Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Thomas Jay Oord, "God Cannot Change Time"

  

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)