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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?

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.

Yes, and I agree with that. I suppose it's like the Lapsarian debate. On one level, it is pointless, but on another it can be intellectually stimulating and edifying spiritually. As long as one's head does not explode, you know, in the bad way.