The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation

Episode 127 - Beyond Time: Can God Be Both Immutable and Interactive?

• Paul

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Does God have conversations? It seems like a simple question with an obvious biblical answer, yet it opens up one of the most profound theological tensions in Christian thought.

The concept of divine immutability—that God does not change—has traditionally been linked with the philosophical idea that God exists outside of time altogether, in an "eternal moment" without sequence, without before and after. But this raises a crucial question: how do we reconcile this timeless vision of God with the biblical portrayal of the Trinity in active relationship? Throughout Scripture, we witness the Father speaking to the Son, the Son responding to the Father, and both remembering the past and looking forward to the future.

When we explore these divine conversations, we find ourselves confronting fundamental questions about the nature of personhood itself. If there is no genuine interaction between Father, Son, and Spirit—if they share a single consciousness with no sequential dialogue—then what remains of the Trinity as three distinct persons? And if God cannot engage in sequential interactions within the Godhead, how can He meaningfully engage with us, His time-bound creatures? Does God actually respond to our prayers, or is that merely how we perceive things from our limited perspective?

The incarnation presents a particularly striking challenge to the timeless view. Scripture clearly teaches that the Son, who was not previously human, became flesh at a specific moment in history. He lived, died, and rose again—a sequence of events that cannot be flattened into an eternal moment without doing violence to the biblical narrative.

This tension between philosophical timelessness and biblical relationality isn't just an academic exercise—it shapes how we understand our relationship with God and how we read Scripture itself. Are the Bible's descriptions of God's interactions merely "baby talk" accommodations to our limited understanding? Or are they faithful revelations of who God truly is?

Join us as we navigate this theological tightrope, examining diverse Christian perspectives and considering whether we've sometimes allowed Greek philosophical concepts to override the clear testimony of Scripture. Subscribe now to engage with these profound questions that challenge us to think more deeply about the God who reveals Himself as both transcendent and intimately relational.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Speaker 1:

Well, welcome back to the Christ-centered cosmic civilization. And we are continuing to explore how God is immutable. And what does it mean when we confess that the Lord does not change? And we're right into the depths of a meditation on the idea that God is timeless, meaning and the claim is made that God does not change because God is timeless in the sense of having absolutely no sequence of before, does wills, before, during and after, with the prima facie language of the Bible. Because the Bible does seem to describe conversations within the Trinity the Father speaking to the Son and then the Son responding to the Father, and the Father, son and Spirit remembering things and looking forward to things. And really the point I want to push at with this Is it the case that there are personal interactions between the Father, son and Spirit within the Trinity, like, do they relate to each other as persons with relationships that have activity within them, that they are interactive with one another? Now that at super again, people would go well, of course the father, son and spirit interact with one another because they are persons and they have this total fulfillment in one another and enjoyment of one another's company, and language has been used throughout church history to like there's a word called perichoresis and this idea of this lively interaction and interdependence with one another and all of that. But even leaving aside those abstract ideas, the Bible seems to just obviously describe conversations happening within the Trinity. And years ago, like 35 or more years ago, when I was reading the Puritans a huge amount, particularly Thomas Goodwin and Sibbes and people like that, some of my absolute favorite bits that are still intensely moving to me to this day and Spurgeon does this as well in the 19th century take those conversations within the Trinity that are mentioned in Scripture and then they would preach them and kind of get into them with reverence and awe and worship and so on, like open up those conversations and, you know, fill out the words of the father and fill out the words of the son and imagine what the father was feeling and how the son responds and and how important that is to us and how we it's about church and about our confidence and all those like, if you've never read those things in the Puritans or Spurgeon and how, where they kind of open up these conversations within the Trinity, it's so delightful and just so heartwarming Now for me that really spoke to me and so those parts of scripture that really do that and give us this insight into the way the Father, son and Spirit relate to one another and interact with one another and talk to one another, to me are really precious, and some of the parts of scripture that move me most and satisfy me intellectually as well to understand the nature of the Trinity.

Speaker 1:

But I remember talking to a theologian at St Paul's Cathedral or just next to St Paul's Cathedral this is going way, way back to before I was ordained as a minister and in the process of being examined whether I was a suitable candidate ridiculous the idea that the Trinity that the Father, son and Spirit had and this is again abstract language. But he said it like this that they have separate consciousnesses and the idea was that they had exactly the same consciousness, exactly the same consciousness, exactly the same mind, such that there is no need for them to ever talk to one another because they have exactly the same consciousness and mind, like there's one single mind, one single consciousness, uh, so that they there is no person, there's no like one person talking to another person or anything like that, because there's just a single mind. And I, I was like horrified. Horrified by that, um, and he, because he was explained. I think he was sort of motivated by this idea that there can't be any sequence of conversation within god. And so to him the solution. And he didn't even like the idea that the members of the Trinity interacted with one another, because he felt that was it was not language that should be taken literally, but for him there was a single mind, a single consciousness, so that there is, to be honest, I came away thinking partly I was quite upset by that, but also I came away thinking I'm not sure to what extent that is Trinitarian, that is, how is that not Unitarian?

Speaker 1:

That is like, if there is a single mind, a single consciousness, I don't know in what sense there are three persons at all. That sounds like a single person, a single person who maybe has three aspects to them or something, but I can't see in any substantial way that that is three hypostasis, three persons. Anyway, let's just push into this idea that the Trinity, because I'm saying I don't, I can't accept that idea that effectively that God is a single person who just has a single consciousness, single mind, and that there's no. There is no, because genuine conversation has a sequence of dialogue. First one speaks, then another responds and so on, and the idea sometimes again, when I've discussed this with people, they'll say but the father knows what the son is going to say, and the son knows what the father is going to say, and so what's the point of having any conversation, any any sequence of, of, of backwards and forwards? That kind of again is a kind of very, very sad thing, because you might speak to many people, uh, particularly someone you know very, very well, and you know what they're going to say, even just like greeting hello, and then they'll say hello, and then how are you doing? I'm not doing so bad, and things like that.

Speaker 1:

Now, now, is there any point in having any of that kind of personal interaction and relationship if you already know what the person is going to say? Or is it not the case that part of the enjoyment of the relationship is the predictability, that you kind of know the heart of that person, and not just with that superficial greetings, but even when you get into deep, deep conversations and interactions with the person, that you kind of do know where they're coming from and the kind of thing they're going to say, or even you may know almost exactly what they're going to say but you like that. You want that. You enjoy that they are like that and what they say and how they say it. You want that they are like that and what they say and how they say it. You want that. And the fact that you know that they're going to say that doesn't diminish the conversation but enhances it. But personal interactions have that backwards and forwards character to them, from one person to another and backwards and forwards, and an enjoyment of the interaction and an appreciation of that.

Speaker 1:

If there is no past, present or future, no sequence within the Trinity, no sequence of before or after, then how can there be any personal interactions within God or at least in any way that makes any sense to us at all? And what does that do to the language of the Bible? If we're saying all the language, that is just of the conversations within the Trinity, to be discounted as something that is okay for, like children, but is not, once you go beyond the like, the way that, like the father and the son, you go beyond that to realise that there are no personal interactions within the Trinity, that's like oh how ghastly, but even not. Let's expand this out slightly because, of course, the personal interactions within the Trinity, I think are immensely important because they are the source and the guarantee of all personal interactions in the universe. And if the if it's the case that within the trinity there isn't personal interaction in any sense, in any way that meaningful or comprehensible or relatable for any creature, angel or human or animal or whatever if there isn't anything that any of us, then it kind of is a huge diminishment of the basis of personhood and relationship in the universe itself. But this is the point how can there be, even if there are no personal interactions within the Trinity, because there's no sequences of before, present and after, how can there be any personal interactions outside of God with us in any way that's meaningful to us? Again, this idea, then, is the father responds to our request in some way, um, and that that it. But if it's the case that none of that is to be taken, that doesn't actually happen. The Father doesn't have any sequential relationships with us in any way. That's a problem. It raises quite serious questions, first of all about whether the Father, son and Spirit ever converse with one another. First of all about whether the Father, son and Spirit ever converse with one another. And then, do they even converse with us in any meaningful sense or any way that makes sense to us and the way the Bible seems to depict these relationships.

Speaker 1:

So some have argued right that these verses, the ones we've looked at and many others, should not be understood in a literal way, because it's impossible for divinity to have sequential actions and events, and the idea is that we are confined within time. Confined within time, we are like sometimes they've even used the language of we are imprisoned within time or limited by time. We are limited by belonging to a past, present and future timeline, and then implicit in that is the idea that it is much that it is. There is a freedom, or or it is more unlimited to exist in a ghastly existence, but nevertheless, the idea is that we are confined within time, meaning we can only think in terms of one event happening after another in a sequential order. That's like we are in, that we are. We are constantly crippled by sequential thinking, and so the father and son are described in that way To make sense to us. But we should not think of the father and the son as really being like that, or that they, they interact with one another that way. So this is the common argument.

Speaker 1:

So there is this tradition of Christian thought that I think reverently concludes that the way that the Bible depicts the living God interacting is not how the Trinity really is, or metaphorical language designed to make God accessible, to overcome those limitations and see that God is not the way. That isn't of scripture superficially. But they can discern a deeper strata of the Bible because they've been able to break out of this time limitation or intellect limitation and they can perceive this deeper strata within the Bible in which the Father, son and Spirit don't have sequential conversations and don't have any relation, certainly no conversations in that sense at all. Now the question is, how could we know that that is true If everything in the Bible describes the Father, son and Spirit in a way where there is a past, they live in God, they look, they remember things, they currently do and say and think and feel things and then they look forward to things. That is pretty consistent throughout the Bible, that sort of language, and that the once was a time when the son was not incarnate, then he is incarnate, then he ascends back to the father as the God man, and so on, and that does all of that language seems to be clearly sequential language and that there is a looking forward to the end of the world.

Speaker 1:

That has not yet happened? Certainly not. But it's not even happened for the Father, son and Spirit either. Really, I can't see how we could say that. But how could, how could we know that there's this, that the language of the Bible, the language of the Bible, the superficial language of the Bible, is not correct and that we need to translate the language of the Bible into this completely different category of language? From what perspective can we tell which language of the Bible is baby talk and which language of the Bible is adult talk or serious talk or non-metaphorical talk or something?

Speaker 1:

See, the Bible does use all kinds of figures of speech, from parables to metaphors, extended stories. It's got typology, all kinds of things like that, many kinds of it. There are whole stories, sequences of stories that have a symbolic and typological meaning, and the Bible shows us how to identify and understand these patterns. And that's why it's very important that the Bible spends so much time quoting and interpreting the Bible, because the Bible shows us how to use the Bible, and that's something I've devoted my whole life to, that idea that the Bible shows us how to use the Bible and seeing how the Bible quotes the Bible, and that's how we learn, when you know how to discern what is a metaphor, what's a parable, what's typology, what's symbolic. The Bible teaches us that it's not that we go.

Speaker 1:

I think that this is the case because I, you know, I do think, as we, we did some lectures on the Arian controversy and Arius does seem to have this, this philosophy where he says well, the Bible cannot mean that Jesus is God in the same way that the father is God, because that doesn't make philosophical sense, because he, arius, had this philosophical idea that true divinity can only belong to the father, because true divinity cannot become flesh, cannot suffer, cannot die, cannot get involved in the universe the way that God, the Son, has done. Let us use this deep philosophical system to grade and handle the Bible so that we make sure it's saying what we already know. It must say kind of thing. Now, of course, the ancient church fathers from all over the world, especially Athanasius, said. Others from all over the world, especially Athanasius, said no, the only system of thought that can fit Jesus has to begin with Jesus and therefore you can't bring some extra biblical philosophical system and then impose it on the Bible to then force the Bible to say what you kind of already know it must say we can't do that, because where have we got that from? We have to come to the Bible and be really sensitive and sort of be watching ourselves. And this is why we have to read the Bible as a community, as a church community, as a global church community, so that we kind of challenge one another to say, hang on, like, are you really saying what the Bible itself is saying? Be careful not to bring with you an alien philosophical system. Now, this idea that there's, like the Bible, consistently just has the Father, son and Spirit having conversations with one another and planning things in advance and remembering things, and the claim that none of this, that all of this language of the Bible and it's not like a small part of the Bible, this is huge across the whole of the Bible that that has to be comprehensively translated into an entirely different perspective, that makes me super nervous. The claim is that those who think more deeply are able to go beyond the baby talk language of scripture to glimpse something of this non-sequential vision of God, a vision where God does not change in any absolute metaphysical sense. So it's genuinely hard to get beyond the fact that the Bible does present the Trinity in sequential action and again I've hinted at this, but let's just get into this especially when we think about the second person of the Trinity.

Speaker 1:

The Bible teaches that once he was not a human like us, and then he was born of the Virgin Mary, he became flesh. So that person, that divine person, who is God, the son eternally begotten of the father, that person, person, that person became flesh and is now a divine human person forevermore. And the ancient church fathers were very careful to say that. It's not that when we think about Jesus of Nazareth, what we can't say is that Jesus of Nazareth, operating within the space-time continuum, that is only his humanity, and then his divinity remains in a say, timeless, not part of the space time continuum or something, or like dividing the natures so that they remain isolated from each other and remain like totally separated or anything like that. No, like the ancient creeds were like, without dividing them, without separating these natures, that this one person, god the Son, is all that divinity is and simultaneously everything that humanity is, but he's just one person. So that one person is the divine human person forever, and so the son. The person of the son has had a sequential history Before he became flesh, then he became flesh and as flesh he has a biography.

Speaker 1:

So, revelation 1, verses 17 to 18, the glorified Lord Jesus declares I am the first and the last. Now, just on that, do you remember when we looked at those scriptures throughout the Old Testament? Remember when we looked at those scriptures throughout the Old Testament where the Lord God would declare himself to be I am the first, I am the last, these very, very strong declarations of this transcendent deity, the transcendent deity of the Lord God who has this kind of view of history and rule over history, so that he is at the beginning of the universe and he is the one who will be at the end of the universe, like that. And so this glorified Lord Jesus declares I am the first and the last, I am the living one. I was dead and now, look, I am alive forever and ever. So that same lord god who is the first and the last, describes a sequence of events in his life I was dead, I am and I will remain alive forever and ever. It's hard to see how he could be alive, then dead, then alive again, without a certain sequence of events. That is a sequence of events. That is a sequence of events connected to this. There's I mean, there's so many verses like that, but just the classic john 3, 16.

Speaker 1:

We're told that god, the father, sent his only begotten son to save the world. I mean, doesn't that mean there was a time before the Father sent his Son, a time during which his Son was on earth? And then a time when the Son ascended to the Father, such that the ascended divine human Son is described as currently seated at the right hand of the father? And then, even stepping back, just the idea of a creation, a creation, the creation was created at a point there was a beginning to the creation. Now, was the has the creation? Is it that there was a time? Was there a time before the creation of the universe?

Speaker 1:

The Bible actually speaks about that, that before the creation of the universe, like the father chose the son, or before the foundation of the world, even that, the idea that Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world, even that, the idea that jesus was slain before the foundation of the world, and that that's that's a deep thought, what that means. But, but if there was, if the father, what, how? But let me put it this way has the father always is he, is him being the creator. Is he eternally and essentially the creator, or is it that he became the creator when he created the universe? Is God, doesn't change, because God doesn't have a past, present or future, doesn't have a before and after, but exists in an eternal moment of where everything that God can do is done, everything that God will say is said, felt, willed, everything in this eternal moment. So there's no necessity of past, present or future, because it's all accomplished in this single moment. If that is the case, then the universe has always existed because the act of creation, the universe is also part of that eternal moment. So there has never been a before. The universe is also part of that eternal moment, so there has never been a before the universe.

Speaker 1:

You know I hope that makes sense that if the act of creating the universe is part of this eternal moment, then the, the creation, the heavens and the earth and and the creatures in it and everything are eternal, are part of that eternal moment. The universe is as eternal as the Father, son and Spirit, which I mean. That thought, I know. I could imagine someone listening to that and saying what? I can't understand that, no, I get that, but try to just chew on that idea that if everything that God does is done in this eternal moment, then that includes the creation of the universe and that means that the universe itself is eternal and that, I think, really isn't taught in the Bible. I think that raises enormous problems with the doctrine of creation. So let's pull this because we'll need to in the next episode to begin on that second philosophical idea that God is simple.

Speaker 1:

But let me conclude this by saying it's by no means straightforward to integrate a timeless concept of divinity with the historical Trinitarian God of the Bible. It's not straightforward to integrate the idea that God exists in an eternal moment without past, present or future, and that there are no sequence of events, no sequence of thoughts or words or conversations within the life of the Trinity. Everything is done, said, felt, willed, completely simultaneously in this eternal moment. That idea comes from a different philosophical tradition. It's been attempted to integrate that with the historical Trinitarian God of the Bible and I'm saying, at the very least, what we say is that isn't a straightforward thing to do and if a person says and I've had people say to me that view that God has no sequence of before or after or anything like that is essential. You have to believe that and if you don't believe that you're a heretic. I've had people say that to me. I think what I want to argue is I think that is at least overstating the case, because I just can't see how to integrate that with the historical Trinitarian God of the Bible.

Speaker 1:

Now, there is a long tradition of Christians and I want to say this really clearly and wholeheartedly there is a long tradition of godly Christians who have, with sincere devotion and reverent care, tried to do it, to integrate that notion of a timeless God with the Trinitarian God of the Bible. And there's books I've read that come from that kind of tradition of attempting to do that, some of which I've enjoyed, like the devotion, the intellectual power of it, intellectual power of it. But some traditions in global Christianity absolutely reject that concept of God, a timeless God, absolutely reject it, and not all Christians are persuaded, even within, say, the Western tradition. Not all Christians are persuaded that it is the best way to speak about the Trinitarian God of the Bible. So, although there is a long tradition of linking the idea of the immutability of God with the idea that God is timeless in a non-sequential character. Nevertheless, not everybody is persuaded by this link and it's not obvious that the Bible teaches this.

Contributor

Rev Dr Paul Blackham

Host