The Mathematical Basis for Timelessness
C. S. Lewis BBC Part 1 from Ron Smith on Vimeo.
C. S. Lewis understood why God has to be timeless as you can hear in his own words. Timelessness is, however, not just a theological concept. If timelessness exists then there must be a timeless God. The math for timelessness is actually quite spectacular and not really that complex, and it proves that timelessness exists.
With Einstein’s original publication of the special theory of relativity in 1905, the formula E=mc2 was born. The concept of time dilation is a key foundation of the theory. Simply stated it says that to every object in motion, the speed of light is constantly the same. That means for an object in motion that time must change since the speed of light cannot.
The faster that an object moves, the slower time passes. The classic thought experiment is of twins, one who remains on Earth while the other who rockets to a far distant star at some speed much, much closer to the speed of light.
Upon the return from his astronautical trek the adventurer will have seemingly remained young while his brother on Earth will have gotten much older. How much older depends only on how fast the rocket was.
The equation for time dilation and has been proven. In order for the time on satellites to all be synchronized with each other and the earth, each satellite has to use this equation to properly adjust its own time as it orbits at different speeds around the earth.
In the example below, t‘ is the time that passes for the earth-bound twine. Let that be 10 years. c is the speed of light. v‘ is the velocity of the astronaut twin in the rocketing to a far distant star. t is the time that passes for the astronaut.
As the velocity of the rocket gets closer and closer to the speed of light, the time that the astronaut sees pass shrinks over the ten years experienced by his twin brother on earth.
What is significant is that if the rocket could reach the speed of light the astronaut would see no time pass not only for the ten years that his earth-bound twin experienced. The astronaut would see no time pass for any amount of time that his brother experienced! That is mathematical timelessness.
Let me state again that because God is timeless, he knows no such thing as a before or after. Because we are creatures of time and God must use our language based in time, it is easy to see how confusion arises on our part about timelessness.
When God calls Israel chosen, there is no point from his timeless perspective at which they are chosen or that they were not chosen. To us there is a before and after. They were timelessly chosen.
That’s also why nothing changes God’s mind. God does not change because he is timeless. He just is the same always. When Jesus is praying to the Heavenly Father who loved him “before the foundation of the world” it doesn’t mean that at some point before creation God the Father “discovered” his love for God the Son. He loves the Son timelessly.
John 17:24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be ewith me fwhere I am, gto see my glory that you have given me because you loved me hbefore the foundation of the world.
When the language of timelessness is communicated into the stream of time and space, we distort God’s perspective when we forget where the message sender exists. We try to shackle his message with the bonds of time and the results are not always pretty.
L