Back to the Future and Onward to the Past?

Yesterday's post made the provocative point that, depending on how you look at it,  

The very act of creation thus might be called the beginning of the passion of God. God has so entered into the world that God cannot but be affected by its life, including its sinful life (Fretheim).

So, prior to the passion of Christ is the passion of the Creator (or Trinity)? Creation itself is God's cross to bear?  

Welcome to the club.

Well, where is the beginning of anything, really? It's like asking Putin when the troubles with Ukraine began: "Such questions do not have a facile journalistic answer. Rather, one must begin with an unimaginably hot and dense universe about 13.8 billion years ago, followed by a rapid expansion of space itself."

He's not wrong. At the very least, one must track things back to Genesis 3, but it is possible that the Fall had a retroactive effect on events preceding it. 

Is that even possible?

I don't know. Let's ask Gemini

Some theologians argue that because God exists outside of time, He had foreknowledge of the Fall. Therefore, the consequences of the Fall were factored into the creation itself. This perspective is sometimes used to address questions about suffering and natural evil that existed before the recorded Fall. 

In any event, I think we can agree that

Everything in history begins before we think it begins and ends after we think it ends. 

This is partly because... as you know, I don't like to speculate, but if the space of the quantum world is nonlocal and entangled with itself, why not time? If this is the case, then all times are copresent, and Joyce was right after all:

Joyce's innovative use of language plays a crucial role in conveying his concept of time via wordplay, puns, and neologisms. A central concept in Finnegans Wake is that history and events repeat themselves in an endless loop. This is reflected in the book's structure, which loops back on itself. 

The work blurs the lines between past, present, and future, suggesting they are not linear but interconnected. Joyce uses the logic of dreams to dismantle the traditional linear understanding of time, weaving together historical events, mythical narratives, and everyday occurrences, collapsing them into a single, continuous flow.

This being the case, then the invasion of Ukraine is just the sameold sameold in a new iteration. Nor will it ever end, rather, just beginagain in a new form. Who's to blame? Ultimately no one and everyone, AKA Here Comes Everybody. All wars are just Cain and Abel going at it hammer and tong.

Is this supposed to be helpful?

Well, I did recently read a book of open theology called Satan and the Problem of Evil, which makes this argument with a straight face, very different from our whimsical and bemused face. In other words, the author accounts for the existence of natural evil by positing a retroactive effect of original sin. Thus, death and suffering existed in the world prior to Adam & Eve, and it's their fault.

Now, do you have a better explanation for natural evil? 

Every beginning is an image of the Beginning; every end is an image of the End.

If this is the case, then the beginning and end are always copresent in any and all events, or in every moment. Indeed, according to the Poet, "the end precedes the beginning," 

And the end and the beginning were always there / Before the beginning and after the end. / And all is always now.

No wonder then that "Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break under the burden," as they did in Finnegans Wake, and in a lesser way our own OCUG. 

"In my beginning is my end." And

What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning. / And the end is where we start from.

If Eliot is on the right track, then "the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."

There's a First (and Last) Time for and in everything?

If so, this must be the Presence, or presence of Presence -- which, when you think about it, is a rather shockingly strange thing. I remember Schuon saying something to the effect that... Better yet, here's the exact passage:

the Absolute is either Truth or Presence, but it is not one or the other in an exclusive fashion, for as Truth It comprises Presence, and as Presence It comprises Truth.

The presence of truth is the truth of presence?  

Such is the twofold nature of all theophanies; thus Christ is essentially a manifestation of Divine Presence, but he is thereby also Truth: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” No one enters into the saving proximity of the Absolute except through a manifestation of the Absolute, be it a priori Presence or Truth.

So, if God is present, it is because he is the presence of Presence? If that's the case, then 

Come in, open His presence and report for karmic duty. Why, it's a Tree of Life for those whose wood beleaf. 

The hologram to your private particle is none other than the spatial and temporal nonlocality and entanglement referenced above. This was McKenna's view -- that time is indeed fractal, such that any part contains all parts. He calls this "temporal resonance," through which any time has an effect on all time, and vice versa. Which is pretty damn weird, the question of course being whether it is weird enough.

Let's bring this existentialada down a couple of nachos and get back to the presence of the past, or to their copresence. Petey, how much time to we have left? 

Twenty-nine words. Make that twenty-four.

So, brevity. The question is, did the fall of man affect not only descendants but ancestors? Lookin' at you, Gemini:

The idea of the Fall affecting "ancestors" is where the theological debate becomes intricate [and weird]. Some theologies would argue that the fall didn't just affect humanity, but all of creation -- that the very fabric of reality [the cosmic area rug] was altered. So, in this way, all things that existed before the fall, existed in a state that was destined to be altered. 

In essence, while the immediate and direct consequences of the Fall are most clearly seen in its impact on descendants, the theological concept of God's eternal perspective and the reach of Christ's atonement leads to ideas that the fall has implications that reach across all of time.

Back to the future and onward to the past, or something?