APOLARITY

There’s a sci-fi book in which time travel becomes possible. When a time-traveller goes to the past, however, he/she finds that the past is immutable – one cannot so much as pick up a blade of grass (IIRC, this was mentioned in the preface to C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce). Of course, other books and movies have also played with this theme – from Back to the Future to The Butterfly Effect.

With regards to “God”, we in the West often think in very Greek terms (omniscient, infallible, omnipresent, immutable…I’m sure I’m forgetting one or two from my Christian elementary school). I’m not so sure anymore that that’s what “God” is. I tend to think now that “God” is a being completely beyond our ability to imagine, describe, grasp; yet at the same time he has chosen in some way to reveal [a part of] himself to humans, to interact with humans. As Meister Eckhart said, “The unnameable is omni-nameable”.

It’s hard (impossible) to speak for God, but I imagine that God is simultaneously in some way beyond time (hence his ability to hear all prayers at once, and the Catholic/Orthodox practice of praying for the dead), and limited or bound by time (perhaps this is a self-limitation?). He doesn’t (that we know of) change events of the past, and he doesn’t (again, to our knowledge) mandate the future or have it set in stone.

I believe that God enters into relationship with his creation – a real, two-way relationship, with the ability for both “parties” to change and be changed.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 28th, 2006 at 12:09 pm and is filed under religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.