In the end of all things is their beginning, and only from the perspective of the end can one know what they are, why they have been made, and who the God is who has called them from nothingness. From the perspective of eternity, the end comes first and the beginning later.
– David Bentley Hart
In part one of this series, we looked at the possibility that (metaphorically) God experiences time as a sphere where the past, present, and future are all available to the Creator in Her eternity. We experience time in a linear fashion—a line which moves from past to present and toward an unknown future. The past is gone and can never be visited. The future does not yet exist and therefore cannot be experienced. However, the transcendent God “experiences” all of time simultaneously. God is both within time and beyond time, and therefore “sees” the end/telos of time. (I am aware that many theologians today do not accept this view of time. Process and Open Theism theologians are among those who reject this perspective. Process Theology and Open Theism offer helpful suggestions regarding the nature of God and reality. However, I find the God they present is, in the final analysis, contingent and with insufficient transcendence. Their reasoning, in my opinion, becomes a type of pantheism or weak panentheism logically leading to a form of naturalism which disposes of any transcendent God. These bracketed comments are for those who are aware of Process Theology and Open Theism.)
Imagine that you are God and you have decided to create a universe designed for creatures who can become free, creative, loving, responsible, joyful, communal, and capable of transcending themselves. And imagine that as God, your eternal essence is unconditional, indiscriminate, self-giving, nonviolent, everlasting love. If such a creation were your intention, how would you evaluate the accomplishment of your goals considering the world today–a fractious world too often characterized by violence, greed, hatred, arrogance, and imbecility? Perhaps you would be tempted to scrap your experiment and either start over or just rest eternally in your own sense of joy and peace.
If you were God, capable of creating such an exquisite, grand, and intricate universe, wouldn’t you have considered the risk involved in creating beings who are free to choose their course in life?
If you were God, capable of creating such an exquisite, grand, and intricate universe, wouldn’t you have considered the risk involved in creating beings who are free to choose their course in life? Wouldn’t the thought of creatures with so much freedom choosing paths that could lead to tragic ends enter your divine mind? That the choices of love, compassion, peace, and mercy would be more difficult than the easy choices of self-interest? Wouldn’t you know that possibilities like wars, holocausts, and injustice could threaten your loving and creative intentions? And if you as a human, and thus finite in your ability to reason, could entertain the likelihood of such tragic outcomes, wouldn’t you assume that such a thought would have passed through the infinite mind of the Creator?
In college, I majored in history and minored in English literature and psychology. In my studies, I became aware of the tragic and violent lives billions of human beings have had to endure over the millennia—slavery, war, hunger, oppression, genocide, abject poverty, bigotry, and untold individual suffering. Those of us in the USA who have been largely insulated from this history often forget how tragic and sad life has been for many if not most human beings. I must confess that I have wondered if God’s creation of the universe has been worth the effort in the face of such evil and suffering, especially if such evil and suffering is the final word for this world.
Authentic Christianity offers no complete explanation for all the evil and suffering in the world.
Religion has been used as an “opiate of and for” people to cope with the horrors so many have suffered in history. Christianity’s response to such experiences has too often been two-fold: some form of “It’s God’s will and you will understand it in the by and by” or “pie in the sky” to compensate for the travails of this world. Authentic Christianity offers no complete explanation for all the evil and suffering in the world. Our freedom to choose evil remains only a partial answer to this perennial and haunting question. Mature Christian faith maintains that God in Christ has come into this beautiful but fallen creation and has taken into the divine self all the evil and suffering of this world. God is our co-sufferer and companion who will not (and perhaps cannot) deliver us from all the pain that comes with life but goes through those dark valleys with us–and invites us to work with Her in addressing the suffering and evil which afflicts this world. The more helpful question we can ask is not “Why did this happen?” (although we cannot help but ask this question) but “How, in the here and now, can we join God in incarnating a healing solution to this suffering and evil?”
You may be wondering how this relates to Hart’s quote about time found at the top of this article. Here are some suggestions:
- God sees the end of Her creative experiment in the sense that She knows the goal to which She will use all the powers of love to fulfill. That goal, according to the best of Christian theology, is the healing of the entire universe (all of time, space, matter, and beings) and the experience of joyful and loving communion by all creatures with God and each other.
- If God “experiences” time as a sphere when all the past, present, and future are available to God, then any point in time reverberates throughout time. The following quote from Douglas A. Campbell is helpful although it requires a stretching of our minds: We experience this (space-time) as past, present, and future, but from the point of view of God, there is no past, present, and future. All of space-time is “present” to God all the time. And we can perhaps see how that the entry of the Son into space-time as Jesus must ripple through all of space-time, and hence, in a rather counter-intuitive way, into the past as well as into the future. . . Jesus comes to a certain point on the surface of the beach ball that is space-time, and when he touches it, the entire surface of the beach ball changes. . . He is present to all of space-time. Both the past and the future are not inaccessible to God, who is the Lord of time, whether presiding over it from “outside” or entering it—as the scientists would say—mapped by a specific set of space-time coordinates. (Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God’s Love, p. 710)
- Christian faith asserts that in the cross, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, God has taken into the divine self all the universe with its joys and sorrows, its hopes and nightmares, its beauty and ugliness, its acts of compassion and justice, and its suffering and sin, As Campbell writes. Space, time, and existence are all rolled up together, around a ball, and space-time itself is resurrected, including all its suffering. . . History itself is resurrected. . . The love of God grasps time. It is present to it, and eventually reaches into it, takes it up, and heals it. (Campbell, pp. 713-714)
- So many of the common understandings of the cross and resurrection of Jesus are misleading, inadequate, and often blasphemous. The cross is a flesh and blood experience of God’s solidarity with humanity and, indeed, all creation. God comes into time and space in Christ and everlastingly commits the divine self to our healing and joy. The cross is not the price Jesus paid to convince a wrathful God to forgive us of our sin. The cross is the “price God paid” to eternally bind Her self-giving love to humanity and the universe. She will love us forever, no matter what. The cross reveals the depths of God’s love. The cross we are called to bear is the “price” we pay in being faithful to the example and life of Jesus who reveals the face of God.
- The resurrection of Jesus is a foretaste of the fulfillment of God’s goal of universal healing and reconciliation. With Jesus’ resurrection, the ultimate “future”—that goal we mentioned earlier–has penetrated time and prefigures the destiny of all creation. As Jesus was raised, so will all of time, space, and creation be raised and transformed into a new creation where love rules supreme. We are destined for joy! In the end is the beginning.
- So, what keeps this from being another “pie in the sky” response to suffering and evil? With this understanding of time and God’s intention for creation, God through Christ is in the world working through love as defined above and inviting us to join Her in Her healing mission. The communion of abiding love God desires for Her creation begins here and now and will be consummated in the next dimension. Right now, we can bring some of that healing experience into this world as we offer ourselves to others through compassion and acts of justice. Such faithfulness has immediate effects as well as providing “building blocks” God can use as She gathers all of time into Her healing and transforming arms. “Heaven” can begin in our collective and individual histories and will be brought to unimaginable fulfillment beyond our limited experience of time and space. The good news of Jesus Christ can seem too good to be true. However, as we give ourselves to God through following Christ and abiding in God’s infinite love, we shall become more convinced of and committed to that end/telos which includes and heals all our beginnings. We can know God and Her telos only as we abide in and participate with Her in the healing and transformation of Her beloved Creation.
