And how can we claim that a time-bound God is eternal?

 I don’t see why we need to. What is wrong with the idea that God lives for ever in time?

Also, I’m not sure why you have compared the story of Jesus at the temple and the story of Joshua at Jericho.

Because if I saw anybody doing one of those things in the name of justice, I could also see the same person doing the other thing in the name of justice without having to infer that the person had undergone a massive shift in personality.

You seem to be evaluating arguments on the basis of your understanding of reality.

 Don’t we all?

How do you determine what is realistic and what is unrealistic?  

Generally, what is realistic is what is obvious to normal people and readily ascertainable to the senses without a lot of extrapolation. The idea of a God who is outside of time is certainly not realistic in this sense. Everything we do is predicated on living in time. The best reason I can think of why people might want to assert that God is outside of time is that it avoids having to confront a number of contradictions in the supposed nature of God as all-knowing, including in particular knowing of the future. But this kind of assertion only works because it cannot by definition be disproved. In other words it is not open to question. It is simply a way of reinforcing one’s argument without having to provide normal justifications for that argument. This particular idea runs parallel to Calvin’s assertion that the basis of God’s judgement in electing some whilst rejecting others cannot possibly be known to us. Since it cannot possibly be known then it is not open to question. I would reject any argument that by its nature was not open to question because it breaches fundamental ethics of truth and logic.

If you suppose that God is eternal (i.e. in a timeless dimension) and unchanging, and that we are made in his image, then you should also argue that we are eternal and fundamentally unchanging. Indeed, this is what is implied by the body/spirit dichotomy which is the tradition of much of Christendom. But how then do you account for conversion? How do you account for change, for repentance? Also, how do you account for birth (let alone death)?

And how are we to be of the same mind as Christ a la Philippians if that means emptying himself of his divine nature to become like a mortal man? Would that mean that we empty ourselves of our human nature to become like a dog? Even if wanted to do such a thing we would not have the ability.

But, lest I be accused of digressing, let me just say that the idea of imposing on God some kind of rule that he is not allowed to commit genocide in any circumstance smacks to me of a desire to make God into a kind of impersonal force always doing exactly what it is supposed to, without personality and without concern for what happens in history. But when events happen all around us, we can’t make them just stop for our convenience. We have to make decisions about them and those events don’t always fit into our neatly preformed ideas of right and wrong. In fact I would go further and say that they are likely not to fit into any of our preformed ideas of right and wrong. And the more we preform our ethics, the less likely we are to be able to use them in the real world. We may perhaps towards the end of our lives feel satisfaction that we kept the rules to the best of our ability but did we really engage in and with the world as it was taking place?

Desert