by Arthur C. Custance, PhD
Table of Contents
PART I: Time And Eternity: Creation And The Theory Of Relativity
Chapter 1. Historical Background
Chapter 2. The Relativity of Time in Experience
Chapter 3. Time and Relativity in Creation
Chapter 4. Time Contrasted With Eternity in Scripture
Chapter 5. Time in Redemption.
Part II: Three Trees And Israel's History
Chapter 1. History in Three Dimensions
Chapter 2. The Vine and Israel's National History
Chapter 3. The Olive and Israel's Spiritual History
Chapter 4. The Fig Tree and Israel's Religious History
PART III: Between The Lines: An Analysis Of Genesis 1:1,2
Chapter 1. Analysis of Genesis 1:l
Chapter 2. Analysis of Genesis 1:2
Chapter 3. The Continuity of Tradition
Appendixes
1. The Meaning of the Word "Day"
2. The Meaning of the Verb "Make" by Contrast With the Verb "Create"
3. The Meaning of the Phrase "The Foundation of the World"
PART IV: The Omnipotence Of God In The Affairs Of Men
Chapter 1. The Omnipotence of God in the Universe
Chapter 2. The Omnipotence of God in Our World
Chapter 3. The Omnipotence of God in the History of Israel
Chapter 4. The Omnipotence of God in Personal History
Chapter 5. The Omnipotence of God and Human Responsibility
PART V: The Confusion Of Languages
Chapter 1. The Original Unity of Languages
Chapter 2. The Original Speech of Mankind
Chapter 3. The Confusion of Language: Ancient and Modern
PART VI: Cain's Wife And The Penalty Of Incest
THE SIX papers in this volume, published between the years 1957 and 1967, do not form a connected series as the other volumes have done, but they have this in common: they all assume Scripture to be the touchstone of truth, and they demonstrate that it is able to stimulate one's thinking enormously, especially when the mind is informed by the data of current research. The Bible has nothing to fear from the most careful and detailed examination; more often than not the more precisely we attend to its statements, the clearer will be the overall picture of truth which emerges. I am convinced that people who find Bible study dull are simply not studying with sufficient care.
The first paper, "Time and Eternity," requires some stretching of one's thinking processes! It is an intriguing excursion into the question of the nature of TIME in heaven. It is well worth the effort it will demand if the implications of the lines of thought suggested in it are to be understood, and these implications are by no means purely academic or unrelated to present Christian experience.
The second paper, "Three Trees and Israel's History," provides an illustration of how one Spirit has clearly directed and supervised and inspired the writing of Scripture throughout. From Genesis to Revelation certain symbols have been consistently employed with hidden meanings to which all writers subscribed, though they nevertheless nowhere indicate to the reader that they are employing these symbols in such complete concordance with all the writers who preceded them, often by many centuries. This is a powerful witness to the existence of a single guiding Mind throughout.
The third paper, "Between the Lines: An Analysis of Genesis 1:1,2," is a study involving an issue which is highly controversial today because it appears to be a recent concession to modern evolutionary geology by opening up a "time-slot" of any length that geology might ask. That this is a total misreading of the evidence is borne out by showing, not only that the Hebrew original virtually demands such an interpretation, but that the idea of a hiatus in time, of unknown duration, between Genesis 1:1 and 2 was recognized by Jewish commentators in the centuries before Christ and has been continually referred to by Christian writers from the earliest times to the present.
The fourth paper, "The Omnipotence of God in the Affairs of Men," is a detailed study in somewhat concentrated form of the extent to which Scripture reveals that God rules or overrules in the affairs of men and in the calling and saving and positioning of the child of God within the Body of Christ. It is both a sobering and a comforting study--deeply rooted in the Word of God.
The fifth paper, "The Confusion of Languages," explores the fact that human languages do still indeed show many signs of having been developed from some one single original, and that this original was almost certainly a language belonging within the Semitic family, of which Hebrew is a member. The evidence suggests that in the confusion of tongues which put a halt to the building of the Tower of Babel, it was chiefly (if not solely) the members of the family of Ham whose speech was dramatically and very suddenly confused to such an extent that communication and further cooperation became impossible.
The last paper, "Cain's Wife and the Penalty of Incest," is brief but informative. It shows how beautifully consistent Scripture is, both with itself and with the latest assured findings of research into the genetics of inbreeding. There is no need whatever to suppose that Cain married some non-Adamic creature or that Eve was not truly the mother of all living.
The Doorway Papers are a collection of papers previously published one at a time by the author. The entire collection of the Doorway Papers was published in nine volumes and an index volume by Zondervan Publishing House in 1977. (Now out of print).
Even if the attempt at discrimination should fail in exactitude, it may yet, by opening out fresh views contribute light to minds of greater precision--who may thus be enabled to hit upon the exact truth.--Lord Arundell of Wardour, 1872
IT HAS BEEN well said that it takes two to tell the truth. I think what this means is that there is a sense in which we conceive a truth most clearly when we have given it verbal expression for someone else's benefit. Often we think we understand-- until we try to share our understanding with another person.
My impression is that the reader will profit most from this paper if he lends it to a friend with whom rapport is already established and then discusses it so as to verbalize its implications for himself.
If these things are true, there is wonderful comfort--one might almost say a spiritual thrill--in the contemplation of them. Not the least surprising is the fact that some of the implications in the Theory of Relativity were so clearly perceived by Augustine and so wonderfully allowed for in Scripture. The light which the theory both casts upon and receives from the New Testament, especially John's Gospel, opens up all kinds of new avenues of Christian thought on some of the deepest problems of eternity. Much remains yet to be explored. If you begin to lose track, don't give up! Press on to the end --it will become clearer in due time.
If any excursive brain...wonder that Thou the God Almighty and All-Creating and All-Supporting, Maker of Heaven and Earth, didst for innumerable ages forbear from so great a work before Thou wouldst work it: let him awake and consider that he wonders at false conceits. For whence could innumerable ages pass by, which Thou madest not, Thou the Author and Creator of all Ages? Or what times should there be, which were not made by Thee? Or how should they pass by, if they never were? Seeing then Thou art the Creator of all times, if any time was before Thou madest Heaven and earth, why say that Thou didst forego working?...But if before Heaven and earth there was no time, why is it demanded "what Thou then didst"? For there was no "then" when there was no time.--Augustine, Confessions
IN THE HISTORY of science it has frequently been observed that every new theory involving highly abstract ideas has to be discussed and argued about at the upper levels for some time before it can be understood by the educated public in general. In the ordinary processes of conversation, the words and phrases and analogies essential for its verbalization have to be generated and combined in various ways before it can be communicated meaningfully to a larger audience.
At first the search for terms with which to convey the new ideas is slow and, for all but a few specialists, quite inadequate. But in the course of time a kind of natural selection operates to eliminate terms that confuse and to elaborate those that clarify the issues involved. Modes of expression are standardized. More and more individuals come to attach the same specialized meanings to phrases that are commandeered as the particular property of those who possess the new truth. A scientific "jargon" grows up that facilitates expression and gives new freedom to the exchange of ideas. The more abstract and removed from common sense the theory is, the longer it takes for it to percolate down to the lower levels. Occasionally the process is accelerated by the appearance of some scientific genius who has a peculiar gift for expressing the abstruse in remarkably appropriate common terms, thus bridging the gap from the specialist to the layman much more rapidly. A. S. Eddington and Sir James Jeans were men of this type. (1)
The Theory of Relativity is a case in point. The difficulty of making the implications clear was increased by the fact that the terms themselves were all common ones, like space and time This had the effect of misleading the public into supposing that employing the terms was equivalent to knowing what they meant. And, of course, since Relativity was applied to time, everybody knew what was meant because we all experience apparent fluctuations when we are waiting for someone or when we are trying not to be late! All this was plain common sense....
The problem was even further complicated by the fact that the novelty of the idea stirred the imagination of popular science writers who explained Relativity to their readers by the use of analogies which at first appeared to give immediate insight into the new mysteries but afterward proved to be misleading. It then became difficult for those whose thinking had thus been influenced to escape from the insights supposedly gained in order to achieve the more profound insight which was required for a true understanding.
This paper inevitably suffers from both these difficulties, and undoubtedly much discussion and argument is required to generate the more exact terms and phrases necessary to crystallize the somewhat new application of the Theory of Relativity to the scriptural meaning of Time and Eternity.
A basic tenet of Einstein's theory is that time, as a fourth dimension, has no meaning or existence apart from the physical universe and could not be said to have existed prior to the Creation. In one of his more popular statements, Albert Einstein put it this way:
If you don't take my words too seriously, I would say this: If we assume that all matter would disappear from the world, then, before relativity, one believed that space and time would continue existing in an empty world. But, according to the theory of relativity, if matter and its motion disappeared there would no longer be any space or time.
This in itself is difficult enough for anyone who has not reflected upon it. But there is an equally important corollary: namely, that in a spiritual world (in which matter has no place) the same situation would exist--there could be no passage of time. This would be a real world which either existed in the absence of a physical world altogether or existed alongside a physical world but without any dependence upon it. In either situation there need not be any experience of time as we understand it. If this spiritual world is thought of as existing in the absence of a physical world, it would be, as it were, "before" the Creation--that is to say, before Genesis 1:1. If it is thought of as existing alongside a physical world but not dependent on it, then we have the situation as it is now. Yet, although the present situation is what it is and time is being experienced by those of us who exist within the framework of a physical universe, those who now live outside this physical universe do not experience the passage of time m any form.
This concept is in a sense a part of the philosophy of modern physics, yet it really is completely understood only by something akin to spiritual insight. Its implications are highly complex. The light which is thrown upon many passages of Scripture fully justifies the effort necessary to grasp what is really being said--an effort made particularly necessary because we first have to abandon our characteristic common-sense views of what time is
That Scripture explicitly and repeatedly takes into account the fact that time is wedded to the material world but not to the spiritual world is by no means a new discovery. Augustine, among others, saw it clearly, as a proper understanding of his quotation will show. But a careful exploration of those passages of Scripture that reflect this fact reveals much more than has been hitherto suspected: and the revelation is, to put it quite simply, a truly wonderful one. It will probably help considerably, before examining these passages, to review briefly the historical background of the events that led to Einstein's formulation of the two essential principles of the Theory of Relativity.
References:
1. For example: Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, Cambridge U. Press, 1930; Sir James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, Cambridge U. Press, 1931.
2. Einstein: quoted by Philipp Frank, Einstein, His Life and Times, Knopf, New York, 1947, chap. 8, section 5, p. 178.
Added to the online library, April 17, 1997, by Lambert Dolphin (dolphin@best.com)