Okay Lon, I didn't see this post until this morning because I've had you on ignore for a while. I can no longer remember specifically why I put you on ignore which I usually use as good enough of a reason to take people off of ignore. Here's hoping it lasts, because this is one of my favorite topics!
It could be more than just concept because we can use things to measure, in this case watches.
What does a watch do? What does any clock do?
A clock is simply a device that provides a set of events that are evenly spaced apart against which other events can be compared. Just as a ruler is a set of regularly sized distances marked out such that we can compare them to some other unknown distance and thereby refer to that distance with terminology that is regular and well defined and therefore useful. A clock does the same thing only with events rather than distances. All you are doing with a clock is comparing an event with a set of standardized events. More specifically, you are naming standardized events (seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, etc) and using them to refer to other events.
People used to use less precise terminology, "sunrise", "noon", "sunset" and for longer periods people would use the phases of the moon and the position of the Sun relative to a particular hill or standing stone or whatever and for even longer periods they would use the beginning of a king's reign or some cataclysmic natural disaster or something. These events are well defined and are fairly regular so they worked fine as clocks but the point is that, regardless of what you called it or what event you were using to make the comparison, the measurement of the passage of time is, and always has been, a convention of language where one is communicating information about the duration and sequences of events
relative to other events.
It is basically observation and measurement of movement/change. As such, it is a property of constructs. The reason most of us believe observation and measurement don't directly apply to God is that He is not a construct, but the Being from which all constructs proceed. John 1:3 Ephesians 3:19
That makes no sense whatsoever.
Seriously Lon, you need to try hard to stop over intellectualizing everything.
Time and/or distance is not a property of anything. Both are themselves mental constructs! They are just ideas. One edge of my desk is in one position and the other edge is in a different position, the difference between them is what we call distance. My dog's life began and then it ended, the intervening passage of events is what we call time. Just because we give name to something doesn't make it pop into existence in an ontological sense. These are concepts that we can name, standardize and use to great effect but they are still just concepts and are not intrinsically part of anything, including God or my desk or my dead dog.
In a bit of agreement, this is why we see God as 'relational' not bound as time is concerned, when interacting 'with' Creation.
Or with Himself! There are three persons in the Trinity who have enjoyed a loving relationship with each other for a very very long time. An interaction is just another event that can be compared with some other event and by doing so, you've used the concept of time, whether you ever bother to call it that or not.
He is uncreated thus there is a necessity to see something of God as not relating to His creation.
Huh?
Do you mean to say that God is not the same thing as His creation?
If so, change the capital "H" above to a capital "D".
How is this even the slightest bit relevant to this topic?
"Time" is one pinnacle of disagreement, but it 'seems' that if time is arbitrary among parties, such would have God must necessarily above His created beings and their limitation of concepts that are 'arbitrary' and 'relative?'
Okay, that sentence was not written in English. It's total gibberish.
First of all, what does "time is arbitrary among parties" mean?
You seem to be trying really hard to make the concept of time into something way more complicated than it is. Why would a concept, regardless of who came up with it or how arbitrarily defined it was, be out of bounds for use by or in reference to God? Why would the concepts of time or distance be any less applicable to God than to any other real thing?
I would agree that it wouldn't make sense to try to measure God with a ruler or a clock but that's only true because they aren't intended to measure infinite things. Infinities of all sorts, whether mathematical or actual, are fundamentally ineffable and the concepts of time and distance are intended to be communication tools and so there's a conflict there. You cannot communicate the ineffable, by definition.
That, however, doesn't mean that its totally out of bounds to use these concepts in relation to God nor would it mean that the concepts are meaningless to God. So long as you aren't attempting to use distance to measure from the tip of God's head to the bottom of His feet (not talking about Jesus' physical body here) or attempting to use a clock to measure from God's beginning to His end, then it's perfectly valid to talk about God and issues related to Him in terms of both time and distance and for Him to do the same.
I agree. When did God 'think' it? Some argue it is a part of His nature but you'd seem to be more in tune with me (or I you) that it is a property of what is created and their observations as creations. I believe 'logic' has a starting place for us that gives us diverse incongruent answers especially on concepts related. I read that God is apart from His creation:
1 Kings 8:27
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!
WHEN did God think of time?
Do you seriously not notice when you say such things?
And why did you put the word "think" in quotes?
And, no! I do not believe in the slightest that time (or distance) is a property of anything, created or otherwise. IT IS AN IDEA!!! It is nothing more than comparing one thing to another thing and giving that comparison a name. For time you are comparing events, for distance you are comparing locations. That's all these things are. They aren't ontologically intrinsic to anything.
Question: If we think of time as 'single-duration-movement.' Is God bound to only that?
Define "single-duration-movement".
-As I believe with you that time is merely an apprehension for understanding movement and change (or is that different: the 'measurement/construct of time rather than duration itself?')
Time is a convention of language used to communicate information related to the duration and/or sequence of events relative to other events.
Distance is a convention of language used to communicate information related to the position and/or size of objects relative to other objects.
Read those over and over again until you have them memorized. In two decades of using those definitions, to my knowledge, no one has come within a mile of even finding a flaw of any sort in them, much less debunking them. ("in two decades" - "within a mile" - see what I did there? lol)
This part doesn't add up as I'm following: How can there be events without any kind of concept of duration?
Because the word "duration" is simply a name that we give to the comparison of an event with some other set of events. The events don't have to have that comparison named in order to happen.
Remember, duration (and any other aspect of time) is a CONVENTION OF LANGUAGE.
Just the same as the color red existed before anyone said the word "red", so events happened before anyone used the word "duration" or even thought to talk about one event in terms of other events.
And again, are we talking about a construct relating rather than the duration/change itself?
This sentence is gibberish and was not written in the English language.
Time has to do with events. I don't care who or what or where the event happened in relation to. If it was an event that happened then the concept of time can be applied to it.
Ultimately, we are trying to figure out if 'it' (Time and/or its concept) always existed or not.
I'm not trying to figure any such thing out at all. Time DOES NOT EXIST in any ontological sense. It is an abstraction.
I begin with you that it coincides with creation but what happened 'before?'
Any event that happened before creation can be compared to the event of creation and concepts such as sequence and duration can be discussed in those terms. Creation itself becomes a tick of a clock. The concepts can be applied retrospectively so long as there are events to compare to other events because that's all time is, comparing events to other events and giving those comparisons names like "before", "after", "since", "during", etc.
Scripture says eternity (a sense of timelessness, or at very least a meaninglessness to continuing to observe its successions) is set in our hearts.
Funny that you should bring up that passage. Have you actually read the verse that comes from?
Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful
in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does
from beginning to end.
That is not the verse anyone would want to use if they were trying to argue that eternity is "timelessness".
Something in us realizes and reaches past time constraints even as 'time-started' beings. Are we yet capable of grasping the eternal?
If by "eternal" you mean "outside of time" then the answer is, NO! The irrational does not exist and cannot be grasped. To try is a form of insanity.
And I think even "reaching past time constraints" is over stated. Events take time to happen and that will always be the case. If you desire, when you get to heaven, to learn to play every composition that Bach ever wrote then it's going to take time to learn those musical pieces and it will take time to play them and it'll take time for you to sit down after words with John to get his opinion of your performance over tea. In short, heaven is a real place where real events happen and we'll be able to make similar comparisons between events that we make now.
For example, the Tree of Life will produce twelve different fruits, one coming ripe each month. A very nice clock by which to compare the long event of your learning to play Bach's musical material. Perhaps apples will have come ripe on The Tree of Life fifteen times while you were learning that material. Maybe we'll refer to that duration of time as a year or maybe there will be a completely different word that we use but regardless of what you call it, the idea is the same. It's a regularly occurring event that you are using to compare with some other event or set of events to discuss the duration and/or sequence of those events. That's time!
As for "eternity in our hearts", it simply means that we all know intuitively that this life isn't all there is; that we are going to survive our physical death and that God's existence is real and that we are only a small part of that existence.
My first inkling is that God never ever, ever, had a beginning.
Good thinking!
Because I'm stuck in successive cause/effect thinking, I'm just barely able to grasp "God has a beginning that never started and is still going well beyond my eternal ability to grasp how far back He began. That may not sound profound, but literally I 'can' think forever, daily (if such exists) for the rest of eternity, forever and ever, how long ago God 'began' and never reach that day. It is a logical conundrum but seems clearly to intimate that God cannot possibly have the same 'kind' of time we have, are bound to, or observe.
Okay, be careful about admitting in one breath that you can't comprehend something and then, in the next breath, using that lack of ability as cause to conclude something about the very thing you just said you can't comprehend.
The problem isn't with your mind, it's with the instrument your using. Time cannot be used to measure the infinite. Just as there is no ruler long enough to measure God's height and width, there is no clock that can measure His duration. That doesn't mean you have a good excuse to throw out time and distance completely when discussing God. You just can't use them in ways that are self-contradictory. You cannot apply time to God's own duration because the concept of time requires the comparison of one event to another event. God had no beginning. There is no event that can be rightly named, "God's starting point" and so there's no event there to compare other events to. It's similar to trying to divide by zero. You can't do it because it's a contradiction. The word "zero" means "nothing" and if you're dividing something then the presupposition is that you are dividing by something, not nothing, and so division by zero implies an inherent contradiction. The same is true when trying to discuss God's duration in terms of time because there is no event that we can call "God's beginning" or "God's end".
It seems to intimate that 'time' in that sense is a property of God.
No. It is an idea.
Time is a convention of language used to communicate information related to the duration and/or sequence of events relative to other events.
My dilemma is yet just above: It doesn't seem God 'can' be but relational to time properties and uni-duration as we know it.
This sentence is gibberish and was not written in the English language.
All such confusion is a creation of your own. It comes from believing that an idea exists ontologically. Get rid of that single error and such gibberish sentences will never come to into your mind ever again.
