Time and Thought

 

Stephen C. over at Times and Seasons has a post this week on time and God that raises age-old questions. It reminded me of a chapter in a book I self-published way back in 1996 (the book was titled “Away with Stereotyped Mormons!: Thoughts on Individuality, Perfection, and the Broad Expanse of Eternity). Chapter 3 was on time and thought. It was interesting to take a look at this old book. When I wrote it, I was young and naïve; in fact, today I would probably not agree with many of the things I wrote back then. But I’ll post part of that chapter here anyway just to weigh in on the topic of how God does or does not exist in time.

 

Dimensions

The fact that God is omniscient has something to do with the way he exists in time. He knows past, present, and future. How? Well, he hasn’t told us. But he has given us some information, and we can deduce some things.

Earlier in my life I thought God’s knowledge of the future was a predictive sort of knowledge. In other words, God knows what I will do next Wednesday at 4 p.m. because through our lengthy premortal association and his observation of me in mortality, he knows me perfectly, he knows everyone else perfectly, and he knows how the elements will respond to the various forces that act upon them. And because of all this knowledge, he can account for all variability and randomness and can predict perfectly what I will do. This theory has obvious limitations, the most significant being that it is not true. God does not predict the future. He sees it. It is present before him. He even tells us so: “The Lord your God . . . knoweth all things, for all things are present before mine eyes” (D&C 38:1–2). Elder Neal A. Maxwell has said: “God does not live in the dimension of time as do we. Moreover, since ‘all things are present with’ God, his is not simply a predicting based solely upon the past. In ways which are not clear to us, he actually sees, rather than foresees, the future—because all things are, at once, present, before him!”¹

After I understood this, I assumed that God was outside of time—that the river of time flowed on but did not take God with it. He just sat on the bank and watched it as an outside spectator. But then I read these words of Orson Pratt: “The true God exists both in time and in space, and has as much relation to them as man or any other being. He has extension, and form, and dimensions, as well as man. He occupies space; has a body, parts and passions; can go from place to place—can eat, drink, and talk, as well as man.”² Now, this presented me with a dilemma. How was I to reconcile this statement with that of Elder Maxwell?

What Orson Pratt said makes sense. If we imagine a God who is outside of time, then from our perspective he would be everywhere at once, and he would also be in one place for eternity, and we could even say he would be everywhere at all times. He would fill the immensity of space and yet dwell in our hearts. He would be, by definition, the God of modern Christianity who, the prophets have insisted, does not, cannot exist. The key, I believe, lies in Elder Maxwell’s words “God does not live in the dimension of time as do we.” He inhabits time, but differently than we do. When I understood this, several things began to make sense.

How do we live in time? Time for us is one-dimensional, and it runs from past to future. The fact that time is one-dimensional for us explains our inability to know past, present, or future. What is the present to us? It is, I argue, completely empty. If we were to stop time and analyze what is going on, we would be looking at something very similar to a three-dimensional snapshot. Objects, including human beings, would be present—because of three-dimensional space—but everything would be motionless. And if we could look into a person’s mind and examine the thoughts he is thinking, his mind, I suggest, would be empty. In one instant we don’t think anything. Our consciousness, our ability to think, is directly related to our walk through time. Our awareness of life is much like a movie. Each succeeding instant along our one-dimensional timeline is like an individual frame of that movie. And only as the frames advance do we see motion or activity, including mental activity. We are aware of our surroundings and our own thoughts because the reel of time is unwinding. This is why we can focus on only one thing at a time—because each instant in time is virtually fixed or stationary for us. And if from instant to instant our attention shifts (which it obviously doesn’t), we still would only entertain one idea at a time.

But consider the possibilities of two-dimensional time. What if every frame of our mortal movie were filled with an infinite amount of thought? Perhaps objects, including people, wouldn’t move, but if a person lived in two-dimensional time, she would be able to think and feel infinitely in that one instant. Imagine the depth of experience, how full life would be. Life would begin to take on a more complete shape. We would literally be able to focus on an infinite number of things at once. We would have the leisure to count the hairs on an infinite number of heads or watch sparrows fall—if the heads and sparrows were within our immediate view. But two-dimensional time also has its limitations. Those limitations deal with seeing the past and future.

So, let’s imagine three-dimensional time. This is extremely difficult, akin to imagining four-dimensional space. But let’s draw a parallel. Think of one-dimensional space, a concept popular in introductory geometry classes. If space were one-dimensional, we would be unable to see anything, assuming we could exist at all. Our whole universe would lie along an infinitely long, infinitely narrow line. If space were one-dimensional, we would not be able to see ahead or behind, to the right or left, up or down. This is why we cannot see past and future. Time for us has no substance. It is only directional. We have a sense of moving forward and a sense of where we have been, but we cannot see past or future.

Two-dimensional space has similar limitations. Objects would have depth and width, but no height. Or they would have height and width, but no depth. Any way you look at it, with only two dimensions we would still be unable to see anything, really, because all of existence would lie on the insubstantial plane of two-dimensional space. In order to see with our eyes (or to have eyes at all), we need three dimensions of space. Now imagine three dimensions of time, in which (for God) each instant along our one mortal timeline is infinitely high and infinitely wide. God, being wherever he is, would simply be able to look ahead or behind and see things as they really were, or as they really will be, since time would have substance, and not just direction.

Let’s look at this from another angle. In one-dimensional time, as discussed, each moment is virtually empty. Thought and awareness are a sequential experience. In two-dimensional time, however, a person would be able to either consider one object in infinite detail or consider all things for an instant. If you inhabited two-dimensional time, you could perhaps number all the hairs on one head in an instant of our time, or count all the stars in the sky, but not both simultaneously. In order to see and comprehend all of eternity—past, present, and future—you would have to inhabit three-dimensional time. Then you would not only have “time” to count all the stars in the sky, but you could spend a literal eternity on an infinite number of objects or activities. You could watch a million sparrows fall, number the hairs on all the heads in the universe, count all the stars in the sky, hear and answer the prayers of all your children, and still have an infinite awareness of everything else in the universe. This is what it means to be omniscient, and it is far beyond our comprehension.

When God tell us “the heavens . . . cannot be numbered unto man” (Moses 1:37), he is speaking literally. If I count two numbers each second for 80 years, I will make it all the way to 2,533,880,000—roughly two-and-a-half billion. I literally don’t have time to count all of God’s creations. “But they are numbered unto me,” he says. He has all the time in the universe to keep track of what he has created, a comforting thought for his children, by far the most important of his creations.

 

The Mortal Test

This explanation of how God sees past, present, and future is by no means doctrine, but it is the best explanation I can find for what we know of our eternal Father. He is not limited to focusing on one thing at a time. He can grasp all of eternity at any instant. This suggests multiple time dimensions. But why are we limited to one-dimensional time, to thinking one thought and focusing on one idea to the exclusion of all others? Hugh Nibley gives us an answer to this question.

But why this crippling limitation on our thoughts if we are God’s children? It is precisely this limitation which is the essence of our mortal existence. If every choice I make expresses a preference; if the world I build up is the world I really love and want, then with every choice I am judging myself, proclaiming all the day long to God, angels and my fellowmen where my real values lie, where my treasure is, the things to which I give supreme importance. Hence, in this life every moment provides a perfect and foolproof test of your real character, making this life a time of testing and probation.³

It is our one-dimensional experience that provides our test. We must constantly choose what we will think about. Sometimes we don’t choose at all, or so we suppose. We let our minds wander. We switch over to autopilot. Yet this is also a choice. Most often our thoughts follow the course of habit. We don’t direct them, for that takes effort. But isn’t that what Joseph Smith said about faith? “When a man works by faith he works by mental exertion instead of physical force.”⁴ As the scriptures remind us, we will be judged by what we think, and by what we fail to think.

If we had complete comprehension of reality, as God has, it would negate the purpose of our mortal probation. Now and then, however, God has given certain mortals very limited glimpses of his perspective, and their accounts are enlightening. Moses was shown the earth, “even all of it, and there was not a particle of it which he did not behold, discerning it by the spirit of God. And he beheld also the inhabitants thereof, and there was not a soul which he beheld not; . . . and their numbers were great, even numberless as the sand upon the sea shore” (Moses 1:27–28). One instant for Moses was filled with such immense detail.

Dr. George Ritchie writes of a similar expansion of mental capacity when he was out of his body. In the presence of the radiant being, who he understood was the Son of God, he viewed his entire life. “Everything that had ever happened to me was simply there, in full view, contemporary and current, all seemingly taking place at that moment.”⁵

 

The chapter goes on from there and talks about communication, but this is the part that’s relevant to the topic of time and God, so I’ll stop here.

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1. Neal A. Maxwell, “Speaking Today,” Ensign 9, no. 2 (February 1979), 72.

2. N. B. Lundwall, comp., Lectures on Faith (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, n.d.), 56.

3. Hugh W. Nibley, “Zeal Without Knowledge,” in Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1978), 264.

4. Lundwall, Lectures on Faith, 61.

5. George G. Ritchie, with Elizabeth Sherrill, Return from Tomorrow (Old Tappan, N. J.: Spire Books, 1978), 49–50.

6. Ritchie, Return from Tomorrow, 48–49.