The Eternal Now

Right now I'm reading a book that's royally kicking my butt. It's challenging a LOT of the things that I believe, and I'm not sure that I completely agree with everything that it talks about, but I'm still working through everything. Its called Speaking My Mind: The Radical Evangelical Prophet Tackles the Tough Issues Christians Are Afraid to Face by Tony Campolo. I'm reading Chapter 6 which is called "Are Evangelicals Afraid of Science?" and I feel like I need to post this excerpt from the chapter. It's about how time relates to God. We are bound by time, but God seemingly transcends time. This section talks about God being in the eternal "now".

TIME AND "THE NOW"

In reflecting upon how time is relative to motion, I want to declare that I believe God is able to experience time at the speed of light. For God, all of time can be compressed into what the theologian Emil Brunner called "the eternal now". All things happen "now" with God. With God, a thousand years are as a day, and a day is as a thousand years (2 Pet. 3:8). The very name of God implies this reality: God's name is "I AM." God never was, and God never will be. God is always in the "now."

The "nowness" of God lends support to the declaration of theologian Paul Tillich, who contended that God could not be known as an object caught in the time/space continuum in which we live. According to Tillich, God can only be "encountered in the now." We cannot analyze God and then describe God in ways that fit the categories of time-bound logic. God will not yield to positivism (the philosophy that reduces all of reality to terms that the five senses can experience) nor be understood in terms of the categories of human logic.

Those philosophers and social scientists who call themselves phenomenologists are most in harmony with the concept of the eternal now. They point out that "now" has no extension in time. They argue that we cannot say that the next minute is now; nor can we even say the next second is now. Now, they contend, is that non-existent point wherin the past meets the future. Now, in a sense, is not really in time. Yet each of us can say, "I am alive now! Now is where I am!"

Everything that is true about me belongs to the past. I can reflect on me -- I can take a good look at myself -- but everything that I observe about me is in the past. What I can know about me is not who and what I am right now. Me is what I used to be. I cannot even tell you what I am thinking now, because in order to do that, I have to stop and consider what I was thinking. But again I point out that now is where I am -- it is where I exist.

More importantly, God is in the now. For God, all of time and eternity are gathered up in this eternal now. God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end (Rev. 1:8). Given this assertion about God's being in the now, we can begin to understand why Tillich argued that God cannot be known, as other objects are known, because in the now, there is now objective knowledge. That is because objective knowledge requires reflection, and when we reflect, we can only reflect on what was -- never on what is now. If I ask you to reflect on what you are experiencing now, you can only tell me about what you were reflecting upon when I asked you the question.

GOD IN THE NOW

All of this seeming double-talk affirms a basic evangelical truth, and that is that those who would know God must encounter God in the now. Right now, the person who would know God must surrender to God and let God overwhelm and invade his or her mind, body, and soul. A person does not become a Christian simply by gathering objective knowledge about God. In reality, an individual may know all the doctrines about God and have a "sound" theology about what God accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but he or she still may not know God. There is a qualitative difference between knowing all about God and having a sacred encounter with God in the now.

Each morning I try to wake up half an hour before I have to and then lie in bed, experiencing quiteude. In the stillness of the morning, I surrender to a possible encounter with God. I wait patiently to feel God's presence. I sense a beckoning, as did the psalmist of old, who heard the admonition, "Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10). The "still small voice" of God has no words (1 Kings 19:12), but there comes an inner groaning as I encounter God in the now.

I can talk about this experience with God. I can try to describe it and even theologize about it. But in doing so, I am no longer into the experience. I am only reflecting on the experience that I just had with God. In such occasions of mystical ecstasy, in the linear sense, ceases to exist. I am, in such spiritual encounters, beyond time. I am experiencing God in the now. This is the kind of knowledge about God that the apostle Paul was praying to experience when he wrote, "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship if his sufferings, being made comformable unto his death" (Phil. 3:10).

Such and encounter with God is one way to experience what we evangelicals call being "born again". It taps into the essence of the conversion experience.


Anyway, I thought this was an amazing description of time in relation to both ours and God's existence. And an awesome description of meditation and salvation.

Matt