This Chat about “God & Time” LITERALLY changed my life.

[0:00] have I got a treat for you today time is tricky and our language about time is even more tricky Augustine famously said that he knows exactly what time is until you ask him to Define it and I don't think that there is a single person alive who has done more hard work to clarify their language and their thinking and their definitions around what time is than Dr Ryan Mullen he is an intellectual heavyweight he has a wonderful wonderful Ministry talking about the philosophy of time he's got a bunch of letters after his name that tells you he's done a lot of academic work but he's an absolutely delightful person to talk to and more importantly I think that his view out of all of the biblical options out of all of the philosophical options is the one that does the most honor and does the least violence to the pages of scripture themselves and honors the way that God presents himself now there may be a

[0:47] couple of things that we talk about where we disagree and you have to be a pretty smart person to disagree with Ryan Mullins but I think it was an edifying conversation and in fact there's a lot here that if you're a recent viewer of my debate will lead you to see there are even more more possibilities to explain my position and even fewer to explain my opponent's position so get your thinking caps on this one's going to be a little bit headyy but if you can Soldier through and make it to the end I think that you'll be much much richer for it and I hope that this becomes one of those resources you point people to when you want to talk about God and time so without further Ado here's Ryan Mullins okay so again Dr Mullins or Ryan which one do you prefer it doesn't matter because I've got too many titles so Ryan's just it's just easier how how many letters do we stack onto the end of your name before we get it exactly accurate so yeah I think it's like five

[1:35] or six and then if you throw in reverend in there then you get you know like it's it's a lot it's we will stick with Ryan for the purposes of this conversation but just understand that all the respect I can stack onto the name Ryan with all the letters before and after are all every time I utter the name that's kind of what I'm feeling when I say it so we'll just go with that there we go so Ryan um I really appreciate your willingness to come in and talk to me about this because um as you know obviously I just I just had a debate with James White and it's not as though this is the only place that this happens in fact it's so pervasive that we kind of have to address it on a really wide level but we have really flabby language around time and I just wanted to tee you up with there's a there's a Doctor Who quote that I'm sure you're familiar with which is that time is like a big ball of

[2:25] wibbly wobbly timy wiy stuff and I think that that's about as accurate a definition to what people actually think as uh as any that I could find you know there's the Augustine quote also of like I know what time is until you ask me um so first off why do you think that our language around time is so flabby why do we have such mixed up definitions is it just that it's very difficult to understand and therefore very difficult to define or what do you think is at work in us having such bad language around time this is a problem that's bothered me for quite a long time actually is going why won't anybody tell me what time is so like your average introduction will start with that Augustine quote and then go you know we'll just move on and I'm like no no no answer the question like I know it's funny when Augustin because Augustin has a lot of jokes he's like he's like yeah

[3:13] I know it isn't let's ask me and then we're like move on and I'm like no um so I Augustine explains it slightly he's like he's like it's this very familiar stranger like time is something you experience every conscious moment it's so close to you that it's hard to figure out how exactly to talk about it and that's what you see him struggle for like the next several chapters in the confessions is he's trying to capture the entire temporal landscape the different aspects of it like how do I measure time because they didn't have like very consistent clocks so he's like well what if I sing a song in my head uh so so so so time is like the extension of the mind is what he says and people go nuts over that and say the stupidest things when all he's trying to do is I'm just trying to come up with a measurement system that's all bro like it's not time is consciousness or something like mystical like that uh so you've got that kind of problem is that it's so close to you it's hard to figure

[4:01] out the second problem is you've got a million different things in the temporal landscape that you're trying to capture duration measurements change before and after uh and then like what's the thing that makes all of that possible there's all these different features you're trying to get to get at and then the third thing this is the most pervasive problem I think is is spatial metaphors we use spatial metaphor constantly to talk about time so we'll say things are like inside of time outside of time uh times like this box that uh things could be located in and that is where it gets really messy in a lot of different debates and theology is people are like well God's outside of time I'm like tell me what that means and they're like you know he's outside of the thing I'm like outside of the the what and they're like you know he's just outside and he creates it I'm like well what is this thing that he's you know you know and

[4:49] then then they just give me like all these different spatial metaphors and I'm like I'm like I I you're you do know that space and time are not the same thing right like do you know that cuz I don't think you do uh and and so then we just get lost in metaphors and when we're metaphor about metaphors we're not going to get anywhere in theology okay right and so this this is another thing I've noticed so people will people will appeal to almost poetic metaphorical expressions of time where you you might have uh someone in like an orthodox tradition like in The Divine Liturgy for example talk about remembering the second coming and that's a that's an ostensibly future event right when they're saying remembering it remember sounds like a past word like you could say if we're trying to be

[5:37] rigorous something like remembering that the second coming is coming or something like that right but but that's not the way that it's phrased and so then people really latch on to the way that certain things are phrased and that combination of poetic language often metaphorical language flowery you know time is a time is a there's such a an interesting sort of romantic um space around time sorry to use the word space again but um but all of that coupled with really poorly defined words leads to really muddy thinking so I think the next thing I would like for us I I really wanted to get you and and and get your help with this and I'm asking for help personally because I think I need help with this is how do we start to even get our head around defining some of these things and you know we have an existing thousands

[6:27] of years of argument from lot of different theological and not even theological Traditions just maybe even physics right and all kinds of different angles trying to put um definitions to some of these ideas how do we even start to get our head around these things and then how do we start to get a a foothold where we can start to maybe get okay this one's clear and then we can sort of extrapolate from Clear definitions to find some clarity on the unclear one yeah so one of the things I did was over the last decade and a half I guess was just try to go through and just catalog here's all the different definitions that people have given and then try to figure out is this one actually just a metaphor or is it actually something like literal H and and surprisingly the number of metaphorical statements are they they significantly outweigh the

[7:14] number of literal theories because the number of literal theories there's basically two which is which is kind of shocking and then this is including like Eastern religions too this is not just like the West uh so the two different views both of what they're trying to do is they're trying to capture that thing as I mentioned earlier the the temporal landscape so kind of like when you're doing moral philosophy you there's sometimes they'll talk about the moral landscape you've got obligations virtue Vice uh responsibility like a lot of different things you're trying to capture and so Mor like your moral theory is trying to get all of that when you're doing time I want to say the same thing there's a whole host of different features of reality you're trying to capture and so uh whatever your theory of time is is going to try to do that so the two different views there's the What's called the relational Theory sometimes it's called the reductionist theory and then there's the absolute Theory so the relational or the

[8:02] reductionist theory there's a lot of different versions of it um because they're all so illd defined um and this is something that gets commented on um that like uh Newton Smith not Isaac Newton but this other guy named Newton Smith he says it's it's a theory so so like popular that people didn't even bother to Define it and I'm like that that doesn't that doesn't help at all this is not good no so what you're trying to do here is you you go okay what what things exist in the world uh and so like potholes I don't know about you but like in Indiana we had a lot of potholes so bad that Domino's Pizza offered to fill them in um when Pete budded was the the mayor of South Bend this was a real thing you can look it up um do you think potholes exist or do you think it's just the road happens to be

[8:51] missing some pieces yeah very interesting I think that the yeah the definition of a pothole is a gap in an otherwise complete Road yeah so it's not is a thing that exists yeah yeah because we're trying to avoid it but but so what we're doing here is what's called a paraphrase there's this thing in reality um like you know a road and then there's like a bunch of missing pieces and and you could and you could say like while you're driving like beware of that perforation in the road or be of the missing piece no you're just like a pothole so it's not like there's a thing that's a pothole it's just like a it's just a Miss it's it's easier to say po hole and talk about it as if it's a thing when really you can reduce it down to it's just the road is missing like some pieces it's an absence so what the reductionist theory of time is doing this it's saying time is not a thing in reality it is reducible to something else that is

[9:40] concretely there in reality and so the project of of the relational or the reductionist theories to try to find that item in reality that does exist that is concrete uh and that we can really reduce time down to we still talk about time but it's just a paraphrase so the common example is usually chain and but you're like well tell me what A Change Is and they're like well change is a before and after things being what do you mean before and after you're smuggling time into the definition yes okay and so Aristotle gets like so Galen uh um this uh ancient uh philosopher and um and medical doctor he he gives he gives aist a lot of crap for this like so he's like he's like you've got you got this bizarre circularity here and aros's like well what if maybe maybe they try again and so he and AOS gives

[10:28] like a bunch of different like kind of nebulous sort of answers to try to get out of these sort of worries and I and every single attempt at it I think just ends up failing because they all bring in sneak in time back into the story and so I want to go like this is a dead end it's just viciously circular you're not getting anywhere why don't you just say time's really a thing in the world and that's exactly what the absolute Theory does so the absolute Theory says uh time is an actual substance it's an actual like an actual substance thing in the world and it has a lot of different features one of those important features is it's this natured entity that makes change possible it's the thing that explains why change is possible uh it also is the thing that is the source of moments because a moment is the way things are but could be subsequently otherwise like at at another moment what is the source

[11:17] of those moments like what makes those moments exist time does uh what what takes a bunch of those different moments and unifies them into a coherent timeline time does uh and so time is supposed to be this eternal ubiquitous thing that extends everywhere and and plays all these different kind of roles and so it's this actual thing and so that's the absolute theory of time there's a couple different versions of it though these are easier to identify because they don't encounter the same kind of problems um they actually say unique things so the main two are time really is just the substance Eternal uncaused substance just hanging out there it's just always been there no no further explanation needed um the other popular view that you see is no time is God is actually time uh so it's proper

[12:07] to like say like this is an essential attribute of God because God is this eternal uncaused substance that plays all these different roles U so you see that in like Isaac Newton you see that in uh ragun shoman in the in the Hindu tradition um so there's a lot of different people who have these kind of views fascinating okay so that's really helpful just a big broad level right so yeah I I immediately intuitively grasp that I'm not a reductionist because I think that time ontologically is a thing that exists it is real then the nature of it and how we kind of come to explain it is uh is a different set of issues but be under the sort of absolutist position saying that it's reducible to something else I think just inevitably because I think it is real you're just going to find over and over that you're

[12:53] going to be smuggling in the definition like the thing into the definition of the of the thing so you're gonna be yeah like you said viciously circular now there may be things I would say let's um if we're talking about a temporal landscape which is looking at all of these different concepts and ideas in the language and in the ontological world of time there may be things that themselves are uh like reducible or that are separate from like there's not an actual thing there like a vicissitude if I were to describe what a vicissitude is it's just a gap between moments right it's a gap between things happening so the the gap between when I last spent time with my best friend and the next time I'm going to spend time with my best friend is a gap of time it's a span of time yeah but it you know it doesn't it doesn't necessarily refer

[13:41] to something that's absolute it's just a maybe a measurement word correct yeah so the ontology of time in this and this could refer to a couple of other things and I think we'll probably get into presentism and eternalism here in a minute but just whether or not it exists The reductionist View would say no it's abstract it onto something else but the absolutist view is yes it exists now what is kind of the next question correct yeah and the now what is important to your earlier question of how do we talk about time better because the absolute Theory says you need to distinguish between time and moments of time and so a lot of our temporal language a lot of our talk is is pointing out features of a timeline over or a series of moments so when you talked about like the gap between seeing your friend you're talk about temporal

[14:29] distance relationships a relationship between one moment and another moment on the timeline when we talk about before and after uh or I talk about change of things being in incompatible ways at different moments I'm talking about features of a timeline when I talk about clocks which is what physics is primarily interested in those are properties or features of a series of moments or a timeline they're not time itself it's the things that time makes possible and that the things that time is the under uring thing that EXP explains all the phenomena so trying to get clear on those things that's something I've only come to this realization a few years ago and I have not figured out the best way to to go about talking about this stuff because at the moment I'm still just trying to convince everyone let's start thinking about this issue in the way that I'm telling you to think about it because it's way better than what we've been doing for the last you know thousand

[15:17] years or so yeah H Hills to die on Fires to put out and all that exactly um so let's let's explore that for a minute just is is there a meaningful difference for example between an event in a moment is it is is an event something that takes place in a moment that's kind of like the way I would think about it but that's how I think is yeah so when this is what's so when I looked at the reductionist theory before a lot of times uh people want to reduce time down to events and then when you look through all these different uh like introductions to metaphysics textbooks they'll have like a section on events and you're like what is an event and they're like an event is a substance having a property at a time and you're like cool thanks man um but but but so I think it's a good definition of an event because that's true like it's it's something happening and there's a when

[16:05] things happen um but I don't think you can construct like time out of events um I don't think you should reduce them down to each other in in one reason being because there's a wi events happen another is lots of different kinds of events can be happening at the same series of moments so the event of you and I like having this conversation well there's a million things happening out on the street in Philadelphia right now we don't need to talk about any of them because they're all violent and awful and gross but you know like those are separate events uh they're not identical to this event but they're over laughing in terms of the series of moments that they're taking place they all exist in the same moment right so when we refer to an event we're referring to something that occurs in a moment so the a a single any given moment if if you were able to stop the flow of time you would be able to see any number of events

[16:55] transpiring in lots of different contexts but all taking place in the same temporal moment correct yeah because so like I said before a moment is the way things are but could be subsequently otherwise so it's like a total like look at like this is everything that's happening uh because it really is this is the entire way things are and they could be different at the next moment but yeah yeah so it's a slice of reality and so this is gonna I don't want to import import too many things because then I I want to talk about logical moments but logical moments only exist if you posit that God is temporal in some way and that's going to be a whole other thing when we get to like eternalism and present there's supposed as a preview they're supposed to be able to fit into a single temporal or a single Timeless moment they're supposed to be but we we can talk about those later we'll get to that in a

[17:41] minute yeah but I'm we we've got events we've got moments we've got a concept of um arrangement of those moments and ways that things could be subsequently otherwise so subsequently baked into that word is the word sequence right so there is an arrangement of these things that is in a I think of this as almost like a unilateral flow where the there are things that you can't have a circular or web like arrangement of moments they are sequential yeah right is that is that a fair thing to assume or how do we get to that definition I I think so I thought about this problem a lot because there's this question in philosophy of time uh about the direction of time uh and and and why can't time go in the other direction and The View that I affirm is is what's

[18:29] called like primitivism about the arrow of time that time just necessarily goes in One Direction end of story and people are like well why why is why why couldn't It Go in another Direction and I'm like and eventually came to the conclusion that the reason people ask those kinds of questions is because they're still thinking in terms of of spatial metaphors when I say time has a Direction that's a spatial uh notion that I've snuck in whereas if I say a moment is the way things are but could be subsequently otherwise there's no spatial stuff there like it's just purely temporal and so you're like thee you said Direction I was like hm right but it took me forever to see this because like all the debates about this they are just put in terms of direction of time why this direction and not another Direction and so I'm like well could a moment of time be the way uh the way things are but could be subsequently previously otherwise is basically what

[19:18] you're asking and that just sounds stupid on its face and I'm like right when you get rid of the spatial stuff and put it in purely temporal terms because we're talking about time stuff then the absurdity of time going back backwards it's right there on the surface and you would see it immediately and go oh that's dumb why would I waste my time thinking about that question and that's what I think should be is like why did people waste hundreds of years thinking about a dumb question when it was just yeah um but you know that's just me being cranky in my old age but yeah sure old age but I'm I'm I'm uh 32 and I'm plenty frustrated by this already so I'm on the same page so again I deeply appreciate that I think I think that that's all very intuitive to our experience of time as well I think that one of the other issues and this is

[20:06] definitely I will say this probably mostly comes to us from the theological realm of where this where this language even comes from is assumptions about what God must be like lead to other assumptions about how time might be structured or natured right um and I have you probably you might not have even known this about me at all until we got into this conversation but I have a I have a very strong like suspicion of anything that's rooted in um Greek philosophy and thought it's just kind of one of my hobby horses especially like as a Christian I like pointing out how Jewish thought is very different from Greek thought and how ancient Hebrew categories and even ancient near Eastern categories in that same context into which the Hebrew Bible is written are very different from worldview

[20:53] assumptions that show up later in sort of the Greek uh and all when I say Greek that's obviously another huge umbrella enass you know epicism and and stoicism and schols of thought yeah yeah right but one of the things that they seem to share is an assumption that uh and you can correct me if I'm wrong on this this is my understanding as a Layman just kind of looking at this but when it comes to even like space and matter and material things they have a sense that well what's material is bad and what's immaterial is what's perfect what's perfect must be unchanging and there are so many philosophical assumptions baked into that that when you start toit things if you if you just grant all of that and lay that down into your sort of axiomatic furniture on top of which

[21:40] you're building the rest of your beliefs then you start to come up with views about what God must be like and what he what what his relationship to time must be based on those prior commitments and I don't think we know even what those prior commitments are so this is all very good for me to kind of like get this out and talk about it because I don't think we especially in the Christian tradition and I'm just sort of rambling now and I'm sorry about that but in the Christian tradition part of why we have such a hard time defining things is that we don't we want to affirm scripture on one hand and what scripture teaches clearly or at least demonstrates that it asserts to be true by assuming it and then we want to have that but then we also want to have definitions that have taken us you know that have come to us from thousands of years of theological discussion and interaction with our philosophical

[22:27] neighbors or our people in our context and we've been doing this for thousands of years so we get all these kind of lumped in issues in terms of how we even think about the nature of reality not just time but then how time relates to space and matter and things like that so um I don't know if that tees you up into anything interesting but I'm just sort of expressing a frustration that I feel too yeah no so I don't want to exaggerate the difference between like biblical and Greek ways of thinking but they are there I mean they are really there for instance when you look at the nature of God you see something very different in a lot of Aristotelian and platonic thought than you see in scripture because in a lot of aristan and platonic thought you see this this being that cannot change in any way shape or form uh According to Aristotle can't even know any contingent truths at all uh doesn't know that you exist

[23:16] cannot possibly care about you and Aristotle says well if God did know all that stuff and if he did actually cause the universe to exist was like if God actually was the efficient cause of the universe like you know he created it if God did that then he'd be changing and he wouldn't be perfect and and so you see all this stuff of going hang on so it looks like God's not really omniscient and God's not the creator of the universe and and that's supposed to be like this perfect being I mean that is very different from the biblical picture of God so so in one sense I don't want to exaggerate but that difference is very real and very very significant and very important uh and and but I don't want to fault the past too much because every single one of us are born into some kind of cultural context and we can transcend our context we're not like slaves to our like cultural millu by the very fact that we debate our cultural millu all the time I

[24:06] mean all the culture wars we have right now they're completely asinine but like all we're doing is just debating them so we have these debates that we are usually in interaction with what's around us and so when you look at a lot of the early Christians the scientific the philosophical baggage of that time comes from a particular system or set of systems and they're interacting with those and so they're developing Christian thought accordingly so I don't want I can't fault them for that but we we don't want to engage in chronological snobbery but neither do we want to engage in in backwards chronological elitism where just because it's old that must mean that it's true yeah because there's this democracy of the Dead that that um uh GK chesteron talks about and I'm like that sounds good like people in the past they have a vote you know like they gave reasons for why they believe these things but let's not have like a tyranny of the dead or some sort of

[24:52] dictatorship of the Dead which you see a lot in contemporary Christian thought and Christian apologetics where a bunch of my favorite set of dead people in the past they said these things therefore it's true and if I point out if I come along and go actually you know there's another set of dead people at that same time period who were like open theists they're like no no no but they don't count they don't count as the real you know they're not the real tradition and you're like okay yeah so I don't I don't want to engage in that nonsense because you know we don't have time for that we're trying to figure out truth so we don't have time to deal with BS yeah truth truth is an idea meritocracy the thing that is the most corres that corresponds best with reality is the thing that is most true right yes um that's my again not to be this is not cronological snobbery this is maybe just Garden variety snobbery but that's my that's my take on this is that I'm a big correspondence theory of Truth guy and

[25:41] that'll get it to truthmakers kind of as this progresses as well but um is this a logical time to talk about logical moments or is this something we would want to maybe introduce when we talk about eternalism and presentism and is that the next thing or are there things in between that once we've gotten to kind of an absolutist and maybe primitivist direction of time definition what is the next thing that we kind of need to make sense of in order for this to not fall like a house of cards yeah so let's talk about the ontology of of of moments and then um that sets us up to talk about is Time created or not and then there we can go like about all the dynamic omniscience thing and figure out like what on Earth were these people trying to get at and also we need the onology of Time stuff to figure out how to define timelessness and temporality because those are assumptions that are in the in the table so yeah so we're

[26:28] talking about the ontology of time this is a question about what moments of time exist so I said like a moment is the way things are but could be subsequently otherwise but there's this question of which moments exist and uh the two most popular views today are presentism and eternalism so presentism has been the overwhelming majority view until around the time of Einstein uh I keep finding historians say what about this person over here that they look like they affirmed they rejected presentism I'm like it doesn't it whereas I do know there's some medieval Buddhist debates where it is actually really clear that they are debating presentism versus eternalism without those labels here's the presst says uh it's right there in the name the present is the only moment that exists that's it past moments when they were present they existed but those

[27:16] are gone those moments are gone uh the future moments like they're coming but like they don't exist because when something when it's present that's it present exhausts reality whereas the eternalist goes all the things on the timeline exist like all those moments exist they're just as real as the present uh and technically speaking you really shouldn't talk about the present there's just all these different locations they're all there so the Year 2525 it's there just as real as like this moment is you're like it's just as real and all the past stuff too and you're like Yeah from all eternity there's just this block of time like like a block of cheese and you could slice it up and all those slices are just there yeah and so obviously that seems really incoherent for one thing that that

[28:03] radically breaks from our experience of time that doesn't mean that it's not true but that certainly makes it difficult for us to intuitively grasp but I think that that's kind of at root in some of like Lewis's language when he's talking about God being able to look to his left right and then to his right and see see the whole thing from beginning to end there's there's an assumption there that is that if he if he is taking at face value what he's doing is is assuming or asserting a b Theory to make that kind of a statement because that kind of a thing isn't possible on a presentist ontology of time correct yeah and and so the spatial language there um so two issues you brought up so one is experience the other one is like you've got the spatial metaphor God could look to the left or the right of the timeline so people who are who affirm eternalism they're very

[28:50] explicit about the fact that they are spatializing time uh and some of them will say like that's actually what we need to do we need to fully spatialize time because that's what like physics demands and then Tim mlin who's like one of the world's leading philosophers of physics will go no no uh the physics does not demand anything of this sort um in fact it seems like it it's it's temporalizing space and I'm like I don't quite understand what that means but like whatever cool you keep going to because he's because he's like really brilliant um so yeah so they're fully they're really explicit like yeah we're spatializing that uh with the experience thing you're right like it goes completely to all of our experiences and this has been a major research project for um about hundred years or so in particular in the last like 20 years a

[29:38] lot of literature from people who affirm eternalism going how do we make sense of temporal experience um uh Tango Juliana Tango just came out with a new book I think like just a couple weeks ago on temporal experience um because like and this has been a big project of his for like 20 or 30 years of trying to figure out what's going on because that's how big of a problem it is is if you affirm this view whereas youir presentism you're just like experience one thing and then another it's it's a lot more simple carries a lot fewer pieces of baggage so this is this is another interesting thing so when I hear concepts for example like four dimensional okay that sounds like B Theory entailment to me like you wouldn't you wouldn't posit a four-dimensional or even even posit time as a fourth dimension unless you were assuming B Theory language already am I

[30:28] right about that for the most part you will find some people who will say because they're focused on the geometry of SpaceTime in um the special Theory relativity uh because the geometry that we have in um for this special the relativity the movy uh that we use it's it's not true uh most businesses know it's not true and they're trying to figure out how to replace it um but which I'm like okay good luck man um but they're also kind of worried about questions like well I can't find the present on The movy View and so there's been some people who will go here's a way to find the present um uh where you just have presentism and it's still got the 4D geometry and I just feel like they're just playing with numbers but yeah I don't know I don't know I

[31:16] I've become a bit of an anti-realist about a lot of different theories in in physics because when I talk to a lot of physicists they're anti-realist themselves about it and I'm like that's right well if you can't be realist about it then why should I physicists I find especially are really pragmatically focused on finding useful calculations and useful theories rather than true or real ones simply because there's for one thing I I actually kind of appreciate that because there's almost like a like a development of of uh like the human project behind that where it's not just endlessly pontificating about difficult to Define ideas it's like how can we put this to work and make it useful which is good it's easier um but what I would like is that more philosopher and theologians and in the popular level I wish they would hear that part that

[32:02] we're just doing useful fictions because when a philosopher hears that they're like no you're being anti-science I'm like I'm saying the same thing as Nobel prizewinning physicist what do you like what do you mean I'm being anti-science stop it you know yeah right I I I look forward to the day you know this might be controversial I look forward to the day that special relativity Falls and is replaced by something more coherent but um I don't know you have to be pretty smart to disagree with Einstein but I'm just uh I do I don't know if I do so intelligently but I do so but then also language like SpaceTime where you're just kind of unifying that into a single noun assumes that it almost is assuming just by the Linguistics of it that space and time are part of a single re reality where they're not just inextricably linked but almost substantively the same in some

[32:50] way and that's all seems to me to be borrowing from B Theory assumptions that if we were to if we were to have good reasons for not assuming B Theory we would have good reasons for not adopting that language yes and you'll see that move a lot too so sometimes uh Jeff kerski he's got a good chapter on this in his book the physics of theism uh and he'll say what some people do to affirm presentism and physics is they'll adopt what what's called like a 3+ one Theory uh so you've got a similar geometry but you're really fully acknowledging that SpaceTime is not a thing like that's just a that's a mathematical fiction that gives us use predictions space and time really are separate things they're not one item uh and so you've got three dimensions of space plus whatever time is is I guess is the idea there okay so

[33:40] then presentism because I prefer presentism there are good reasons to prefer presentism again aside from it just being an intuitive um articulation of our own experience of time but even just the on like the ontological claim that this is what time is the way that I typically Define this and you can help me sh up my language here is that the present is O only ever what is always actual when you said uh did you said the present exhausts reality yeah I think that that's my new favorite way of saying that but that's what I'm trying to get at yeah the past in so far as it exists is not an ontological thing you can access so much as it is a a complete record of past presents okay and then the future again not something that you can access but it's pontification or prediction or prognostication about what might transpire in future presence is

[34:28] the way that I've kind of tried to discuss this yeah yeah yeah and is that an accurate representation of what like broadly because there may be other nuances and ways that people try to frame this up yeah would that be a broadly accurate way of describing what the presst ontology of time would be forwarding as it's like as its postulates yeah that's typically is is they'll say the past just is like there's just some kind of record of events and they'll have different stories of how you get that record but you're not positing concrete things that are there floating around in the past and same way thing with the present um you'll say there's different ways to cash out how you're able to come up with the abstract set of things that will happen or might happen or or predicted to happen but there it's not like there things that are existing at other moments like literally there because

[35:15] those moments don't exist yet right okay and so then what we can say if we're borrowing our language from earlier is that if I were to describe um the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the bearing Pompei that's a description of an event that transpired in a past moment corre and that moment when it was present that was true at that moment it is no longer true because time has continued and we're in a different moment at which at which the event of the eruption of Mount vvus in that time is no longer transpiring yep yeah exactly yeah seems really intuitive to me so where did we get this a temporality from like why why do we even if it's so intuitive and we kind of embrace we all experience it this way we all much more naturally think about it this way why did we even arrive at

[36:05] possibility that there might be a temporality of or like you know that might we might have eternalism or why why postulate things like Divine atemporality why did we even go down that rabbit hole and waste what I think is thousands of years discussing about you know nonsense so I only ever find myself existing at the present uh and so I exist as a or all at once at this present moment and that seems pretty cool I like it's it's a good thing you might even be tempted to say like that's a Perfection um but something kind of sucks though is like I lose that I I go to the next moment and I'm like well I only find find myself here at that one uh at the present moment um but you can conceptually divide my life up into a bunch of different parts because I do experience a series of these these things so I exist as a hoer all at once

[36:55] but there's a different sense in which you could say I don't um because you can conceptually in your head you can kind of abstract different parts of me they're not really Parts but in your head you can like abstract them out because I have a series of moments uh and so whatever that Perfection is that I just get some kind of taste of when I'm existing at at the present I it's fleeting it's very fleeting well wouldn't it be better wouldn't it be better if there was a being that was completely perfect that exists always at the present uh and as a whole all at once without a before and after wouldn't that be like the real Perfection and that's like what kind of argument you'll see for timelessness and you'll see them use this language of endurance existing as a whole all at once which is what you and I do and you'll use the language of

[37:43] presentism and go right there's something perfect about this but there's all it's all wrapped in this imperfection because as we all know change is like imperfect um apparently you know and and so they're fly asserted without any kind of backing yeah because all changes for the better or worse you know that we all know the thing so therefore and this is this is how the arguments typically go and so when you see timelessness laid out they'll go eternity just means to exist without beginning without end that's pretty cool but that could still be consistent with undergoing a succession of moments like The Eternity of the world according to Aristotle that is eternal but it still undergoes succession it's temporal God however though is going to be timeless so God exists without beginning without end and without succession and without tempor location so it's this being that exists when at the Timeless now the

[38:32] Timeless present without a before and after so there's no succession no change uh that's that's the idea and so that's some of the reasoning behind it you've got assumptions about hey like it's pretty cool to exist right now as a whole and you're like yeah that sounds fine plus other assumptions like well we all know changes changes for the better or worse like either getting better or getting worse like yeah right so we've got a we've got a hearty pour of some dignum Deo theology right like what what ought to be fitting of God which smuggles in other assumptions that you're not necessarily foregrounding right yeah and then the assumption that change is always for the negative or it's always a change for the greater or lesser right and so if there's the assumption that if there is any change in a perfect being then that would be a change for the Lesser so they must be unchanging where I would I would think okay look just two very very simple

[39:20] examples a change in a person's charact if a person's character is perfect and it it changes then sure maybe that's a a degradation right of their character but a a clock that is perfect and accurately captures the way that we measure time in seconds minutes and hours that is unfailing in its ability to perfectly track the movement of time changes accurately every second and it's it's ever changing because of its perfect measurement of time so change when we're talking about both of those things I think are Perfection statements about change and time and one of them involves no change and one of them involves constant change in order to maintain Perfection so I don't think that we even just with that example we can't say you

[40:08] know I I don't I don't buy the idea that change of any kind is um is a change for the greater or less yeah then so if we can just kind of put that to bed when I think about God's relationship to time okay um I will simply assert this we can prove this in a different conversation or I can do a different video or whatever but I'll simply assert that the Bible completely repudiates that view oh that it's on every page yeah God is assumed to be interacting with time the timeline of what transpires in the Heavenly realm as God and His Heavenly Host are observing things transpiring runs parallel to time on Earth God experiences sequence God experiences moments God you know again in my view because I'm an open theist I see God interacting with things in time anticipating a future reality that he

[40:57] hopes will take a a certain shape he'll he'll anticipate hopeful events that he hopes will transpire in moments to come and then they don't happen and he expresses frustration when he gets the time the moment that he thought the event would transpire and it doesn't so I'll just set that whole thing to the side biblically speaking philosophically speaking why is it not required for us to use a temporal language to describe God and why should we prefer philosophically speaking divine tempor when we're describing God and his relationship to time yeah so so so both views temporality and timelessness they both affirm that God is eternal uh so God exists without beginning and Without End and if you have Arguments for thinking that God is a necessarily existent being and there's a lot of

[41:44] those um well then you get eternality for free because if you are necessarily existing being you have to exist you cannot fail to exist so you're not going to begin and you're not going to cease to exist so you get Eternity for free uh so any philosophical argument for God being necessary only gets you Eternal it doesn't get you to God being Timeless what the temporalis says is God exists without beginning and without end but God does have temporal location so like he exists right now which doesn't sound that remarkable but that's it it's God exists right now uh and God can undergo succession God can do one thing and then another and I want to say that this view has a much better fit with all sorts of other things we to be true about God so necessary existence like I said you just get Eternity for free if you think God

[42:33] is perfectly rational uh and you think God is all knowing and you think God is perfect in power and freedom I want to say all of these have a much better fit with temporality than timelessness and here's why so freedom freedom is the ability to is like you're the source of your own actions and you act for a reason um this is what typically distinguishes an intentional action from like just like you're like start scratching your ear without even thinking about it like you know there's no reason like behind you're not like I meant to do that whereas a free action supposed to be intentional you do it for a reason uh and you've got the ability to do otherwise at the next moment uh and this is not some newfangled view on freedom like that's a direct quote from like Peter Lumbard the guy who aquinus had to write his commentaries on um he's

[43:20] like yeah freedom is just the ability to do a or not a at the next moment and he's getting it in Aristotle so this is like not a new fangled view on freedom at all and I'm like right okay so it it has the time thing built in there right from the start and when Peter Lombard goes yeah we want to say God's free but without all the time stuff H how do we do that well I'm not going to tell you I I got to talk about other questions and I'm like thanks thanks Peter um whereas I want to go no you just can't get rid of the time stuff to be free really does mean being able to act or not act at the next moment because right now it's too late you're doing whatever you're doing the next moment's not too late you could do something else and then and they're and they're mutually exclusive claims they have to be mutually exclusive claims correct that if something is Tim less and it is it is atemporal then we can't again smuggle in some of those like linguistic and that's where I think

[44:09] logical moments come from so it might make sense for us to now talk about logical moments where the idea is there has to be for example uh we're talking about God's natural knowledge right and then his his I think it's his free knowledge there's all these different things where you have logical moments that could theoretically take place in one temporal moment corre but then also like the temporal moment if we're talking about sans's creation also gets really muddy so we're just postulating an entire concept of like we want to use the time language to describe things that aren't temporal simply because we've assumed beforehand that time doesn't exist in you know without creation so yeah how do logical moments like I don't even want to ask you how they make sense because I don't think that they do yeah but uh how do we how do we undercut the assumptions that lead to logical moments as a thing that gets

[44:57] Advanced as a theory and then replace them with they're just temporal moments in God's existence even before creation yeah so I actually have to explain it slightly in order to see why you should just go just make them temporal what are you doing bro um so so here's the problem so creation X nio says that prior to Creation God exists all alone there's God in nothing else uh because God doesn't create from preexistent material stuff there's just God all alone and then God exists with a bunch of cosmic stuff and so so there's several problems here one how are you going to get God being Timeless if he exists all alone and didn't exist with a bunch of stuff another set of problems is creation X nilo is involves God acting freely uh for a reason and then you also want to build in you know whatever theory of Providence you affirm be an

[45:45] open theist you could be you know like a theological determinist you could be a molist you know whatever Theory Providence you want to affirm you got to explain like what's the rationality going on there how's god making like some sort of decision-making process all at a single Timeless moment that lacks a before and after and so what you get is this problem that's inherited um of going God's natural knowledge God knowing himself that just gives God knowledge of all necessary truths like all the things that are possibly that could possibly be it doesn't give you anything about like what could contingently like what will in fact exist it doesn't give you anything like that um and so so you've got to figure out how do we get God from knowing I exist nothing else exists uh there's a bunch of stuff I could do but there is no fact about what I will do how do you

[46:35] get God from going there to God going his free knowledge going I want this universe with this particular timeline where this is exactly how the future is going to go so now God knows the future because the his forn knowledge according to calvinist and molist and toist and all that is based on his free knowledge it's based on his so you've got God not knowing anything about the future because that just aren't no facts about the future to God knowing the future how do you do that without a transition U without a time without different moments and so this is where the logical moments come in so scotus is like ah let me let me tell you so and he's like he's like let me do it first with a temporal moment because those are the ones you're familiar with right you know Timeless stuff that's weird temporal moment can an angel exist for a single instant in sin so pops into existence and then like sends and like then all of a sudden it's

[47:24] gone and you might go that's not enough time this SC is like no hang on a second hang on a second what if what if there's these logical moments embedded within a single temporal moment they have the same kind of structure as temporal moments there're a way things are but could be subsequently otherwise but it's not a temporal subsequent and there's there's a lot of this kind of winking going on throughout the whole explanation going it's not time trust me and I'm like it looks like time he's like I know but it's not time I'm like all right fine uh and so at the first logical moment uh the angel is like what should I do and then over a series of logical moments makes a decision to do something really terrible like flip off God or something I don't know and then does that and that's all supposed to be embedded into a single temporal moment so the angel just comes into

[48:11] existence flipping off God and then is gone uh and scotus is like well embedded in that single moment is a whole series of these logical moments so that's how there's the Angel's able to make a series of rational deliberations and then a free act now we can do the same thing with timelessness and you get the same story of God's like what should I do um oh here's all these things I could create and over a series of logical moments makes these decisions but from all eternities just God just doing stuff and there's a couple problems here one of which is you're going like you're just sneaking time into the story like come on like that's the really obvious one yeah but I want to go no let's make it really explicit how bad this problem is because it's not just that you're clearly sneaking in time because like Paul Helm who's like one of the the world's like uh best living Defenders of timelessness that's his complaint about these things he's a calvinist he's going

[48:59] when you talk about these logical moments we're just sneaking time in like we don't want that you know we affirm temporality like Calvin did uh oras I want to go let's let's see what the problem is here you've got at the moment of natural knowledge God doesn't know the future because the future literally does not exist and at the moment of free knowledge God does know the future because he's determined like what what will happen so from all eternity in the single moment God does not know the future and God does know the future that's a contradiction and I can ex from a single temporal moment God knows a and not a correct the same temporal moment now the other problem is that I see is that Timeless the same Timeless moment right yeah which again that feels like a contradiction in terms but then like temporal moments can also be there are

[49:46] people who you okay there's there's not like a Time atom or a cronon or whatever there's all this other language around it but like you could say that a moment is infinitely subdivis right where you have how do you measure the length of a moment can you not also if you have this moment and then this moment can you not find a moment between them could you not find a moment between those two moments and then those two moments and kind of having why why are we baking in infinite regresses to our time discussion correct yeah so you could you could postulate even if you had those logical moments well aren't those logical moments themselves also like temporarily arranged from one another I I don't think logical moments makes any sense I never I never have strugg with this when I first started yeah I I struggled with this when I first started really studying this and William Lane Craig somewhat ironically helped me out of

[50:35] this in terms of his God entering into time and then you know his Timeless sounds creation and entering into time but I I quickly moved on from that view too because it was also incoherent so so we've we've got a Divine temporality I I I simply assert if you're a trinitarian and you think that the the trinitarian community of love has forever been existing in relationship to one another if there was ever a moment that the father this is all sounds creation right if the father expresses love to the son and then the son returns love to the father that is a sequential event that took place between the father and the son if that has ever happened you have time okay so time this is this is kind of the Crux of it I would think at this point do we say that it is a property of God himself is it something that is it something that exists separate from God

[51:26] that also experiences that's co-eternal with him if this is too difficult like where where do we start to find some ground there because I think it's again it's intuitive to say that God experiences time even since creation but what does that what does that mean yeah yeah so if you go with the view that that time is an attribute like an essential attribute of God uh then you've got God as that natured entity that makes change possible and it's the source of moments and all that so the the Divine persons loving each other that's a way things are but could be subsequently otherwise so them just simply existing and loving each other you got a moment you got at least one moment um you know and that's all you need I mean like right you could be I think you have I think it's very simple

[52:15] to extrapolate from there and say well if there's ever been a reciprocal love relationship where love flows let's say from one of those one of those beings to the other that's continuous moments continuous events transpiring in other moments ex yeah you don't even need that though because on this view you're saying time just is an essential attribute uh and part of the nature of time is that it's this thing that is the source of moments um so you only you don't even need to go into this argument um but the argument I think what it does is it helps you see there's got to be some kind of before and after going on here like what you know like it helps you like get in the neighborhood at least of of this view it doesn't get you to this view but it would help you get there um there's another view you could affirm though too where it's not an attribute of God um this is a view that it's it's very nebulous but you see it a lot um so

[53:04] there's this guy named Al baghdaddy he's an Islamic thinker in the 10th 10000s the not the 10th Century the 10 hundreds uh who has this view that Richard swinburn also affirms um which is that time is is like the dimension of possible change and time uh it just depends for its existence on any concrete being that exists um because if a concrete being exists you can say well there's a win that it exists and so if God exists well there okay well there you go there there's a being uh so therefore time exists uh and so since God's Eternal time's Eternal uh and and so this is like it's it's a view in the neighborhood of saying time is an attribute of God but it's not saying that it's it's something a little bit more vague and nebulous but it's a very

[53:53] well it's like there's there's a long history of this of this view you know I I could see that being defensible and then you'd have to talk about the implications from there right yeah yeah yeah so is there one or the other of those that you favor I like the the attribute view better because it's the one that you're going to see me develop um a bit in my my little book about a big God which just came out um and then my Divine time Maker book which I think comes out in January of 2025 I think that's what the publisher told me which is annoying because it's just it's done it's sitting it's just sitting there like but um yeah I try to develop it a whole more and the more I developed it and try to trace down the history of it and see the arguments for and against it the more I was like this just makes sense so I might have just like corrupted myself into thinking this views like right or I might have convinced myself to reason an argument I don't know um we we'll see we'll see

[54:41] you're honest everyone does that but your honesty about it is refreshing we don't we don't admit our own biases or even that we have them really too often at op no no no no no so so I prefer that too um and that would also be there's a parallel conversation happening with space like God's existence and's all this all this other stff but I prefer that because then this allows me to do what I've been on Trinity radio the past couple of weeks twice uh in live discussion with Braxton Hunter and Jonathan pritchet and Leon flowers was on there and um we were discussing time and it was as difficult as you know as you have experienced and as difficult as you might imagine um so all all three of those guys are Mullins right you're a molinist and I'm an open theist of some flavor right there's uh Dr White called my form of open theism something of a

[55:30] mutant form I thought that was so weird because I was like this pretty historically established view you know what I mean Calvinists in the 17th century were debating people who are open but you know it's it's it's a mutant form it's fine I I found it hilarious it's just you know it's it's it's good rhetoric it's good debate rhetoric um depends on if you're trying to convince other if you're trying to convince your opponent or if you're trying to convince the audience you know what his strategy was I think his was to convince the audience most M mine was too for the most part yeah so with that said when I went on there and we were discusting time I tried to articulate a difference between the existence of time and then the measurement of time yeah right so when I think about God existing I I almost said in time and I would have had to punch myself but God

[56:19] existing temporally okay with with an experience of time you can have that existing before and during and then after the creative event right but then the measurement of that time seems to me again let's dig out the scriptures again because we're Christians here if I'm digging out the scriptures again and I'm looking at the scriptures the discussion about time seems to be relative to the creation but it doesn't seem to be like ontologically dependent upon the creation if that makes sense I think so yeah yeah so when you what's the guy's name gersam Bren has this book called time in I think it's like the Hebrew Bible in the Dead Sea squirrels something like this so he's trying to look at like all the hebraic concepts of time and stuff and he says the earliest moment of time mentioned in scripture is

[57:08] of the reality prior to creation and so he's got in mind Psalm uh Psalm 990 uh where it says like you know from Everlasting to Everlasting uh you know before the foundations of the world from Everlasting to Everlasting you were God because all of the biblical terms for eternity are explicitly temporal terms term uh and everlasting yeah Everlasting is a temporal term because theum it just is just means a really long time and and the author there uses a dating format that you see throughout the Old Testament from the days of King so and so to the like the days of like this other king this is what was going on so the from two formula is a dating formula to denote a stretch of time and so what the the psalmist does in Psalm 90 is from Olam to Olam from Everlasting to Everlasting using the dating term so

[57:57] saying from like this really long time ago to this other really long time ago there's God before creation so yeah I think also I think of um Second Timothy 1:9 where he's talking about the grace that was that was given to us in Christ Jesus I think it's pronon ionion right so Before Time Eternal it's essentially the way that it usually gets translated but it's before so there's a before relationship temporal prior on the timeline okay we're assuming a line of of sequential time before the beginning of like time in eternity is essentially what that sounds like to me right yeah um that sounds weird and confusing but like here's how you can make sense of it so when you're looking at a lot of ancient Greek texts they'll use time words

[58:47] to sometimes they're trying to refer to time uh and in other instances they're referring to just the universe itself right uh so when you look at the biblical passages I think it's safe to affirm that are they making some stupid contradiction like there was time before time because that would be that'd be really unfortunate um or are they saying there's this like age that you know like a certain like set of events some sort of age uh that before that there's like God doing some cool stuff and then right now during this present age God's doing some cool stuff and there's an age to come where God's going to do some really cool stuff well there's some judgment some people won't like that part but you know there's be some res C like that's pretty cool uh yeah maybe they're just talking like that like you know like like a normal colloquial kind of way without all the stupid

[59:34] contradictions that is so yeah and that's so interesting to me too because I think that a lot of people lament and you know I don't want to I don't want to lay rightness and wrongness or oughtness or should on top of this lament because I understand it and I just it is what it is but a lot of people lament that the scriptures aren't more precise and aren't more clear about very obvious and clear definitions of certain things and it it is what it is I think of literally the first verse of the Bible in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth in the Hebrew it is not that clear to say in the beginning it's basically the Hebrew equivalent of like way back when yeah right uh so we when we look at the scriptures again it's like we might almost be looking for clarity where it doesn't exist there but what is assumed

[1:00:24] to be the case feels like God is temporal uh presentism versus eternalism presentism is to be favored time exists before creation but begins to be measured at the event of creation you look at Genesis 1 and two you've got the sun moon and stars being given for the keeping of sign you know times and signs and Seasons things like that um so that's the whole set of assumptions that if I'm if I'm laying the Bible at my axiomatic roote of where I get truth from those are the sorts of things that I expect to spring forward and I expect to to get is God is temporal present is all that actually exists the past is something that is discussible it's not something that still exists or has continued to exist but it is something that um God existed during that time because he's from Everlasting to Everlasting right so God existed at that moment um and those things are an

[1:01:12] accurate record of past presents the future is something that is not an accessible thing in and of itself but it's prognostications or it's predictions about what will come in future moments and events but the present is all that exists and this gets into kind kind of like truthmaker too like when I think about truth makers and and correspondence theory of Truth you can make a statement this is this actually gets into a question that I think is relevant to like the molist and theist discussion which is I can make a statement I'm a person I'm a human I'm made in God's image but I'm not God I don't have the same ontological nature that God does but I can make a statement about the future that I view as a prediction about what will come to pass M and then if it does not come to pass does it make me wrong like I may be proven wrong in the future about the

[1:02:00] thing that I state right that seems intuitive where the thing that I said would be true ends up not becoming true and so then my past statement was false right is there anything wrong there about like truth makers and and how how things come to be labeled true is there anything that I'm I'm off on well okay there's a couple different issues here so one is about just our language about the future what are we doing when we making a prediction um and then then there's the things that like what explains why your statement is true or false uh and then one theory about that explanation is truthmaker Theory so there's like a couple different layers here so I don't know which one you want to talk about so if you want to talk about truthmaker we do that and then we can talk beginning to end let's say beginning to end so um maybe most most

[1:02:49] broad claim to most specific claim um where you saw me because I I said that and I knew that there were probably several philosophical layers of things that I was smuggling in without thinking about it yeah and I want to I want you to help me think about it yeah so when you're talking about the past uh it it seems pretty straightforward like you just want to be like Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States like there we go you know um true uh and why well I guess that's just the way the world was whereas a truthmaker theorist is going to go now hang on a second that's no no no no no you need something that exists EXs in reality that makes it true uh and and you go well what exists right now that makes it true that Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States and the truthmaker

[1:03:38] theorist will say to the presentist there's nothing that exists right now to make that true so you can't you can't even ex so when you said Abraham Lincoln was the president there's nothing to make that true now there's a lot of different answers you could give um and I do some of this in the time Maker book um so what I one of the things I do is go well if you are a substance dualist and you affirm that absent from the body present with the Lord so there's this thing called the intermediate State a place where you where you go while you're waiting for Resurrection Abraham Lincoln does exist right now um okay yeah there's some stuff that exists right now uh a lot of truthmaker theorists won't like that because they're like you that's cheating and I'm like why I'm not allowed to bring in my theology to like other things I know to be true to be like yeah it's what cheating just means is you said something I didn't like that's eventually what it turns out to me um

[1:04:26] because they'll do the same thing too with like Alan Roa uh is an open theist he he says it's J.R Lucas he's also an open theist they both say the same thing um what makes it true is God's memory like God remembers all this stuff from the past he's got this infallible memory and God exists right now and has these his properties uh and um I've seen different truthmaker theorists go well that's cheating because now you're going against naturalism I'm like now I why did we bring in naturalism why are we bringing in like you know so they're bringing in all these other things that so it's not truthmaker it's just at all and other people though who are affirming who who are naturalists they don't care about these theological debates at all they just think when I said that Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States and now you're forcing me to bring in all sorts of metaphysical baggage to explain what makes that true I have to say the past

[1:05:14] literally exists well that's still not enough I have to say that there's these temporal counterparts of Abraham Lincoln that ex that existed and I have to say and it's still it's not you have to keep going and going and going and now we're back into B Theory yeah and so or Mayer who's very much a fan of the B Theory um and and very much like not interested in theology in the slightest he just goes you are forcing people who are making very benign statements to start saying all sorts of absurd things just to satisfy truthmaker uh maybe truthmaker theory is just leading to absurdities maybe it's not actually helping us discern like the right metaphysical Theory so he's like just get rid of it what makes it true that something was the case in the well that's just the way the past was end of story we don't need truth makers right it it was true at the time MH and so yeah that's that's very interesting because yeah truthmaker I

[1:06:04] think can be a really sort of cancerously um almost toxic assertion of presentist ontology of time where it it's making such a Hardline delineation between the present is all that exists that statements about the past or even presents in the past things that were presents becomes absurd and I don't think that that's I don't think that that's fair to the past and I don't think that that actually creates any kind of contradiction in presentism either correct where if we if we that's why I I try to frame the past as it as it is as a thing it's not something that is temporally accessible it's already past it no longer exists in reality but it is an accurate record of past presence yeah right what transpired in past presents because this present is

[1:06:51] the product of past presents and events that transpired in moments in the past so this present moment we have um we have historical documents that delineate that Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States and that explain you know events and actions and thoughts and words that he brought into existence in past events that we now have record of them right yeah well it's not to say that they weren't real but like a real Ardent sort of a strident truthmaker or theorist might say say well those things aren't true anymore even like the only things that can be true are statements about present is what it sounds like yeah okay and that's and that's what makes it so weird because like so the records you point

[1:07:37] out this is actually common argument against presentism is go well we've got records of all this stuff and they're like well imagine all the records get destroyed you know like all the libraries get burned that's happened in the past you know so that's not out of the realm of possibility that some Vikings will come and destroy everything you know like as they do as they do as we've all experienced we've all been there um so they'll be like all the records get destroyed well now there's nothing to make it true that that Abraham Lincoln was the president and you're like well that's just absurd and so what I think is so much better about the response to say that's just the way the past was end of story there's no need for truthmakers is it gets you out of these kind of objections because because it's not the record like all all our historical documents that we have right now that's not what makes it true that Abraham Lincoln those things are about Abraham Lincoln and they're trying

[1:08:27] to accurately record what what Abraham Lincoln did after the factor subsequent to the EV exactly yeah so it's just that's just what happened in the past end of story this other stuff is trying to capture that and it gives us epistemic access to it but it's not the metaphysical Foundation of what makes any of this true it just is true end of story that's just the way truth works and so you'll see like Jonathan Talent um who's a presentist this is his View and he says just get rid of truthmaker theory Patrick Todd who's an open theist and a presentist he'll do this but then there's a whole bunch of people who are eternalists about time or like growing block theorists or people who just don't like presentism at all who are saying the exact same thing of going truthmaker is just weird and nuts get rid of it because truth just that's just the way things were no more to the story fascinating okay and that's good that's

[1:09:16] helpful now truth maker again can be such a a cancerous and toxic version of this but like it would a softer version be sort of just the standard uh I know JP Morland talks about this quite a bit like just correspondence theory that which corresponds to reality is what's true right yeah that's a softer claim yes because the truth maker is giving you a version of how do you make sense of how truth corresponds to reality right um whereas like the people who are saying that's just the way the past was end of story they're saying it corresponds to the way the past was but they're like there's no there's no need for details there's no more deta to give whereas the truthmaker theorist is going there's more details identify the truthmakers right so this is all really helpful and I think that we've done

[1:10:05] enough of what I was hoping to do in order to bring us to the point where I wanted to talk about the future okay so this is um I have no ranker or any like uh any I I have my own view of this but I'm genuinely just openly curious and I'm setting aside presuppositions I'm open to wherever the evidence leads wherever the best arguments go but my my understanding of the future um I articulated it some in the debate right that it's the way that I view the future as is as a it starts from the present right we're we're prognosticating about an infinitely branching series of possible timelines that could resolve that all ZIP down into a single line of what transpired called the past right but that the present is ethically and

[1:10:53] ontologically or the future is lethally and ontologically and epistemically open that there are openness aspects to it and so that's my assertion and that's kind of the way that I view it as an open theist that it could go this way it could go that and that maybe when we're talking about God's knowledge and his his infinite understanding and His Infinite intelligence and His Infinite Wisdom sort of the boian infinite intelligence argument about God's ability to predict the future right that what we get what we land on is sort of a neoism right where there are things that in molinism my understanding of okay and you might push back on this when I think of molinism I think of um the middle knowledge being the the knowledge of the truth values or the outcomes of all possible subjunctive counterfactual if

[1:11:42] this data set then this output pairs right and it's it's will happen not might happen it's will happen the neom molinism just sort of imports the idea of well this God has if this then that may happen like we we don't have would counterfactuals exhaustively all things are will happen or would happen counterfactuals but we have some might and coulds as well yeah sorry to just dump all that on you but that's my understanding of molinism and that's my articulation of an open theist view that's kind of like a neom molinism based on some boian thinking yeah if I just kind of like vomit that all into the table and push it over to you and say hey can you help me make sense of this what would you what would you say in response yeah so my wife my wife is a molecular biologist and um and so when

[1:12:30] she was asking me like when we're when we're first dating and then like you know then after we get married and whatnot uh she's like what are you working on I'm like looking at all these different models of God trying to make sense of them and identify Arguments for and against and I tell her about open theism and she's like that's the only one that makes any sense why why do people not like it and I'm like well there's the Bible and she's like okay we go other than that and I'm like well okay um there's this question about is God taking too big of a risk when he creates a universe because he doesn't know the future like because he doesn't know exactly what's going to happen and her lab was working on these things called Risk Management Systems in molecular biology and she's like well well open theism doesn't think God's an idiot right and I was like of course not like you know he all all powerful is maximally cognitive Excellence you know he can predict the future with like amazing accuracy and she's like well

[1:13:19] okay well he would just put Risk Management Systems into the world like to mitigate the risk which is the exact stuff that my lab is is um studying so we wrote a paper on this called uh open theism in in Risk Management it's philosophical biological views and so what we do there is articulate basically something like uh Gregory Boyd's view where God knows here's all the possible timelines that could Branch from this this this present moment and here's the objective probability of any of those particular timelines coming about but that's not the whole story that that Boyd tells because Boyd's like God also knows that here are certain timelines that I don't want to happen because then my entire plan for creation gets derailed so I'm going to put in certain things in place to just just completely cut those timelines off so they're not

[1:14:07] even possible anymore but a bunch of other timelines um I am GNA make sure that I have this exhaustive contingency plan so I'm going to if things start to go down this one path I'll put in place certain things to make sure that it goes goes back where I want it to go so what you have with the open theist view is you've got God coming with an exhaustive contingency plan putting things in place if they're if necessary to get things back on track and knowing the object of probability of all these possible future events uh and and a willingness to nudge things if if needed and what you'll see from a lot of open theists is not just nudge but if God really needs to he'll just override unilaterally override people's Free Will um because you might need to do that every now and then and then I'm like okay there you go um you get risk somewhere but not the kind of risk that I think you're average open

[1:14:55] theist talks about uh I think like what my wife and I came to conclude was that the way open theists talk about all the risk involved I think they gradually ex like just completely exaggerate massively how much risk is really involved here because God's not an idiot he'll put in Risk Management Systems in the world like that just seems the rational thing to do right no yeah yeah just to to kind of speak to that because I know that there's more coming and I'm yeah I'm grateful for all that's coming but when I think of this biblically speaking I think of again I I grant it for the sake of argument in the debate and also I think that there's a really good case to be made that the entire Redemptive project was something that was known ahead of time how it would be brought about there may be some shifting of the timeline when certain events right will transpire right but the idea

[1:15:42] that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:7 that we speak of God's wisdom in a mystery that was hidden for ordained right Pro Oren go by God before the ages for our Glory which was the entire Redemptive project of Jesus right Jesus incarnating as the son um be being himself the uh the new Adam the new Moses and all of those different callbacks and types and antitypes and stuff like that Jesus coming incarnating living a sinless life dying in some way whether that was had to be on a cross whether he had to know the identities of everyone for whom he was atoning in the act of dying on the cross those are those are separate questions from the from the fact of the matter the fact of the matter is biblically speaking the data is that

[1:16:30] whole project was planned and prepared and in place as the rescue mechanism before creation that's just what the claim is and I don't think there's any way around it yeah right yeah so here's the I think that's against an open but no no I think that just is the open view but you can start questioning some of the specifics so TJ mosson at Oxford he's got this really nice argument called a Divine bodgery argument so bodging is a very English word Scottish don't use it it's very English though um so you bodge something when you intend to bring about a particular outcome but then you just you you don't do it so like I intended to make a baked Alaska U but I just failed miserably at it because it's it's kind of hard to make one of those and I have very limited cooking skills so I bodged it and so what what what Tim does is he'll look at all these uh cases and go

[1:17:19] okay here's the open theist idea uh the whole plan the whole all the contingency stuff all you know everything we built in and he's like well God only knows the object of probabilities so he's going to intend to do something well he could he could he could bodge it up even the fact that he could bodge it up that's enough to show that God's not as perfect as he as he could be uh and so Tim's got like this background assumption about perfection that I think are really good right um so like even the possibility that God could bodge like that seems bad and I'm like okay well in response on behalf of the open theist I started thinking if God's got all this probabilistic knowledge what EX actly are some of his intentions going to be surely he's not going to be like one of these overeager gamblers and just go like I'm going to put all the money on this I know this is it I know this is it just come on baby please please God's Gonna hedge his bats like he's gonna go

[1:18:07] I know that I want to uh become incarnate for you know the sake of entering into solidarity with Humanity for the sake of Salvation because I know these humans when I create them they're going to screw up like I need to bake in this whole project forgiveness Redemption and the whole thing because that's the only you're going to like really be able to work with creatures like this but God for some reason wants creatures like us uh and and and so he's going to know all that going in but like when exactly he does all these things that's going to be different on all the different timelines and I so I would think that God's like okay my intention is to become incarnate when exactly I don't know it's going to happen on one of these timelines so I know that it's going to happen but when we're gonna have to see um he's not going to say this is the only exactly when uh when exactly will like Tim or Ryan like

[1:18:55] accept my offer of of friendship and forgiveness I don't know um but I'm intending to offer that on all the timelines and I'm intending to do all these things on no matter what how it unfolds to make sure that it happens but like when exactly it happens I think God would be smart enough to not like make that prediction because he knows how all the objective probabilities are and that they change from moment to moment so yeah so I think he's going to hedge his bats yeah and I so again kind of just going back to this is the part where the scriptures are really good to get foregrounded for our discussion and like I wanted to have the philosophical background and the time language and the definitions and stuff sort of pretty well defined before we landed on something to talk about these things and we get into temporal language in the scriptures and how that stuff works but I I I really straightforwardly see things like um you know John says that

[1:19:44] God could bring new Sons of Abraham out of these Stones he could make new Sons of Abraham out of these Stones meaning like look there's no way you're GNA actually thwart his plan he can bring you know yeah you can cut off you know and he's he's ascribing this is another thing that I find really frustrating in my conversations with Calvinists is that why even posit evil beings if God's ultimately the one bringing them you causing them to do what they do and yeah and think what they think and want what they want yeah it's really odd but you know the Bible seems to always be looking at the activity of evil beings as the explanation for evil outcomes and evil things transpiring in the world and then God is working against those things to bring about his purposes but he can always kind of Find A Way Forward he can always find a way to make the plan

[1:20:31] continue in some way which speaks to me of like contingency language he obviously he seemed to desire a world in which Free Will was a feature and Free Will necessarily allows for the possibility of freely reciprocated love which was what he seems to be angling for on a molist scheme that would be like what he's optimizing for right correct the number of the maximum number of people maybe who freely choose to reciprocate love to him in response to his his loving overtures right his his desire to bring people into a loving relationship with him but that necessarily allows for a possible um rejection of him and and desire to move away from him and that's just kind of what he gets when he bakes free will into the creation but then when I'm starting to look at this in terms of

[1:21:18] future relationships I'm seeing like Peter say what kind of people should you be then or what kind of lives should we lead lives of godliness and obedience hastening the day of the Lord right where he's he's seeming to say okay well there's a day of the Lord coming and it's like by our Behavior we can either temporally relocate it closer to us as to when it'll transpire because there's a certain set of conditions God seems to be looking for or if we're disobedient the implication that's silent and not written but it's an implication is that if we're disobedient Believers that it sort of lengthens the time Horizon for when the day the Lord might come to transpire and that's assuming a whole bunch of stuff about the day of the Lord and stuff too but sure so that's why I'm I'm I'm looking at this in terms of an like an open and settled View and the way that I framed up in the debate and

[1:22:06] I'm sorry for again the word vomit here but there's no no other way out but through yeah yeah um one the way that I framed it up in debate is that there are three views that seem to say that the future is a line of certainty now my Armenian and molinist Friends pushed back on that saying well no there are possibilities there are other possibilities they just not open possibilities right there are possibilities of what what could happen that just have a zero percent chance of actualizing right that's certainty it's certainty certainty um here's what they should okay here's what they should have said uh because it's it's it's certain it is certain and this is and this is you see this in Molina you see this in a lot of everybody is that it's it's this is certainly what's going to come to pass um because God has

[1:22:54] this exhausted for down so it is certain that it's going to come to pass that doesn't mean it's necessarily going to come to pass so they need they you're supposed to make the distinction if you affirm exhaustive for knowledge any of you who are listening if you affirm exhaustive for knowledge this is the statement you should make it is certainly the case that this is going to happen it is not necessarily the case that this is going to happen because it is a genuine possibility that things be otherwise um but then you have to start explaining how that what grounds that or what explains that possibility that's where it's weird and tricky but you shouldn't say it's not certain you're like no it is certain it's just not necessary it's uh and you'll see Calvin he'll do the same thing to he'll be like it's inevitable that this will happen but it's not necessary that it'll happen so calvinist make the same kind of move um yeah yeah and that's where I'm that's where I'm like okay it feels like the

[1:23:45] certainty of a future of a statement about a future event in terms of all the specifics and especially what I what I view to be the claim of all three of the other views is that everything about the future including what will transpire in what which events will transpire in which moments all of it being exhaustively forn ahead of time yes to me feels like if that's if it's all certain with 100% accuracy then it feels like it would move in the direction of necessitarianism for for me that's my view that's what I think is a logical entailment of that again people could make arguments but I think that that collapses into necessitarianism and then it also feels to me like the truth value of a future statement is set ahead of the actualization of that thing

[1:24:35] in the event in that moment right yeah well it well it is like I mean that's that's that's the right the propositions about the future is like they this is what will take place and that has a settled truth value of true or false yeah um so this is one of the worries that I have that I don't have a good answer to about molinism so I had a lot of like worries about molinism one of which was the grounding objection and when I saw that was based on truthmaker Theory and then eventually came to realize truthmaker there is so weird and nuts like just get rid of it okay well there we go well I don't know how to articulate the grounding objection without truthmaker Theory so okay so what's left oh well this whole thing about Free Will and for knowledge oh that whole thing that's a was a very big problem um now here's something I've had conversations with Patrick Todd about this a bit um so he's an open theist but

[1:25:24] but he makes this point that I've seen others uh say as well which is the mere fact that there's a set of things a set of propositions about what I will do that doesn't obviously undermine My Free Will there has to be more to the story and that story that you tell about why those things are going to in fact happen that is what's going to explain why you do not have free will H and so trying to explore those different options is is one that is is like part of the next big project for me is to try to look at a lot of different like details here um because just that like yeah this is what you will do like I will go eat eat lunch after this therefore I don't have free will oh my God no no like there's got to be something else that explains it and the calvinist I think has a great story of how God knows the future he knows what's going to happen because he knows he's

[1:26:11] going to cause it and I'm like well now I can really see why I don't have free will because God's going to cause me to do stuff like that's really obvious to me why I don't have free will in that case and the claim is clear yeah if it's e it makes it very easily refutable because of how clear it is yes why that's not the case again if we're going to if we're going to place the Bible at our axiomatic Bas if we're going to have it anywhere near our axiomatic base and it in some way communicates truth to us and it is in some way divinely inspired and however we land on you know inherency and inspiration and things like that and infallibility um the story that the Bible is telling seems to not be that one I I mean all this stuff about like God you know you know God's not going to tempt you God's not going to be the author of sin and I'm like okay if he directly caused me to have all the

[1:27:01] thoughts that I have and cause me to have all the desires that I have and then cause me to act on certain desires tell me how he's not the author like well because you have your own causality I'm like can I cause things by myself no God has to cause you to cause things right okay so the clarity that you get from some calvinist because some contemporary Calvinists they want to tell you conveniently incomplete stories to hide like how like how robust and clear the view is so they can avoid objections but the people who don't do that then you can see all the problems right there for everyone to see and and I appreciate that because Clarity is what I want as a philosopher but yeah wof it's a that's a hard worldview to to maintain my gosh yeah yeah and it's unlivable and you know causes all sorts of problems with your decision- making and I think it can become necessarily it

[1:27:51] tends that way Trends in the direction of passivity in terms of your decision making uh it Trends toward um uh inertia not towards action and it it divests it removes uh uh power from the the decisions that you're making and it removes agency and if you don't let it do that it's because you're going against the implications and entailments of the view rather than let this um a debate that Erasmus and Martin Luther had and Rasmus was saying everything that you're saying um and uh my friends in Finland um so uh Aku vasala and alip pekao they have a great paper on this where they they they're like here's the debate between Luther and arasmus now here's a bunch of cognitive science um that's happened you know since then because a lot of cognitive Sciences only

[1:28:38] happened recently because it's only a recent science um but all the cognitive science backs up erasmus's claim uh it's like yeah when people really do think they don't have free will or don't have this kind of responsibility or this robust autonomy they really do start to engage in antisocial Behavior instead of pro-social behavior and they do start to like withdraw within so so it's like oh yeah it's not just like this there really is a very real tendency that we do observe in reality uh with this stuff yeah just in terms of the behavioral psychological impact that seems to be you know unavoidable that that's where it leads to yeah and then a stoic will say this is what you should be doing right like you have no free will so you should start to you know meditate in these kind of ways so so like the stoic just builds a whole like lifestyle around this and like so yes we've got great examples in history and today of like that this is a thing that that that can in fact happen well and so yeah

[1:29:27] that's and that that's a whole other wor whole other can of worms because I I would also affirm like again I'm I'm an open view person but I think a an overwhelming majority of things were determined for me by other things by antecedent conditions that brought me you know to this moment I have much less say in the the circumstances of my life than I you know Jonathan prit is always saying Free Will is not a superpower right I I have will to do something but then like even my power to bring that about is different from my will and then the whole set of things that brought me that that were true and that this gets into truth Meer again which is funny but all the things that happened before that bring me to this moment um I had zero control over yeah and I'm brought into

[1:30:16] this world in a in a set of circumstances that I had nothing to do with so like I don't think that that equals determinism no right and it doesn't equal uh repudiation of free will simply because things were determined for me by antecedent conditions and it's not even Divine determinism right saying saying God determined all those things as yet another claim yeah but um people seem to think that because I'm an open theist because I adhere to um because I adhere to Free Will and then I think that that means that there are probabilities ontologically speaking of what may happen that God knows as might happens and could happens not as WS woods and wills simply because I think that people some times assume that that means that I think I have like some superpower where I can God and go against his plans or something I I see this all the time on Tik Tok right now and I am just going

[1:31:04] have you ever read a book like I mean not just like a philosophy like book on free will but just a book like you know and and so when I say this about free will like I'm constantly going every introductory textbook to Free Will written by actual people who know what they're talking about will go yeah your freedom is in a context like duh like and in your freedom doesn't mean like you can go against your like that's it's just stupid no no of course like because Freedom about like making choices well I have to have a context otherwise I can't I can't make a choice um so like yeah of course things influence me that's what to be a rational agent is to be appropriately responsive to objectively good reasons so you have to be influenced in order to be a free agent so so yeah I I really do when I see some of these things where it's like if you have anything that influences you you

[1:31:50] don't have free will I'm like talk to anyone who actually like affirms Free Will what are you what are you going on about like you know like read a book before you come back and have this conversation yeah yeah okay so I wanna I wantan we're coming up on well a good chunk of time here so I want to kind of tie a bow on some of this and then close us out with uh just a couple of questions so kind of the last three things I want to talk about I wanted to ask you what you thought of the line of reasoning and how you would respond to the same line of reasoning that I used against Dr White in the debate specifically kind of in the opening statement around there's the three sort of blueprint worldviews uh first off I want to know if you think that the charge lands against molinism or your against your view and then the other one being flexible enough to allow to split the difference between some

[1:32:37] things being determined by God some things being exactly forn with 100% will use the word certainty by God in advance of the event transpiring in a moment and then in terms of some things being genuine open possibilities that God knows as possibilities ahead of time to say nothing about like more extreme views of open theism like a Chris fiser for whom I have a ton of respect right but and he's very much he's got good textual arguments but I'd like I want to know how you feel about that argument then I would like to know kind of like if you would if it's accurate to say that you're a molinist okay why not the open views why don't you accept the open views and then we'll talk about metal music yeah so we'll start from the to so remind okay so the so the the blueprint argument you laid out was like things are either like fully determined uh the three yeah three views say that there is

[1:33:26] an ex uh to borrow Alan roa's term there is a unique actual future there is something that will transpire it is a line of certainty from which there is no deviation in God's knowledge of what will transpire it's a blueprint and then my view is that the ontological shape of the future so much as we can refer to an ontology of the future is that it's we're making prognostications this is a strict presentism we're making prognostications and predictions and God too is making prognostications predictions about what he thinks will transpire in the future but it's subject to change based on decisions based on emergent circumstances based on other things and then that God dynamically adapts to that thing but it's the only view that is not a settled line of what

[1:34:15] will happen first off do you think the critique lands I mean yeah so like a molinist and a calvinist they both have to agree that there's a Thin Red Line of like here's all these possible timelines of how things could go but because God on the basis of his free knowledge has four knowledge so the free knowledge there uh on both the calvinist and the molist view um what it at the very least what it does is it ethically closes the future so right there's a certain set of propositions about what will happen and what will not happen and those get settled uh and so there's a thin red line of like this is how history is going to go so yeah they both have to say that um I think that's just that's just I think that's just an accurate statement of description of what the view is um so it's not even a critique it's just like that's just the view like

[1:35:03] so yeah okay thank you I've gotten a lot of push back for that oh there's a they would be saying that we have to say there's a Thin Red Line yeah um and there's lots of ways you can try to capture the the the genuine uh because you've got the AL lithic settled future but that doesn't mean that the future is like causally uh settled um like whereas on The calvinist View like it's it's causely settled it's causally settled because God caused it to be that way correct yeah so the the the molinist wants to say it's not causally settled like it really is like causally open but that is what I'm going to do um okay yeah so that's where they should right the critique lands in so far as the the nature of what the future is is that there is a unique actual future of what will transpire yeah

[1:35:52] however that comes to be whether it's simply forn that the the what will happen is what will happen and that's kind of the the classical simple forn knowledge Armenian sort of a view or the god determined it to be that way or some like middle knowledge mechanism it is a line of certainty it is The Thin Red Line of what will transpire so that part's true yeah I don't know how you could deny that without just fudging what the historical position is but yeah I mean I don't know but people do that all the time so okay so that's again really comforting I've had a lot of people push back on that and say you just don't understand XYZ whatever thing I'm like no I think I understand it and I'm not hiding from the implication I used to be molinist um I still have a great deal of love for my molist friends um I think it's the most intellectually consistent view I think I think it's

[1:36:39] probably got the one with the the narrowest uh standard deviations away from a kind of settled core of of of affirmations right so like I talked to you I talked to Tim Stratton uh I talked to William Lane Craig generally when it comes to God's relationship to the Future there's pretty little there's a pretty small amount of variance open theism is this big huge playground full of people who have all kinds of different views yeah yeah yeah um but so then the next question is and there's no wrong like I'm not looking for anything in particular it's genuine just open curiosity why molinism for you and why not some kind of openness view where there's you know I've I've I've POS I've posited this slider of things that maybe for known about the future in terms of that thin and red line right where if

[1:37:26] there's one or two branches it's still open right um all the way to God knows nothing and I think that's crazy like we have no idea what's happening in the future like my slider if I'm putting that slider if I'm putting my my uh I'm sliding it to the truth value I think it's going to be a lot closer to the 99 than the zero yeah you don't want to go like full Aristotle or like you know left exactly yeah EXA or like process theism which is another whole thing but like um why why the 100% version and not the 99.9% version yeah the well if it was just 99 like yeah if if so say God creates a universe uh with certain intentions certain goals in mind and and he's like if I create the universe with these initial conditions and it's a 99.9% uh like chance that this is

[1:38:14] exactly how it's going to go I wouldn't see the big deal there uh I know like a lot of molist would be like oh oh gosh and I'm like I'm like it's basically the same thing what are you what's going on like well that what's that like like you know slight chance that he could go wrong I'm like I don't what would introduce that well because creatures have free will well he could he could make sure he puts in a contingency plan to make sure that doesn't happen like I don't I just that that I wouldn't see a big deal um but they're like well he doesn't know with certainty I'm like it's close enough who cares like it's it's negligible like so I mean that's where that's also the language that like William hasker uses too and Richard rice who are open Theo like could God fail to satisfy his purposes for creation oh yeah oh yeah it's a real Poss like a big song and dance to risk risk risk oh well it's it's only negligible though that would

[1:39:01] happen I'm like what was all this risk nonsense then you gave me um so that yeah if it's just like 99 like I'm like who cares like I just don't see the big deal um but if I go like more further down like more risky then I've got some slight worries some slight questions um so a few things though that would keep me going that have kept me from open open theas um one is still trying to make sense of the language of for knowledge in scripture and I've read a lot of you know I've read like mreg boy I've read like all these people so I know these debates going back and forth and I just find myself going oh gosh I need to think about this more and I don't want to because I'm doing other stuff that I'm researching to die on I guess yes exactly but it's one that I'm like at some point I need to sit down and rethink it and then the other big issue originally like I like I said earlier

[1:39:49] they had the grounding objection kind of worry I'm like I don't have that anymore against molinism but the freedom Forge question is a very real question so even though I I want to say I don't see exactly how I do not have free will just because the future is ethically settled that still feels a little bit weird though right I mean like I mean like because it because it it does seem like if I were to like stumble into a room and find a book written on there that it says it's like in a bridged book of the world uh and it has like my everything that I'm going to do laid out in it uh in like really shocking detail I'm going to start to doubt do I really have free will and I but I won't know why I don't have it but I'm going to go it looks like it's already been written um so I mean there's a lot of questions there that need to be

[1:40:35] addressed and I've not sat down to do them U because I've been looking at all this other time stuff um so yeah so that's that's so basically it's autobiographical be going I haven't focused enough on these questions to get like satisfaction in my head of like why exactly do I want to go open theism just cannot be the case perfectly reable perfectly reasonable I think it's uh you know if you're if you're open to it in just the sense of like I haven't studied it to say yes or no but I'm preferring this because I think it makes more sense of where things are currently and I want to just kind of leave that part settled in my thinking for now so that I can have time and space to think about all this stuff without dealing with all the metaphysical questions over here totally great that's yeah and it's something actively done because like I mean I've got papers defending Calvinism uh from certain objections so I published those

[1:41:25] I've got uh like two or three papers defending M or like open theism from different objections and then what you'll see in the little book about a big God is me going okay say God's options are a calvinist universe a molist universe or an open Universe which one is he G to create and I try to look at Arguments for and against each View and I'm like so like it really is an active project of going let's think through this like as clearly as we can and do our best to defend every single view how the chip how are the chips going to fall I don't know I don't know that's fun well it's cool uh I'm I'm glad you and I are connected at this juncture so if there's any way that I can contribute to that discussion as you're kind of going forward I know myself I know Warren I know Alan Roo would love to would love to kind of be in and around your uh your brain space as you're thinking about those things when it comes time for you to sit down

[1:42:12] and get a cup of tea and really chew on that stuff I've done I'm satisfied with your answer yeah yeah um so yeah la last question for me um I I once heard a description of time of music that I really loved and it was uh in the same way that we use um decorations to Adorn our spaces we use music to decorate our our time and I love that thought it was really just fun to stop and think about I I do love decorating my time and one of the things I love decorating my time with is uh is heavy metal music so I wanted to ask in your view how do you Define big umbrella metal music oh gosh that's I don't know how to define that I

[1:43:00] mean I'll give you my shot I'll give you my shot first tell me you think it all depends on the level of distortion on the electric guitar if if you have what might be called an overdrive pedal we're do we're talking about rock okay but if you have a distortion pedal a full-on distortion pedal and you start to get even just crossing barely over the threshold into like Black Sabbath o aie Osborne where it's like just a little bit past overdrive for like a rhythm guitar or a lead guitar I think now you're talking about Metal that's my way of delinting yeah I mean well it's not just any distortion pedal right because like reg is gonna have Distortion and of course I've been at I remember gosh one of these because I used to be in like this this metal core band uh and we did a show and there was this ree metal thing that played before

[1:43:51] us and it was it was a i there's no next way to put it yeah it sounds it sounds like a really uh you know you're like I love I love sharp cheddar cheese and I love peanut butter so you know just poing your life that's great yeah so when I was in high school I know people give you a lot of grief about like the painted nails it's whatever um I I my brother was like Marilyn Manson fan and like we Listen to Korn and nails and so I'm familiar with like the chokers and thep jeans and the painted it's not a big deal people are weird about it um but when I was in high school I was a thrash metal guy and I would still call myself kind of a thrash metal guy I love Metallica I love Mega Death Slayer um in fact this guitar here has played a whole lot of Metallica

[1:44:40] music day um but I had hair kind of like down to the small of my back because I was a you know James headfield Kirk H do the headbanging thing um so that's kind of my genre but I'm looking to brand out from that I've tried certain things I don't like like death metal black metal so much the aesthetic isn't the problem it's really just kind of like the the the the feel if you know what I mean so but I'm looking to Branch out and I know you are something of an expert on the matter so uh what are your favorite genres I'm not going to limit you to one what are your favorite genres of metal and where would you suggest that I get started oh gosh like it varies like at the moment I've been listening to a lot more death core um just cuz like they've got they've got like fun breakdowns and stuff um so I really like this band called make them suffer from Australia

[1:45:29] uh and they've been doing a lot more I mean they kind of like you know there every band They evolve over the years and so some of their newer stuff it's a bit more not poppy um but it's got a little bit more pop stuff in there um and the whole genre of like death core as a whole like it it sometimes they'll to you'll have like weird like kind of like pop synway stuff so like uh we butter the bread with butter they're from Berlin they do not take themselves seriously as you would imagine from a name like that just alone from the name yeah yeah and so sometimes they'll be like let's just put in some like weird like uh like synth wave kind of stuff in this in this in moment just to make it more Dancy and fun and then now let's go back to like the really like serious like G rolling you know kind of thing go so they're fun um one band that I really like that like they're just all over the place though um electric callboy uh I was at was a bar the other night I heard

[1:46:19] them playing again um so my wife and I saw them last oh gosh it was last September they what they'll they what they'll do is they want to just like mix a lot of genres together so they'll be like let's have some like really like fun dance music uh and we'll have this like kind of cheesy pop thing where everybody can sing along and then we'll go into the metal a bit and then go back out and and and they do in a way that that works because sometimes it's just like really kitchy and yeah that sounds really disjointed to me you have to really kind of thread a needle to make that work yeah most bands cannot pull that off and nor should you try but for some reason it just works with them it was a fun that's one of the things I love about Metallica For example as a as a as a band is I love they have a really strong commitment to good Melody just really good Melody throughout the whole thing and if you listen to songs like Fade to Black or uh nothing else matters

[1:47:08] or one there's a real beautiful like they really focus on having a beautiful uh we'll call it a verse right verse structure and then they get a really heavy chorus and they'll come back to a beautiful and melodic verse and then back to a heavy chorus and then they got like a pre pre solo that tells you it's about to get really heavy and then they do the really heavy solo with you know a lot of like Kirk Hammet messing around on the guitar yeah but I like a little bit of melodic quality to my I know again Greg Boyd's a metal guy this so funny Greg Boyd's a metal guy is a pretty good drummer from what I understand and he really likes like the slip knot where it's just like really because that's very drum heavy so yeah that would that makes sense he would like that he would love that yeah so we've got make them suffer we've got Electric Cowboy um if you were to drop a third on there that's like maybe those are more recent interests if there's

[1:47:56] like the comforting like security blanket I go back to this just to enjoy some good music oh yeah what would you say is that be zo for me like so Zao um they were actually they started this in then this Pentecostal Church in Pennsylvania if I remember correctly uh yeah that's right yeah it's Pennsylvania like any good metal band yeah yeah because they're because they're they're from like um near like uh Lancaster or something so this so actually this actually makes not like there's a few different bands that are from like the middle of Pennsylvania so like them and August Verns red and stuff and so they've created this whole like culture of going to play out in the middle of Pennsylvania I live in Philadelphia at the moment so they don't come to Philly because they're like no no no like we got to go back to our roots and everybody goes in like middle of like middle of Pennsylvania and I'm like I

[1:48:43] don't have a car I can't get out there like what screw you guys come to Philly which there's a major venue so screw you so I love zo but I'm also like screw you because now everybody goes out to instead of coming out to me so yeah yeah yeah it's personal it's personal it is it is I get it okay I get it um well that's great you've given me a lot to chew on and I'm excited about all those three L literally all of this I'm just really grateful for all of this seriously thank you for your time this has been super uh a lifegiving for me because I feel significantly less crazy after having talked to you even though I feel like almost everything that we landed on is really intuitive and really um you know fits with our experience and understanding and I don't I don't understand the the sort of moralistic fallacious outrage that comes about when we talk about Divine temporality I don't

[1:49:31] know um but it's it's been there my whole career of people going what are you studying I'm trying to do a PhD on God in time you can't do that well I'm doing it right now like what do you mean so yeah so no it gets it gets moral very fast I've experienced that far too many times but um hopefully this conversation also uh can be a blessing to you and that I think that you're just making so much sense and I I'm so thankful that there's someone who's rigorously spending a career philosophically pursuing Common Sense answers not not just common sense answers answers that are truth looking for the truth but not discounting the common sense answer for being too easy or leading to implications that we don't like because of reasons that are themselves not very well founded and I

[1:50:19] just appreciate that about you in general I want to model that in my own space such as it is I'm not a philosopher I'm not uh I'm not a PhD holder of any kind but this is what I try to do in my space as well so thank you because you've you've modeled that for me strongly I hope that this conversation helps you to continue doing the work that you're doing and to feel not crazy for pursuing it and on that note I would like to just ask obviously you've you've just come out with a book you're working on another one that's coming out in January tell us a little bit about the book that just came out about the book that's coming out and about what your plans are for the future from there yeah so the so when I was in I had a fellowship in Finland um at the collegium for advanced studies and I was working on my my next big book on God and time which was like uh it's called

[1:51:08] from Divine time maker to Divine watchmaker so it's an exploration of divine temporality and so I'm trying to go here's all the models of God um what does it mean to say that God's temporal what are your options and then here's a bunch of different problems related to Creation Providence Trinity life after death evil how what are your options as a temporal uh in terms of all these kind of things and so it's it's it's going to be so it's already done uh the Publishers hands they just got to print it um but I think it's January is when they they they told me and so that's the up to this is going to be the most thorough discussion of divine temporality uh that as far as I know is ever ever existed so it's a pretty big undertaking and they gave me a second PhD for so that was cool um so how many pages are we talking I know this is

[1:51:57] going to be a hefty book I think it's around 175 really like no sorry 275 yeah no it's it's long it's a long one it's longer than the end of the Timeless god um which was amazing and wonderful and everybody should read that right now I don't want to say hey let's let's all have everyone wait for another five months to get the book that I'm excited about you can certainly wet your appetite I don't want to even say wet your appetite it's a meal in its own right but going and enjoying the end of the ESS God is also a tremendous tremendous read I recommend it highly it's extraordinarily helpful for clarifying A lot of what is so dang flabby and so wibbly wobbly about the the language of time and the metaphors we use very helpful book and then what was the one in between it was the big book about the the small book about a big God it's a so it's Eternal in love a little book about a big God and so that

[1:52:46] just came out uh so that was one I it was my my dad and a few other people were saying you need to write a popular level book uh that is Affordable because these academic Publishers charging like 100 bucks and I don't get any money from them so it's all so it's just like whatever um whereas I wanted to write something that is actually affordable and it's short and sweet and where I can be more devotional than I typically get to be allowed to do and be more sarcastic than I'm typically allowed to do because academic writing they don't like they don't like you to be a person they don't like you to be human fun no fun allow yeah so I had a lot of people who are not professional philosophers and theologians read over the earlier drafts of it to make sure that is this actually clear is it accessible and everyone's like yeah it's really and it's a lot of fun it's very funny it's also very thought-provoking so you're going to laugh you're going to cry

[1:53:33] you're going to learn a lot about the nature of God in between U and it's only 25 bucks so like you can actually you don't have to sell your firstborn child to to get it so it's so it's nice steal steal yeah well then I'm gonna I'm gonna modify my recommendation let's if if we're talking about things like eternalism and presentism and ontology and athic and if these words are kind of like hurting you maybe start with the eternal love book instead and uh it's available now which is awesome I'm really excited I haven't actually grabbed my copy yet I'm eager to um but I just will probably pick up and devour just about anything you write because uh it helps me not to feel crazy so thank you for all of that if if nothing else thank you for helping me not to feel crazy but um also thank you for coming on thank you for spending the time with us I am personally deeply grateful for your work and uh we'll pray for God's uh

[1:54:23] God's best and all good success for everything that you're working on going forward I appreciate it thank you you got it man all right well that'll do it for today uh if you have any other questions obviously uh feel free to post them down in the comments and then if uh if you're open to it I'll post some other links to things in the maybe even including our metal band recommendations down in the description for people to go and enjoy but that'll do it for today so thanks everyone and have an amazing rest of your day God bless