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Jared Leonard
Jared Leonard
7 years ago

This is how most people think about it, no? As if time doesn’t exist in heaven? Or, more pointedly, as if time isn’t a part of God’s nature?

timothy
timothy
7 years ago
Reply to  Jared Leonard

I think of it as God is the fullback carrying the football.

The football is creation.
One end of the football is the beginning of time; the other end is the end of time.
“Forever” is the length of the football.

Eternity is where God is; it includes God holding time–and Forever–in His hands.

From God’s perspective, He can be at any place at any time all the time, because He has it in His “grasp”

Also, He has a Larry Czonka’s face guard on His helmet.

Jared Leonard
Jared Leonard
7 years ago
Reply to  timothy

timothy,

I realize this is an analogy and, thus, comes with the standard caveat (i.e. it breaks down at some level), but I don’t think time was created. Consistorian’s take below is closer to my own understanding, though I might take issue with God as the originator of time rather than time simply being a part of God’s nature.

Dunsworth
Dunsworth
7 years ago
Reply to  Jared Leonard

I have trouble with thinking of time as a “thing” at all. Isn’t it merely a way of describing something?

As a somewhat weak analogy, I don’t think we talk about whether or not God created “hot.” He created things of varying temperatures. Some of them we describe as hot.

timothy
timothy
7 years ago
Reply to  Dunsworth

Hi Jane,

IIRC big-bang physics itself states that time did not exist before the big-bang.

Dunsworth
Dunsworth
7 years ago
Reply to  timothy

Yes, but there was no big bang so that’s irrelevant.

Jared Leonard
Jared Leonard
7 years ago
Reply to  Dunsworth

Jane,

Would you say justice is a “thing”?

Dunsworth
Dunsworth
7 years ago
Reply to  Jared Leonard

I am not sure it is a thing in the way I am thinking. Justice is merely a property of actions that may or may not be present. If we say a judge rules unjustly, it’s not because there isn’t enough justice stuff floating around. It’s because that’s how his actions are described.

I think I’m being set up here because it’s an attribute of God, but since God has no parts, then His attributes by definition aren’t things, right? They’re just ways of describing His behavior.

Christopher Casey
Christopher Casey
7 years ago
Reply to  Dunsworth

“hot” is not a thing but heat is.

Dunsworth
Dunsworth
7 years ago

Is it? Or is it just a description of a state? We say things like “transferring heat” but we really mean transferring energy. “Heat” just describes what the energy is doing at a given time.

Christopher Casey
Christopher Casey
7 years ago
Reply to  Dunsworth

Heat is energy. You may say heat is a way to describe energy, if we make heat analogous to time then time is a way to describe a dimension.

Dunsworth
Dunsworth
7 years ago

But a given unit of energy can continually change form depending on various factors, can’t it? So heat isn’t a thing that is always heat. It is merely the way energy is being at a given time.

Or am I wrong about that?

Christopher Casey
Christopher Casey
7 years ago
Reply to  Dunsworth

That’s mostly right, but as an analogy for time you have Heat>Time, energy>?

timothy
timothy
7 years ago
Reply to  Jared Leonard

fwiw, I got the distinction between eternity and forever from Joseph Campbell.

Nat
Nat
7 years ago
Reply to  timothy

…but an Alabama jersey & helmet!

Consistorian
7 years ago
Reply to  Jared Leonard

Agreed Jared, though I tend to take it a little further. God is the origin of time. That is, in creation, we measure time by observing the relations between moving objects (i.e., sun, moon, stars). But in heaven, time is measured by the relation between the persons of the Trinity. It’s not that there is something like a clock in heaven, but there is an everlasting (not eternal in the philosophical sense) reciprocity of love flowing between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that is measurable. Hence, we do justice to ‘from everlasting to everlasting’ and ‘with God, a day… Read more »

Jared Leonard
Jared Leonard
7 years ago
Reply to  Consistorian

Consistorian, In both your examples, time is a measurement of movement. I would guess that the only difference between a clock in heaven and a clock on earth is that the clock in heaven is always correct. I’m not sure I would want to say that time is something different for God than it is for us even though our respective experiences may be ontologically disparate. My understanding is that time is a component of existence, regardless of how (or whether) it is measured. The conceptual metaphor here is that “time is movement”; nothing can occur or be instantiated without… Read more »

Rob Steele
Rob Steele
7 years ago
Reply to  Jared Leonard

Angels and demons seem to be in time more or less as we are but I don’t think time is part of God’s nature. It’s certainly not his natural habitat the way it is ours. We usually say he’s “outside” time but that just substitutes a spatial metaphor and space has the same issues as time. I think time and space are both part of creation, which means that they have their being in God. You could say that reality is God’s fantasy.

Jared Leonard
Jared Leonard
7 years ago
Reply to  Rob Steele

Rob,

Time as a habitat is an interesting metaphor. You could say time is that in which we live, move, breathe, and have our being; then it starts to resemble an attribute of God, does it not? I think time is fundamentally necessary for being in relationship, otherwise how would the relationship proceed? Timelessness seems like an incoherent concept to me and I don’t think it’s just because I am “bound” by time. As image bearers, our tensed relationship with each other and the rest of creation is a reflection of God’s character and nature.

Rob Steele
Rob Steele
7 years ago
Reply to  Jared Leonard

We certainly live, move & etc. in time but the same is true of air. The strangeness of the idea of timelessness seem rather an argument in favor than against.

katecho
katecho
7 years ago
Reply to  Jared Leonard

I’ve had similar thoughts about the personal triune relationship. I don’t understand God as eternally static. If there was any proceeding or unfolding in the honoring and giving and receiving and glorifying within the Trinity, then this would seem to provide a reference point to establish a chronology or sequence of events, even if not time in the bounded, space-time sense that we experience. This would imply that chronology or sequence is of the essence of God and His being. Since God is not a singularity, or inert, or in stasis, there is unfolding and overflow, there is origination and… Read more »

Jared Leonard
Jared Leonard
7 years ago
Reply to  katecho

katecho, Yes, this resonates with my own understanding. Time as we experience it has its grounding in the nature of the Trinity. The proposal that God is timeless, in the sense that he could, in theory, experience any moment of his creation as presently happening, does not seem like a viable proposition. A robust Christology seems to demand this position as well since how else could the Son become incarnate? I think the hangup may be in the language: we don’t want to say God is “bound” by time because that makes it seem like an outside imposition exists, as… Read more »