Time and Relativity in CreationArthur C. Custance

BEFORE WE COME to consider the spiritual aspects, it seems desirable to review briefly the bearing which the Theory of Relativity has upon the "time" taken for Creation. To begin with, the possibility of a real acceleration or deceleration of Time in certain given circumstances introduces the question of whether time was needed for the Creation at all, or whether it might have been instantaneous. It might be well to state clearly, first of all, that Scripture does not demand the Universe to have been created instantly. Its evidence of "age" is probably not a deception deliberately introduced by the Creator for some unknown reason. The age is real. (19) Whether we argue for 4,000,000,000 years or twice or half this amount -- it is not important at the moment -- it seems clear that the Universe is very old. But what does such a concept mean, and was it necessary for God to work so "slowly"? Could He have created it all, as was once supposed, in a moment of time? Was there any fundamental advantage in establishing the time-consuming process which seems to characterize geological change, if such changes could actually have been in some way vastly accelerated "to save time"? First, we may ask whether the actual age of the Universe has any meaning at all. Suppose all the "clocks" by which we now "tell" geological time are actually running fast � would we be aware of it? Is it not possible that all geological (and chemical) processes at one time occurred much more rapidly? Could we discover the fact if it were indeed the case? It seems doubtful. All the counting devices in the world that give us an age of so many millions of years are perhaps right -- in that they are being read correctly and register consistently and in concordance with one another. But we still do not know
19. This is considered in some detail in another Doorway Paper, "The Preparation of the Earth for Man," Part I in Evolution or Creation, vol.4 of The Doorway Papers Series.
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whether the rates involved are absolute and have always been what they now are. Just as Nature conspires to conceal Absolute Time, so it may have closed the door against any inquiry into the absolute rate of the passage of time in the past. We are speaking, of course, of geological time, and not the time since man appeared. In any case, the appearance of age could have a purpose, even if it were an appearance only. Appearance or reality, we unconsciously derive considerable comfort from it. This comfort is both of an intellectual and a psychological � perhaps one might even say a spiritual � nature. Intellectually, there is real satisfaction in being able to unravel the stages by which something complex has come to be what it is. It is rather like a mystery story or a detective novel. Sometimes it almost looks as though God took delight in this process of unravelling, either by leaving in the rocks some special link in the chain of evidence � like a single specimen of Archaeopteryx, for example � or by confounding the experts by preserving some remote form, out of context as it were, like the Coelacanth. For some men, the adventure takes on the form of a spiritual exercise, as when Kepler in studying the starry heavens is said to have exclaimed involuntarily, "O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee." The thrill of being able to visualize what underlies the countryside at one's feet, with its hills and valleys, cliffs and plains, and occasionally to stoop down and pick up some small but exquisite fossil of a shell or a leaf, is something experienced universally by those who have sufficient training to recognize what they see. And because imagination knows no bounds, it seems to revel in the expanse of time in the past, as it does in the mystery of space above.

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