The Beginning of Time

When we think about eternity, we often appeal to the following schema: God has always existed; at some point He decided to bring the universe into existence; one day the universe will cease to exist and God (and we) will go on existing forever. As a working model, this synopsis is accurate; it captures more or less what we need to know in order to maintain an operational understanding of creation, salvation, and everything. However, it is inaccurate in a subtle yet important way.

What the model neglects is that the creation of the universe was also the creation of time. Since there is no time outwith the universe, it makes no sense to speak of what existed ‘before’ the universe, or what will exist ‘after’ the universe. It is therefore imprecise to say that God existed ‘before’ the universe was created, that the universe came into existence at some ‘point in time’, or that God (and we) will continue to exist ‘after’ the universe no longer does. These are meaningless statements; to borrow from C.S. Lewis, they refer not to impossibilities – since with God all things are possible – but rather to non-possibilities.

For some reason[1], it is easier for us to understanding this point if we formulate the statements in terms of space rather than time. God obviously does not just exist ‘outside’ of the universe – you wouldn’t reach Heaven if you travelled to the edge of the universe and kept on going, or even if you found some way to travel between multiple universes, dimensions, or whatever. Rather, He exists in altogether distinct, non-spatial reality. As Einstein and others have shown, moreover, what is true for space is also, and necessarily, true for time.

In truth, it is difficult to escape a spatial-temporal perspective, since, as physical beings, we exist within the confines of space-time and conceptualise existence accordingly. This is evident in our vocabulary, as even this blog post attests. Although I am attempting to reason that God exists ‘outside’ of space itself and existed ‘before’ time itself, even the very adjectives, verbs, and nouns that I employ in order to do so are predicated on a fallacious universality of space and time. We can at least say, though, that whereas the universe is spatial and temporal, God is not. This is why God is the Great I AM (Exodus 3), and why Jesus claimed that “before Abraham, I AM” (John 8) – not I was, but I AM[2].

Indeed, I would submit that all of this admittedly abstract and seemingly pedantic deliberation actually helps us to grasp – or, at least, helps us to grasp why we cannot grasp – the nature of God. For example, a common (and powerful) Christian argument is that the universe must have been created since it could not have existed forever nor come into existence by itself. The obvious counterargument is that the same would be true for God, leading to an infinite regress. When we take the foregoing analysis into account, however, it becomes clear that God is not eternal in the sense of time going on forever; He is eternal in the sense of being outside of space-time; and since He is outside of space-time, it is not surprising that His existence is eternal[3]. For the same reason, it is not surprising that God never changes, and that He is everywhere at the same time. To be sure, these phenomena are astonishing, but only because we cannot grasp existence outside of space and time. Indeed, the miracle of the Gospel is precisely that God came into space-time to participate in, overcome, and redeem our fallen reality.

Notes:

[1] I would speculate that, when we think of a non-physical (i.e. spiritual) reality, we implicitly (and inaccurately) think of another ‘place’ – perhaps a place that is infinitely far away, or a place that cannot be reached by the usual means, but a place nonetheless. There seems to be no analogous method for thinking about time.

[2] Incidentally, the Jehovah’s Witness bible modifies this verse so that Jesus does in fact say “I was” rather than “I AM” – clearly a dishonest contrivance to downplay the divinity of Jesus. Indeed, it is not even a particularly well-thought-out contrivance, since it leaves unexplained why Jesus’ Jewish listeners would be offended by His statement to the point of seeking to stone Him.

[3] In the context of this post, a useful distinction might be made between ‘eternal’ and ‘everlasting’. Indeed, to my limited understanding, this distinction is often the subject of discussion between Bible translators. Such a discussion, however, would take us too far afield.