Questioning the Linearity of Time
Orthodox Christianity conceptualizes time as linear — passed down from Judiasm — with the establishment of creation as the “starting” point and final redemption by God as the “end” point ; Christians anticipate eschatology in the form of the Parousia as the “end” point of the equation. Yet, the equation seems fallacious. Acknowledging God constitutes both a personal and ultimately an eschatological end point, God also is the starting point not God’s creation, that is the alpha and omega — the beginning and the end (Rev 22:13). This means that God both pervades time (or history) but also constitutes it’s nature or function.
Linear views of time attract those seeking prediction; that is, a predictive equation for salvation. It rests on the assumption that human beings possess the ability to predict the divine. For example, one such equation could be the following: X (individual faith) + Y (corporate faith) = eschatological realization of the Parousia.I In such an equation, faith is the key variable predictive of salvation, the more faith, the better eschatological result. As such, the argument for linear time rests on its predictive value. Throughout history, God is proposed to act through people culminating in a series of events pointing to an eschatological end of salvation. Unfortunately, the identification of the people and events (i.e., variables of faith) rests on the people themselves; the failure of early Christians to predict the Parousia following the death and ressurection of Jesus Christ ultimately led to the institutional development of the church (see Early Catholicism). The early Christians arguably possessed the best evidence — the teachings of Jesus Christ — to identify and predict the Parousia, yet they failed. The only predictable history is an individual’s salvation after death (Matt 12:38-41).
A circular conceptualization of time needs serious consideration because it more accurately represents both the meaninglessness of human perceptions of life and the mystery of God. Stanley J. Grenz notes that other religions — such as those worshipped by the Canaanites — held a cyclical understanding of time. This understanding alone perhaps persuaded the Hebrews to eschew time cyclicality for linearity, just to differentiate themselves from polytheistic religions of the Near East. Using an equation based on Rev 22:13, God being both the beginning and the ending points begs the formation of a circle not a line segment, especially given the view of monotheism. The line of history begins and ends with God.
A circular depiction — by itself — seems to put almost too much emphasis on God and not enough on man. Figuring into the circular functionality of time, however, is free will. No matter how free will is defined by various religions and the diversity of theologies within these religions, the concept implies choice. God refuses to mandate worship by human beings creating the first choice. That is, do you believe in God? If so, you move to a more nuanced fork in the road: does your belief in God drive your life? If it does, then your perceptions of the world — minimally — what you value, and how you behave — maximally — diverge significantly from the population.
Throughout these posts, I propose the need to “see,” that is an alternative point of view or reality that minimally involves a social reversal and maximumally proposes a communion with God, free of the obstacles associated with individual physicality (hunger, thirst), psychological requirements (need for affirmation) and socio-political desires (status, consumerism). Seeing, then, is a developmental process that is a path chosen by human beings. This path insists on the active pursuit of God, of knowing God often through trial-and-error, questioning, and introspection. This path cannot be traveled through passively, of believing that attending church and verbally acknowledging that God exists is enough. Too often, such passivity results in marginalizing diverse points of view because the emphasis is not on pursuing God but in agreeing on a doctrine or belief system. The motivation behind such doctrinal agreement is peace through uniformity.
The circularity of time, then represents a reality — viewed through the misshapen lens of human beings that color reality via the obstacles discussed above — rendered meaningless. This view does not imply that matter is inherently evil or the body is an inherently evil vessle to escape as advocated by traditional gnosticism. Rather it posits that humans value and believe in education, technology, political and economic institutions that are cultural manifestations. Institutional responses to given problems are a function of the cultural mileus to which they are embedded. Given the diversity of responses emanated through this equation, one constancy emerges: the same problems occur over and over again regardless of the millennium, century, decade, year, month or day of time measured. Problems fail to be solved and transcended through the auspices and perceptions of humans. Again, Ecclesiastes 3 outlines the cycles that life events and experiences occur; some are good and some are bad. The point is circularity of “human” reality; the contrived institutions fail to allow human beings to transcend individual and social problems. Peace and love, as such, is short-lived soon to be followed by yet another cycle of war and hate.
Accepting the reality of cultures, their institutions and the reoccurring cycle of problems eventuates in humans relegating the church as irrelevant in its effectiveness. Unfortunately, the church becomes one of the “meaningless” institutions, segmented and slotted — in time — to Sundays and special events (e.g., weddings, funerals), ultimately placed on the lower end of the cultural totem pole. Our culture is expedient and attention-deprived. The result is Christians — comfortable in the uniformity of their beliefs — fail to take the time, effort and — most importantly — the risks needed to pursue a journey necessary for seeing an alternative reality necessary for experiencing communion with God.
Instead, they are comfortably numb.
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Comments
Your notion of time is interesting. God as the “stadium” whereby “time” is acted out, manipulated, whatever. What I am suggesting in terms of cyclical time is time as perceived by humans, especially humans “seeing” a reality based on giving importance to social institutions such as politics, education, technology, and yes, even religion. These institutions emphasize “humans” as the driver of events. Since that view perpetuates man as the source of meaning, the result is that nothing changes, war, peace, poverty, wealth, etc. keep happening over and over again. Hence, the cycle. The question becomes whether human beings — by pursuing God and undergoing a spiritual journey starting with social reversal can ultimately “see” different realities and transcend cyclical meaninglessness. I believe this is what the Hindus on some scale were trying to discover.
This particular post caught my interested immediately. You put in more precise terms what I’ve come to believe.Time, as humans know it, is not as God knows it. It first occurred to me when struggling with the dilemma posed to me by some many friends, and occasionally my self, with pre-marital sex. The old argument being Pre-Marital sex is an equal sin as to Adultery. Though I’m in no way a hedonist, the standard Conservative argument is flawed when considering either soon to be married couples and or eventually married couples. The question being, If God knows they will be married then aren’t essentially married already, since Jesus was with God in the Beginning and the End described in past-tense? This rather juvenile issue of pre-marital sex being analyzed by me and my other college future minister peers, lead me into the revelation that this same form of non-linear concept of time what applicable to everything. We humans almost lack the capability of imaging time the way God does. We speak of it because possess the ability to make the hypothesis and understand that it could be so, but we are incapable of perceiving it. I wouldn’t even call time Cyclical, as I’m not claiming your post concludes either. You seem to bring the cyclical argument up as an alternative, but I don’t believe it’s right either.The best I can describe time from the point of view of God is with this visualization.Consider our human history time line. On one end we have Adam and Eve, and on the other we have the so-called end, which I won’t even began to debate that concept here so for sake of argument let’s say that there is an “End of the World (Time) As We Know It.” The human embodiment of God in Jesus is on the timeline, but God Godself does not appear on the timeline. Instead God is the person like the teacher in the classroom who wrote the timeline on the chalkboard. Therefore God can see each event happening simultaneously and reach God’s hand into the time as necessary, but not actually being bound by the concept of Time as those within the time are bound.Even this description does not fully or accurately describe Time, alas it is late and I’m “Out of Time.”