God, Time, and the Incarnation

Written by Richard A. Holland Jr Reviewed By R. T. Mullins

Richard Holland's book comes at an interesting time. Two different conversations have been taking place within contemporary philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. One conversation is over God's relation to time. The other conversation is in regards to the doctrine of the incarnation. Over the last few years several philosophical and systematic theologians have turned their attention toward the metaphysics of the incarnation. Various models have been proposed, and the discussions are starting to become quite rigorous. Among divine temporalists there is a common claim that the incarnation shows that God must be temporal. The problem is that only a few temporalists have attempted to rigorously argue this point. Holland's work is the first book-length attempt to argue from the incarnation to the claim that God must be temporal.

In order to develop this argument, Holland surveys and analyses the relevant issues and debates within the philosophy of time and theology. For instance, he briefly discusses different theories of time, biblical theology, and the history of divine timelessness. He also critically examines some of the major thinkers in the contemporary debates.

One relevant issue for the debate that Holland notes is that time involves change and succession. The connection between this understanding of time and theology is as follows. To say that God is timeless is to say that God exists without beginning, without end, and without succession. God does not undergo any change such that he has no before or after in his life. He enjoys all of his life at once in a timeless present. To say that God is temporal is to hold that God exists without beginning and without end, but to affirm that God does have succession in his life. After laying out these definitions, Holland goes on to argue that there is no biblical evidence that God exists without succession. On the contrary, the Bible clearly portrays God has having succession in his life. Another issue that Holland focuses on is the debate between the tensed and tenseless theories of time. It is commonly held today that if a tensed theory of time is true, God is temporal, whereas if the tenseless theory of time is true, God must be timeless.

After laying out the above issues, Holland delves into the doctrine of the incarnation. He offers an analysis of biblical and creedal issues in the development of the doctrine. It is Holland's contention that the incarnation should serve as a control-belief for the debate over God and time. If Jesus Christ truly is the God-man and the one who reveals God to us, then Christian theology must allow the incarnation to inform our beliefs about the divine nature. Holland offers three issues from the incarnation that serve as a paradigm for his argument that God is temporal. First, the incarnation-event indicates succession in the life of God the Son in its occurrence and in its permanence. The doctrine of the incarnation affirms that God the Son existed prior to the incarnation. Once the Son became incarnate, he continued to be incarnate and will continue to be incarnate forever and ever amen. Second, the earthly life of Jesus demonstrates temporal succession. The Gospels clearly show Jesus doing one thing and then another. Third, the salvific work of Christ indicates succession in the life of God. The work of salvation comes to a completion in Christ. This indicates that salvation was not timelessly complete, but comes to completion at some point. Throughout the book Holland expands upon these three paradigmatic issues to come to the conclusion that the Christian God cannot be timeless.

In what follows I will point out some of the weaknesses I find in Holland's book. My first complaint is one that I have with just about every recent treatment of God and time. Most of the contemporary discussions on God and time have not kept up with the contemporary discussions within the philosophy of time. For far too long the debates about God's relation to time have focused on the tensed versus tenseless theories of time. A tensed theory of time holds that tensed propositions are more fundamental to reality than tenseless propositions, whereas the tenseless theory of time holds that tenseless propositions are more fundamental. For much of the late twentieth century, it was assumed that each theory corresponded to a particular ontology of time, but this has turned out to be false. If you put three tenseless theorists in a room, you can find them holding three different ontologies of time. One will say that only the present exists. Another will say that the past and present exist. The third will say that the past, present, and future exist. The same thing can happen if you put three tensed theorists in a room too. What is actually relevant for understanding God's relation to time is knowing which ontology of time is correct.

Propositions about time are not the crucial issue and serve only to obscure the debate. This brings me to my second criticism of Holland's book. This criticism, like the last one, applies to most contemporary discussions on God and time. As noted above, there is somewhat of a consensus that God can be timeless if the tenseless theory of time is true. What is often misunderstood is that the tenseless theory of time is, in fact, a theory on time and change. Holland, like most others, treats the tenseless theory of time as if it were about timelessness. The idea seems to be that a tenseless theory of time gives us a world where all moments are equally, wholly, simultaneously, and timelessly present to God. But the tenseless theory of time does not give us this. All it gives us is a theory about what is true at certain times without any reference to tense. An example of a tenseless truth is <Wipf & Stock publish Richard Holland's book on February 20, 2012 at 8:00am>. Granted, this proposition does not change its truth-value like <Wipf & Stock will publish Holland's book tomorrow> does. But the tenseless proposition still gives us a proposition about what is true at a particular time. Even if the tenseless theory did entail a particular ontology of time whereby the past, present, and future all exist, it would not give us a state of affairs where all moments of time are simultaneously present to God. This is because all moments of time are not simultaneous together, even on a tenseless theory of time.

This misunderstanding of the tensless theory of time has led to a misunderstanding of the classical tradition. Again, Holland is no different in this respect. For instance, he claims that Boethius holds that all moments of time are literally present to God. In other words, Boethius holds to a tenseless theory of time. However, this is false. Boethius holds that only the present moment of time exists. In fact, Boethius uses this ontology of time to describe and argue for God's timeless present. What Holland and others grab onto is an analogy that Boethius offers to explain divine foreknowledge. Boethius says that God is like a man standing on top of a mountain. He can see the road below all at once. What Holland and others ignore is Boethius's claim that God's knowledge is in no way dependent upon the temporal world. “[H]ow absurd it is that we should say that the result of temporal affairs is the cause of eternal foreknowledge!” (Consolations of Philosophy, V.147). Instead, God has a perfect knowledge of himself and thus “views in [his] own direct comprehension everything as though it were taking place in the present” (Consolations of Philosophy, V.163). What Boethian commentators like John Marenbon point out is that Boethius is falling in line with a long tradition of thinkers who hold that the divine essence generates eternal truths. In God having a perfect knowledge of himself, he is able to know all true propositions regardless of whether the temporal world exists. The debates over the tensed and tenseless theories of time have tended to obscure this.

However, these criticisms are not unique to Holland's work. What criticisms are unique to Holland? The main weakness I see with Holland's work is a lack of metaphysical rigor. Due to an underdeveloped account of the metaphysics of time, as well as an underdeveloped account of the metaphysics of the incarnation, I worry that Holland's arguments might not be as persuasive as they could be. When it comes to articulating the doctrine of the incarnation, Holland's account simply is not as rigorous as one will find in the works of thinkers like Stephen Davis, Thomas Senor, Oliver Crisp, or Richard Cross. In regards to the metaphysics of time, there is no discussion of presentism or four-dimensional eternalism nor any discussion about theories of persistence through time. Though Holland's argument packs quite a punch, I can easily foresee an analytic theologian who is committed to a three-part Christology, four-dimensional eternalism, and divine timelessness failing to feel any force from Holland's argument. I believe that if Holland were to delve deeper into the metaphysics of the incarnation and time, he could give his argument some serious teeth.

I do not wish these criticisms to overshadow the fact that Holland's arguments do have force, especially if one is committed to the belief that only the present moment of time exists and that the past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist. This book gives a much needed treatment of how the doctrine of the incarnation relates to the debate about God's eternality. Holland offers several critiques of thinkers like Paul Helm and Brian Leftow that are quite devastating. Also, his argument from the atonement to divine temporality is interesting and novel. It certainly deserves more attention. At the very least, Holland has clearly driven home the point that the doctrine of the incarnation has not played a significant role in how theologians typically understand God's eternality. Holland persuasively argues that Christian theologians cannot continue to do this. Instead, the incarnation must be a control-belief for thinking about the divine nature.


R. T. Mullins

R. T. Mullins
University of St Andrews
St Andrews, Scotland, UK

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