Monday, December 15, 2025

God and growing block

  1. On the growing block theory of time, if God is in time, God grows.

  2. God doesn’t grow.

  3. So, God is not time or the growing block theory is not true.

4 comments:

Mtwewy said...

1 seems false.

How does God grow?
God grows in knowledge, but this is true for any theist who believes creation is contingent, anyway.

Alexander R Pruss said...

On growing block, substances get temporally larger as time passes. For instance, I am now about 53 years long, and in another year I will be about 54 years long.

Mtwewy said...

But how does that happen with God simply if Growing Block is true?

The way I see it, God could simply be growing in knowledge (which is a relational change; the same that happens when God learns that he has created a world with such and such, hence why every theist who believes creation is contingent also accepts that God grows in knowledge). No issues there.

I suppose you could say God grows older, but this isn't a problem unless one thinks that God has only existed for X amount of years (as if God's beginning in time were God's beginning of existence)

Alexander R Pruss said...

You are a four-dimensional being. On growing block, every day, 24 hours gets added to your temporal dimension. Thus, you are constantly growing. If God is in time in the same sense in which you are, then every day, 24 hours gets added to God's temporal dimension.

Of course, one might suppose that God is in time in a different sense from you and me being in time.