The Relationality of the Classical Theistic God

 This is a selection from my book, Why Christianity is True (pp. 83-86):

The Relationality of the Classical Theistic God

We have seen that the God of classical theism is dimensionless and non-temporal. This brings up some natural and important questions. How can such a God relate to the space-time universe and the beings in it? If he is outside of time and space, how can he relate to beings who are in time and space? And how could he be the creator of the space-time universe, if he himself is dimensionless? Earlier I said that consciousness must go back to the First Cause, because you can’t get consciousness from non-consciousness. You can’t start from one thing and then get something so totally different that the product can’t be explained by the ingredients and the relationships between the ingredients. Well, the same issue can be raised here. If God is dimensionless, non-spatial and non-temporal, how can he be the source of a dimensional universe? Wouldn’t that be an example of having a product that is not explained by the ingredients and their relationships?

All the western, monotheistic religions are committed both to the idea of a classical concept of God--God is dimensionless, etc.--and to the idea that God is the source of the space-time universe and can relate personally with that universe. So if these two ideas are in conflict, that would be fatal for all of these religions (and for any form of classical theism, as all forms of it require God to be the source of the universe, even if he doesn‘t interact with it any further). The Bible, for example, teaches a classical theistic concept of God. It teaches that God is the source of the entire space-time universe and that he owns it and everything in it (Genesis 1-2; Romans 11:36; Psalm 24:1-2; Psalm 95:3-7; Psalm 100:3; John 1:1-3; Hebrews 11:3). Therefore, all things exist for him, to exhibit his glory and to do his will, and the destiny of all things will fulfill the will of God and glorify God (Romans 11:36; 1 Corinthians 15:24-28; Philippians 2:5-11; Colossians 3:17; Colossians 1:15-18; Romans 12:1-2; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Isaiah 43:5-7; Revelation 20:11-22:17). He is the only God, the highest being and the highest authority in the universe, and our ultimate purpose is therefore to obey him, to love him with all our hearts, and to worship him alone (Isaiah 42:5, 8; 43:8-13; 44:6-8; 45:20-25; 46:5-10; Exodus 20:1-7; Deuteronomy 6:4-5; 1 Corinthians 8:4-6; 1 John 3:4; James 2:8-13). God is all-powerful, does whatever he pleases, and ordains everything that happens in the world and in history (Amos 3:3-6; Isaiah 45:6-7; Amos 9:7; Lamentations 3:37-38; Job 42:2; Daniel 4:34-35; Psalms 115:3; Proverbs 16:33; Proverbs 19:21; Proverbs 21:1; Psalm 105:17, 25; Isaiah 46:8-10; Genesis 30:1-2; Ephesians 1:3-14; Genesis 45:5-8; 50:20; Job 1-2; Acts 4:27-28; John 9:1-5; Exodus 4:11; Matthew 10:29; Romans 11:30-36; Romans 8:28-30; Romans 9-11; Exodus 4:21-23; 10:1-3; 1 Timothy 1:11). God knows all things, including the entire future (Psalm 11:4-5; 14:2-3; 33:13-15; Hebrews 4:12-13; Isaiah 46:8-10; Genesis 15:5, 12-16; 25:23; Exodus 7:2-5; Daniel 7-12; John 13:21-30, 38; Genesis 40:8; 1 Samuel 23:9; Genesis 37:5-11; 49:1; Deuteronomy 31:14-29; 30:1-10). All of these things (and I could go on for quite a while longer adding to our list) show that the Bible is committed to and teaches classical theism. Although the Bible does not speak in the philosophical language that we have been using (because the Bible was written to many different kinds of people in many different cultures at many different times, not just to philosophers or to people trying to lay out a rationally articulated proof of the existence of God), its teachings clearly point to a classical theistic concept of God once they are “transposed,” so to speak, into a philosophical key and their necessary philosophical implications are spelled out. The same thing could be said for the Qur’an as well, which is the claimed revelation of Islam.

The Bible (as well as the Qur’an) is also committed to claims about God that might seem, at first glance, to be incompatible with classical theism. The Bible depicts God as being the creator of the space-time universe. But how could God, who is dimensionless, outside of space and time, create a dimensional universe? The Bible depicts God as acting in time and space, and entering into relationships and interacting with people in time and space. But how could God, being outside of time and space, act and interact in time and space?

The answer lies in realizing that God sees reality very differently from the way we do. God is all-knowing, outside of space and time, all-powerful, etc. We are clearly not. The universe is obviously going to look different to God than it does to us, just as the world no doubt looks different to us than it does to, say, a lizard. A lizard has far less intelligence than a human being. The intelligence that it does have is very different from ours, as well as its instincts, desires, etc. This is going to have a profound impact on how the world looks to a lizard as compared to how it looks to us. And the difference between God and humans is infinitely greater than the relationship between humans and lizards. God, being dimensionless, is going to see reality as a single, indivisible whole. We, being dimensional as well as limited in our point of view, are going to see the universe as divided up into parts spread out through space and time. We are in one place at one time, and so the universe appears to us as a large system spreading out away from us in space and in time, with everything getting smaller (at least in space) the farther away it gets, until it finally vanishes from our sight--until we try to explore further. But no matter how much we explore, there will always be more universe out there for us to discover. But God, being outside of space and time, and therefore equally present in all places and at all times (omnipresent and omnitemporal), will not see the universe in that way. This vast difference in the way we and God see things is what creates the impression that our two realities are incompatible.

However, they are not incompatible. We just have to recognize that the language that we use at any given time will reflect one of the two points of view--God’s or man’s. What would be said one way in reference to God’s point of view would be said in a different way in reference to man’s point of view. (41)  I like to think of the analogy of a prism. I look at my prism, and I see that white light goes into the prism, but a rainbow of colored light comes out. How can the colored light that comes out be the same as the white light that went in? Well, the prism has caused the different wavelengths of light to be divided up, so that what started out as single and unified white light ends up divided up into an array of different colors. When you try to describe the light, therefore, you must keep in mind which side of the prism you are on. Think of the universe as it looks from God’s omniscient point of view as represented by the white light. The prism itself represents the transition from God’s point of view to our limited, dimensional point of view. And the rainbow of colored light represents the universe as it looks from our human point of view.

Now, let’s take this analogy and apply it to our understanding of God’s relationship to our space-time universe and the beings within it. The Bible says that about twenty-five hundred years ago (or so), God parted the waters of the Red Sea so that Moses and the Israelites could pass through on dry ground. Then, about fifteen hundred (or so) years later, God sent an angel to release the Apostle Peter from prison. These are two events attributed to God in the Bible. (Of course, every event is ultimately attributed to God in the Bible in some sense, as we saw a little earlier, but miraculous events, being special acts of God outside of the normal course of things, make good examples for our present purpose.) God performed these two acts at two different times. Does that imply that God must be in time? Not at all. From God’s point of view, all of reality appears as an indivisible whole, for all reality is immediately present to God’s omniscient view. So if we were talking about these events from God’s point of view, we would not describe them in the same sort of temporal language. I don’t know exactly how we would describe them, because I am much further from being able to see things from God’s point of view than I am from a lizard’s point of view! But the Bible, if it is the Word of God (which we have yet to establish, but let us assume that it is hypothetically for now for the sake of thinking through this issue), is a communication to human beings that is meant to be understandable to them, and therefore describes events in their space-time universe from the point of view from which the description would make sense--namely, from a human point of view. Both the human point of view and the divine point of view are correct--neither of them is in error--but they are different, just like the lizard‘s and the human‘s points of view. Therefore, the Bible is accurate in describing these events in human-point-of-view-language. In fact, it is more accurate in a sense, because being accurate involves communicating clearly and understandably to the ones to whom you are speaking. So, when we are contemplating God acting at various points in time (and the same things apply to God acting in different places in space as well), we should not think that we are seeing things just as God would see them, but we are looking at them “through the prism,” so to speak, translated into the forms that the universe takes from our limited, dimensional point of view.

Let’s look at another example. We’ll use another event in the life of Moses. When God called Moses to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, at the burning bush, Moses reacted at first by coming up with excuses for why he wasn’t the right person for the job. In response, Exodus 4:14 says that “the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses.” Now, this may seem strange, considering that we are talking about a non-dimensional, omniscient, omnipotent (all-powerful) Being. This passage shows God involved in a personal relationship in time and in space with a particular person, and even getting angry with that person. How could this be possible?

There is only conflict here if we make the unwarranted assumption that God’s relationship to Moses--to his particular behavior, at this particular time, in this particular place--is all that there is to God. God sees all reality in its totality in one, undivided view. This does not mean that he is missing a part of reality. How could seeing all of reality in one view imply that one is missing something? It would be exactly the opposite of missing something, as far away from it as it is possible to get! God’s seeing all reality in one view does not mean that he does not see particular places or particular times and cannot relate to those places and times. True, he does not seem them the same way that we do, for he does not see them all divided up as we do, but he does see them and relate to them. Some people seem to have the idea that we have to choose between knowing a portion of space or time and knowing the whole, just as we can either be close to the forest and see the individual pine trees and pine needles but not see the whole forest, or we can be far away (say, flying above in an airplane) and see the whole forest but not the individual trees (or at least not the pine needles). But being omniscient means that God would see all of reality in one complete picture, without missing anything.  So God could know and relate to Moses’s time and place in Exodus 4, while still being omnipresent and omnitemporal and seeing all reality as a whole. Think of the prism analogy again. Saying that God’s involvement with Moses in space and time contradicts his transcending space and time would be like saying that the blue light that comes out of my prism contradicts the white light that went into it. It is the same light, but one view of it sees it as a united whole, while the other view of it sees it as divided up into a rainbow of colors. To say that God’s relationship with Moses at that place and at that time was a part of God’s total experience (abstracted from the whole, as we humans see things) does not preclude that there is more to God’s experience than simply that part.

But what about God getting angry with Moses? Is this not incompatible with a classical concept of God? If God is dimensionless and the source of all reality, then how could he dislike any portion of reality? Wouldn’t that be to dislike himself, since all things have come from him and are based on him? And since he is a dimensionless being, to have any dislike of himself would imply a total dislike of himself, since he does not come in parts. But if God disliked himself, he would be at odds with himself, which would imply that he is divided into parts and not dimensionless. He would have to have an idea of how he would wish himself to be and to love that image, while hating what he really is, which would clearly imply division in God‘s mind. So surely God could not dislike himself, and so must be unmitigatedly happy with everything, all things considered as a whole. Ah, but there’s the key phrase--all things considered as a whole. Yes, God would have to be unmitigatedly satisfied with all things as a whole, but that does not imply that he must be satisfied with all the parts of reality abstracted from the whole, as we humans see things. It is possible to be fully satisfied with something as a whole, while being displeased with some individual parts considered in themselves apart from the whole. Consider J. K. Rowling and her famous Harry Potter books. Voldemort is a bad guy in the books. Does J. K. Rowling like Voldemort? Does she find him, in himself, pleasing? I doubt it! But does that imply that she is dissatisfied with her books because Voldemort is in them? No, of course not. Voldemort is displeasing in himself, but he contributes to the overall good of the books as a whole. To use another example, a symphony might have discordant notes in it that are not in themselves pleasing or beautiful, but which in the context of the entire piece contribute to the whole, making it better than it would be without them. So it is no contradiction to say that God found Moses’s behavior in Exodus 4 displeasing, in itself considered, while recognizing that in the context of the whole, it is not displeasing, but contributes to an overall good product which is totally satisfying to God. So why did the Bible describe God’s reaction to Moses as being one of anger, rather than unmitigated happiness? It is appropriate for God to express his emotional experience in “pieces,” so to speak, because we experience life in “pieces.” If we want to know how God feels about some particular event or thing in our experience as we experience it, abstracted from its place in the overall tapestry of reality, a communication of God’s overall emotional life would hardly be helpful. For God to have represented himself as unmitigatedly happy when Moses was making excuses would have been to misrepresent his attitude toward Moses’s behavior. In itself, that behavior was displeasing to him, and that is what needed to be expressed at the time, however true it might have been that Moses’s displeasing behavior was infinitely overbalanced by good in the overall scheme of things (as the Bible teaches elsewhere).

There is one more thing we need to address in this section: the issue of creation. How could a dimensionless, temporal God have created the space-time universe? Isn’t creation, by necessity, a temporal act? To create something, doesn’t that imply that there is a before, a during, and an after? If I create a cake, that implies that there was a time before the cake was made, a time when the cake was being made, and a time after the cake was made. It is a temporal process, one that would be impossible for a being that is outside of time and is thus incapable of acting temporally.

Well, of course the concept of creation by humans will always involve an inherent temporal component, because we are temporal beings. But the concept of creation itself need not necessarily be conceived temporally. The core concept at the root of the idea of “creation” is “dependence.” The reason we say that “I made the cake” is because the cake came from me. The cake exists because of me, because of something I did. I was the cause of why the cake came to be. If the cake started out not being there, and then came into being while I watched and did nothing and had no part in it, then we would not say that I made the cake. When we say that I made the cake, we are saying that the existence of the cake is dependent on me and on my actions.

Similarly, to say that the universe is created by God is to say that it is derived ultimately from God, and derived willingly--not by unconscious instinct or accident. If God is fully conscious and omniscient, and if he is indivisible, then all that he does he does with all that he is--with full knowledge and will (“will” here being defined as a “desire which brings about a certain state of affairs”). God is the creator of the universe, because the universe exists because of God and his will. Even if the relationship between God and the creation is non-temporal (from God’s point of view), this doesn’t make the term “creation” any less valid as a way of expressing the fact that the universe exists because of God. From God’s point of view, his relationship with the universe is part of one unchanging, indivisible whole, but from our point of view--on our side of the prism--the creation is a temporal event that took place in the past, and God is still bringing new moments of time into existence in the present and presumably will on into the future as well. (Classical theists usually speak of God’s having created the world in the past, while superintending it and ordaining all events by his providence throughout subsequent history.) So there is no conflict between saying that God is dimensionless and non-temporal and saying that he is the creator of the space-time universe.

41  You can get a sense of this when you read novels, or stories, attempting to portray the world we live in from a different point of view than the typical, adult human point of view--such as stories told from an animal’s point of view, or a child’s point of view.  (Of course, many of the stories told from an animal’s point of view often distort the effect by humanizing the animals, like in Finding Nemo or Bambi.)  But the distance between our point of view and God’s, as I’ve mentioned, would be infinitely greater than any of these other distances, for obvious reasons.

Published on the feast of St. Henry II.