Valerie is a 42-year-old, single, Reformed Christian lady who lives in Baltimore. She doesn't remember a time
before she knew and loved Jesus, but she does remember accepting John Calvin into her heart in March of 2000.
Valerie is a member of Christ Reformed Evangelical Church in Annapolis.
Though her career aspiration is to be a housewife, Valerie has not yet found anyone suitable who wishes to hire
her for employment in that field (or, more properly, anyone suitable has not found her), so in the meantime she
earns her daily bread working in communications -- editing, writing, print design and website management.
Is There a Word for It?
The Lord is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent -- He has every power, knows everything and is everywhere. But is there a word that indicates He is everywhen? He is the same yesterday, today and forever. And all at the same time He was and is and is to come. Time is His creation. He isn't waiting for the future to happen -- He has already created it. And the past isn't a distant, lost memory to Him.
This is hard for us to grasp because we must travel through time one point after another. But He sees every point at once -- none is more distant than the others to Him, because all are in Him. I picture all of history lined up on His mantelpiece. And I want a nice, tidy omni- word to pin on His relation to it. Since the other omnis are Latin-derived, I'm going to go with omnitemporal 'til someone tells me otherwise. And if there is an otherwise, I hope somebody will tell me!
Posted by Valerie (Kyriosity) at 7:46 AM
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7 comments
7 Comments:
On November 17, 2007 2:07 PMAnnette Heidmannwrote... You know, I get where you're coming from, but I think the word "eternal" covers the outside-of-time-ness attribute of God. Having no beginning and no end, the eternal unchanging one... yeah. Unless you wanted to try "omni-ternal"! :-) Or "extra-temporal"?
On November 17, 2007 4:49 PMpentamomwrote... I think "eternal" is exactly the right word. If you think eternal doesn't apply, it's probably because we've all gotten used to a rather inadequate and in some respects even incorrect definition of the word.
On November 18, 2007 2:44 PMThe BadgerMumwrote... "Omnitemporal" is the first thing that came to mind while reading your post. "Eternal" doesn't say as plainly what Valerie's trying to get at, plus there's no parallelism there.
Besides that, "omnipresent" needs a word to go with it -- the first two put the emphasis on the second syllable, but omnipresent and omnitemporal both have the primary accent on the first syllable with a secondary accent on the third.
On November 19, 2007 12:03 AMValerie (Kyriosity)wrote... Jane caught me. I must have gotten used to an inadequate definition, a synonym of "everlasting," which isn't quite the same. Thanks, Annette and Jane, for the correction.
But Kelly's right, too. I still (greedily) want another word...
infinite:omnipresent::eternal:omni___?
On November 19, 2007 9:59 AMpentamomwrote... If we're talking rhetorical/poetic concerns, then Kelly has a point.
But if we're answering the question in the title of the post, then no new word is needed. If the question is, "Is there a word for it," then the answer is, "Yes, it's 'eternal.'" ;-)
On November 23, 2007 4:57 PMThe Danewrote... Huh. I actually wrote about this a couple posts ago. I think eternal is exactly the right word - since I don't think the whole outside-of-timeness thing is really supported by Scripture. It seems to me that though God may be outside of time, we don't really have any good reason to believe it is the case, and certainly not any good scriptural reasons. To that end, I suggest sticking to things like eternal and everlasting, since that's how God describes himself. Besides, if you really want to hammer home the incompressibility of God's temporal scope, eternal is a mighty fine word and will prove baffling to thoughtful people for eternity to come.
