It’s been a few months since the last post in the series Author God, but today we’d like to bring you the next installment. In this series we are considering the ways in which the paradigm of God as the Author of history is helpful to understanding more about how God relates to his creation. I’ve been arguing that the relationship that exists between God and his creation is similar in many ways to the relationship that exists between an author and his characters. No doubt, at certain points the analogy breaks down. The more I continue to press into the idea, however, the fuller it becomes in clarifying (for me at least) some of the hardest concepts to understand when it comes to how God relates to this universe.
Today I want to consider a pesky little idea called time. In what way does God who is out of time relate to characters and a story that takes place within time? Let’s examine this question through the lens of God as Author.
A human author exists outside of the time of the story he’s writing. He’s not constrained by it. In fact, he creates it. He decides how quickly it passes and what happens when. This means that an author doesn’t have to write the first scene first and work chronologically through the story as the characters must do. An author can write the last scene first and then go back and write the previous scenes that lead up to that final moment. Or he can start in the middle, work on the end, and then turn his attention to the beginning. This is possible because to the author every moment in the story is present. The author can open to any page and enter the story at any moment he chooses, and when he does so, that moment is the present for him. If that’s so, then to the author, the first scene in the story is happening at the very same moment that the last scene is happening. Neither the future nor the past of the story happens before or after any other moment. All moments are laid out before the author the same.
I believe the future can cause the past.
There’s another intriguing—and a little spooky—consequence of the fact that the author exists outside of the flow of time of his story. If this is true, then in a story, the future can cause the past. Here’s what I mean. While being formed in the mind of the author, a story is very much a pliable object. It’s not a thing that is permanently and irrevocably set in the author’s mind and then dictated to paper once and for all. Everything about the story is fluid. The setting, characters, and plot develop in the mind of the author, and the hammering out of all the details to arrive at a cohesive story is a process. This means that because every moment for the author is present, the author can enter the story at any given point and make changes there that will then require him to work both backward and forward through the story and make the changes needed to keep the story consistent and cohesive.
For example, at certain times as I’ve been writing I’ve had an idea for chapter 24 of the story that has required me to go back to chapters 2, 7, 18, and 23 and add, change, or delete certain elements there that make my idea for chapter 24 work. And I can do that. I’m outside of my story’s flow of time. In that sense, though it might sound strange at first, the event I added in chapter 23 caused the changes to events in chapters 2, 7, 18, and 23. That is, my story’s future caused my story’s past. It’s like I dropped a boulder in the “future” side of my story’s swimming pool that then created ripples stretching all the way backward to the “past” side of my story’s swimming pool. And that’s not a problem because in terms of my story, I’m outside of time and not bound by it in the slightest. Since every moment for me is present, it doesn’t really matter if something I thought of for chapter 24 causes me to add specific events in chapter 2. The characters will assume the event in chapter 2 caused the event in chapter 24, but that’s of little consequence. The fact will remain that the event in chapter 24 necessitated and therefore caused the event in chapter 2. And that’s how the future can cause the past.
If it’s possible for me, a human author, to create a situation in which my character’s future causes his past, then why would we be surprised to find that God is capable of exactly the same thing? I’m going to argue that not only does God do precisely that, but he also does it routinely in the lives of his children. In fact, I believe that the entire life of a follower of Jesus is based in part on this very principle, the principle of a person’s future causing his present and past. In short, here’s how I’d say it: The assurance of the future glorification of believers is the impetus that gives rise to their present sanctification. In other words, the fact that all God’s children will one day stand faultless and glorified before God is what causes those very believers to purify themselves here and now. The future reality of glorification causes our present sanctification.
Amazingly, the Bible spells this exact idea out multiple times. Here’s one:
“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3).
The assurance of the future event empowers and motivates our present movement toward that unshakable end. In other words, a sure event in our future flows backward in time and causes events that, relative to itself, are past.
Notice how this works. John says that we know that one day we will be like Jesus, that is, pure and holy and sinless. That will happen because one day we will be given eyes to see him, and in seeing him, we will become like him. Notice then, the second sentence: “And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” Don’t miss the tenses. The fact that we will one day be clean (future tense) gives rise here and now (in our present tense) to us making ourselves clean. The assurance of the future event empowers and motivates our present movement toward that unshakable end. In other words, a sure event in our future flows backward in time and causes events that, relative to itself, are past. And that’s simply not a problem if God, just like an author, is outside of time and can do things that appear to us to be crazy like making our futures cause our pasts.
We’ll stop there for today, but keep an eye out for the next post in this series.
What about you? Does thinking of God as Author help you better understand the concept of time? If so, in what ways? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Read the previous two posts in the series Author God: Writing with Purpose and Free Will and God’s Sovereignty.
I’ve often thought that time must not work the way we understand.
I wonder if we’ll ever be able to understand it. Einstein talked about how incredible it would be for beings living in two dimensions to suddenly encounter a three dimensional object. God certainly has a higher vantage point from which to view time than we do. Maybe some day we’ll be elevated to some higher level of existence and we’ll be able to see time more like God sees it. Or maybe not. Either way, it’s fun to think about!
That’s an interesting way of looking at it. Actually delayed-choice quantum mechanics experiments have proven that a cause can happen after an effect. Another interesting demonstration of quantum physics is that we do actually determine a degree of otherwise indeterminate reality by observing it. Of course Einstein was uncomfortable with it as an implication that God “plays dice,” but if you look at it that God sees all the possibilities and gives His creatures a role in shaping the outcome (while in His foreknowledge not being surprised by it), it actually fits nicely with the parallel concepts of God’s sovereignty and our free will.