If you Google ‘LDS views on time’ the first article that comes up is an article in LDS living by C. Robert Line titled ‘How Does God’s Time Work? How Can He Listen to All Our Prayers at Once? Robert initially wrote the article in September 2015. Robert repeats quite a few quotes out of context that we have discussed previously. See the following posts as a more detailed and alternate view of how he is referencing a few quotes and scripture.

• time is only measured unto men (Alma 40:8)
• Joseph and the ‘one eternal now’ statement

He also quotes C.S. Lewis, who is a traditional Christian when it comes to viewing God and time. While C.S. Lewis has many views that align with the beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, his opinions on Diety are not LDS views. Finally, Robert quotes Elder Neal A. Maxwell. Here are the two quotes.

Time is clearly not our natural dimension. Thus it is that we are never really at home in time. Alternately, we find ourselves impatiently wishing to hasten the passage of time or to hold back the dawn. We can do neither, of course. Whereas the bird is at home in the air, we are clearly not at home in time—because we belong to eternity.

…

However, as logical as this appears, it contradicts the scriptures and living prophets. God is not guessing, predicting, or anticipating what we will do. “He sees, rather than foresees,” as Elder Maxwell has said, because all things past, present, and future are continually before Him.

Elder Maxwell’s quotes have been the most difficult for me to digest concerning the openness of God. His quotes leave little leeway to interpret them other than the view that God knows the fixed future. However, we will see that his views may have changed since the above-quoted statements.

Other Elder Maxwell web references

Robert isn’t the only one that quotes Elder Maxwell. Scott Woodward has a full page of Elder Maxwell quotes on the topic. I won’t take the time to list them all in this post. However, I recommend that you read them on his page. Using the web archive, we can see that Scott posted this material on August 10, 2013. Here are two of the more direct statements on time from Elder Maxwell as quoted by Scott.

Unsurprisingly, we ponder over how, with a later mere flick of the Divine wrist, “time is no longer” (D&C 84:100; 88:110).

…

Time is of this world; it is not of eternity. We can, if we are not careful, feel the pressures of time, and see things in a distorted way. How important it is that we see things as much as possible through the lens of the gospel with its eternal perspectives.

Elder Maxwell’s Publications

Note that his time quotes come from three publications.

• All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience published in 1979.
• But for a Small Moment shared in 1974.
• The Promise of Discipleship published in 2001.

Notice that the two quotes from the publications in the seventies are the most pronounced in their traditional view of omniscience. The quote from The Promise of Discipleship, published in 2001, has more nuanced caveats.

Does “no longer” mean we will have passed through our own experience in the second estate, so that time will be over–but only for us? Will time still be needed for all those yet to pass through the second estate? We do not know the details, but the perspectives will be vastly different from those of the present in ways yet to be understood and experienced. In any case, working out our salvation in this elusive dimension–time–is unavoidable.

Blake Ostler on Maxwell and time

Blake Ostler was a friend of Elder Maxwell and appeared to have had multiple conversations with him about time and the traditional view of omniscience. Between the seventies and 2001, Blake Ostler published a paper titled The Mormon Concept of God in 1984 that references personal conversations that he had with Elder Maxwell.

In fairness to Elder Maxwell, we must recognize that his observations are meant as rhetorical expressions to inspire worship rather than as an exacting philosophical analysis of the idea of timelessness. Furthermore, in a private conversation in January 1984, Elder Maxwell told me that he is unfamiliar with the classical idea of timelessness and the problems it entails. His intent was not to convey the idea that God transcends temporal succession, but “to help us trust in God’s perspectives, and not to be too constrained by our own provincial perceptions while we are in this mortal cocoon.”

Blake added more information about their conversation in the following footnote.

I refer to this private conversation and to excerpts from Elder Maxwell’s letter with his permission. He writes, “I would never desire to do, say, or write anything which would cause others unnecessary problems. … I would not have understood certain philosophical implications arising (for some) because I quoted from Purtill who, in turn, quoted from Boethius. Nor would I presume to know of God’s past, including His former relationship to time and space.” Elder Neal A. Maxwell to Blake T. Ostler, January 24, 1984. My thanks to Elder Maxwell for his helpful and generous comments on this and numerous other subjects.

Blake’s article is a beautiful read on the theological implications of Mormonism concerning the omni attributes of God. I highly recommend a thorough reading of his article to see the impact and understood definitions of the omnis as well as to understand our own theology on the topic. I appreciated one of his opening comments.

While there is much that we do not and cannot understand about God, our ignorance does not give us license to talk nonsense. -Pg. 67-

The following quote is insightfull in helping us understand some of the nonsense conclusions that we might make.

The deity of Mormonism, in particular could not be timeless because he is corporeal and therefore has spatial position. If our idea of space entails a number of consecutive temporal positions, then even a perfected body must relate to time. Further, if matter is uncreated, then time is an eternal aspect of reality. Indeed, for Mormons spirit and matter are described as essentially the same, and therefore spirit also occupies space, has location and moves in spatio-temporal dimensions.

C. Robert Line and Scott Woodards pages

Both of these websites should include the material from Blake’s article. They should also recognize the early prophets that did not hold this view. I doubt my blog will ever reach the web impact to come up before their sites on a Google search. For the few that find this post, I hope it has answered some questions about Elder Maxwell’s quotes.

What should we do with Elder Maxwell’s quotes on time?

I will recognize that Elder Maxwell wanted us to worship God and that he wanted us to acknowledge that elements of God’s abilities were beyond our comprehension. That Elder Maxwell was not any different than most Latter-Day Saints - he was using phrases according to his meaning without fully understanding the implications of those phrases as currently defined in theological writings of modern and historical Christians. He believed that God was in a different type of time than us but that he was not outside of temporal succession.

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