John's Gospel, Genesis, and us

About thirty years ago, when I was living in the flatlands of Illinois, I vividly recall observing from a distance of perhaps half a mile away a train traveling through a great expanse of prairie land. It was a sunny summer afternoon, with no perceptible breeze to stir even a blade of grass, and the panorama in which the train was making its way appeared otherwise motionless. “Motionless” may be the wrong word here; the landscape might better be described as “serene,” even “majestic” in its stillness. The contrast between the steadily moving train, so far away that its rumbling was inaudible to my ears, and the immense, silent prairie surrounding it made an impression on me that has stayed with me ever since. It presented, I remember thinking, an apt visual analogy of the flow of time through eternity. Within that train were human beings, seated or lounging in their cars, dozing, talking, reading, eating, checking their watches, and so on; in other words, there was activity inside, though mostly of a languorous sort, and life in the cars moved along according to the demands of the clock. Life outside those cars, however, was seemingly still (of course, it really wasn’t, but the illusion was definite). To my eyes, the entire train, from engine to end, was visible as it passed through that rural similitude of eternity; for a few moments, the sight was almost magical and a thing words can’t adequately describe. If from a much wider perspective I could have seen both the station from which the train started out on its journey and simultaneously the other station that was to be its destination, I could have had an extended analogy of what is meant theologically by “predestination.” “Predestination” is merely a term for what is, in a sense, immediate in eternity: from a God’s-eye-view, “start” and “finish” – and time itself – are fully comprehended and accomplished; “past,” “present,” and “future” are everlastingly completed. What we have in that “field” is infinity in all directions, through which our small chronological train cars (our personal lives, that is) “move” until that day when chronology itself is no more. We live our lives en route, but God sees them whole and all the “stations” at once. It was while reading recently from the twelfth homily on the Gospel of John by St. Augustine – the Father whose name is most closely linked to notions of “time” and “predestination” – that something along these lines suggested itself to me.