Time and Timelessness

As I read over the past several posts of our newly rescuscitated blogging effort, I was struck by the effect that one's view of the relationship between God and Time has on discussions of both creation and God's ongoing providence. Specifically, several comments in the last post related the possibility that the Universe was created with some degree (whether lesser or greater) of "Free will", able to develop and change in ways that the creator may not have foreseen. In short, God is (or at least has enabled himself to be) affected by time. It is a view that has grown in popularity, not least because it seems well supported by such OT passages as that where Moses succeeds in "changing God's Mind" regarding the His judgement on the children of Israel becasue of the golden calf incident. It also neatly resolves some longstanding questions regarding God's foreknowledge and free will, as well as emphasizing God's historical, real interaction with us, made complete in the person of Christ.

On the other side of the discussion, however stands a long and venerable traditions of thinkers, Christian and Pagan alike, stretching from Plato and Socrated, through Augustine and the Medieval Scholastics. In these writings God is logically and scripturally seen as timeless, above the mutability and changeability of the world. "Thou Changeth Not" says the hymn. Even the words of Paul contribute to this, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever." From this understanding we gain the knowledge of God's sovereignty, His utter control and authority over all creation, past, present and future. In it's own way, it also resolves the foreknowledge and free will debate, this time casting on the side of forekonwledge.

This much many have already discussed, indeed for centuries, and only a man of greater chutzpah than myself could suggest that resolution could be accomplished in the next paragraphs. What I would like to do, however, is suggest that these debates may have less to do with God Himself and more to do with the nature of time. I will then suggest a third path, hoprefully to be followed by spirited discussion.

Philosophically (ie, at least according to Dr. William Lane Craig) there two ways of conceiving time, a tensed and a tenseless version. He calls these A time and B time. To make a long explanation short, A time theories postulate that the present is all that there is. In this model, the past does not physically exist, nor does the future, but only a series of present events. There are no time machines in this view, nor can their be, for there is nowhere for them to go. Time, therefore, is defined as a measure of change, what has changed no longer exists, what will be changed into has not yet occurred.

B Theory, on the other hand, regards time as a tenseless whole, a massive block of temporal duration in which all events exists like the notes on a musical score. In this view, the present is the thin slice of time in which we happen to be living, but aside from this inconvenient (albeit somewhat massive) fact, present, past, and future enjoy a peaceful coexistence. Change in this view is not in fact real, but merely apparent, an outworking of what always would have been into what now is.

Considering these it should take no vast leap of thought to discern which views of God are compatible with which views of time. But now I must ask the question, why should out view of God depend on our view of time? Should not, rather, our view of time revolve around our view of God? To this, the witty reader might reply. "Fine, so what does that look like. What do we know regarding God that could key us to the origin of time." To answer that, I refer to the entire pattern of revelation, culminating in the incarnation, death and resurrection of the Son and the Coming of the Spirit at the Father's behest. In short, I would refer us to the Trinity.

In many ways the Greek fathers exceeded the western church in their comprehension of the Trinity. While latin scholars debated philosophic terminology in an effort to categorize the Trinity's timeless eternity, the Greek scholars spoke of that marvelous doctrine in terms of Perichoresis. Perichoresis, meaning the endless dance of Love that the Father, Son and Spirit shared in perfect harmony and utter self-giving before the worlds were framed. In short, the Greek Fathers clearly saw that God as Triune meant God as Love (Not to completely knock the latins, Augustine knew this too). What does that mean to us? It means that relationship itself is a fundamental part (if not the fundamental part) of the identity of God. I've argued this before, so I will not elaborate at present.

Fine, so what does this have to do with time. Consider this: current physics appreciates the concepts of time and space as primarily relational. I'll explain. Imagine an electron sitting along in a dark void, with no other matter present, and then ask yourself the question, do time and space exist in that context. At first you might say yes, of course. But think about it. What can the electron interact with? What can change it? (there are no other particles) Where can it go? (because of the lack of particles, any movement it makes will be into an area identical to the one it left, and so it cannot even be said to have moved in any meaningful way.) In short, for time and space to even have meaning, there needs to be at least two things present. (You may here try to argue that you can indeed picture the eelctron moving and changing, but in fact, you can only do this by projecting yourself next to the electron and observing it, thereby creating the two things necessary by accident) But we as Christians, (as opposed to mere monotheists) say more than this when we recite the creed, because we, in fact are affirming that not one, not two, but three persons existed in a perfect union of being (perichoresis) before creation.

As I close this rambling, I wish merely to suggest the corollary to all I have said. If God is a Trinity, then time and space emerge as logically necessary outworkings of the love relationship between them. That is not to say that this space and time is the same as the one that we live in. No, indeed, for our world is sinful and broken, a far cry from the perfection of that dance. But it does suggest that a completely contained Timefulness is a secondary, but necessary, characteristic of who God has revealed himself to be. And it does hint at a possible relation between the two times, Our fallen, fractured world floating as a bubble in the great sea of His present; real, free to move where it will (good or bad), yet always and forever completely surrounded by the greater time of which it is shadow and ectype.

This is not a God who is bound by time, unable to see past the cusp of present reality, to affect a future from which he is absent, as an extreme A theorist might say. Nor is this a God who build a temporal universe of such crystalline rigidity that nothing can be other than it will and all freedom is an illusion. No, this is a God who contains within himself a perfect time and space, filled with the free love of the Father, Son and Spirit. It is a God who build, out of the overflow of that love, a contingent universe of free, though completely temporally encompassed, creatures that he desired to draw into that more perfect time that is Heaven for it is Himself. It is a God who, when that world went so horribly wrong, its very relational nature turned in rebellion against him, came down into it to restore it by his own act of utter self-sacrifice. And it is a World that, in the end, when all kingdom and dominion and authority have been given to Him, will consummate into the entrance into the eternal Dance of the Triune that is at once perfect rest and perfect activity, where we will know even as we are known, and where freedom and predestiny will finally be seen for what they truly are, the same thing.