Timelessness in heaven

[Neil_Anthony]

I’ve heard that there is no time in heaven. But people also talk about heaven like it has endless time. But if it is beyond time, I picture it as being frozen.

So if we are frozen in an instant in time, no matter how happy that instant is, it seems like heaven doesn’t sound all that fun. Am I misunderstanding something about timelessness?

 

[beckycmarie]

I don’t think we’ll be “frozen” in an instant in time. That sounds more like Hell to me than Heaven. I think we just won’t be aware of “time” as we are here.

“But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” 2 Peter 3:8

If you have an hour, check out Dr. Peter Kreeft’s talk on Heaven. It’ll help with those worries that it might be boring.

peterkreeft.com/audio/35_heaven.htm

 

[andy120]

I don’t believe there is a definitive Church teaching on it, but here is what I believe from what I’ve learned and read.

First, we don’t know for sure what heaven will be like other than it will be perfect happiness, praising God forever.

God is outside of time, but Heaven is not necessarily.

I think Heaven will have some kind of chronological order. Revelations gives some sort of idea as to what Heaven might be like. If one can “do” things in Heaven, that implies a sort of time.

When we die, we will have an individual judgment but then there will be the Last Judgment, which we will have to wait for. Therefore, there is a chronology to events in Heaven.

I’m sure time will be different in Heaven, but I doubt it will be “frozen.”

 

[jkarp]

I’ve heard that there is no time in heaven. But people also talk about heaven like it has endless time. But if it is beyond time, I picture it as being frozen.

So if we are frozen in an instant in time, no matter how happy that instant is, it seems like heaven doesn’t sound all that fun. Am I misunderstanding something about timelessness?

If we are frozen in heaven then we are still existing in reference to time.

I believe that heaven exists outside of time. For example, you might be able to see all of time, each moment frozen, stretched out in front of you, sort of like a model train set, from creation to the end of time. (This is, of course, my own personal vision, not a Church statement). You would be able to move around it and examine each different detail and even ask the Lord to effect change within in it as He sees fit.

 

[CapIV]

lol @ Heaven doesn’t sound like fun.

 

[DanteAlighieri]

Our innermost yearnings are for union with God; heaven is the fulfillment of those desires. From the Catechism:

1023 Those who die in God’s grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ. They are like God for ever, for they “see him as he is,” face to face…

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.

We are unified with the Trinity in such a way that every desire we have is fulfilled. Since we want only God, and we “have” Him in heaven, we are eternally happy.

1025 To live in heaven is “to be with Christ.” The elect live "in Christ,"600 but they retain, or rather find, their true identity, their own name.

Our true identity is complete in our union with God. “Finding” oneself is one of the most common themes in art and philosophy, which indicates it is one of our deepest desires. This is fulfilled in Heaven.

1027 This mystery of blessed communion with God and all who are in Christ is beyond all understanding and description. Scripture speaks of it in images: life, light, peace, wedding feast, wine of the kingdom, the Father’s house, the heavenly Jerusalem, paradise: “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.”

We cannot conceive of what heaven is like – nor what God is like – and must therefore use our knack for poetic imagery to illustrate it. The Biblical imagery cited above is intended to give us a reference point: the eternal wedding feast, celebrating the eternal marriage of Christ and His Church, for example.

1028 Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man’s immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. The Church calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory “the beatific vision”…

To know that which is unknowable, and yet which is the thing we innately most wish to know – that is heaven.

1029 In the glory of heaven the blessed continue joyfully to fulfill God’s will in relation to other men and to all creation. Already they reign with Christ; with him “they shall reign for ever and ever.”

As in this life, one cannot find happiness without subjecting oneself to His will. In heaven, that surrender is complete and the happiness that arises from it is immediate and all-consuming. In other words, one’s will is perfected such that one only wants what God wants.

Thus, the bliss of heaven is generated by fulfillment of our nature. We have an innate longing for union with God and knowledge of God and ourselves. Heaven is this union and knowledge – forever.

What could possibly make one happier than to be everything one was supposed to be in the first place?

Peace,
Dante

 

[JimG]

I think it is not a matter of being frozen in time. Rather it is being able to fully possess your being in its entirety–being able to fully possess all your moments in time, not as memories, not as tomorrows, but as present realities.

Here on earth we only possess our being an instant at a time, piece by piece. In heaven we possess the fullness of our being. Don’t ask me how that works.

 

[utunumsint]

Also remember that our eternity will be in relation to the one infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, trinune being: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, Creator of all time and space. Trust me. You wont be bored. That sense of confinment is an illusion based on our difficulty (or maybe I should say the impossibility…) to understand what this mode of existence will be like. It is infinitely beyond us in this life, expect in those glimpses that the mystics can sometimes report to us using analogies and metaphors. Just trust that it will be a blast.

God bless,
Ut

 

[johnco]

hi,

eternity will not be less but more. now, all we have is the present fraction of a second. the past is gone, the future has’nt happened yet. all we have is “now”. in eternity we shall have it all, past, future, and an eternal now. all this and endless bliss.
God is Love!

God bless,

johnco

 

[CentralFLJames]

Here on earth each of us feels insignificant and irrelevant. We are just small cogs in the wheel turning within our cities, states , nations, planet our solar system, our galaxy and our Universe.

In heaven we all become profoundly relevant to God and everything in God’s celestial court (His Family of angelic beings and human beings). We also become relevant to anything God has created or will create in the future. Just as Jesus is essential, necessary and inseparable from God the Father in the Triune relationship we all individually are made inseparable from God’s grace and love that is available to us through the Divinity of Jesus and our share in the beatific vision.

God The Father’s Love for each of us is so profound and so intense that God could not suffer to seperate Himself from His communion with us individually (through Jesus) . As created beings our souls do not have the spiritual capacity to bear sharing in God’s full divinity as He knows Himself. But He fully shares each to our individual spiritual capacities (why we should work hard to grow our souls in holiness on earth - prayers and spiritual works are important!). He falls in love with each of us individually and expresses that love to the fullest capacity that our created souls can bear without causing the unbearable joy to damage us.

Don’t forget - in heaven we are immortal beings and god-like!

After Jesus resurrects our perfected immortal bodies and reunites them wth our souls we are as divine-human-beings and are given powers to go anywhere in and out of Heaven and to step into time at will to enter the new Creation. There will be more than mere galaxies, stars, and planets and paradisaical thing to see and marvel over in Creation. We will likely be given active roles within God’s new Creation and new Heaven and in His unimaginable new works. We will have eternal relationships and interactions with each other that will be infinitely more intense than anything we could relationally experience on earth (think of a supernatural agape love with joys and pleasures that infinitely eclipse the transient pleasures one might enjoy in earthly unions - this was just a prefiguring of things to come). It would not surprise me if God will not ask us to share in the creative aspects of shaping the beatific vision in a way that we can personalize new works with Him. With God His Love is not just one way - he will invite and empower each of us to personally express our Love through the full power of His grace. Can anyone imagine being in communion with all the power and Love of all of Creation and what can come out of that?!!

OMG! Abba! I am ready for bigger and better things! Beam me up!

James

 

[drafdog]

This is not properly a religious question but one of the ability to express ideas in words. “Timelessness” is a negative and is not properly a concept. We can’t talk meaningfully about what we do not experience. Don’t worry about this unless you’re planning on writing a doctoral dissertation on the concept of time.

Matthew

 

[fhansen]

As finite beings we can’t conceive of infinite time or eternity. I believe that time was created as a “pause”, so to speak, in eternity in order to literally give us time to decide between eternal life and eternal death (eternal separation from God). Time might mean physical death-that there is a finality or an end to the road which we find ourselves on. Death, both spiritual and physical, entered the world when we were cast out of the garden and banned from eating from the tree of life. This is God’s merciful reprieve from the immediate annihilation which justice apparently demanded for the act of original sin. Since the genesis of all evil is this act of rebellion against God and His order or laws which exist within us, God could’ve just chosen to wipe the slate clean and start over. Instead, He accommodated creation by allowing time, a “temporary” or short-time fix, where we could experience the fruits of sin, coming to know good and evil, and, if we’re smart, coming to reject evil by choosing good, ultimately partaking from the tree of life again which Jesus won us back the right to eat of. But this metanoia or change of heart requires time. Without this need of learning, time would be unnecessary. Another way of looking at it is that life on earth is a temporary separation from God to see how we like it-to see what life without God, and with created things being the highest good, is really like- and to see whether or not we’ll choose to make that separation permanent.
Maybe not-anyway that’s my thoughts on it.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Thanks to everyone who answered, the responses have given me a lot to think about! And helped answer my question, at least to the point where I realize that being frozen in an instant isn’t the right way to look at it.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

As finite beings we can’t conceive of infinite time or eternity. I believe that time was created as a “pause”, so to speak, in eternity in order to literally give us time to decide between eternal life and eternal death (eternal separation from God). Time might mean physical death-that there is a finality or an end to the road which we find ourselves on. Death, both spiritual and physical, entered the world when we were cast out of the garden and banned from eating from the tree of life. This is God’s merciful reprieve from the immediate annihilation which justice apparently demanded for the act of original sin. Since the genesis of all evil is this act of rebellion against God and His order or laws which exist within us, God could’ve just chosen to wipe the slate clean and start over. Instead, He accommodated creation by allowing time, a “temporary” or short-time fix, where we could experience the fruits of sin, coming to know good and evil, and, if we’re smart, coming to reject evil by choosing good, ultimately partaking from the tree of life again which Jesus won us back the right to eat of. But this metanoia or change of heart requires time. Without this need of learning, time would be unnecessary. Another way of looking at it is that life on earth is a temporary separation from God to see how we like it-to see what life without God, and with created things being the highest good, is really like- and to see whether or not we’ll choose to make that separation permanent.
Maybe not-anyway that’s my thoughts on it.

Thank you. I wonder, do you think that the garden of eden and original sin occurred in time as we know it, or was this physical world of time created as a result of that to give us the ‘extra time’ to be saved from what we had done, as you put it?

 

[davidv]

Thank you. I wonder, do you think that the garden of eden and original sin occurred in time as we know it, or was this physical world of time created as a result of that to give us the ‘extra time’ to be saved from what we had done, as you put it?

Given that we are expected to believe that Adam and Eve were real human persons who were the first parents of all humankind, it had to occur in “our time”.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Given that we are expected to believe that Adam and Eve were real human persons who were the first parents of all humankind, it had to occur in “our time”.

I’m not so sure about that… sometimes I think the garden of eden may have been a different “dimension” or “place” or “world” or “sumpthin’”

 

[fhansen]

Thank you. I wonder, do you think that the garden of eden and original sin occurred in time as we know it, or was this physical world of time created as a result of that to give us the ‘extra time’ to be saved from what we had done, as you put it?

That’s a very good question. My thoughts on the whole matter are speculative since we’re dealing with an unknown for the most part.

But whether time was a necessary dimension of creation from the beginning or whether it came into being along with corruption and death at the Fall, or at least took on a different meaning or role at that point, I don’t know.

I’m not sure what the differences are between Adam & Eve’s original state in the Garden and the final state in heaven. But in both places, 1) the body possesses immortality, and 2) man is in the immediate presence of God. So did they already exist in a state of timelessness, which was lost at the Fall, or is timelessness a state which only exists in the next life? I can’t imagine created beings operating outside of time but the fact is that we will always remain created beings.

Maybe time, which by the way, is a concept which is virtually as hard to understand as eternity, was created at the beginning, perhaps in anticipation of the Fall, and will no longer be necessary in the end, in which case my theory probably doesn’t hold water. But since we are being prepared for the possibility of eternal life by first getting to have a taste of eternal death –a life without God concentrated on temporary, created things- I think the “pause in eternity” idea, as the way of a merciful God putting a “hold” on things until creation gets it together, could have merit as a definition of time -or the reason for it’s existence anyway.

 

[CentralFLJames]

Well unless it is a limitation of humans having to think and write stories sequentially from top to bottom as a limitation of our human thinking I think we know is that there is a concept of “sequence” - a before and after. We have that in the creation story before the fall and in Eve’s creation being dependent first on Adam’s and on his need for companionship. The creation story seems to suggest that time was present at the instant of Creation since a void contains to physical relationships and thus no dependencies or co-dependencies among any physical entities that all have mass-momentum and particle properties that are functions of time and time based probabilities. That is, except we still do not know what happens inside the very very small “tick” of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle where for all we know anything at all could happen (a new Creation? ) as long as conditions returned back to the prior state we are in “now” on the next interval. Anything happening in that interval would be completely transparent to us or would result in a leap or discontinuity of events that could not be explained by physical phenomena and would appear as an impossible miracle to us.

If I were to generalize it seems that as a condition of physical relations (planets to each other, heaven to earth, humans to self and their environment and maybe even light to dark) there seems to be necessity for time that is just as woven into the necessity for a fabric of space or volume (and there may be other dimensions outside our senses as we Christians believe to be the case).

On the other hand the necessity of time is not implied in the state of nothingness (nothing created spiritually nor physical) “before” the Creation since we hold in faith that the primal relationship of “God” in His 3 persons with Himself existed entirely onto Himself - the inexplicable enigma of the great “I Am Who Am” or “The Word”. It seems clear to me that time becomes irrelevant to God (but not us) when He attaches ourselves to Himself relationally at birth - or when we relate to Him (as either friend or as enemy). But we seem to have a hybrid case in life since we relate at first in time then later outside time eternally. But some of us at least may have also known God before we were formed in the womb since we Catholics believe that we are baptised as priest, prophet and king and share through the divinity of Christ in some aspects of His divinity (our souls are in fact immortal). That’s latter part people forget - we are immortal beings who just have a phase or a “sequence” that is mortal that is subject to time.

This gets pretty intensely metaphysical…

James

 

[Vincent]

This reminds me of Pope Benedict’s thoughts on Purgatory:

It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ

Encyclical Spe Salvi, 47
​

 

[fhansen]

That’s latter part people forget - we are immortal beings who just have a phase or a “sequence” that is mortal that is subject to time.

This gets pretty intensely metaphysical…

James

So then, would-or can-time, for us, exist in eternity? Would events happen sequentially? Or does sequence even make sense in eternity?