This question stems from a debate about God establishing the existence of evil, as a side effect of creating freewill agents that operate within time-space.
I have often said of myself, I am either a Calviminian, or an Arminivist; somehow freewill, and God’s omniscient foreknowledge, are both true. But how can one reconcile this without thinking of God, who is love, as also being a tyrant, creating a great many souls with the explicit purpose of destroying them in hell?
To many it makes no sense, simply stating that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect, pure, and only good Creator of all things, when simultaneously, the most horrendous, ghastly evil imaginable, spawned from His creation. If God knew Lucifer was going to sin before He created him, then why even create him? Could not His perfect creation, remain perfect and unpolluted, indefinitely? If not, why? Why is it that God settles for second best, establishing a Judgement Day deadline to draw a line in the sand, after which he throws countless souls into hell, and everything finally goes His way?
In summation, the human understanding of all of God’s attributes, holding to classical theism, is not adding up. How can God be perfectly good, and knowingly create the entity who would unleash a chain reaction of evil across the cosmos, infecting and destroying possibly as many as one third of His angels (Revelation 12:4), and much of the human race (Matthew 7:13-14)? Satan may be the father of lies, but God created Him, knowing this is how he was going to turn out.
- Revelation 12:4: 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born.
- Matthew 7:13-14: 13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
This initiates a debate about the concepts of classical theism, (including the classical attributes of God), and a newer, contemporary view of open theism (referring to God’s behaviors).
These theological frameworks can possibly help reconcile perceived contradictions with what are commonly believed to be God’s attributes, contrasted with His actions, which often seem to be at odds.
Here is a breakdown of common perspectives, as they relate to the above question, “Can God learn?”:
Traditional/Classical Theism (Classical Attributes):
- Omniscience: In traditional Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theology, God is considered omniscient, meaning all-knowing. If God is already all-knowing, there is nothing new for Him to learn. Learning implies moving from a state of not knowing to knowing, which contradicts the idea of perfect and complete knowledge.
- Immutability: God is also often considered immutable (unchanging). Learning would imply a change or development in His nature or knowledge, which goes against the concept of an unchangeable God.
- Perfection: God is seen as perfect. If God could learn, it would suggest an initial imperfection or incompleteness in His knowledge, which contradicts His perfect nature.
From a classical theism perspective, God does not “learn” in the way humans do. His knowledge is eternal, complete, and intrinsic to His being. He does not acquire new information or develop new understanding.
Open Theism (Process Theology):
- God’s Relationship with Creation: open theism is a more contemporary theological view that posits God’s knowledge of the future is not exhaustively settled, especially concerning freewill choices of creatures. In this view, God genuinely interacts with His creation and is influenced by it.
- Genuine Experience: proponents of open theism might argue that God “learns” in the sense that He genuinely experiences the unfolding of history and the choices of freewill agents. While He knows all possibilities, the actualization of events (especially those involving freewill agents) might be genuinely “new” to His experience in a temporal sense, even if not a surprise to His overall knowledge.
- Responding to Prayer: They might also argue that God’s responses to prayer or His interactions with individuals demonstrate a dynamic engagement where He “learns” how to best relate to His creation in real-time.
In this view, “learning” is not about acquiring new facts God did not previously know, but about genuinely experiencing and responding to a developing reality that includes genuine creaturely freedom.
Other topics to consider while debating these perspectives include anthropomorphic language, specific attributes of the members of the Trinity, and advancements in quantum physics, which propose possibilities about the nature of the universe, or multiverse, as it relates to consciousness, and the existence of freewill agents.
Anthropomorphic Language in Scripture:
- Metaphorical Language: The Bible sometimes uses language that describes God as “seeing,” “hearing,” “remembering,” or even “repenting” (e.g., Genesis 6:6 where God “regretted” making mankind). These are often understood as anthropomorphic (human-like) descriptions to help humans understand God’s actions and emotions, rather than literal statements about God acquiring new knowledge or changing His mind in a human sense.
- Experiential Knowledge vs. Propositional Knowledge: Some differentiate between God’s propositional knowledge (knowing facts) and experiential knowledge (knowing by experience). While God knows all facts, His “experience” of creation might be an ongoing, dynamic process.
According to Gemini (Google AI), open theism is not considered part of standard or mainstream Christian theology by the majority of Christian denominations and theologians. It represents a departure from what is known as classical theism, which has been the dominant understanding of God’s attributes, particularly His omniscience and immutability, throughout most of Christian history.
Following is a breakdown from Google AI, of why, and how open theism relates to Christian theology:
Why it is not “standard”:
- Departure from Classical Theism: Classical theism, which largely draws from Greek philosophical concepts integrated with biblical revelation, holds that God is entirely omniscient (knows all past, present, and future exhaustively), immutable (unchanging in His nature and purposes), and impassible (not subject to suffering or emotional change in a way that implies imperfection). Open theism proponents, such as Clark Pinnock (1937-2010), John Sanders, and Gregory A. Boyd, challenged these classical understandings, particularly regarding God’s foreknowledge of future free choices.
- Controversy and Debate: Open theism has generated significant controversy and debate within evangelical and broader Christian circles since its prominent articulation in the late 20th century. Many prominent theologians, such as John Piper, R.C. Sproul (1939-2017), and William Lange Craig, and entire denominations, view open theism as incompatible with essential Christian doctrines.
- Concerns about God’s Sovereignty and Trustworthiness: Critics argue that if God does not have exhaustive knowledge of the future, it undermines His absolute sovereignty, His ability to guarantee His promises, and the certainty of prophecy. If God takes “risks” and can be “surprised” by human choices, some feel it diminishes His glory and trustworthiness.
- Implications for Prayer and Prophecy: While open theists emphasize that their view makes prayer more meaningful (as God genuinely responds to it), critics argue that it also weakens the concept of detailed prayers, certain prophecies, and God’s overall control over history.
Can Open Theism be part of standard Christian theology?
This is where the nuance lies. While not currently standard, proponents of open theism argue that it should be considered a legitimate Christian theological position. Their arguments often center on:
- Biblical Interpretation: Open theists believe their view is more consistent with a straightforward reading of certain biblical passages that depict God genuinely interacting with humanity, seemingly changing His mind, expressing regret, or responding to prayer in ways that imply a non-exhaustive knowledge of future free actions. They argue that classical theism often imports philosophical ideas into biblical interpretation, rather than letting the Bible speak for itself.
- Human Freedom: They emphasize libertarian freewill, arguing that for human choices to be truly free, they cannot be exhaustively predetermined or exhaustively known by God beforehand. This, they believe, preserves genuine moral responsibility.
- God’s Relational Nature: Open theism highlights God’s active, dynamic, and relational nature, emphasizing His love and responsiveness to His creation. They see a God who genuinely engages with His people as more loving and understandable than a completely immutable and foreknowing God.
- Historical Precedents (Minor Stream): While a minority view, some open theists point to historical figures or theological streams (e.g., certain Arminian or Wesleyan traditions, or some early Church Fathers) that they believe contained elements consistent with open theism, suggesting it is not entirely novel.
Denominational Acceptance:
While no major, established denomination has officially adopted open theism as its doctrine, some individual theologians, pastors, and churches within various traditions (particularly within evangelicalism, Arminianism, and some independent churches) may hold to or be sympathetic to open theist ideas. However, it is generally a point of significant internal debate rather than a widely accepted position.
Inspiration from Groundhog Day:
Please pardon this deviation on what may appear to be an odd tangent, but this slight deviation is relevant, as it explains how inspiration for the concept of a special type of learning that may apply to God, came about.
As silly as this may sound, I had a theological epiphany while watching the well-known movie Groundhog Day. The main character Phil, played by actor Bill Muray, becomes caught in a time loop, repeating the same day, over and over again. Nothing he does allows him to escape this endless repetition, which drives him mad to the point of suicide. But not even suicide allows him to escape.
He starts out as a miserable wretch, utterly selfish, and bitter about life in every way. Rather than seeing anything positive about his day repeating over and over, he instead chooses to kill himself. When that does not work, he then comes to the realization that he cannot possibly experience any consequences for his actions.
For a profoundly selfish person, not having any consequences for anything whatsoever is initially appealing.
During this phase, he learns how to rob an armored car without incident, and with this hefty sum of money, he does whatever he wants for that day, but the thrill does not last long. He can only do so much with unlimited money, in such a small town. Trying to escape to the next town only ends up in failure, because he runs out of time.
The one thing consistent about his character, is that he is very attracted to a female coworker, Rita, so he sets about pursuing her with obsessive gusto.
His coworker is not an easy catch. Much unlike him, she is a genuinely altruistic, caring, respectful and considerate person. She also has a number of aesthetic tastes, such as a love for French poetry, and classical music.
What can a guy possibly do with only having a single day to work with? His overall goal, being selfish and lustful, is to get her in bed by the end of the day, but this is a daunting task, for such a refined and pure hearted woman.
Phil begins by taking piano lessons, finding a woman in town who provides them, and was willing to pick up on someone’s learning, whatever skill level that person happened to have. Phil learns the basics of classical piano and later focuses on mastering Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Variation 18 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
After mastering the piano, he learns to speak French, fluently, and he memorizes some French poetry.
Again and again, he repeats his day, and each time, he enriches himself with more knowledge and skills, until the day finally arrives with him being an ultra-talented savant, but still, this woman will not budge. No matter how impressive his attempts at trying to impress her are, he is still a very shallow human being, which is very apparent in his overall behavior. Because of this, nothing he does, tailored to her exact specifications, impresses her.
Again, he breaks down, utterly miserable, not knowing what to do. Pursuing her for a while gives him some relief, but only for a while.
He then pursues other women in town, and they are all easily impressed. He has his way with many of them, but because of this, he quickly loses interest in them. Having his heart set on the goal of landing Rita in bed was his most prolonged distraction. What about her did he find most appealing? At this point, he finally realizes that it is his wretched, selfish character that needs adjusting. If he simply becomes a better person, then maybe she will finally change her mind about him.
Every morning, there is an annoying man who asks him a series of questions, and he always ignores him, walking past him as if he is invisible. Then there is a kid falling out of a tree, who hurts himself, but he could care less. A man steps in a puddle in the gutter, soaking his sock and shoe, and so it is, throughout the entire town, different people experiencing different problems, and no one seems to notice or care.
Phil therefore focuses on people all over town, whom before, he treated as meaningless background characters. He begins to involve himself in their lives, a little bit at a time, learning about each one of them. Over time, he gains insight that there is something fulfilling about learning so much about all these people. A turning point occurs with Phil reaching out to a homeless man. He is dramatically affected after giving this downtrodden man relief with a simple meal, only to later discover that he dies that very night.
After this, he begins to experience an appreciation for who everyone is, and out of that love, joy is manifest from doing good things for the first time in his life. When helping these people out, even in little ways, there is joy. He even saves the lives of several of them, and this changes him.
He catches that boy falling out of the tree, he prevents two people from being hit by a car, and he performs the Heimlich maneuver on a man in a restaurant, among other things. In some of these instances, he is lauded as a hero.
Near the end of the movie, while sitting in a diner with Rita, he begins to narrate to her what his life had become, and how he cannot escape it. There is nothing he can do about this conundrum, though aspects of it are not entirely all that bad. He tells her, “I am a god, not The God, but…a god.”
While I was watching this movie, it occurred to me that it played out like King Solomon’s quest for wisdom. There was nothing Phil did not do. Enthusiasts of this movie have debated the math, and calculated Phil’s time loop to thirty-three years, repeating the same day, over and over again. The moral of the Groundhog Day story is, Phil comes to the grand conclusion that the only fulfillment that lasts in life is having genuine love for others.
At the conclusion of this movie, which happens to be hilarious, and I highly recommend it, in the back of my mind I was thinking, this screenwriter is on to something.
Phil did not claim to be The God, Creator of all things, but rather a little god, with a little “g”, because he was experiencing the equivalent of thousands of miniature lifetimes. From this, he refined himself to become the best version of himself, that he could ever possibly be. And with this understanding, the thought occurred to me, what if The God, did the same thing, when He created time-space?
Members of the Trinity:
Neither classical theism, nor open theism, dispute God’s triune nature, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Here is where I will introduce a new idea (I doubt – probably someone else has thought of this, but I don’t know who), which may reconcile some confusion about God’s relationship with time-space. This new idea incorporates some open theism concepts, but it is not so strict to the point that it declares that God does not know the future. I am somewhat reserved on hard theological declarations, mostly because I recognize my finite limitations as a creature of time-space with limited knowledge.
Like my theological hero, N. T. Wright, I often reserve drawing hard yes/no lines with black and white, theological declarations. Even Google AI made this distinction about N.T. Wright, who expressed ideas in his writing that sided with human freewill remaining fully intact, while simultaneously, believing in God’s foreknowledge.
According to human understanding, with our existence restricted to linear time, the concept of learning appears irreconcilable with God’s omniscience. However…
What if there a kind of experiential learning that applies to God alone, as the author of time-space?
When Jesus was speaking about his Father to His disciples on one occasion, they asked Him if they could see the Father. Jesus fired back, that by looking at Him, they were looking at the Father (John 14:9). Jesus’ response, in short, was to inform them, that He was the physical manifestation of His Father, within time-space. However, on another occasion, Jesus distinguished Himself from God (His Father), by saying that no one has seen God except for Him (John 1:18). In another instance, Jesus also said that no one truly knows the Father, except for Him (Luke 10:22).
- John 14:9: 9Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
- John 1:18: 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and[a]is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
- Luke 10:22: 22 All[a]things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”
With these cryptic statements, I suggest that Jesus indicates there is a timelessness distinction between His Father, and Himself, such that that no creature in all of creation, within time-space, can perceive the Father the way that Jesus does.
Taken at face value, this makes Jesus truly unique, because He is the only entity in all existence, who has seen His Father. No one, not even angels―have seen the Father, and I suspect the reason why is, no other entity is capable of seeing the Father.
Consider the following what if scenario, regarding the Trinity:
The Father associates with timelessness, because He alone, exists outside of time-space, where no one but Jesus can perceive Him.
Holy Spirit is associated with “space.” We see Him as omnipresent, even existing within His believers, simultaneously, throughout all existence. On the day of Pentecost, people saw tongues of fire landing on hundreds of people simultaneously, when they were filled with Holy Spirit, (Acts 2:2-4). His Spirit was filling these believers, all at once. There is no place that God is not present, even including the depths of hell (Psalm 139:8), so maybe this is a reference to Holy Spirit in time-space.
- Acts 2:2-4: 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.
- Psalm 139:8: If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
Holy Spirit is also attributed to the birth of Jesus, by overshadowing Mary when she conceived (Luke 1:35). So, Holy Spirit physically impregnated Mary with the Father’s seed. This is consistent with the idea that the Father exists outside of time-space and His operations within time-space are through His Son, and Holy Spirit.
- Luke 1:35: 35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a]the Son of God.
The only place in the Bible where the Father is clearly distinguished from Holy Spirit and His Son, injecting His presence into time-space, is when Jesus was baptized, and also when Jesus was transfigured on the Mount of Transfiguration. In both instances, the Father’s voice was heard. It is for this reason, that sound, which took form from the Father’s Words, may be the only means by which the Father directly interacts in His creation in time-space, distinct from Jesus and Holy Spirit. All of creation came into being, through the act of the Father speaking, and so it remains in effect, that while the Father cannot be seen, He can be heard.
As for Jesus, He is God’s relational interface, within His creation of time-space. Simply to have meaningful conversations with people, and experience human existence in any capacity, God must engage in time-space, whenever and wherever He interacts with His creation. Just as God limited Himself by creating freewill agents capable of disobeying Him, perhaps some degree of limitation also applies to Jesus, within time-space, just so Jesus can interact within His creation.
This is a byproduct of time-space itself, and the limited freewill agents within it, and not to be construed as God being limited in a manner that is out of His control. God has to come down to our level within time-space, so we can perceive Him and communicate with Him. This even pertains to the realm known as heaven, or the heavens, and not just earth, because even heaven experiences time-space. I realize some may not believe that heaven is within the domain of time-space, of which there is ample proof to support, but suffice it to say, I intend to stay focused on the topic at hand and not trail off on unnecessary digressions.
Jesus and His Father are One (John 10:30), even when Jesus walked the earth as a human being, subject to human frailties. He was hungry, tired, sleepy, injured on occasion―severely on the cross, and the list goes on. He wanted to experience the full package of human experience.
Scripture goes as far as say that Jesus grew in wisdom. In other words, He learned (Luke 2:52)! He sobbed at His friend’s funeral, and He wept bitterly over all Jerusalem. This was not an act. Indeed, all of Jesus’ behavior, and the deep emotions He expressed while here on earth as a mortal, are truly baffling, for someone who knows everything, and someone who cannot possibly be taken by surprise, when He clearly was on several occasions.
- John 10:30:“I and the Father are one.”
- Luke 2:52:52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
The woman with an issue of blood, who extracted healing power from Jesus’ body, surprised Him (Luke 8:44-46). He acted as though he truly did not know who touched Him. And the Roman centurion who told Him not to bother to go to his house, all He had to do was say the word, and his daughter would be healed, shocked Jesus. He was genuinely surprised by this man’s faith, and He praised him for it.
- Luke 8:44-46: 44 She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. 45 “Who touched me?”Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.” 46 But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”
Relative to this idea of Jesus learning from cause-and-effect scenarios playing out in real-time, is not interesting to note that all of Jesus’ teachings were centered on parables? Exactly what are parables, if not specific examples of cause-and-effect scenarios, with layers of meaning, whereby lessons are taught about a great many things, particularly focused on ethical behavior, and God’s responses to it?
Now classic theology will explain these episodes of Jesus having what appears to be limited knowledge, using the argument of kenosis, which comes from Philippians 2:6-7. The argument for kenosis suggests that God set aside His divine attributes of omniscience, and omnipotence, temporarily, in order to accomplish His mission on earth, culminating in the cross. But what if there is still a version of kenosis that remains in effect with Jesus specifically, because of His role in the Trinity?
- Philippians 2:6-7: 6 Who, being in very nature[a]God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature[b] of a servant, being made in human likeness.
Consider the behavior of Jesus, in His pre-incarnate manifestations. (As to why I believe these Old Testament manifestations God were Jesus, I will discuss that shortly).
He bartered with Abraham, who hoped He would spare Sodom’s destruction, on account of his nephew Lot (Genesis 18:24-26). His whole point of that visit was to see in person how bad things were in that area (Genesis 18:20-21). He wrestled with Jacob (Genesis 32:24-28), and He often debated with Moses, utterly frustrated with the behavior of the Israelites (Exodus 32:9-10). All of this interaction pinpoints God’s definite personality, His likes and dislikes, and His personal involvement, with profound intimacy. And all of these interactions are experiential, flowing with a natural progression of events in linear time.
- Genesis 18:24-26: 24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare[e]the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” 26 The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
- Genesis 18:20-21: 20 Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous 21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”
- Exodus 32:9-10: 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27 The man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,” he answered. 28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,[f] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
- Exodus 32:9-10: 9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
- Genesis 22:32: 9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn
As the Alpha and Omega (Revelation 22:13-15), we see a picture of Jesus in Revelation as the master of all time. Can Jesus time travel? Sure, why not, He can do anything He wants, within His creation.
- Revelation 22:13-15: 13 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
Consider the following.
Outside of time-space, the Father existed (Genesis 1:1; Psalm 90:2; 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 1:2). Nothing else, and no one else, is capable of existing there, just God. Time-space is merely a subset of eternity, and it did not always exist. Scripture states in the first three words of the Bible, that all of time-space, which the Bible refers to as the heavens and the earth, had a beginning. God is defined as the Creator, over and over again in the Bible. A Creator can only create something that did not previously exist.
- Genesis 1:1: 13 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
While it is difficult to speak of a time, or a place, outside of time-space, there has to be an existence that is eternal, and is beyond the confines of time-space. Within that timeless, space-less realm, might it be possible that God did not yet know what would come about, with the creation of other freewill agents, until He created them?
What if the whole point of creating time-space was to establish a learning environment, whereby God could explore His own free will? If there is anything whatsoever that would ever be a mystery to God, it would be Himself.
This suggestion may be perceived as taking a jab at God’s omniscience, and that is why this argument sides with open theism to a point. However, consider the possibility that if there is anything God does not know, it would be His own nature, or His own future. If God’s future is predetermined, then He would have no freewill Himself. All of existence, revolves around what God chooses to do, and there was a point in eternity, when time-space did not yet exist, so God had not yet chosen to create time-space.
At some point, in God’s timeless, space-less existence, He decided to create time-space and populate it with freewill agents. Why? I say He did this, in order to explore the concept of relationships, external from Himself. In doing this, He would gain wisdom about His own freewill nature, and how He would choose to be.
To fully experience these relationships in His new creation, He wanted His own physical interface in this new environment, to put a face behind the sound of His voice. While He always had a voice, because He is the Word, He did not yet have a body before Jesus. To have a body, God required a new state of being for His existence, so the Word, became flesh (John 1:1-5, 14).
- John 1:1-5, 14: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made… 4 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Outside of time-space, it can be argued that the Father experiences all of time and all of space, all at once. Classical theology leans in this direction, but maybe it does not go far enough with God’s interaction within time-space.
The Father is eternally present, yet timeless; He is everywhere, yet nowhere. But within time-space, Holy Spirit is everywhere, and Jesus is in the now, experiencing linear time in a single location, (or possibly multiple locations via time travel, but not everywhere like Holy Spirit). In these locations, Jesus experiences the flow of time, as the rest of His created beings experience it. However, His consciousness is integrated with the Father, and Holy Spirit.
The Trinity overlaps, because they are One.
Jesus is directly interfaced with His Father, but possibly in a perpetual stream of consciousness that moves about with varying focus, depending on what the Father wants to explore and/or discover at any given point in linear time, where Jesus, and His freewill agents throughout His creation, reside.
Scriptures refer to God establishing times and seasons (Genesis 1:14), and setting reminders, such as the sign of the rainbow following the flood of Noah (Genesis 9:12-16), God remembering His covenant with Abraham (Exodus 2:24, Leviticus 25:42, Psalm 105:8), and memorial offerings (Numbers 10:9-10). All of these reminders refer to God’s shifting focus within time-space. I propose that this is for the benefit of Jesus, within time-space.
- Genesis 9:12-16: 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
- Exodus 2:23-24: “During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
- Leviticus 26:42: “Then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.”
- Psalm 105:8: “He remembers his covenant forever, the promise he made, for a thousand generations.”
Now sure, Jesus can bounce around in time, and I suspect He did. This started with the creation of His physical body, which did not necessarily pop into existence with a temporary placeholder body, floating in a void when the Big Bang erupted. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. He lived His exemplary life, died on a cross, then rose from the dead and ascended to His throne in the heavens. After this, being the first born of all creation, I suspect Jesus traveled back in time and created all life within the constructs of time-space (Colossians 1:15-17, John 1, etc.).
- Colossians 1:15-17: 15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
If we are to believe that what Jesus said was true, and no one has seen the Father except for Him (John 6:46), then every instance of God interacting with people in the Old Testament, was Jesus. He had a glorified body in these pre-incarnate encounters, long predating His birth in Bethlehem. I suspect the glorified body He was using was originally created when He was physically born as a mortal, in the future of Bethlehem. Then when He was resurrected from the dead, His body was glorified, and He traveled back in time, manifesting in those pre-incarnate encounters.
As for what did pop into existence from nothingness, that was the Father’s seed, from which Mary was conceived, and Jesus was born.
- John 6:46: No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.
The Father directs the actions of both Jesus, as well as Holy Spirit. They are As One.
Jesus only serves the will of His Father. While living as a mortal, He went wherever the Father wanted Him to go and He did whatever the Father wanted Him to do (John 5:19). This was in effect, even when it seemed like Jesus’ will was in opposition to His Father’s will, which is most noticeable when Jesus asked His Father, if it were possible to take the cup of God’s wrath away from Him (Matthew 26:39).
- John 5:19: 19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does
- Matthew 26:39: 39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
This interaction between Jesus and His Father, is most difficult to comprehend, without understanding the unique distinction Jesus has from His Father. Jesus was suffering, in the moment, sweating blood! And later, on the cross, He cried out to His Father, quoting Psalm 22, “Why have you forsaken me!” On that cross, I purport that Jesus was learning an incredible lesson about the cost of sacrifice, and this learning, was passed to His Father in eternity.
Muslims in particular, have an extreme revulsion regarding the cross, and they outright reject it. The cross is perhaps their biggest argument they have against the Trinity, declaring it as blasphemy, and utter nonsense, suggesting that God should have to die in order to save His own creation. If He was truly all powerful, then why go through all that trouble, to get what He wanted? How could God’s hands possibly be tied, literally?
I say it is because God learned about the mess He created, at the exact moment He created it, and He also understood with His perfect knowledge in that same exact timeless moment of His learning, what He had to do to correct the problem.
I apologize if this sounds blasphemous, to say that God created a mess, because a fallen angel initiated that mess, but why didn’t God either prevent Lucifer from sinning, or just shut everything down right then and there, when Lucifer rebelled? Why did He allow a war in the heavens to run its course, and why is Lucifer, now Satan, still allowed to cause problems?
I call that a mess, and countless others do as well. Because of the situation of so much evil existing in the world today, many people struggle with declaring that God is good.
Suggesting that God learned from His creation, answers this question.
Jesus was in the moment, knowing He had to go through with the cross, but the pain and suffering were unbearable, and even He, in that moment, was struggling to comprehend it. There is nothing like sharp spikes through the hands and feet, to create a distraction!
But the Father made it clear to His Son, that correcting the corruption of creation was not possible without the cross, because God the Father established His will through what He learned. He would not escape His own will, once He established it, after learning it, all at once.
As for Holy Spirit, He bears witness to the Father, also serving His will, as part of His triune existence.
God the Father is an invisible Spirit, representing His timeless, space-less, eternal nature. He has a physical body in Jesus, operating through time-space, expressing His will. And His omnipresent Holy Spirit is imbedded within freewill agents, spanning all creation.
Did the Trinity always exist?
Yes, and no.
This is where I might be called a heretic, if that has not already happened…
If “always” refers to all of time, then yes, the Trinity has always existed since the beginning of time and the Trinity will always exist.
But outside of time-space, before time-space existed, (pardon the temporal language here, because it technically does not apply, but there is no other way for me to refer to it that I know of), I postulate that God the Father, had not yet established Himself as a Trinity. All of whom God is as a Trinity, existed within God, Elohim, yet He may not have had a Trinitarian nature yet, because I propose that new nature came about, within time-space.
All of God’s creation, can be summed up with a trinity of trinities: 1. Time, 2. Space, and 3. Consciousness.
- Time = 1. Past, 2. Present, 3. Future
- Space = 1. Height, 2. Width, 3. Depth
- Consciousness (Freewill agents) = 1. Orbiting toward God, 2. Orbiting away from God, 3. Orbiting neutral
Another way of looking at God’s creation, reflecting on God’s Trinitarian nature, resides with God the Father’s association with “time,” as the One who holds all of it in His hands, from outside of it. Holy Spirit is associated with all of “space,” as the One who can exist in all places simultaneously. Jesus is associated with “consciousness,” having the Mind of Christ, the head of the body (Colossians 1:18, 1 Corinthians 2:16), processing the will of God as God’s primary interface, interacting with all freewill agents within time-space.
- Time (Father)
- Space (Holy Spirit)
- Conscious will in focused action (Jesus)
- Colossians 1:18: 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
- 1 Corinthians 2:16: “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
When the spark of creation ignited, a new concept came into existence for God; the concept of learning from His new creation, whereby He took on His new nature of a Trinity, and He created new life, imbued with the ability to do things; to make choices in a cause-and-effect environment.
The very nature of time-space, and freewill agents within it, establishes the precedent of cause-and-effect, whereby the freewill of every living spirit is evaluated. Time-space is therefore a kind of sandbox learning environment, which never before existed.
Could it be that God created time-space, to explore His own enigmatic existence, and learn more about Himself, in a much larger version of Groundhog Day?
It is clear that God wants us to learn from our mistakes; that is the point of repentance, and it is also the point of God’s discipline, and judgements. God is our divine parent, and we can also experience childhood and parenthood ourselves, receiving a micro-taste of what it means to be on both sides of this learning coin, from God’s perspective of being the ultimate Father.
But why did God do this, why did He create time-space with freewill agents, if not for the explicit purpose of learning via cause-and-effect? One could postulate that the only redemptive value that anyone could possibly extract from the existence of sin and evil is the wisdom to avoid it! But maybe that is precisely the point! How did God acquire this wisdom, without first creating the environment where it would first come about?
Once time-space existed, God the Father could see the end from the beginning, so then He would know all about it, but before time-space existed, there was no end from the beginning, because it did not exist yet, so how could He know?
Classical theism stipulates that God has always known everything, because He has infinite knowledge, period. But this does little to explain God’s insistence that sin be allowed to ever come about in the first place, or to run its course to an extreme extent, with devastating effects.
Outside of time-space, can God predict His own future, about things He had not yet created? If God is all-knowing, even about Himself, does not that bring His freewill into question?
Since good and evil both exist, and they both came about in God’s perfect creation, why is it that God is good? Could that be a conscious choice He made about His nature, in response to His evaluation of all freewill agents, and their cause-and-effect scenarios that played out from the beginning of time, and into the infinite future?
Why wouldn’t God be both good, and evil, unless, of course, He learned about evil and all of its corrupt fruit, by evaluating it since the beginning of time, and throughout all eternity?
Such perfect knowledge that would be if that is how He obtained it.
If God is only pure good, why exactly does He allow Satan to run about, boldly making accusations against God’s children, at His very throne, to His face? What is it with this legal battle, whereby Satan obtained authority to wreak havoc on earth, when Adam and Eve fell for his deception and sinned in the Garden of Eden? Why did God even allow Satan there to tempt them in the first place?
Mormon theology takes a hard line on this, declaring that Adam and Eve’s sin was part of God’s will.
But I do not accept that conclusion.
Does not any of this speak to a kind of cause-and-effect learning, whereby the actions of all freewill agents, humans, angels, and everything in between, are evaluated by God? Could it be that all of this learning, is what God experienced and learned from, for His own benefit, all at once?
While God is omniscient regarding all of time-space and everything within it, where I suggest He might have had limited knowledge is in His own existence, regarding His infinite nature, before He created time-space.
That is not much of a limit in my opinion, but it makes sense out of freewill becoming corrupt, and God learning from that experience, and then establishing a plan to correct it.
Before the creation of time-space containing freewill agents, the concept of selfishness, which is the core of all evil in a nutshell, did not exist. How could it? God was all alone. But the instant God spoke creation into existence, I suggest that He branched out into the Trinity as we now understand Him, and with His new nature, came a type of learning that only applies to God.
I suggest that God the Father learned everything there was to learn about time-space and freewill agents, including the existence of good and evil, all at once. The Father is learning, or has learned, all that can be learned, all at once.
Consider the wisdom of Solomon and recognize how pleased God was with Solomon’s desire to attain wisdom (1 Kings 3:5-14). Does it not make sense to see how many blessings, and how much grace God lavished on Solomon, because of his desire to pursue wisdom? Is God possibly telling us something about Himself in this?
- 1 Kings 3:5-14: 5 At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.” 6 Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day. 7 Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?” 10 The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. 11 So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, 12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. 13 Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. 14 And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.”
God’s new nature as a Trinity, being Holy Spirit, and Jesus, are embedded within time-space, and they know what the Father reveals to them, at their specific places and times, in linear time. There is an interactive, perpetual exchange of information between these three, who are One.
Holy Spirit receives perpetual input, from the hearts and minds of all freewill agents, and relays that information to Jesus, and the Father. Holy Spirit operates as a kind of nervous system for God’s creation. The manner in which Jesus instructed believers to pray, is indicative of this. When people pray long, hard, and persistent, adding a powerful amplitude of faith to their prayers, the signals get through, and God responds (Luke 11:5-8, 18:1).
- Luke 11:5-8: 5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread;6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity[a] he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
- Luke 18:1: Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.
I have always wondered, why pray, if God can read my thoughts, and He even knows what I am going to pray, before I pray it? What is the point of this interaction, for a God who exists entirely outside of time-space? He often proves His point, by answering our prayers while we are in the middle of asking for something (Isaiah 65:16). Clearly there is something about this asking, this experiential relationship, that God enjoys, and it is baked into His creation. This is where open theism has a solid argument.
- Isaiah 65:16: Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.
Sometimes there are spiritual battles attempting to disrupt the orders that Jesus issues forth from His throne, in response to information received from Holy Spirit. For example, Daniel prayed for days on end for God’s guidance, and in response, Jesus dispatched the archangel Gabriel, who was then apprehended by an evil entity known as the Prince of Persia (Daniel 10:12-13). Gabriel was detained for twenty-one days in a higher realm. Continued prayer from Daniel, and probably Gabriel as well, relayed by Holy Spirit, resulted in Michael being dispatched to deal with this delay. All of these events happened within time-space, as products of God’s interaction with His creation.
- Daniel 10:12-13: 12 Then he continued, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them.13 But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.
Regarding Jesus, the mind of Christ, likely operates much the same as a person’s consciousness, but on a vastly larger scale. Jesus is fully integrated with Holy Spirit, and His Father, at a level that exceeds all other created beings. The church, is the body of Christ, relaying everything to the Mind of Christ, through Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit provides sensory input from all creation to the Mind of Christ. Jesus plainly stated that He is the head, and the church is His body (Colossians 1:18). As for the Father, Jesus’s mind is constantly exchanging information with the Father. He provides input from wherever He is at, in whatever He is dealing with, teaching His Father, but His thoughts and memories from Holy Spirit, and the Father, bounce around in time and space, with full access to all knowledge.
- Colossians 1:18: 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
But not all knowledge is necessary to deal with any given situation in time-space. Just as we access select memories while having a discussion, or during the course of a day, or we scratch our arm in response to an itch, so Jesus thinks and responds much the same way, but on a vastly larger scale.
The Father contains the sum-total of all knowledge and experience, but at the same time, Holy Spirit and Jesus seem to learn and experience things as any other freewill agent does, but on the greatest scale of any entity that exists within time-space. They are the central conduit―the central processing unit of God, relaying all of His experiential learning.
When Jesus prays to His Father, He stills His thoughts, and fully enters His Father’s stream of consciousness, at that time and place where Jesus is at. When Jesus submits information to His Father, this is the Father’s steam of learning. When the Father wants to experience things or do things, He submits information and commands back to Jesus. So, the Father and His Son commune with each other about everything going on in that specific time and place, but the Father has latitude to share from an ancient past, the distant future, or even alternate realities altogether. The point is, the Father is in an experiential relationship with His Son, just as His Son is in an experiential relationship with other freewill agents throughout His creation.
And the same can be said of Holy Spirit, who moves about, bearing witness (Romans 8:15-16).
- Romans 8:15-16: 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.[a]And by him we cry, “Abba,[b]” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.
Going back to the concept of classic theology, I ask the question again, with these new concepts of the Trinity in mind. If God knows everything, why did He create Lucifer, knowing he would be the father of lies, and spawn the existence of evil, hatred, and misery?
Classic theology addresses God’s attributes as follows:
- Omniscience: God is generally understood to be omniscient, meaning he knows everything that can be known, including all past, present, and future events. From this perspective, God does not know the future in the human sense of guessing or foretelling something uncertain. Instead, he already knows it as part of his complete and perfect knowledge.
However, is it possible that He might not know certain things, until He brings them into existence? When it comes to God’s nature, the things He chooses to do, and the origin of His personality, these are the mysterious things I speak of.
It is vastly easier and much more comprehensible, to conceive of God being pure and good, even perfectly innocent like a child, if He acquired His own nature, and the truth about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, having superiority over selfishness, evil, hatred, and misery, through His own creation, at the exact moment He took on a new triune nature when He created all of time-space.
In essence, the existence of evil was not even a thought to God, until He instantly experienced the fullness of it through His creation. I suggest that this is why He allowed Lucifer to do what He did, because He as the Father, was learning from the unfolding of events as they happened, all at once.
Humans may have difficulty in disengaging with linear time to contemplate this. Why would God allow countless freewill agents to sin, committing horrible acts against each other, over and over again, until the situation becomes so incomprehensibly horrible, with countless atrocities occurring throughout all of human history? And this is a drop in the bucket compared to the span of time that covered the war in the heavens among innumerable angels. Why does God, more often than not, allow sin to run its course? What good can possibly come out of millennia of misery?
Scripture tells us that God’s Judgement Day is long in waiting, because of God’s great mercy (2 Peter 3:9), but what about all of His creation who are suffering until that time?
Unless… It is all a part of God learning His ethics and morality, through all of this madness, all at once from the Father’s perspective, but from Jesus, Holy Spirit, and all freewill agents to ever exist, they experience everything in real-time.
Jesus created the angels, and He delegated tasks to them. War in the heavens might have been won on the cross, but there are still battles going on, among angels and other entities, here on earth, and possibly still in the heavens.
Scripture clearly states that there is life in the heavens requiring reconciliation with Christ (Colossians 1:19-20). The problem of sin even spans beyond the earth.
- Colossians 1:19-20: 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
We have a full ecosystem of hierarchical society, both on earth, and in the heavens, to include different ranks or orders of angelic beings. Terms like “thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities” (Colossians 1:16) and “archangel” (1 Thessalonians 4:16, Jude 1:9 referring to Michael), suggest a structured order. This order applies to evil entities as well (Ephesians 6:12), and taken altogether, they regulate the affairs of freewill agents, establishing their alignments, either with God, or in opposition to God.
Even angels have scuffles now and then, as was the case with the Old Testament prophet Daniel, which will extend into the future (Daniel 8:9-10). Having access to the consciousness of every single freewill agent in existence, angels included, God the Father has access to both sides of the coin, in every relational interaction. Through all of this, God appointed Himself as the Captain of the Lord’s Host (Joshua 5:13-15), to serve as the ultimate arbiter, and example of righteousness and integrity, from everything about ethics and morality that could ever possibly be known.
- Daniel 8:9-10: 9 Out of one of them came another horn, which started small but grew in power to the south and to the east and toward the Beautiful Land.10 It grew until it reached the host of the heavens, and it threw some of the starry host down to the earth and trampled on them.
- Joshua 5:13-15:13 Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” 14 “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the LordI have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord[a] have for his servant?” 15 The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.
God is the author of right and wrong; if freewill agents are to exist, this is how they should behave.
Leading by example, God appointed Himself to the cross to die for the greatest cause of love, to redeem any who wanted a way out of all their wretched, selfish, sinful choices. It makes sense to suggest that this came about as an experiential decision, with Jesus and the Father communing throughout eons, during the war in the heavens, and afterward, through all the trials and tribulations of humanity on earth and culminating on the cross.
I think this is perfectly reasonable, and does not detract from God’s omniscience whatsoever, to suggest that God was not aware of such misery ever coming into existence, until He created time-space, and experienced it through His new nature, and newly created freewill agents, unfolding instantaneously from the Father’s perspective, all at once.
To me, this makes perfect sense, and it ascribes an attribute of innocence to God’s character, more than an all-knowing and perfectly pure and good God, creating Lucifer from the start, knowing full well the evil he was going to unleash, before He turned him lose on His creation to profoundly corrupt it beyond all recognition.
The typical classical theological argument shouts back, that it is all too easy, for us creatures of linear time, to judge the Alpha and Omega, Creator of all things, accusing Him of evil, because He had a foreknowledge of the side effects of new freewill agents coming into existence, and He therefore should have prevented the damage they would inflict on each other from ever happening. This might not make sense to us, but we are just limited creatures with scraps of knowledge, and we just simply have to accept by faith, that God is still pure good and nothing else, period, end of sentence.
But many people, particularly questioning intellectuals, do not buy that simplistic argument. They want more.
The facts do not add up to God being purely good, as far as justifying His creation, in light of the carnage that Lucifer unleashed. We mortals of earth may be miniscule in our cognitive reasoning, but this is basic ethics here; ethics we currently have, because God gave us those ethics! Common sense dictates, if a judge knows someone is a pedophile serial killer, mass murdering maniac, (which Lucifer is all of these and more), why would he or she ever be allowed to roam free and wreak havoc?
That is what God did, and it does not require a vast intelligence to recognize this discrepancy.
Satan, no doubt, uses his own sin as a means of declaring that God is a hypocrite for allowing him to sin in the first place. He also thinks he is exploiting God’s grace, with God allowing him to do what he has been doing all this time.
So, we now have schools of thought, Calvinism vs. Arminianism, trying to figure out God’s behavior, what He says about Himself, and the nature of His flawed creation. For God to allow the corruption of His creation at all, does not seem ethical, and if it were possible to avoid all the pain and suffering that followed, if He is all-powerful, why didn’t He avoid it? Why bother with having to create hell? Equally confusing is, if it was not possible for God to create an uncorrupted creation, why?
How does any of this make sense?
- Timelessness (Atemporality): Classical theology purports that God exists outside of time. For a being that is atemporal, there is no “past,” “present,” or “future” in the way humans experience them. All moments are eternally present to God. Therefore, God does not experience a linear progression of time and thus would not experience time as we understand it. He does not look forward to a future He has not yet experienced; He simply encompasses all of existence simultaneously.
For the Father, whom Jesus said no one has seen, this makes perfect since.
But again, I say, what if God established a new triune nature since the beginning, whereby part of Him, Jesus and Holy Spirit, do exist in linear time. Does this not add a more personal touch to God’s relationship with His created children, and make better sense out of why His buggy creation is taking its sweet time to get to version 2.0?
Pardon the cyber-jargon; I’m an old-school techie…
With backdoor access to every living entity in time-space, Holy Spirit experiences every thought and every emotion. He hears every word spoken and witnesses the actions of all created life in motion, in all of existence. His consciousness includes the sum total of all conscious entities, in a real-time progression of cause-and-effect, from beginning to end, ever since the beginning of time, and into the eternal future of time-space. This knowledge stemming from freewill agents interacting with each other, is incomprehensibly vast, yet it all exists within the construct of time-space, which did not exist before God spoke it into being.
As for Jesus, He is the Alpha and Omega, making Him the Lord of all time. He can bounce around within the confines of time-space as much as He wants. As previously stated, Jesus may have even traveled back in time after He ascended to heaven with His new body, and created all life before any existed, because Jesus is the firstborn of all creation (Colossians 1:16-17). Most Bible scholars, and all the commentaries I have ever read, suggest this is a metaphorical, or symbolic reference to Christ’s birth, and it is not to be taken literally, but I postulate that it does not have to be interpreted that way, because Jesus is the master of all time.
- Colossians 1:16-17: 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
When Jesus was living His life as a mortal, He was given glimpses of an ancient past, predating His birth. He talked about seeing Lucifer fall like lightning (Colossians 1:18), when Michael cast him back down to earth in an angelic battle that predated humanity (Isaiah 14:12-15, Ezekiel 28:14-17, Revelation 12:7-9).
- Colossians 1:17-19: 17 The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” 18 He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. 20 However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
- Isaiah 14:12-15: 12 How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! 13 You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.[b] 14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” 15 But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit.
- Ezekiel 28: 14-17: 14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy
mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. 16 Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. 17 Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings. - Revelation 12:7-9: 7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
Jesus also remembered His conversation with Moses, when He assumed the form of a burning bush, and identified Himself as… I AM, because He told the Scribes and Pharisees, “Before Abraham was, I AM!” (John 8:58). In Moses’ later interactions with God, they saw Him as a humanoid form. A group of Israelites even chilled out with God on the top of Mount Sainai, eating a meal with Him (Exodus 24:9-11)!
If no one can see God, as Jesus declared, then this had to be Jesus that ate that meal with.
- John 8:58: 58 “Very truly I tell you,”Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”
- John 8:58: 9 Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up 10 and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. 11 But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.
These instances of Jesus’ memories before He was born with a body, defy linear time. I suggest that these are examples of Jesus’ selective, cognitive integration with His Father. I speculate that He has access to His Father’s omniscience, in a moment-by-moment progression, in the context of whatever He happens to be experiencing. He accesses His memory, the same as any human’s brain works, except on an infinitely larger scale, and Jesus’ memories can bounce around in time, and even include future events He personally has not experienced yet.
This brings up a conundrum I previously touched on; can God predict His own future?
Yes, and no.
If God can predict His own future, does that throw a monkey wrench in Him having freewill? If there are things He knows He has to do, and He cannot avoid them, how is that free? In the case of the cross, it seems to look like that, because Jesus surrendered His will on that occasion, acquiescing to His Father’s will. This is an odd Scripture, because it distinctly pits Jesus’ will, being at odds with His Father.
If Jesus saw things in His own future, which if He bounces around in time, may even be the ancient past if He traveled back in time after dying on the cross, does He have no will to avoid those things in His own future?
Perhaps from the Father’s perspective, all of time is like a canvas, seen all at once, and He has the ability to edit any of it, at any time or place, when, and/or however He chooses, through Jesus. With His edits, He can use His freewill to create alternate realities or timelines, or parallel worlds in the process, exploring the full depth of His own will.
Perhaps in other realities, it was not Lucifer who sinned, but some other angel? Or maybe Adam and Eve passed their test in some other parallel universes. The serpent gives his pitch, then Adam suddenly grips him by his throat and shuts him up. Then down the road, one of their children, many generations down the line, blew it?
The possibilities are endless, regarding alternate realities, whereby God can explore the full range of freewill, through all of His freewill agents, and working out what everything means, and what exactly He wants.
All of time-space, is God’s Groundhog Day.
As for Jesus, being God imbedded in time-space, having an interactive, experiential conversation with His Apostles, He suddenly recalls a memory from an ancient time predating humanity. The only way He could have done this, was to witness it from His Father’s perspective, outside of time-space.
Jesus was likely there at that time, bodily, but maybe He had not traveled there yet when He was speaking with His Apostles about this, because His glorified body did not exist yet. I suggest this happened by means of the Father, witnessing this event through Jesus’ future eyes, relayed from Holy Spirit. Then Holy Spirit relayed that memory forward in time from that event, to Jesus, when He walked on earth as a mortal, and was conversing with His disciples. So, this would be an example of Jesus seeing something from His own personal future, which happened in the ancient past, so He reflected on it in the past tense.
When it comes to understanding God’s timeless, and simultaneous temporal qualities, it can become confusing to the rational mind. However, I believe it is well worth the cognitive effort to attempt to understand these possibilities, in order to reconcile God’s perfect goodness, along with His omniscience, in relation to the horrifically flawed corruption that came about in His creation.
Consider the fact that Jesus created His own ancestors, Adam and Eve, from the dust of the earth. He did this, knowing that He would one day be born as one of their offspring. In a manner of speaking, Jesus created His own body, in a paradoxical time-loop!
Then there was Jesus visiting Adam and Eve in the Garden, and later warning Cain about sin, knowing full well what was eventually going to happen, not only because His Father might have informed Him about it in the moment, but also because He remembered hearing all about it as a kid in Bethlehem when He was growing up – in the future.
Having the ability to bounce around in time, is something the average person does in his/her imagination all the time, but God’s imagination, is our reality.
— God’s Imagination —
The perfection of His face
The miracle of His spirit
And the secret of His personality
Only He knows all
Only His words are pure
For His imagination is our reality
And only God knows
The compound of awareness
And the secret quest of every soul
Only His smile is purely sweet
His mercy complete
His love entirely whole
In the life He delivers
In His mystical breath
His being irrelevant to death
We are a spark
In the dust of His thoughts
That He let roam free
In an period called time
In a place called space
That He simply willed to be
This is precisely why I suggest that God may have not known about the existence of evil, prior to creating time-space and all other freewill agents to interact with. Just as we can imagine horrible things spontaneously, often by accident, and not be held accountable for those thoughts if we do not dwell on them, God deals with this issue as well, but on a much grander scale, with the inception of His creation.
Consider that God has grace with us, regarding our thoughts, which is the spawning ground of any new creation. God does not consider thoughts associated with temptation, the same thing as sin. Sinful thoughts cross our minds all the time, but it is what we do with these thoughts that counts. If we resist temptation, rather than giving into it, the battle is quarantined in our minds, and we are free of sin. Even Jesus experienced temptation, but He was without sin (2 Corinthians 5:21).
To this, I say, when God created all life, even including Lucifer, God was without sin, because at the inception of creating time-space, God did not know what would happen, until He created it. It was then that He instantly, timelessly, formulated His plan to correct it.
- 2 Corinthians 5:21: 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[a]for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Consider the grace that God applied to Cain, who committed the first murder. Even to the extreme of murder, Cain did not receive the eye for an eye death penalty treatment that came later through the law of Moses. This could be seen as God downplaying Abel’s death, letting Cain off the hook. However, another way of looking at it is that God saw things from Cain’s perspective. Cain may not have had a full grasp of the gravity of his actions, this early in humanity’s development, just as God may not have had a full grasp of the consequences of creating all of time-space and freewill agents within it, which brought about the environment for evil to exist in the first place. In this respect, God might have identified with Cain’s situation in a unique way. This is not to justify Cain’s murder, but rather to explain why God didn’t kill him for it.
Returning to the topic of the Trinity, and each member’s relationship with time, for Jesus, His ability to know things in the future, seems to be based on where He is currently at, and what He is currently doing, interacting with any given entity, or situation.
As previously stated, God may even create parallel universes, exploring the introduction of countless variables that affect people’s choices, working like a perfect algorithm to extract the extract ingredients from His children, in order to bring them to repentance and salvation. This brings up the topic of quantum physics, which I will discuss further momentarily.
Whenever and wherever, Jesus happens to be, He is in the moment, relating to whoever is in front of Him, as if He is also experiencing linear time, just like we are – in that moment. He uses time-based language, possibly not only to relate with us, but also because linear time is part of His overall experience and nature, at least to a certain extent.
There are some aspects of Jesus that are beyond human comprehension, because He can see His Father, and no one else can. He also has unlimited access to His Father’s knowledge and power, but as we see Him in Scripture, this access is obtained through an interactive relationship, which can only be explained within the context of time-space. Prayer, for example, and especially persistent prayer, and conditional prophecies, make more sense if we understand God’s intimate, relational nature, expressed in time-space.
- Sovereignty and Purpose: Classical theology concludes that God’s knowledge of the future is often linked to His sovereignty and His ability to accomplish his purposes. If God declares the “end from the beginning” (as in Isaiah 46:10), it is not merely a prediction, but a statement of His ultimate plan and His power to bring it to pass. In this sense, His “future” is what He has willed and will bring about.
In this respect, classical theology makes sense, if it applies directly to the Father. The instant time-space came into being, and He entered it with His Holy Spirit, and Jesus, He formulated a plan to redeem the damage that was done by rouge freewill agents. Part of this, from Jesus and Holy Spirit’s perspective, was a plan that unfolded over time, after seeing what happened in the war in the heavens. They came to an understanding of what must be done to stop it.
First, there was a physical battle in the heavens among the angels, and the archangel Michael overthrew Lucifer and his minions. This happened before Adam and Eve were ever created, because freshly minted Adam and Eve, before they sinned, encountered an evil, possessed serpent, in the Garden of Eden.
Satan was then allowed to tempt Adam and Eve, and on this point, I say it is easier to comprehend, if understood from the context of God’s learning. Holy Spirit was there in that moment, recording what was going on in Satan’s mind, and Adam and Eve’s minds.
Satan has essentially been appointed by God at some point, in a strange twist, to play devil’s advocate, literally. This is the bizarre legal issues that we see with Satan in Scripture, which I previously alluded to.
In the book of Job, Satan appears with his followers, before God’s throne, making accusations against God’s children. In fact, the name Satan, means accuser in Hebrew. Satan continues to make accusations against God’s children to this day (Revelation 12:10).
- Revelation 12:10: 10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night,has been hurled down.
In Job, Satan tells God that he is roaming about in the world, going to and fro (Job 1:7), free to create problems, no doubt. Adam and Eve granted him this legal authority in the earth when they rejected God and sinned.
- Job 1:7: 7 The Lordsaid to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
The interaction between God and Satan is very interesting, if not disturbing, because God allows Satan to do some really messed up stuff to Job and his family. The optics do not look good for God in the book of Job, unless it is understood as a learning experience, to see how Job reacts, and possibly extract information out of this entire exchange, and learn about good vs. evil.
A version of this scenario with Job, is doubtless played out, with every single freewill agent, in all of existence, up to the point of Judgement Day. In all of these interactions, we are learning about good and evil, because we asked for it (Genesis 3:6-7), and I suggest that God may be learning as well, in a special way that only He can learn.
- Genesis 3:6-7: 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
All freewill agents, including God, see the horrendous evil perpetrated by Satan, and those aligned with him, contrasted with faithful, loving, righteous, good people, or entities, whatever their species. All of this interaction establishes a baseline of good vs. evil, in infinite degrees, which God the Father learned, all at once, but we, stuck in time-space, have to experience it all.
The Bible later speaks of Satan’s role as God’s official alternative, the man of lawlessness, in the New Testament. Anyone who reject’s God and His established truth, will naturally gravitate to this man of lawlessness, the Antichrist, to come in the future (2 Thessalonians 9-12). God makes this appointment and will even allow this man of lawlessness to have an incredibly deceptive power, referred to as a strong delusion. The Antichrist will draw in all who would abuse their freewill, and everything that God has learned about the corruption of freewill that He wants destroyed.
- 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12: 9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie,10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
This only makes sense for a perfectly just, pure, and good God, if God learned about freewill, only after bringing it into existence. Then, after learning all there is to know about it, He established His perfect personality and alignment out of this experience. Simultaneously, outside of time-space, He devised a plan to clean it up, and make it perfect, through a linear time-based process, with an established Judgement Day deadline, because all of this unfolded in linear time.
Quantum Physics
I earlier mentioned the possibility of alternate realities, or parallel universes, because it can help to explain any discussion about time travel, as it relates to freewill agents.
If Jesus is able to bounce around in time, creating parallel universes, He can then possibly reject the cross in some alternative reality, and see the results that decision creates. He may very well have discovered that everything in such a universe would eventually be irrevocably corrupted and destroyed. He could likewise come to the conclusion that if His standard was not perfect mercy, humility, and perfect justice, in response to sin and evil, His creation would not be what He wanted it to be. The only way to make it the way He wanted it to be, was to establish His perfect standard, based on everything that He learned, accumulated in the Father, and then fulfill His perfect standard on the cross.
Additionally, through creating alternative realities, God may have also learned that sin inevitably comes about, every single time, without fail.
What if the nature of freewill makes the result of sin inevitable? Perhaps it is not Lucifer in another reality, when God injects other variables to alter Lucifer’s trajectory, but then something else happens, and another angel ends up sinning? Again and again, sin comes about, in every new instance of time-space, thus, the cross becomes a painful, unavoidable conclusion.
Does this mean that Jesus had to die on the cross, countless times?
I do not think so, but He did have to die at least once. Scripture says that Christ died once for all (1 Peter 3:18), so for that event, the Father could have integrated all of reality in His grand tapestry, in such a way, so as to make that a unified event, intersected in all timelines.
- 1 Peter 3:18: 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.
All of reality is God’s creation, to do with as He wills, once He brought it into being. Recall the edited canvas of God’s creation mentioned earlier, full of edits, eraser marks, and paint-overs? It is God’s creation, edited all at once. The universe, or multiverse, may be a patchwork of parallel universes, but it all exists in the hands of the Creator, who is able to do with it as He wills, working it into His perfect masterpiece, from both outside of time-space, and within it, to include His new triune nature as part of it.
God might not have been able to avoid the initial corruption of freewill, because His creation was explicitly designed to be a learning experience environment. The instant He learned from it, He simultaneously established His plan of salvation, which resulted in burning up all corrupted, irredeemable freewill agents in the Lake of Fire, then moving forward into a glorious, eternal future, with those He redeemed.
It is difficult to think of an alternative to this conclusion, with God intentionally creating freewill agents that He predestines for destruction in hell.
If there are such things as parallel universes, as previously stated, they could also be used to explore the injection of new variables, through angelic intervention or other means, to nudge all freewill agents in the right direction, in hopes that they will eventually repent and be saved.
I suggest the possibility of parallel universes, not to say that an infinite number of them exist, but rather, to say that God could use them over and over again, attempting to teach His freewill agents to eventually choose rightly, as He has learned.
Perhaps all it takes is one parallel universe, for a person to accept Christ and repent, and out of that one reality, salvation applies to every timeline instance of that freewill agent? That one instance is all God needs to save that soul. Could not this explain why some people like me seem to have a shortcut to guaranteed salvation, with a dream vision of Jesus, after which I instantly accepted Christ when I woke up in the morning, while other people never repent of anything, and they die in their sins? How is that fair?
Why would God seem to cut a break for some people, giving them astounding revelations of Himself, while ignoring others? Could it be that God goes through to great lengths with everyone, and in addition to the cross, and that He may even appear in visions to everyone at some time or place, but many still rejected Him?
What about aborted fetuses, do they get a free pass to heaven, without ever having their freewill tested, without ever having to repent of sin? Would not that provide a twisted justification for abortion, to supply one’s unborn children with guaranteed salvation?
I think not.
One theory about aborted children, automatically going to heaven, is that they will be resurrected during the millennial reign of Christ in the future, and at that time, they will be tested by Satan when he is released again. They will not get a free pass to eternal salvation without any testing if this is the case. But another theory is that they might survive the abortion, or not be aborted at all, in the parallel universe of another timeline, so murdering them cannot be justified for the sake of saving them.
In all situations, I know in my heart of hearts that God is fair. I credit the above-mentioned encounter I personally had with Jesus, which transformed me overnight in a radical behavior shift, with this firm belief. Recall I mentioned earlier that there are few things where I will make hard yes/no theological declarations, but God being fair is one of those exceptions, where I do have an insistence on this matter. I know God is holy, with an essence of pure love, and from this love comes His definition of perfect fairness. I know this, not based on theological quandaries, applying logic, left and right brained thinking, and all I know of science and other fields of study, to derive this conclusion. I know this truth, because I was in God’s manifest presence, and I believe He revealed this to me about Himself, from that experience, in a way that I cannot deny on any count, no matter how confused I get about anything. I know God is love, more than I know I even exist. I know that I know that I know!
For this reason, if I have to err on the side of caution, pitting God’s omniscience and foreknowledge against His divine nature of pure, holy, and unquestionable love, I will side with God’s love every time. This is not to say that I fully support every aspect of open theism, believing that God has gaps in His knowledge, because I do not. I do believe God somehow knows all things, but simultaneously, He is love. But the fact that we live in a fallen creation makes no sense to me, logically speaking. However, now with this new theory about God learning, which maybe God revealed to me, I find comfort in knowing both aspects of God are true, and they can even make sense with a logical explanation, if God can learn. I also suspect God might use parallel universes/timelines to maximize salvation, because of His loving nature.
Some, or perhaps a great many, will perpetually choose evil, and worse yet, repeatedly double-down, refusing to appeal to God and ask for forgiveness. Maybe we have as many as 490 alternative universes to live (7 X 70), whereby God allows a do-over at any given point in our lives. In each new timeline spinoff, generated at various decision points where we fail to ask God for forgiveness, He can press the pause button, rewind, and inject new information or new experiences, appealing to our spirits.
Angels can intervene in some of these decision points, if no one else is available. In every attempt, God can create new timelines to get us to see things His way, which He has learned through a vastly incomprehensible set of experience, spanning every single interaction of all freewill agents that has ever happened, or ever will happen, in the eternal future.
God is actively searching our hearts and minds, and I suspect that process likely involves some interesting and far-reaching tactics.
For those who are truly lost, their freewill is entirely intact. God might go through incalculable extremes to appeal to them, even using parallel universes and countless do-overs with varying sets of circumstances, just to see them sin, over and over again, and never repent. There is a point at which God will conclude that a soul is lost, but only God knows what that point is.
Did God create these lost souls from the beginning, knowing they were going to sin, such that they were destined for wrath? This is a hard Calvinist stance, but is that what a good God does; have children, knowing He is going to throw them into hell?
I seriously doubt this this, because it does not appear to align with the acts of a loving God. However, Jesus’s comment about Judas being better off, had he never been born (Matthew 26:24), is a frequently cited example for hardline Calvinists, and it’s tough to reconcile.
- Matthew 26:24: 24 The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”
Again, I reiterate that God did not know about the corruption that would stem from other freewill agents in time-space, until He created them. This applies to Lucifer, and Judas Iscariot as well. Arguing against this stance, brings God’s pure and holy goodness into questione
Outside of time-space, prior to God creating it, the concept of freewill, and sin, was completely foreign to God, as it relates to other freewill agents sinning against each other. No other freewill agents existed before this, and freewill had no time or space to be expressed, so how could He know? As stated earlier, to Muslims, it appears that God tied His own hands when it comes to the cross, and to this, I say that is because He did! Indeed, He did, because He did not know He would have to go through with something like that, until it was too late, from His perspective inside of time-space.
Scripture records a number of instances, where God appears to express regret, and I sincerely believe that is precisely because part of Him did, in fact, have regret on those occasions, for real! Going to the cross was exceedingly difficult for Jesus. And wiping out the entire planet in the flood of Noah, was an Oy Gevalt, forehead slapping moment, no doubt (Genesis 6:6)!
- Genesis 6:6: The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.
Once He brought time-space into existence, and populated it with other freewill agents, the Father immediately learned about sin, and with the new triune elements of His new time-embedded nature, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, working through their cognitive integration with the Father, set out to correct the corruption that spawned within time-space, using mechanisms within time-space to do it.
Recap –God Knows Everything (General Statements):
- 1 John 3:20: “For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”
- Psalm 147:5: “Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.”
- 1 Samuel 2:3: “Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.”
- Job 37:16: “Do you know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of him who is perfect in knowledge?”
These scriptures speak of God’s omniscience, but notice God’s personality and inter-relational language, used consistently throughout the Bible. God is described in the all-knowing context of His justice and ethics. From where did God’s knowledge originate? What has caused Him to formulate opinions, to have a personality and express His will? I say God learned through His integrated back-door access to all the interpersonal relationships of all freewill agents, throughout all existence, since the beginning of time-space, and into the eternal future.
God Knows Our Thoughts and Hearts:
- Psalm 139:1-6: “O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.”
This scripture speaks of God’s backdoor access to all freewill agents. Notice that He searches our hearts in order to know us. This is interactive. He searches our paths, perhaps in countless parallel universes, and He becomes acquainted with all our ways. This Scripture speaks of an interactive relationship over time, pointing out God’s intimate dealings with His children.
- 1 Chronicles 28:9: “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.”
- Psalm 33:13-15: “The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man; from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.”
Again, the Lord searches out hearts, which is an action that transpires through time-space, and therefore must involve an aspect of experiential learning for us, and I say for God as well.
- 1 Kings 8:39: “then hear in heaven your dwelling place and forgive and act and render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways (for you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind).”
He knows our hearts by searching them, and He interacts with His children, in time-space, while simultaneously, existing outside of time-space. Part of God’s triune nature is going through time, within time-space, with His creation, interacting with His creation, while another part of God, the Father, exists outside of time-space. From there, He relays information and actions to and through Holy Spirit, and Jesus, in accordance with His will, which He formulated, based on what He learned, all at once.
- 1 Samuel 16:7: “But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.’“
- Hebrews 4:12-13: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
God is living, and active! To be active, and discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart, within time-space, is to interact with His creation, respond to cause-and-effect events, learn things, and make adjustments.
God has a plan!
But why the need for a plan?
Inside time-space, Jesus and Holy Spirit saw, as time unfolded prior to humanity, the need of a plan of salvation, and every intricate detail it would have to cover. They observed and learned from the interaction of all freewill agents from the beginning of time, and this will continue into the eternal future. From their perspective, this learning is experienced.
Outside of time-space, God’s plan was established, the instant He created time-space and freewill agents, because they created a situation that called for the need of a plan. From God the Father’s perspective, His plan of salvation was established outside of time-space, before the creation of the world, (Ephesians 1:4-5). This aligns with the Calvinist perspective of predestination. But the need for this plan was something God learned, through interaction with His new triune nature, which came into being the instant He created time-space and imbedded Himself within it. Part of God learned about good and evil, all at once from the Father’s perspective, while another part of God, learns over time, for all eternity.
- Ephesians 1:4: 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he[a]predestined us for adoption to sonship[b] through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—
God Knows the Future (Foreknowledge):
- Isaiah 46:9-10: “Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’”
This is the Father’s perspective, outside of time-space; He declares the end from the beginning, and in this respect, there is none like Him. His creation is whatever He wants it to be, however, what does He want? How is it that His creation became corrupt, if He did not want it that way? Why will so many souls be lost, if He is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9)?
- 2 Peter 3:9: 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Again, I suggest that God learned through His new triune nature within His creation of time-space populated by freewill agents, what good and evil actually are, and from that, He developed His ethics and morality. If this were not the case, how could He be perfectly good, while creating an environment with so much evil? There would be no point in a perfectly good God, creating anything at all, if it resulted in so much misery and death, and it was not what God intended.
It makes more sense to suggest that God’s will, regarding His creation, was formulated the instant He created time-space, and established a new nature for Himself. Obviously, something outside of God’s will happened, which corrupted His creation, but this could only happen to a perfectly true, just, pure, and good God, if His perfect will was not established, until the point of inception, when He created other freewill agents within time space, and learned from their interactions.
- Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
- Acts 15:18: “Known to God from eternity are all His works.”
These scriptures speak of the Father, outside of time-space, referring to His existence in eternity, which is external from His creation. Part of God exists outside of time-space, but another part of Him operates within time-space, experientially.
God’s Knowledge Extends to Every Detail:
- Matthew 10:29-30: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.”
- Proverbs 15:3: “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.”
- Psalm 33:13-15: “The LORD looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man; from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.”
- Romans 11:33-34: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’”
Again, notice how these scriptures speak of God’s ever-present Spirit, which is Holy Spirit, observing, and learning, then witnessing all He learns to His Father in heaven. He watches the evil and the good which is to say, He often allows sin to run its course. This often results in the ghastliest evil to run rampant, though not indefinitely, because God is merciful, He has a plan in effect, and He is correcting it. There is a day coming in the future, called Judgement Day, when God draws a line, and He will separate those who accept and follow Him, from those who reject Him (Matthew 13:24-30). After this, everything will be so perfect, we may eventually even forget about the pain and hardship of our lives altogether (Isaiah 65:17).
- Matthew 13:24-30: 24 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. 26 But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”
- Isaiah 65:17: 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Judgement Day will occur on a specific deadline in time-space, executed from the throne of the King of the Multiverse, so it is within the construct of time-space, that God executes His Judgement. Jesus is the Righteous Judge on this day, and from His throne, He will cast His judgements, which He established with His perfect will, relayed to Him from His Father, outside of time-space.
God Knows the Future (Foreknowledge):
- Isaiah 46:9-10: “remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’”
- Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
- Acts 15:18: “Known to God from eternity are all His works.”
- Isaiah 42:9: “Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I announce them to you.”
These passages consistently portray God as having complete, perfect, and exhaustive knowledge of all things, past, present, and future. And yet, He searches our hearts, He discerns our thoughts, He has conversations with us, using linear time language, and everything He does, flows out of a heart of love. At the same time, He created the heavens and the earth, from which spawned all known evil.
In Conclusion…
God does not just know all things and needlessly allow the carnage of all evil to run rampant across His creation, destroying a substantial chunk of it, just for the fun of it. There has to be a solid explanation as to why sin came about, and for why God often allows sin to run its course. To this, suggesting that God learned, all at once, from what He had created, while simultaneously, He experiences His creation as an interactive process within His creation, and He uses what He learned, (and is perpetually learning), in His divine plan of salvation, is a redemptive conclusion.
Hopefully, with all of this explanation about God, time, parallel universes, time travel, freewill vs. predestination, Groundhog Day, and the perceived contradictions of God’s nature in contrast to His creation, relative to widely accepted classical theology, some may find this conclusion intellectually sufficient, to explain how an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, pure, holy, and perfectly good God, could create a universe with so much evil, and have to go through so much trouble to fix it.
Traditionally, God is depicted as a stern old man in the Sistine Chapel, reaching down from the heavens, touching Adam’s finger. But in light of the perspective outlined here, God can actually be thought of as more like an innocent child equipped with pure, unlimited consciousness, infinite intelligence, and unlimited power to create. Perhaps the only thing He may not have fully understood before He created the heavens and the earth, is Himself. He existed in an eternal timeless, space-less realm, before He created time-space. This is clear from the first sentence in the Bible, which establishes God creating of the heavens and the earth, in the beginning.
After some pondering, which occurs in an incomprehensible way, since it occurs outside of time-space, wham! God creates time-space and imbeds a new nature for Himself within it. In this creative process, He then defines His perfect nature as we understand Him, being perfectly pure and good, from the wisdom the Father instantly learned from His integration with His new creation. This nature by which He now defines Himself, from a human perspective, always existed, since the beginning of time, and God never changes going forward. We can rest assured God will never adopt any evil policies! Since He created time-space, and learned all there is to know about evil, He knows better than that!
But the learning process, took eternity going forward inside of time-space, through Jesus and Holy Spirit.
God’s overall, pure good nature, is consistent throughout the Trinity, but His all-knowing attribute is expressed interactively and experientially within time-space, for Jesus and Holy Spirit, in their interactions with other freewill agents.
And thus concludes this epiphany, to which I give credit to the very funny movie, Groundhog Day.
Now go watch the movie!