I. The problem of simultaneity
A. Time series is our only way to understand reality.
B. Time-like expressions are the only way we can talk about events.
II. God and time
A. God does not live in time.
B. All times are present for God.
III. The analogy of the novel-writer
A. Time moves within the novel at the novelist’s discretion.
B. The writing process moves along in the novelist’s time-frame.
C. The analogy breaks down because—
1. the novelist is constrained by his own time-series.
2. God is not constrained to time-series at all.
D. Conclusion: God has infinite attention for each person.
IV. The analogy of a line on a sheet of paper
A. As beings constrained to the line, we must pass through the points in order.
B. God, living outside the line, sees and participates in it all at once.
C. This idea removes some of the difficulties.
1. How Christ could be God as a baby—
2. How Christ could not know “who touched” him—
3. How God’s life as Christ is a period of time out of God’s overall lifespan.
D. God has no history and no anticipation of the future.
V. God’s foreknowledge
A. The past is gone for us, but not for God.
B. God sees our future as the present.
C. It is hard to see how we could act in a different way from what God has foreseen.
D. This idea about God and time is helpful, consistent with Christian doctrine, but not essential.
Discussion Questions: (pp. 166-171)
1. How does 2 Pet. 3:8 begin to express the relationship of God to time? (p. 168)
2. Does Lewis’s hypothesis about God and time help you? (pp. 168-169)
3. What are the implications of Lewis’s hypothesis for Jer. 31:34? (p. 171)
A. Time series is our only way to understand reality.
B. Time-like expressions are the only way we can talk about events.
II. God and time
A. God does not live in time.
B. All times are present for God.
III. The analogy of the novel-writer
A. Time moves within the novel at the novelist’s discretion.
B. The writing process moves along in the novelist’s time-frame.
C. The analogy breaks down because—
1. the novelist is constrained by his own time-series.
2. God is not constrained to time-series at all.
D. Conclusion: God has infinite attention for each person.
IV. The analogy of a line on a sheet of paper
A. As beings constrained to the line, we must pass through the points in order.
B. God, living outside the line, sees and participates in it all at once.
C. This idea removes some of the difficulties.
1. How Christ could be God as a baby—
2. How Christ could not know “who touched” him—
3. How God’s life as Christ is a period of time out of God’s overall lifespan.
D. God has no history and no anticipation of the future.
V. God’s foreknowledge
A. The past is gone for us, but not for God.
B. God sees our future as the present.
C. It is hard to see how we could act in a different way from what God has foreseen.
D. This idea about God and time is helpful, consistent with Christian doctrine, but not essential.
Discussion Questions: (pp. 166-171)
1. How does 2 Pet. 3:8 begin to express the relationship of God to time? (p. 168)
2. Does Lewis’s hypothesis about God and time help you? (pp. 168-169)
3. What are the implications of Lewis’s hypothesis for Jer. 31:34? (p. 171)
∞ : a quick guide to infinity
ReplyDeleteMathematicians do not use the word infinity much. They speak of “infinitely many” and “infinitely (that is, infinitesimally) small” more often. The word infinite simply means “not finite”, the latter being the word from which we get the familiar word definite. A finite collection of objects has a definite quantity; a finite distance has a definite extent. To both of these, we can attach numbers. For the infinite, this is not so.
Note that infinity is not a number. This is illustrated by the following:
For any number n, there is a number n+1.
Clearly there can be no largest number, and therefore ∞, which by definition is larger than all numbers, cannot itself be a number. The same kind of argument applies to smallness of numbers (excluding 0):
For any number n, there is a number n/2.
Thus, the infinitesimal, that which is smaller than all non-zero numbers, cannot itself be a number.
All these ideas are useful in mathematics for studying spaces and algebras. There are two important notions to remember about them: (1) they are ideas, in that they exist only in our minds, and (2) no one has discovered anything in nature to correspond to these ideas.
There is, so far as we know, no such thing as an infinite extent in the cosmos. Nor is there known to be an infinitesimal extent in the particle physics world. Both are also true of time. Time and space are infinitely divisible in our geometry studies, and may be so in reality, but no one has demonstrated this to be true, and it may be false.
Even numbers themselves are not native to nature: they are extremely simple ideas that we use to organize our thoughts about natural phenomena. They have not been shown to have independent existence. Were all people to suddenly disappear, there could not be any such thing as a number without anyone to think it.
While it may be useless to ask the world to be careful in its use of such slippery and ephemeral ideas, one who is pondering these matters should be cautious in drawing conclusions, for there are many pitfalls. This is particularly true in evaluating Lewis’s timelessness hypothesis for God. We are the ones living on a line (time), trying to discover what life off our timeline would be like.