Questo articolo è disponibile anche in: Italian English

Good evening Father Angelo,

a new question arose in my mind, how can God exist if he is outside time? One might be led to think that everything that exists exists only insofar as it is in time.

Could you help me give a rational answer to this question, please? If you have already answered this query, could you please attach the replies as I have not been able to find them?

I promise you my prayers and many thanks.

Paolo

Answer by the priest

Dear Paolo,

1. since we are in time, we are prone to think that everything that exists must be explained by temporal criteria.

Instead, there are realities that are outside time, such as spiritual beings, God and angelic creatures whether good or perverted.

This is analogous to matter. We are also made of matter because our bodies are material.

And because we only see material things with our eyes, we are led to assume that only material realities exist.

But this is wrong.

2. It is not difficult for us to discover that we are not just made of matter and that our needs are not merely material ones.

In fact, precisely because we are endowed with reason, we are capable of transcending matter with our thoughts.

We are even capable of thinking about the existence of spiritual realities, such as God, angels and demons, regardless of whether they exist.

But if we are capable of conceiving of spiritual realities, it means that we are also more than matter; rather, we are made of spirit.

3. The ancient and great philosopher Aristotle said that agere sequitur esse, implication of acting follows being.

Everyone acts according to his or her inherent manner.

This is an incontrovertible fact. Birds fly because they have wings. So too we can see, hear, taste, smell, touch because we have senses capable of picking up these realities.

Similarly we are able to think about spiritual realities because we are endowed with spiritual intelligence, which abstracts from matter, processes and molds matter as it will which purely material beings cannot do because there is nothing in them that transcends matter.

4. The same applies to time, which according to Aristotle is the measure of movement according to a before and an after.

This is measurement.

But only thinking beings, beings that transcend time, can measure.

That is why Aristotle still said that if there were no rational soul, there would be no time. There would be movement, but there would be no measurement of movement according to a before and an after.

5. It is precisely from here that we start to rationally understand the concept of the eternal.

This was well understood by Aristotle who came to define God as the Unmoved Mover.

God is he who moves without passing from power to act, without passing from one instant to another.

God is he who breathes existence moment by moment into all his creatures.

Were it not so, they would plunge into the nothingness from which they have been drawn.

God is therefore the mover of all creatures, but by moving them he does not move.

If he could move from one instant to the next he would be in power with respect to the next instant. In which case he would be lacking something and would not be God.

6. For us who live in time it is difficult, indeed impossible, to think how we can exist without being in time, without passing from one instant to the next.

Yet we are able to understand that the eternal exists.

And although we are unable to define it for what it is, we are nevertheless able to say precisely what it is not.

7. This is why, in Greek language that seems a little ostrogothic to us but is perfectly correct, it is said that theology is more apophatic than cataphatic, i.e. that it describes God more for what he is not than for what he is.

Only Christian revelation can tell us more about the intrinsic nature of God and his works because God has revealed himself.

8. This is the rational answer in which I have quoted four times Aristotle, a Greek and pagan philosopher who lived in the 3rd century BC.

Aristotle is among the greatest philosophers, probably the greatest. So much so that in the time of St Thomas, he was referred to as the Philosopher. He is the philosopher par excellence.

Hence we see how important philosophy is that allows us to do theology, that is, to understand what we believe by divine revelation and not find anything in it that is irrational or contradictory in itself.

I bless you, wish you well and thank you for your prayer made on my behalf.

I gladly reciprocate it.

Father Angelo