Your last sentence, in context, of course, is my very point. The notions, "before" and "after" are necessary for the human mind to arrange thoughts, but do not quite reflect reality.
Yep.
However....
I wonder if "our reality" is exactly what is intended. As a Reformation-minded believer I am obligated to be consistent and if God decided all things or, as the WCF puts it, "ordained all things from eternity," then the various "realities" is purposeful. Despite (or perhaps because of) my deliberations on the matter I cannot fathom a way out of the fact the heavens and the earth are separated and separated in many ways (beginning with the opening line of scripture) while also connected and/or overlapping. The angels, at least temporarily, have faculties we do not possess and we, conversely have faculties they do not possess, and we will yet have faculties that eclipse the current heavenly host when we find ourselves among them. To the degree knowledge and experience inform and define "reality," then there are multiple realities, and that diversity stands apart from the diversity established by physics (or what we call "physics").
The one exception to these rules is sin. Sin mucks up everything, including our perceptions and our perceptions of our perceptions.
In the Trinitarian pov Jesus is both God and human. So Jesus can be understood to command creation simply because he is divine and possesses the faculties of the Creator.
BUT Jesus is also the perfect male human unadulterated by sin. He, therefore, also commands creation, down to its base elements if he so chooses, simply because he is a good, sinless, unashamed human able to walk in the authority and power given humanity in its created state.
Genesis 1:27-30
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food"; and it was so.
So when we see Jesus commanding the wind we naturally (no pun intended) understand he does so with divine might and authority BUT we should also understand he does so because he has been given the ability to rule over and subdue the earth, all the plants and animals are his to command as a human made in God's image. When he spits on dirt and makes a blindness-healing mud he does so as someone
human bending the earth to do his will. He alone can do this but it is our destiny.
It's also the correct reality we're supposed to know and inhabit.
Angels cannot do that. Whatever faculties the angels possess in their created state is likewise compromised and corrupted by their sin when they disobey the created order.
God exists external to ALL of it.
Multiple realities, not just God and not-God.
I arrange from what seems to me logical concerning God — Simplicity, Aseity and so on— which imply that God spoke the finished product into existence from the beginning. But to say it that way, I realize, is to once again introduce "before" and "after".
Yep. It's very difficult to acquire and sustain an "IS" mindset.
Yet, if I am to talk about what I mean, that this temporal is but a vapor compared to the solid reality of the eternal, it would be silly to emphasize the "during" over the "before"—and the work of creatures over that of the Creator.
Sorta.
I read scripture to say the "
heavens and the earth" are going to be around a very long time. Billions of years. The last chapters of the Bible are about the "new" city of peace (jeru=city; salem=peace) coming down out of heaven to earth. The earth is not destroyed. The externally existent God and Son dwell on the earth in ways we do not currently fathom. The earth is not permanently destroyed at the end of scripture. The great judgment in which the adversary and death itself are destroyed is not the end of creation, the end of the earth. It appears previously existing divisions between the heavens and the earth implicit in Genesis 1:1 forward are changed.
Yet it is still inside time and space.
I conclude our understanding of "
temporal" will, therefore, change...... and some greater degree of the eternal "is" is obtained. Perhaps we'll finally understand all ten or eleven of creation's dimensions and possess the knowledge, understanding and wisdom to use them for God's purpose(s). We barely grasp four dimensions now. If this is true then our current understanding of "before" and "after" will change; old way rendered childish or amateurish, if not meaningless.
We'll understand the true Jesus, not a mythologized figure, but one who simply operated the vehicle the way he designed it to operate. The truth of the Creator as Creator will be understood and the meaning (and absurdity) of God asking Job if he knows how to make a bird will bring mirth.
It's a secular book, but I strongly recommend giving Michio Kaku's book, "
Hyperspace" a read. It's an amazingly accessible exposition on the history and nature (again, no pun intended) of field theories, and when read thorough the Christian mindset it's both illuminating and fun. Unblessedly, with his increased popularity some of his books pander to politics and social commentary. His book, "
The God Equation" is a waste of paper. When he sticks to physics then he is at his best and there is much Christians can learn from learning the basics of field theory. More germane to your point, when we understand how it is something can be in two places at once or two times at once scripture won't lose its amazingness (as the antitheists would have us believe). Creation and the scriptures describing and explaining Christ in creation will be more amazing, not less.
