There are very few Christians who question the majority belief that God is not constrained by the same physical limitations as humans and earthly creatures are. We believe that God has the ability to be anywhere he wants, at any time he wants, and is even able to be multiple places at once. In fact, most of us believe that, in one way or another, God is really everywhere all the time. I have opinions about how the belief came about, but that is a topic for another conversation. The topic of conversation for today centers around our beliefs about how God works in relation to time.
Time is a tricky concept, at least in part, because it is something that is very difficult to define. Time seems to be simultaneously a human construct that we impose on the world in order to understand it and a real natural phenomenon we have absolutely no control over. In the same way, our discussions about how God relates to time end up being quite complicated and usually only end up making sense to the person making the argument. For this reason, I would like to start by proposing a working definition for time before moving on to discuss how I believe God works with regard to time.
We begin our discussion with a geometry lesson: We know that in a triangle, the sum of the squares of the lengths two sides of the triangle add up to the square root of the length of the hypotenuse of the triangle. The equation that relates to this looks like this:
Many people encountered this in their middle school geometry class, found out that it is called the Pythagorean Theorem and subsequently forgot about it. Another way to think about this, is if you went a certain distance, x, in the horizontal direction and a certain distance, y, in the vertical direction, your distance from where you started (which we will call displacement from now on), in two dimensions, would be H. Your displacement in this situation is related to how far you moved in the x direction and how far you moved in the y direction. What most people don't know is that interesting similarities to this can be seen in other formulas relating to the quantifying "distances."
One similar formula can be seen in the calculation of what we might call the "hypotenuse" of a 3-dimensional triangle (really a type of prism, but that's not important). In the example of the 3-D triangle, we can look at something like what is shown in the picture at the right which has a side in the x-direction (to the right), one in the y-direction (up), and one in the z-direction(out of the screen). If a person traveled along the x side, the y side and then the z side, the total displacement would be the side labeled I. The calculation of the length of this side comes from the formula seen here:
The similarity between this calculation and that of the hypotenuse of a 2-D triangle is clear. This may not seems stunning to many people, but it will be more interesting momentarily. The fact that, when another dimension is added into the mix, the formula simply expands to accommodate it will shed real light on the concept of time.
The next similar formula requires a little bit more upfront explanation to ensure that everyone understands (at least to some extent) where it is coming from. I'll start out by simply mentioning the theory of Special Relativity which Albert Einstein developed and which as changed very little since. Many people have probably heard of Einstein's theory of Special Relativity, but most probably do not actually know what is all about. Basically, Einstein wanted to understand light better because light has a number of very odd properties. One of the more interesting things about light is that, no matter what substance it travels through, it always travels the same speed. That's really weird!
Anyway, part of what he ended up doing was looking at the behavior of other types of matter when they moved at high rates of speed. What he discovered is that the faster something moves, the slower time goes by. This is a really odd concept, but it has been documented extensively by now. Scientists have calibrated two atomic clocks, kept one on the ground and took the other into a fast jet that flew around for a while and when it landed, the clock from the jet was behind the clock that stayed on the ground (There are also many more complicated predictions and findings, but we need not concern ourselves with them given our current purposes). What this told Einstein is that time is not really a fixed construct like we normally think of it as. It can, in fact, be changed to some extent.
One of the results of Einstein's work on the theory of Special Relativity was his development of the concept of space-time. Space-time is a concept used in many science fiction movies and whatnot, but it is never really explained. Basically, it is exactly what it sounds like - a combination of space and time. It is really a mathematical model that looks at the combination of space and time which is based on Einstein's ideas that space and time are actually related due to the theory of Special Relativity. Just like we have calculations to figure out the displacement of a person who moves in 2-dimensional space or in 3-dimensional space, we also have a calculation for the displacement of a person moving in space-time:
In this formula, everything is the same as in the 3-D one except that now we add in a quantity of time. What is being looked at is how far someone moves in each of the three dimensions along with how much time it takes and what we get is the quantity represented by J which is the displacement in space-time. It is largely because of this formula, that time is sometimes referred to as "the fourth dimension."
What we can learn from this last formula and its similarities to the other formulae is that time is really just a dimension like the three dimensions (length, width, height) we normally talk about. Time truly is just the fourth dimension of the universe we live in. So the question that interests me from all this is in relation to how we should think about God's relationship to time.
What it says to me about how God works in relation to time is that he is not constrained by time in any way at all. As discussed at the beginning, many Christians do not have a problem believing that God does not have to operate within our limitations regarding space. He can be (and I would argue he probably is) simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. I certainly do not believe this previous statement literally as it is because, in reality, I believe that God simply does not need to "play by the rules" when it comes to spatial constrictions. As parts of his creation, we cannot operate outside of the concept of space as defined by the physical laws God created and which are interpreted and defined by us in terms of mathematical models. I do not believe, however, that God needs to operate within the physical law he set out to be the foundation of his creation. It is from this belief accompanied by the limited understanding of what time really is that I draw the conclusion that God does not operate within time at all, but time is merely another part of his set of laws for this physical world he created.
I am not simply saying that I believe God is able to move through time as he pleases, any more than I would say that he can move through space as he pleases. Sure, those things are probably true, but it goes so far beyond that. God does not even need to exist within space even though I believe he probably chooses to at times. In the same way, God does not even need to exist within time regardless of whether he chooses to.
Just as width is a feature of space, so time is a feature of space-time. And just as I believe God is not constrained to operate within any width-related boundaries, so I believe he is not constrained to operate within any time-related boundaries. God created everything that exists including the laws that govern the universe (like space-time). Though he may choose to exist within his creation, and even within the physical laws that he created to keep order his creation, he certainly is not bound to be governed by any aspect of his creation.
I think the first formula applies to right triangles only; also, I think there are rules of logic that are unbreakable, and, assuming they're created, they may 'govern' more than you imply (though I'm not sure).
ReplyDeleteYour fan,
Len
I hope I didn't say anything that would go against anything in your comment because I agree completely. Though we could argue about they semantics behind talking about "rules" of logic I think :)
ReplyDeleteVery well said, Peter. This is basically what William Lane Craig is arguing. It is interesting that among many physicists, the very old, classical theistic notion that God is a-temporal (i.e., not in any way constrained by time but able to act within time) is not illogical as some modern theologians suggest, but perfectly coherent.
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