Eternity Week #3: Eternity Already
So yesterday I talked a little bit about the problems with materialism and pantheism. My objections do not disqualify them as reasonable positions; they are merely problems for adherents to solve or accept. Theism has its own problem, that is, this crazy notion that whatever caused the universe is completely outside the world and time itself. But what precisely does that mean? Well, I can't really tell you; it's outside the world, and we're all in it. There are a few things, though, that it doesn't mean.
It doesn't mean that God inhabits another world, in which time and causality work more or less like ours. He's really just not a guy with a beard; as nice as he might be, beard guy can't help us (2). It's true that our "known" universe may well have been formed by an event in another world much like it. Perhaps our Big Bang was the result of a Black Hole in another. Sensible enough. But still, this doesn't answer the question; it just punts it off to another world, of which we must ask the same thing. In the eternal 'world' we need to solve the problem, time can't mean anything like what it does here. What we need is its own cause, and that seems to suggest a very different relationship with time than anything we see here.
It also doesn't mean that God was sitting there in the void before our world showed up, and suddenly decided to make something. Science is actually with us on this one. Since Einstein, time has been a function of space. Since the Big Bang, we've known that we emerged from a singularity, in which there was no space, and thus no time. We think of time as something that stretches forever in both directions, but that's only because on our scale, it's big enough to seem that way. It also seems reasonable to us that something can always get colder, but it turns out there's a point at which it can't, an Absolute Zero at which something is as cold as it can be. Just so with time; there appears to have been a point at which the question "what came before this?" is demonstrably meaningless (3). Eternity is not the same as "forever": it does not merely mean that God has always been, and will always be, though that is true. If all the history of our universe is a line segment, then eternity is not the whole line, even if it stretches in both directions forever, but rather the paper on which the line is drawn.
This is a very difficult thing to grasp. And it's obviously not something I can prove to you to be out there; our present, common senses only reveal to us a world confined by time. I've read a few proofs, and I've found at least a few weak but valid arguments against each one. Still, once one's mind warms to the idea, it can explain a lot of things, and that's just what modelling is all about: not proof, but explanatory value. Before eternity can explain a thing, though, we need to explain eternity. Three illustrations.
One that doesn't work very well for me is an image from nature. It portrays our world as a river, presumably flowing down from some source, and perhaps toward some sea. People bob along in it, and can see only things floating near them. By this model, eternity is a high bluff looking over the whole river's course, from which you can see everyone floating along. Perhaps when the people in the river look up, they can see you looking down at them; perhaps the sun gets in their eyes (perhaps you're the sun!) It doesn't much matter, the important thing is that you can see the whole picture, all at once. This is a decent graphic aid, but it has some real flaws, the worst of which is that from what we know of rivers and bluffs, the eternal viewer is still in time. If he looks down at a patch of river, it will have changed from what it was a moment ago. This model is really only good to demonstrate that from eternity, the whole of time is equally accessible.
A better model is that of a book. If I read or write a book (one with a story,) I can leaf through the whole book at will. The "river" of the book's story is, in a sense, frozen; I can pick up the book whenever I like, turn to page 347, and the protagonist will be doing just the same thing as she was five minutes ago. I can read a chapter, go take a break, come back, read some more. I might even be able to rewrite a chapter if I like. It doesn't make any sense to ask when or where the author is 'in' a book. He is not the text, not necessarily a character, though he could write himself in. The book might betray his artistic style, and be composed of elements he knows and finds interesting. But he is not within it; the timeline of the story is subordinate to his own. There are still problems with this model, though, in explaining eternity. We are using ourselves as models for God, and we are all still bound up in time and causality. From this model, one still has the option to ask, well, what makes the author write, what provides him with his subject? In eternity, the only answer available is, well, He does. He is a being who causes Himself, unlike any human author. Further, the whole question of 'taking a break' and 'rewriting' is a bit out of place as well: in eternity (as usually formulated,) all time is 'present'. On to our next model.
The last and best model (for me,) the one that takes on time directly, is that of the dream. It's kind of insane, if one stops to think about it, that every night we go unconscious and hallucinate vividly. But we do, and it's not a bad way to think about eternity. The time in my dreams is completely disconnected from reality. Time passes in the 'real world' while I dream, but within the dream itself, minutes, days, or years may pass, or a jumble of scattered moments that can't be given a name at all. It is made up (mostly) of elements I know (1), but usually far simpler. The laws of reason that govern it are loose and limited, the set of things in each dreamworld is far smaller than in the real one. And when I awaken, all that remains are memory and meaning. The odder dreams fade from memory quickly; without words to put their jumbled images together, one can't hold them for long.
Some may share with me the (sometimes terrifying) experience of nested dreams, in which one wakes from one dream into another. When I have these, I usually do find that the dream from which I wake is more chaotic and partakes of fewer symbols from the 'real' one. I am often quite relieved to wake into the new dream, in which the time of that deeper dream is only a memory. The question that makes this relevant to eternity, then, is "What if I were to awaken from my waking life?" Would I be in a world in which time was more ordered, causality more fixed, fact more permanent and immutable, and in which more symbols presented themselves? If I woke from that, would it be still moreso? If I kept waking, again and again, as many 'times' as it took, would I eventually come to a place in which time was so ordered, logic so perfect, and symbol so dense that each 'moment' of its 'time' would be discernible from any other 'moment', and thus equally 'present'? What wonders would it hold, what colors lost in some translation into dreaming? Would it, as I suspect, reveal to me not merely that it happens to be, but why it must be, why it Is what it Is of its own power? If I were so to waken, then I would be in eternity, and in the presence of God.
And yes, I realize that we have departed quite far from reason and pure, observation-based argument. I don't mind this at all, and find it perfectly rational to do so. Mysticism has its place; when one cannot discern, it is fair to interpret. If we'd never used our intuitions, we'd never have had a thing to deduce, and many people have tried to deduce this stuff for a while, with some significant fervor. In my experience, Queen Elizabeth was right when she called the work of theologians something along the lines of 'an attempt to build a ladder, of sea-slime or sand, to the moon.' I still think it's a noble attempt, though I'd go for the sun, myself; harder and more trinitarian. That'll probably be tomorrow.
(1) It is true that sometimes I dream of things for which I do not think I have a referent in the real world. I interpret these as being either "sent" directly from a more eternal world, or being the result of intuitive flashes which piece together bits of the world not obviously related to one another and which signify things not found here.
(2) I am amazed when critics of Christianity say that they know we don't worship a guy with a beard, that's not the problem, and then take God to task for His ability to hear and answer all prayers "simultaneously."
(3) It does not necessarily mean that the question "what caused this?" is meaningless as well; time and causality may not be so related.