How would time travel affect moral theology?

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Ashleybird

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As you can probably tell, I have a lot of time on my hands lol…and I was wondering, if it exists in the first place, how would the development of time travel affect moral theology?

For example, marriage is indissoluble, but what if you went back in time and changed it so those marriage vows were never made in the first place? Or what if Bob and Jane are married, and Tim goes back in time, without their knowledge and consent, and changes it so that Bob and Jane never got married? Are Bob and Jane’s souls still indelibly tethered to each other, even though in this new timeline, they might not have even met at all?

Or maybe, for example, someone gets into a graduate school over me, so I go back in time and redo my undergrad so I do better and end up getting in over him? Is it a sin that I deprived him of the opportunity he rightfully earned the first time, even though I technically earned it the second time?

Or how about things that are closer to the realm of possibility today? What if I go in a spaceship and travel really, really fast for a bit, experiencing 20 years of outside time in 20 seconds from my perspective? Am I responsible for the 1040 weeks of mass I missed? (Based on other teachings about the obligation to go to mass, I think not, unless I did it with the intention of missing those masses, but that’s the best example I can think of right now.)

I don’t really have any concrete opinions on these questions, I’m just curious to see what others think. I guess a lot of the answers might depend on how time travel works; for example, whether there’s one true timeline that can’t be changed or multiple branching timelines…I’d be interested in hearing thoughts on each different case. For example, if time traveling results in a new timeline that branches off from the old and runs concurrently, what does that mean for our souls? Heaven and Hell obviously(?) transcend timelines, so does that mean there might be 500 different versions of me from 500 different timelines in Heaven, and another 500 different versions of me from 500 different timelines in Hell?
 
You are engaging in time travel right now… time goes forward, and so do you. Use it wisely.

Going “backward” is a metaphysical impossibility, so let it go.
 
WOW, you do have a lot if time on your hands… why not put it to better use and build a flux capacitor, then tell us what happens.

Or better watch the Butterfly Effect, see how well time travel worked for him.
 
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What do we want?

TIME TRAVEL!

When do we want it?

WHO CARES?
 
If time travel is possible and someone chose to change the timeline for their own personal gain they could be sinning especially if it is to the detriment of others. However, God works through all things for good so perhaps the changes to the timeline would indirectly lead to more souls being saved in the new timeline. And the new timeline was in God’s providential plan all along.

But the metaphysical implications of this makes me scratch my head probably just a movie thing. 🙂
 
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I’d be lying if I said I never had questions like this passing through my mind, but–with the exception of time dilation–it’s all still in the realm of fantasy. I’m not sure we have answers to all of the questions yet.
 
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Morality is the evaluation of human acts. So moral theology deals with “the real”, not the speculative. (although speculation can help us think about things ahead of time, to the degree that the speculations deal with reality. Your speculations do not, unfortunately.)
 
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As life is now, when something happens we have to learn to accept it. There is a peace we have to learn if we cannot correct our mistakes, if we cannot forgive ourselves for the things we have done. If time travel allowed us to correct mistakes, it would push us to fret more and to be less accepting of the world we live in.

Learning gratitude for what is, acceptance of whatever God has given us, is an important part of life.
 
Ashleybird said:
For example, marriage is indissoluble, but what if you went back in time and changed it so those marriage vows were never made in the first place? Or what if Bob and Jane are married, and Tim goes back in time, without their knowledge and consent, and changes it so that Bob and Jane never got married? Are Bob and Jane’s souls still indelibly tethered to each other, even though in this new timeline, they might not have even met at all?
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It seems like what you are really asking is if the Consent is eternal or temporal. Time travel isn’t going to tell you that. We can say that Tim is deliberately attempting to put asunder what God has joined so in that sense he is clearly sinning.
Ashleybird said:
Or maybe, for example, someone gets into a graduate school over me, so I go back in time and redo my undergrad so I do better and end up getting in over him? Is it a sin that I deprived him of the opportunity he rightfully earned the first time, even though I technically earned it the second time?
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How exactly are you doing this? Are you replacing the mind of your previous self with your current mind? Are you physically replacing him? The ethical issue here is that I’m not seeing a method for this scenario that isn’t a form of murder or kidnapping.
Ashleybird said:
Or how about things that are closer to the realm of possibility today? What if I go in a spaceship and travel really, really fast for a bit, experiencing 20 years of outside time in 20 seconds from my perspective? Am I responsible for the 1040 weeks of mass I missed? (Based on other teachings about the obligation to go to mass, I think not, unless I did it with the intention of missing those masses, but that’s the best example I can think of right now.)
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Actually, there’s a place you can research for a historical answer to this. In 1582 the church jumped the calendar forward 10 days to adjust for the new Gregorian calendar. Here’s a moment in time where over a “week” passed but no one experienced it. You can probably get some insight into how the Church would handle relativity by the discussions that surrounded this jump.
 
Let’s say Jane and Bob are married and living in this century. Jane accidentally travels back to the revolutionary war and by her presence, changes history. Then she goes back to Bob’s time and finds out that Bob was never even born as a result. Is she free to marry now? As long as this is her timestream and not the wrong timestream in some multi-verse, I say, go for it, get married. :crazy_face:

But what if instead Jane switches timestreams looking for a better Bob? No, she cannot take up with the new Bob. The two are not the same man.

(of course I have no clue)
 
In the movie “Back to the Future,” the heroes several times went back into the past and changed history so that events never happened. As I saw this, I thought in my mind, what about the people who were never born when events were changed? It is wrong to put people out of existence.
 
I don’t think there’s a single one of us who wouldn’t like the opportunity to go back into our past and change some things for the better. Since we currently cannot do so, we have to find ways to live with things we cannot change.

Is going backward metaphysically impossible? Who knows? It is now, but maybe in the future someone will find a way to do so. But that would open up an ethical can of worms, so it’s probably a good thing that we can’t.

As several here have pointed out, the ethics of such a journey would depend upon motive and intent. WHY would we be going back? And would it harm anyone else?

This is something we are not ethically equipped to handle, much like cloning, so it’s best not to speculate.
 
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