infinity. . .

When discussing the potential infinity of the Noun Phrase in English grammar, I began to look at the concept of infinity from a new perspective. In English, we have the ability to create Noun Phrases that carry on and on (ex: the girl with the ball, in the car, by the house, in the city, where I grew up, in the state...) This has the potential to go on ad infinitum.

My theory is that all things, not just language, have the potential to carry on forever. So why doesn't it? In general, all things have the potential for infinity unless interrupted or impeded by some external force that cannot be prevented or diverted. In language, if we all continued stringing phrases together forever, we would no longer have discourse, simply billions of individual monologues. The limitations that have been placed on language are; the need to communicate, the need to sleep, our need to stop and eat, and ultimately our own death.

There are limitations placed on all of nature which prevents the potential for infinity from ever being realized. Most of these limitations can be summed up as 'time' and 'space'. These are outside forces that keep us and all of nature bound and finite. Humanity has been in a struggle since the very beginning to push these boundaries, grasping at infinity in the vain hope of increasing our standing in the Universe which could only come about if we ever broke the limits of time and space. We try to live longer than ever before, longer and better. We try to spread our influence out to the farthest reaches of attainable space. We have 'shrunk' the space of the earth by mass communication and rapid travel technology. We have measured the speed of light and have calculated the size of the Universe, but we are still bound by time and space, our days are numbered and we cannot be in more than one place at a time.

A Christian view of the infinite brings an element of hope into humanity's futile struggle. This hope comes from the idea of an infinite God who created these boundaries, but is himself outside them, completely untethered in his capacity to be. He has promised that we can have eternal existence in his presence if we submit our feeble wills and lives to his as long as we have life. And from what I glean from scripture, space is affected by time and will therefore no longer have the hold on us that it does now.

So, if we become freed from time and space, what is going to keep us from becoming equal with God? What will the dividing line be between created and creator if these limitations are removed? This takes us back to the origin of this thought, language and grammar and our use of tenses. We have the potential for infinite future, but God trumps us with the reality of infinite past, present, and future. He is infinity perfect, the ever constant state of infinity, and against that we can hold no candle.