The Temporal Presence of God in a Relativistic Universe
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The traditional concept of a temporarily present God in Open Theism more closely aligns with religious and biblical understandings of God than does the classical timeless concept. Divine temporal knowledge and causality require, however, a dynamic theory of time and absolute time, concepts that most theorists of relativity challenge. The standard version of presentism, as proposed by W. L. Craig, has not been well received in the scientific community. A more effective solution to conceptualizing God’s temporal presence in a relativistic universe involves reinterpreting the Theory of Relativity as pertaining to measurements of local times, which do not interfere with the unique cosmic “now”. In this view, Minkowski’s space-time does not need to be interpreted solely as a geometric representation of the effects of natural forces, as Craig suggests, but it can be argued that even if realistic, it does not exclude a unique present.
Source: Studia theologica
DOI: 10.5507/sth.2024.009
Author: Ľuboš Rojka
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4403289869