“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” — attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas

If I were to follow the precepts laid down by the Blessed Doctor in the epigraph above, I would not have written this series of articles. I believe that explanations and discourses about mysteries of God’s Creation do enhance our understanding and deepen our faith. As background to the principal thesis, God’s purpose in creating time, I have presented discussions on the philosophy, psychology, and science of time in the preceding three articles.

Before discussing that thesis, a so-to-speak theology of time, I want to show why science does not give a totally satisfactory explanation of time. Since this discussion will require additional background, I’ll summarize below my view of how science works and its limitations. A more detailed presentation is given in these online articles: How Science Works, Part I: How We Believe, Faith and Revelation; Part II: How We Believe, Rational Inquiry; Part III: What Science Is All About; Part IV: What Science Can’t Do.

How Science Works and What It Cannot Do

Science is neither pure theory nor a mere collection of facts. The philosopher of science Imre Lakatos gave the most complete account of how science actually proceeds: a research program built around an inner core of fundamental principles — such as the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics — surrounded by shells of primary and auxiliary theories, tested and refined by experimental data. Scientific truths are not eternal; they are subject to revision as new data and new theories emerge. In this respect science differs fundamentally from Catholic faith, which is founded on unchanging revealed truth.

Science is also limited by its very nature. As the physicist-theologian Fr. Stanley Jaki observed, science is essentially quantitative and reproducible — and existence itself cannot be measured. Science can sometimes explain how something came to be, but never why it came to be. Purpose — teleology — lies outside science’s domain. Science cannot explain itself, nor can it account for what the Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner called “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in describing the physical world.

What science cannot answer are the deepest human questions: Why is there anything? Why do I exist? Why do we seek the beautiful and the good? The best answers to such questions are not found in scientific theories but in revelation — in Scripture and in the tradition of the Church. Science illuminates the how of creation; faith addresses the why.

That science does not give a complete world picture is exemplified in the previous articles on time. We have seen different scientific perspectives: past and future as equivalent in the fundamental laws of physics, entropy and irreversible change mapping past to future as time’s arrow, and time as a placeholder, a location in a four-dimensional space-time block universe. There is a still a fourth picture from quantum mechanics: time as uncertain, fuzzy, possibly even an emergent variable arising from more fundamental relations in quantum gravity theories, correlations and entanglement. An old fable comes to a mind as an analogy for these different pictures of time. Five blind, wise old sages describe an elephant they’ve examined—and the pictures are all different; none have seen the complete animal, only a particular part—tail, tusks, trunk, feet, ears. And so it is with science. It gives us only partial pictures of the world—what the philosopher Nancy Cartwright calls a “dappled universe.” Thus, I am justified in turning to a more satisfying understanding of time, one which is given by revelation and theology.

GOD IS NOT LIMITED BY TIME

If one concedes that there is no consensus in science or philosophy about time, then one is justified in putting scientific interpretations aside in favor of that which is concordant with Catholic faith. Accordingly, proceeding from that faith, I propose that God is outside of time—timeless—even though He interacts with a universe set in time. The first block in that structure of belief comes from Scripture (revelation), and tells us that God is timeless: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8 KJV).

Philosophers and Theologians support the timelessness of God as shown in the quotations below.

“…for it is one thing to progress like the world in Plato’s theory through everlasting life, and another thing to have embraced the whole of everlasting life in one simultaneous present.” Boethius Consolation, V.VI. Translation. V. E. Watts 1969

“It is not in time that You, God, precede times. Otherwise You would not precede all times. In the sublimity of an eternity which is always in the present. You are before all things past and transcend all things future, because they are still to come.” St. Augustine, Confessions [emphasis added]

The medieval theologians built on this view of God’s timelessness as being a necessary consequence of God’s properties.

“For Anselm, the timeless eternity of God follows from God’s being that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Eternity in Christian Thought”

For Aquinas, God’s timeless eternity is unending, lacking both beginning and end, and an instantaneous whole lacking succession. It is a correlate of divine simplicity.” Ibid.

Let’s consider this notion of “divine simplicity.” If God is perfect in every way and every part, then a change in a part would be different and thus less than perfect. Accordingly God is uniform (if unfathomable to our limited minds) and thus simple. Here’s an analogy for a timeless God and a universe in time. Imagine God sitting on top of a mountain, surveying the plain below. Since God is omniscient, his field of view encompasses the whole plain at once. Thus God, outside of time, knows of all time as a present time. It should be evident that this notion of a timeless, omniscient God is consistent with God surveying the universe as a block of space-time (the picture given by relativity).

Now a picture where God sees what happens in the future leads to questions about Free Will. If God knows that event A happens in our future, doesn’t that mean we don’t have freedom of choice about our actions leading to event A? This is a question that needs at least a book for a proper discussion. In this article I’ll say only that many philosophical and theological proposals justify a timeless God, omniscient and omnipotent, and man’s free will to make moral choices.

The next question is Why did a timeless God create man in time?

Why did God create man in time?

My argument here will be very brief. First, I’ll assume that God created man out of love. He had no need to do so. Second, I’ll assume that God created man as a thinking being with the capacity to make choices for good or evil. This is to say, he didn’t make robots who would do only good, but he created free beings. (These assumptions agree with what theologians have written over the ages.)

Implicit in the capacity to make choices, and in the notion of good or evil acts, is the concept of succession—of cause yielding effect. What is required for events to occur one after another and for effect to follow cause? Time! So that’s why we have that mysterious thing, time: that which has different rates in the mind, that which has as its arrow, entropy, and that which confounds straightforward physical interpretation. This confusing and mysterious entity is what enables us to have free will—to be sinners or saints.

Let us return to St. Augustine:

“And what is said of the light is said of all the works. For some abide in the most exalted holiness next to God, transcending all the changes of time; but others abide according to the determinations of their time, while the beauty of the ages is unfolded by the coming and passing of things.” St. Augustine, Genesi ad Litteram [emphasis added]