Author
Wolterstorff, N. (2001). Response to Paul Helm
2 quotes Popular first.
- “I find this an interesting, though ultimately baffling, answer to the question. I understand Paul to be saying that “dialogue, real dialogue,” is impossible between two persons unless both are mutable; if one is not capable of change, then it’s only “make-believe” dialogue that can take place between them, not “real” dialogue. If we now add to this thesis about dialogue—which seems to me eminently correct—Paul’s thesis that God is immutable, then it follows that, on Paul’s view, there can be no genuine dialogue between God and human beings. Nonetheless—this seems to be his view—it was indispensable to God’s achievement of “his purposes for his people on whose behalf he intervenes in time” that the people believe that they were engaged in genuine dialogue with God.”— Wolterstorff, N. (2001). Response to Paul HelmSource:God & Time: Four Views (p. 72)
- “It seems to me that if the eternalist view were correct, then God would not respond to what happens in time, and that the way God acts within time would simply be the way that deists have always held that God acts within time. I see the crux of the debate as located at this point: An eternalist God is necessarily a deistlike God.
Think of God’s action in the world, says Paul, on the model of one of us setting the timer on our central heating system. As the result of my one act of setting the timer, the system may go on at 7:00 in the morning, go off again at 10:30 in the evening, day after day. Let us add that the system has a thermostat that I set at 65 degrees Fahrenheit—so that when the system is on during the day, if the temperature dips a bit below 65 in the room the furnace will light, and if it gets a bit above 65 degrees the flame will go out.
I agree that this is a rather good model of how the eternalist thinks of God’s action vis-à-vis the world. So let us ask, first, whether on the model I respond to the time of day or the temperature in the room. It seems to me obvious that I do not. I program the timer so that it responds to the time of day, and I program the thermostat so that it responds to the temperature in the room. But I myself don’t respond to those events. Probably a good many of them I don’t even know about. And in any case, when I set the timer and the thermostat, those events hadn’t even occurred yet
I performed some basic actions a week earlier when I programmed the timer and the thermostat; but those are the last basic actions I performed relative to the heat in the room. Having performed those then, I may well have gone off on vacation.
On the eternalist’s picture of God’s action in the world, God in eternity formulates a plan for world history, initiates the first stage of the plan and then watches the scroll unroll. God does not respond to the actual events of history any more than I respond to the actual events of temperature fluctuation when I set the thermostat in advance. And the only basic actions God performs are whatever basic actions are necessary for instituting the first stage in cosmic history. After that, God acts “in” history only in the sense that I act “in” my room by doing something a week before which has the consequence that now the flame turns on at 2:10.”— Wolterstorff, N. (2001). Response to Paul HelmSource:God & Time: Four Views (pp. 76–78)