A Brief History of Time (According to 2 Peter)
Physics investigates, among other things, what we might call “the laws of the universe,” and I’m all in. I love all the books and videos targeting the amateur physicist (some favorites include: Minute Physics, Sci Show (not just physics), PBS Space Time, Kurzgesagt, and Sixty Symbols). And yet, one of the things that language like “the laws of physics” implies is a kind of absolute materialist detachment. The laws of the universe are what they are because they are. This is actually one of the big unanswered problems in physics: how did the laws of the universe get to be what they are? Does Planck’s constant equal 6.62607015×10−34 J⋅Hz−1 because it has to be that number, or are there other values that may exist in other possible universes, or did some cosmic being turn a dial somewhere to set it at that number?
This is not a post about physics, though. Like everything on this silly little blog this is a post about stories. Or, more particularly, I want to claim here that the “laws” of physics (and chemistry and biology) are what they are because they are part of a cohesive story that God is writing in time. Physics is subservient to the narrative. We should use math and telescopes and experimentation to study these things, not Scripture, but Scripture gives us the narrative backdrop for why the world around us works the way it does. The laws of physics are anchored by a story; they are functions of a metanarrative.
An Age Long Past, an Age Yet to Come
Peter does not know about Planck’s constant. He has a different picture of the universe than I do. And yet he believes that the workings of the world are tied to decisions that God has made.
“For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.”
2 Peter 3:5-6
The “they” referred to in the passage are these individuals Peter calls “scoffers;” they’re something like cynics. Peter tells us that their fundamental claim about the world is that it will continue on, that the future will be like the past, that there is no final judgement or climactic end or new beginning. Time is a straight infinite line. Now, I know I’m oversimplifying, and we shouldn’t anachronistically map ancient cosmological philosophy onto modern scientific theories, but the point is nevertheless clear: the world will continue on, same as it ever was.
Peter rebuts this claim with a simple observation: the world hasn’t always been the same. There once was another world. Time, according to Peter, can be divided into various periods, and it seems like within those different periods things work slightly differently, according to God’s purpose and design. Peter tells us that there was an Age before the present Age–an age long past–and there will be a New Age in the sometime-future–an age yet to come. That former age (what shall we call it? The Primeval Age?) was buried under water, and from that water a new age was born. Maybe the laws of physics and biology were the same back then (but maybe not?), but at the very least God’s way of relating to the world and his people (which we sometimes call a “covenant”) changes as time moved from that age to the next. So the two ages are different, and that difference is a sign to the scoffers and to the church that God is at work and will bring about his purposes and promises.
These Last Days
What is more, Peter believes his own ministry is part of a newer age in which God is at work, an age he calls “The Last Days.” Time is periodized. There is coherence and continuity between the periods, but there are also differences. Like the Primeval Age, this age will come to a climactic end. The old age was destroyed and reborn by means of water; this age will be destroyed and reborn by means of fire. The rebirth aspect of this conclusion should be emphasized, since it is so often missed. Fire (like water) is an appropriate image for Peter’s apocalyptic reflections because it is both an image of destruction and rebirth. The “metal” of this world will melt, to be sure, but from that a new and more perfect age will be reforged. In that future time there will be no death; humanity will have fully realized their identity as “partakers in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4); righteousness will dwell (3:13).
The next age will be, to borrow from 1 Peter, “imperishable” (1 Peter 1:4), and I do not know how that can be if the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is still in place.
