Who all exist outside space and time?

[KevinK]

I often see it said that God exists “outside of space and time”. I don’t know if this is Church teaching. My question: Is God the only one who exists there? Where do angels, Satan, saints, demons etc. exist if not the temporal world?

 

[SpearOfMichael]

The creed states we believe in God the Father, the Almighty, creator of heaven and of earth. Of all things visible and invisible and in Jesus Christ, his son, our Lord who was born of the Father Before All Ages.

Genesis Asserts that from that point in time all other things were created. Everything else has a temporal signature.

 

[Roguish]

I often see it said that God exists “outside of space and time”. I don’t know if this is Church teaching.

It is, though it receives little explicit attention. One place where God’s independence of space and time is mentioned explicitly is the Catechism, paragraph 205.

My question: Is God the only one who exists there?

No. But everything else that exists outside time and space is still ontologically “lower” than God. An example: God first created the Heavens (Genesis 1:1), and those Heavens stand outside time and space. Yet they are obviously part of God’s Creation. The souls of perfect saints are also outside time and space, for they are immortal, i.e. eternal. Indeed this is what is meant by the phrase “being with God” when Christians are speaking of the state that they ultimately strive to attain.

Where do angels, Satan, saints, demons etc. exist if not the temporal world?

We covered saints. Demons exist on the mindplane, which is not eternal, so you may call them “temporal” although they are not “creatures” that sense time. Satan is of course the ruler of malignant demons so this goes for him too. Angels are eternal as they abide in the Heavens of Genesis 1:1.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Demons exist on the mindplane, which is not eternal, so you may call them “temporal” although they are not “creatures” that sense time. Satan is of course the ruler of demons so this goes for him too.

What’s your source for this?

 

[Wesrock]

I often see it said that God exists “outside of space and time”. I don’t know if this is Church teaching. My question: Is God the only one who exists there? Where do angels, Satan, saints, demons etc. exist if not the temporal world?

For God… the word “outside” can conjure up a bad image without more context. People imagine a box, and God has no location in it, but then imagine he has a location outside of it, as if there’s more space out there. Maybe one would imagine that God has twelve dimensions and our reality is a 4-D worldblock he can tinker with. Those images are incorrect.

It might be better to say that God is not bound or contained by space-time. It’s not perfect, but it’s a little better, in my opinion.

I have been thinking of God as not being a higher dimensional being, but as being dimensionless. Simply eternal and unchanging and transcendent.

Those who have died and are in Heaven… perhaps I go beyond what I know, but until the Resurrection, it seems to me they have no dimensions either. They simply are experiencing the bliss of God’s presence, knowing what they’ve received and are being given, and united to God’s will.

For the Blessed Virgin Mary who was assumed, and Christ’s ascended body, we know less. We can speculate about little carved out realities in which they exist, but I prefer not to spend too much time speculating on that which hasn’t been revealed or knowable from natural theology. They are, in some unknown way, with God, body and soul.

The angels and demons? They can manipulate matter locally, but are they themselves localized? Their knowledge seems to be, and they seem to be temporal (I want to check this one a bit more, honestly). They are not immutable and eternal in the way God is, but beyond that… Most of my theological study has been on Thomist theology, particularly of the Divine Attributes. I’ll admit that angelology and other topics aren’t my forte, though Aquinas teaches that the angels, being immaterial, are intellectual, and not corporeal.

 

[stephenSTOSS1]

I don’t believe that anything is part of the eternal (infinite) now except God. Only that which is infinite is able to be in the eternal now. Angels and humans are eternal, meaning they will live forever…from the moment of their creation … from their beginning. The infinite God has no beginning and no end …existing in the infinite “now”. For angels and humans to be in the infinite now, they would have had to exist before they existed, which is a contradiction. To be sure, God can grant finite beings knowledge concerning future events, but that is different than existing in the infinite now. Another distinction should be made regarding quantum states. The theory of relativity states that at the speed of light, time strands still. Even when time stands still, time still exists and that which is in such a state is still within time.

 

[Richca]

Space or the heavens and time are creatures, creations of God and God transcends all of his creation so, yes, it can be said that God exists outside of space and time. Before creation, only God existed. The entire universe of creatures can also be said to be in God as like contained by God for St Paul says ‘In him we live, and move, and have our being’. Beyond the universe there is only God except it appears the incarnated Jesus and maybe Mary too because Paul says that Christ ascended above all the heavens and sits at the right hand of God. It is said that God’s glory is above the heavens ‘The LORD is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens!’ (Psalm 113:4).

The good angels are said to dwell in the heavens.
‘Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens, praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host!’ (Psalm 148: 1-2). The heavens were created by God ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’ (Gen. 1:1).

Various fathers, doctors, and saints of the Church speculate, taking their cue from various scriptural passages including the ones I just mentioned and others such as from various visions of the prophets and the book of Revelation, that the natural abode of the good angels is in the highest heavens, a real corporeal place, invisible and beyond the visible heavens. This is called the empyrean heaven. But, many of the good angels and choirs of them have various administrations in carrying out the providential governance of the world by God which involves the whole visible creation, the visible heavens and the earth, the forces of nature and the affairs of man on earth. So these angels are all over the visible creation carrying out their duties though their natural abode or home as it were is the empyrean heaven. That there is more than one heaven or different levels of them comes from scripture itself and Paul says in one place that he was caught up to the third heaven.

Satan and the other wicked angels were cast out of heaven and thrown down to the earth by St Michael the archangel and his army of good angels (cf. the book of Revelation). St Paul says ‘… following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience’ (Eph. 2:2). And again ‘For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places’ (Eph. 6:12). I think it is commonly believed the heavenly places here does not extend past the earth’s atmosphere, the air in Eph. 2:2. Jesus said too that he ‘saw satan fall like lightening from heaven’.

 

[Richca]

(continued)

From Scripture, hell is considered to be in the earth, in the bowels of the earth. So the abode of satan and the wicked angels is in the hot and fiery inner earth but they are allowed in this present time to roam the earth and tempt man but not go further it appears than past the earth’s atmosphere or the air. So it seems the domain of satan and the wicked angels is earthly, i.e., in and on the earth and its immediate surroundings such as the air. But, there real abode to which they’ve been assigned too is hell which appears to be in the deep parts of the earth.

It is an article of the faith which we recite in the creed every Sunday at Mass that Jesus descended into hell after he died and before his resurrection. This seems to mean that he descended into the bowels of the earth where the souls of the just were but not into the hell of eternal fire which is deeper. St Paul says ‘In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things’ (Eph. 4: 9-10).

 

[thistle]

From Scripture, hell is considered to be in the earth, in the bowels of the earth. So the abode of satan and the wicked angels is in the hot and fiery inner earth but they are allowed in this present time to roam the earth and tempt man but not go further it appears than past the earth’s atmosphere or the air. So it seems the domain of satan and the wicked angels is earthly, i.e., in and on the earth and its immediate surroundings such as the air. But, there real abode to which they’ve been assigned too is hell which appears to be in the deep parts of the earth.

It is an article of the faith which we recite in the creed every Sunday at Mass that Jesus descended into hell after he died and before his resurrection. This seems to mean that he descended into the bowels of the earth where the souls of the just were but not into the hell of eternal fire which is deeper. St Paul says ‘In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things’ (Eph. 4: 9-10).

The Church does not teach that Hell is physically anywhere within the earth.

 

[Richca]

The Church does not teach that hell is not in the earth. My arguments are from inspired Scripture which is essentially all that has been revealed to us and that we can go by without essentially turning to pure human speculation.

 

[thistle]

Nor does it teach that it is not. My arguments are from Scripture which is essentially all that has been revealed to us and that we can go by without essentially turning to pure human speculation.

You mean you are Sola Scripura which of course is not even in the Bible.

 

[Richca]

No, what I mean is the Church definitely has not said as a matter of faith that hell is not in the earth which if it did we might then have a problem in some manner with a certain article of the catholic profession of faith. But in the earth is where Tradition places it and the Bible. In fact, I think the Catechism of the Council of Trent places hell in the earth too. St Paul says that Christ descended into the lower regions of the earth and it is an article of faith that Christ descended into hell after he died on the cross and before his resurrection.

 

[thistle]

No, what I mean is the Church definitely has not said as a matter of faith that hell is not in the earth which if it did we might then have a problem in some manner with a certain article of the catholic profession of faith. But in the earth is where Tradition places it and the Bible. In fact, I think the Catechism of the Council of Trent places hell in the earth too. St Paul says that Christ descended into the lower regions of the earth and it is an article of faith that Christ descended into hell after he died on the cross and before his resurrection.

Trent catechism does not state Hell in under the Earth someplace.

In fact the Church does not teach Hell is a place or a state or both.

“Descended into Hell” is an expression to convey Christ went to those who had died before. It does not literally mean he went someplace under the earth.

 

[adgloriam]

Roguish:

Demons exist on the mindplane, which is not eternal, so you may call them “temporal” although they are not “creatures” that sense time. Satan is of course the ruler of demons so this goes for him too.

What’s your source for this?

@Roguish, theology has it preternatural creatures are indeed eternal as our souls are. Devoid of matter they are pure spirit. In the first chapter of the book of Job, Satan appears in heaven, and in many other books you see demons in the physical world affecting physical objects - and demons are destined to the eternal lake of fire.