More on the complications of Time

In the last few chapters of The Great Divorce, Lewis discuses Time in relation to us as well as Heaven and God. On Earth, we can only experience what is happening as it does. The past is gone and the future is a mystery. As Lewis describes the gigantic beings around the chess board the narrator sees at the end of the book. He suggests that the chess pieces are but representatives of our eternal souls as they appear and are perceived in this world, and that the giants are the whole, eternal culmination of those souls, without the hindrance of Time. MacDonald notes that our souls are meant to be seen without “the lens of time”, and that man can only view such a small segment of his existence at one time because he could not bear to view the entirety of every decision, action, and attribute of his life at the same time.

But is this how God views our existence and the handicap we call time? Does God really dictate everything that happens in the world, or does he just know exactly what will take place because he resides outside of time? In his 27^th letter, Scretape advises that God “does not foresee the humans making their free contributions in a future, but sees them doing so in His unbounded, Now.

Of course, we can’t take Screwtape’s word for it. But this is an interesting way of viewing predestination and free will. Is that how God’s plan works? He knows everything and exactly how it will occur in our time all at the same time? Does God’s knowledge of our actions prior to our knowledge or performance of them do anything to the free will that we so frantically cling to? Are we meant to view our existence in the way MacDonald describes it, without the lens of time?

This is so perplexing to me.