Dilemma of beginnings and endings

But for now remember, no matter what time it is in your part of the world God still loves you... You are accepted, you are valued, you are loved! By the Heavenly Father and by us. 

Love, 

Denis  

 Part 9  Watch out for speed bumps

 Gentle reader , 

Are we are running out of “time” to do the things that are important to us all “world peace”, the “perfect” cup of coffee, the great Irish (American, or whatever country you are reading this from) Cosmologists of the Western world today are on the horns of a dilemma. Although it is very generally agreed that the universe is running down, scientists find it difficult to accept the idea that it will really come to an end. What can come to an end must have had a beginning; and this raises the question of who began it. So they speak about a heat death of the universe which is not a physical "end of the world" but only an end of it in its present configuration, as though its corpse would return to dust but the dust would remain. Yet one still has to ask, Who made the dust? A true beginning is as inconceivable in terms of physical laws as a true ending would be. L. Susan Stebbing reported Eddington, one of the most notable of Britain's astronomer-physicists, as having said:(5)

“Philosophically the notion of an abrupt beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me, as I think it must be to most; and even those who would welcome a proof of the intervention of a Creator would probably consider that a single winding-up at some remote epoch is not really the kind of relation between God and his world that brings satisfaction to the mind. But I can see no escape from our dilemma”.

It is a problem, isn't it? Some years ago when the concept of an expanding universe first became a topic of popular discussion, the same Sir Arthur Eddington wrote:(6)

“The difficulty of an infinite past is appalling. It is inconceivable that we are the heirs of an infinite time of preparation; it is no less inconceivable that there was once a moment with no moment preceding it.

This dilemma of the beginning of time would worry us more were it not eclipsed by another overwhelming difficulty lying between us and the infinite past. We have been studying the running-down of the universe; if our views are right, somewhere between the beginning of time and the present day we must place the winding-up of the universe”.

Travelling backwards into the past we find a world with more and more organization. If there is no barrier to stop us earlier, we reach a moment when the energy of the world was wholly organized with none of the random element in it. The organization we are concerned with is exactly definable, and there is a point at which it becomes perfect.

There is no doubt that the scheme of physics as it has stood for the last three-quarters of a century postulates a date at which either the entities of the universe were created in a state of high organization or pre-existing entities were endowed with that organization which they have been squandering ever since. Moreover, this organization is admittedly the antithesis of chance. It is something which could not occur fortuitously. This has long been used as an argument against a too aggressive materialism. It has been quoted as scientific proof of the intervention of the Creator at a time not infinitely remote from today. . . .

It is one of those conclusions from which we can see no logical escape — only it suffers from the drawback that it is incredible. So there it is: the incredible has to be the only account that is left to us. No other explanation of reality seems possible.

Sir Theodore Fox, in the Harverian Oration for 1965 before the Royal College of Physicians in London under the title, "Purposes of Medicine," had this to say:(7)

“To contemplate the Universe is to stand even more abashed. For somehow at some time, all that we see and touch and hear must have emerged from NOTHING. To us this transformation of nothing into something is contrary to reason; and the creation of the Universe is a mystery that Man may never be able to understand. Yet the Universe seems to exist: and we must beware of making excessive claims for any system of thought [i.e., scientific materialism] that finds its origin impossible.”

Years ago Lord Kelvin in a popular lecture entitled, "The Wave Theory of Light," reflected upon what would be one's reactions if the universe is limited in its size. He asked his audience: "What would you think of a Universe in which were to go millions and millions of miles, the idea of coming to an end is incomprehensible."(8) What Lord Kelvin said of coming to an end of space, now has to be asked of coming to an end of time.

We have every reason in the light of present knowledge to suppose that time and space are integral parts of a single reality, so that the creation of things occupying space means the simultaneous creation of time when things began to happen. Neither time nor space existed before creation. Augustine asked a pertinent question relating to this. He argued thus: If we should wonder how God occupied Himself before He created the universe, we have to realize how meaningless such a question really is. The question springs out of our consciousness of the passage of time. Before the universe there was no time and therefore it is inappropriate to ask what God was doing then, "for there was no 'then' when there was no time."(9)

Time and eternity: two different realities

Thus we find ourselves face-to-face with some profound philosophical problems. If we see time as a kind of linear property of events stretching out on either side of us, part of it already spent and the rest of it yet to pass by, we cannot conceive of such a tape as endless. But neither can we think of it as having two ends without at once wondering what was before it and what will be after it! Either way, our powers of conception fail us. Yet time is not eternity; for eternity is not merely an endless chain of fragments of time, since these fragments of time already past must then necessarily have shortened eternity, and eternity is thereby being exhausted little by little. Eternity would simply run out of time!

If it should be asked whether time is "within" eternity, I think the answer must still be, No. For this would make time merely a fragment of eternity which then becomes simply an extension of time at either end of the line. Time and eternity are not such that there can be this kind of overlap because the two realities are not in the same category of experience. The only "overlap" is that point of crossover at which the line representing time (which is horizontal) crosses the line representing eternity (which is vertical). Since neither line has any width, the place of intersection is not an area but merely a point, a point that can only be described as NOW. We can diagram this as shown in Fig. 1.

The Beginning of time The End of Time 

 Gen 1:1 Rev. 10:6

Time Passed  ?? ?    “NOW”      Time to come???

Since this figure when completed may look a little frightening, let us "build" it in two stages. In Fig. 1a we have a horizontal line which represents the passage of TIME. The movement of TIME passes from right to left with respect to each of us personally. We stand at the point marked "NOW." The beginning of TIME has already gone by and moved off to our left. What yet remains to run by is to the right; and since it is limited, it will continue only until, one day, it comes to an end. Thus the short vertical line marking its terminus has yet to move past us. When it finally does, TIME will be no more (Revelation 10:6).(10)

We then add a vertical line through the NOW-point to indicate that wherever our NOW happens to be, at that point ETERNITY impinges upon our consciousness. 

 Confused Gentle Reader?

Hang in there and all will be clear when you go to bed tonight!

 In the meantime consider that you stand in Eternity “Now” so don’t be a speed bump in the road of life. Or as the great Yoga Berra once said “when you come to a fork in the road , take it”

 Love, Denis 

Foot notes for those who care about such things:

5. Stebbing, L. Susan, Philosophy and the Physicists, London, Constable, 1959, p.258.

6. Eddington, Sir Arthur, The Nature of the Physical World, Cambridge University Press, 1930, p.83 f., 85

7. Fox, Theodore, "Purposes of Medicine," Lancet, 23 Oct. 1965, p.804.

8. Kelvin, W. T., "The Wave Theory of Light", Lecture delivered under the auspices of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, U.S.A., Sept. 29, 1884, in Popular Lectures and Addresses, London, Macmillan, vol. 1, 1981, p.322.

9. Augustine, Confessions, XI.xiii.15.

 Part 10 Gentle reader, 

 This is a long journey and we need to go slow. 

The pattern of two lines thus crossing, one representing the horizontal passage of TIME and the other the vertical NOW-ness of ETERNITY, allows us to carry the figure one step further in the service of setting forth the truth. The horizontal line moving through history continues to flow by us until, according to Scripture, it will one day come to an end. Time will then have entirely passed by, and the vertical line of ETERNITY will no longer intercept it. There will be no more time because this heaven and earth will pass away (Mattew 24:35).(11) At the beginning — the beginning of time, that is to say — the line started its journey by intersecting the vertical ETERNITY line.

Thus we have this kind of analogy. Fig. 2 shows TIME a moment after "the creation" when only a short segment of it has elapsed.

11. "[Jesus said] Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." Matthew 24:35.

When this present universe comes to an end, the line of TIME will have completely moved across the vertical line and passed by it. Fig. 3 represents analogously that moment when TIME has only just run out.

Thus this vertical line of ETERNITY which stretches upward and downwards will be the only line remaining. It has no width, but its depth and height reach to infinity. The horizontal line representing the passage of TIME will have ceased to exist. Intensity of experience will replace extensity.

And so it appears that the only relation we can establish between time and eternity is at the point of intersection; and when time has passed by and is no more, we shall not be able to represent it in any way — except, perhaps, in our memory or by observing its effect upon the Lord's body in the marks of the nails and the wound in his side. Everything else relating to time as we now experience it will have passed away.

The eternal as "now-ness" 

It is necessary to say a further word about the sense of now-ness. We carry this with us as long as we have consciousness. It always has to do with conscious being, not with having been in the past or with hoping to be in the future. It amounts to this almost, that eternity is a kind of now-consciousness, an awareness of something which has no passing, but travels with us. So long as we experience time, it is like a single point that moves with us along the horizontal line of our time-frame. When that time-frame comes to an end and the horizontal line no longer intersects the vertical line to mark the point we experience as now, now-ness will cease to be a single point. We shall then experience it along the whole vertical line of eternity in a way that has nothing to do with time but has everything to do with depth and intensity.

This is where God is always 'present.' We shall in this experience presumably share something of his eternality. Our new kind of consciousness will of course be contingent upon his sustaining us, since it will always be true that "in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). It is He alone who is the great "I am," the One who lives in the present, He who "inhabits eternity" (Isaiah 57:15)(12). The statement is an important one. We dwell in space and therefore in time, and both impose limitations upon us. God inhabits eternity, which involves neither time nor space as we experience them in the present world.

The essential quality of eternal life is depth (not length). The idea of permanence and enduringness is essential to it but it is not the prime quality which the New Testament emphasizes. What the Lord Himself emphasized was depth in the present rather than extension into the future: quality not quantity.

12. "For thus says the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place." Isaiah 57:15a

The Old Testament saint was promised "long life" (Exodus 20:12);(13) the New Testament saint is promised "life more abundant" (John 10:10).(14)

To think of length as the essence of eternal life is to suppose that the reality of it is to be measured by how long it lasts. But a little thought soon demonstrates that we are pursuing the wrong road to understanding when we follow this path. Physicists have recently discovered a particle that has independent existence of about one-fifteen billionths of a second!(15) Is this long enough to say that this particle, called an antiomega-minus baryon particle, is a reality? How long must a thing last to have real existence? Surely the reality of existence in eternity is not measured by "how long"?

The question is inappropriate because if the same question were asked of some creature that lived for only a fraction of a second (and there is no reason why such a creature may not exist somewhere), that creature would presumably view the even shorter-lived particle in the same light as we view something which has lived for a few hours or a tiny fraction of our life span. It is all a matter of viewpoint. It is tantamount to saying that reality depends upon timed existence; that is to say, existence over some minimum period. But then we have to ask, Did God not exist until He had created time in which to exist?

And what of angels? Angels do not have material bodies, although it seems they can sometimes assume them when fulfilling divinely appointed tasks such as the rescue of Lot and his wife from Sodom — "taking them by the hand" to hurry them out of the city (Genesis 19:16).(16) But if they do not have material bodies as normal to their existence, they do not normally occupy space either and therefore do not live in time as we do.

Moreover, they existed before the creation of the universe, since they were already present at its inception and rejoiced to see it (Job 38:4-7).(17) Did they therefore exist before time and thus outside of it? They were, however, created beings and therefore not "inhabitants of eternity" as God is.(18) What then was the nature of the framework of their existence if there was no time until the creation of the physical universe which came "later"? Can we speak of a before and an after in eternity while as yet there was no physical world in existence to constitute time in which to set events 'before' and 'after'? Is there a sense in which eternity does witness sequences of events that supply the ground for the terms before and after even though there is no actual passage of time involved? Is this the sense in which the Son of God said, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58)(19), re-asserting the NOW of his eternity by the words "I am," in spite of his use of the word "before"? Is there some kind of proto-time or pseudo-time in which the angels lived while awaiting the creation of the universe? Or are we to restate Augustine's insight by saying that time began with the creation, and read this to mean "with the creation of the spirit world" — this, then, being the first stage in the creation of the physical world?

To state this as simply as possible: Did time strictly begin with an act of creation per se — that is, the creation of the spirit world, this being only one kind of time? Was a second kind of time then initiated with the creation of the physical world? When this physical world comes to an end, will this second kind of time also terminate? But as to the first kind of time, appropriate to a created order that is spiritual, will it continue as long as created beings continue to give it meaning? It may indeed be beyond our comprehension — but it still bears thinking about. . . . 

If we limit the existence of time to the creation of the physical world we find ourselves called upon to explain how the creation of the angels, the bringing of something into being that was not there before, could occur when there was no time to accommodate this before. We therefore seem to be forced to conclude that the beginning of time was marked by creative activity per se, not merely with the creation of the material world as Augustine saw it. This makes the angels an essential part of the created universe in a way that we do not customarily think of them, but it does seem to be in accordance with Colossians 1:16 ff.(20) Here the creation of principalities and powers is linked with the creation of the material universe that constitutes the heavens and the earth, as though in a sense they all belong together. The creation of the spirit 

13. "Honour your father and your mother that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God gives you." Exodus 20:16.

14. "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." John 10:10b.

15. On the discovery of these particles and on the problem of describing them, see Cyril Henshelwood, "Science and Scientists", Nature, Supplement, Sept. 4, 1965, p.1060; and also Allen Emerson, "A Disorienting View of God's Creation", Christianity Today, vol. 29, no. 2, Feb. 1, 1985, p.24. 

16. "And while he [Lot] lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the Lord being merciful unto him, and they brought him forth, and set him without the city." Genesis 19:16.

17. "Where were you when I [God] laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have understanding. Who has laid the measures thereof, if you know? Or who has stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner stone thereof; when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Job 38, 4-7.

18. "For thus says the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is holy; I dwell in the high and lofty place." Isaiah 57:15a.

19. "Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, 'Before Abraham was, I am.'" John 8:58.

20. "For by him [Jesus] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist." Colossians 1:16 & 17.

however, created beings and therefore not "inhabitants of eternity" as God is.(18) What then was the nature of the framework of their existence if there was no time until the creation of the physical universe which came "later"? Can we speak of a before and an after in eternity while as yet there was no physical world in existence to constitute time in which to set events 'before' and 'after'? Is there a sense in which eternity does witness sequences of events that supply the ground for the terms before and after even though there is no actual passage of time involved? Is this the sense in which the Son of God said, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58)(19), re-asserting the NOW of his eternity by the words "I am," in spite of his use of the word "before"? Is there some kind of proto-time or pseudo-time in which the angels lived while awaiting the creation of the universe? Or are we to restate Augustine's insight by saying that time began with the creation, and read this to mean "with the creation of the spirit world" — this, then, being the first stage in the creation of the physical world?

To state this as simply as possible: Did time strictly begin with an act of creation per se — that is, the creation of the spirit world, this being only one kind of time? Was a second kind of time then initiated with the creation of the physical world? When this physical world comes to an end, will this second kind of time also terminate? But as to the first kind of time, appropriate to a created order that is spiritual, will it continue as long as created beings continue to give it meaning? It may indeed be beyond our comprehension — but it still bears thinking about. . . . 

If we limit the existence of time to the creation of the physical world we find ourselves called upon to explain how the creation of the angels, the bringing of something into being that was not there before, could occur when there was no time to accommodate this before. We therefore seem to be forced to conclude that the beginning of time was marked by creative activity per se, not merely with the creation of the material world as Augustine saw it. This makes the angels an essential part of the created universe in a way that we do not customarily think of them, but it does seem to be in accordance with Colossians 1:16 ff.(20) Here the creation of principalities and powers is linked with the creation of the material universe that constitutes the heavens and the earth, as though in a sense they all belong together. The creation of the spirit 

1. 18. "For thus says the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is holy; I dwell in the high and lofty place." Isaiah 57:15a.

19. "Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, 'Before Abraham was, I am.'" John 8:58.

20. "For by him [Jesus] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist." Colossians 1:16 & 17.

Part 11

 Gentle reader, 

We have been looking at time lets jump ahead and consider

WHEN TIME BECAME AN ETERNITY

There are two 'schools' of thought about the best way of eating candy. They are mostly composed of children. There are those who plop a candy into the mouth and let the sweet juices slowly dissolve, bathing the taste buds gently and for quite a long time. Then there are those who find this delivery system quite unsatisfactory. They immediately start breaking up the candy with their molars and the enhanced flow ofsweetness which results from the greatly increased surface area of the many smaller pieces proves far more rewarding.

For a while the volume of taste is marvelous and absorbs all their attention. They stare into space wholly

occupied with delight, until suddenly they discover the candy is all gone; the last fragment has surreptitiously slipped down the throat with almost indecent haste. All too soon there is nothing left:

nothing, that is, except the resolve next time to suck it more slowly! This resolve is strengthened as the supply of candies runs out and only becomes firm when they are all gone.

There are many of the former school, mostly girls I suspect: but there are perhaps more of the latter, mostly boys I think. I always resolved to make the candy last and always failed to keep that resolve — and still do,

sixty years later.

Herein is an analogy. Enjoyment may be mild and long, or deep and intense: as it is with pleasure, so it is with pain. Not infrequently we have a choice, even in the matter of pain. We can stay away from "the house"so that mother will not at once send us to that highly paid torturer, the dentist. We endure the gnawing ache until it either becomes unbearable and cannot be concealed, or until for some reason it eases up and finally

stops altogether — for a few days at least. Alternatively, we can go home like a martyr about to be thrown to the lions, and for a few agonizing moments we can allow some eager dentist to probe relentlessly. He hits it with a sledgehammer, all the while supposing he is merely tapping it in order to identify the offending tooth which must be obvious to anyone. And then he asks, "Does it hurt?" while he can see we are suffering

agonies even from his mere looking at it. Then all of a sudden he presents the offending tooth before our eyes, and we are not even quite sure when he took it out!

So there we have a principle: the alternative of long and mild, or short and awful. This is a principle of very wide application. We meet it in our handling of criminals, for instance. We can chop off a man's head (France still does, I believe), or we can imprison him for twenty years. We assume, of course, that twenty years of imprisonment is always to be preferred by the prisoner, but we do so only because neither he nor we can

know what a long slow painful death those twenty years are likely to be unless, of course, there is hope of reprieve for "good" behaviour.

Having one's head cut off or being shot by a firing squad is at least quick, and perhaps hanging is not much more protracted; but given the choice, men opt for the long and the slow rather than the quick and the short.

At least, most men do. A few very brave or perhaps strangely misguided (?) individuals prefer the short and the quick. But most people facing such an alternative naturally choose the one that allows some small chance of remission. Yet even where there is no possibility of a reprieve, men still often choose the long and the slow, hoping against hope.

In our society, we have now confused the issue by supposing life to be better than death, no matter what the conditions are. Even in a concentration camp only a very small percentage of people deliberately tried to commit suicide. It is when all hope is gone, all hope of a foreseeable end and release, that death seems

preferable. If, for some reason, the circumstances are such that death cannot be embraced as a means of release from the agony of life so that there is no hope of escape even by this means, then the penalty becomes utterly unbearable.

As we shall see, this was the position that the Lord Jesus Christ was in when He became a sin-offering for us. Only when the suffering entailed in that sacrifice was paid in full could He then embrace death and find release. And as we shall also see, those three hours of darkness must have been an eternity while they were endured.

Fitting the punishment to the crime

Now the point of this preamble, and indeed of all that has been reviewed in the previous studies, is that there is some kind of equation in the scales of justice between punishment which is extensive and punishment which is intensive; between punishment that, judged by our relative standards, is long-lasting but sufferable, and punishment which is brief but insufferable.Moreover, the nature or character of the sufferer has a bearing on the matter. Consider the penalty of total

isolation, for example. Total isolation would do little for a cow — though being a herding animal, it would probably get lonely now and then. But total isolation for a human being has proved to be so severe a punishment that it can amount to torture if it is sustained; and the nations are near to agreeing (at least, professedly) that it should be outlawed entirely. Such international abhorrence will probably not put an end to it, but at least the confession of abhorrence is itself proof enough of the severity of isolation as a punishment.

So man suffers more than a cow in certain situations. But it is also true that some men suffer more than other men. In the same situation, punishment that seems comparatively innocuous for one may devastate

another. Thus the principle of sentencing to so many years in prison, or to so many lashes, or to a fine of so many dollars, on a sliding scale fixed for each offense by consent of society, is essentially unjust because it does not take into consideration the "sensitivity" of the prisoner. Such sensitivity is, of course, taken into account sometimes, though in times of public danger these refinements are abandoned. Yet that it should be done at all demonstrates another important point: namely, that the capacity of the prisoner to suffer predetermines to a large extent the severity of the penalty from his point of view.

A hardened criminal shrugs off a term of two or three years as merely an inconvenience. These two or three years can even be to his advantage. After all, he goes to 'school' among experts in his craft and can improve his technique while being supplied with free board and lodging and some entertainment. The naive individual who, though admittedly for selfish reasons, has allowed himself to be trapped into some

skullduggery and to get caught, suffers far more from the same sentence for a similar crime. He may not be a criminal at all, only a human being, perhaps with a low self esteem. The fitting of the punishment to the crime depends not merely on the nature of the CRIME, but also on the nature of the criminal.

What, then, of the suffering imposed unjustly upon a Man who is morally perfect, who is completely innocent, whose imaginative powers are developed to the highest degree possible for a human being, who is without spot or blemish in his character, and who has a capacity for suffering for others infinitely beyond that of the rest of men? Because of our selfishness most of us have too little capacity for this kind of suffering, but the capacity of the Lord Jesus for suffering with and for others was infinite. Every one who touched Him, expectantly, drew strength out of Him, and He was always consciously drained by this kind of human contact (Luke 8:46). He wept at the grave of Lazarus not because Lazarus was dead, for He knew that within a few

moments He would be raising Lazarus to life again. He wept because He shared so totally the grief of Martha and Mary, and was overwhelmed in his spirit by the sadness of the fact of death in the midst of life.

Because He was God-made-Man, this capacity for sharing human suffering must have been inexhaustible: yet it was deeply, deeply felt nevertheless. On the intensive side of the scales, there was no imaginable

limit to what the penalty of our sins could impose upon Him in agony of soul when He accepted responsibility for them in our place. How long, then, must He actually suffer in his own body on the cross (1 Peter 2:24) in order to atone for our sins? Clearly, the answer lies in the extent of his capacity. And that capacity was infinite. The depth

dimension in this equation reaches down so far in the infinitude of his capacity that the length dimension, the length of time He must suffer when measured in hours, almost ceases to have any consequence. It is necessary to say almost for reasons which will become apparent in due time.

It would seem, in fact, that the Lord Jesus could have been made a curse for us for only one second of time by our clocks and still have paid in full the moral consequences of our sins, perfectly satisfying the demands

of the law — because of the intensity of that one second of suffering. The unfathomable depth of his agony of soul would fully have compensated for the seeming shortness of his sentence.

Think about these things gentle reader in relation to Time and eternity. 

Next time then..... Have you no home to go to? Be off with you then

 Love, 

Denis

 Part 12 

Gentle reader, 

We have been looking at the concept of Time, eternity and infinity. There is a custom in Ireland that and the end of the business day in the Pub (where men gather to share their stories, and lie about the one that got away , yes dear reader in that way we are no different than you in America) The owner of the Pub will shout out “Time, Gentle Time’’ meaning “drink up or rather one more for the road”. Well it is time to consider the subject of Eternity as God sees it and as man sees it. So with that let’s look first at.

 Punishment: extensive vs. intensive

Now a diagram seems inappropriate in such a context. Yet the significance of this tremendous truth can be illuminated in some ways by such a means. Let us assume, for instance, that the length of a man's three year sentence is represented by a line (AB, Fig. 4) thus:

If the terms of his imprisonment are only mild, the depth of his suffering throughout this period could be represented by a shallow rectangle (Fig. 5) in which the dimension AB is still the length of his sentence, but the depth BC is the measure of the intensity of his suffering during that period. Thus the area ABCD stands, visually, for the total effective weight of his sentence, for the real measure of his punishment.

Let us take the case of another individual who has committed the same offense and ought therefore to have the same penalty imposed upon him. However in this case, either because he is a first offender or because of old age or frail health, let us suppose that the judge, recognizing the greater sensitivity of the offender, shortens his sentence to two years instead of three. We now have a rectangle whose long dimension (AB in Fig. 6) is only two years but whose vertical dimension (BC) is now half again as deep as that of the vertical

dimension in Fig. 5.

The area of this rectangle turns out to be the same as the area of Fig.5: in fact both sentences are the same in their weighting, though the second individual has received a significantly shorter sentence in terms of years. The sensitivity of the victim, the capacity of the victim to suffer, has been taken into account by shortening the extensity of the sentence. The total penalty is unaffected.

How far could this shortening go? How short can the line AB become while strictly forming an equivalent penalty if compensated by increased depth? Obviously the two rectangles can simply be up-ended without

in any way altering their total weighting. Thus the line AB becomes greatly abbreviated and the intensity, BC, is greatly extended (Fig. 7), and if the proportions of these two lines are preserved, the total area must

remain constant, and the penalty itself as imposed by the judge remains unchanged.We may go one step further yet. If this tall thin column were to be narrowed still further and deepened accordingly, the principle would remain intact, for the rectangle could be adjusted in depth to maintain a constant total area. In the end the AB or horizontal or time factor line could be almost negligible but the depth factor BC then becomes all important. Capital punishment represents this kind of situation: the intensity of the punishment far outweighs its extensity. Carried to its logical conclusion, if the intensity of the suffering is infinite, the line AB representing the time factor can be reduced to a point — i.e., theoretically,

to no time at all. There is nothing absurd about this, for as we have seen, there is a reality which is conceivably time-less.

He endured the cross

Thus, had the Lord Jesus Christ been suffering only as God, the torment of the penalty would have been infinite in its depth and the time element would have been reduced to zero, since time would have been

eclipsed by eternity. But because the Son was not only God but also Man, and because He was placed in this position as a suffering human being, He could not altogether escape from the bondage of our time frame. He had to remain conscious within time and, in some sense, of time. In this sense He endured the cross (Hebrews 12:2). How long, then, did He endure?

Throughout history man has experienced the terror of physical torture; and from what has been recorded of it in recent years we may learn some things about that other kind of torture with which we are particularly concerned in the present instance, the torture of the soul. From personal experience Viktor Frankl had a profound insight into the nature of suffering endured when there is no hope of an end. Intense suffering of this kind concentrates attention entirely upon the present moment. There is no looking to the future in hope.

Hope is a powerful sustainer when an end is foreseen but, as Frankl observes, a man who cannot see the end ceases to live for the future and therefore exists altogether without hope.(5) This was precisely the position in which the Lord was confined when He became a sin-offering for us. For in the absolute condemnation which this involved, He suffered as One from whom the termination of his sentence was completely hidden. He experienced total forsaking not merely by man but by his heavenly Father whom He had never disobeyed

throughout his whole earthly life — nor even displeased.(6) Because He had not the slightest inkling of a foreseeable end, His suffering became, in fact, an eternal punishment.(7)

Yet while He thus suffered eternally, the soldiers who guarded Him continued to live in time, no doubt eagerly awaiting the end of the day when they would go off duty. Frankl observes that the prisoners and the guards in the concentration camps lived in entirely different worlds of time. The prisoners often experienced such agony of soul that time ceased to have any significance to them whatever, while their guards continued to live entirely by the clock. 

The man whose suffering is bearable can keep his eye on the passage of time and, if he knows when the end is to be, he can gain some comfort by saying to himself, "I'm halfway through" or "It's nearly over." The great that the sense of time is lost, hope is lost. Pain is locked into the immediate present and any comfort in the thought of an end is eclipsed. Suffering takes on an experienced quality of endlessness. Extreme agony of soul pins down all consciousness to a point in time, kaleidoscoping both future and past and effectively converting the momentary now into endlessness. 

Because we conceive of punishment as being much or little in terms of duration, we interpret the Scriptures which tell us that it will be eternal (which is a more correct translation of the original Greek) to mean

everlasting (which is probably a far less correct translation of the original Greek). It could be that the biblical meaning of eternal has no direct reference to duration at all. It could conceivably be a qualitative erm rather than a quantitative one, carrying the idea of intensity or depth rather than extensity of length —as it almost certainly does in reference to eternal life. Eternal life is another kind of life, a quality of life, a life of depth, a life more abundant (John 10:10(8)). The question of duration is not denied: it is simply not at issue.

Perhaps eternal punishment really means punishment whose intensity cannot actually be conveyed to our time-bound minds except by saying that it will be experienced with an intensity that will make it effectively interminable while it lasts. 

In some unfathomable way, the Lord Jesus Christ as our substitute must have experienced eternal punishment. One has to ask then, How does this quality of eternity relate to the three hours of darkness on

the cross? Was this experienced by the Lord as three hours, or was this just the time period accounted for by the guards on duty who had some kind of candle or water clock to keep a record of their time? Did the supernatural darkness of those hours actually signify (among other things) that the one agency of God's economy in the heavens by which our time is regulated had been "stopped" for that interval? I do not mean to suggest that it was literally stopped in its passage but effectively stopped because its movement could no longer be seen. The Lord Himself was thus left on the cross without a clock. 

Did time then stop for Him? Did He experience such a sense of timeless-ness that what was already endured did not contribute in any way towards the reduction of what remained yet to be endured in order to fulfill the total penalty which must be paid? Was this a form of endless punishment with no foreseeable termination, though when it was over it had occupied only three hours by our clocks? Do we not in fact have here a case of truly eternal torment which had, nevertheless, been fulfilled in a period of three hours?(9) 

5. Frankl, Viktor, Man's Search for Meaning, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1963, pp.112, 115, 171. 

6. Three times God declared He was pleased with his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ: in his youth, "Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" (Luke 2:52); at the beginning of his ministry, "And Jesus, when he was baptized, went straightway up out of the water; and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending on him like a dove and lighting upon him, and lo, a voice from heaven saying, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased' (Matthew 3:16); and near the end of his ministry on the Mount of Transfiguration, ". . .a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice came out of the

cloud which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him" (Matthew 17:5). 

7. On this see the Seed of the Woman, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, Doorway Publications, 1980, chap.31, p.396. 

8. "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." John 10:10

He descended into hell

Can we have even the remotest conception of what it would mean for One who was morally perfect, pure in spirit in the absolute sense, without the slightest taint of guilt in any form and altogether sinless, to be suddenly held responsible for the appalling record of crime and injustice and brutality and hatred and insane cruelty that marks the frightful record of human history from the murder of Abel to the extermination centres and labour camps of today? What would it mean to be so accounted guilty that the Father Himself turned away from his beloved Son as One who now, as the sin-bearer, was abhorrent in his sight?

In these three hours the Lord Jesus was made a sin-offering; that is to say He became effectively the doer of this frightfulness not only in the sight of man, but in the sight of God and the whole host of heaven. He who was Himself blameless assumed full responsibility and was to blame. He who was pure was made vile. He who was holy was made unholy with the leprosy of our sin. He who was the very expression of love became

as hateful as sin itself. He who was without spot was infected with the cancer of our wickedness. He who knew no sin was actually made sinful by identification.(10) 

9. Some time after completing this part of the study, I acquired a copy of A Body of Divinity by John Gill (1697—1771) and came across, to my delight, the following (I have taken the liberty of re-phrasing his sentences slightly in order to make his meaning clearer — but reference to the original will show that I have not betrayed his meaning in any way). He wrote as follows:

"When He (Christ) was made sin and a curse. . . it was tantamount to an eternal death, or the suffering of the wicked in hell. For though the two kinds of suffering differ as to circumstances of time and place, the persons being different, the one finite and the other infinite, yet as to the essence of these sufferings, they were the same. Eternal death consists in two things: punishment in the form of deprivation, and punishment in the form of actual affliction. The former lies in an eternal separation from God, or a deprivation of his presence forever: and the latter lies in an everlasting affliction in the everlasting fire of God's wrath. 

"Now Christ endured what was answerable to both of these. . . . Eternity is not the essence of punishment but it is consequent of the fact that the sufferer cannot all at once bear the whole -- being finite as sinful man is finite. And as it cannot be borne all at once it is continued ad infinitum. But Christ, being an infinite Person, was able to bear the whole at once and the infinity of his Person abundantly compensates for the eternity of the punishment." [A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, vol. 1, Grand Rapids, Baker reprint, 1978, p.574.] 

10. Scripture seems to go out of its way to make it very clear that Jesus was indeed sinless. Paul, the intellectual, declared "[God] has made him [Jesus] to be sin for us, who knew no sin. . . ." (2 Corinthians 5:2); Peter, the activist, said "who did no sin" (2 Peter 2:22); and John, the spiritual one, observed that "in him is no sin" (1 John 3:5) [my emphasis]. 

 That’s enough for now Gentle Reader, rest your weary head and think about what God provided for each of us and what we have done. 

 Next time.....

 Denis