God & Infinity (ritual, Deists, doom, followers, choice)

[tomspug]

Warning: Long post ahead. If you don't like math, you might not want to read this...

Thomas Larson
The Three Dimensions and the Incomprehensibility of God and Infinity
(April, 2005)

In examining the work Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, I am compelled to examine our ability as humans to understand God and His relationship with our world and its inhabitants. The book explores the relationship of dimensions with infinity and with each other, which compelled me to draw comparisons between the mathematical concept of infinity and the theological concept of infinity.

The book chronicles the life of a two-dimensional square who experiences a divine revelation. He is transported to a world in which there is only one dimension, then to a world of no dimensions, and finally to one of three dimensions. The story ends with the man returning to his world trying to explain the concept of three dimensions to his peers, who consequently lock him in an asylum.

You can probably see how this relates to my Christian worldview, specifically my advocacy of God's ability to simultaneously exist in our world while at the same time being outside our comprehension. We as humans tend to try to rationalize God, to explain his actions and motivations as though He were bound by the same laws that we are. This was the message of Genesis with the forbidden fruit. Once we tried to understand God, we doomed ourselves with an inability to fully appreciate his love, which is represented in his choice to exist relationally in the same world we do. However, by eating the fruit we did not become like God. That was the lie.

I tend to think of the spiritual world (that affects our world but is not necessarily within it) dimensionally, not that I am an advocate of the spiritual world as a dimension, but I think that (using a method that C. S. Lewis used in his storytelling) by examining the nature of our world in abstract ways we may come to a clearer understanding of a possibility we might not have considered, ultimately making revelation further possible. Dang, that was a long sentence.


1. Say that God exists in... the third dimension and our world is merely two dimensional. And say that a three dimensional object (a sphere) passes through our two dimensional world to represent God moving in our world. All we would see is a circle that grows from nothing to a small size to a large size back to a small size and back to nothing. As only represented in two dimensions we are only able to examine the cross-sections of the sphere as they instantaneously pass through our world. Now, say that our world is merely one dimensional. Our entire existence is a line and we exist as points on that line with lines of differing sizes. If the same sphere, or even a circle, were to pass through that line that is our world, we would only see it as a line that appears, grows, shrinks, and disappears. Using time, we would (perhaps with divine revelation) be aware of two dimensions and understand the two-dimensional shape of the circle, but determining the shape of or even comprehending the idea of a sphere is an absolute impossibility. It would (mathematically) require an infinite number of instances of that sphere passing through the line to understand its complete shape. Of course, if you're just a simple line all of this would mean nothing to you. The knowledge that this "phenomena" of an appearing, growing, shrinking, disappearing line is actually not a line but an infinite number of lines forming a shape is incomprehensible. And with this in mind you can see that the idea of a sphere is out of the question for a simple line.

Now, keep in mind that we are simply dealing with the concept of three dimensions, something we all understand. It’s kind of funny that this is so brain-racking. Imagine the world we live in is a dot. It has no width, length, or depth. Everything exists in one, precise, infinitesimal dot. The idea of a line passing through a dot is even more interesting. Because there is no concept of growth or shrinking because there are no dimensions! All everything on that dot can see is something that is there and suddenly it is not there. Imagine you are living on that dot one day and suddenly something appears on the dot that was once not there. Where did it come from? And before you have a chance to study it, it is gone again. Well, to us the answer is simple. A line crossed that particular point for a certain amount of time, making it exist in that point until it had moved on. But it could have been a circle, or even a sphere that passed through that infinitesimal point. And here we have God, a sphere, passing through this dot. The ability to examine a sphere in zero dimensions is absolutely impossible. Even theoretically, no matter how many times that sphere passes through the dot, it will just seem a mere blinking in and out of existence, like some sort of ghost.

Now imagine that the third dimension is not God but the spiritual world, something we are not able to comprehend yet we can see it actively working in our world in certain instances. But it is so not of this world we have no ability to even examine it. We can make assumptions about the length of a line because of the amount of time the instance occurs, but we can never be sure what the shape of an object might be. Why is it then that we try to identify God and the way the spiritual world interacts with our own? As you can see, I am not advocating the idea that the spiritual world is a dimension, but something beyond our comprehension. If you say that something is incomprehensible, then there is no middle-ground between understanding and not understanding, only complete understanding of certain parts (or dimensions, if you will). But if we say that something is out of our comprehension (like saying God is infinite) we can theorize what this means, but we will never be absolutely certain.

We say things like "God is outside of time" and his love, understanding, and power is "infinite", and that he can create "something out of nothing" without even realizing how impossible these things are within our own world. Do you see how God can interact with our world (because He chose to do so) while still being completely separate from us in so many ways?


2. Now say that God is time. Time does three things: It allows us to measure duration, encapsulates all dimensions bound by time, and it allows us to measure change, which we use to determine other things. So we can say that God, as time, is the measure by which we determine the movement of things, the energy of things, and the force of things. Not only is he these things in our three, two, one, or zero-dimensional world, but he is the thing that makes up all things that exist within time. At every moment in time, there is an instance of our existence. And time itself is the make-up of all of these instances. Without time, there is no dimension, or at least there is no equation of its existence. He is also, as a determinant, our revelation. That, as a two-dimensional being, time reveals to us (by examining the change in a circle’s shape over time) a three-dimensional object's shape. The third dimension is equitable in two dimensions with respect to time. Without time, we can picture the change in shape in our heads and put it in three dimensions (theoretically), but it would be stretched or squashed and would not completely certain of its exact shape.
This is perhaps how God reveals things to us. Again, not to say that God's interaction with the world is dimensional but in a similar way, God is able to reveal things to us that would not be determinable on our own. So, in the same way one could say (to use charismatic doctrine as an example) that certain doctrines about the Spirit were revealed to them by God and had become doctrine.

And, like time, God embodies all things. Time produces something that would otherwise be nothing. So this is a method God has given us to understand the concept of making "something from nothing". God's existence ensures the universe, makes it complete.

God also, as time helps us determine speed, acceleration, force and more, reveals truths within our world. You could equate this with God's gift of the Bible, or God's revelations to his followers as transcribed in the Bible. Understanding of God (His character, law, etc.) allows us to become a useful presence in our world because of our increased understanding of that world. In this way we become his servants, tools, clay, or whatever Biblical metaphor you wish to prescribe.

[tomspug]

3. Now say that God is outside of time. This is a principle of Classical Armenian Theology, which C. S. Lewis adopted. So my experimental theoretical interpretation of God now crosses over with my actual theoretical interpretation of God. In this area I hope to discover some form of revelation. We will assume that time was used to bind only the first three dimensions, so when I say ‘outside of time’ I mean outside of the world we understand.

God is now in a fourth dimension (the number is irrelevant) to our third dimension, yet another dimension. At this point the concept of 'dimension' is starting to lose its significance as I shift my focus to the concept of the incomprehensibility of God. Instead of trying to comprehend the very idea of a fourth logistical dimension (quite improbable to comprehend, as we have discovered, without the revelation of time or a time-like measure) I will simply focus on what we have learned about comprehension. We are limited (in whatever space we exist) to what we know, what is around us. As two-dimensional, we are limited to two dimensions while understanding the concept of one and zero dimensions. Unfortunately, in every dimension we can imagine with our scientific concept of 'dimension' the word 'infinite' is not applicable. It is something we can conceptualize or use to conceptualize something theoretical, perhaps as a never-ending line or an ever increasing size, but we cannot express it (infinity) within our own dimensions. Infinity is seemingly non-existent while simultaneously plausible. But it is infinity that is required to examine a dimension outside your own. In one dimension, infinity is necessary in explaining a shape because a shape is made up of an infinite number of lines. In two dimensions, an object is made up of an infinite number of shapes. So if God is in four dimensions, the only means we have to describe Him is that He is infinite. And remember, we say infinite with the inability to describe infinite.

Now we have discovered that 'the infinite' is what is simultaneously incomprehensible and necessary. This is reminiscent of when I used time to describe God, that existence both required Him and was defined by Him.


4. This brings us to our final examination of dimensions. Imagine, though you can’t comprehend it, that God is infinite. He is a being that is completely and absolutely, by definition, incomprehensible. It is, within our own terms, non-existent, a theory, indefinable. But what we cannot say is that infinity does not exist, because it is through infinity that we describe our own world within lower dimensions. We have discovered that, when we limit ourselves to a lower dimension, we understand the incomprehensibility of our own dimension to others without infinity.

So then, the answer to identifying God would be (like applying infinity to the 2nd dimension to describe the 3rd) to apply infinity to our own world, achieving a possible understanding of a fourth dimension. But you have forgotten, we are not imagining that God exists within the fourth dimension, we are imagining Him as the embodiment of infinity. And now we have reached infinity times infinity. Absolute incomprehension. In the same way that a line cannot see the sphere, so we cannot see the infinitely infinite. We have reached our limit to the theoretical. Even given theoretical revelation of infinity we are still left with an infinite to describe. It is absolutely impossible for a man in this position to determine what is beyond the first infinity.

Another way to look at this would be the description of our world as bound by infinity. Any number of dimensions stretches infinitely, only confined by the next dimension. But if God is indeed infinite, then He is without dimension, the infinity of dimension. He is the measure, like time, we use to describe not only our own world, but beyond our world. So dimension is, we have observed, something that is infinite but simultaneously bound by the next dimension. The infinity of the first dimension is added to the infinity of the next. Thus, if something is without dimension, than the infinity has just been described infinitely, outside of infinity. This is the definition of raw infinity, and it is infinity that the Bible describes God as. Exegetically, through divine revelation, God has provided us a means not to understand Him completely but to understand his incomprehensibility.


5. This very interpretation of God using mathematical examples that exist within our world illuminates my point. By examining the world that we live in (that God also exists in) we are able to further understand the world God created through revelation. This revelation is not determined by experience but through reason in light of Biblical exegesis. But, in light of this particular revelation, we are simultaneously unable to comprehend the nature of God in any way. Instead, we are further mystified by his incomprehensibility, which is truly the absolute nature of God as a “deity” and anything we consider spiritual in nature. Revelation must be defined as available to us only through divine intervention, just as a sphere passes through Flatland. We must now put into question theology or doctrine that is not Biblically-based (acknowledging the Bible as a divine revelation). Any attempt to examine God by human experience alone must almost-definitely be flawed because the incomprehensibility of God is not compatible with human experience without the necessary inclusion of divine revelation (as we have determined through analyzing the nature of infinity). We must examine our role in light of infinity and understand that we are a limited species. Human experience is the dot, and God is the infinite infinity.

[Rolling_Stone]

Interesting posts. Thank you.