[Paul] I recently did an interview with Dr. Hugh Ross,
and we spoke a little bit about God and time. And the idea that I got from Dr. Ross was that
God potentially has his own dimensions of time, and I seem to get from you that you
think that time is solely created by God, that it didn't exist causally prior to the universe.
If... this is difficult to put into words... if God existed prior to time,
how could he be relational with himself if there's no time for him to have a relationship? Or
does God have his own unique time that's not linear, forwardly speaking, but there's
multiple dimensions, forwards and backwards, sideways in time? I don't know. [Craig] Aright.
Well I'm really sorry to hear that Hugh is still pushing this line, because he has been criticized
for this view in my book "Time and Eternity." J.P. Moreland and I sat down with Hugh at Talbot School
of Theology and laid out for him the difficulties of this viewpoint of God's extra-dimensionality,
and in that interview with us he admitted, he said candidly, that he's just using these
expressions metaphorically to appeal to physical scientists. But in fact what he really means
in a literal philosophical sense is that God is timeless, that God transcends time,
and I think it's better to be straightforward with people and to tell them what you actually think.
And my view would be that God existing alone without the universe, not
temporally prior to creation because time begins at the moment of creation,
but God without creation, I would say that God is simply timeless,
that is to say unchanging; there is no before and after, no earlier and later, in his existence.
And I think the concept of the Trinity can really help us to make sense of the timelessness of God,
because what the Trinity tells us is that God is not an isolated individual existing
in a lonely solitary state. Rather, God is a Trinity of three persons with a full
inner penetration or sharing of love, knowledge, and will, and that is a changeless
interpenetration of these three persons with each other in terms of that fellowship of love,
knowledge, and will that does not require time. Just as we sometimes speak of two lovers
who just sit staring into each other's eyes as lost in that timeless moment, I think God
literally is in such a timeless state of fellowship among the Trinitarian persons
that involves no change or transition, no earlier or later, before and after,
but is a timeless, full, sharing, or interpenetration of knowledge,
love, and will among the three persons of the Trinity, a very rich concept. And the marvel
of creation is that God would condescend to create a world of finite persons and invite these persons
into that inner Trinitarian fellowship as adopted sons and daughters of God.