Thinking Outside the Universe: Part 2 of 6 - Time

 

Chapter 2 – Time

In the previous chapter, I wrote about something (God) which is outside the universe. Now before we talk about anything else that is outside the universe, I want to write about something that is not outside the universe, though we often treat it like it is. Time is not outside the universe. Time is part of the universe. Time was created by God.

     The problem is that from our point of view, time proceeds in a steady rate in one direction – it is as close as anything can come to be an absolute fixed standard. It seems from our imagination that time could, in theory, go forward in the same direction forever, though it is harder to imagine how it could have gone on backward to an infinite past. But this imagination is all wrong, and it’s because our perspective is too small. If I look out the window, the world sure looks flat - but it’s not. In the same way, time is not an absolute, and things outside the universe, like God, do not live under its constraints. I’m going to offer some arguments for this point from the Bible and also from science, but before I do, I’d like to illustrate it by an analogy.

     Many readers will be familiar with The Lord of the Rings, the book series by J.R.R. Tolkien, which was also made into a movie trilogy. In The Lord of the Rings, there was a timeline of events happening in what was called middle-earth. Early in the first book of the Trilogy, Bilbo the Hobbit celebrates his 111^th birthday. So here is a question: if Bilbo was 111 years old early in the book, was Bilbo born before or after J.R.R. Tolkien fought in the First World War Battle of the Somme? Hopefully the reader will realize that the question is nonsense. Tolkien doesn’t live under the timeline he created for The Lord of the Rings. In the same way, God doesn’t live under the timeline he created for the universe. We are like the characters in the book. God is like the author.

Now as to arguments – in the previous chapter I started with God, so this time I’m going to start with science. We may feel like time is a universal absolute, a constant, but it is not. If the reader has a handle on how time is addressed in Einstein’s theories of Special Relativity and General Relativity, then this will be familiar. If not, I’m not going to explain all about relativity, not even close - but I would like to describe just a few things about how time is relative.

    According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, time varies based on speed. If there were two 20 year-old twins, and one got on a spaceship that traveled far faster than any we have today, so fast that it got to a significant percentage of the speed of light, what would happen? When the twin from the spacecraft returned and met his twin who didn’t travel, the twin in the spacecraft would be younger than the twin who stayed at home. It is possible that the home-bound twin would be 60 years old, while the traveling twin would be 30 years old. The clock the twin kept on the spacecraft would also log only 10 years worth of activities, while the clock that stayed home would record 40. Time is running at different rates for the two twin brothers.

     There is also general relativity (different from special relativity), which indicates that time is relative based on the force of gravity. This time let’s put the two twins in two different spaceships and have one of them fly in the direction of a black hole – a super-massive object which, if you get too close, will not even let light escape its gravity. The twin in the spacecraft not approaching the black hole will perceive that his brother’s spacecraft is moving slower and slower, but it will never look like he gets all the way to the event horizon of the black hole (an event horizon is the point at which light can’t get out.) At the same time, the twin in the spacecraft approaching the black hole will look back at his brother who is staying away, and if he could see clearly, he would watch his brother rapidly grow old and die. Time is running at different rates for the two twin brothers.

     Some readers may look doubtfully on this discussion, since relativity is hard to understand and sometimes we get suspicious of things we don’t really understand. A further complication is that these are the “theories” of relativity, and theories may eventually be shown to be wrong. That might happen with relativity, but I want you to know that they won’t be wrong in a way that meaningfully refutes what I just described – if they are wrong it will be because they don’t work completely at the quantum level or something like that. As far as we know now, the theory of relativity not only is right, but we have to adjust for it in the real world.

     One good example is the GPS satellite system. If you have a smartphone and use the map function for directions, you use this system. The GPS satellite system is a network of 24 satellites orbiting the earth. Because satellites in space are moving at a higher speed relative to where we are on earth, clocks on a GPS satellite run 7 microseconds slower per day than clocks on earth due to special relativity. However, because we on earth are closer to the earth’s center and subject to a greater force of gravity than the satellites are, clocks on a GPS satellite run 45 microseconds a day faster than clocks on earth. In short, clocks on a satellite run 45 microseconds faster because of gravity minus 7 microseconds slower because of motion, or 38 microseconds a day faster than clocks on earth. GPS satellites are programmed to make this 38 microsecond adjustment due to relativity. If they did not make this adjustment, the way the GPS network works, your smartphone directions would drift off by more than a whopping 6 miles per day. Time relativity is true.

You may have seen the scene. Flight controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wait with baited breath to see if their spaceship lands safely on Mars. They’ve been working on their project for years, and now it all depends on whether or not the spacecraft can make it through the thin Mars atmosphere and land safely without having a fatal crash. It’s not the first time we’ve tried this, and it doesn’t always work. This time the spacecraft lands safely and sends a signal back home. Everyone cheers. But the funny thing is, when everyone cheers, it’s not for something that just happened. They are cheering for something that happened 12 minutes earlier. Depending on where Mars is in relation to Earth, it takes at least 6 minutes for the electronic signal to get here, and if Mars is on the far side of the sun, it can take more than 20 minutes. Nothing goes faster than the speed of light, so it takes time for information to get to us. The sun may have blown up seven minutes ago, but we wouldn’t know it for another minute yet. When we look at stars that are farther away, we are not seeing them the way they are today. We are only now seeing what they looked like long ago.

So how fast do the clocks run from God’s perspective? Which of the twin’s times applies? When does God see things happen in the universe? I think a Christian or most any theist would have to agree that God sees things differently than we do with regard to time. If we see something far away, like a star, we are not seeing the present, but rather the distant past. Christians believe God is omni-present, that is, everywhere at once. An omni-present God would at least see everything when it actually happens. But if we understand that God is outside the universe, we should also understand that he is outside of time entirely. Trying to ask when something happened for God makes no more sense than comparing a timeline of J.R.R Tolkien’s life with the timeline for life of Bilbo Baggins.

In the Bible, there are several passages that also seem to indicate that God is outside of the timeline for the universe, and that people who have died, or any spiritual being who is with God, is outside that timeline as well. In John 8:56, Jesus says to the Pharisees, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” Think for a minute about the verb tenses in that sentence (Abraham had died almost 2000 years before). It confused the listeners too (look it up for context). Jesus doubled down a minute later saying, “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

Understanding that God does not live under the timeline of the universe may help us to better understand some difficult points in the Bible and in Christian theology. I’ll give several examples.

In Christian theology, it is commonly understood that Satan and demons are fallen angels. However, Christians often are unclear on this concept if they have to discuss when this fall took place. In some ways, it seems like it should be before creation and certainly before the fall of man, but it doesn’t seem like there is enough time there to let that happen. Later, in Revelation 12, the last book of the Bible, John sees a vision of this fall happening (not past tense) and it’s all wrapped up in the last times. As long as we understand that what happened with Satan getting kicked out of heaven was something outside the physical universe, then we should also understand that it was outside of time as we know it. The question as to when it happened becomes meaningless.

In Luke 23:43, Jesus, who is being crucified and is about to die, says to the thief crucified on the cross next to him “Today you will be with me in paradise.” This verse has been rightly reassuring to Christians as it holds out the promise that if we are absent from the body we are present with the Lord. At the same time, it has been confusing. For one thing, Christian theology doesn’t exactly have Jesus going to paradise during the time frame between his crucifixion and resurrection, (“he descended into Hades” – the Apostle’s Creed). Even more confusing is that the clear teaching of the Bible and all Christian churches is that we are promised a resurrection of the body at the last day. So we end up imagining a situation where someone dies and his soul or spirit goes to be with the Lord, then at the last day it makes a comeback to get back into the original body but in a resurrected/glorified form. I’m not saying that idea is entirely wrong, I’m just saying that the only part of it that is confusing is that part that pertains to time, and time with the Lord is not the same as it is for us who are still entirely inside the physical universe.

Perhaps this understanding of time being part of the universe and God being outside of the universe could also shed some light on the complex topic of reconciling God’s foreknowledge and man’s free will. That’s far too deep a topic to get into here, but I offer it as a thing to think about.

Thinking Outside the Universe: Part 1 of 6 - God

Introduction

On a normal afternoon on a normal day, a small meteorite arrived. When it flashed into our atmosphere, it was large enough not to burn up, but not so large as to do any damage. It left a small crater where it landed in a wooded forest. The crater was soon filled in by the effects of weather, and eventually moss and mold grew on the meteorite with wild grasses around it. Over time, the forest completely assimilated its visitor, so that it looked like any other rock on the forest floor. Only with the most careful analysis could anyone learn that the rock did not belong to our earth at all – that it was an alien belonging to an ancient comet from the far reaches of the solar system.

     The famous American scientist Carl Sagan said “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” [Opening his series, Cosmos] I believe Carl Sagan was wrong. Like the meteorite in this parable, I believe our universe has co-opted a number of things that don’t belong to our universe at all – things that are now in our universe but originated outside of it. The purpose of this book is to explore some of those things. We won’t discover them all, and they’re not all the same size, but I do think we can discover a few of them.

     Here are some terms I’m going to use. Naturalism is the term I’m going to use to describe the viewpoint of Carl Sagan – the view that the cosmos, or nature, is all that exists. The expected term to use to describe things outside of the universe, or outside of nature, would be supernatural. However, I don’t want to use supernatural, since that term tends to make people think of God and ghosts and not much else. It’s not that supernatural is wrong, but it may give the reader a misleading feeling. Instead, I want to use the word extra-natural. Some of the things we think are very normal are actually extra-natural.

Chapter 1 – God

I have to start with God. I toyed with the idea of writing about some of the other topics first, but it didn’t work – they all end up dragging God into the picture at an early stage. Now if the reader is not a theist, you could go ahead and skip to a later chapter, but the problem is that God will always be the elephant in the room, and it’s way too awkward to ignore the elephant. I am not going to try.

The God that I am going to talk about is the Christian God. Most of what I say applies to God as described in any of the major monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but I am a Christian and I am writing from a Christian perspective. I am definitely not talking about the god of any pantheistic religion, like Hinduism or some of the other eastern religions. In those religions, God is part of the universe, or everything in the universe makes up God, or something like that. Although I called those eastern religions, they haven’t stayed in the east. The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza was a 17^th century rationalist who advocated pantheism. More recently, the Star Wars movies (which I loved) brought this idea into popular western culture with the concept of “The Force.” “Life creates it” they said about the force, and so on. It was part of the universe. That kind of pantheistic god or force has a lot of appeal nowadays, because it doesn’t make any moral demands on you. You can call on it when you need to and forget about it when you want to. It’s a very convenient god, but it isn’t truth, and so we are going to set it aside for the remainder of this book. The God I’m talking about is the Christian God, and He is outside the universe.

God exists outside of the universe. The Bible begins by saying “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) The Bible teaches that God made the universe. He is not the universe and He is not dependent on it.

For the Christian reader, I want to say that what I am saying about God is not some novel or private interpretation. Although the ancients didn’t usually talk in the same terms I am using in this book, it is very consistent with what they believed. To demonstrate this, I’d like to quote a few lines from the Nicene Creed as amended in 381. This is one of the oldest Christian creeds and is held as reliable in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches. The Nicene Creed begins:

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.”

This line states that God is the creator of heaven and earth – he is not part of it; but rather he made it. The scope of what He made includes “all things visible and invisible.” The creed continues:

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made.”

The main reason the Nicene Creed was developed was to establish a proper understanding of the person of Jesus Christ. The creed says that Jesus was not created but “begotten,” and this “before all worlds.” Using the best terminology they could find, this not only makes Jesus co-equal with the Father, but it places Jesus outside the universe.

“who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man;”

This phrase saying Jesus “came down from heaven” addresses the great Christian doctrine of the incarnation – God who created the universe entering into the universe and becoming a human being. Using the language of the introduction to this book, Jesus was by far the largest meteorite that ever came to be part of our own earth.

“we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”

These words indicate that the Christian church is looking in faith for something to happen that does not happen in this universe. We don’t currently have any resurrections or lives to come. That’s not a part of this universe, but it is part of the Christian faith.

The Rise and Fall of Christendom 2D - The Coming of the Priests

From the coming of Christendom through a period extending for more than a thousand years, most of the leaders of the Christian faith at one time or another carried the title of "priest." This continues today in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches of Christianity. I do not want to disparage those individuals, many of whom were and are faithful followers of Christ. It would have been nearly impossible for them to serve without being set apart to a unique calling as a priest. When I was a youth, there was a priest who treated me with a kindness and Christian maturity that I did not exactly reciprocate. I still have a Bible he gave me. So I wouldn't want what I am about to write to be misunderstood as an expression of hostility toward anyone who is a priest. It's just that unfortunately, the creation of the priest as a church officer was a major error.

     A priest is an individual who serves as a mediator between God and man. In a religion with priests, it is not possible for a regular person to have direct access to God; it is necessary to go through the priest, or at least to have the priest perform some service to allow access. This role of the priest is well-defined in the Old Testament and was practiced in Judaism at that time (though not today) and is also reflected in many other religions in the world, including pagan and folk religions.

     However, the New Testament teaches that all believers are priests (1 Peter 2:4-9, Revelation 1:6, 5:10, 20:6). It teaches that Jesus himself is the Great High Priest who acts as a mediator between God and man and through whom man has direct access to the throne of God (Hebrew 4:14-16). The New Testament does not envision any role for a human priest as a church leader; church leaders were given different titles, such as elders, pastors, apostles, etc. but not priests.

     If it was merely a matter of a title it would not have been so bad, but priests under Christendom eventually did begin to serve in a role as a mediator between God and man, and this was a very bad thing. Forgiveness of sins required giving a confession to a priest. Rather than repentance, a priest could assign someone to "do penance." Eventually, the practice of indulgences arose, where forgiveness could be bought with money.

     The designation of some individuals as priest also led to a sharp hierarchy in the church which even many protestants that shook off the concept of priests have not been able to avoid. The church leaders became professional Christians, while the laity were merely amateurs. The amateurs did not feel required to be as committed as the professionals: they did not need to learn the Bible or practice the more advanced functions of the professional members of the faith. Conversely, professionals will usually not feel there is anything to learn from amateurs. This amateur/professional division was a factor in curtailing the missionary imperative that initially drove the spread of the faith. 

     The Protestant Reformation, beginning in 1517, served to undo some of the harm. In fact, the reformation even helped reform the Catholic churches to an extent, as indulgences and some other excesses are no longer practiced in Catholicism.

     It is not certain how much of a role Christendom itself served in the rise of the priests. Perhaps this was a historical development that would have happened even outside of a state church and its coming was just coincident with the rise of Christendom. But whether or not Christendom was the cause or whether it just happened at the same time, the office of a priest was a mistake.

The Rise and Fall of Christendom 2C - Lost in Church

Lost in Church

Though Christendom brought many blessings to the world, from a Christian standpoint, it also came with drawbacks. The most glaring drawback was the ease with which people could be in the church, yet lost. When Constantine had his legions mark their shields with the chi-rho symbol, all those soldiers became Christians – sort of. Officially. But did any of those men come to a sincere faith in Jesus Christ? A few? How many? Christendom created a new social structure in which everyone (except for the Jews) was judged to be a Christian, and sometimes even a church member, at birth. This identification was sealed by infant baptism. The situation was analogous to Judaism and Islam, where everyone born as a Jew is considered to be a Jew and everyone who is born a Moslem is considered to be a Moslem. Yet this kind of Christian identification based on a first birth is alien to the New Testament’s teaching. How many citizens of Christendom were actually born again? For a believer today, it hurts to even think about the question. Some evangelicals today consider the “lost in church” aspect of Christendom to be so serious that its fall is considered no great loss, since “they weren’t saved anyway.”

     The idea of Christian identification at birth is still present today, not so much in any Christendom-like environment, but among Islamic countries where Christians are a recognized minority. They were born in Islamic countries but they are not Moslems, therefore they are considered Christians. Whether or not they have a relationship with Christ is another matter altogether.

The Rise and Fall of Christendom 2B - Canon and Creeds

Canon and Creeds

During the earliest period of Christendom, agreement crystallized on which books belonged in the New Testament canon. In 383, Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome to translate the Bible into Latin, and Jerome’s work, the Vulgate, served as the primary Christian Bible for more than 1000 years. The Synod of Hippo (393) and the Synod of Carthage (397), convened by Saint Augustine, formalized the 27 books of the New Testament as scripture.

     Christendom gave authority to church councils which had an enormous influence in the shape of Christian doctrine over the ages. The earliest of these may have been the most important. The Council of Nicaea in 325 served primarily to slap down the heresy of Arianism, the idea that Jesus Christ was not fully divine. It endorsed the doctrine of the Trinity, a doctrine now held by Christian churches of all denominations. It says:

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the father; from thence he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead. ; whose kingdom shall have no end. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets. In one holy catholic and apostolic church; we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.” [The Nicene Creed of 325, as amended by the First Council of Constantinople in 381]

     A second important creed, the Apostle’s Creed, would appear in 390, though its origins may have been earlier. It reads:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of the saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen [Translation by International Consultation on English Texts, Fortress Press 1970]

     The Nicene and Apostle’s Creeds have stood the test of time. Today, even church denominations that shy away from creeds, like the Baptists (who like to say “No creed but the Bible”), would generally consider denial of the tenets of these creeds as being out of bounds.

     The weight of Christendom lessened what had previously been a situation where numerous heretical views ran amuck. Christian missionaries eventually converted most of the Arians to Nicene Christianity. Christendom was less successful in combating errant teaching that had crept in before Constantine. Even before Christendom, veneration of Mary had begun, and by the 5^th century Christians were praying to Saints.