A God Outside of Time
There are many different views of time, which affects our views of God.
Some physicists believe in the B-Theory of time. What this means is that each part of time is static within the universe and time is comprised of instances of time. You can think about it like a movie you would watch at the movie theater. Each frame is static, but because we are exposed to new images all the time it makes it appear as though the picture is showing moving images when in reality, they are just single pictures. In this model of time, time is not a continuous stream like a river but just made of screenshots. Other people think time is continuous and that time is separate from our third-dimensional space. In other words, our third dimension runs by time. This is the A-Theory of time. Personally, I am agnostic on which theory of time I think is more accurate (between A-Theory and B-Theory of time). This has an effect on how I view God.
You see, I have to come up with a theory of God that accounts for both kinds of time. Here I would like to share how I see God in relation to time.
There are many verses about God's foreknowledge. Most Christians have believed that God has complete foreknowledge since the first Christians. As such, I believe in God's foreknowledge. So that is not a question for us here.
I believe God is outside of time. God is not "within time" nor do I think God is "prior to" time. To say God existed prior to time would be to say that there is a time that God existed--a time before time.
I would say that God is Holy from time--that is to say, that God exists separate from time. It's a difficult concept so let me try and be more articulate about it.
God created the universe. That should be clear from Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Notice how God is not part of creation. He supersedes creation by being the creator of it and not in a way that He "enters in" time. You can think about it like this: Think of time as though it is a ruler that keeps growing. The start is like the ruler. Now, the thing about a ruler is that it started at a specific point. God never existed at a specific point. You can think about it as God is what is at the butt end of the ruler. At the beginning of the ruler, there is no ruler. But given God exists in a way that time does not, God does not exist in the same way as the ruler. In this way, God is a priori to the ruler--that which is where the ruler is not. A priori just means "knowledge without appeal to particular experience."
But if time began to exist and God did not begin to exist, then we have two options: either God becomes temporal--"within time" at the point that time exists--or God is immutable in regards to time, and he always was--not in the sense of time, but more to say that time is a construct to God. In this way, it is like saying God is observing a race between people running on a track. The people line up to race. They line up at a specific point. But God can see the whole track all at once. It would be as though God already has seen the race, and so he knows how each runner will do. But that doesn't mean that God isn't there seeing the whole track all at once. He sees, before the race starts, every part of the race itself, and how the race ends all at once. In other words, God is the creator, and everything in creation--including time--falls under the umbrella of God's creation. That is what it means for God to be Holy. He exists whether or not time exists. God did not need to create anything. He only creates for His own glory. He is not dependent on creation in any way, including time.
In this way, we have to devise a way to conceptualize God. We have to make sense of a timeless being. And if God is timeless, it means he doesn't change. This is God's immutable nature. So we can say that God does not change. So how do we think about a being that never changes, that created everything existing that exists outside of time? The way I like to think about it is that God is being itself or absolute being and existence. That is, He is absolute power at work to produce the universe in which there is a time of some sort.
So someone might say, "That's fine, but how do you explain how God acts within time then?" And that's an excellent question! It is my opinion that although God does not meticulously micromanage the universe, there are clearly times when God does step into the universe to do things such as miracles. How I would say it is the same way I would think about the incarnation of Christ. Christ existed prior to the incarnation. There are many examples of the Son existing prior to the incarnation in the Old Testament. One of the clearest examples is found in Genesis 18, where it says, “The LORD appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of his tent during the heat of the day.” And as we know, whenever the word "LORD" is said in the Bible it is talking about YHWH. And YHWH is God the Father--the first member of the Trinity. But elsewhere it says in the Bible, "No one has seen God." So how do we reconcile this? Well, that is where we read from the Bible, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” So we can see YHWH in the Son--that is Christ--Jesus of Nazareth. So in the same way that God acted in the world and how the Holy Spirit caused Mary to get pregnant with Christ yet Christ existed prior to the incarnation along with what I said about the race analogy--that is that God sees the track before, during, and after the race--God acts in the world knowing where and when He will act in the world prior to the creation of the universe and time.
So for B-Theory of time, my perspective of God is that God exists where time does not, meaning that where the segments of time exist, God operates on a "higher resolution" than time does.
For A-Theory of time, my perspecitve of God is that God does not need to be "within time" to know what will happen at any time.
And that's how I see God and time.
God bless you! Until next time!