If I could turn back time (Part 10)

Gentle reader,

This is a long journey and we need to go slow.  Why? Because there are some among us who have no concept of what is involved. (hint we will be looking in the future once we get this issue of time settled at "death" and "resurection")

 Now then looking at the next figure, we see the pattern of two lines thus crossing, one representing the horizontal passage of TIME and the other the vertical NOW-ness of ETERNITY, allows us to carry the figure one step further in the service of setting forth the truth. The horizontal line moving through history continues to flow by us until, according to Scripture, it will one day come to an end. Time will then have entirely passed by, and the vertical line of ETERNITY will no longer intercept it. There will be no more time because this heaven and earth will pass away (Mattew 24:35).(11) At the beginning — the beginning of time, that is to say — the line started its journey by intersecting the vertical ETERNITY line.
Thus we have this kind of analogy. Fig. 2 shows TIME a moment after "the creation" when only a short segment of it has elapsed.

11. "[Jesus said] Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." Matthew 24:35.

When this present universe comes to an end, the line of TIME will have completely moved across the vertical line and passed by it. Fig. 3 represents analogously that moment when TIME has only just run out.

Thus this vertical line of ETERNITY which stretches upward and downwards will be the only line remaining. It has no width, but its depth and height reach to infinity. The horizontal line representing the passage of TIME will have ceased to exist. Intensity of experience will replace extensity.

And so it appears that the only relation we can establish between time and eternity is at the point of intersection; and when time has passed by and is no more, we shall not be able to represent it in any way — except, perhaps, in our memory or by observing its effect upon the Lord's body in the marks of the nails and the wound in his side. Everything else relating to time as we now experience it will have passed away.

The eternal as "now-ness"

It is necessary to say a further word about the sense of now-ness. We carry this with us as long as we have consciousness. It always has to do with conscious being, not with having been in the past or with hoping to be in the future. It amounts to this almost, that eternity is a kind of now-consciousness, an awareness of something which has no passing, but travels with us. So long as we experience time, it is like a single point that moves with us along the horizontal line of our time-frame. When that time-frame comes to an end and the horizontal line no longer intersects the vertical line to mark the point we experience as now, now-ness will cease to be a single point. We shall then experience it along the whole vertical line of eternity in a way that has nothing to do with time but has everything to do with depth and intensity.

This is where God is always 'present.' We shall in this experience presumably share something of his eternality. Our new kind of consciousness will of course be contingent upon his sustaining us, since it will always be true that "in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28 ) . It is He alone who is the great "I am," the One who lives in the present, He who "inhabits eternity" (Isaiah 57:15)(12). The statement is an important one. We dwell in space and therefore in time, and both impose limitations upon us. God inhabits eternity, which involves neither time nor space as we experience them in the present world.

The essential quality of eternal life is depth (not length). The idea of permanence and enduringness is essential to it but it is not the prime quality which the New Testament emphasizes. What the Lord Himself emphasized was depth in the present rather than extension into the future: quality not quantity.

12. "For thus says the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place." Isaiah 57:15a

The Old Testament saint was promised "long life" (Exodus 20:12);(13) the New Testament saint is promised "life more abundant" (John 10:10).(14)
To think of length as the essence of eternal life is to suppose that the reality of it is to be measured by how long it lasts. But a little thought soon demonstrates that we are pursuing the wrong road to understanding when we follow this path. Physicists have recently discovered a particle that has independent existence of about one-fifteen billionths of a second!(15) Is this long enough to say that this particle, called an antiomega-minus baryon particle, is a reality? How long must a thing last to have real existence? Surely the reality of existence in eternity is not measured by "how long"?

The question is inappropriate because if the same question were asked of some creature that lived for only a fraction of a second (and there is no reason why such a creature may not exist somewhere), that creature would presumably view the even shorter-lived particle in the same light as we view something which has lived for a few hours or a tiny fraction of our life span. It is all a matter of viewpoint. It is tantamount to saying that reality depends upon timed existence; that is to say, existence over some minimum period. But then we have to ask, Did God not exist until He had created time in which to exist?

And what of angels? Angels do not have material bodies, although it seems they can sometimes assume them when fulfilling divinely appointed tasks such as the rescue of Lot and his wife from Sodom — "taking them by the hand" to hurry them out of the city (Genesis 19:16).(16) But if they do not have material bodies as normal to their existence, they do not normally occupy space either and therefore do not live in time as we do.
Moreover, they existed before the creation of the universe, since they were already present at its inception and rejoiced to see it (Job 38:4-7).(17) Did they therefore exist before time and thus outside of it? They were, however, created beings and therefore not "inhabitants of eternity" as God is.(18 ) What then was the nature of the framework of their existence if there was no time until the creation of the physical universe which came "later"? Can we speak of a before and an after in eternity while as yet there was no physical world in existence to constitute time in which to set events 'before' and 'after'? Is there a sense in which eternity does witness sequences of events that supply the ground for the terms before and after even though there is no actual passage of time involved? Is this the sense in which the Son of God said, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:5 (19), re-asserting the NOW of his eternity by the words "I am," in spite of his use of the word "before"? Is there some kind of proto-time or pseudo-time in which the angels lived while awaiting the creation of the universe? Or are we to restate Augustine's insight by saying that time began with the creation, and read this to mean "with the creation of the spirit world" — this, then, being the first stage in the creation of the physical world?

To state this as simply as possible: Did time strictly begin with an act of creation per se — that is, the creation of the spirit world, this being only one kind of time? Was a second kind of time then initiated with the creation of the physical world? When this physical world comes to an end, will this second kind of time also terminate? But as to the first kind of time, appropriate to a created order that is spiritual, will it continue as long as created beings continue to give it meaning? It may indeed be beyond our comprehension — but it still bears thinking about. . . . 

If we limit the existence of time to the creation of the physical world we find ourselves called upon to explain how the creation of the angels, the bringing of something into being that was not there before, could occur when there was no time to accommodate this before. We therefore seem to be forced to conclude that the beginning of time was marked by creative activity per se, not merely with the creation of the material world as Augustine saw it. This makes the angels an essential part of the created universe in a way that we do not customarily think of them, but it does seem to be in accordance with Colossians 1:16 ff.(20) Here the creation of principalities and powers is linked with the creation of the material universe that constitutes the heavens and the earth, as though in a sense they all belong together. The creation of the spirit however, created beings and therefore not "inhabitants of eternity" as God is.(18 ) What then was the nature of the framework of their existence if there was no time until the creation of the physical universe which came "later"? Can we speak of a before and an after in eternity while as yet there was no physical world in existence to constitute time in which to set events 'before' and 'after'? Is there a sense in which eternity does witness sequences of events that supply the ground for the terms before and after even though there is no actual passage of time involved? Is this the sense in which the Son of God said, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8: 58 ) (19), re-asserting the NOW of his eternity by the words "I am," in spite of his use of the word "before"? Is there some kind of proto-time or pseudo-time in which the angels lived while awaiting the creation of the universe? Or are we to restate Augustine's insight by saying that time began with the creation, and read this to mean "with the creation of the spirit world" — this, then, being the first stage in the creation of the physical world?

To be continued....

 Love,

Denis

Footnotes for those who care about such things 

13. "Honour your father and your mother that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God gives you." Exodus 20:16.
14. "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." John 10:10b.
15. On the discovery of these particles and on the problem of describing them, see Cyril Henshelwood, "Science and Scientists", Nature, Supplement, Sept. 4, 1965, p.1060; and also Allen Emerson, "A Disorienting View of God's Creation", Christianity Today, vol. 29, no. 2, Feb. 1, 1985, p.24.
16. "And while he [Lot] lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the Lord being merciful unto him, and they brought him forth, and set him without the city." Genesis 19:16.
17. "Where were you when I [God] laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have understanding. Who has laid the measures thereof, if you know? Or who has stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner stone thereof; when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Job 38, 4-7.

18. "For thus says the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is holy; I dwell in the high and lofty place." Isaiah 57:15a.
19. "Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, 'Before Abraham was, I am.'" John 8:58.

20. "For by him [Jesus] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist." Colossians 1:16 & 17.