Considering the Eternity of God--How did it ever get to be now?

[Ed Walsh]

Greetings,

We humans and all of creation for that matter live in something we call TIME. This thing called time had a beginning and will someday have an end. My question therefore is, and I'm not trying to be a smart-alec. How did enough eternity ever get piled up so that it got to be NOW? How does NOW ever come into being? I suppose this is beyond our understanding but is there a proper way of thinking about this? Is it just a mystery and perhaps a prying into things that are beyond our understanding?

If anyone wants to laugh at me, he has my full permission.

 

[Jeri Tanner]

I understand! The thoughts of the eternity of God and that then something happened- he created the heavens and the earth. I guess he had previously created the angels? What else “happened” (what were his works) in all eternity before “then”- before time? I don’t stay there long or delve into it. The immensity of God and the my extreme finitude in the face of all that mystery is overwhelming. I go back to my creaturely “now.”

 

[RJ Spencer]

I think of Einstein, who sees time and space as one. When God created space, He created time.
But I see what you are saying... God in eternity choose a specific "time" to create time? Mind Boggling.

 

[Bill The Baptist]

Greetings,

We humans and all of creation for that matter live in something we call TIME. This thing called time had a beginning and will someday have an end. My question therefore is, and I'm not trying to be a smart-alec. How did enough eternity ever get piled up so that it got to be NOW? How does NOW ever come into being? I suppose this is beyond our understanding but is there a proper way of thinking about this? Is it just a mystery and perhaps a prying into things that are beyond our understanding?

If anyone wants to laugh at me, he has my full permission.

I think it might have been Augustine who said , and I’m likely paraphrasing, “If I don’t think about time, I know exactly what it is, but as soon as I start thinking about it, I have no idea.”

 

[Ed Walsh]

Of course, I knew in advance nobody would have a real answer. It is just something I think about at times.
@Bill The Baptist @RJ Spencer @Jeri Tanner

Thanks for your thoughts.

Ed

 

[RJ Spencer]

Of course, I knew in advance nobody would have a real answer. It is just something I think about at times.
@Bill The Baptist @RJ Spencer @Jeri Tanner

Thanks for your thoughts.

Ed

I love theoretical physics. I think often on these things as well.

 

[SeanPatrickCornell]

To be honest, I think the answer to the question is somehow related to the possibility that the question itself is somehow flawed. Like, the question arises somehow from a misconception about what time is, and what eternity is, and how they relate to each other.

But, I don't understand them well enough to see if this is even the case or not. So, I am also stumped.

 

[RamistThomist]

Some observations:
1) Is there momentary duration in eternity? Most critics and advocates of divine eternalism say no. In that case, there isn't an infinite number of moments.

2) The question "how did it ever get to be now" is an excellent one to ask those who believe in the eternity of the universe. It doesn't apply to God, though. God didn't create *in* time. He created time. Therefore, there isn't an infinite number of moments because God isn't inside that chain.

 

[timfost]

Ed,

Yeah, I've thought about this a lot. And the answer is... Oh yeah, I can't figure it out.

Sometimes it's easier to think about eternity future because we have a starting point and numbers are infinite. I think this may be part of our problem, though. Does eternity future = infinite time? I don't think so, and yet souls in eternal bliss now are still waiting for the resurrection of the body, so there must be some kind of interaction between the temporal and eternal, at least in this regard.

But I think that when we consider eternity past, we cannot think in terms of "a lot of time" because a point in time seems inconsistent with the infinite since for the now to appear in the sequence of eternity could also mean that now is infinitely far away.

But perhaps I'm being stupid. Very likely. At the end of the day, I can only believe what God says about Himself, even when I can't figure it out. If I could figure Him out, I've likely confined Him to the finite parameters of my little mind and boxed Him up. This is a losing proposition.

 

[C. M. Sheffield]

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.—Psalm 139:6

I do not exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.—Psalm 131:1

 

[Jack K]

As I like to tell my students... If you are thinking about God and you come to a thought that feels like it will make your brain explode, that is a sensation you should sometimes expect when you think deeply about God.

 

[Taylor]

I think it might have been Augustine who said , and I’m likely paraphrasing, “If I don’t think about time, I know exactly what it is, but as soon as I start thinking about it, I have no idea.”

Yes, that comes from a later chapter in his Confessions.

 

[RamistThomist]

The difficulty is that Augustine wants to hold that the Future exists. Yet observation and reflection teaches us that only the present exists. So Augustine gets around it by saying that the future exists in the mind of God.