///Disclaimer: This may be the ramblings of a man who doesn’t really understand the implications of what he says, and seems to be trying to fit God in a box. Take this whole post with a grain of salt, and please don't stone me. ///
Often, we view God as timeless. I find this to be a convenient approximation. We know that God is “outside” time, because He made it, and so he is able to work outside the constraints of time. By thinking God is timeless, I am often tempted to view time as embedded in God. In this view, time is a changing part of an otherwise unchanging whole, where God is Timeless: without time and without change. God does not move or think or talk, because these are all time orientated actions. God simply holds the world together, and someday we’ll all end up with Him in paradise, frozen in an unchanging perpetual state of happiness. When we talk about the timelessness of God, I think many other Christians are caught in this frame of mind.
When the Bible talks about God, it does not tell us to view Him as timeless. That is a convenient construct we created so we could put God in a box and study Him. The Bible describes God as eternal. In other words, God doesn’t have no time. God has all the time there ever was and ever will be.
I don’t think it’s easy to think of it like this. Another view I often take is that God is beyond the material world. In a sense, God is not material at all. He is an unchanging, unmoving spirit. However, is this really the view we should take? God does not have no space. God created space. God has as much space as He could possibly want.
Now, God was something before time and matter came into existence. Maybe He was just spirit. Maybe that’s simply the only part of Him we have any hope of understanding. But when God made time, he put those restraints, for lack of a better word, on himself too. God is not timeless. God is timeful. God cannot see the future, not because He couldn’t, but because He can’t. He didn't give himself that opportunity when He created the universe, and that’s the “life” God chose for Himself. As Christians, we trust He made the right decision.
True in that God is timeful, however He can still very perfectly see future events yet to come. He is not required tobe timeless in order to view or change future events. However, all -n- all Christians are not required to understand the quantum physics of time; for sometimes Faith is not about knowing the "why" . Abraham didn't know why, but look what he accomplished Gen. 22:18 & consider the significance of Prov. 3:5 !
ReplyDeleteThis is a post that I was purely speculating in. Since then, I've read a wonderful book by William Lane Craig called "Time and Eternity". It is much better written and more thought out. This is absolutely a peripheral topic though. Perhaps in Heaven we'll understand more completely.
DeleteAs I understand it now, however, I believe that God does not perfectly see the future because the future does not exist yet. There are many possible ways the universe could pan out, and God sees each of these, but due to our free will, the exact future has not been set. In this way, God is never surprised by the future because He has seen its possibility, yet He does not control our actions.
It is like chess: a grandmaster may not know your exact next moves, but he will win in the end because he can see much further into the game than we can. Likewise, God can see the result of any sequence of choices.
Anyway, that's my imperfect understanding. It is the best way I can think of to reconcile free will with God's plan for my life.