Yesterday we noted that there is more than one way that the word “eternal” is used.
For example, sometimes it is used to mean everlasting (being inside time but having no end, beginning, or both), and sometimes it is used to mean atemporal (beyond or outside time).
We saw that God is eternal in the second sense. He is completely beyond time.
But what about us?
Specifically: What about us when we die? Do we journey beyond time to be with God in the eternal now outside of time?
You often hear the idea that we do.
This idea seems to be based on reasoning something like this:
- God is outside of time.
- God is in heaven.
- When we die, we go into heaven.
- Therefore, when we die, we go outside of time.
But we need to be careful here. That’s not a formally valid argument. Consider this parallel:
- Bob is outside of Scranton.
- Bob is in ecstasy.
- When I think about God’s love, I go into ecstasy.
- Therefore, when I think about God’s love, I go outside of Scranton.
That doesn’t follow at all. I might think about God’s love and go into ecstasy even though I am located in Scranton. (Note: People in Scranton might disagree. I’ll leave that up to them.)
This is also important because the Church does not understand heaven as a physical place up in the clouds where God literally has a throne but as a state of spiritual communion with God and the saints.
Thus John Paul II taught:
In the context of revelation, we know that the “heaven” or “happiness” in which we will find ourselves is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity [General Audience of July 21, 1999].
And the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:
1024 This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity – this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed – is called “heaven.” Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.
1025 To live in heaven is “to be with Christ.” The elect live “in Christ,” but they retain, or rather find, their true identity, their own name.
For life is to be with Christ; where Christ is, there is life, there is the kingdom.
1026 By his death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has “opened” heaven to us. The life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by Christ. He makes partners in his heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remained faithful to his will. Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ.
So the Church understands heaven in terms of a relationship with the Holy Trinity and the community of the blessed incorporated into Christ rather than a physical place.
But if I can be the state of heaven by virtue of being definitively happy due to communion with God and his saints, without it implying that I am in a particular physical place then I could similarly be in that state without implying that I am inside time or outside of time.
In other words: Whether you are “in heaven” tells you about your spiritual state (definitively happy, in communion with God and the saints) but does not tell you about where or if you are located in space and time.
The argument above, thus, does not work–despite its superficial plausibility–just as being “in ecstasy” does not tell you anything about whether you are also “in Scranton.”
If this argument does not work, does Catholic theology have anything to say about whether we leave time upon our death?
It does.
Tune in tomorrow.
Well from the scientific perspective, if one leaves the physical universe, one is outside of time since time is tied to this physical universe. Before there was a physical universe, there was no time. After its gone, there is no time.
That of course, does not mean that we will be eternal like God if we leave the physical universe, but it does mean that if there is a linear time outside the physical universe (as the 4 last things seem to indicate) or the universe is remade (as Revelation seems to indicate), time will likely be something very different than we currently understand it to mean.
Dear Jimmy (and all) —
Thanks for another great article, Jimmy.
Here are some some thoughts concerning whether or not we “leave time upon our death or not”.
First, we know from Catholic teaching that the human soul is immortal.. See CCC — 1703 Endowed with “a spiritual and immortal” soul, the human person is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake.” From his conception, he is destined for eternal beatitude. — As such, we will, by the grace of God, live forever. Time, to something that is immortal, has little significance, perhaps. Maybe that is being “outside of time”. Of course, the immortal human soul is not necessarily immortal, as is God. God is necessarily immortal, and cannot not-be. Humans, however, have come from nothing and can go to nothing, at the will of God. Christ’s great gift is immortality, eternal life, with him.
Of course, much of this discussion depends on one’s view of “time” itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time#Philosophy
”
Two distinct viewpoints on time divide many prominent philosophers. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension which events occur in sequence. Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time.[8] An opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of actually existing dimension that events and objects “move through”, nor to any entity that “flows”, but that it is instead an intellectual concept (together with space and number) that enables humans to sequence and compare events (such as, ‘change of conditions within an ever-present’)[32] This second view, in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz[9] and Immanuel Kant,[10][11] holds that space and time “do not exist in and of themselves, but … are the product of the way we represent things”, because we can know objects only as they appear to us.
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Also, if by “leaving time” we mean that we are in the “eternal now” and experience past and present and future all at once, in the way God might, then that might seem a bit too God-like for some reason. If we know the past and present and future then we would know all things humanly knowable. I suppose that is possible; but, it seems unlikely given our known limitations of intellect and will. However, if we mean by “leaving time” simply as a way to to describe that one has no end and is immortal, then we have that possibility for sure.
Some evidence can be found in Mary’s movements. Mary has appeared to us across space and time. Mary has certainly left the strictures of time, in that she is not bound by them in the same ways in which humans living here and now on Earth are bound by the laws of time. Since Mary is fully human, we can see clearly that yes, humans can “leave time”, at least in the sense that they can reach a state where they are not bound by the laws of time as humans are bound on Earth.
That being said, it seems that “sequence” and “order of events” is something abstract and universally applicable. While the possibility of “different timelines” clouds the issue a bit, it is not really that murky as long as we specify a single point of reference. That is, from a single point of perception (a human’s awareness at some “particular and singular now”) it seems that there must be a categorization possible, categorization that orders events such that some are known to have occurred “before this particular and singular now” and some are only potentialities that might occur “after this particular and singular now” but have not “yet occurred”. This is a theory and it makes good practical sense– it is simple.The possibility of a human having multiple simultaneous points of perception may be allowed and does not upset this theory as long as we specify that this theory applies to each instance of perception individually not to the multiplicity.
So, if Leibnitz is right, and time is just the way we describe things, then there is probably no being “outside” of time, in that one can probably always describe the order of events that occur in reality.
(That begs the question of whether or not the content of thoughts are “part of reality” and “real” or something more abstract– but, I suppose ordering can be applied to “thoughts” as well, so perhaps it holds.)
But, if Newton is right, and time is some part of the essential fabric of the universe, then there may be a way to be “outside” of time but it would be “outside of THIS time in THIS universe” and there may be some other type of time exists (or not) in some other type of universe. But, that would mean “time” does not really refer to the same thing in both cases, so we would probably need to decorate the term– Universe1-Time and Universe2-Time — or find some other tokens to express the dissimilarity.
I suggest the more important part of discussion is directed to these questions…
Is the human soul immortal?
…and…
What is the nature of the immortal human soul?
HTH.
Thanks and God bless you.
— Mark Kamoski