A model of time for physics and theology

ABSTRACT

Anthony P. Stone

A paper by the author on time in relativistic physics ('A program model of becoming', Physics Essays, 10, 150-163, 1997) is explained briefly in a non-technical way. Giving up the idea that the present involves simultaneity in clock time, there can be an objective universal present which is the same for everyone and extends throughout the universe. (The same construction was explicitly proposed in 1985 by N. Maxwell, and subjective experience of the present was treated fictionally on this basis by Fred Hoyle & Geoffrey Hoyle in 1963.)

In relativity, the 'time' in space-time orders events as earlier-simultaneous-later, and no event is distinguished as happening 'now'. This aspect of time will be called 'chronos'. When events are ordered as past-present-future, this is a different aspect of time which will be called 'kairos'. (The Greek words are used as technical terms.) Chronos is time as usually employed in physics, and is confined to space-time. Kairos is thought of as not so confined, and is taken as more fundamental.

The open future is modelled by a tree of branching general-relativistic 'possible space-times', branching being at presents. The changing 'now' is produced by a program, analogous to a computer program, running in kairos and advancing the present in small steps. At each step there is input of the state of affairs in the near future, which is postulated to be the intentions of various agents, inside and outside of space-time, edited by the 'highest agent'.

The events in space-time belonging to a particular present belong to more than one present outside space-time. This allows input into the program to be a process in kairos while nothing happens in chronos. Agents outside space-time are postulated to 'make' their own kairos; thus kairos is free of 'the pressure of time' experienced in chronos. This gives the 'program model of becoming', which provides simple understandings of time's arrow and wave-function collapse, the theoretical possibility of empirical effects of the present, and a justification of tense logic.

A theological model for time is obtained by taking God as the 'highest agent' , and replacing possible space-times by 'feasible worlds', where a feasible world is logically possible world with the property that God might actualize it.

Brief applications are suggested to time and eternity, miracles, laws of nature and God's action in the world. More detailed discussion is given of divine sovereignty, human freedom, predestination and God's knowlege of the future, in the cases where the number of feasible worlds is one or more than one.