Many have been the attempts to explain the phenomenon known as déjà vu which refers to the distinct sensation that you have already experienced a currently occurring experience whilst having no memory of having done so in the past.
Surely, if you walk into your office for work you may experience pseudo-déjà vu (in that seemingly never ending “Groundhog’s Day” cycle and recycle). Yet, for example, you may visit a country to which you have never been and yet, have that feeling of having been at a particular location, performing a certain action, hearing, seeing the same thing again, etc.
Certainly, a simple approach is to simply dismiss déjà vu as nothing more than a mistake: since you have never been there and done that before then the feeling that you have is mistaken.
Yet, I am interested in presenting a theological speculation from a Biblical standpoint along with that which theologians have inferred from the Bible’s implications.
The Bible’s very first verse implies a basic theology and basic cosmology as follows, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.”
God is timeless or eternal, without the restrictions of locality or omnipresent, immaterial or spirit. Pantheism and omnipresent sound similar but they are different. Moreover, this theology denotes that God is a volitional, rational and all powerful or omnipotent being.
Reread with this in mind, Genesis states, “In the beginning” thus, God is outside of, beyond, not subject to time, “God” a preexisting being who is not subject to the dimensional restrictions of the universe, “created” volitionally carried out a rational plan in a display of awesome power, “the heavens” which God transcends and is thus not restricted to location, “and the Earth” which God also transcends and is thus not restricted to the material realm.
Our most modern cosmology implies that the universe is a time, space, matter continuum. Reread with this in mind, Genesis states, “In the beginning” which refers to time, “God created the heavens” referring to space, “and the Earth” referring to matter.
The text denotes that the creative act had a beginning and Genesis 2:1 notes that it had a conclusion, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.”
There are various views as to how time functions yet, I am interested in grounding my speculation on the concept of a one time completed creation of all events simultaneously. This is a Thomistic concept which denotes that from God’s perspective all of creation is laid out before Him such as an entire parade can be viewed by someone aboard a helicopter who can see the beginning/front, middle and end/back.
Yet, we are like a person standing on the sidewalk who can only view the parade in sequences. Thus, we experience time a unidirectional sequence. Although, this particular view may not even be necessarily necessary to my own speculation.
If you have ever experienced a dangerous situation such as a car accident you may have come away with the feeling that time slowed down. Conversely, as you get older you may get the feeling that time is passing by faster.
In any case, the fall into sin which is recorded in Genesis chapter 3 had universal implications. This means that not only were Adam and Eve affected but so was every subsequent human, the Earth and its various inhabitant and the universe as a whole. For example, the point at which entropy (by any other name) would seem to have had begun is pin pointed to this event and entropy it the key to my speculation.
In very general terms entropy refers to the breaking down of everything from order to disorder and yet beyond that from usable energy to unusable. This means that the universe as a whole and thus everything which it contains does not function as per its original design even though that design can still be discerned much like the rubble of a house destroyed by fire can still be seen to have been a house with a foundation, furniture, etc.
Time seem to have been created so that everything does not happen at the same well, time: simultaneously. We humans, and all Earth dwellers it would seem, were created so as to experience the unidirectional moment by moment passage of time—linear time, I tell ya, it’s just one thing after another!
Now, what if the entropy-like effects of the fall has affected our experience of the passage of time or time itself? Perhaps entropy in this sense is increasing so that we can expect to experience more and more of it. That at which I am getting is that perhaps our relationship with time which was meant to have us experience it moment by moment is off by a bit here and a bit there so that when we experience déjà vu we are experiencing a memory, the déjà vu manner of speaking, not of something we have already done—since we know that we have not—but of a temporary slippage in time which results in us having an experience and its recall at the same time?
It may be a form of a temporary loop whereby the moment and its memory conjoin. We are supposed interact with the all already there one time creation in a linear manner however, it may be that the entropy slippage is causing us to rarely interact with time in an offbeat manner so that we find ourselves interacting with a portion or time out of sync.
That is my speculation—at least for “now.”
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