Eternity and Invisible Time as a Creative Process

Eternity is not defined by time. Time is defined by eternity, and the Eternal One who created it and has an existence outside of it. God brought time, as a creative process, into his Creation out of eternity. God’s eternity, watching over all time, renders time itself a creative process, a process his children can trust to work ultimately for our good. The time that has gone before us, our own time on Earth, and the time after us to Jesus’ coming, all of history, are all a part of the same creative process that started when God created the heavens and the earth. History in its completion is an aspect of Creation and a manifestation of God.

This post will give a brief introduction to time and eternity, concepts that will be discussed at greater length later, and show that, by discarding our belief in eternal things, we have discarded eternity and with it any practical belief in time as a creative process, rather than merely a measurable physical quantity.  I will not attempt in this post to solve the contradictions created by the concept of time created by God and flowing from eternity, except to remind the reader of Ellul’s previously-quoted observation that the law of non-contradiction applies to visible reality, not to the invisible things of God (which are by nature dialectical).

Contrary to common thinking, eternity is not defined by time—for instance, as infinite or endless time. Rather, time is defined by eternity, by the Eternal One who created time. God is eternal. That doesn’t just mean that he always was, and that he will never end, as long as there is or was time. Instead, God’s eternity  means  he created time, and, therefore, has an existence outside of it. Genesis 1:1 places God “in the beginning,” before anything else was—including time as we know it—and says he created the heavens and the earth.  (If God had a time of his own before the beginning, we would not know of it). Before God “gave birth to the world,” the psalmist says, “from everlasting to everlasting, ” he is God. Psalm 90:1-2. John 1:1-3 also places the Word—a personality within God  we will discuss in greater detail later—“in the beginning… with God, and declares “all things were made by (or, through) him, and without him nothing was made that has been made.”   God also clearly connected his eternity to his self-existence and his creation of everything in Isaiah where he first declares of Israel, “’You are my witnesses,’ says the LORD, ‘my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may consider and believe in me, and understand that I am,” and then states “before me there was no God formed, and there will be none after me.” Isaiah 43:10, and compare v. 13.  He reiterates this theme in Isaiah 48:12, saying “Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel my called: I am… I am the first, I also am the last. Yes, my hand has laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand has spread out the heavens.” God was before time, because he created it.

Exactly identical things are said of Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus declared that he exists above time and has always existed just like his Father. In John 8:58, Jesus declared, “before Abraham was, I am.” Likewise, in his prayer for his disciples and those who would later believe in him through their message, Jesus asks his Father to glorify him “with the glory which I had with You before the world was” and reminds the Father that “You loved me before the foundation of the world.” John 17: 5, 24. In a similar vein, Paul wrote of Jesus that he is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,” that all things visible and invisible” were created by him, through him, and for him, that he “is before all things,” and that in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:15-17. When Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection and commissioned them to preach the gospel to the world, he encouraged them by reminding them that “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Matthew 28:20. As stated, in the present tense, this is not so much a promise that he would, in the future, be with them wherever they would go as a statement of the fact that he was already with them every place they would ever go. It is a statement of his eternity extending into the future, as we see time.

God brought time, as a creative process, into his Creation out of eternity.  This is shown by the temporal sequence of creative events, one day following another, in Genesis 1, and the sub-detail of the creation, innocence, Fall and banishment of the first humans in Genesis 2 and 3.  But it is also shown by God’s promise in Genesis 3:15 to send, in time, a son of the woman, who would crush the serpent’s head.  It is further shown by God’s continuing dealings with humanity, and especially the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, leading to the birth of Jesus.    

Because God has an existence outside of time, he presently exists in himself in the same way at all times, just as he presently exists everywhere within space.  He is presently at the beginning of time. He is presently at the end of time. As he told Isaiah, he is the first and the last. In Revelation, he declares himself to be “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” and ““who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” Revelation 1:8; 21:6; 22:13.   And he is present all the way through created time. This does not mean that he “was” present in the past, and “will be” present in the future, like us. He simply IS present–in the past, present and future.  When God told Moses that he should tell the people that  their God was self-existent, that his mane was merely “I am that I am,” he then told Moses to tell the people that this God who simply is, is “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of your fathers.”  Exodus 3:15-16.   Centuries later, as we see time, Jesus quoted this story when asked to prove that the Torah speaks to the resurrection of the dead:  

But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God:  ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

Matthew 22:31-32.

In the parallel passage in Luke, Jesus adds to this the explanation “for all live to him.”  Luke 20:36-38.   Even those we see as dead, are presently alive to God, and God is presently alive to them.

God can be both above and outside time, as its creator, and yet fully present in it at every point, because he came into his creation, and into time, as a man.  He knows time, and understands what our limited time in this life, and the transitoriness of all things, means to us, because he became one of us.  He put aside his divinity, for a few years, lived, matured, felt all we feel, and died.  He then rose from the dead, and fully understands us, as he—in his eternity—is all around us.    

This came up for me recently in a discussion about what is meant by God first choosing Saul to be King of Israel (1 Samuel 9:15-17), and then, a few years later, saying that he “repented” of making that choice (1 Samuel 15:11).  Did God not know what Saul would do before he anointed him? 

 God’s eternity  implies that, when he appointed King Saul, he was already present at the times of King Saul’s failures (1 Samuel 13:8-14; 1 Samuel 15), at King David’s coronation, with Jesus on the cross, and in our present world. He knew how King Saul would fail–that being King Saul’s free choice–and how He planned to work out the consequences of Saul’s failures to do his perfect will for all time. This is hard to think about, and impossible to completely understand, but our God is vast.  Being above time, he is able to  work out the consequences of everything that happens—even our voluntary evil choices—so as to ultimately work out his perfect will for all time. 

“Work out,” or “work together” (Greek, συνεργέω) is exactly the verb used for this in Romans 8:28.  This verse is often misunderstood as a promise that, if an individual (usually the speaker) is a Christian, then everything will mysteriously “work out” for him or her in the end—i.e., that life will go well and the individual will ultimately get whatever they want.  However, this is not what the verse says, either in isolation or in context. 

The verse starts with a phrase that is usually translated “for we know,” and which refers to the preceding context.  Verses 18-25 speak of our “present sufferings”—from which we are not exempt—which we suffer along with the whole Creation . The Creation is also bound to futility and decay along with us, we are told, until we receive the end result of our adoption as God’s children—that result being the full redemption of our bodies (and, along with them, the Creation) from death.  But this has not yet happened, as we see time, so we eagerly await it, hope and “groan” for it.  Verses 26 and 27 then speak to what the Holy Spirit does to help us as we groan in our weakness, while struggling with our sufferings and waiting for our final redemption.  Our most serious weakness in our struggles is that we do not know most of God’s plans.  We therefore do not know perfectly what we ought to pray for.  But the Holy Spirit, who searches our hearts and also knows God’s mind, knows perfectly what we should ask, and joins His prayers to ours, asking the Father for that which is his will for us.

And this is where verses 28 through 30 start:

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Whom he predestined, those he also called. Whom he called, those he also justified. Whom he justified, those he also glorified.

Romans 8:28-30 (WEB)

Because we know that we are still—together (this whole context is in the plural)—struggling with our own mortality but also know that God, through his Spirit, is helping us with that struggle (verses 18-27), we also know that all things will work together for our ultimate good, which is the purpose of God to which we are called.  I realize that most modern translations make God the subject of this verse,  so emphasizing God’s role, by following the reading in exactly four Greek texts (the Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, p46 and 81) from the Alexandrian text tradition, which add “God” in the nominative form after the verb translated “work together,” so that the verse translates “God makes all things work together…”  But all other ancient texts, including a majority even of the texts of the Alexandrian tradition, do not contain this addition.  (See discussions of this question by others, here and here).   So I consider the addition of “God” as the subject to be poorly supported by the Greek textual history.  And I also consider it unnecessary, because, as I will discuss at greater length in a later post devoted to this passage alone, I believe the proper subject of “work together” is “all things,” just as the KJV, ASV, WEB and a few other translations have it.  The emphasis of the verse is on the “all things,” all of the events in our lives as lovers of God, collectively, not on God (whose presence is simply assumed).

But how can it be that “all things,” in this instance, the events that occur in our lives—and in all of created time—“work out” to accomplish God’s purpose for us, if God isn’t actually causing each of them, including the evil ones, to happen?  There are a couple of rather old metaphorical explanations which I believe give an intelligible explanation of this.

The most ancient of these explanations involves the observation that the Greek verb synergeo can be used to speak of weaving together a rope, although it is never used in this sense in the New Testament (except maybe metaphorically in this verse).  In Biblical times, the plant fibers that were worked together into ropes were not nearly as uniform in consistency and thickness as those used by ropemaking machines today.  They had lots of thin, weak areas and thick knotted segments in them.  To fashion a durable rope, the artisan would have to match the thin areas of one strand to thicker areas in other strands and would also have to weave around the knotted areas in a strand.  At least one ancient writer compared the process pictured in this verse to the work of the artisan, making provision for weaknesses and irregularities in the strands that he fashioned into a rope.  The artisan did not make the thin parts or the knots in the separate cords–the cords came that way,  Likewise, God does not cause the weaknesses or the sins in our lives.  But God—whose presence as the artisan is implied—is able to weave them together into an ultimate future that carries out his will for us (our ultimate good).

The second metaphor, which dates from the Renaissance, takes the idea of ropemaking one step farther, and compares the lives of God’s people throughout all history (and, so, history itself) to a tapestry.  Once again, the presence of God, as the artisan making the tapestry, is assumed.  The key to this metaphorical explanation is the side of the tapestry on which we are presently living:  while we are bound to time, and God is still (in our view of time) working history together, we are living on the back side of the tapestry.  The only way we can see any part of the front of tapestry, before it is completed, is if God—who already knows the finished product—specially reveals it to us.  The disadvantage of living on the back side of the tapestry is that all we can see from back here is a tangle of threads and knots that makes no sense.  And some of the threads we can see have really ugly colors and textures. So we wonder what the artisan is doing, using such ugly threads in a pattern that makes no sense, and that seems to make our own lives make no sense.  But, when the tapestry is complete, we will see that the result is beautiful beyond all imagination.

This reading of verse 28 is also supported by verses 29 and 30, which join with verses 18 through 25 in identifying the “good” to which all of the otherwise apparently meaningless events of our lives, together, are being worked.  In the present time, we are being transformed into the image of his Son, Jesus, so making us ready for the full redemption of our bodies (and of all Creation) which is coming.          

Thus, God’s eternity, watching over all time, renders time itself a creative process, a process his children can trust to work ultimately for our good.   The time that has gone before us, our own time on Earth, and the time after us to Jesus’ coming, all of history, are all a part of the same creative process that started when God created the heavens and the earth.  This does not mean that everything that happens to us, or to others around us who love God and are listening to has call, will be good.  Bad things will continue to happen to us, and others around us, and many of these these things will appear to be unfairly directed against “good” people and to exempt “evil” people whose sin makes them rich and powerful. (See, for instance, Psalm 73:1-14; Habakkuk 1; Luke 13:1-9; James 2:5-6; James 5:1-6).  As those who love God, we are promised persecutions in our present life. (John 15:18-25). But we also know that God is working out the consequences of all of that evil to an end that is good and in which all who love him will share.

The pessimistic Preacher of Ecclesiastes wrote that God has set eternity in the hearts of all people–we all understand the concepts of eternity and time to some degree–though we are not able to work out for ourselves what God is doing in them. Ecclesiastes 3:11. Paul similarly wrote that God’s “invisible attributes,” namely his “eternal” power and divine nature–which includes his eternity–are known to all people, being understood through the things he has made (including time!), so that we are without excuse when we ignore him and serve ourselves or other things he has made. Romans 1:18-21.

Nevertheless, our modern world insists, as a practical matter, that only things visibly present in our time exist. This has the effect of excluding God, the eternity he inhabits, and time as a creative process.  It leaves only time as a pseudo-spatial entity, a mere mathematical construct, connecting our birth to our death:

We must challenge science as a spatial entity: when it claims to include time while reducing it to something spatial. We must challenge science as related to reality: when it pretends to be the whole truth by limiting and excluding everything that goes beyond it. Science tries to exclude anything it cannot reduce. Hence we must also challenge this reductionist process itself: “everything” is defined as what can be categorized or reduced by the scientific method.

Jacques Ellul (J.M. Hanks, Tr.), The Humiliation of the Word, p. 258.

Or, stated from a different perspective:

The mind or the minding of the spirit is life and peace precisely because it locates us in a world adequate to our nature as ceaselessly creative beings under God. The “mind of the flesh,” on the other hand, is a living death.  To it the heavens are closed.  It sees only “That inverted Bowl they call the Sky, Whereunder crawling cooped we live and die.”  It restricts us to the visible, physical world, where our hearts demand can never be. 

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p.83.

But doing this blinds us to God’s creative process and our part in it.  It blinds us to our purpose.  And it blinds us to history. History in its completion is an aspect of Creation and a manifestation of God.