Below is Claude.ai’s summary of the paper “Transcendent Temporality: A Transdimensional Model of God’s Free Relationship to Spacetime” by D. T. EVERHART, Logos Institute, University of St Andrews. The PDF is in the Dropbox directory “God”. The Prompt was: Summarize the attached file into commonly used English while accurately conveying the author’s views and rationale.
Summary: Transcendent Temporality – A New Model of God’s Relationship to Time
The Problem
This paper addresses a fundamental debate in Christian theology: Is God temporal (existing in time) or atemporal (timeless)?
Two opposing camps:
- Oxford School of Divine Temporality (OSDT): God exists in time and experiences succession and change
- Divine Atemporalists: God exists outside of time to maintain His sovereignty and distinction from creation
The “Prisoner of Time” Objection (POT): Atemporalists argue that if God is temporal, He becomes trapped in time like any creature—unable to escape its relentless flow, which threatens His freedom and sovereignty.
Shared Concerns
Both sides actually agree on two important points:
- Divine freedom – God must be free in His actions
- Divine sovereignty – God must have lordship over time’s ordering
They disagree on whether temporality is compatible with these attributes.
The Author’s Solution: “Transcendent Temporality”
Drawing on M-theory (a physics theory about multiple dimensions), the author proposes a middle way:
Key insight: Just as a three-dimensional cube can exist in a two-dimensional plane without being limited to it, God can exist in our dimension of time without being confined to it.
How It Works
- Two kinds of time:
- Created time: Our experience of linear, one-directional succession
- Uncreated time: God’s own temporal dimension that transcends ours
- God’s dual presence: God exists both:
- Within our time dimension (so He genuinely acts in history)
- Beyond our time dimension (so He’s not trapped by it)
- Different experiences: God experiences our temporal moments differently than we do—perhaps simultaneously, in different order, or in ways we can’t fully comprehend
Why This Works Better
It preserves the Creator-creature distinction: God’s experience of time is fundamentally different from ours, even while He’s present in our time.
It maintains divine freedom: God isn’t stuck in time’s “ever-rolling stream” because He transcends it, even while occupying it.
It validates biblical language: We can truthfully speak of God doing things “before” or “after” other events, because God genuinely occupies our temporal dimension—even though His experience differs from ours.
It makes our God-talk coherent: Our temporal language about God is accurate (like a 2D model of a 3D cube), though limited and incomplete.
The Analogy
Think of a cube intersecting with a flat plane. The flat inhabitants see only a square, but the cube truly exists there—just not only there. Similarly, we perceive God’s presence in our time truthfully but incompletely. God is genuinely temporal, but in a transcendent way that exceeds our dimensional limitations.
Bottom Line
God is neither imprisoned in time (as OSDT suggests) nor locked out of it (as atemporalists claim). Instead, He transcends time while remaining authentically present within it—free, sovereign, and genuinely engaged with His temporal creation.
