Well, that doesn't sound bad at all, but my understanding of the Bible is that at some (any) point before creation, there was some "thing" called predestination. Whatever that was, and I have my ideas :), it involved change. But, if all that counts as "in Himself", then I suppose I could accept the idea that time started upon creation.
I agree with you on the Arians, they were all wet. The Son is eternal.
To start the thought, I envision a cottonmouth swimming across a pond. All he sees, with his eyes at water level, is where he is. But we are above the pond, and we see everything around him.
Then if we were to apprehend his every position in the pond at once, it would be sorta kinda like God and time. And then we can throw pebbles into the pond, before the snake, after him, or right at him. We see the whole thing and our view does not change, but for him every second is new and is swiftly slipping into the past, with NOW as the nexus where the water touches his eyes.
AMAZING! A while ago, on this very thread, I made up the following to describe God's omnipresence. Imagine a two-dimensional man who "lives" on a sheet of paper. He can see up, down, right and left, but not outward. I could sit with my nose one inch from his and he wouldn't have the slightest idea. I could reach around and waive my hand behind the sheet of paper and he would be oblivious. I could also stick my finger through a hole in the paper, but he would not recognize me for what I am. Thus to him, I am everywhere and no where all at once! Our comparisons sound very similar.
And for God, all times are Now.
Yeah, BUT :), I don't think that means that God doesn't act within time. From our existence, He does act within time, without being subject to it or limited by it. So, when God throws a pebble, while His view doesn't change, He notices the ripples that weren't there before. It's just that my experience has been that your particular phrase here has been thrown against me (not by you) in the past in order to quash further discussion (due to "declared" irrelevancy) when I was sure that I was winning. LOL!
This is why religious debates are frequently dumb. May I lose and God win.
See, because you are younger than I and missed the 60's, you don't understand the recreational value of having your brain explode. Yes, God acts in time. No question (not in OUR religion, anyway.) I suspect it is part of the operation of the Son, but whoever puts it together or not, somehow changing temporaality is comprehended in Gods eternity. The old joke is "Time is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once," and I like to think that one reason God made change and stuff was so that our finite minds could get a clue about his infinite glory. SO in history he "says" stuff like "I am just," "I am mercicful," "I am Love," but we are so dumb that if we just saw His mercy we wouldn't get how important His justice is. Something like that. We need time to comprehend Him even to the weeny insignificant extent that we comprehend Him.
And being temporal and dumb we get it wrong mostly.
The purpose of our metaphors is to express temporal things spatially - as though the far reaches of the pond are "after" where the snake is right now. WE are trying to suggest that God apprehends (beholds?) all time at once. When I say that for God all times are now, I am trying to get away from the idea of GOD experiencing something like "waiting" or foreseeing. I want to say something like He currently sees the pond before the pebble, during the pebble, and after the pebble. For Him all things do happen at once. He can cope.
I'm not arguing here, I'm trying to express, okay?