should possess His entire life fully, completely, and all at once. He should never have to "wait" for part of His life to arrive, and He should never "lose" part of His life to the past. His life should be, in Boethius's words, "the complete, simultaneous possession of interminable life" — interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio.²⁹

This argument has real emotional and philosophical force. We all know the ache of time passing — the feeling that moments of joy slip through our fingers, that the best years of our lives are behind us, that we cannot hold onto the present. Would it not be a kind of perfection to be free from all of that? Would it not be greater to possess one's entire life in a single, undivided act of being?

Boethius develops this idea with eloquence. In The Consolation of Philosophy, he writes that "whatever is subject to the condition of time, even that which...has no beginning and will have no end in a life coextensive with the infinity of time, is such that it cannot rightly be thought eternal. For it does not comprehend and include the whole of infinite life all at once, since it does not embrace the future which is yet to come."³⁰ In other words, even a being that exists through all of time — what we call an "everlasting" being — still does not possess its life completely, because at any given moment, the future is not yet possessed. Only a timeless being — one who possesses everything "all at once" — can be truly called eternal.

Katherin Rogers picks up this line of reasoning in the contemporary discussion. She argues that temporal existence involves a kind of radical disconnection. If we think of a temporal being's life as spread out across time, then the different stages of that life "do not have access to one another." The "me" of yesterday cannot touch the "me" of tomorrow. My childhood self is gone. My future self has not yet arrived. I never have my whole life together at once. Rogers argues that this is a genuine imperfection — and "surely the life of a perfect God would not suffer from such a defect."³¹

Other atemporalists have pressed this argument from slightly different angles. The general idea is that perfect being theology — the approach to God that begins with the concept of the greatest conceivable being — favors timelessness over temporality. A timeless life is a greater, more perfect life than a temporal one, because a timeless life is always whole, always complete, always fully possessed. A temporal life, no matter how long, is always partial, always incomplete, always lacking something that has either passed or not yet come.³²

DeWeese notes the tension in Boethius's famous definition — "the complete, simultaneous possession of interminable life." He observes that there appears to be "a contradiction between 'simultaneous possession' or 'possession all at once,' in a non-extended moment, and 'endless, illimitable life,' which seems to entail endless temporal extension." Life, at least as we experience it, seems to require duration. "At least intuitively it would seem that life must involve some duration, that a life lived instantaneously is not anything like what we would mean by 'life.'"³³ But the atemporalist would respond that this is exactly why divine eternity is so radically different from creaturely experience — God's mode of existence transcends our ordinary categories.

Craig himself finds this argument less persuasive than the arguments from simplicity and immutability, but he acknowledges its force. He has written a response arguing that a temporal being's life need not be "incomplete" in any deficient sense — that a God who perfectly knows His past and perfectly foreknows His future is not lacking anything. But he recognizes that defenders of timelessness like Rogers and Helm find this argument genuinely compelling.³⁴

I will address this argument more fully in Chapter 6. For now, I want you to sit with it. There is something attractive about the idea that God is free from the limitations of temporal existence — that He is never waiting for something that has not yet come, never mourning something that has passed. The question we will have to ask is whether this picture of divine perfection is the right one — or whether it comes at too high a price.

Let me note one more dimension of this argument. The atemporalist would say that there is something deeply fitting about a God whose life is complete, whole, and undivided. Think about the way we sometimes long for wholeness. We wish we could hold onto precious moments. We wish the best seasons of our lives did not have to end. We wish we could somehow gather up all the beauty and joy and love we have experienced and hold it together in a single, unified experience. We cannot do this, because we are temporal creatures — our lives are spread out across time, and each moment slips away as the next arrives. But God, on the atemporalist view, does not have this problem. His life is not spread out and scattered. It is gathered together, unified, complete. Every moment of His experience is fully present, fully real, fully possessed — all at once. That is what divine perfection looks like, according to this argument.

Is this vision correct? I do not think so — I think it purchases unity at the cost of genuine personhood, genuine relationship, and genuine emotional engagement with creation. But I want you to feel its appeal before we examine its problems. The atemporalist is not arguing for a cold, distant God. She is arguing for a God whose life is so rich, so full, and so complete that it transcends the limitations of temporal experience altogether.

V. The Stump-Kretzmann Model of ET-Simultaneity

The fifth argument — or, more accurately, the fifth model — for divine timelessness comes from the philosophers Eleonore Stump and the late Norman Kretzmann. Their influential 1981 article "Eternity," published in the Journal of Philosophy, attempted to solve one of the most pressing problems facing divine timelessness: the problem of how a timeless God can be related to a temporal world.³⁵

The problem is easy to state but very difficult to solve. If God is outside of time, and the world is in time, how can they be related to each other? How can a timeless God interact with temporal creatures? How can He know what is happening now? How can He act at particular moments in history? The whole idea of a relationship between a timeless being and temporal beings seems puzzling — maybe even incoherent. If there is no temporal connection between God and the world, how can He be "present" to us?

Stump and Kretzmann recognized this problem and proposed an ingenious solution. They argued that there is a special kind of simultaneity — different from ordinary temporal simultaneity — that holds between eternal (timeless) beings and temporal beings. They called this relation "ET-simultaneity" (short for "eternity-time simultaneity").³⁶

The idea works like this. Ordinary temporal simultaneity is the relation that holds between two events that happen at the same time — for example, two bells ringing at the same moment. ET-simultaneity is different. It is the relation that holds between a timeless being and a temporal being when both are, in some sense, "present" to each other — even though they exist in radically different modes.

Stump and Kretzmann were aware that defining this relation would be tricky, because the two relata — eternity and time — are "distinct modes of existence" that seem irreducible to each other. You cannot reduce timelessness to temporality, or vice versa. So they borrowed an idea from Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity: the notion that simultaneity is relative to a reference frame.³⁷

In Special Relativity, two events may be simultaneous in one observer's reference frame but not in another's. Stump and Kretzmann proposed something similar for the eternity-time relation. They suggested that we think of "timelessness" and "temporality" as two different "reference frames" — two different modes of existence. Then ET-simultaneity can be defined in terms of two observers and two reference frames:

This definition is, admittedly, complicated. But the basic idea behind it is straightforward: relative to the eternal reference frame, God sees every temporal moment as present to Him. And relative to any given temporal reference frame, God is present to that moment. So God and every temporal event are "ET-simultaneous" — present to each other in a special, cross-modal way.

Several features of this model are worth noting. First, ET-simultaneity is symmetric — if God is ET-simultaneous with some temporal event, then that event is ET-simultaneous with God. Second, it is non-transitive. This is important. The fact that event A in the year 500 is ET-simultaneous with God, and event B in the year 2025 is also ET-simultaneous with God, does not mean that event A and event B are ET-simultaneous with each other. They remain temporally ordered — A comes before B. So ET-simultaneity does not "collapse" the temporal order. It preserves the chronological sequence of events while allowing each event to be related to God's eternal present.³⁹

Stump and Kretzmann believed this solved the interaction problem. If every temporal moment is ET-simultaneous with God's eternal present, then God can be related to each moment — He can know it, act on it, and be causally connected to it. His timeless existence does not cut Him off from the temporal world. Instead, His eternity touches every moment of time through this special relation of ET-simultaneity.

The model also seemed to answer a famous objection raised by Anthony Kenny. Kenny had argued that if my typing right now is simultaneous with God's eternity, and the Great Fire of Rome is also simultaneous with God's eternity, then my typing and the Great Fire of Rome should be simultaneous with each other — which is obviously absurd. Stump and Kretzmann responded that this objection fails because ET-simultaneity is non-transitive. God is ET-simultaneous with my typing and ET-simultaneous with the Great Fire, but this does not make my typing and the Great Fire ET-simultaneous with each other. They exist in different temporal reference frames and remain temporally ordered.⁴⁰

Later, Stump and Kretzmann revised their definition of ET-simultaneity to address criticisms about the obscure language of "observation." Their revised definition replaced observation language with causal language: x and y are ET-simultaneous if and only if both observers — one in the eternal frame and one in the temporal frame — can enter into "direct and immediate causal relations" with both x and y.⁴¹

This model generated enormous discussion. It has been widely influential — virtually every serious treatment of divine timelessness since 1981 has had to engage with it. It represents the most sophisticated attempt by atemporalists to explain how a timeless God can interact with a temporal world. And it shows the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the atemporalist research program. Even if, as we shall see in Chapter 6, there are serious problems with ET-simultaneity, the very attempt to construct such a model demonstrates that defenders of divine timelessness are not simply ignoring the interaction problem. They are working hard to solve it.

Craig acknowledges the significance of this attempt while raising serious questions about it. He notes that the definition of ET-simultaneity is "explanatorily vacuous" — the language of "observation" used in the original definition is "wholly obscure" and has no clear procedure for determining whether ET-simultaneity holds between any two things. He argues that the definition, once the obscure observation language is stripped away, reduces to "a restatement of the problem" — it says that a timeless being and a temporal being are both "present" to each other, which is exactly what needed to be explained in the first place.⁴²

DeWeese develops a penetrating analogy to illustrate this concern. He compares the ET-simultaneity definition to a hypothetical definition of "IM-copresence" (immaterial-material copresence) that a realist about universals might construct to explain how an immaterial universal can be wholly present in multiple material objects. Such a definition, DeWeese argues, "is clearly possible, but it probably would not convince the nominalist, who could plausibly maintain that an incoherent idea cannot merely be defined into coherence. Definitions simply can't do that work."⁴³

Helm himself, despite being a defender of divine timelessness, has expressed reservations about the Stump-Kretzmann model. He has complained that their "'solution' to the problem is found simply by rewording the problem with the help of the device of ET-simultaneity. ET-simultaneity has no independent merit or use, nothing is illuminated or explained by it."⁴⁴ This is a striking admission from an atemporalist — it suggests that even some defenders of divine timelessness find the ET-simultaneity model unsatisfying.

The revised, causal version of the definition faces its own problems. Craig argues that it is "viciously circular." ET-simultaneity was originally invoked to explain how a timeless God could be causally active in time. But the revised definition now defines ET-simultaneity in terms of a timeless being's ability to be causally related to temporal things. This amounts to saying, as Craig puts it, "God can be causally active in time because He can be causally active in time."⁴⁵ Brian Leftow, who has written extensively on God and time, concurs that this circularity is a fatal problem for the revised definition.⁴⁶

Despite these criticisms — which we will develop further in Chapter 6 — the Stump-Kretzmann model remains the most serious philosophical attempt to explain the eternity-time relation, and it deserves careful engagement. The fact that two philosophers of Stump and Kretzmann's caliber devoted such effort to this problem shows how central the interaction question is for the atemporalist position.

VI. Katherin Rogers's "Fifth Dimension" Proposal

The sixth and final argument we will consider comes from the philosopher Katherin Rogers, who has developed what may be the most creative contemporary defense of divine timelessness. Rogers's proposal is both ingenious and ambitious. It attempts to solve the interaction problem by combining divine timelessness with four-dimensional eternalism — the view that all of spacetime exists at once, with past, present, and future equally real.

Rogers calls her position "Anselmian Eternalism." Drawing on Anselm's perfect being theology, she argues that we should start with God's perfection and work our way to the correct view of time. If God is the greatest conceivable being, and if timeless existence is more perfect than temporal existence (because it avoids the incompleteness of temporal life), then God must be timeless. And if God is timeless, then the correct metaphysics of time must be one that is compatible with a timeless God — namely, four-dimensional eternalism (the block universe).⁴⁷

Her key innovation is the proposal that God's eternity functions as a kind of "fifth dimension" — a dimension that contains all of four-dimensional spacetime. She writes: "Time is a fourth dimension containing all of space, and divine eternity is a sort of fifth dimension containing all of time and space."⁴⁸ This is a striking metaphor. Think of it this way: just as time is an additional dimension beyond the three dimensions of space, God's eternity is an additional dimension beyond the four dimensions of spacetime. God's eternal present "contains" the entire spacetime block, and everything in it is immediately present to God.

Now, Rogers is careful to clarify what she means by this. She is not claiming that eternity is literally a spatial dimension. Rather, she is trying to express the idea that "all of time is equally present to God's eternity since it is God's eternal activity which causes it all to be." God is "the source of each temporal instant. He is not contained in any of the temporal instants, but is directly, causally, and cognitively related to each and every one of them equally."⁴⁹

On Rogers's view, God sustains the entire spacetime manifold by a single, eternal act. God knows and causally acts upon all of spacetime "in one, eternal, act." This is a form of what she calls theistic idealism — the view that all creaturely existence depends entirely on God's sustaining thought. As Rogers puts it, for "a creature to be, then, is to be thought by God. There is nothing more to a creature than what God is thinking."⁵⁰

This model has several attractive features for the atemporalist. First, it solves the problem of God's relation to creation. Unlike some classical atemporalists (like Aquinas), Rogers does not deny that God is really related to creation. She explicitly rejects the medieval doctrine that God has no real relations with the world — she finds that view "incredibly difficult" to maintain.⁵¹ On her model, God is directly, causally, and cognitively related to every event in spacetime. He simply sustains the entire block at once rather than sustaining it moment by moment.

Second, the model seems to explain God's knowledge of the temporal world without requiring any change in God. If all of spacetime is equally present to God in His eternal act, then God does not need to update His knowledge as time passes. He knows the entire contents of the spacetime block in one comprehensive, timeless act of cognition. There is no problem of God "finding out" what happens next, because for God, there is no "next" — everything is already present.⁵²

Third, the model preserves the temporal ordering of events within the block. Events within spacetime still have their temporal relations to each other — A comes before B, B comes before C, and so on. The temporal order is not destroyed. It is simply that God, from His timeless vantage point in the "fifth dimension," comprehends the entire temporal order at once, rather than experiencing it sequentially.

T. J. Mawson agrees with Rogers's general approach. He argues that one should be "agnostic at first as to which ontology of time is correct," then reflect on what a perfect being would be like, and then choose the metaphysics of time that allows God to have the greatest possible perfection. On this approach, four-dimensional eternalism wins because "God would know more if four-dimensional eternalism were true, than He would if presentism were true."⁵³

Rogers also argues that her model follows naturally from divine simplicity. Since God is simple, all of His actions are one action. There is no distinction between God's act of creating, His act of sustaining, His act of knowing, and His act of willing. They are all one simple, eternal act. And since all of God's creative and sustaining activity is one eternal act, the created world must be "always present to God's eternity. There is no point before creation at which God exists alone and then a later point at which He exists with creation."⁵⁴

Now, as Mullins points out, there are serious problems with this model — including the worry that a "fifth dimension" is not really a coherent concept. As the philosopher Evan Fales has observed, dimensions do not typically "contain" other dimensions. A timeless God does not have a metrical topology (a way of measuring distances within His mode of existence). And given divine simplicity, the "fifth dimension" would have to be a dimensionless point — but a point cannot be a dimension.⁵⁵

Mullins also argues that Rogers's model does not actually succeed in preserving divine timelessness. If God is really related to temporal things — causally sustaining each temporal instant, cognitively aware of the temporal order — then God has temporal properties. And if God has temporal properties, then "God is temporal as understood on four-dimensional eternalism."⁵⁶

But these are objections that belong to Chapter 6. Here, I want to acknowledge the ingenuity of Rogers's proposal. She has taken the interaction problem seriously and has attempted a creative solution that draws together perfect being theology, four-dimensional eternalism, theistic idealism, and divine simplicity into a unified model. Even if the model ultimately fails (as I believe it does), it represents the atemporalist tradition at its most resourceful and imaginative.

VII. Perfect Being Theology and the Case for Timelessness

Before we close this chapter, it is worth stepping back and noticing something about the overall structure of the case for divine timelessness. Several of the arguments we have examined share a common root: they all appeal, in one way or another, to the idea that timelessness is a perfection — that a timeless God is greater, more perfect, and more worthy of worship than a temporal God.

This way of thinking about God is called "perfect being theology." It traces its roots to Anselm's famous definition of God as "the being than which nothing greater can be conceived." On this approach, we should attribute to God whatever properties make Him the greatest conceivable being. If timelessness is greater than temporality — if a life possessed all at once is more perfect than a life lived in succession — then God must be timeless.

This reasoning runs through the incompleteness argument (a temporal life is less perfect than a timeless one), through the simplicity and immutability arguments (a simple, unchanging being is more perfect than a complex, changing one), and through Rogers's "fifth dimension" model (God's perfection requires the most complete mode of existence possible). In each case, the atemporalist is claiming that timelessness belongs to God because it is intrinsically better — more perfect, more complete, more self-sufficient — than temporality.

Mullins has helpfully noted the role that certain value judgments and metaphysical principles play in this reasoning. He observes that "everyone brings their own value-judgements and metaphysical principles to the table when they engage in perfect being theology." The question of whether timelessness is a great-making property or not is not a question that can be settled by logic alone. It depends on deeper assumptions about what counts as perfection.⁵⁷

One principle that has played a major role in the history of perfect being theology is what Mullins calls the "Platonic Assumption" — the metaphysical principle that there are no value-neutral changes. On this assumption, every change is either for the better or for the worse. If God changes, then either He was imperfect before the change (and changed for the better) or He is imperfect after the change (and changed for the worse). Either way, change implies imperfection. Therefore, a perfect being cannot change, and since temporal existence involves change, a perfect being cannot be temporal.⁵⁸

Helm, in his influential Eternal God, develops a version of this argument rooted in the classical tradition's understanding of the creator-creature distinction. He argues that whatever is created is finite, whatever is finite is mutable, and whatever is mutable is in time. Conversely, whatever is the creator is infinite, whatever is infinite is immutable, and whatever is immutable is outside of time.⁵⁹ On this view, timelessness is not just one perfection among many — it is a necessary consequence of being the infinite, immutable creator of all things.

I want to be upfront with you: I do not find these arguments for timelessness-as-perfection ultimately convincing. I believe, as I will argue in later chapters, that temporal existence is not a deficiency but a positive feature of God's life — the life of a dynamic, living, personal, relational God who genuinely acts, responds, loves, and creates. But I recognize the force of the atemporalist's intuition. There is something deeply appealing about the idea that God is free from the limitations of time — that His life is not marked by loss, waiting, or incompleteness. The question, ultimately, is whether this picture of divine perfection can be maintained without sacrificing the biblical portrait of a God who truly engages with His creatures in time.

VIII. The Cumulative Case and What Comes Next

We have now surveyed the six strongest arguments for divine timelessness. Let me briefly summarize each one:

The argument from divine simplicity says that a strictly simple being cannot have temporal parts — different phases or stages in its life — and therefore must be timeless. If simplicity is true, timelessness follows virtually by logical necessity.

The argument from divine immutability says that a being who exists in time must undergo at least Cambridge changes (changes in relational properties due to changes in the world), and since God cannot change in any respect, He must be outside of time.

The argument from relativity theory says that Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, on its standard Minkowskian interpretation, supports a static "block universe" in which all times are equally real — and this block universe picture naturally supports divine timelessness.

The argument from the incompleteness of temporal life says that a temporal being's life is always partially past (lost) and partially future (not yet possessed), while a perfect being's life should be complete and whole — possessed "all at once." Only a timeless being can possess its life in this complete way.

The Stump-Kretzmann model of ET-simultaneity proposes a special relation between eternity and time that allows a timeless God to be "present" to every moment of temporal reality without Himself being in time. This is an ingenious attempt to solve the interaction problem for divine timelessness.

Rogers's "fifth dimension" proposal says that God's eternity functions as a dimension that contains the entire four-dimensional spacetime block. God sustains all of spacetime by a single eternal act, and everything in history is immediately present to Him.

Taken together, these arguments form a cumulative case that is genuinely formidable. They draw on metaphysics (simplicity, immutability), physics (relativity), philosophy of value (perfect being theology), and creative philosophical modeling (ET-simultaneity, the fifth dimension). They represent centuries of brilliant philosophical and theological work by some of the finest minds in the Christian tradition.

Notice, too, how the arguments reinforce each other. The simplicity argument and the immutability argument work together — simplicity entails immutability, and both entail timelessness. The relativity argument provides independent, scientific support for the block universe, which fits naturally with timelessness. The incompleteness argument appeals to our deepest intuitions about divine perfection. And the ET-simultaneity model and Rogers's fifth dimension are both creative attempts to address the most pressing objection to timelessness — the interaction problem. Each argument, on its own, makes a case worth taking seriously. Together, they make a case that has convinced some of the greatest theologians and philosophers in the history of the church.

I want to be clear: I have presented these arguments at their strongest because I believe they deserve to be heard at their strongest. I have not caricatured them, weakened them, or set up straw men. The atemporalist tradition has produced powerful arguments, and intellectual honesty requires us to acknowledge that before we respond.

But I also believe — and I will argue in Chapter 6 — that every one of these arguments can be answered. The simplicity argument depends on a doctrine (strict classical simplicity) that faces devastating problems of its own. The immutability argument depends on a version of immutability (strict, total unchangeableness) that goes far beyond what Scripture teaches. The relativity argument depends on a particular philosophical interpretation of the physics — one that is not the only option. The incompleteness argument assumes that temporal life is inherently deficient — but this assumption is precisely what the temporalist denies. The Stump-Kretzmann model has been shown to be either explanatorily vacuous or viciously circular. And Rogers's "fifth dimension" creates more problems than it solves.

In the next chapter, we will work through each of these responses in detail. And then, beyond those responses, we will present positive arguments against divine timelessness — arguments showing that a timeless God cannot be a person, cannot be really related to creation, cannot know what time it is now, cannot become incarnate, cannot genuinely respond to His creatures with emotion, and cannot cause creation without Himself changing. The cumulative case against divine timelessness, I believe, is even more powerful than the cumulative case for it.

But that is the work of Chapter 6. For now, we have done something important: we have heard the strongest case the atemporalist can make. We have taken it seriously, examined it carefully, and felt its force. That is the foundation for everything that follows.

Footnotes

¹ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 3, aa. 1–8; q. 10, aa. 1–6. Aquinas's treatment of divine simplicity and eternity remains the most comprehensive classical statement of these doctrines. ↩

² R. T. Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), chap. 3, "What Is Divine Timelessness?" under "Divine Simplicity." ↩

³ William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001), 30. ↩

⁴ Craig, Time and Eternity, 30. ↩

⁵ Anselm, Incarnation of the Word, VII, cited in Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 3, "What Is Divine Timelessness?" under "Divine Simplicity." ↩

⁶ Peter Lombard, Sentences I, Dist. VIII.3, cited in Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 3, "What Is Divine Timelessness?" under "Divine Simplicity." ↩

⁷ Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 3, "What Is Divine Timelessness?" under "Divine Simplicity." ↩

⁸ R. T. Mullins, From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker, Routledge Studies in Analytic and Systematic Theology (London: Routledge, 2025), chap. 1, "Classical Theism and Divine Timelessness." ↩

⁹ Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 10, a. 1–2. God's eternity follows from His immutability, which follows from His simplicity, which follows from His being pure act (actus purus). ↩

¹⁰ Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 3, "What Is Divine Timelessness?" under "Concluding Remarks." Mullins argues that simplicity, immutability, and timelessness form an interlocking package that stands or falls together. ↩

¹¹ Craig, Time and Eternity, 30–31. Craig notes the logical chain from pure act to simplicity to immutability to timelessness. ↩

¹² Paul Helm, Eternal God: A Study of God without Time, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), chap. 1, "God and Time." Helm defines immutability as requiring the absence of even "merely Cambridge" temporal and spatial changes. ↩

¹³ Craig, Time and Eternity, 31. Craig provides this catalogue of the changes a temporal God would undergo. ↩

¹⁴ Craig, Time and Eternity, 31. ↩

¹⁵ Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 6, "Divine Timelessness and Four-Dimensional Eternalism," under "Four-Dimensional Eternalism Does Not Save Divine Timelessness." ↩

¹⁶ Helm, Eternal God, chap. 1, "God and Time." ↩

¹⁷ Natalja Deng, God and Time, Elements in the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), sec. 3, "God Beyond Time." ↩

¹⁸ Mullins, From Divine Timemaker, chap. 1, "Classical Theism and Divine Timelessness." Mullins notes that even relational descriptions like "Creator" were denied as properties of a simple God. ↩

¹⁹ Craig, Time and Eternity, 31. ↩

²⁰ For accessible introductions to the relativity of simultaneity, see Craig, Time and Eternity, chap. 4, "God and Physical Time"; and Deng, God and Time, sec. 2, "Time and Persistence." ↩

²¹ Hermann Minkowski, "Raum und Zeit" (Space and Time), lecture delivered at the 80th Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians, Cologne, September 21, 1908. Minkowski famously declared, "Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality." ↩

²² Craig, Time and Eternity, 168–169. ↩

²³ Craig, Time and Eternity, 170–171. ↩

²⁴ Craig, Time and Eternity, 171–172. ↩

²⁵ Craig, Time and Eternity, 172–173. ↩

²⁶ Deng, God and Time, sec. 2, "Time and Persistence." ↩

²⁷ Deng, God and Time, sec. 2, "Time and Persistence." Deng mentions the neo-Lorentzian interpretation as one strategy for reconciling relativity with the A-theory. ↩

²⁸ Garrett J. DeWeese, God and the Nature of Time, Routledge Philosophy of Religion Series (London: Routledge, 2004), chap. 3, "God and Relativity Theory." ↩

²⁹ Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, V, prose 6. The Latin reads: Aeternitas ... est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio. ↩

³⁰ Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, V, prose 6. Cited and discussed in DeWeese, God and the Nature of Time, chap. 5, "Atemporal Duration, Timelessness, and Time." ↩

³¹ Katherin Rogers, "Anselmian Eternalism: The Presence of a Timeless God," Faith and Philosophy 24 (2007): 7, cited in Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 6, "Divine Timelessness and Four-Dimensional Eternalism," under "Katherin Rogers Into the Fifth Dimension." ↩

³² See the discussions in Helm, Eternal God, chap. 2, "Eternity and Timelessness"; and Katherin Rogers, Perfect Being Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), chaps. 3–4. ↩

³³ DeWeese, God and the Nature of Time, chap. 5, "Atemporal Duration, Timelessness, and Time." ↩

³⁴ William Lane Craig, "On the Argument for Divine Timelessness from the Incompleteness of Temporal Life," Heythrop Journal 38 (1997): 165–171. Craig argues that the Boethian argument confuses the mode of possessing one's life (temporal vs. atemporal) with the degree of perfection of one's life. ↩

³⁵ Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, "Eternity," Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981): 429–458. This article is one of the most cited and discussed in the contemporary literature on divine eternity. ↩

³⁶ Stump and Kretzmann, "Eternity," 436–439. ↩

³⁷ Craig, Time and Eternity, 90. Craig explains that Stump and Kretzmann "propose to treat modes of existence as analogous to reference frames." ↩

³⁸ Stump and Kretzmann, "Eternity," 439. The definition is also presented in DeWeese, God and the Nature of Time, chap. 8, "Eternal-Temporal Simultaneity: Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann," and in Craig, Time and Eternity, 90. ↩

³⁹ Stump and Kretzmann, "Eternity," 439–441. The non-transitivity of ET-simultaneity is crucial to avoiding the collapse of the temporal order. ↩

⁴⁰ Stump and Kretzmann, "Eternity," 447. They present a set of propositions designed to show that their model avoids Kenny's objection. See also Gregory E. Ganssle, ed., God and Time: Four Views (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2001), 37, where Helm discusses the Stump-Kretzmann response to Kenny. ↩

⁴¹ Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, "Eternity, Awareness, and Action," Faith and Philosophy 9 (1992): 477–478. The revised definition replaces observation language with causal-relation language. Also discussed in Deng, God and Time, sec. 3, "God Beyond Time." ↩

⁴² Craig, Time and Eternity, 91. Craig argues that the language of "observation" in the original definition is "wholly obscure." ↩

⁴³ DeWeese, God and the Nature of Time, chap. 8, "Eternal-Temporal Simultaneity: Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann." ↩

⁴⁴ Paul Helm, cited in Craig, Time and Eternity, 91. Helm's critique is especially striking because he himself defends divine timelessness. See also Ganssle, God and Time: Four Views, 37. ↩

⁴⁵ Craig, Time and Eternity, 92. ↩

⁴⁶ Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 173. Leftow concludes that "any definition of ET-simultaneity which invokes any form of ET-causality...is implicitly circular." Cited in Craig, Time and Eternity, 92. ↩

⁴⁷ Katherin Rogers, Perfect Being Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), chaps. 3–4. See also Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 6, "Divine Timelessness and Four-Dimensional Eternalism," under "Katherin Rogers Into the Fifth Dimension." ↩

⁴⁸ Katherin Rogers, "Anselmian Eternalism: The Presence of a Timeless God," Faith and Philosophy 24 (2007): 6, cited in Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 6, "Divine Timelessness and Four-Dimensional Eternalism," under "Katherin Rogers Into the Fifth Dimension." ↩

⁴⁹ Katherin Rogers, "Anselm on Eternity as the Fifth Dimension," The Saint Anselm Journal 3 (2006): 2, and Rogers, "Anselmian Eternalism," 8, both cited in Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 6, under "Katherin Rogers Into the Fifth Dimension." ↩

⁵⁰ Rogers, Perfect Being Theology, 109, cited in Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 6, under "Katherin Rogers Into the Fifth Dimension." ↩

⁵¹ Katherin Rogers, "Back to Eternalism: A Response to Leftow's Anselmian Presentism," Faith and Philosophy 26 (2009): 336, cited in Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 6, under "Reaping the Benefits of Four-Dimensional Eternalism." ↩

⁵² Rogers, "Anselmian Eternalism," 8–9. If all events exist in the spacetime block, God knows them all by sustaining them all eternally. ↩

⁵³ T. J. Mawson, "Divine Eternity," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 64 (2008): 35–50, cited in Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 6, under "Katherin Rogers Into the Fifth Dimension." ↩

⁵⁴ Rogers, "Anselm on Eternity as the Fifth Dimension," 3, cited in Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 6, under "Katherin Rogers Into the Fifth Dimension." ↩

⁵⁵ Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 6, "Divine Timelessness and Four-Dimensional Eternalism," under "Leaving the Fifth Dimension Behind." Mullins cites Evan Fales's three objections to the fifth-dimension concept. ↩

⁵⁶ Mullins, End of the Timeless God, chap. 6, "Divine Timelessness and Four-Dimensional Eternalism," under "Four-Dimensional Eternalism Does Not Save Divine Timelessness." ↩

⁵⁷ Mullins, From Divine Timemaker, chap. 2, "God's Relationship to Time." Mullins discusses the role of value judgments in perfect being theology. ↩

⁵⁸ Mullins, From Divine Timemaker, chap. 2, "God's Relationship to Time." Mullins calls this the "Platonic Assumption" and traces its influence on the immutability-timelessness argument. ↩

⁵⁹ Helm, Eternal God, chap. 1, "God and Time." Helm develops the argument that immutability follows from infinity and timelessness follows from immutability. ↩

⁶⁰ Ryan Mullins, God, Time, and the Incarnation (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 122–123. Mullins notes the contrast between the biblical meaning of God's changelessness (remaining the same through time) and the classical atemporalist's technical meaning (unable to change because outside of time entirely). ↩

⁶¹ Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 10, a. 1. Aquinas draws the conclusion from immutability that there is no before and after in God and that God's existence is "simultaneously whole." Cited and discussed in Mullins, God, Time, and the Incarnation, 122–123. ↩

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