Discussions of time travel are unfairly maligned, distracted, and cognitively interrupted by conversations which pertain to time machines. The notion of a time machine is no less stupid than a hope machine or a salvation machine.
Further, the Enlightened daffiness of the time machine has also corrupted our understanding of transcendence. The reason “time travel” was not much of a plot device prior to the time machine was because “time travel” was already caught up or implied in conversations about transcendence. We have a weak understanding of transcendence today because we have allowed time travel to be swallowed up by time machines, and thus our understanding of transcendence misses crucially bizarre aspects of divine omnipresence.
A materialistic age has prompted us to discard the notion of teleological causes, and thus everything and everyone in our world seems marooned in time, lost in time. A proper understanding of teleology and eschatology, however, helps us understand that some of the things in our world are not of our world, but of the future. While we rightly ridicule the time machine, then, we do right to acknowledge the Eucharist as the time supper, the Church as the time building, the doxology as the time song, the Scriptures as the time book.
