Succession of Time in God A Reality!

“Many are much disposed, for example, to hold that there can be no Succession of thought in God, that there is to Him therefore no past, and present, and future, that duration is to Him without the element of time, and must be regarded in His eyes as “one eternal now”.   This, we are persuaded, is an entirely mistaken notion – first, because the facts of creation belie it; second, because the statements of Scripture do not support it; and third, because it is inconsistent with all that we know or can conceive respecting the operations of the mind.  We have therefore no proper alternative but to think of God according to the analogy of our own rational and moral nature, which by the way, we are told, has been formed in the image and likeness of that of God.  Unless we come to this finding, it is a priori obvious to us, that any attempts to examine into the schemes of God with respect to our world or ourselves, is, and must needs be, mystery; in fact, that our relation to God, in its most essential character, has no validity – that we can have no conception of His operations, and no sympathy with His mind, as being of a character wholly foreign to ours.  Such notions misrepresent God, and they forestall the impossibility of our reaching God, or of feeling our true relation to God.  It is such notions that have gone to confound the fore-knowledge and fore-ordination of God, and which has thereby introduced all the difficulty wherewith we are surrounded in speaking of the decrees of God.  It is such notions that have gone to perplex the question of human freedom in respect of divine operation and the fulfillment of the divine will.  It must be of enormous moment, then to understand upon principles that cannot be gainsaid, what are, and must be, the characteristics of the divine mind, as in consistency with all that is proclaimed to us of God, and with all that can be gathered of God from His Word and from His Works.

As to the facts of creation, we know that there was a time (and we must call it time) when these facts began to be – a time when they were not as they now exits – a time when one arose in subservience to another and out of the proper causality, as pre-existing the phenomenal facts, in as far as it produced the facts: does it not necessarily follow that if God, as Creator, prescribed and in Himself constituted the causality of will in each separate case, in due subserviency to facts formally preordained, that there was of necessity before Him a process of what is properly called time?  What is Time but the interval of duration betwixt one event and another?  Time is transition.  Time always marks eventuality: time is measured by eventuality.  Are we to say, there is no eventuality with God?  This is a pantheistic notion, full of incongruities; and goes to destroy the personality of God.  Eventuality exists in the mere variety of thought.  If there be on thought in God as distinguished from another, this distinction of thought marks time.  It is analogous to the question of Space.  Were there not space as applicable to God, there could be no space as applicable to creation.  Space is measurement of extension: space consists in such measurement: it may begin with an atom; but there is no limit to its expansion.  Were there not time and space as applicable to God, it is obvious that there could be no time and space introduced, that is, creation could not be introduced.  Time and space are limitations essential to creation: but how could these exist at all, if they were not originally and intrinsically in God?  Without the presentations of time and space in God, one would make God to be an imperfect Being; for we should render Him incapable of creating the things that are.  Time and space must needs be regarded as characteristics pertaining to the mind of God.  And the Scriptures abundantly confirm this view. They not only speak of ‘the form of God,’ as indicating that the limitations of space belong to Him – limitations, by the way, that may be indefinitely extended, so as to cover the uttermost possible expanse, that is, expanse without limit; (my note: author’s left hand seems to take away what the right hand giveth here, but to proceed) but they speak of the purposes, designs, or ‘decrees of God’.  If there are decrees of God, respecting one thing, and another thing, and another, then there are thoughts of God, as distinguished from one another; and therefore there is time in God as the very necessity of His nature: time, however, that may be expanded from the smallest adminicle termed a twinkling, to the largest possible interval betwixt one eventuality and another – an interval that may be indefinitely expanded.  What follows?  If there is a succession of determinations in God, in symmetrical subordination, that is, a series of thoughts inwardly conceived, and of resolves separately formed, in order to their being outwardly realized, what alternative have we, but to apply to the highest Reason the experiences which we realize in ourselves?  There is no other logical conclusion open to us:  there is no other legitimate inference which we can draw.  It is, moreover, quite out of the question, that contrary to all analogy and all reason, we should prescribe to God a category, whereby we place ourselves out of all sympathy with Him, and out of all possibility of understanding Him, or even of recognizing the true and proper relation which belongs to us as the offspring of God.  The Scriptures reveal the mind of God to us that we may acquire it, that we may follow after and imitate the same: ‘Be ye followers of God as dear children,’ and so be fitted to tabernacle with God.  But how could this be if there were no succession, that is, no eventuality with God?  If, therefore, we forestall our views of God, by laying down maxims as applicable to God, which lie wholly out of the range of human vision or apprehension, we do but constitute what is nothing than a reductio ad absurdum, by reasoning there from.”
1884, Author to be released.