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Garden of Eden

Divine Eternity and the Challenge of Creation

Is contemporary theology drifting toward divine temporalism? James Dolezal is afraid that might be the case.

God’s life is not ahead of him nor behind him. Time is a creature that submits to the creator and yet God has “revealed himself temporally and administers his eternal plan successively.” Indeed, human language cannot transcend temporality as human beings are time-bound creatures. If this is the case, how can Christians avoid misconstruing God’s eternality? Is a drift toward divine temporalism inevitable?

As Augustine explained, God’s “today does not give way to tomorrow nor follow yesterday.” In this phrase Augustine is demonstrating a profound truth – perhaps it is only possible to describe eternity by professing what it is not. God’s transcendent eternity does not mean that human language is useless. Christians may not be able to comprehend eternity, but we might be able to protect ourselves from misconstruing eternity.

Still, questions remain. Is God’s eternal nature compatible with theistic personalism? How does the doctrine of creation relate to God’s eternality? How should time-bound believers speak of God’s eternal being? Throughout this video, James Dolezal attempts to help believers think through these difficult topics in order to know the God we cannot comprehend.

 

James E. Dolezal

James E. Dolezal is professor of theology at Cairn University in Langhorne, PA, and visiting professor of theology at International Reformed Baptist Seminary in Mansfield, TX. He is the author of God without Parts (Pickwick, 2011) and All That Is in God (Reformation Heritage, 2017). He is a contributor to Divine Impassibility: Four Views of God’s Emotions and Suffering (IVP, 2019), Classical Theism: New Essays on the Metaphysics of God (Routledge, 2023), and to the T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Christian Theology (forthcoming). He resides in the Philadelphia suburbs with his wife and children.

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