Abstract

This dissertation seeks to demonstrate the thesis that a conception of eternity as necessarily atemporal is unwarranted for evangelicals in light of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In the literature on God's relation to time, atemporalism is the view that God's eternal existence involves either no experience of distinct moments or an experience of all moments simultaneously. Temporalism, on the other hand, is the technical term for the notion that God's eternal existence involves an essential experience of moments successively. Two attempts to define eternity as temporal or atemporal are examined and found wanting, and it is suggested that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo could inform evangelicals on the matter.

Evangelicals are rightly committed to this doctrine of creation ex nihilo, that God alone existed until he freely created something other than himself. Historical, biblical, and doctrinal warrant for this doctrine is affirmed, and the dissertation's basic argument then follows: Creation ex nihilo says that God created the spiritual and physical realms—a “world”—not from his own substance, nor from a primordial matrix co-eternal with him. God alone existed without a world, but now exists with a world that he freely called into existence. Thus, two non-identical, non-concurrent conditions in God's existence are revealed in his own free decision to create ex nihilo. These conditions in God's existence are therefore successive, suggesting the temporal view of eternity, as opposed to the atemporal view, because God himself is understood to enjoy an essential experience of “time” as an ordered succession of moments.

Evangelicals must consider whether this notion of God's essential experience of moments as successive, rather than simultaneous, is a proper conception of eternity. The classical Hellenistic conception is that time is antithetical to divine existence. This view has influenced Christian theology for centuries, but this dissertation suggests that theological indicators from the doctrine of creation ex nihilo may allow evangelicals to break with that atemporal tradition if it can be shown that succession in God's existence does not entail a denial of divine immutability. Succession that is not God-changing in an ontological sense would then allow the temporal view as a credible option and eternity as necessarily atemporal would be unwarranted. To arrive at this conclusion does not mean that a conception of eternity as necessarily temporal is warranted, or even the superior view, but it would provide a foundation for further investigation of both notions.

To be palatable to evangelicals the temporal notion would have to affirm a strong sense of divine immutability. This dissertation proposes that the atemporal tradition has led such discussions astray by wrongly making God's atemporal mode of existence that which affords him his immutability and omniscience. A proper theological method for evangelicals would require that immutability and omniscience be logically prior to any determination about God's mode of existence. Given such a method, evangelicals may increasingly accept the temporal conception of eternity as a credible alternative to the atemporalist tradition, at least if a commitment to creation ex nihilo is retained. To reject the suggested method leaves evangelicals open to a misguided debate with emerging temporal views such as Open Theism, where the debate is not so much God's relation to time, but whether God is mutable and nescient of the future.