Does God experience time?
Or does he experience the entire fourth dimension in one grand sweep, the way we are capable of experiencing three dimensions at once?
If this were so, then it would be obvious why God is able to know the future: because He is already there, at precisely the same time that He is telling us about it. The famous "a thousand years is like one day, and one day like a thousand years" would then be literally true.
In that case, how does He decide? A decision, after all, is tied to time; it involves a before and after. If He decides to do something, does the eternity thereafter get erased as fast as a snap of the fingers, and a new one written down even faster? Is He an artist constructing a novel, a plot line that leads to the greatest joy for His people?
And if God experiences everything at once, then what is the present? Can there be multiple presents? Maybe my great-grandparents are alive right now, experiencing a present that is 80 years prior to mine. Maybe Adam and Eve did die the day they ate the fruit.
Time-travel would be possible as soon as scientists figure out how to jump from one present to another. Of course, since this whole God-is-outside-of-time thing presumes God exists, then we'd have to consider whether He'd want time-travel to happen: we wouldn't want sin spreading to all eternity, would we?
If time is the fourth dimension, what is the fifth? Some crazy fantasy novel I read once said it was dreams. (Foolish writer.) Would God be bound to the fifth dimension the same way we are bound to experience time, moment by moment? But then this presumes that God is bound by the laws of nature, and we know that isn't the case. Perhaps it is the sixth dimension that binds Him?
Decisions require a dimension to take place in. Can I say that God must either be bound by a dimension, or must not be able to make decisions?
Perhaps this dimensional stuff is foolishness, and that time and space really aren't all that related. Perhaps they're just human constructs for the world we find around us, that attempt to explain what we find, but are not actually what we find.
The oceans of mystery beyond the island of human knowledge are vast and deep indeed.
"Who am I, that I should go before Pharoah?" (Moses)
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5 comments:
God knows the future? Are you sure?
Ever heard of prophecy? Some of that stuff is just crazy. Of course, it's entirely possible that He tells us what the future is because, as all-powerful God, He is capable of enacting it at the proper time. Hmmm... this sounds like a future blog post.
But what about the times when She has changed Her mind? :)
It's not that I think God is a He. I'm sure that God is perfectly asexual. I just prefer "He" to "It."
You could just eliminate the pronoun. Or alternate between "He" and "She." Or use "He/She" alternating with "She/He." Or even S/He, like some people do (though I don't particularly like that one). There are lots of ways of making it apatriarchal. :D
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