Time In the Context of Eternity—A Timescape.
In his article on “That Mysterious Flow” Dr. Davies refers to any portion of the four-dimensional creation (three dimensions of space and one of time) as a “timescape.” A timescape is like a landscape, but with the added fourth dimension of time.
In adopting the eternal perspective, it is helpful to look at time as physicists do. The concept of “timescape” allows a physicist to view time as just another dimension of creation, rather than the inflexible and unending continuous flow of moments that it appears to be from the human temporal perspective.
The physicist’s four dimensional view may be close to how God views our time from his perspective in eternity, which is outside of time. I have modified Davies’ “timescape” in Figure 1 to give an inclusive picture of space, time, and matter that allows temporally challenged human beings to view ourselves and our four dimensional space-time cosmos in the context of eternity.
Figure 1. A Timescape.
In Figure 1, I picture time as a cylinder, or pipe, within which material persons or objects exist in three spatial dimensions—height, width, and depth. Within this imaginary timescape everything progresses in only one direction because of the unidirectional peculiarity of time’s dimension; this peculiarity according to natural law, is similar to a one way street established by traffic law . We might think of it as a “head of pressure” (Figure 1) at one end of the pipe which causes everything and everyone caught up within the pipe to proceed toward the other end, wherein is death and decay.
This progression is individually appreciated by each of us as personal entropy from a new person full of life to an old person approaching death in the time structured cosmos. This movement in one direction will be irrevocable, because of the way the system was originally set up, at least when viewed from within the timescape and the perspective of a present moment in that timescape.
With regard to the entire timescape, God is the one who engineered the system, and only he knows how far it runs, its source, and its ultimate destination. Today’s standard model of cosmology (also known as the Big Bang model), in agreement with Einstein’s views of time and space, accepts a beginning and an end of time (represented by the dashed arrows in Figure 1) coincident with a beginning and end of the cosmos. This model is similar to the biblical scenario to the extent that it views all of the present creation that we inhabit as having a beginning out of nothing, and an end.
It has been said that a text without a context is merely a pretext. Therefore let us postulate that the context, or environment, of the present time-bounded cosmos is eternity (Figure 2.).
Figure 2. A Timescape in the Context of Eternity
Unlike the time-confined cosmos, eternity is infinite, and has no limit and no restriction of entropic historic earth-time, at least in the sense that people today comprehend and experience time that inexorably moves through life unto death. If a text without a context is merely a pretext, then I suggest that eternity is the environment (the context) from which the temporary realm (the text) of matter, space, and time is created.
Representations of our temporary realm, which ignore the context of eternity are merely deceptive pretensions by those who pretend to know what they do not. In other words, if you want to understand this world we live in, eternity matters!
Wherever in time people find themselves, they are always surrounded by eternity. When a person, a soul (psyche in the biblical Greek), exits this space-time island, it encounters the limitless ocean of eternity, leaving behind the dusty molecules of a changing and dying physical body.
Eternity is the realm of the personal I AM, Who is Infinite and without limit or boundary or time as we know it (Figure 2.)
Eternity is the realm of Him . . . who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light,” (1 Timothy 6:16)
Eternity is the realm of the Uncreated, Unprecedented, and Unending Triune God.
Only when one dwells in eternity can one say, “I AM” in the continuous present tense; all other persons can only say I was, or I am, or I will be. Even in eternity, a dependent human being can only say, “I am, because HE IS.” From the temporal perspective, time and existence are relative, always with limits, and the ultimate limit , according to Einstein’s mathematics, is the speed of light. which can never be achieved by physical objects or persons in our present space-time cosmos.
In this time-dimensional cosmos, time may be stretched by very rapid movement, but entropy and ultimate personal extinction cannot be overcome or avoided in the natural four dimensional timescape of the created world that we presently inhabit. Perhaps a more limited personal timescape may serve to illustrate the relationship between the ocean of eternity and the island of time.
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