God Cannot Change Time
God’s relation to time has long intrigued theologians.
It surprises many who enter these conversations to learn that leading theologians
of yesteryear and today say God can't change past events. What’s done is done and
cannot be altered by God.
Thomas Aquinas, agreeing with both Aristotle and
Augustine, says God cannot change the past. “That the past should not have
been,” Aquinas says, “does not come under the scope of divine power.” He adds, “Some
things at one time were in the nature of possibility, whilst they were yet to
be done, which now fall short of the nature of possibility, when they have been
done. So God is said not to be able to do them, because they themselves cannot
be done.” Summa Theologica, 1a, Q. 25, A. 4) John Wesley applies this to
past divine actions: God “cannot . . . undo what he has done.” (“On Divine Providence,”
Sermon 67, §§ 15, Works, 2:541)
Theologians offer various reasons why God cannot
change the past. Some think God is timeless and has no past that could be
changed. In this case, “past” is not a category for divine action. Others say
the past is real, but changing it requires doing what is ontologically
impossible. This argument says it’s the nature of time to flow forward
temporally, and it cannot be stopped or reversed. Existence is essentially time-indexed.
Although these two views differ significantly, they do share this conclusion:
God cannot change the past.
Fewer theologians have written about God changing the
future, but the same principles apply. Those who think a timeless God has no
divine future should claim God cannot change it. Those who say God moves with
the forward flow of time should say there is no future to change. Only the
present exists. For this latter group, God and creation engage a real but a not
yet actual realm of possibilities. In either case, however, theologians should
further quality omnipotence. (Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and
Birth of Amipotence [SacraSage Press, 2023], 57-58)
