Time and God

[Bravus]

Tom raised the very interesting question about how God experiences time, and how His time might interact with our time, and whether that might have some implications for prophecy. (At least, that's how I read his post - it had big words!)

[Bravus]

When we ask time-related questions (like one I asked recently elsewhere on this forum about how Jesus is judging lives in 0.007 seconds in the Investigative Judgement) we tend to be told 'a thousand years is like a day to God and a day is like a thousand years' (ack, did I quote? I think I paraphrased!)

My own take is that God is outside of four-dimensional spacetime entirely. 'Outside' is not quite the word, since space-time is inside God in my view of it, so he permeates space-time without being bound by it. As such his existence is atemporal - he is not going through eternity like we are, at one second per second, but instead is experiencing all of time at once, all the time.

But I guess in the Bible he has to try to communicate with us, who are time-bound...

[John317]

I agree with your point about God "experiencing all of time at once, all the time," if we can put it that way.

There are some Bible verses that certainly support that. Yet there must be, even for God, a difference between something that actually happens and something that hasn't yet occurred. What is that difference?

Does God see the future with the same detail and certainty as we see the past? If He does, how can God experience the actual event as distinct from the same event when it is still in the future?

I suggest that He knows some details but that we have true freedom in the sense that God does not know what we will do in everything that happens in our lifetime. But he knows human beings so well, and he knows His own plans so well, that He can make "predictions" on the basis of those contingencies and powers.

[Tom Wetmore]

The concept of meta-time in time theory may get to where you are heading with this ... I am thinking out loud here but it seems that beyond living human functional time-bound concepts there are possible time dimensions that God experiences that either overlap, encompass or parallel our own time existence.

From my quick cramming of time theory, here is a base line to build on. For humans (not sure about other life forms) experience of time can be broken down into two broad concepts - conscious time and para-time. Conscious time is what we live in. Para-time includes dream-time, memory-time and imagination-time. Comparing conscious time with dream-time shows that the time-line for each doesn't measure equally. Dreaming time skips and jumps, fast-forwards, etc., so that you may experience extended and prolonged events in a nano-second of actual conscious time. You may dream you have driven from Maine to Florida and wake up to realize you were only asleep for an hour.

God may live in a para-time environment along similar lines.

[Tom Wetmore]

I hear echoes of open theology, which tries to balance free will with God's foreknowledge.

If free will/choice is foundational to our relationship with God and real experience of life, the predictability of outcomes in the future becomes more akin to great stabs in the dark, humanly speaking. That is where applying a stochastic process to time theory could come to play. Essentially a stochastic process is a random sequence of connected events, if I understand it correctly.

What may to us seem random or even chaotic events over time viewed from God's experience and meta-timeframe history is fractal in nature. Expansion or magnification exposes the continuous pattern in what may seem random at a previous level of observation or experience.

The divine meta-time somewhere out there can handle it. Our conscious time bound experience of history limits our perception.

[John317]

Yes, [open theology] is influenced by the process theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg and Alfred Whitehead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfhart_Pannenberg

Richard Rice, one of my teachers, wrote a controversial book, The Openness of God, exploring some of these ideas. The book isn't expressing Rice's firm beliefs but merely challenging our thinking. It shows God as evolving along with His evolving universe.

[melvin mccarty]

I'm wondering Tom if you think it is reasonable to assume that Heaven runs on earth time? (as in i844) I'd like to hear your thot on that....mel...:-)

[Tom Wetmore]

Yes, I've read The Openness of God which he wrote along with John Sanders, Clark H. Pinnock, and William Hasker, and Rice's book, God's Foreknowledge & Man's Freewill. Both very thought provoking. Also of interest was a debate on Christianity Today entitled Does God Know Your Next Move?, between theologians John Sanders and Chris Hall.

[Tom Wetmore]

Excellent question, Mel. If heaven is the dimension where God is, I would assume time may follow in another dimension.

What happens when heaven and earth meet? Was part of the miracle of the incarnation, God stepping out of God-time and into human-time? What happens to the age of man while in heaven? Is having eternal life a time-warp of sorts that puts one in a new time dimension? What effect did sin have on time? If time is experienced differently by God, what does that do for your understanding of creation? Can God make time stand still? Can he alter time? Is time, as we experience it, a creation of God?

OK. Everyone put your thinking caps on and let's see what happens.

[Beryl]

I don't think we will count time in heaven. We will in the New Earth, because we will come together each Sabbath day -- and I guess we will in heaven, too, so---- just maybe ---- just once(!) ------ I just may be wrong!

Beryl

[Neil D]

As we understand time, if time affects God, is time supreme over God? If so, does God age? Or does God allow time to age Him? If so, how does that affect our understanding/perception of Him at His 2nd coming?

Also, a different thought....with all this talk about God being outside of time, how does this affect our understanding of OUR resurrection?....or rather, is the doctrine of resurrection at the 2nd coming become null and void and the "attain heaven at death" doctrines more valid ? IOWs, does one's judgement happen at ones death? Is a faithful Christian allow to attain heaven after death? Remember, the God of Isaac and Jacob refers to these men as LIVING.....

[Woody]

Time most certainly has to be compressed with God. For He can see and know each and every step that we are going to make before we make it. Yet, he does not interfere. We have freedom of choice but God knows what that choice will be.

It is like God has a super computer. He is not influenced by time. He can just look it up in His computer.

[Woody]

Sounds to me like Beryl covered both sides of the issue and is thereby guarenteed of being both right and wrong.

[melvin mccarty]

A related question might be are all created worlds that are inhabited syncronized time-wise with earth or are they like the other planets in our solar system? Some people think the 10 commandments are universal in scope. I think they are specifically for this earth......mel

[John317]

I agree with you. I think the evidence shows that the Ten Commandments are eternal principles of love applied to our unique situation on earth. If we were on another planet and belonged to a different species, we would have different laws but all of them express the same principles of love for others and for God.

[Bravus]

Well, certainly other planets would have different length days and years, so that would make some changes. If their stars were more massive general relativity says time would actually pass differently for them.

But they're still part of the space-time continuum. I have more to say on this but need to head to work now - more soon.

[Bravus]

OK, very quickly...

Many people think of Heaven as just another place within our space-time continuum.

My take on what God is like draws a lot on general relativity. It's a complex theory, particularly once you get into the maths, but the simple verbal version has three parts:

1. Matter and energy are the same thing: that's what E = mc^2 means, that energy can be converted into mass and vice versa.

2. Space and time are part of the same 4-dimensional system - three space dimensions, one time dimension.

3. General relativity has been described as 'space tells matter how to move, matter tells space how to curve'. But with 1 and 2 in mind this is better stated as 'space-time tells matter-energy how to move, matter-energy tells space-time how to curve'.

The implications of this are that space and time are warped near large masses like suns and black holes, so that time actually passes differently depending on the local masses. Gravity, in this understanding of the universe, is not so much a force as the curvature of space, and objects simply move through curved space...

Now, (sorry about the physics lesson, now we get to the point!) - if something or someone is not made out of matter-energy, not made of the substance of this universe at all, then that thing or person is not at all subject to the laws of space and time. Not in some parallel or fractal or stochastic way, just not at all. So if the substance of God and the angels is something different, it explains their ability to be all around and within us but undetectable by our instruments or senses.

Now one of the implications of this view is that Jesus gave up all of this - the omniscience, omnipotence and the ability to experience all of space-time at once - at the incarnation. He took on flesh, took on the matter of this universe, and became time-bound like the rest of us. What a sacrifice?

Given this, heaven would not initially have been a location at all - it would have been where God is, which is everywhere. But since Jesus is material, on his ascension from the earth a material heaven would have to be created - a place where he can live as he is now, and where he is building many mansions for us to live.

So in that sense, Jesus, being human, presumably lives on human time in heaven, and so will we. Our eternal life will be qualitatively different from God's, since he will still have access to all of space-time all the time, and we will be just living forever at one second per second.

[Bravus]

The freewill and predestination stuff is less interesting to me, since God knowing the future does not determine the future under the view outlined above. 'Future' and 'past' are meaningless concepts to someone who is outside of time.

[Bravus]

Makes sense, but yeah, I think just 'appearing in our universe' rather than 'moving from one place in our universe to another'. If God is everywhere in our universe the angel can be at his side and at Daniel's simultaneously anyway. Angels, of course, are a whole other can of higher-dimensional/non-physical worm(hole exploiter)s.

[Dr. Shane]

This is a very interesting thread. I think we have to somehow distinguish between God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Bravus covered the humanity of Christ very well but what distinguishes the Father from the Holy Ghost?

[melvin mccarty]

What of the angels? They are ministering Spirits. Why do we need another indescribable Spirit which is called the Spirit OF God? So many things are not at all clear to me. When one is "filled" with THE Spirit what exactly does that mean? How can the "Spirit" be "poured out"? We use these words but do not really know what we are talking about I think....mel

[Bravus]

Metaphors, a lot of them.

The distinction between the Father and the Spirit is an interesting one. Maybe a lot of our confusion about it arises because we imagine the Father living in a particular spot in space and time (maybe as a white-bearded old white man), and the Spirit as existing throughout the universe. But if the Father exists throughout the universe, then talking about his Spirit is more talking about some aspect of himself. We (particularly as SDAs) don't talk about our own 'spirit' as being something separate from ourselves, but as a way of talking about some particular aspect of ourselves.

Not sure where that would leave us with the Trinity doctrine...

[Neil D]

Many years ago, someone described the Godhead as three individuals....At some point, they decided that, while thier relationships were good, they wanted to share it with others....so, they took an eternity to figure out all the possiblities of what type of persons they would like to commune with, they took another eternity to figure out what type of universe they wanted these people to live in...and they took another eternity to figure out the "what if's"...

At some point in eternity, they decided to create....First the universe.....since we could not live outside of God, one of those Individuals decided that they would be the matter for the universe. And by stretching Oneself into eternity, they became the universe...That is why, you can not go anywhere without God being there.

One of the other Individuals became the Person whom everyone could come to worship...the last Indidivual was the "back up" plan, in case someone/group of someones decide to rebel.

At least, while this is not MY origional thought, I bring this origional thought to this forum...in the hopes that it adds to this discussion

[Dr. Shane]

The apostle Paul seems to clearly define the Godhead as three distinct entities and yet being one. However I don't see any kind of clear definition Biblicaly for either the Father or the Holy Spirit.

I do think God is outside of time. I think of it as reading a book. As I read a book I can read about certain characters on page 10 and about their grandchildren on page 550. Jesus becoming flesh would be like the reader of a book stepping into it and becoming part of the story.

[Stan]

Our God is one God.