In No Time at All

I have finally understood more of the classical view of God being outside of time. Not that I am convinced to go over to that viewpoint, but rather I realize that some of my objections did not apply.

I can see this described in two sets, the one set of God's eternal moment, where God's time is a single point (zero length), which maps into the the set of the created universe timeline. One point mapped onto a large, time ordered set in the universe (which has non-zero length). This is illustrated in Figure 1. T₀ is God's timeless eternal moment. The t₀, t₁, ..., t_k are the events on the created universe time line. God interacts with the created universe all at one zero-time-length instant from God. All of God's interaction maps into the time-ordered universe. In this way, all of humanity's interaction with God has a time sequence to it, but God interacts completely in a timeless moment, which always exists.

There are many unsatisfactory things about this description, but many unsatisfactory things are only apparent problems. I'll look at a few of these: (a) the critique some make that this is a deist description of God, (b) the impassibility of God, (c) God is static.

Paul Helm, in the book God and Time, is an advocate of Divine timelessness in eternity. He gave an analogy of God interacting with the world like someone at one moment programming a programmable thermostat to work throughout the week. The other authors in that book rightly criticized him of presenting a deist view of God. With the thermostat analogy, the actual interaction with the thermostat occurred at one moment in "thermostat time", the rest of the thermostat's actions were the result of the initial programming. This does not fit with the timelessness framework described here. While God's interaction occurs in one eternal moment for God, that moment is mapped across all of the history of the universe, across all of time. That initial interaction of God at t₀ also occurs just as much in the real sense in t₁, ..., and across all the moments of the universe. So, going back to the thermostat analogy, the thermostat setter is actively setting the thermostat all the time, even though it is done in an instant from the thermostat setter.

The impassability of God is thought by many to mean God is incapable of feeling emotion, or God is immobile, or there is no action. However, the classical definition of impassability of God speaks of God's faithfulness, constancy. God does love, is angry, is sorrowful over evil, delights in his people, takes pleasure in his creation. God's interaction in the universe reveals different aspects of God's constant emotions and feelings as they map into time.

God being in the eternal timeless moment gives many the impression that God is static, frozen. This too is a misconception. The ideas behind static and frozen are time-based ideas. It is putting God inside time and saying there is no change over time. If God is outside of time, we cannot speak of him in time-based language, in the strictest sense. There are many things about God, in his interaction with the universe that maps into time that reveals a rich nature of God.

Continued in the previous post... (I could not figure out how to import two images into one blog post).

In No Time at All (Concl)

(Continued from the later post.)

While God is simple, without parts, without division, there is a complexity to God, particularly with God's mind. This complexity is seen in part in mapping a part of God's mind across time in figure 2. This mapping of God's mind fills the entire span of time in the created universe, but it does not exaust the mind of God. In this mapping, each moment reveals unique features about God, yet it also displays God's constancy.

Diagrams, such as these, have their weaknesses. In this diagram there may appear to be a randomness in the mind of God, particularly in how it is mapped into the created world time. What I wished to show is that the ordering may be more complex than just a simple mapping. In fact, it might be more convenient to express the mappings as an infinite series of functions that map from the mind of God into his creation. Even this has its inadaquacies.

This point of this discussion is that I had thought an eternal, timeless God was a very simple, overly simple model. Instead, there is room in this approach to see a lot of complexty and a rich dynacism in God's interaction with creation.

However, I do see some major issues with this. If time permits, I'll get into some of those issues.

Varieties of Mentally Disabled

In the discussion on the mentally disabled and communion, I do not wish to imply that all mentally disabled are disqualified from communion, even in the most strict interpretation of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. As one person who is very much involved with mentally disabled people reminded me, there are many kinds of people who are mentally disabled. This includes people who can give a very credible profession of faith, that they trust in Jesus. It also includes people who are capable of self examination, often with more honesty than "mentally competent" people.

The issue involved in this series of blogs were people with disabilities that prevent them from communicating a credible profession of faith -- at least in the usual sense, along with the inability to communicating much of anything about their interior lives.

Aleph-Null Bottles of Beer on the Wall

[Author's note, February 6, 2008: This is one of the most read entries of my blog (at the time I wrote it I had no idea how popular it would become). This was written quickly and I discovered some errors. I wish to thank a London discussion group that pointed out one of the errors. I welcome comments on this blog entry or any other. If you find errors, please let me know, I will be happy to correct them and entertain any discussion. You may comment on errors you see in the comments section. Thanks]

Speaking of infinity in the last few entries, the old beer song, "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" takes a different twist. If we use the cardinality of the set of integers, {..., -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ...}, which is called "Aleph-Null", we get this little gem of a beer song:

Aleph-Null Bottles of Beer on the Wall

Aleph-Null Bottles of Beer

Take one down and pass it around

Aleph-Null Bottles of Beer on the Wall

...repeat until you get to zero bottles of beer on the wall.

Georg Cantor named the absolute minimum infinity as Aleph-Null (see the symbol at the top of the post). Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet. Null -- that was zero in German, Cantor's native language. Previous posts mentioned Cantor's famous proof that the Real Numbers was a greater infinity than the integers. In fact, there is an infinite hierachy of sizes of infinite sets.

In order to understand what the next size is from Aleph-Null, called Aleph-One, I need to explain the concept of a power set.

Let's look at the following set of lower case English letters: {a, b, c}. The possible subsets of this include:

1. {}, known as the empty set.
2. {a}
3. {b}
4. {c}
5. {a, b}
6. {a, c}
7. {b, c}
8. {a, b, c}

The power set of {a, b, c} is the set of all subsets of {a, b, c}:

{{}, {a}, {b}, {c}, {a, b}, {a, c}, {b, c}, {a, b, c}}

The power set of the set of Integers has a cardinality the continuum and Cantor speculated it to be Aleph-One. Georg Cantor proved that the power set of Integers (or the counting numbers {1, 2, 3, ...}) has a greater cardinality the original infinite set of Integers or counting numbers.

Let us stop here. In a previous discussion the question was raised if other infinities had anything to do with the person or nature of God. Let's first ask the question, does God know all the counting numbers individually, given he is omniscient? If so, then God's knowledge is at least "countably" infinite -- because this infinity relates to all the counting numbers (and has the cardinality of Aleph-Null).

If God knows all the counting numbers individually, then does God know each of all the combinations of counting numbers? If so, then God's knowledge goes beyond the infinity of Integers. We can take the question even further. If God knows all the elements individually for any given infinite set and any cardinality, and he knows all the individual possible combinations of that set, then God's knowledge is infinite beyond any limit in the infinite sizes of infinite sets.

What would this say about God? If we limit our description of God to only one kind of infinity, as enormous as that is beyond our comprehension of the finite to grasp individually all the elements of infinity -- so God is so far beyond the simplest form of infinity.

Imagine people's concept of the size of the universe a thousand years ago. What was considered Really Big then is smaller than a speck of dust compared to the size we understand today of just the observable universe. Understanding God's infinite knowledge in the light of the infinite heirachy of sizes of infinity adds a whole new appreciation of God's knowledge. It also adds a whole new perspective on how small we are. Yet this infinite, beyond infinite, God took an interest in his people, so much that one of the infinite persons of the Truine God humbled himself, became flesh, lived, suffered, and died for us. It adds a whole new dimension on amazing grace.

Communion and the Mentally Disabled

This is part of the series of posts dealing with the question of admitting mentally disabled people to the Lord's Table at our church. The first post is here.

The argument against admitting the mentally disabled to the Lord's Table has overstated the case in at least one area -- discerning the Lord's body. The PCA Book of Church Order (BCO) states:

"the minister, at the discretion of the Session, before the observance begins, may either invite all those who profess the true religion, and are communicants in good standing in any evangelical church, to participate in the ordinance; or may invite those who have been approved by the Session, after having given indication of their desire to participate." (BCO 58-4)

In contrast to the Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC), which states that the communion elements have the special spiritual presence of Christ, communicants in good standing at any evangelical church include those who view the elements as symbols only, and those who view the elements as the real body and blood of Christ (e.g., traditional Lutherans). Thus, strictly speaking, the PCA BCO does permit those who do not properly discern the Lord's body, in some degree, to come to the Lord's Table. A strict reading of one particular part of the standards needs to be carefully considered by the whole of the standards, including the Book of Church Order.

A second issue is that the PCA recognizes there are be disagreements about the Westminster Standards, both to some degree to the standards themselves, and to their interpretation. Teaching elders, ruling elders, and deacons, are to adhere to the system of teaching in the Westminster Standards. This is not a strict subscription to every statement in the standards. The reason is that the Bible, God's word, is the final authority in the Church. It is recognized that the Westminster Standards are written by humans and are subject to error -- although the standards are viewed as the best written summary of what Scripture teaches. The key is that elders and deacons are to adhere to the system of teaching contained to the standards. Exceptions to the particular statements in the Westminster Standards are permitted, provided that church court that has jurisdiction in the particular area rules that the exception does not violate the system of teaching contained in the Westminster Standards. For the church where admission to the Lord's Table is determined, this is done by the session (for those not familiar with Presbyterian terminology, this is the current active board of elders).

It is quite possible for the elders on the session of a church to disagree on this issue. How the session resolves the disagreement can vary. Probably the most preferable way is for the session to reach a unanimous agreement. If that is not possible, then a strong majority or consensus can be sought for. Sometimes the session will defer the decision until a consensus can be achieved.

Type of Infinity in Expanse of Time

Now here some questions for those interested in exploring infinity:

(1) Is time continuous or discrete? In other words, between an interval of time, say one second, can time be divided without end into smaller pieces, or is there a fundamentally smallest unit of time?

(2) Which type of infinity does time stretching throughout all eternity have? Let's assume this is for an individual born at some point, and then ultimately lives on in heaven.

Depending on how question 1 is answered can tell us how question 2 is answered.

A related concept are the Zeno's Paradoxes.