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I’m no theologian, but unless I miss my guess you seem to be suggesting that God experiences aeveternity—simply time extended, whereby the past is truly past and God undergoes some kind of change in state:

No, although I see how you could have thought that from what I said. We know as a basic principle that God is immutable. But in Scripture this immutability is never defined in terms of static time. It always has God acting or having His being in relation to time, with what is constant about Him being His nature and attributes, not His relationship to the coming into being of events in sequence:

Psalms 102:24-27 I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are throughout all generations. (25) Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. (26) 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: (27) But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.

So to say He is "completely changeless" is to say He does not truly act. Time is how we experience change. There is a moment in our time before God speaks from heaven, as He does in the Gospels, and a time after. Nothing in the purposes or character or knowledge or holiness or perfection of God changed, but He did introduce Hiimself as actively participating in our temporal existence. He spoke from Heaven in time. His speech, as all speech is, was controlled changed, a modulation of sound waves caused by His direct action among us as a Person. His love for us occurs in time, is expressed in time. And in our time, there is a moment called Now, which both God and we understand as distinct from all other moments, which is constantly advancing through the sequence of events that describe our reality.

All this comes to the difference between intrinsic versus extrinsic change. We accept that intrinsically, God cannot change, else we admit of imperfection, or limitation under the control of created things. But extrinsic change, of the kind implied by a God who acts in time, and is personal, capable of relationship with other persons, unlike the pseudo-deities of pantheism or deism, is not only possible but necessary to our understanding of God as the God of redemptive history.

But before we ask whether this means God is time-bound, we need to first ask whether this history in which we live is itself "time bound." Time is an artificial construct we use to describe our relationship to events of change. Time therefore appears to be unreal, in that it is not a created substance in itself, but is a device of the mind to comprehend change. To say God is outside time because He created time is to misunderstand what time is. In the priority of all things, the first fact is that God exists. One of the outcomes of God existing is His introduction of extrinsic change by creation of our universe. Exterior to our universe and the story of it's progress, God exists. He is the great "I Am," the one Whose ways are as far above us as the heavens are above the earth, unsearchable, and unknowable except as he reveals them.

This divine state, this infinite "aboveness," is nether about time nor timelessness. It's rather like asking whether God uses inches or centimeters to measure space. Those are our constructs, handy for the tiny tasks of tiny minds, but wholly inadequate to describe God.

Which is why there is prudence in limiting oneself to the revealed record, rather than impose on it artificial constructs born in the imagination of fallen human beings. If God has revealed that something has occurred at a specific point in past time, why undo that? When Jesus tells us to "Do this in remembrance of me," why can we not simply accept what God has said and leave it at that? I will tell you why. We are sinners, and we are hell-bent on treating God as if He left out something important. This is our rebellious nature at work. This is the root of Adam and Eve's disobedience.

But in fact all we are told of the purpose of the sacred meal is that it is done to remember His offering of Himself on our behalf, not to reach around time and try to literally be there again. Indeed, the writer of Hebrews specifically enjoins us, under the power of the Holy Spirit, to think of the event as done.

Hebrews 10:9-12 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. (10) By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (11) And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: (12) But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;

So again, God does not ask us to choose between static or dynamic time, or some magic sci-fi conduit between the temporal and the atemporal. He simply tells us the deed is done, the propitiation of our sin accomplished, past tense, in the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, and that we may rely upon it for the forgiveness of our sins. In other words, whatever speculations we may have about time, God has given us specific instruction to think of the offering of Christ on our behalf as a past event, upon which may be built our present and future redemption.

This is reiterated in the instruction to the disciples for the Lord's Supper, in which remembering is the central activity, not the material consumption of material flesh and blood disguised as bread and wine. Remembering is a time-bound activity. We only remember what is past. Thus we are enjoined by the very words of Jesus Himself to treat His sacrifice as a past event, which He sealed even further by uttering "It is finished" from the cross, because if this event is timeless, it is never finished, and the words of Christ are untrue.

But God forbid that the words of Christ should ever be construed as untrue. Nor those of the Holy Spirit inspired writers of Holy Scripture. We cannot allow the shiny trinkets of vain human philosophy, however much they may appeal to our imagination, to distract us from our written marching orders. Christ died for our sins, so that if we but believe in Him, apart from any ritual or theoretical constructs of man, we will be saved. But whoever trusts in the devices of man, or human imagination, will find the results very disappointing on the day off God's judgment.

However, all this aside, I don’t think any of this represents the true reason so many of you find this doctrine so viscerally repulsive. I will address that in the next post.

I saw your subsequent post, and believe it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of our view of the atonement. You suggest we view it all as wrath, and not as love. I don't know where that comes from. There is an abundance of evidence in Protestant writing, preaching, hymnody, etc., that the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf is viewed as both the expression of God's wrath, and the revelation of the most amazing love that could ever be, from the heart of God direct to us.

I still remember when I first seriously contemplated what Jesus did for me, hanging there on the cross, seeing me in all my wretched filth, giving Himself for the very sins that were destroying my life, dying for me, personally, individually, known to him by name from before the foundation of the world, as the unworthy object of His undying love. It moved me to tears, and still does. It is what I remember about Him when I partake of the bread and the fruit of the vine, at that moment joined together in spirit with all other Christians of all ages, by the same Spirit of God who indwells everyone who believes, all because of the amazing grace of the eternal God, who loved us, and gave Himself for us.

Peace, SR