Question:

I have just read your book, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, and found it fascinating and helpful. I have one question, though. In "Evidence..." (p.54), you refer to "space-time." I have a work of yours dated in 1973 in which you say, "Time is only a measure of man's immortality. Ultimately, it is not real." In view of your explanation of the relationship between the Divine Services and space-time, I wonder if, in 1973, you felt that time was an illusion, but have a different view now? I am asking because of the debates about the meaning of time in the physics world.

Roger Mortimer, Buffalo, N.Y.

REPLY:

Any comments about the meaning of time could quickly become quite complex. I never felt that time was only an illusion, however, what time means is relative to the context in which the concept is being used. Time is a measure of mortality, but it is also a measure of our daily lives which helps us have order and stability. Ultimately, time is a metaphor. Often, it is a metaphor for direction or measurement of one sort or another. We conceive time in terms of direction. Even if we say that we "sat in one place for hours," we conceive a forward movement in terms of time. There is some suggestion that time does not really exist, and this is probably correct in a major sense - certainly time does not exist in terms of eternity, and the universe does exist in the realm eternity. In the debates about the nature of time, I would rather think of time as both metaphor and unit of measure, significant mainly to the order and rhythm of our lives, than to think of it as illusion. Time does have concrete as well as abstract meaning, but certainly at the quantum level, it is uncertain just what it does mean. Within the context of the universe, there is no clear distinction between the present, the past and the future. In a sense, they all exist at the same "time," and time itself in fact may not exist. I believe that this is essentially how the debates about time will be resolved. I used the term space-time in "Evidence..." in order to give a sense of both eternity, and the fact that past, present and future are not radically separate in the Divine Services, which are a clear reflection of the eternal. This is more a quantum view that a relativistic view.

+Archbishop Lazar