Mere Christianity - Book Four - Time And Beyond Time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Four

 

 

Beyond Personality:

Or First Steps In The Doctrine Of The Trinity

 

 

 

 

3. Time And Beyond Time

     It is a very silly idea that in reading  a book  you must never "skip."
All sensible people skip freely when they come to a chapter which they  find
is going to  be no use to them. In  this  chapter  I am  going to talk about
something which may be helpful to some readers, but which may seem to others
merely  an  unnecessary complication. If you are  one of the second sort  of
readers,  then I advise you not  to  bother about this chapter at all but to
turn on to the next.

     In the last chapter I had to touch  on the subject of prayer, and while
that  is still fresh in  your mind and  my own, I should like to deal with a
difficulty that  some people find about the whole idea of prayer. A man  put
it  to me  by saying  "I can believe in God  all  right, but  what  I cannot
swallow is the idea of Him attending to several hundred million human beings
who are all addressing Him at  the same moment." And I have found that quite
a lot of people feel this.

     Now, the first thing to notice  is that the whole sting of it comes  in
the words at the same moment.  Most  of us can imagine God  attending to any
number of applicants if only they came one by one and He had an endless time
to do it in. So what is really at the back of this difficulty is the idea of
God having to fit too many things into one moment of time.

     Well that is of course what happens to us. Our life comes to  us moment
by moment one moment disappears  before  the next  comes along: and there is
room for very little in each. That is what  Time  is like. And of course you
and I tend to take it for granted  that this Time series-this arrangement of
past, present and future-is not simply  the way life comes to us but the way
all  things really exist We tend to assume that  the  whole universe and God
Himself are  always moving on from past  to future just as we  do.  But many
learned men do not agree with that. It was the Theologians who first started
the idea that some  things are  not in  Time  at all: later the Philosophers
took it over: and now some of the scientists are doing the same.

     Almost certainly  God  is  not in  Time. His life  does not consist  of
moments following  one another. If  a million  people are praying to  Him at
ten-thirty tonight,  He  need not  listen  to  them  all in that  one little
snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty-and every other moment from the
beginning of  the world-is always the Present for Him. If you like to put it
that  way,  He has all eternity in  which to  listen to the split  second of
prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.

     That is difficult, I know.  Let me try to give something, not the same,
but a bit like it. Suppose I am writing a novel. I write "Mary laid down her
work; next moment came a knock at the door!" For Mary who has to live in the
imaginary  time of my story  there is no  interval between  putting down the
work and hearing the knock. But I, who am  Mary's maker, do not live in that
imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half  of  that sentence and
the  second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary.
I could think about Mary as if she were the  only character in the  book and
for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear
in Mary's time (the time inside the story) at all.

     This is not a perfect  illustration, of course. But it may give  just a
glimpse of what I believe  to be  the truth. God is not hurried along in the
Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the
imaginary  time of his own novel He has infinite attention to spare for each
one of  us. He does not have  to deal  with us in the mass.  You are as much
alone  with Him as if you were the  only  being He  had  ever created.  When
Christ died,  He died for you individually just as much  as  if you had been
the only man in the world.

     The way in  which my illustration breaks down is this. In it the author
gets out of one Time-series (that of the novel)  only  by going into another
Time-series  (the  real one).  But  God,  I  believe,  does  not live  in  a
Time-series at all. His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours:
with Him it is,  so to speak,  still 1920 and already 1960. For  His life is
Himself.

     If you picture Time as  a straight line along which we  have to travel,
then you must picture God as the whole page on which the  line  is drawn. We
come to the parts  of the line one by one: we have  to leave A behind before
we get to B, and  cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or
outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.

     The idea is worth  trying  to grasp because it  removes  some  apparent
difficulties  in  Christianity.  Before  I  became  a  Christian  one of  my
objections was as follows.  The  Christians said that the eternal God who is
everywhere and keeps the whole  universe going,  once became a human  being.
Well  then, said I, how  did the  whole universe keep  going while He was  a
baby, or while He was asleep? How could He at the same time be God who knows
everything  and also a man asking his  disciples "Who  touched me?" You will
notice that  the sting lay in  the time  words: "While  He was a  baby"-"How
could He at the same time?" In other words I was assuming that Christ's life
as God  was in time, and that  His  life as the man Jesus in Palestine was a
shorter period taken out of that  time-just as my service in  the army was a
shorter period  taken  out  of my total life.  And  that is how  most of  us
perhaps tend to think about it.  We picture God living through a period when
His human life was still in  the future: then coming to a period when it was
present: then  going  on  to a period when  He could  look  back  on  it  as
something in the past. But probably these ideas correspond to nothing in the
actual  facts.  You cannot  fit Christ's earthly life  in Palestine into any
time-relations with His life as God beyond all space and time. It is really,
I  suggest,  a timeless  truth about  God that human nature,  and  the human
experience of weakness and sleep and ignorance, are somehow included in  His
whole divine  life.  This  human life  in  God is  from our  point of view a
particular period in  the history of our world (from  the year A.D. one till
the Crucifixion). We therefore imagine it is also a period in the history of
God's  own  existence.  But God  has  no  history. He is too completely  and
utterly real to  have one. For, of  course,  to have a  history means losing
part of your reality (because it had already slipped away into the past) and
not  yet  having another part  (because it is still in the  future): in fact
having nothing but  the tiny  little  present, which has gone before you can
speak about it. God forbid we should think God was  like that.  Even  we may
hope not to be always rationed in that way.

     Another difficulty  we get if we believe God  to  be  in time  is this.
Everyone  who believes in God at all believes that He knows what  you and  I
are  going  to do  tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how
can  I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again,  the difficulty comes
from thinking  that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only
difference being  that He can see ahead and we cannot.  Well,  if that  were
true, if God  foresaw our acts,  it would be very hard  to understand how we
could be  free not  to  do  them. But suppose  God is outside and above  the
Time-line. In that case, what we call  "tomorrow" is visible to  Him in just
the same way as what  we call "today."  All the days  are "Now" for Him.  He
does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them,
because, though you have lost yesterday. He has  not. He does not  "foresee"
you doing  things tomorrow;  He simply sees you doing  them: because, though
tomorrow  is not yet  there for you, it is for Him.  You never supposed that
your actions at this moment were any less  free because God  knows what  you
are  doing.  Well,  He  knows  your  tomorrow's  actions  in just  the  same
way-because He  is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense,
He does not know your action  till you have done it: but then the moment  at
which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.

     This idea  has helped me a good deal. If it does not help you, leave it
alone. It is a "Christian idea" in the sense that great  and wise Christians
have  held it and there is nothing in it contrary to Christianity. But it is
not in the Bible or any of the creeds. You can be a perfectly good Christian
without accepting it, or indeed without thinking of the matter at all

 

 

 

 

 

A discussion of how God exists outside of time.

1. Do you have trouble with the idea that God listens to prayers from many people all at the same time?
2. Lewis makes an analogy to God's existence being like a writer of a novel. Describe this analogy. Where does the analogy break down?
3. If we picture life as a straight line along which we walk moment by moment then God is …?
4. Why does having a history mean losing part of your reality?
5. How did Lewis resolve the dilemma of God knowing exactly what decisions we will make in the future and people still having free will?

 

 

 

 

 

 

This chapter discusses Time as it relates to Prayer.

We live through time. In this reality, we flow in one direction with time. All that is behind us is lost to us, except in our memory. All that is before us is unknown to us. What Lewis is attempting to address here is, "How can God listen to everyone in the world praying at the same time?"

• God created time
• God exists beyond time ("outside and above")
• God is not restricted to time
• We live in this tiny window of Now, the past behind us, the future before us
• God can see all of the "Now's" all of all time
• Example of the author writing the book with the character in the book living in a separate, independent timeline.
• "But God has no history. He is too completely real to have one."
• In human language we use terms like "foreknowledge," and "foresaw," and "predestined."
  • These terms are all locked into human reason and human language.
  • We really don't have language to adequately deal with God's presence outside of time.
  • Because of God's presence beyond time, He is able to tell the prophets what is in their future because it is not future to God, but present reality.
  • This allows a view of foreknowledge and predestination that does not violate, in any way, free will and human responsibility.
  • Humans retain personal responsibility in light of "predestination" without the two conflicting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt 

http://www.opendiscipleship.org/Mere_Christianity_leaders_notes

http://www.gordy-stith.com/Mere%20Christianity/mere_christianity_study_guide.htm