No time?

[Chocolatesa]

I came across this article just now, about a scientist that says time does not exist. This clicked with something in my memory, I remembered reading somewhere something about God and the saints existing outside of time, God being everywhere present always at once. Something about when the world ends there will be no time maybe, or that after we pass away we exist outside of time?

Anyways if anyone could link me to any useful articles regarding Orthodoxy and non-existence of time I would appreciate it to refresh my memory. A quick google search of "Orthodoxy and time" didn't really bring up anything relevant. It would be awfully funny/ironic if this was another one of those cases of "Science proving what we already knew"... in this case the "we" being Orthodox Christians And here some people are saying science and religion are mutually exclusive!

 

[jckstraw72]

well time is mysterious but i dont think we can say it doesnt exist. Christ was in the tomb for 3 days, roughly 2000 yrs ago. God created the world 7521 years ago according to the Byzantine Creation Era calendar. We have so many Saints assigned to very specific days. I don't really even know what it would mean to say that time doesn't exist.

 

[ArmyMatt]

for God, no time does not exist in the sense that He is outside of it. the saints are beyond space and time as far as we know it, but I imagine that there is still time there since they are still creatures and are not by nature eternal.

I think that it's kinda a relativity thing, where the saints, so enraptured by God's love that all of eternity seems like the blink of an eye. kinda like if you are doing something you really enjoy, doing that for 3 hours could breeze by like 5 minutes.

 

[inconsequential]

It exists, it's just very unstable and erratic in its passage. That's why it takes anywhere from 12 to 18 days for me to get from Tuesday morning to Saturday afternoon but Sunday and Monday are gone in less than 10 hours.

In all seriousness, to me it seems that either time flows from eternity, becoming time as it encounters the creation or the moment we are in, the NOW, is the point where we, who are "inside" time, touch eternity. I doubt that makes any sense but my vocabulary is too limited to properly articulate what I mean.

 

[Thekla]

The book Time and Man, by George Mantzaridis may be of interest.

(My books are packed, and it's been a while, so I don't know if your specific question is addressed - sorry.)

Time and Man, by Georgios I. Mantzaridis; Translated by Julian Vulliamy

 

[ArmyMatt]

according to Fr Hopko even in this world before the end, there is a relativity to how we experience time as well. if you go to a baseball game and you are behind home plate, you see the ball hit the bat right when you hear the crack. if you are way out in left field, you see the ball hit the bat, then you hear the crack a little later. the event happened at the same time, but is experienced at two different "times" because light travels faster than sound.

so time being experienced differently when we come before Christ is not so alien as we might think.

 

[bibledoctor]

Your sense of time can be measured by sunrise and sunset ~ pretty simple.

 

[Thekla]

We can't perceive time without space -- physical landmarks, etc.

To the extent that we are not rooted in created space (as in prayer), our sense of time changes.

 

[bibledoctor]

Isn't the Liturgy of St. Basil the great like 4 3/4 hours long?... :o

 

[Gxg (G²)]

Time travel may be possible...

 

[Thekla]

Time travel may be possible...

As in the (LXX) book of Daniel.

 

[ArmyMatt]

Time travel may be possible...

with God....? yep it is

 

[Kairos]

Here's a puzzler: There is music in Heaven, but an essential component of music as we understand it is time. So if in Heaven there is no time, what will music be like?

 

[MKJ]

Here's a puzzler: There is music in Heaven, but an essential component of music as we understand it is time. So if in Heaven there is no time, what will music be like?

It it no time because time has disappeared, or because it has been somehow brought into the fullness of perfection?

I can maybe think of it as being a sort of harmony.

Or, maybe time will just be so different it isn't the way we think of it? But it will still be a way of measuring change? Maybe change without degradation?

An interesting question though.

 

[Crandaddy]

Why isn't the cat that jumps the same as the cat that lands? I suppose Barbour would say the reason is that since there's no time, the cat can't have any temporal extension across temporal frames. But surely this isn't right. Am I not the same individual now that I was a year ago? Yesterday? Ten nanoseconds ago?

It would seem, on Barbour's view, that over the "last" ten nanoseconds, there are an infinity of "me's," each corresponding to a timeless "now." This strikes me as highly implausible. It also seems quite at odds with Christian orthodoxy, for the "me" at any given "now" would be a distinct individual and, thus, completely disconnected from any events in his "past," including his "past" sins and his baptism (assuming such events can even occur at all, as they seem to require temporal extension).

No, the "now" right now and the "now" of five minutes ago are not separate entities like pages of a book. They're more like snapshots of a continuum that we take in abstraction. I can see no good reason why we shouldn't call this continuum "temporal" with a past, present, and future (or, alternatively, with temporally preceding and succeeding parts).

 

[ArmyMatt]

Here's a puzzler: There is music in Heaven, but an essential component of music as we understand it is time. So if in Heaven there is no time, what will music be like?

there is no way to know until we get there. even the most beautiful music here is still in a fallen, imperfect state. so we will have no comprehension of what it is, until God willing, we make it to Christ's right hand.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

As in the (LXX) book of Daniel.

I think where most often struggle is time travel to the past. The scriptures, in addition to Daniel, note where such as happenend before with going to the future /seeing things play out...and even as it concerns time slowing down/instant transportation (as it was with Philip in Acts 8). But to go back into the past and change things is another issue altogether.

It would be interesting, as I'd love to do the Marty McFly thing and observe what happened in the past with the potential to alter the future....and if the Lord allowed it, it'd be all good. However, as I do believe in the concept of predestination paradox ( a phenomenon in which an event of time travel can become part of events which have already occurred, and can even lead to the initial event of time travel in the first place..debatable as that is), I do believe that any attempt to change the past would actually serve to see that it happened as was meant.

It's like what I saw in an episode of Startrek once, where a predestination paradox occurred on Earth in the year 1893, when Enterprise-D crewmember Lieutenant Commander Data, who had traveled back in time from 2368, became trapped in a temporal vortex and had his body separated from his head, which remained in a cavern under the Presidio in San Francisco until 2368. In that year, Data's head was discovered, leading the crew of the Enterprise to mount an investigation. This investigation led to the very time travel event which transported Data back in time in the first place, thereby completing the time loop. (from the episodes "Time's Arrow" and "Time's Arrow, Part II")