Time and Eternity and God

Many years ago, I recall reading George MacDonald's novel, Phantastes, in which the protagonist of the story, Anodos, visits a fairy-tale land.  One minute, he is fumbling through his desk; the next, he has stepped out of this world into another world entirely.  Anodos goes on a variety of adventures, but one adventure is a particularly curious one.  At one point in Anodos' story, he reads a book about a man named Cosmo, which Anodos becomes enmeshed in. In other words, Anodos, the protagonist of George MacDonald's book, plunges into a world outside his own, and then plunges into a story that is not his own.  Yet, Anodos becomes so entrenched in Cosmo's story, that it gradually becomes difficult to recall where Anodos ends and where Cosmo begins.  Their lives become intertwined.  Anodos is Cosmo, and Cosmo is Anodos - until the story ends - and the reader realizes that he/she has also become so enmeshed in the story that he/she has been experiencing it right along with Cosmo/Anodos.  Yet, this journey is a voluntary one.  Anodos chose to read the story of Cosmo and allowed himself to identify with Cosmo, just as I chose to read Phantastes and to identify with Anodos.  For whatever period of time I was reading the book, I was confining myself to that story.  I could escape at any time I wished, but chose not to do so.

 

Taking his cue from MacDonald (and also Saint Boethius), C.S. Lewis said something similar in his book, Surprised by Joy.  Lewis explained that if Shakespeare somehow wanted to meet one of his own fictional characters like Hamlet, then Shakespeare would have to write himself into the play as a fellow character.  That is the only way that Shakespeare could exist in both places at once, i.e., as the playwright and as a character within the play.  This is analogous to what God Himself did when entering the world through the Person of Jesus Christ. (Lewis used this technique in some of his own novels by including himself as a character, e.g., The Great Divorce, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength.)

 

Saint Boethius wrote a large portion of his book, The Consolation of Philosophy,  to explain how divine omniscience and free will can coexist.  We experience time as a steady stream, but God experiences it as a single, eternal moment.  I believe that the Person of Jesus Christ experienced both simultaneously.  I believe that Jesus was obedient by conforming His human nature to His divine nature.  As divine Author, Jesus wrote the story, but chose to live it out as well.  He grew into understanding His divine nature because He chose to do so.  God chose to plunge into the world as an infant, to live alongside His creatures, not to simply live vicariously through them, but to become one of them.  He wrote Himself into the story where He could freely do as He wished.  He could write Himself into the story as Hero or villain, as Friend or foe.  As the One Omnipotent Being, God can do as He wishes.  Jesus is the exemplar of faith, not out of necessity, but because it is His nature to be the good and perfect Exemplar and that is what we need: a sinless Savior and a sinless Model of Perfection.  

 

That's where I stop in my speculation about time and the eternity of God.  Saint Thomas Aquinas stopped too.  Indeed, Aquinas wrote speculatively about Beatific Vision, but when he later experienced a Beatific Vision himself, he declared that all of his work was "like straw," and as a result, one of the greatest systematic theologies of all time, Summa Theologica, went unfinished.  Since I fall far short of Aquinas, I too will likely look back on these thoughts and consider them straw as well.  Yet, for now, this is the best I can do.