1. Movement
The “Unmoved Mover” is an Aristotelian concept of all motion in the universe. In his Physics, Book VIII, Aristotle examines change and motion, attempting to show that the concept of time, of there being a “before” and an “after,” requires a catalyst, an agent of change. That agent of change he calls the “first principle.” The later cosmological theory arose that God is that agent of change, the first principle who began all movement in the universe, because otherwise it would have no reason to move.
I've heard this argument (though oversimplified) to counter the theory of a Godless Big Bang—if there was an infinity dense form of matter in the center of the universe, why would it spontaneously decide to explode? There must be a catalyst.
(Aristotle’s ideas were picked up in the 13th Century by St. Thomas Aquinas [my personal favorite church figure]. Pertaining to this study, Aquinas wrote the Quinque viæ [Five Ways], five arguments considering the nature of God, and De Substantiis Separatis [Treatise on Separate Substances], a study of the angels. He’s much more readable and concise than many of the other authors and his theories are easier to apply to modern theology.)
2. Angels
Now let’s consider the nature of the angels. The popular Christian belief is that they serve as messengers and servants for God, such as the angels who greeted the women in Jesus’ empty tomb, or the angel who told Mary she would be with child. But these angels are also God’s creations, made before men. A good way of looking at their creation is through the words of St. Augustine, an incredibly important 5th Century father of the church. In Book XI of his work The City of God, Augustine argues that “the angels already existed when the skies were made. The latter, however, were created on the fourth day. Do we therefore say that the angels were created on the third day? No. For it is well known what was made on that day: the earth was separated from the waters. Perhaps on the second day? Indeed not, for the firmament was made then...No wonder, therefore, if the very angels pertain to these works of God, just as that light which receives the name of day.”
Therefore, according to Augustine, angels are associated with heaven, created when it is in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” Angels were around before, or while, God created the rest of existence.
Another church father, St. Jerome, in the 4th Century, says this while commenting on the Epistle to Titus: “Six thousand years of our time are not yet completed and how many eternities, how many times, how many origins of ages are we to think first existed in which the Angels, Thrones, and Dominations and the other orders served God without the succession and measurement of time and did God’s bidding.”
3. Time
My previous blog entries have dealt with the idea of time (see God Pressed Play and A Timeless Heaven). In a nutshell, time doesn't work for God as it works for us, such as in Jerome’s notion that the angels served God without the measurement of time. Just as humans will enter a timeless Heaven, thus losing our earthly concepts of “before” and “after,” the angels in Heaven live in a constant, unmoving state.
But there was a change. The Bible shows us examples of angels bringing messages, revealing future events, interacting in the timeline of humans. The angel in the tomb said, “He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.” What changed the angels from unmoving being? What caused time to begin for the angels? Who or what was the catalyst to begin the wheel turning?
Next point—the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were created by God out of dirt and ribs, respectively, and placed in the Garden of Eden. While there they named animals, ran around naked, and overall had a great time being sinless and living in God’s perfect world. Then the snake came around, tempted Eve, who tempted Adam, and everything got messed up.
The point of all of this? Time didn’t exist for Adam or Eve until the snake tempted Eve. He was the catalyst, the agent of change, the one who ended their perfection. After that point, everything suddenly became very real, very deadly, and very time-conscious:
Genesis 3:22-23—Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken (ESV).
Underlined are the sections which really get across the idea of change, or time. Before they were expelled from the Garden, there was no death or time. There is no evidence that Adam or Eve aged, got sick, or got closer to death in any way. There’s also no way of telling how long they were in the garden before the snake showed up and ruined everything because, just like with the angels, there was no measurement of time.
4. Satan
The history of Satan is quite complicated and is made no easier by popular retellings involving fire and brimstone, pitchforks and red horns, and strangely enough—goatees.
The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you” (ESV).
And Revelations 12:7-11, which is generally assumed to be the story of Satan’s fall from grace—Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death (ESV).
5. Satan Moved
Now to connect the dots. We know this:
• God is the Unmoved Mover
• The Angels and Heaven are outside of time, while Earth and humans are within it.
• Satan rebelled against God and was cast down to Earth.
• Satan caused Adam and Eve to sin against God and they were cast out of Eden.
• Time causes death (yeah, I know, but I have to say it)
Therefore, Satan’s true sin was not only disobeying God’s will, but introducing the very concept of time into the universe. God is the Unmoving Mover. As existence stood, it was just God and His angels. Then Satan changed; Satan moved. And with movement comes time.
With Satan’s rebellion, time was created—the “before” and “after.” God created Earth, separating it from Heaven like the land from the waters, because time existed, to have a place to throw Satan.
Then the Spirit of God hovered “over the face of the waters,” over the Earth that was dark, without form, and void. And God said, “Let there be light.” He created another timeless paradise on Earth, another attempt at Heaven, on an Earthly plane. His creations, this time, were humans. But Satan appeared and moved again. Eve would not have acted if not tempted; Adam would not have sinned unless Eve handed him the fruit. And the Garden was abandoned.
Death and time would not exist in the world if those events had not occurred.
As Aristotle said, there has to be a “First Principle.” God began it all, but never intended there to be time, which leads to death. Satan’s sin was that in rebelling, he forced time to occur. When Satan moved, he flung himself into the timeline, separating himself from the timeless Heaven and a timeless God.
How do you make sense of this in light of the fact that time existed long before humanity came about?
ReplyDeleteAceofspades,
DeleteMy theory is that Satan's rebellion against heaven caused time to come into existence, which would have been long before humanity. However, once God created the Garden, he created it to be timeless (if not in a literal sense, He at least made Adam and Eve age-less and death-less). The snake's intervention, often associated with Satanic intervention, began time for humanity.