Between research, and then pushing my aging brain to get things “on paper”, my blog posts generally take a long time to write, and I assume a long time for you to read—sorry. My goal with this one is to just go with what I know (or if you disagree, with what I think I know) and knock out something shorter. With maybe a few slightly off-topic thoughts thrown in. Just my ponderings here…
Infinity is a concept that most people are familiar with and that I have encountered over and over again during my long life, primarily in three contexts: pure mathematics, physics, and theology. Not so much petroleum engineering, my professional field.
Infinity is a useful concept—essential, in some respects—but it is not a real thing!
Defining the Infinite
Infinity is the concept of the unimaginably and immeasurably
It’s what you get when you disobey your grade school math teacher and divide by zero. It’s so big that when you double it, it’s still infinity. If you double it infinitely many times, it’s still just plain old infinity: ∞
God and Infinity
Theologians like to apply the term infinite to God. All of His attributes are said to be infinite in scope. Well, that may be, but the Bible doesn’t actually make that claim. Infinity was not a known concept in ancient times. If God had claimed it, nobody would have understood it anyway. The most you’re going to read in ancient literature is “a whole big bunch!”
Enormity only gets stated in idiomatic terms. For example, many English translations say that the “army from the east” in Rev. 9:16 will be exactly 200 million strong. The actual Greek says literally “twice ten thousand times ten thousand”, which is way bigger than the record 12 million that the US fielded in 1945, and way, way bigger than the next biggest human army in history. There is no question in my mind that John was speaking merely of a very large army. See also below.
That is not to say that God has no infinite attributes. I’m simply pointing out that, given the Bible’s silence, it’s a philosophical question, not theological.
God’s Size
In Implications of God’s Omnipresence and Eternity in Space-Time, I discussed God’s omnipresence in terms of His spanning, encompassing, infusing, and in fact subsuming all of everything that is—Space, the Universe, in other words, all matter and energy that exists. The 93 billion lightyears estimate I mentioned for the diameter of the universe is probably a minimum.
Some astronomers still throw around the term infinite for the actual size of the universe. That discussion goes beyond my pay grade. 93 billion lightyears is enough of a living space for me. That’s 550 quadrillion miles, or about 3 million trips to the sun and back. So, God is at least that big! If the universe is infinite, then God is more infinite… Huh?! That doesn’t mean anything quantitative.
God’s Age
In the same previous post, I explained that God’s age, as does His size, spans, encompasses, infuses and subsumes the age of the universe.
Some scientists postulate an infinitely old multiverse; that is, a master universe that grows, “buds off” like a hydra or a nematode, and the “baby universes” each have their own, random sets of physical laws. This theory has very tenuous scientific support and was proposed only to explain the mind-boggling (to unbelievers) Anthropic Principle, the unavoidable observation that our universe has a huge set of physical characteristics, many of which are independently necessary to support life in any way that we can envision. The idea is that if the multiverse is infinitely old, then it has spawned an infinite number of buds, and with infinite tries it is statistically likely that at least one of those is anthropically friendly. Hence, they have no need for the God hypothesis.
(Incidentally, they would never admit to this, if they even made the connection, but physicists have a theory that might account for a “god” popping into existence out of nothing. It’s a theoretical consequence of random quantum mechanical fluctuations over an infinite period of time. This is what is called a Boltzmann Brain, and no, I don’t believe that accounts for God! I’m just pointing out that, as much as I love science, it does have its inconsistencies.)
The Spirit Beings I discussed in Gods and Demons are immortal and everlasting, which means that they will survive forever if God lets them, but they have not always existed because God created them to manage the cosmos. Eternality is not the same as everlastingness. Scripture says that God alone is eternal—but what does that mean?
The assumption made by most theologians is that God has existed from the infinite past. There’s that pesky, undefinable infinity again. I don’t deny it, but I can’t comprehend it. There are some respected conservative theologians (don’t ask me who, I think I remember some of them, but I’m taking a vacation from research for this post, and I don’t want to slander anyone if I’m wrong) who acknowledge that God’s existence may define the term, “eternal.” That would be to say that His existence did have a beginning, and that beginning marked the beginning of eternity.
I neither believe nor disbelieve that. Once again, it is philosophy, not theology.
Daniel 7
[9] I beheld till the thrones were cast down [set in place], and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.
[10] A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.[13] I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of man [Daniel’s conception of the coming Messiah] came with the clouds of heaven and came to [approached] the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.
[22] Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.
—Daniel 7:9–10,13,22 (KJV) the annotations and emphases are mine
Daniel 7 is perhaps the most pivotal chapter in all of prophecy, because it explains so much that we read elsewhere in Scripture.
My emphasis here, though, is on the cast of characters. The stage is a meeting in heaven of God and His Divine Council. Those in attendance are,
- The Ancient of Days, also called here the most High. The three instances in Daniel 7 are the only occurrences of the term, “the Ancient of Days”, in the Bible.
- The term “son of man” appears many times in Scripture. At a minimum, it simply means a male human being. It is frequently used in the prophetic books to emphasize that the prophet is merely a human, delivering God’s divine words. Here, though, Daniel has added something important:
A human being is ushered into the presence of God in heaven. But the phrase, “with the clouds of heaven” is something that appears frequently in Ugaritic and Babylonian literature to signal the movements of Ba’al. The use of a polemic here is Daniel’s (or rather, the dream’s) way of saying that this particular Son of Man is divine!
Second Temple Era Jewish scholars, the Pharisees and their scribes, were divided on whether Daniel was actually referring to a divine Messiah or something else, but without question, when Jesus quoted this verse in Matthew 26:64 and applied it to Himself, the high priest and Sanhedrin sitting in Judgement of Him took it the only way possible, as an explicit claim not only that He was Messiah, but that He was divine.
[63] Yeshua remained silent. The cohen hagadol [high priest] said to him, “I put you under oath! By the living God, tell us if you are the Mashiach, the Son of God!” [64] Yeshua said to him, “The words are your own. But I tell you that one day you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of HaG’vurah [Lit., ‘the Power’, a euphemism for Yahweh] and coming on the clouds of heaven.” [65] At this, the cohen hagadol tore his robes. “Blasphemy!” he said. “Why do we still need witnesses? You heard him blaspheme! [66] What is your verdict?” “Guilty,” they answered. “He deserves death!”
—Matthew 26:63–66 (CJB) the emphasized text here is the quotation
- There were also many, many of the Heavenly Host on stage. The “thousand thousands” in verse 10 are members of the Divine Council, while the “ten thousand times then thousand” are additional “angelic” witnesses. Here are two more examples of the idiomatic expression mentioned above. The Council members are the “they” of verse 13, ushering Jesus to God’s throne.
- The term “saints” that occurs twice in verse 22 is קַדִּישׁ (qaddiysh, pronounced “kad-DEESH”). It means “holy”, “holy one”, or “holy ones”, and it applies both to redeemed humans and to loyal angels. That “judgement was given to the saints” can’t mean that they pronounce judgement, because that is Jesus’ job, specifically. Instead, it has to mean that they administer judgement, which is borne out in the statement that they also “possessed the kingdom.”
(Forgive me, but I’m going to throw in another rabbit trail here. My interpretation regarding “judgement” in verse 22 is an illustration of something that really bugs me: traditional, verses thoughtful, exegesis. I’ve personally read a number of commentaries on Daniel 7 over the years, and as far as I can recall, every single one of them has assumed that pronouncing judgement was in view, leading them to further assume that verse 22 is applying the name “Ancient of Days” to Jesus, rather than to Yahweh. Because we all know that it is Jesus who will pronounce judgement in the eschatological future.
Why? In no particular order, it is because (a) too many commentators lean too heavily on earlier works and forget to think for themselves; (b) too many Christian commentators overemphasize Jesus and relegate Yahweh to the “stale writings” of the Old Testament; (c) too few Christian commentators care enough about the ancient Hebrew and Near East cultural background to provide more that standard “Sunday School” answers to harder interpretive questions; and (d) simple careless thinking.
I’m not a theologian. I’m not a scientist. I’m an engineer, and skeptical of anything I haven’t personally evaluated.)
Is God Ancient, or Just Old?
So, this brings me, ponderously to be sure, to the crux of my ponderings. Which may seem anticlimactic to most of you.
Is God merely old, or is He ancient?
Those are relative terms, of course. Age is a property of “stuff” and stuff didn’t exist until God created it. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, in effect, says that everything ages. But aging, and time itself, are properties of the universe. Isaac Newton notwithstanding, God does not age, because He is not bound by the universe He created.
As most of you know by now, I’m an “Old Earth Creationist.” In my view, God defined the physical laws, and then by His word, He spoke the universe into existence, in all of its building blocks and the forces that drive them. At one point in time and space, about 13.7 billion years ago. He decreed it, and He continues to supervise the orderly processes of birth, growth and maturation. Those processes are ongoing; God does not have to repeat them every week.
I have a different interpretation of the “six days” than those of Young Earth Creationists. To my senses, creation itself tells me that it is way more than 6,000 years old. Given that God doesn’t actually age, I would term Him truly “ancient” based on His resume. In my view, His “experience” is some 2.3 million times more impressive than a mere 6,000 years!
The Back of My Mind 