Some Latter-day Saint critics of Open Theism often cite some comments from Church leaders who affirm “divine timelessness” and/or the concept that God has foreknowledge in the “traditional sense.” One such LDS Church leader is that of Neal A. Maxwell in All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1979).
However, in personal correspondence with Blake Ostler, Maxwell was careful to argue that his comments should not be seen as dogmatic proclamations of the Church in his office of Apostleship and that LDS should avoid any theory of foreknowledge and God’s experience of time that is contrary to Latter-day Saint Scripture and theology. Writing in Dialogue Ostler wrote:
Mormons have generally been aware that their idea of God requires that he be involved in process even though he may stand in a different relation to time than do mortals. For instance, Orson Pratt told the Reverend F. Austin: "God and all his magnificant works are limited to duration and time. It could not be otherwise." B. H. Roberts told the Reverend Vander Donckt that in taking Jesus Christ as the revelation of the nature of God, there is necessarily a "succession of time with God--a before and an after; here is being and becoming." However, the notion that God is timeless has recently been introduced into Mormon thought. Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, writes, "The past, present, and future are before God simultaneously.... Therefore, God's omniscience is not solely a function of prolonged and discerning familiarity with us--but of the stunning reality that the past, present, and future are part of an 'eternal now' with God" (italics in original). The idea of God's eternity here appears to consist not in the Hebrew notion of God's eternal duration in time without beginning or end; but of transcendence of temporal succession. In fairness to Elder Maxwell, we must recognize that his observations are meant as rhetorical expressions to inspire worship rather than as an exacting philosophical analysis of the idea of timelessness. Furthermore, in a private conversation in January 1984, Elder Maxwell told me that he is unfamiliar with the classical idea of timelessness and the problems it entails. His intent was not to convey the idea that God transcends temporal succession, but "to help us trust in God's perspectives, and not to be too constrained by our own provincial perceptions while we are in this mortal cocoon." (Blake T. Ostler, "The Mormon Concept of God" Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought vol. 17, no. 2 [Summer 1984]:64-93, here, p. 75)
In a footnote (no. 30), Ostler reproduces some more of his personal correspondence with Maxwell:
I refer to this private conversation and to excerpts from Elder Maxwell's letter with his permission. He writes, "I would never desire to do, say, or write anything which would cause others unnecessary problems.... I would not have understood certain philosophical implications arising (for some) because I quoted from Purtill who, in turn, quoted from Boethius. Nor would I presume to know of God's past, including His former relationship to time and space." Elder Neal A. Maxwell to Blake T. Ostler, 24 Jan. 1984. My thanks to Elder Maxwell for his helpful and generous comments on this and numerous other subjects.