Time Is Relative

A comparison of the Old Testament and the New Testament, reveals differences in how the concept of time came to be understood in the Jewish and Christian traditions, respectively. The Christian viewpoint regarding time is generally linear; that is, the universe had a beginning and will have an end (in Greek, the eschaton ἔσχατον), which will occur when Jesus Christ returns to Earth in the Second Coming to judge both the living and the dead. His arrival will be the fulfilling of a promise he made to the Apostles and will be culmination (but not the end) of the world and time. At least the world and time as we understand it now. Augustine of Hippo mentions this in his seminal City of God, written during the 5th century in 410 AD. All this while the Visigoths sacked and burned Rome, with many Roman citizens blaming Christianity. I imagine it looked like the end of the world for them. Augustine set out to provide a consolation to Christianity and Christians, writing that it was the City of God that would ultimately triumph at the end of time or in the eschaton.

Such a view was at times at odds with the view of the Israelites / Jews. The Hebrew concept of time, was concerned with the qualitative substance of time as it related to seasonal events like the rain in summer or an early autumn. The Hebrew calendar was based on the lunar cycle. The Hebrew day was one cycle of the earth on its axis. The month was one lunar cycle, or revolution of the moon around the earth. The year was 12 lunar months of the approximate time required for the earth to circle around the sun. For the Jewish mind, time was for all intents and purposes not just linear as in Christianity but also…circular. Reoccurring. The chronologically linear was, at times, experienced as circular or repetitive. Crops, sacrifices, judicial cycles, Jubilee, etc. The circle would be unbroken.

The Old Testament divides the Jewish year according to each season of an agrarian society, such as when the women Naomi and Ruth traveled to Bethlehem to attend the barley harvest (Ruth 1:22). Likewise, the concept of time centered on the hallowed events of God intervening in human history. Time was dependent to an event that God either caused or allowed to occur in the natural world and how it was linked to His divine acts. Passover for instance. All of those events are directly associated to Jesus or salvation. This is why I’ve always said that if you cannot find Jesus or Salvation in every verse of the Bible, you’re not reading it properly. That is why the story of Creation in Genesis 1 can still be valid and accurate even if direct science is not described in it. The Bible is about relationship. Time is relational. Relations. Family of one form or another. The Bible occasionally speaks to science, medicine and economics but that was not the purpose for its writing. Time really was about your relatives, neighbors and God.

We see the linear/cyclical nature in the Jewish Old Testament prophecies too. There we nearly always see an immediate fulfillment of a given prophecy and a long term one. It is as if history repeats. Time repeats. Incidents repeat. That is likely because prophecies were done in the Spirit. When in the spirit or spirit realm like John the Revelator, time held no sway. Time for all reasoning that we would understand in this world…was irrelevant. Time was timelessness, or more specifically diachronic. Every moment for God in the spiritual realm is the eternal present. That is why when I see modern day Christian ‘soothsayers’ trying to predict what Revelation means along a specific timeline…I know they really do not understand the true nature and character of the prophetic.

Furthermore, for the Hebraic mind, time was concrete and real, not an abstraction. There is no evidence that they engaged in the sort of abstract philosophical speculation that is the hallmark of the Hellenized Christianity and Greeks. Rather, a Hebraic mind would see time as sacred, just as space can be sacred (Holy of Holies) and physicality (Temple of the Holy Spirit, relational position to God). The feasts of the Old Testament were anchored in time. Exact times that directly corresponded to Jesus’ death and resurrection. When I study the Old Testament, I realize that time is specifically relational for the Hebrews. That is, the understanding of time in the Old Testament came from how it described the events of human lives and God's interaction with those lives.

It is also why prophetic books of the Bible pointing to Jesus have what is called superscription.  All of the prophetic books of the Bible begin with a superscription identifying a prophet in relation to God, Rulers and…exact points in time. We are told their name, and usually when they were active in the years of a certain king of secular rulers reigns.

Isaiah 1:1 The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah

We even see it in the New Testament when a Gentile doctor dates Christ’s birth during the reigns of Quirinius, governor of Syria and Caesar Augustus (Luke 2). 

Luke 2:1-2 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town.

Luke was dating Christ’s birth in a Hebraic/Jewish manner. The superscription is also always in the third person, and often reads as if written at some time different (or outside of) the time of the prophet being spoken of. That is because it is the Spirit working through the writer of the books from outside of time.

Without Christ and Salvation. Time is immaterial. Without God and His interaction with man, time becomes irrelevant. Therefore, in Old and New Testament thinking the passage of time literally becomes a sequence of saving and redeeming acts. Without salvation what other need of time would there be? This is why God’s plan of salvation is progressively revealed through a sequence of events historically. The salvific plan is revealed throughout the Old Testament and is brought to culmination and fulfillment in Christ dying on the cross, being buried and rising again in three day’s time. Just as it was revealed by the prophets of the Old Testament in the past. Repeatedly. And just like any other prophetic fulfillment, it will repeat again in the future in the Second Coming in the future.

Real salvational events occurred, and humanity measured and marked life by its relationships to those events. Until we arrived in the godless Enlightenment era all chronological time had been gauged either by it preceding Jesus’ birth (BC) or after (AD). After Christ's time was marked in a manner relational to Christ’s arrival in the world. Time then became very linear and imperative. We marked time straight forward from His first advent until His second.

The passage of time was an unfolding story concerning God’s behavior. So, even though God can and does exist outside the universe and time, our time and physicality in the universe cannot exist without Him. The Old and New Testament show this (Isaiah 66:2, Psalm 33:9, John 1:3, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:16). That means to spend time profitably as the Bible commands means living one’s life so that others could mark their lives and tell their stories in reference to one’s actions both with one’s neighbor and God. The question therefore that should be asked by a Christian isn’t, “What should I do to make the most efficient use of my time?” Instead the question that should be asked is, “How can we best make use of our lives in this present moment to both help our neighbors and love our God?” How will you redeem the time? (Ephesians 5:16)

[Addendum: It should also be noted we will all reach our final destination in eternity. When we get there we will still have two things. We will have some form of physical body (resurrection body) and those bodies will be subject to time. How do I know? Simple. To be able to be punished in or by Hell for eternity assumes both. How can one be physically tormented without both? How can one enjoy paradise without both? Both sensation and elapsing of time via a sequence of events?]

Boman, T. (2002). Hebrew thought compared with Greek. New York: Norton.

Craig, W. L. (2001). Time and eternity: Exploring God’s relationship to time. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

Ganssle, G. E. (2001). God & time. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Hasker, W. (1998). God, time, and knowledge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Littlejohn, R. (2000, Winter). Time and God. Biblical Illustrator, pp. 53–56.

McGrath, A. E. (2001). Christian theology: An introduction (3rd ed.). Boston: Blackwell.