Thank you for your answer. I've heard the "it's an unchanging gravitational field" argument before, but it doesn't really explain the question for me. If the suns gravity is a field, then why is the movement of that field (which is locked to the suns mass I presume) instantaneously "known" to the earth, so the earth "free falls" in the curved space time in the right direction holding its orbit. Why doesn't the earth, at 1 au, free fall into the space time curvature that was created by the sun 8 minutes ago? It certainly appears the earth "knows" where the sun is now, which would imply instant information travel.

I also think you contradict yourself in your last statement, in which you say that the gravitational field of the sun does take 8 minutes to reach earth.