God outside of time × God acting in time
If God is eternal and not subject to time, how can He:
create;
respond;
act;
decide;
not do X before and then do X afterward?
Every verb seems to presuppose a temporal sequence.
And there are interesting paradoxes outside Christianity as well.
In Buddhism, for example, there is a fascinating tension:
If there is no permanent self (anattā), who is reborn?
If person A dies and B is reborn:
if B is the same person, then some kind of permanent identity seems to exist;
if B is not the same person, why should B receive the karmic consequences of A’s actions?
The Buddhist solution is generally neither “the same person” nor “a completely different person,” but rather a causal continuity without a permanent essence — like one flame lighting another.
In Hinduism, especially Advaita Vedānta, another extraordinary question arises:
If Brahman is absolute reality and everything is Brahman, where does māyā, the illusion of separation, come from?
If the illusion is real, then something exists beyond Brahman.
If it is not real, how can it produce the entire experience we have?

#religion #paradox

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Divine Foreknowledge × Free Will
If God already knows infallibly today what you will do tomorrow, could you really do otherwise?
Suppose God knows that tomorrow you will drink coffee.
If tomorrow you decide not to drink coffee, then God was wrong.
But God cannot be wrong.
So… did you really have freedom?
This problem has produced completely different answers in Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Calvinism, Molinism, and so on.

#religion #paradox