“To which I answer, ‘You can change your purpose, but since the truth of Providence knows in its present that you can do so, and whether you do so, and in what direction you may change it, therefore you cannot escape that Divine foreknowledge: just as you cannot avoid the glance of a present eye, though you may by your free will turn yourself to all kinds of different actions.’
"’What?’ you will say, ‘can I by my own action change Divine knowledge, so that if I choose now one thing, now another, Providence too will seem to change its knowledge?’
“No; Divine insight precedes all future things, turning them back and recalling them to the present time of its own peculiar knowledge. It does not change, as you may think, between this and that alternation of foreknowledge. It is constant in preceding and embracing by one glance all your changes.
“And God does not receive this ever-present grasp of all things and vision of the present at the occurrence of future events, but from His own peculiar directness. Whence also is that difficulty solved which you laid down a little while ago, that it was not worthy to say that our future events were the cause of God's knowledge. For this power of knowledge, ever in the present and embracing all things in its perception, does itself constrain all things, and owes nothing to following events from which it has received nothing.”
—from Book 5, Prose 6
Now perhaps I might believe that I can still “trick” God, that I can outwit Him by changing my mind. He looks over, and sees me doing one thing, but then I turn to do something else, and so I have messed up the whole plan.
If I am somehow still thinking this way, I haven’t really been following along with the argument. It may seem rather childish of me, and yet this remains a quite common form of adult behavior, the manipulation of impressions to cover up a reality. I shouldn’t be trying to do that in human affairs, as a matter of my own character, but it is quite impossible for me to do that when it comes to Providence.
I can certainly change myself, since that power has been conditionally gifted to me within Divine omnipotence. I cannot, however, change Divine omniscience, since that power transcends to the level of what is Absolute. Only imperfect creatures undergo change, while a perfect Creator is completely unchanging.
Remember, “it has been” or “it will be” are human modes of perception; Divine existence rests in an “it is”. There is no receiving there, no absence there, only Being.
When I am playing games with appearances, which is really only a reflection of my own lack of integrity, I am assuming that others must be limited in their awareness, and I try to take advantage of that fact for my own gain.
In a sense, it is like I am pretending to be a little god, deciding who gets to know what. A wise friend once firmly told me: “You can lie to yourself, and you can lie to your neighbors, but there’s no lying to the Universe. It has you all figured out, and there is no hiding from it.”
This is excellent advice. It isn’t even like I will eventually be exposed, the fear of every deceiver; I am already exposed, and I am only pulling the wool over my own eyes for the moment.
Like any good geek, I do enjoy the metaphysical speculation about the possibility of time travel, and yet all of it really hinges on a question of logical order, where we run into contradictions with an opposition between past, present, and future.
To truly become time travelers would actually require us to no longer be subject to the sequence of time, in which case it wouldn’t really be traveling anymore, would it? It would be existing as an eternal presence, and that is nothing less than becoming Divine.
I can stand at a crossroads, and I can look right or left, forwards or backwards, considering all the possible paths and outcomes. For me, it has not yet come to be, and I will still choose to go this way or that.
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