Time and Beyond Time

Big idea

Summary

Lewis begins with an objection someone raised to him: that it is hard to believe God can attend to hundreds of millions of people praying 'at the same moment.' He locates the real difficulty not in the number of people but in the phrase 'at the same moment,' which smuggles in the assumption that God experiences time the way we do, as a narrow, ever-vanishing present with room for only one thing at a time.

He counters with the idea, held by theologians long before philosophers or scientists took it up, that God may not be 'in time' at all, so that every moment of history is equally and simultaneously present to Him. He offers the illustration of a novelist who can pause for hours of real time between writing two halves of a single in-story instant, while acknowledging that this picture is imperfect, since the novelist still exists within some time-stream of his own, whereas God, on Lewis's account, has no time-stream at all.

This framework is then used to dissolve two classic difficulties. First, the puzzle of how the eternal, all-sustaining God could also be a helpless baby in Bethlehem is eased by denying that Christ's earthly life is a 'period' carved out of God's own timeline; rather, human limitation is timelessly included within God's single, undivided life. Second, the tension between divine foreknowledge and human freedom dissolves once we stop picturing God as watching from earlier in the same time-line we occupy: He does not foresee tomorrow's choices, He simply is already there, watching them as we make them.

Lewis pictures time as a line drawn on a page and God as the whole page itself, containing and seeing the entire line at once, in contrast to our own experience of leaving one point behind to reach the next. He closes by noting that this timelessness idea, though it has genuinely helped him, is not found explicitly in Scripture or the creeds and can be safely set aside by any reader who does not find it useful.

Key points

• Identifies the real sting in the 'millions of prayers at once' objection as the hidden assumption that God is confined to a single narrow present like we are.
• Proposes, following a long theological tradition, that God is not 'in time' at all, so every moment of history is equally present to Him.
• Uses a novelist's freedom to pause real time between two halves of a story-moment to illustrate, imperfectly, how God's life could exceed our time-stream.
• Argues that Christ's limited earthly life should not be pictured as a segment cut out of God's own timeline, dissolving the puzzle of how God could 'also' be an ignorant, sleeping baby.
• Resolves the tension between divine foreknowledge and human freedom by arguing that God does not foresee the future from an earlier point but simply is present to it already.
• Frames time as a line and God as the page containing the whole line at once, while noting this particular picture is a helpful but non-essential Christian idea.

Illustrations & analogies

• Lewis imagines a pilot's last-second prayer as his plane crashes in flames, suggesting God can give that instant the same full, unhurried attention as if it were the only prayer ever prayed.
• He describes writing the sentence 'Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door,' and pausing for three hours of his own time between the two halves without any gap appearing in Mary's story-time.
• He pictures time as a straight line drawn on a page, with human beings moving point by point along it while God, as the whole page, contains and sees the entire line at once.
• He recalls his own pre-conversion objection about how the eternal God could also be an ignorant baby asking 'Who touched me?', showing how the puzzle depends on assuming God has a history like ours.

Notable lines

Almost certainly God is not in Time.

C. S. Lewis Book IV, Ch. 3 — Time and Beyond Time

God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe

C. S. Lewis Book IV, Ch. 3 — Time and Beyond Time

All the days are "Now" for Him.

C. S. Lewis Book IV, Ch. 3 — Time and Beyond Time

Related Scripture

• Mark 5:30

For reflection and discussion

1. Does picturing God as existing outside of time change how you feel about being one among millions of people praying at once?
2. How does the novelist analogy help, or fail to help, explain the mystery of Christ being fully God while living a genuinely limited human life?
3. Does the idea that God does not 'foresee' but simply 'sees' your future actions change how you think about free will?