Post Edited (hand_carved) : 3/26/2008 11:47:50 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/27/2008 8:09:30 AM (GMT-5)

Hand Carved said, " Some string physicists suggest that as there are likely more than 3 space dimensions, and there may also be more than 1 time dimension."

Response; From my understanding, if two dimensions of time did exist, they could only have intersected once and could not intersect again. This is how some physicists explain the Big Bang Theory. The second dimension of time, "imaginary time" as it is sometimes referred to, could not have intersected "real time" after the initial creation of "imaginary time". For God to exist in another dimension of time, such as "imaginary time", He would not have access to "real time" unless the two dimensions run parallel to each other.  If the two dimensions of time run parallel to each other, they would not have intersected. If they did run parallel to each other, you would be back to a linear sequence separated by position but not direction, and could still find the correlation between the two dimensions. Moreover, parallel dimensions would mean that both dimensions would be infinite.

Hand Carved said,"If such was the case, then God could both place his perspective within, and experience our own temporality in a similar way that a person looking down on a labyrinth from a high place might come down from his "all-pervading" perspective to the planar level, and experience the restricted perspective of being on the ground within the walls of the labyrinth."

Response; For God to be everywhere present, He has to experience time in this realm perpetually. He can't step in and out of time, while being everywhere present. Even if He was looking down on upon that which exists from another dimension, He would be experiencing time if indeed He was able to observe or comprehend anything that was happening "within the walls of the labyrinth".

I am not a physicist, but I don't think that adding another dimension is the answer. It just moves the question to another realm, where it remains unanswered.

Grace and Peace, Joe

Post Edited (Similtude) : 3/29/2008 9:47:13 PM (GMT-5)

The Truth about the End Times

I live in the South - which means plenty of bumper stickers warning, “In case of rapture this car will be unmanned.” I grew up surrounded by preaching on the last days in a context that was decidedly Dispensationalist, Pre-Tribulation, etc. If you are a reader who does not know what all that means then you’ve missed a huge part of our American Culture. It means one believes that time is divided into different “dispensations” and that the end of the world will have seven years of the worst possible calamities, complete with the Great Beast, the Anti-Christ, (all known as the Great Tribulation), but with the Church being “caught-up” into the air to meet Christ and go to heaven just before the beginning of the Great Tribulation (hence, “pre-tribulation”). This is the larger story behind the popular “Left-Behind” series of novels which are selling like hotcakes in the Evangelical culture. Of course, the books are more interesting to read if you happen to be a Pre-Tribulation Dispensationalist.

These are not esoteric doctrines in this part of the world. You could have a fairly serious discussion with a pious farmer about various aspects of end-time Dispensationalist doctrine. Many local Churches will advertise “Prophecy Workshops” of one sort or another - explaining various details of the doctrine and, always, making comparison to present-day headlines (Not to mention the televangelists who major in End Times).

Is this simply an aspect of Christian teaching that is a hallmark of some Protestants, or is it a serious distortion of Christian teaching? And if it’s a distortion, does it matter?

Apart from all the various details involved in “end-time” teaching - the larger theological picture is overlooked. That picture is the radical change in eschatology from that of the Scriptures. Eschatology is the term for the study of things that have to do with “the last things” [eschatos]. For moderns following popular end-time teaching, there is an expectation of a coming event in history, but no sense that time itself is changed or given a different character by the Second Coming of Christ (much less His first coming). It is this loss of a proper understanding of time that, it seems to me, carries the largest error in popular end-time teaching.

It is possible to view time in a straightforward, chronological manner, as one event following another. Indeed, this seems the most natural way to view things - particularly to a modern mind. Of course, such a view of time is as devoid of God as is the naturalist view of creation in which it exists and operates independent of God. Both views are just variations on a secular theme. One can be religious in a secular setting, but the secularization of the faith is a radical departure from the faith “once and for all delivered to the saints.”

I have written about this secularization particularly in my articles on a One-Storey Universe versus a Two-Storey Universe. The point of that metaphorical distinction is to help us think about the consequences of modern secularized thought. As I have noted before, the primary religious effect of secularized thought (which is the mindset of a majority of modern Christians) is to exile God from what we think of as the “ordinary” world. Strictly chronological thought about time (including the end-times) is a secularization of time. God becomes an actor in history, but history remains somehow inert. Time is not effected by its encounter with God (in the modern secularized account).

The clear Biblical and Gospel teaching is that the Kingdom of God has as much effect on time as it has on everything else in our world. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. When He stands of the stage of history, the very End of history is standing in our midst. It is not merely 33 A.D., it is the fulfillment of all things. Thus, Christ does not say, “Before Abraham was I was or I existed,” but rather, “Before Abraham was I am.” There is a world of difference.

Christians themselves are not purely confined to chronological time. “We have been translated into the kingdom of His dear son” (Col. 1:13). This is not something we are waiting to see happen - it has already been accomplished. Of course there is also our experience of praying, “Thy Kingdom come,” and for a fulfillment that we await, and yet we already have a “foretaste” of that Kingdom, in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Indeed the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst takes us “out of time” or rather brings us into the “time of the Kingdom.” The Eucharistic meal that Christians eat, is not a chronological event in which we “remember” something that is past. It is the Messianic Banquet; Christ is truly present on the altar. The Body and Blood of Christ which we take into our mouths belongs not only to our time but also to the “time” of the Kingdom.

Of course there is a chronological time in which we live - and yet that time has been altered and revealed as a sacrament of the Kingdom in the coming of Christ. Every minute is a Spirit-bearing minute and not merely a tick on a clock.

We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain. For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation (2 Cor. 6:1-2).

These verses carry more meaning than simply “you should convert today.” The “accepted” time and the “day of salvation” are also eschatological events - our end has come upon us now.

The tragedy of living in two-storey chronological time (first storey is chronological, second storey is timeless), is that we fail to see the true character of every moment now. We waste our time reading newspapers and wondering about events in the mid-East, as though any of that would tell us something about the Kingdom of God. People live secularized lives, just “marking time” waiting to be raptured out of this wicked world so that God’s great plan for the end of the world can take place.

The truth about the end times is that Christ Himself is the End. ”Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).

I am an Orthodox Christian. I believe in the Second Coming. “He shall come again to judge the living and the dead.” But the One who is coming is none other than the One in Whom I partake at every Eucharist. He is none other than the One Whom I am called to serve in the “least of these my brethren.” Such things are “eschatological” moments. Better to serve Christ in the least of these than to waste time thinking about Bible prophecy and the pattern of events at the end of the world. It will come as a thief in the night, anyway. And if we are not serving Him in the least of His brethren we will be found to have no oil in our lamps.

In case of the rapture, everything will be unmanned. For when Christ comes, He will come to judge the whole earth. Most importantly, we should learn to see time as it truly is - as it is being transformed by the Lord of time and is itself a vehicle, a sacrament of His presence. Now is indeed the Day of Salvation.

This entry was posted on March 28, 2008 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Conversion, Culture, Orthodox Christianity, Orthodox Doctrine, Scripture, The Church, The Sacraments, knowledge of God, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/29/2008 11:12:59 PM (GMT-5)

Why is it that we need to explain away what we actually see in scripture and adhere to a failed conceptualization of a mystic idea that time is not simply as we experience it?

In 2002 I started a post called, simply "Time" which explained this very easily.

But here, you jump to someone's early guesses about potential theories that might somday become a real theory of something we will never be able to prove at all. While I like string theory, jumping at someone's idea that there might be another time dimension to escape the simple reality of what time is cannot be justified.

Time exists just as we experience it, moment by moment and God experiences it exactly as we do. You can't go forward or back, it is directly linear. There is no evidence to the contrary.

I don't think it can be said any more clearly and more simpler than that, Ronald. But it doesn't hit home! Folk still insist...

"But it's God we're talking about. He's just GOT to exist outside of time as we understand it." And we might as well finish what they mean by this: "Therefore it's appropriate to come up with time theories of the which no one has ever proven."

It's the same with the common sense behind saying that someone has freewill and at the same time saying that God knows from eternity past on into eternity forward everything that person will think, say or do, but then not explain "how" it is that God knows this when there's no evidence to suggest He possibly could... "But He's God. He's just GOT to know that information." And, as we did with the time issue, let's finishe what is also meant: "Therefore, it's appropriate to come up with all kinds of theories about how God knows this information, of the which we have no proof, whatsoever, that any of these theories are true. It doesn't matter that life itself is pretty clear about the matter."

Funny, but every Hollywood time-travel flick comes up against the reality of this world, time as we understand it, and no way to combat it. In "Back to the Future," Marty eventually learns that the future is what He will make it. It's not set. In Minority Report, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) discovers from a Pre-Cog herself that John doesn't have to murder anyone; he can change his future, despite what the Pre-Cogs said, and this information coming from a Pre-Cog who was never wrong (unless there was a minority report about the crime to be commited, and there was no report for Anderton). After all is said and done, Anderton didn't have to kill anyone, it having been, however, a rock-solid fact that he was going to kill someone. Even Hollywood can't get around the matter of it being the case that no one can ever tell you everything you will ever think, say and do, not even God (who would never be foolish enough to attempt such a feat). But...

"He's God. He just HAS to know this information" seems to be the thread most commonly woven into the fabric of what is otherwise a nice peice of common sense tapestry.   

Amazing.

For sequencing with God,

Starkman

HandCarved: I think that its openness theology's assumed ontology of time where the theory breaks down. The entire Open Theist position stands or falls on the nature of time, and since time is such an incredibly complex and elusive subject of inquiry, it is a rather fragile crux. [my emphasis]

Tom: HC, your argument here, if true, applies to your own, indeed every, theological position relevant to time. If the open view stands or falls on the nature of time, and if it falls (as you argue) “since time is such an incredibly complex and elusive subject,” then your own view collapses as well, since time’s being incredibly complex and elusive is just as true for YOU as it is for open theists. That is, you dismiss the open view based on its view of time (viz., presentism, the view of time to which most but not all open theists hold) because “time is complex and elusive.” But then you immediately exempt yourself from the consequences of time’s being complex and elusive and go on to offer your own (hardly intelligible) view of time.

At the very least, if time is THAT complex and elusive, then we're all pretty much in the same boat--doing the best we can.

I’ll have to side with Similitude (Jeff) again. Touche.

HandCarved: The Openness ontology of time was one they developed by looking at the biblical texts.

Tom: Well, one can argue that presentism is consistent with the Bible. But open theists have never “developed” an ontology of time unique to open theism. So I’m not sure what you even mean there. We (most of us) in fact adopt standard presentism, a secular and well-known view of time that makes zero appeal to the Bible.

HandCarved: It is what they think answers more problems than any other view.

Tom: Big deal? EVERYBODY embraces WHATEVER view of time (or any belief at all) they hold to (you included) because they think their view answers more problems than any other view. If we didn’t think our beliefs answered more problems than contrary beliefs, our beliefs would be irrational, for we’d have NO reason to prefer one belief over another. The explanatory power of particular views is a reason we ALL appeal to.

HandCarved: By "supra-temporal" what I mean is that God is not "timeless" or "atemporal". Rather, God can transcend our own spatio-temporality. Some string physicists suggest that as there are likely more than 3 space dimensions, and there may also be more than 1 time dimension. If such was the case, then God could both place his perspective within, and experience our own temporality in a similar way that a person looking down on a labyrinth from a high place might come down from his "all-pervading" perspective to the planar level, and experience the restricted perspective of being on the ground within the walls of the labyrinth. To extend that analogy, then, God could also go back up to that high position to see whatever he wants, and then return to the planar level. In other words, God could come into our experience of time, and then "peek" into the future whenever. It is--like all analogies--an imperfect analogy, but helpful.

Tom: I tried for some time to give this view of time (similar if not the same view as Hugh Ross’s) some meaning. But I now find it an utterly incoherent especially WHEN you start attempting to apply it to agency, accountability, relationality, providence, etc. The analogies you offer are, so far as I can tell, vacuous. They’re just Sci-fi imaginations: peeking into the future, backing into the labyrinth, experiencing our temporality yet from his ‘all-prevading’ perspective. Does anybody really know what’s even being said here? Are these really analogies?

A word about analogies. Analogies are supposed to be REAL LIFE experiences, CONCRETE examples that we immediately understand (because we experience them). These then are brought alongside an argument to help give us a way to picture, as it were, the more difficult, foreign thought being offered. I don’t find your analogies at all clarifying.

D and B, I think my view on time is what will really keep me distant from Eastern Orthodoxy. Kairos now? Sure, that’s called presentism. I think time is a good thing. I don’t think it’s “broken” or needs “fixing” at all. I think it’s fine just the way it is. And until somebody can convince me otherwise, I’m inclined to conclude that time (or if you prefer Starky’s ‘sequence’) is a natural consequence of the divine life, not a created thing at all.

Peace out,

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 4/30/2008 6:27:37 PM (GMT-5)