"In the eminence of your ever-present eternity, you precede all times past, and extend beyond all future times, for they are still to come - and when they have come, they will be past. But "you are always the selfsame and your years shall have no end." Your years neither go nor come; but ours both come and go and come in order in order that all separate moments may come to pass. All your years stand together as one, since they are abiding. Nor do your years past exclude the years to come because your years do not pass away... Your years are but a day, and your day is not recurrent, but always today. Your today yields not to tomorrow and does not follow yesterday. Your today is eternity." Augustine, Confessions
Eternity... not infinite time-this is different. Infinite time comes and passes in moments, as Augustine mentions, but eternity does not. It is infinite time contained in a moment-but even that is not helpful, because we really aren't addressing time at all. God created time, therefore He is not bounded by it. He is outside of time. I only use phrases such as "infinite time" because we can only imagine time (sidenote: even "infinite" is misleading, as it is technically a counting term-although you cannot "count up to" infinity, you can approach infinity...there is no way to approach eternity). We have no category for non-time, yet that is exactly what we need. I think God is experiencing every moment of history right now (though "right now" too is only a convention of speech, and not a very helpful one- there is no "right now," no "then," no "was," no "will be,"-all is "now," is "present"-as much as such temporal terms are helpful) and that is why heaven will be so blessed -- imagine the compounded joy of every happy moment you have ever spent piled on top of each other, multiplied by infinity, experienced for your entire life and you have a small picture of what heaven will be like!
Let me try to rephrase Augustine for a minute, and see if this helps, for "in the multitude of [words] is found wisdom" (sometimes :-) - the original was "advisors"). It is very difficult to explain in words what must be grasped intuitively by the mind, or not at all...
Our todays are preceded by yesterdays and precede tomorrows. God's today (singular!) is not like this. With Him there is no yesterday nor tomorrow, only today. And yet it is not that He repeats the same day over and over again, for in the repetition there would be rhythm and therefore time. His "today" really cannot be called "today" truly, for "today" is a designation of time, yet in our experience, "today" is the closest we can imagine to eternity. In the same way, perhaps this will be helpful: someone said, "the present is the moment in which time touches [perhaps mimics?] eternity."
Someone else said, "What is eternity, but the enjoyment of everlasting time in a moment, and the enjoyment of a moment for everlasting time?" I think this is the best description of eternity I have ever heard. It was the instigator of my thoughts on the matter, and what gave me the intuitive understanding that I'm trying and failing to convey to you :-). Think on it for a bit and it may help you.
Eternity... not infinite time-this is different. Infinite time comes and passes in moments, as Augustine mentions, but eternity does not. It is infinite time contained in a moment-but even that is not helpful, because we really aren't addressing time at all. God created time, therefore He is not bounded by it. He is outside of time. I only use phrases such as "infinite time" because we can only imagine time (sidenote: even "infinite" is misleading, as it is technically a counting term-although you cannot "count up to" infinity, you can approach infinity...there is no way to approach eternity). We have no category for non-time, yet that is exactly what we need. I think God is experiencing every moment of history right now (though "right now" too is only a convention of speech, and not a very helpful one- there is no "right now," no "then," no "was," no "will be,"-all is "now," is "present"-as much as such temporal terms are helpful) and that is why heaven will be so blessed -- imagine the compounded joy of every happy moment you have ever spent piled on top of each other, multiplied by infinity, experienced for your entire life and you have a small picture of what heaven will be like!
Let me try to rephrase Augustine for a minute, and see if this helps, for "in the multitude of [words] is found wisdom" (sometimes :-) - the original was "advisors"). It is very difficult to explain in words what must be grasped intuitively by the mind, or not at all...
Our todays are preceded by yesterdays and precede tomorrows. God's today (singular!) is not like this. With Him there is no yesterday nor tomorrow, only today. And yet it is not that He repeats the same day over and over again, for in the repetition there would be rhythm and therefore time. His "today" really cannot be called "today" truly, for "today" is a designation of time, yet in our experience, "today" is the closest we can imagine to eternity. In the same way, perhaps this will be helpful: someone said, "the present is the moment in which time touches [perhaps mimics?] eternity."
Someone else said, "What is eternity, but the enjoyment of everlasting time in a moment, and the enjoyment of a moment for everlasting time?" I think this is the best description of eternity I have ever heard. It was the instigator of my thoughts on the matter, and what gave me the intuitive understanding that I'm trying and failing to convey to you :-). Think on it for a bit and it may help you.
As a sidenote: this is why I think speaking of "eternity past" or "eternity future" is misguided (albeit helpful, which is probably why they do it :-)). So are the questions such as "where are we going to be after we die while waiting for Christ to return?" (unless, I suppose, you believe that once we are dead we remain trapped in time-which is possible I guess). It is also an excellent explanation of a lot of quirky passages and problems in the Bible, including, potentially, the problem of free will vs. predestination, which I have thought about more lately than I have for awhile - a Care Group discussion on the topic reignited my interest.
Have you ever contemplated eternity? Think about it long enough and your mind will explode from its sheer magnitude!
What are your thoughts?
Have you ever contemplated eternity? Think about it long enough and your mind will explode from its sheer magnitude!
What are your thoughts?
5 comments:
Interesting thoughts! ^_^
A couple things:
a) I think I agree with pretty much all that was stated here about eternity, so not much to say here.
b) However, an interesting sidenote: there is a prevalent theory in the realm of quantum physics that time is actually much like you described eternity...all moments are happening at the same time; there is no "flow" of time, as if it were (as a common analogy goes) a river, but rather it is more like a "bubble"--all events are together, simultaneous, and we move between them, rather than they moving and we remaining. This was the theory picked up in Michael Crichton in his book Timeline. It is an interesting read, if you ever feel up to it--however, there is a fair amount of swearing, violence, and such...although I do not remember any inappropriate material...If you can deal with such things, I would recommend Crichton's works, they are often quite interesting reads.
c) Back to the topic(^_^), who was the "someone" who said "What is eternity, but the enjoyment of everlasting time in a moment, and the enjoyment of a moment for everlasting time?"?
d) And how is eternity "an excellent explanation of a lot of quirky passages and problems in the Bible, including, potentially, the problem of free will vs. predestination"? I am genuinely curious(as if I am ever not ^_^) as to how this works out, it has been a subject of my thought for some time.
e) I have contemplated eternity often, but it often eludes my finite attempts to grasp it. ^_^ Fortunately, I retreat before my mind explodes, but not before my mind gets bent a little. ^_^ But here is one of the areas where I get confused thoroughly: if you think about it, infinity, by definition, is continually expanding. If infinity ever stopped expanding, it would become finite. So the confusion is here: if eternity "is infinite time contained in a moment", then how is it contained? Infinite time is continually expanding, so there is no end. Thus, there is no way to be experiencing the end of infinite time. To deal with this inequality, I theorized(realize that this is the theory of a ten/eleven year-old, so it was not well developed) that time had to be finite(infinite time cannot "come and go", because by definition, if it can "go", it is finite). But rather, I thought that eternity was outside of time, and so was capable of observing all events in time, but could go on forever because eternity is infinite.
f) I would like to hear you thoughts further on "I think God is experiencing every moment of history right now", though--it is a fascinating concept.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I love contemplating the things you bring up--they make me think, sometimes quite hard--and reading your contemplations on such, 'tis quite enjoyable. ^_^
--Josiah C.
b) Interesting!
c) I only say "someone" when I do not know who it was (unfortunately!)
d) That will be Eternity, Part II (which is a bit of an oxymoron :-))
e) Hopefully the modifications I made will help with what you said here... you *almost* understand what I'm saying, but not quite!
f) Umm... what do you want to know? That's the best way I can describe it...
Glad you enjoyed it!
c) Ah, well.
d) Well then, I shall await the sequel. ^_^
e) Yep, the modifications helped! I guessed that this was what you meant, but the wording in the previous was a little more ambiguous.
f) Let's see...well, I guess I just wanted clarification: do you mean that God is "at all times"(pardon the not-so-accurate phrase) experiencing all moments of history; for example He is experiencing the cross, the second coming, the garden, Mt. Sinai, etc., "at all times"? Just curious, as this thought is new to me. ^_^
f) Short answer: yes. "At all times" if you wish He is experiencing all things that have and will happen (as we see it in time). Really, this is a natural outworking of my theory. God's "today" encompasses all of history, therefore He experiences all of the temporal process - ie every event - "now." Make sense (as much as it can)?
Yep! ^_^
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