In 2017 Kathleen Flake gave the Annual Neal A. Maxwell Lecture. The entire presentation is engaging and worth your time. I expect to share a few snippets from her presentation in future posts about Joseph Smith and Priesthood insights. This post focuses on a short answer she gave at the end of the discussion about timelessness. I want to imagine what she says is unimaginable.

One eternal round means timelessness?

The short clip below shows a gentleman asking a question about ‘one eternal round’ and how Kathleen would deal with beginnings and ends. Her response felt off the cuff, but she says that it was ’not an unthought answer’ in her response.

Man’s Question: I’ve read about ‘one eternal round’, and I have no idea what that means. I have tried to explain to a non-LDS friend of mine that we don’t think there is a beginning. I don’t know how to deal with … How have you dealt with beginnings and ends?

Kathleen Flake: I just recognize I can’t. Because I live in time, and that is not an unthought answer. I think that, yes, ‘one eternal round’ is a reference to timelessness, and I believe that we are incapable of imagining timelessness.

One Eternal Round Background

Doctrine and Covenants 3:1-2 looks to be the first scripture in the latter-day cannon that uses the phrase when it says;

The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither can they come to naught. For God doth not walk in crooked paths, neither doth he turn to the right hand nor to the left, neither doth he vary from that which he hath said, therefore his paths are straight, and his course is one eternal round.

When I read that verse, I don’t see timelessness implied at all. I see God explaining how He lives in time. I recently read a Wired article that explained how the Big Bang might not be the right scientific metaphor for creating our universe. The article was titled, ’What If the Big Bang Was Actually a Big Bounce?’ with the subtitle ‘New computer simulations model an alternate way of thinking about the cosmos: as a cyclic universe that has no beginning or end’ which provides a great example of ‘one eternal round’ but still well within time.

In another post, I will get through the other five references to ‘one eternal round’ and any Latter-day quotes on the phrase¹. Recently, Elizabeth Nielson published an article in the Interpreter on Mormonism and the Scientific Persistence of Circles: Aristotle, Spacetime, and One Eternal Round that is an interesting read about the history of circles in science and religion.

Imagining perfect circles defining the universe is what got us the picture shown with the post. Beyond the earth being at the center of the universe, every planet had to travel in perfect circles. The early fathers of the stars had developed crazy equations under the assumption of perfect circles that worked reasonably well to predict the planets’ locations. However, they weren’t exaclty right and they were extremely complicated. I hope we don’t take the phrase ‘one eternal round’ too literally and end up with almost right views on time that are extremely complicated.

Maybe you are catching the point that I don’t believe that ‘one eternal round’ implies timelessness. I do agree that we are incapable of imagining timelessness because there is no such thing for any intelligent being. Hopefully, the next conversation will help you see what I am trying to say about the difference between endless and timeless.

Timeless and Waterless Metaphor

If you and I were standing on a high mountain on a small island and could see in all directions for what seemed to be Godlike views, what panorama would we be viewing if I said one of the following statements to you?

• As I look from north to south and east to west, the water is endless.
• The water has no beginning and no end.
• Look at those waterless landscapes.
• The view is without water.

When God tells us that He has no beginning and no end and that He is ‘One Eternal Round’ that doesn’t put Him outside of time, that puts him in time correctly. I hope the first two bullets compared to the last two bullets help make that point. Saying timeless is way different than saying no beginning and no end.

I am forever grateful for our God with no beginning of days and end of years that can help us through our journey to a state where each of us can have no end of years.

Kathleen’s Full Presentation

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