podcast 209 – Ludwig Neidhart – God and Time – A Defense of God’s Timelessness

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In traditional catholic theologies, the popular view is that God is timeless, that God is not at all “in” time, like we are. In this episode, German philosopher Dr. Ludwig Neidhart defends and tries to establish this view of God as timeless. While his conclusion is old, some of his arguments are new – he invokes the ideas of surfers, the Matrix, and parallel universes. He not only discusses God and time, but suggests an interesting way to think about the relation between God and the cosmos he created.

This talk is interesting to contrast with this one arguing for the opposite conclusion. Which view about God and time better fits with reason? With scripture? With human experience?

Dr. Neidhart  considers about four arguments that God is timeless, arguments which, he explains, vary in their plausibility. While considerations about God’s perfection are important, he thinks it is difficult to argue from the Bible to divine timelessness. Towards the end of his talk, he briefly rebuts arguments that the Christian God must be in time (given that he has created a temporal cosmos).

In your view, does he succeed? Does he establish that God is “outside” of time? Why or why not?

Links for this episode:

• Dr. Neidhart’s home page (Google’s English translation)
• “God and Time. A defense of God’s timelessness“
• God and Time Workshop, Society for Philosophy of Time
• St. Anselm, ontological arguments for the existence of God
• divine simplicity
• Genesis 3:8-9.
• theodicies
• This week’s thinking music is “The True Entity of Life” by Daniel Birch & Ben Pegley.