Argument

God Changed When He Created Objection Defeater

Intro

The objection sounds simple. Christians say God is eternal and never changes. But at some point God decided to create the world. Before that, He was not creating; after that, He was. Going from "not creating" to "creating" is a change. So God changed, and if He changed, He is not the unchanging, eternal God Christians describe.

The answer has four parts.

First, there was no "before." Time itself is part of what God made. So there was no stretch of time before creation in which God sat waiting and then made up His mind. Augustine was asked this question in his Confessions, "What did God before He made heaven and earth?", and he answered that there was no "then" when there was no time.

Second, the world changed, not God. When something is created, the thing that changes is the thing that now exists. A man who becomes a father gets a new title because a child now exists; he did not become a different man. Calling God "Creator" names His relation to the world, and the world is what changed.

Third, one eternal choice can have an effect in time. God did not deliberate, learn, and then decide. He eternally willed that a world with a beginning should exist. The beginning is in the world, not in His will. You can decide today that a letter will be delivered next month without changing your mind next month.

Fourth, the Bible already says this. "Of old didst thou lay the foundation of the earth ... They shall perish, but thou shalt endure ... But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end" (Psalm 102:25-27, ASV). The writer contrasts a changing creation with an unchanging Creator, which is the exact point under dispute.

Concede what is fair. Christian philosophers do not all agree on how God relates to time, and some, like William Lane Craig, hold that God became temporal when He created. Even on that view, God's nature, character and purpose do not change. The objection does not show that God is not God. At most it asks which account of eternity is best.

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In full

The objection runs: (1) God is immutable and eternal; (2) God created the world; (3) to create is to pass from a state of not-creating to a state of creating; (4) passing from one state to another is change; (5) therefore God changed, contradicting (1). A sharper version asks why God created when He did and not sooner, implying either an arbitrary choice or a change of mind after an infinite wait.

The reply rejects premise (3) as stated and qualifies (4). Premise (3) presupposes a time before creation in which God was in a state of not-creating; on the classical view time is itself created, so there is no such prior state, a point made by Augustine (Confessions XI.13; City of God XI.6) and developed in Eternity (Divine) and Argument from the Creation of Time. Premise (4) runs together intrinsic change and relational change. The coming-to-be of the world is a real change in the world, and it grounds new relational predicates of God ("Creator", "Lord") without any change in God's intrinsic being, which is the doctrine of Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I q.13 a.7) and what Peter Geach later called a "Cambridge change." Finally, the act by which God creates is His eternal will, whose content includes the temporal beginning of its effect; as Aquinas puts it, a will that wills a change is not thereby a changing will (ST I q.19 a.7).

The page also states the temporalist alternative fairly. William Lane Craig holds that God is timeless without creation and temporal since creation, entering into time by being related to changing things. On that view there is a change in God's mode of existence, but it is a change in relation, not in nature, character or purpose, so the objection's conclusion that God is not the immutable God of Scripture still does not follow. The two views divide the labor of the reply; neither gives the objector the conclusion he wants.

Argument structure

Form

Defensive (a defeater). P1 is a diagnosis of a hidden premise: the objection quietly assumes a time before time. P2 is a distinction between intrinsic and relational change, which removes the equivocation in "God went from not creating to creating." P3 gives the positive account of how an eternal will has a temporal effect. P4 is a reciprocal concession: grant that Christian philosophers disagree on God and time, then collect the point that neither side needs a God whose nature changes. P5 is textual, showing that the doctrine under attack was formulated with creation already in view. Soundness is classical: the central moves are patristic and scholastic, and they do not depend on any particular physics.

Cheatsheet

The 30-second reply (read aloud). Good question, and it is an old one. People asked Augustine, back in the early church, what God was doing before He made the world. Here is the problem with it. Your question pictures God sitting in time, waiting, and then deciding. But time is part of what God made. There was no "before" for God to wait in. So what changed when God created? The world did. It went from not existing to existing. Think of a man who becomes a father. He gets a new name, "Dad," because a baby now exists. He did not turn into a different person. God is called Creator because a world now exists. God made one eternal choice that there would be a world with a beginning. The beginning is in the world, not in God. The Bible says it like this: the heavens wear out like clothes, "But thou art the same."

The 5 fast facts:

1. Augustine answered this in the Confessions. Asked "What did God before He made heaven and earth?", he replied that "before heaven and earth there was no time" and "there was no 'then' when time was not" (Confessions XI.13, NPNF1 vol. 1, PDF p. 73).
2. The world was made with time, not in time. Augustine: "the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time" (City of God XI.6, NPNF1 vol. 2, PDF p. 186).
3. Aquinas: the change is in the creature. Names that relate God to creatures are said of Him "not by reason of any change in Him, but by reason of the change of the creature; as a column is on the right of an animal, without change in itself, but by change in the animal" (Summa Theologiae I q.13 a.7).
4. Willing a change is not changing your will. Aquinas: "It is possible to will a thing to be done now, and its contrary afterwards; and yet for the will to remain permanently the same" (Summa Theologiae I q.19 a.7).
5. Psalm 102 contrasts the two directly. "As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end" (Psalm 102:26-27, ASV). Hebrews applies the same words to the Son (Hebrews 1:10-12).

The 3 strongest counter-moves:

• "Before what?" Ask the objector to say what "before creation" means if time began with creation. If he answers with a length of time, he has put time before time.
• "Changed in what?" Ask what property God has after creation that He lacked before, other than a relation to the world. If the only answer is "being Creator," the change is in the world.
• "Does your will change when its effect arrives?" If you decide in January that a gift will arrive in June, you do not decide again in June. The effect has a date; the decision does not need one.

Reciprocal concessions (grant the small point, then collect a bigger one):

• Grant: there is a real difference between a world and no world, and something genuinely changed. Now collect: then say what changed. The world went from non-being to being. That is the most radical change there is, and it happened entirely on the creature's side.
• Grant: Christian philosophers disagree about God and time, and William Lane Craig holds that God entered time at creation. Now collect: even Craig holds that God's nature, knowledge, character and purpose are untouched. The debate is about God's relation to time, not about whether God is a changing being, so the objection does not get the conclusion it wanted.
• Grant: we cannot picture timeless choosing. Now collect: we cannot picture the beginning of time either, and the objector's own cosmology has to talk about it. Failure to picture is not a contradiction.

The closing line. You asked what changed when God created. The answer is everything except God. The universe went from nothing to something. God went on being exactly who He was, which is why the Psalm can say the heavens wear out like a coat, "But thou art the same."

P1, There is no "before" creation

Affirmative case

1. The objection needs a prior state. "God went from not creating to creating" describes two states in sequence: first one, then the other. That requires a time at which God was not creating, followed by a time at which He was.
2. On the Christian view, time is created. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1, ASV). The New Testament speaks of grace "given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal" (2 Timothy 1:9, ASV) and of the glory the Son had "before the world was" (John 17:5, ASV). The times themselves have a beginning; God does not.
3. Augustine put it exactly. Answering those who imagine God idle "for innumerable ages," he wrote: "For whence could innumerable ages pass by which Thou didst not make, since Thou art the Author and Creator of all ages? ... For that very time Thou madest, nor could times pass by before Thou madest times. But if before heaven and earth there was no time, why is it asked, What didst Thou then? For there was no 'then' when time was not" (Confessions XI.13, NPNF1 vol. 1, PDF p. 73).
4. So the world was not made at a moment in a pre-existing time. Augustine again: "the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time. For that which is made in time is made both after and before some time" (City of God XI.6, NPNF1 vol. 2, PDF p. 186). There was no earlier time for creation to come after.
5. The "why not sooner?" form dissolves too. "Why did God wait so long?" assumes a length of empty time before the world. If time begins with the world, there is no waiting period, and "sooner" has nothing to refer to. Augustine titled the relevant chapter of the City of God "That the world is neither without beginning, nor yet created by a new decree of God, by which He afterwards willed what He had not before willed" (City of God XI.4, NPNF1 vol. 2, PDF p. 184).

Anticipated objections

1. "'Before creation' just means 'logically prior to creation.' God was logically prior to creation and not creating."
2. "Saying time began is a dodge. Something must have been going on."
3. "Augustine made a joke instead of answering."

Rebuttals

1. Logical priority is not a state that ends. God is logically prior to creation the way a cause is prior to its effect, but logical priority does not describe a period that later finishes. A timeless God's "not creating" would have to be a state God was in and then left, which requires time. Without time, the only fact is that God eternally wills a world with a beginning (P3).
2. "Something must have been going on" assumes time again. "Going on" means happening over time. The claim that time had a beginning is not a dodge invented for theology; it is the ordinary reading of Genesis 1:1 and a live position in modern cosmology (see Argument from the Creation of Time and Kalam Cosmological Argument).
3. He refused to make the joke. Augustine reports that someone answered the question with "He was preparing hell (saith he) for pryers into mysteries," and says "I answer not; for rather had I answer, 'I know not,' what I know not, than so as to raise a laugh at him who asketh deep things" (Confessions XI.12, NPNF1 vol. 1, PDF p. 189). He then gave the serious answer quoted above.

P2, The world changed, not God

Affirmative case

1. Two kinds of change. Something changes intrinsically when a property it has in itself changes: a leaf turns brown. Something changes only relationally when it comes to stand in a new relation because something else changed: a man becomes "taller than his son" or stops being so when the son grows.
2. Philosophers have a name for the second kind. Peter Geach, in God and the Soul (1969), called a merely relational change a "Cambridge change." The standard illustration: a mother who was taller than her son last year and is shorter this year has undergone only a Cambridge change, because the son grew and she did not shrink.
3. Aquinas made the same point about God and creation. Relational names are said of God in time "not by reason of any change in Him, but by reason of the change of the creature; as a column is on the right of an animal, without change in itself, but by change in the animal" (Summa Theologiae I q.13 a.7). He adds that "creatures are really related to God Himself; whereas in God there is no real relation to creatures, but a relation only in idea" (same article). The dependence runs one way.
4. Creation is the clearest case. Before there is a world, nothing exists to be related to God. When the world comes to be, the whole change is the world's: it goes from non-being to being. "Creator" names the world's dependence on God, and that dependence is a fact about the world.
5. The codex treats the titles question in full. The general form of the objection, that God gained new titles (Creator, Judge, Redeemer) and so must have changed, is answered at Divine Immutability under "Changing titles, unchanging God."

Anticipated objections

1. "Becoming Creator is not like being to the right of a column. God did something."
2. "Cambridge change is a philosopher's trick to make any change disappear."
3. "If God has no real relation to the world, He doesn't care about it."

Rebuttals

1. Yes, God acts, and the action is not a process in God. The column analogy illustrates only that a relation can change without the bearer changing. God does act, but His act of creating is not a movement in Him that starts and stops; it is His eternal will, whose effect is the world (P3). The novelty is in what is produced, not in the producer.
2. It is a test, not a trick. The distinction is checkable: ask whether the thing itself would be different if the other term of the relation were removed. The mother would be the same height without her son. God would be the same God without a world, which is what Christians mean by saying God did not need to create (Acts 17:25: "neither is he served by men's hands, as though he needed anything," ASV). A change that leaves the subject's own properties untouched is not a disguised intrinsic change.
3. "Relation of reason" is a technical term, not indifference. Aquinas's point is about dependence: the world depends on God, not God on the world. It does not deny that God knows, loves and acts toward His creatures; it denies that they add something to Him. Scripture's language of love and care is affirmed in full (see Divine Impassibility for the debate on how to state it).

P3, One eternal will, a temporal effect

Affirmative case

1. Human choosing takes time; divine willing need not. People move from not knowing, to weighing options, to deciding, to acting. The objection pictures God the same way. But God does not learn or deliberate; He knows all things and lacks nothing (Isaiah 46:10: "declaring the end from the beginning ... My counsel shall stand," ASV).
2. The content of an eternal will can include a beginning. God eternally wills: "Let there be a world, beginning to exist." The beginning belongs to the world willed, not to the willing. Aquinas: "It is possible to will a thing to be done now, and its contrary afterwards; and yet for the will to remain permanently the same: whereas the will would be changed, if one should begin to will what before he had not willed" (Summa Theologiae I q.19 a.7).
3. Augustine said the same of the creation of man. God made man "in time, not from a new and sudden resolution, but by His unchangeable and eternal design," and "without change of will, created man, who had never before been" (City of God XII.14, NPNF1 vol. 2, PDF p. 208). Of the world he wrote that it "could be made in time, and yet that God, in making it, did not alter His eternal design" (City of God XI.4, NPNF1 vol. 2, PDF p. 185).
4. Scripture places the decision outside time. Believers were chosen "before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians 1:4, ASV); grace was given "before times eternal" (2 Timothy 1:9, ASV). And all things exist by that will: "thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they were, and were created" (Revelation 4:11, ASV).
5. An illustration. Sunlight fills a room when the shutters open. The room goes from dark to lit; the sun does not become brighter. The analogy is imperfect, since the shutters are a second cause, but it shows the shape of the claim: a constant source, a changing recipient.

Anticipated objections

1. "A timeless will that produces an effect at a time is incoherent. Causes come before their effects."
2. "If God's will is eternal, the world should be eternal too."
3. "Then God could not have done otherwise, and creation was necessary."

Rebuttals

1. Causes need not be earlier than their effects. Many causes are simultaneous with what they cause: a weight pressing a cushion, a hand holding a ball. The relation of creating is dependence, not temporal sequence. The claim that a timeless cause cannot have a temporal effect is asserted, not shown, and it is exactly the claim the classical view denies. See P3 of Argument from the Creation of Time.
2. Only if the will is for an eternal world. An eternal will produces what it wills. If God wills a world with a beginning, an eternal will yields a world with a beginning. The eternity of the willing does not transfer to the thing willed, any more than a timeless truth about next Tuesday makes next Tuesday timeless.
3. Eternal is not the same as necessary. God's will to create is free: He could have willed no world. Being eternal means the choice is not made at a time, not that it could not have been otherwise. Classical theists hold both that God is immutable and that creation is a free gift (Acts 17:24-25). How God's freedom fits with His simplicity is a real debate in the tradition, treated at Divine Simplicity.

P4, The temporalist model does not help the objection

Affirmative case

1. Craig's view, stated fairly. William Lane Craig holds a hybrid view: God is timeless without creation and temporal since creation. In his essay "God, Time and Eternity" he writes that on a relational view of time "God would exist timelessly and independently 'prior' to creation; at creation, which he has willed from eternity to appear temporally, time begins, and God subjects himself to time by being related to changing things." See Eternity (Divine) for the wider debate.
2. Notice what even this view keeps. The creation is "willed from eternity." The change Craig grants is in God's relation to time, brought about by His being related to changing things. Nothing in God's nature, knowledge, goodness or purpose alters. That is still the immutability Scripture asserts: God's character and counsel do not shift (Malachi 3:6; Isaiah 46:10).
3. So the objection is answered on both models. On the classical model, God does not change at all; only the world does. On Craig's model, God changes only in His relation to time, by His own eternal will, and not in what He is. Neither yields "God is a changing, non-eternal being."
4. The objection has misidentified its target. It treats "immutable" as meaning "no new relations of any kind." No Christian tradition has meant that. The doctrine concerns God's being, character and purpose (Divine Immutability).

Anticipated objections

1. "If Christians cannot agree on whether God is in time, the doctrine is confused."
2. "Craig's change from timeless to temporal is still a change, so he concedes my point."

Rebuttals

1. Disagreement about a model is not confusion about the claim. Physicists disagree about the interpretation of quantum mechanics without being confused about whether atoms exist. Christians agree that God is everlasting, uncreated and unchanging in nature and character; they debate how best to state God's relation to time.
2. He concedes a relational change, which was never in dispute. Craig's critics in the classical camp argue that his model still introduces a real change in God, and that is a fair objection within the household. But the atheist's conclusion was that God is not eternal or not the unchanging God of Scripture. On Craig's view God is without beginning, His nature does not change, and the shift is one God eternally willed. The objector would need more than a relational change to get his conclusion.

P5, Scripture contrasts a changing creation with an unchanging Creator

Affirmative case

1. Psalm 102 has creation in view. "Of old didst thou lay the foundation of the earth; And the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end" (Psalm 102:25-27, ASV). The psalmist states that God made the world and that the world changes, and in the same breath that God is "the same." The objection assumes the Bible's authors never noticed that creating involves a world coming to be. This text shows they did.
2. Augustine quotes this verse in his answer. Immediately after "there was no 'then' when time was not," he continues: "Thou precedest all times past, and survivest all future times ... but 'Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end'" (Confessions XI.13, NPNF1 vol. 1, PDF p. 73).
3. Malachi. "For I, Jehovah, change not; therefore ye, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed" (Malachi 3:6, ASV). God's unchangeableness is the ground of Israel's security, said of the God who made and governs a changing world.
4. James. God is "the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning" (James 1:17, ASV). The image is the heavenly lights, which shift and cast moving shadows; their Maker does not.
5. Hebrews applies Psalm 102 to the Son. Hebrews 1:10-12 quotes the psalm of Christ, and Hebrews 13:8 says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever" (ASV).

Anticipated objections

1. "Those verses are about God's faithfulness, not metaphysics."
2. "The Bible also says God relented and grieved, so it does picture God changing."

Rebuttals

1. Faithfulness is the point, and it depends on the metaphysics. Malachi grounds Israel's survival in the fact that God does not change; a God whose nature could change could not guarantee His promises. Psalm 102 contrasts God with creation precisely in the respect of change. The texts are devotional, and they make a claim about what God is.
2. That is a different objection, answered elsewhere. The relenting texts concern God's dealings with people who change, under a rule announced in advance (Jeremiah 18:7-10). See God Is Surprised Objection and God Is Surprised Objection Defeater.

Master objections to the defeater

MO1: "You keep saying 'eternal will,' but a will that does nothing and then does something has changed."

• That sentence describes a will in time: "does nothing, then does something." The classical claim is that God's will is not a sequence of doing nothing and then doing something; it is one eternal act whose effect, the world, has a first moment. The "then" in the objection belongs to the world's history, not to God's willing (P1, P3).

MO2: "Knowing what time it is now requires change. God knows it is now 2026; last year He knew it was 2025."

• This is a separate and serious objection, about knowledge of tensed facts rather than creation. Classical theists answer it in different ways; Anselm's four-dimensionalist view holds that no moment is privileged, so there is no missing fact for a timeless God to know. See Anselms Four-Dimensionalist Eternity. Temporalists like Craig grant that God knows tensed facts by being in time, which keeps His nature unchanged (P4).

MO3: "This is all special pleading. You've defined God so nothing could count as Him changing."

• Something could count: God learning a fact He did not know, acquiring a perfection He lacked, abandoning a purpose, or depending on the world for something. Each of those would be an intrinsic change, and the doctrine denies each one. The defense is not that nothing could count; it is that creation is not one of those things.

MO4: "Why create at all, if God lacked nothing? The motive itself implies a change in God."

• A motive implies a change only if it comes from a lack. Classical theology holds that God creates out of goodness that is already complete, freely sharing it, not to gain anything (Acts 17:25; Revelation 4:11). Giving from fullness is not acquiring.

Honest limits

• This page does not claim to make timeless agency easy to imagine. It claims the objection has not shown it to be contradictory.
• The page does not settle the debate between the classical and temporalist views of eternity. Both are held by serious Christian philosophers, and the reply works on either.
• How a fully simple, immutable God freely chooses one world rather than another is a genuine question within classical theism, discussed at Divine Simplicity. It is not the objection answered here.

Tactical opening / closing

Opening. That is a good question, and it is a very old one. Augustine dealt with it in his Confessions. Can I ask you something first? When you say God went from not creating to creating, what was happening during the "not creating" part?

Closing. Here is where we've landed. To say God changed, you had to put a stretch of time before time, and then treat a change in the world as a change in God. Take those away and what is left is this: the world went from not existing to existing, and the one who made it stayed exactly who He was. That is not a problem the Bible missed. It is the point of Psalm 102: the heavens wear out like a coat, "But thou art the same."

Live-cite kit

Scripture:

• Psalm 102:25-27, "They shall perish, but thou shalt endure ... But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end." (ASV)
• Malachi 3:6, "For I, Jehovah, change not; therefore ye, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed." (ASV)
• James 1:17, "the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning." (ASV)
• Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (ASV)
• Psalm 90:2, "Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." (ASV)
• 2 Timothy 1:9, "his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal" (ASV)
• Revelation 4:11, "thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they were, and were created." (ASV)
• Acts 17:25, "neither is he served by men's hands, as though he needed anything" (ASV)

Patristic and medieval:

• Augustine, Confessions XI.13 (NPNF1 vol. 1, PDF p. 73), "there was no 'then' when time was not."
• Augustine, City of God XI.6 (NPNF1 vol. 2, PDF p. 186), "the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time."
• Augustine, City of God XII.14 (NPNF1 vol. 2, PDF p. 208), man made "not from a new and sudden resolution, but by His unchangeable and eternal design."
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I q.13 a.7, the column "on the right of an animal, without change in itself."
• Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I q.19 a.7, willing a change is not a change of will.

Scholarly: Peter Geach, God and the Soul (1969), the term "Cambridge change"; William Lane Craig, "God, Time and Eternity," the timeless-then-temporal model.

Aphorism: "When God created, everything changed except God."

Aphorism: "The beginning is in the world, not in the will."

Cross-examination

Four rounds, asked in order. Each has the question, the answer most objectors give, and the follow-up.

Round 1, Locate the "before"

1. Question: "When you say God went from not creating to creating, was there a time when God was not creating?"
2. Expected answer: "Yes, before He created."
3. Follow-up: "Was that time part of creation, or not?"
4. Expected answer: "I guess it was before creation."
5. Follow-up: "Then it was a time God did not make. But Christians say God made time along with everything else. So your objection needs a time Christians deny exists. Can you state it without that?"

Round 2, Name the change

1. Question: "What is one thing that is true of God after creation that was not true of Him before, apart from His relation to the world?"
2. Expected answer: "He's the Creator now."
3. Follow-up: "That is a relation to the world. Did God gain knowledge, power or goodness He lacked?"
4. Expected answer: "No, but He's doing something He wasn't."
5. Follow-up: "Then what changed is that a world exists. If my son grows taller than me, I've become 'shorter than my son' without shrinking. Is 'Creator' any different?"

Round 3, Willing versus changing your will

1. Question: "If you decide today that a package will arrive next month, do you have to decide again when it arrives?"
2. Expected answer: "No."
3. Follow-up: "So a single decision can have an effect at a later time without a second decision. Why couldn't an eternal decision have an effect that begins at the first moment of time?"
4. Expected answer: "Because God's decision would have to happen at some time."
5. Follow-up: "That's the assumption we're testing. If time is created, God's decision doesn't need a date. The world's beginning has one."

Round 4, What would the conclusion prove?

1. Question: "Suppose I grant that God became related to time when He created, as William Lane Craig holds. Does God's nature, knowledge or character change?"
2. Expected answer: "Not on his view, I suppose."
3. Follow-up: "Then is God still without beginning, all-knowing, and good?"
4. Expected answer: "On his view, yes."
5. Follow-up: "Then even the most generous version of your point gives you a debate about God and time, not a God who stops being God. Which conclusion were you arguing for?"

Dodge table

Connection to Scripture

• Genesis 1:1, the beginning of created time.
• Psalm 90:2, God "from everlasting to everlasting."
• Psalm 102:25-27, a changing creation and an unchanging Creator, applied to Christ in Hebrews 1:10-12.
• Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17, God does not change.
• Ephesians 1:4, 2 Timothy 1:9 and John 17:5, God's purpose and glory "before the world was."
• Revelation 4:11 and Acts 17:24-25, creation by God's will, from no need.

See also

• Eternity (Divine), the classical and temporalist accounts of God and time, including Craig's hybrid.
• Divine Immutability, the doctrine under attack, with the "changing titles" argument.
• Anselms Four-Dimensionalist Eternity, Anselm's account of time and the tensed-knowledge objection.
• Argument from the Creation of Time, the positive argument that the Creator of time stands outside it.
• Kalam Cosmological Argument, why the universe and time had a beginning.
• Divine Simplicity, how a simple God freely wills.
• Divine Impassibility, how God's love and care are stated without change in God.
• Aseity, why God needed nothing in creating.
• God Is Surprised Objection, the separate charge that God relents and changes His mind.
• Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, the main classical sources.
• William Lane Craig, the leading defender of the temporalist alternative.
• Atheism, the master hub.