C. S. Lewis and Time
In Mere Christianity, in the chapter called “Time and Beyond Time”, C. S. Lewis proposes that God is outside of time. He notes that this has long been the position of many theologians and these days even scientists are speculating that some things are not in time.
Lewis says,
Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty—and every other moment from the beginning of the world—is always the Present for Him. If you like to put it that way, He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.
Later he says the following:
But God has no history…. He is too completely and utterly real to have one. For, of course, to have a history means losing part of your reality (because it had already slipped away into the past) and not yet having another part (because it is still in the future): in fact having nothing but the tiny little present, which has gone before you can speak about it. God forbid we should think God was like that. Even we may hope not to be always rationed in that way.
Lewis argues that this helps us think about how God could know what we are going to do before we do it. All time is “present” to God; therefore he sees our actions even though we have not yet “reached” them on the time line.
Critique of Lewis’s View
As much as I love C. S. Lewis — and as much as I am indebted to him for helping me to learn to think about these issues — I believe he is wrong in what he says about God and time.
Lewis envisions God as being “outside and above the Time-line.” I believe this geometrical metaphor is flawed. Though I won’t speculate on whether the metaphor itself led Lewis to think the way he did, I don’t believe it will lead us to insight.
Instead, we can think of time as a process. That is, the “substance” of time is something that occurs in its participants. That something is the actualization of potentialities.
The Process View
If we think of “the past” as “that part of reality that is fully actual” and “the future” as “that part of reality that is potential but not yet actual” we can see that the present is the moment in which potentiality becomes actual.
Now one way that C. S. Lewis goes wrong (I believe) is when he says, “… to have a history means losing part of your reality (because it has already slipped away into the past)….” But this ignores the fact that God has perfect “memory” (among other relevant things). God doesn’t “lose” the past — it is, in fact, fully real in a way that the future is not. It is beyond change; it “is what it is” in the mind of God.
Resurrection
As a side note, I speculate that is the basis for resurrection; God perfectly knows us as we were and are and is thereby able (by his immeasurable power) to reconstitute us. But even more, he is able to “re-create” us in such a way that fully captures what we were and at the same time remakes it as immortal, powerful, and glorious.
So God does not lose reality as it becomes actual; he gains it in its fullness.
The Future
But what about the future? The future, in this view, lacks the same kind of reality as the past. It does not consist of actualities; instead, it consists of potential actualities. Many of these potentialities are “incompossible” (to use a philosophical term). That means they can’t all be actualized. For example, right now I have the possibility of deciding to go to San Francisco tomorrow. Or I can decide to stay home all day. But I can’t do both. These alternatives are incompossible.
Time passes as potentialities become actualized. In fact, the only way we can experience time is in this way. Something “happens” and that “happening” makes something actual that was only one among many potentialities.
The Human Experience of Time
Now for fallen, mortal, corruptible humanity, we experience this as loss. We lose potentiality — our death approaches. Possibilities become fewer and more constrained. And because of the way creation was constituted at the fall (see Romans 8:20ff) most of the actualizations we experience involve corruption, decay, entropy. We do lose our grip on reality.
God’ Experience of Time
But here we see the way God’s experience of reality differs from ours. God doesn’t lose the past and the future never escapes him. He retains the past in his perfect knowledge and he is able to deal with the future in all its multiplicity of possibilities. This is why Paul, in the same passage in Romans as referenced above, can say, “… And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). In other words, everything that happens is used by God for the good of those who love him (this includes, most tellingly, suffering).
Another way that God’s experience of reality differs from ours is that he has infinite ability to attend to things. In other words, because God is “omni-present” he can be part of every actualization that occurs in the entire universe. He hears every prayer because he is there; he experiences it as part of his experience of the entire universe. What is more, his understanding and wisdom are unlimited so he can appropriately attend to everything that occurs.
Implications for Us
One might say that the above is all well and good, but what does it matter? How does this affect the way I live and worship God?
Walking With God
The first way I would argue that this matters is that it makes the notion of walking with God more comprehensible. If we take the view that God is outside of time, then from God’s perspective there is no walk. Everything has, in some sense, already happened. Ultimately the idea that God is with us becomes unintelligible. God is already done; we are just “running out the string”.
But if we see God as experiencing the actualization of potentialities alongside us, then walking with God has meaning. Paul’s exhortation in Philippians 2:12-13 seems to exemplify this: “… work out your own salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” This passage illustrates the way God interactively engages — “works in you” — with our lives. We work because God also works.
We see that we are “co-laborers” with God as we actualize — “work out” — our salvation. This process view of our lives with God is very common. Romans 8:26 explains that the Spirit participates in our prayers: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” Thus God is actively present, helping us, even in the moment of prayer
Prayer
This is why we should pray. The notion that God is in time means that prayer is part of the way potentiality gets actualized. We ask God and that forms part of the basis upon which God will act in the world.
Revelation 8:3-5 makes this apparent in a remarkable way:
And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.
Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.
We see that “the prayers of the saints” are part of the fire from God that is thrown down on the earth as part of God’s judgment. In some way, the manner of God’s judgment of the earth is conditioned by the prayers of the saints. We are part of the process.
Paul tells us that we should “make our requests known to God” (Philippians 4:5). Now one can see this as a rhetorical flourish, but there does seem to be biblical warrant for a relational kind of knowing that applies to God. 1 Corinthians 8:3 says, “If anyone loves God, he is known by God.” Galatians 4:9 says, “But now, having known God, or rather, having been known by God….” So the notion that through prayer we make ourselves known to God in a relational way seems reasonable.
Jesus tells us that “… your Father knows what things you have need of before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). But note that this is objective. It does not take into account what we want, what we desire. “Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Psalm 37:4).
In Matthew 7:7-8 Jesus tells us to ask, seek, and knock:
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
There is an active rather than a passive feel here. We are not treating reality as settled; in one person’s words, we “take hold of God and pull.”
The notion that God walks through time with us allows us to see the above as real, not just an illusion occasioned by our finite perspective. God shares our walk with us.
The Open Future
One criticism of this view is that it negates God’s sovereignty. We cannot be certain that anything God intends will be accomplished, because the future is not settled. Perhaps some decision by someone will completely derail God’s purpose for the future (R. C. Sproul’s book Chosen By God suggests this).
God’s Sovereignty in an Open Reality
However, this view posits a weak view of sovereignty where God must exercise meticulous control of everything. It is hard to see how this avoids tarring God with the brush of every evil thing that is done. If God meticulously controls every molecule, why did he let the cyanide molecules kill Jews in Hitler’s gas chambers (just to choose one obvious example)?
Instead, we can argue for two things. First, God allows “libertine” freedom — freedom that gives created agents true causal capability. This libertine freedom is to a certain extent irrevocable — otherwise it is not there at all. If God said, “You can do anything you want, but if you do anything I don’t like, I’ll just erase it,” then we are not really able to do whatever we want.
Second, God commits himself to make things right. That is, God claims to stand righteous with respect to all creation. But if that is the case, God must treat creation fairly. If, due to the actions of someone else, a person did not have “a fair chance,” God will involve himself to redeem the evil that comes upon that person. The biblical principle is seen in Genesis 50:20: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
The combination of these two ideas gives a view of sovereignty that is breathtakingly glorious. We see God as “riding the wave” of his creation, interacting with it, affecting it and steering it in a manner that leads it infallibly to fulfill his purposes. But he does this by allowing it to be what it is. God’s wisdom, power and love are sufficient to accomplish this regardless of the free actions of those who try to oppose him.