Monday Munchies...Food for Thought: Space-Time Continuum?
Ok, so my last few munchies have been very controversial, some more so than I thought they would be. I hope they have inspired much thought, questioning, and eventually more faith. So with that being the objective of my blog, I’m gonna veer a little away from controversial (at least I think I will) and introduce some of my theology. It is important to note that my theology is just that, my theology. It has been influenced by my experiences and relationships and IS NOT GOSPEL. I don’t think it contradicts anything in the bible, but it’s not entirely scripturally based.
Today’s focus is God and the space-time continuum. But it has to start again with determinism and free will. I used to have a very hard time understanding how God is Omnipotent and we have free will. They didn’t logically coexist for me…in fact, they still don’t. But thanks to some insights from one of my favorite theologians, C. S. Lewis, I began to understand.
He explained it as God sees time and space all at once. He sees future, past, present at the same time. (I go into a little more depth will illustrations about lines and geography in my free will v. determinism Monday Munchies.) This satisfies for me the determinism/free will struggle. However, for this to be true God has to exist outside of the space time continuum. Ok, fine. If God exists outside of the space time continuum though how can He affect what goes on inside the space time continuum? Thankfully, God is also all powerful. Being all powerful means that there is nothing God cannot do. This allows God to exist both in the space time continuum and outside the space time continuum. This means that God can affect the space time continuum. On a side note that’s only somewhat related…God can be both metaphysical and physical at the same time as well.
I’m honestly not sure how good of a job I did on explaining this, and honestly I’m not sure how much I understand it. But this is a little glimpse of my theology and understanding about God. If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer, I usually try not to respond to my own posts, but seein’ as how this is my theology, I’ll answer for it. If you think I’m wrong, right, crazy, or just confused, let me know, and I’ll holler at y’all next week.
9 comments:
Hey it's that random down under girl again...I have two questions - 1) I was lost with the whole time/space continuum idea - like is the time/space continuum everything? And how can you be inside/outside it? And 2) What exactly is 'theology'? Is it just a smart way of talking about God?
first off, good questions. I'll answer the simple one first. Theology is a branch of philosophy that deals with God. Philosophy means "love of wisdom" and it is basicly a way of figureing things out through thinking. Theology breaks down in greek to "Study of God"...logy means "study of" and Theos means "God". I hope that answers that.
Now, to the hard stuff. The Space Time Continuum is what we know as the physical universe. There are 4 physical deminisons that we know of, Up/down, left/right, foward/backward, and time. It basiclly means that these are ways we can move (in time we can only move foward...time travel is a subject I'm not sure I'll ever get to talk about here). Now, Einstien (spelling?) believed that space and time, or all four dimensions are connected, and that is where the idea of a space time conituum came from. To say that God can see the whole thing is comparable to you looking at a line. You know that between two points on a line, are infinte number of points, and sense how you can see the line, you can technically see all those points. Now, because God is all powerful, He can differentiate between all those infinate points on the Space Time Continuum line. This is very complicated stuff, and probably a little over my head, but I hope I'm being helpful. Now then, in order for you to be able to see that line, you cannot be on that line. You can only see it all when you can look at it. So in short, you can't be outside of it, because its where you exist. God exists both inside and out of it, so He isn't constrained by it, and He is able to influence it. Kinda like the Matrix (sorry for a movie analogy) but Neo and the humans existed outside of the Matrix, yet were able to interact and influence things inside the matrix. I realize if you haven't seen that movie, you're lost. Its a pretty good movie though, rent it if you haven't seen it.
Before I start to ramble any more, I'll just hope that did a good job of addressing your question. If not, hold me to it, ask again till I get your questions answered.
Great stuff Aaron. I'd say I have to agree with everything. Makes sense to me, and the Matrix analogy really does do a good job of helping to see this whole idea somewhat more tangibly. Crazy stuff to think about God and how he sees and interacts with His creation.
Yeah and nice attempt to answer the questions. Not very easy to explain the whole time/space continuum since its like way out there in the whole thinking realm. So here are a couple articles about the whole Space-Time Contiuum.
Wikipedia Article on topic: Space-Time
Albert Einstein's articleon space-time in the 13th edition of the Encyclopdia Britannica.
"No wise, magician, or fortune-teller can explain to the king the secret he has asked about. But there is a God in heaven who explains secret things..."
~Daniel 2:27-28
Guys don't waste your time on such petty thoughts, instead entrust your life to God so that He can show the path of righteousness and the road to Zion!!!
Mike I beg to differ. I don't think this is such a "petty" thing afterall. Afterall this is closely related to determinism/election/ free will/ and the character of God. Since when is trying to understand the character and nature of God petty? And if there is a God in heaven who explains things as the verse you quoted mentions, should we not then seek him and try to understand Him? Thinking about these things leads us to greater faith in Christ something I would not consider petty.
Some good thoughts so far.
I might have to disagree with you on this one Mike. I think theology is very important to the Christian walk. If theology means thinking about God and studying God what could be wrong about that right? God is not incomprehensible, yet he is not fully knowable. He is both. (Job 11:7, Isaiah 40:18, John 14:7: 17:3, 1 John 5:20) Paul teaches us to keep sound doctrine and be able to refute those who oppose it (Titus 1:9, 2 Tim 4:3), and he constantly prays that we would grow more in our knowledge of God, because he knows this results in holy living. (Phil 1:9) And this, like what Jim said, can strengthen our faith, and help make us more prepared to share our faith or defend our faith. (1 Peter 3:15) But we will not be able to fully understand some aspects of God because we are not God.
Now about the time-space thing, I agree with everything said and I had a few thoughts and maybe a different way of looking at it, maybe it’s the same I don’t know. I’ve spent four years of college trying to understand physical things and I thought it would be cool to see how the space-time continuum and special relativity could help understand the way God views time.
Einstein (the 2nd smartest person in history, Newton was the smartest, still debated but my opinion) found that Newton’s universal law of gravity broke down in certain situations and it couldn’t explain or predict for example the motion of light around massive objects. What he came up with was Special Relativity. Later he united S.R. and Newton’s law of gravity with his theory of General Relativity.
General Relativity says that time and spaces are woven together in our physical world. When space and time are used to describe an event, they can’t be separated. Basically saying that time is useless unless there is space, and space is useless unless there is time.
Special Relativity deals with describing motion around immense gravity fields or extreme velocities (light speed). S.R. says that a universal time component is not necessary to describe an event in space. One effect of S.R is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and when you approach that limit several things happen. The one I am gonna talk about is time dilation. When you approach light speed time slows down (to a stop), but this only happens in a reference frame from outside of the motion. Say if you were running at the speed of light, time would not slow down to you, but it would to your friend watching you (not his time but your time).
Now how does this apply to God? It really doesn’t I’m just trying to explain the way God works using this as an analogy.
S.R. says that there is no absolute reference frame. An absolute reference frame is one where everything is stationary from your point of view. In our world, everything moves relative to something else. Jack and Jill run toward each other, the other person is moving relative to the other persons reference frame. You are standing still but the earth is still moving.
What if we applied the miraculous to this physical concept and said God had an absolute reference frame. Kind of like God views everything traveling at the speed of light, and since he is outside of the reference frame, time appears to be stopped. In this frame, time is stopped and he can go back in time or stay in the present moment for a while. But since he is God he is able to jump reference frames into our reference frame. Here time is moving as we know it, and he can influence it also.
I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I was just gonna make an analogy with S.R. and how it might help understand the whole time thing. I’m not saying it works like this because God can work how he wants to. I just think it is cool that God is such an all knowing and all powerful God. And things in nature can help give us a glimpse of his Glory and nature. Another example is the wave-particle duality of light, which ironically was started by Newton and finished by Einstein. Newton found that light acted like a wave and Einstein found that it acted like a particle also. Einstein went on to figure out that it was both at the same time. Kind of gives a natural glimpse to the Divine/Human nature of Jesus.
I think Josh McDowell and maybe C.S. Lewis used this analogy and I think it is one of the best ones I’ve heard. Say you’re reading a book, The Chronicles of Narnia for example. As you read Narnia you take yourself into the Narnian time-frame and you are apart of their time as it happens. When one of the battles is about to take place, the reader can stop reading and take their self out of the Narnian time-frame. There the reader can turn back pages and read stuff that happened in the past, or ponder on the present events for as long as he wants, or since the story is finished in the readers reference frame, he could flip forward to the future and see what happens. Time in Narnia is still going on the same. The reader is not bound by Narnian time and can jump back and forth if he pleases. Now this is close, but with God when he steps out of Narnian time, he doesn’t step into another time frame. He is above time, unlike the reader who steps out and is in human time now. God sees all time at once, past, present and future, and doesn’t have to flip the pages back and forth like the human reader.
To me that makes a lot of sense, as did some of Aarons analogies. Now that God is not hurried like we are time wise, He has infinite amount of time to spare and devote to each person. Think about that, it blows my mind. When you pray to him its like you’re the only one praying to Him and he can spend all the time he wants listening to that one prayer. That makes Jesus so personal that it is hard to comprehend, and makes the cross all the more powerful.
Love it Johnny, especially that last paragraph. A God who devotes eternity to you! How awsome! What an amazing God we serve.
Time, I think is one of those aspects that we will never fully be able to grasp.
Kinda like the Trinity. We are told very little, but our minds cannot wrap around the concept of the Trinity.
We may have incremented time and we may use it for many scientific calculations and measurements, is what separates us between our physical death in this world and the rest of eternity with God.
8But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. (2 Peter 3:8)
*Time* is what separates us between our physical death in this world and the rest of eternity with God.
Sorry... typo.
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