Having reflected on 2 Peter last week from Morning Prayer, I was surprised to see the same reading, though expanded, in our Sunday lectionary. In teh additional verses, Peter points out that time is relative. What seems like a long time to us, is not experienced in the same way by God. He makes the point rather dramatically, "for God a thousand years are like a day and a day is like a thousand years." This is the foundation of his response to the 'scoffers' who mock the Christian belief that the Day of the Lord is near.
That mocking continues into our own day. It has teeth. It is not a question which I can easily brush away. Peter's explanation, that "God is not slow, He is patient" really does address the issue of the long delay. It also raises another issue, one which my kids asked me at dinner a few nights ago. Does God know the future?
I think there are certainly places in the Bible where that is implied and in some cases claimed. However, there is a difference between predicting the future and knowing the future. I am able, based on my insights, to predict accurately any number of things when dealing with my family or friends. I know how most people act in certain situations, so I can predict that if there is a large explosion in the Mall, many people will run away. Predictions are based on solid information. It is possible to read the Scriptures and see God is doing just that. He knows people's hearts so He is making accurate predictions about what they will do next. [NOTE: I say this may be what is going on]
The reason why I am even asking these things is because I am unclear that the future "exists." As a child, I thought of life as a movie (on a projector, remember I am old). One reel contained all the past. This is the stuff that we have already seen. The other reel was the future. It had not been seen yet, but it was already there ready to be seen at some future point. The present was the individual scenes being projected on the screen. Each brief moment flashes before us after having been 'stored' in the future as it heads to be 'stored' in the past. In such a view, all times are the same (past, present, future) in that they are all on the film. BUT, what if the future is blank? What if it is like an improvisation that is shaped by the past/present, but has not already been set? what if the present is constructed on the spot?
This question may seem silly, but it is important. If the future does not already exist as something which we are just waiting to see, then God may not know the future. Not because of any lack in God, but because there is no future to know! He would have ideas about what will happen, based on all He does know, but He would also be open to surprises as things turn out better (or worse) than expected. In other words, sometimes things work out differently than expected. [In my reading of Genesis the last weeks, there are places where God has regrets about creating humans. This is certainly difficult to reconcile with most explanations of an all knowing God. What is the revelation here? Perhaps God thought we would be better than we ended up being? Is that a problem for faith and worship?]
So God's plan to intervene in the world in the final judgment is part of the future, but maybe the time and place has yet to be determined. Maybe God is making decisions each day about the future based on what is going on here and now. Perhaps the Lord planned to end the whole thing soon after Jesus, but because of His desire ("as Peter writes, "not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance") for all to be saved He keeps putting it off?
Many years ago I taught with a woman who had suffered financially because of her decision to teach in a Roman Catholic school. Each year she told me,"I really have to leave, I have to make more money, but I do not want to leave until this class graduates." We would laugh that each year a new class became the one she wanted to wait for! Is Peter telling us that God is doing the same thing?
Perhaps such thoughts are too sublime for me to contemplate. I do think it is worth a thought or two, however. IF the creation is a work in process, a situation where God is constantly engaged with us, allowing us to share in creating the future, then perhaps we have a bigger part to play then we realize. It means our lives have value and our choices have impact. It means we need to pray more for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It also means we actively shape (with God) our future.
Jeff,I noted this line of thought in your presentation last night and wanted to ask you about it. Here is what I am wondering: if God does not know the future, wouldn't we have to also say the following:
ReplyDelete1. That God is as much inside the flow of time as we are?
2. That "eternal" wouldn't mean he transcends or contains time in some way but only that he is longer-lasting than anything or anyone else--that he was simply here earlier and could remain longer than everything else in creation?
3. That if this is the case, he could not have created time, since he is inside it like everything else?
4. That prophecies about the future, supposedly of divine inspiration, become little more than highly educated guesses on God's part?
5. That passages like Isaiah 46:10 ("I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.") and Psalm 33:11 ("But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.") should be understood only as a sort of rhetorical compliment to God from those authors?
6. That God did not in fact *know* that mankind would fall and need redemption, such his plan of salvation was contingent on what he subsequently *found out* about man's conduct? And if this were the case, what should we make of Revelations 13:8 ("The lamb slain from the foundation of the world")?
I find this particularly important for two reasons. The first is that my principal objection, as an atheist, to the idea of God is that if God is here, we should not be. If he is God, he is perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and transcends time. If those things are true, there could be no reason, not only for him to create, but to *do anything at all.* An action implies a purpose; a purpose implies a goal; a goal implies a desirable condition as yet unrealized. That cannot be true for a perfect, omnipotent being for whom all time is now. He cannot need or want anything that is not already contained in his own perfection, any more than you or I need to "learn" to read, starting this evening or the Sun needs to "start" being hot or luminous.
If God is perfect, we are superfluous, and superfluity is itself an imperfection.
The second reason that this is important to me is the issue of responsibility. If I hand car keys to a man that I know has a long history of DUI arrests, I hardly think it relieves me of responsibility to say "But after all, he had free will; he didn't *have* to stop off at that bar on the way home, and get drunk, and then crash into someone else." That is true even though I do not know the future with certainty. If I really did know the future with certainty, then it seems to me that my responsibility would be inescapable even though, yes, the man's bad actions would be his own choice and his own fault. But that would not let me off the hook.
Christopher Hitchens has said that he not only disbelieves in God but would not want a God to exist, since it would mean we would be under continual surveillance--as he puts it, "a sort of celestial North Korea." I do not want a Supreme Being to exist because if he really were Supreme, he could not evade ultimate responsibility for every horror that has ever occurred and would owe me an infinitely bigger apology than any that I could owe him. I really *would* welcome the discovery that there was some advanced being, somewhere in the universe but still part of the natural order of things, as I am, who was enormously wise and good; if I learned that he was there, I would want to follow him.
But if I learned that he was in fact the same being who was responsible for the universe to begin with, it would change everything, because his responsibility would be inescapable.
Hmm, I regret that we can't edit these comments, because I just thought of the following: if God does not know the future, how should we understand the following:
ReplyDeleteMatthew 24:36: "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
Acts 1:7: "He said to them: 'It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.'"
Acts 2:23: "This man [Jesus] was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross."