Questions Of Time And Eternity
By JOHN YOUNG
Problems are clarified by making the right distinctions. This can be particularly important when we are discussing divine things and God’s Revelation to the human race. I’ll just take five questions here, and seek to clarify the issues by making necessary distinctions. Let’s start with this question:
Are God, Jesus, And Mary Saddened By Sin?
We might recall apparitions in which the Blessed Virgin looked sorrowful or shed tears as she spoke of the offenses committed against her Divine Son. And we speak of sin as an offense against God; but if He is offended doesn’t this imply sorrow on His part?
Well, we can dismiss the idea that the Divine Nature of God suffers or is changed in any way by anything we do, for it is an infallible teaching of the Church that He is immutable: that is, unchangeable. This can also be shown by reason, apart from Revelation, because a changeable God would be imperfect, and therefore not really God.
But what about Jesus in His human nature? He suffered while on Earth; does He still suffer when He sees our sins? And what of Mary: Is she saddened by our sins?
The answer must be no, because those in Heaven are perfectly happy, and perfect happiness by definition is incompatible with any sorrow. So no one in Heaven has any sadness.
However, there is what theologians call accidental happiness in Heaven, which means happiness from such good things as friendship with the angels and saints, or contemplation of the holiness of our companions in Heaven. I think this consideration can be applied to our present question.
If so, while Mary, and Jesus in His human nature, are in no way saddened by sin or any misfortune they will surely have an increase in their accidental happiness through their knowledge of the goodness of people on Earth.
Is It Pointless To Pray For Rain?
A friend of mine had a problem regarding prayers for rain. He claimed that meteorological conditions in the period of drought preceding the rain showed that the drought would have broken whether people prayed or not.
I am doubtful whether our scientists could predict when the drought would break, but suppose for the sake of argument that the time comes when future weather conditions can be reliably forecast. Scientists at that period, looking back at the twenty-first century, might establish that weather conditions then seemed independent of whether people had prayed or not. Would this show that prayers for rain had had no effect?
That conclusion wouldn’t follow. The difficulty arises if we think of God as acting as we do in causing an effect. We use the knowledge available to us in predicting a future event. God doesn’t do that. Nothing is future to Him: He knows all things at once. So when He answers prayers for rain He guides natural causes to produce rain at the appropriate time, causes that operate even before the prayers were said.
Therefore our future scientist would see the natural causes that produced the weather, but would be unable to detect God’s activity in the total picture.
Does God’s Knowledge Of The Future Impose Necessity?
If God knows what I will do tomorrow, doesn’t this mean that I am not free to do something different? For, on the supposition that I will act differently tomorrow, God would be wrong. So I can’t act differently, and it seems that my actions are not free.
It should be clear that there is something wrong with this conclusion because common sense shows that we have free will. Also, I know the sun will rise tomorrow morning, but my foreknowledge doesn’t cause the sun to rise.
But the difficulty comes partly from an implicit misunderstanding of the statement that God knows the future. He knows what is future to us, but to Him nothing is future. He has no past and no future, but lives in an eternal present. And in that eternal present He knows, in one infinite act, the whole past, present, and future of creation.
Why Did God Create Such A Big Universe?
We live on a planet which is a mere speck in the vastness of the universe, and no evidence has been found of life anywhere else in that vastness. Why, we might wonder, would God create such a dead immensity? What is the point of it? Should we assume that science will, in some remote future century, see the whole picture?
Puzzlement about this is due partly to the fact that our vision tends to be restricted to the present life and the short time we live on Earth. Compared with all that is to be known about the universe our present knowledge is infinitesimal.
In Heaven we will see the glory and immensity of the universe, and fully appreciate that “the heavens declare the glory of God.” Even now the souls in Heaven have that vision, and the angels have had it from the very beginning.
Time Is Short, Eternity Is Long
That famous expression, used by Charles Spurgeon, by Cardinal Newman and others, expresses an important truth and helps us see things in their true perspective. But there is a sense (certainly not intended by those who use the expression) in which it is not correct and in which it would be closer to the truth to say that time is long and eternity is short!
We can approach the question by contrasting time with eternity. In our present life there is a constant flow of events, like a running river, resulting in past, present, and future; and time is the measure of this flow. Aristotle’s definition is a good one: “Time is the measure of movement according to before and after.”
But with God there is no before and after, no past and future; and the whole of creation is present to Him simultaneously. That is what is meant by saying that God is eternal.
So eternity in that sense is not a long drawn-out process, but a perfect present without past or future. It is proper to God alone, not to any creature, but God has chosen to offer us the direct vision of Himself in Heaven, and in that Beatific Vision we will have a participation in God’s own eternity.
If we want a paradox, we can say that time is long and eternity is short!
