It's the most basic questions that are the hardest.

What are these two things that we call SPACE and TIME?


Are these absolute things or labels attached to measurements between distance and events? Can these things be infinite, and if not, what about the time before time and the space outside of space? What is outside of space, the "void" and is this void a "something" or a "nothing" Could God have created the universe 3 inches to the left? If he moved the universe now 3 inches to the left, how would we even know?



These were all questions I was asked last night. How would you respond?

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

Oh man, I'm too busy to answer right now Perg but I spent years studying theoretical astrophysics and I can answer these questions. (Really, I'm serious, it was my hobby) I'll try to get back to this.

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Bob Vigneault C.O.L, L.E., G.E, Dr.O.P., O.U.T.
The Heartbeat of Heaven (blog)
Deacon/Christ Presbyterian Church, Janesville, WI OPC www.christ-opc.org

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Of course, if we say that God is outside of space and time, this will bring up further questions in the inquirer. What exactly does this mean that God is outside of space and time? He is, and yet, He is the most active participant at every moment in space and time as well.

-----Added 7/8/2009 at 11:22:36 EST-----

Wow, your eccentric hobbies might just serve to bless me. I will eagerly await your answers later.

God is outside of space and time in the sense that He created both. He is also in space in time in that He is omnipresent. God created the law of physics which govern the physical universe. But as a being, God is not bound by the laws He creates that govern His creation.

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Bill Brown
Elder
Reformed Baptist
Maryland

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?
Visit my BLOG Theology for the Rest of Us

God is both outside of time and inside at the same time.
God created time, so he has to be outside of it. Yet he acts within time.

There are different definitions of time. One explanation is that time is a measurement between events, while another states that time is linear, and then another will counter that and say time is cyclical.
Some don't believe time is real.

This is one of those questions that have baffled humans since...time began

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Claudiu
Reformed Baptist
attending Immanuel Baptist Church
Sacramento, CA

I posed a hypothesis in a physics class one time. I'll share it here.

If you were placed in a room that was devoid of light - not even the faintest particle - would you be able to see? This is not a trick question. The answer is, no. Light is necessary for sight. If there is absolutely no light than it is impossible to see. Light is a medium. It carries visual images to your brain which, through electrical current, is interpreted. If we accept this as an axiom, then we have never seen anything other than reflections. The reflection may be so close to the original that it renders variance negligible, but it is still a reflection.

Mull that one over.

Time and space appear to have began when the Creation began.

But, will they have an end?

I can imagine a "time" when time will be no more if time is the measurement of change between events. Heaven, being unchangeable, will have no time, only an eternal-ness.

God is timeless, outside of time, and active in time. This is hard to fathom.

However, Jesus, haven taken human flesh, and us, getting new bodies, and the universe, being redeemed, seems to lead us to the conclusion that "space" will now be an eternal property of things since there will be "bodies" forever.

-----Added 7/8/2009 at 11:38:37 EST-----

Now you're getting all epistemological on us, Bill! Those are usually some pretty reliable reflections....and they seem to match up to "reality" most of the time.

My answer would be that there are things that we are given to know by God and there are things that only God knows. I would tell the person that asked me that there are many things more important to worry about such as holiness. Is it possible for us to figure this all out? Only God knows. Is it necessary for us to figure all of this out? It seems like it would be in vain if we spent hours upon hours trying to figure it out.

1 Timothy 6:20
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:

I am not calling this questioning an opposition of science but it does seem to be vain babblings as there seems that there would be no solution. Paul encouraged Timothy to keep that which is committed to his trust...the gospel, teaching, exhortation, etc.

I guess it will only be a matter of time before somebody will post and say that if I think this way, then everything is vain babblings unless it is talk of God. I do think that it is acceptable to talk of other things but not when it is something that can never be figured out and will cause us to use precious hours for that other than things such as the Scriptures, family, etc.

Once again, my OPINION. Although, I think I have Scriptural grounds for it.

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John Lanier
Elder in Training
Reformed Baptist Church
Topeka, KS

no




More seriously. Time can(and I think will be) infinite, but only in one direction--forwards. It had a beginning at Creation, before which it didn't exist. This can be proven based on the philosophical impossibility of constructing an actually infinite set of objects by adding successive finite objects. Note that a potentially infinite set is different--adding one item, then another, and another, and so on to infinity, is possible.

Space is also, I think, finite, because if it were infinite, it would suffer from the paradoxes found in the Hilbert's Hotel thought experiment.

Talking about a "time before time" is nonsensical, children's movies notwithstanding. "Before" is a preposition which relates two entities in time--to use it in this manner takes it out of its context and renders it useless. The same goes for "outside of space". "Outside" is a preposition which only has meaning within the context of the system in which it is defined--namely, space. To use it outside this context renders it undefined.

William Lane Craig has some good lectures on the topic. He goes into it somewhat, if I recall correctly, in his debate vs. Dacey.

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Jonathan
Audio Engineer
Reformed Anabaptist
Ohio

Moroni's magical glasses of proper interpretation:

there is only "now"

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Rangerus
Southern Baptist
Austin, TX
Teacher and Volunteer
1689 LBCF & BF&M 2000

Our universe is a created universe. Space, time, and energy as we know then were created in the 1st chapter of Genesis. The "Laws" (ie gravity) were also created. As big as we think our universe is, God could hold it in his hands (so to speak) like a 'scientist' holds a test tube in his hands. God can move the universe around and we would never know it. He can break the "Laws" of the universe as he sees fit. (That is what we would call a miracle, and what defines them so we know it is him)

He is outside of our space-time continuum. Our universe does end as described in Revelation when our universe becomes part of the universe of God.

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Timothy Johnson
First United Presbyterian of Moline
PCUSA (Yea, I know)
Theology/Philosophy Sunday School Teacher
Davenport, IA

But I would hate to curb curiousity in deep things.

God makes our minds to want to know about as much as possible. Sin has made our minds desire to look into sinful things too, but philosophical speculation (though speculation) glorifies God by trying to peer into legitimate areas.

-----Added 7/8/2009 at 12:32:34 EST-----

I'd like to get a hold of these lectures. Where's a link or how do I get mp3 discs?

Space and time are two constructs that intersect to comprise the present. Space is a physical location that moves along time which is a temporal point. In space, we have the ability to move around in any direction we please. All the while, however, we are travelling forward in time as we occupy space without the ability to move laterally or backward.

To put it visually, consider a cube travelling forward. The cube is space; contained therein is existence. The movement "forward" is the passage of time. The particular spot of time where the cube occupies at any given moment is the present. Points where it has occupied before but has invariably moved from is the past, and points which it will invariably occupy is the future.

You can hypothetically move about in the cube and occupy the same space twice, but never at the same point in time twice, because time has passed and the three dimensional reality has moved "forward" in time. To put it another way, you cannoy physically intersect in space AND time two seperate points in time. You can only intersect a point in space and time at one moment in time, thereafter only being able to occupy the same point in space at a different point in time.

When time and space are viewed in this way, it is easy to imagine how God occupies a space "outside" of time because only our physical reality exists on the linear line of time. To use another visual example, we are the fish in a stream, whereas God is the man standing beside the stream. The fish is us travelling forward in the stream, which is time. God, who is beside the stream, does not occupy the stream. He looks into the stream, he can interact at any point He choses in the stream, and can also go forward, backward, before, and beyond the stream.

In short, I consider time to be a sort of "fourth" dimension to reality. I feel that this is a reasonable explaination of our temporal occupation and existence.

__________________
Andrew DeShazo
Husband of Kathryn
Father of Phillip-Giles B. DeShazo
Deacon
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Memphis, TN
"From out of the depth of unbroken Infinfity arose the Question, "Who am I?" And to that Question there is the answer, "I am God!" -Meher Baba, died 1969.

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Christ, died 33 AD, ressurected three days later.

Why do you say heaven is unchangeable? Maybe in certain respects it is (i.e., it is without end) but doesn't change happen in heaven? What's the appeal of thinking that time will end?

Here is one of the more helpful books on the subject, by meh prof. for a class of the same name: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/959876&...=brief_results

I'd also recommend one of the best defenses of the traditional view on God's relation to time, by Paul Helm: Eternal God : a study of God without time [WorldCat.org]

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Patrick
Covenant (OPC), Brighton, MI

There are certain changes in heaven it would seem. The fullness of the saints will be filled up...and the Last Judgment will change a lot of things...but isn't there a certain unchangeableness about heaven after the Last Judgment? There is no more progression to history, the Final State has arrived. If there were changes, then the final state would only be a penultimate state, right?

And we'll be singing. That would be kind of hard if there wasn't time--we'd be standing there, with our mouths open, frozen like dummies in a clothing store.

Good question. I actually borrowed them from a friend, so I'm not sure... let me look.

Wow. He must've found them somewhere else... Craig's "official store" is selling them(the debates, anyway, I don't see the lectures I was thinking of) for $15 apiece. I'll ask him and get back to you.

I get the feeling Heaven doesn't exist in linear time. With respect to where we are now, there is a certain progression of things in Heaven, however, that's only with respect to us. With respect to Heaven, time, as a cosntruct, is not only irrelevant, it's nonexistent.

-----Added 7/8/2009 at 01:46:56 EST-----


To make that criticism you have to assume that there is time, which thereby renders the criticism null. Hypothesizing the non-existence of time doesn't translate to being stuck in a particular intersection of time and space. To do so would naturally be counter-intuitive because in hypothesizing there is no time, you'd be illustrating your hypothesis as merely one point in time, constantly occupied with no progression. It's very plain then, that that's not what Perg or I are talking about when we speak of no time.

I would argue that we can sing forever and even different songs in a timeless heaven.

All right. Why do you think that?



Now I remember why this stuff made my head hurt... if you think you've got it figured out, you know that you don't really.

On a slightly different but related topic, are angels and demons constrained to space-time?

Time and space cannot be separated, they are part of the same 'fabric'. Time does not run like a river with eternity at both ends - eternity past and eternity future. Every point can be located on the space-time fabric, you must think of time as a place. We live in a 4 dimensional space-time continuum with time being the 4th dimension. Every point in space is projected or extended onto a time reference.

Eternity is indeed outside of time but it's a function of location not a timeline. Time is not linear.

Dang, I'm still too busy to unpack all of this. Sorry.

Read the book Flatland and it will help you in these thoughts.

So why can't we reverse the flow of time then? We can move forward and backward in space, we can speed up or slow down our progress through time--at least to some observers--but why can't we reverse it?

Jesus is in a human body right now. He will occupy space for all of eternity. Does this mean that there then must be time for all eternity?

No, not all eternity, just the part of eternity that comes after the beginning of time.

I don't know, I only know that I'm sure time travel backwards is impossible or we would be visited by our future selves. Time travel backwards would go against providence and predestination. The fabric of space-time is complete but there is no way to visit the past.

Time doesn't flow, it just is, the Lord separates the future from past, it's a spatial thing.

1. How do you know we haven't been visited by our future selves? *puts on tinfoil hat*

2. If reverse time travel were possible, it would have been predestined just the same as anything else. You wouldn't be able to change history; you might, in fact, end up being the cause of it turning out the way it did.

3. If time doesn't flow, why do we observe the passing of time?

Doesn't time 'flowing' imply that it is fluid and that 'particles' of time move along a course? I don't see how that could be. Once time is past it is past. It appears to be fixed, not fluid.

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We shall not adjust our Bible to the age; but before we have done with it, by God's grace, we shall adjust the age to the Bible. - Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Lawrence Underwood, Jr.
Pastor - Providence Family Fellowship / Mobile, Alabama
1644/46 LBC
My Blog - Imprimis

No, I don't think so. It's just figurative language that comes from the days of yore when time was kept with an hourglass.

What it means is, we're moving through time(or time is moving through us, depending on how you look at it).

Check out this essay, Time and Eternity,
Trinity Foundation: Explaining God, man, Bible, salvation, philosophy, theology.

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Jim
An Elder, Harvest Reformed Church (RCUS),Minot, ND
http://www.harvestreformedchurch.org/
http://tbftgoggi.wordpress.com/

Upon a life I did not live; upon a death I did not die, Another's death, Another's life, I'd rest my soul eternally
Omnia dicta fortiora,si dicta Latina
Si vis pacem, para bellum

I wanted that to be clarified. I've heard people define the nature of time in the way that I stated regarding 'flowing'.

Thanks for the article

Because time and space are relative and at times (no pun intended) interrelated terms their definitions will be relative (i.e., relative to the frame of reference a person uses to define it ). For example, time is often defined relative to motion or flow. However, metaphysically and biblically this does not help us finite creatures grasp the fact that the infinite God we love is outside of time. Moreover, many students of the Word and even young students of philosophy will try to conceive of God as an “everlasting present.”

The problem with this conception is that it uses “time categories” and therefore implicitly puts God in time. Moreover it muddies the water as to what it means for God to be timeless (years ago my professor, a renown Christian philosopher, pointed this fact out to me by docking me a whole grade for my inconsistent thinking).

IMO, the best definition, though not perfect, was put forth by Augustine in which he defined time as “successive thoughts in a finite mind.” If one chews a little on this definition they will see some vital applications—both theologically and metaphysically.

JWJ

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Jim Jarantowski
Minister of the Gospel
(Currently residing at Covenant Presbyterian Church, New Berlin, WI)

Wow. 'Time' for me to find a different thread before I 'space' out.

Somebody said time and space are equivalencies. What bearing does that have on this discussion?

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Brad
Member- Eagle Heights PCA
Winchester, VA

Pro 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.

Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Time travel is not possible.

1. If time travel were possible, then it would be possible to go back in time and kill my grandmother.
2. It is not possible that I go back in time and kill my grandmother (I'd have no way of doing it if I did it)
3. Therefore, time travel is not possible.

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Steven Nemes
Phoenix, AZ

Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy must be answered - C.S. Lewis

Is the fact that space as we see it has three dimensions ( height, breadth, depth) and time as we experience it has three dimensions (past, present and future) a pointer to the Triunity???

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Richard
communicant member, FCoS
Perth, Scotland UK

His Name forever shall endure;
last like the sun it shall:
Men shall be blessed in Him,
and blessed all nations shall Him call (Ps. 72:17)

Space and time are two things that we, in our own lives, never seem to have enough of, nor do we give proper thanks to the Lord for what of it we do have.

Theognome

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Bill Cunningham
Covenant Reformed Church, URC
Kansas City
There are three kinds of people- those who can count, and those who can't.

Not if you take into account God's foreordination of every event that transpires in space and time. Because he foreordained everything that comes to pass, it is not possible that such a contradiction could exist. Any "changes" a time traveler makes would have already been made before he left.

It would be similar to Satan trying to foil God's plan by killing his Son. He ended up playing right into God's hands.

Time doesn't have three dimensions. It's like a line--one-dimensional. Past and future are half of the line, while the present is a point on that line. Roughly. Maybe.

...but to answer your question, it's possible. Maybe every combination of threes is a pointer to the Trinity. But then what does the fact that there are nine planets point to?