Announcing the launch of my latest book, The Timelessness of God. But beware: it is not light reading!
The Timelessness of God explores the profound mystery of God’s timeless nature – his atemporal omnipresence – and its implications for how he relates to our world. This book invites readers to set aside their temporal perspective and consider a transcendent dimension in which all moments of our timeline – past, present and future – are eternally and simultaneously available to God in his eternal present.
This concept radically reshapes our understanding of the relationship between divine sovereignty and human free will. In the light of divine timelessness, biblical statements concerning election and predestination need no longer imply prior causal determination. Instead, long-standing tensions surrounding sovereignty, freedom and human agency may be understood in an entirely new way.
Drawing upon theology, philosophy, scripture and scientific reflections on the nature of time, The Timelessness of God offers readers a fascinating glimpse into a timeless realm and a deeper understanding of “the high and holy One who inhabits eternity” (Isaiah 57:15).
The Timelessness of God is available in eBook or print formats from Amazon or via the SmartFaith website.
The concepts explored in this book have occupied my thinking for many years, but I have delayed writing about them until now. My hesitation is understandable. To explain further, here is an excerpt from the Foreword in the book:
FOREWORD
These concepts involve profound philosophical and metaphysical considerations. The topic is deep and forbidding and, for many years, I have stood at its precipice and hesitated to take the plunge. But two developments over the last twelve months have ended my inertia.
Firstly, as I have spoken about my views to respected colleagues, several of them suggested that I pursue the subject as a doctoral thesis. Accordingly, I recently made initial enquiries with the Head of Research at a respected university. My proposed thesis topic was, “Atemporal Omnipresence and its Implications for the Interplay of Divine Sovereignty and Human Agency: An Alternate Model to Calvinism, Arminianism and Molinism”. Quite a mouthful!
The university assessed this topic to be sufficiently unique and worthy of pursuit, and I was given the tentative green light to find a suitable doctoral supervisor and lodge a formal application.
However, as I was considering launching into the long and tedious journey of a PhD, a chance conversation at church one Sunday completely changed my trajectory.
After the morning service one Sunday, I spoke to a young man who had attended our church for the first time that day. One of his first questions to me was, “What does this church believe about Calvinism?” He explained that he was searching for a church home and had recently been attending the local Presbyterian church but had decided he could not tolerate the strong Calvinistic theology that was regularly coming through in their preaching.
We spoke for some time, with the young man outlining his deep concerns about the ultimate absurdity of deterministic Calvinism and its misalignment with many key biblical doctrines. I completely agreed with him and assured him that our church does not teach that kind of deterministic framework. I explained to him that I was mid-way through formulating a thesis proposal on this very topic and I promised to send him my initial formulations.
Over the next few days, I grappled with trying to convert my intellectually ponderous thesis proposal into a readable and accessible document that was more readily understandable to the average person. As I wrestled with this, I was confronted by some important questions. Who am I writing for? Who is my target audience? Who am I trying to help? What is my goal in writing about this profound and important topic?
I stood at a fork in the road. Would I pursue a doctoral thesis, producing a weighty tome that might be read by a handful of intellectuals and then gather dust on the shelf of forgotten academic discourses? Or would I write a book exploring the issues at a slightly more accessible level, in the hope that it might help confused Christians reach a more satisfying and biblically consistent understanding of how God’s sovereignty plays out in our world?
Obviously, by the fact that you are now holding this book in your hand or reading it on your device (or reading this online blurb for the book), I chose the latter.
It may still be the case that very few people will read this book. It may sit on the same shelf of obscurity and gather just as much dust as my now unfulfilled doctoral thesis. After all, this is a deep and profound topic, involving some concepts that are difficult for the average person to grasp. Consequently, it will not have as broad an appeal as a book entitled, “Seven Steps to a Victorious Life” or “How to Train a Puppy”.
I have tried to make the concepts in this book as accessible and understandable to as wide a range of people as possible, but I concede that some people may struggle. Exploring the timelessness of God and its implications for how he intervenes in our world involves venturing into a realm of profound mystery. It requires that we set aside our limited temporal perspective and peer into the fog of an eternal dimension of which our minds can barely conceive. As we descend into this rabbit hole, we will find ourselves echoing Alice’s sentiment, “Curiouser and curiouser!”.
Not everyone will have the ability or the inclination to follow me down the rabbit hole but if you are able, I urge you to persist.
The timelessness of God – his atemporal omnipresence – has profound practical implications for how we live our Christian lives. It impacts prayer, evangelism, sanctification, service and many other aspects of our daily lives. It also provides the conceptual framework for understanding that our free will choices in this life have genuine agency. An exploration of God’s timelessness is not a disconnected intellectual exercise; it is deeply practical and pastoral. The final two chapters of this book unpack these practical applications in detail.
If you have been troubled by the deterministic implications of Calvinism, or if you have wrestled with the apparent tension between God’s sovereignty and human freedom, I hope this book provides a pathway toward greater clarity. My aim is not merely to critique existing conceptual models, but to suggest that the timelessness of God offers a more coherent and biblically balanced framework. The ideas explored in the following chapters may initially feel unfamiliar, but I believe they lead to a richer understanding of God and of our genuine participation in his eternal purposes.
Purchase The Timelessness of God from Amazon.