Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 7/26/2007 10:43:00 AM (GMT-5)

"A Christian Approach to the Philosophy of Time."  Describes the thought of the Greek Fathers on time & eternity, with a brief suggestion for how it can be applied to the problem of human freedom & divine foreknowledge.  Presented at a conference on Christian approaches to metaphysics, June 2006.      http://www.uky.edu/~dbradsh/papers/Christian%20Approach%20to%20Phil%20of%20Time.pdf

 

(Dionysius) "Viewing time and eternity as divine processions is a striking innovation, but it also raises many questions. Most obviously, what becomes of the traditional view that time is a feature of the physical cosmos? How can this be, if it is also a divine procession, and thus one way of apprehending God himself?"

 

(John of Scythopolis) "...notes repeatedly that God is eternal by Himself being Eternity, whereas creatures are eternal by partaking of eternity.²⁵ Yet he does not neglect that God can also be identified with Time."

 

 

(article's author--Bradshaw)   

There are here two distinct ways in which God can be referred to as Time. One is in reference to time in the proper sense, "the procession of the goodness of God in creating sensibles." Time in this sense is God just as any of the divine processions is God, although He also remains beyond it as its source. (Indeed, it was "once at rest in He Who Always Is," prior to its shining forth in the creation of the sensible world.) Second there is time as "the movement of temporal intervals," that which is measured by time in the first sense. God can also be called Time in this sense, just as He can be called by the name of any of His creatures, since they pre-exist in Him as their cause. By way of analogy, we might distinguish two ways in which God can be referred to as the Good: goodness as a divine procession, and "the good" as referring collectively to those creatures that partake of the Good in the first sense. John is careful to qualify this second way of referring to God as Time by the adjectives "supereternally and timelessly," so as to make it clear that in using the name of creatures for God there is no diminishment of divine transcendence.

 

. . .

 

In closing I would like to leave aside philosophical controversies for a moment in order to observe that what the Greek Fathers are proposing is not only a different theory of time, but a different way of experiencing time, one which sees it as an icon of eternity.   . . .   St. Basil speaks explicitly of time as an icon.

(Basil) "We make our prayers standing on the first day of the week, but all do not know the reason for this. For it is not only because we are risen with Christ and that we should seek the things which are above, that on the day of the Resurrection we recall the grace that has been given us by standing to pray; but also, I think, because this day is in some way the image (εἰκών) of the future age."

To pray without kneeling on Sunday is not only a commemoration of the Resurrection, but a foretaste of the age to come, as befits Sunday, which is itself an icon of that age. In such an act one deliberately lives within the iconic meaning of time, accepting time as the expression, within our current sensible existence, of the immeasurable fulness of eternal life. It is this iconic form of life that the eastern Church Fathers open up for us today.

 

The Universe as "Hypostatic Inherence" in the Logos of God

The meaning of the term hypostatic comes from the Greek word hypostasis, which was used in the Patristic theological context in order to underline the "personal," active as well as intransitive dimension of existence as different from impersonal substance (ousia) or nature (physis). The difference was articulated by Patristic thought in the context of the trinitarian and christological discussions throughout the fourth to seventh centuries. Ousia (as related to universals, families, or species) tends to be used with regard to internal characteristics and relations, or metaphysical reality (in this it is almost identical with physis), whereas hypostasis regularly emphasizes the externally concrete character of the substance, its empirical objectivity, and the existential aspects of being, expressed through the realization of freedom, movement, and will. It is important to stress that though every individual substance moves and is moved, the personal element in the realization of the potentiality of the substance is not included in the concept of substance itself, that is, the hypostatic aspect of individual existence is not immanent to what is included in the substance.

The difference between ousia and hypostasis can be elucidated in the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, which asserts that the world was created out of nothing as an ecstatic act of interpenetrating love among the persons of the Holy Trinity. In Patristic theological language there were different expressions of this belief. It was affirmed that the world was created in God’s will, but not in his essence (ousia) (Athanasius of Alexandria). This entails that God is present in the world, not ontologically (i.e., on the level of the world’s substance), but rather relationally and personally, on the level of his loving kindness to the world, expressed through his will and realized by his Word. It is affirmed since the times of the Gospel of John that it is the Word-Logos of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, who entered the world by creating it and preparing his incarnation in Jesus as the meeting of the uncreated Divine with created humanity. It is at this point that the cosmological mystery of the presence of the ontologically transcendent God in the world acquires christological (and anthropological) dimension. For the presence of God in the world cannot be understood without the hypostatic mystery of Christ as a locus of the divine and human.

Nature or substance (in its self-realization, which is accounted for by God’s will as creator) can be divided and shared while the hypostasis of a particular being is indivisible. The reality of substance (i.e., its transcendence) is made available to human beings because of God’s economy, which relates independent creation to the Creator through communion; that is, substance becomes evident and real only in hypostases, that is, in what is indivisible. In a theological context hypostasis is similar to prosopon, that is, person in modern parlance. This implies that the nature of things becomes evident if it is personified. The hypostasis, then, is seen as the foundation of being, for it is that in which nature exists.

The distinction between nature and hypostasis allows one to articulate the unity of creation in two different senses. On the one hand, all varieties of sensible objects share the same nature (e.g., the same elementary particles). On the other hand, if one considers the world in relationship to its creator, then natural existence acquires the feature of existence acquires the features of existence for someone, that is, the Creator, who is not an impersonal substance or essence of the higher order (in which other individual substances participate), but who is the personal God. Thus when Christianity affirms that the world was created by the Word-Logos of God and that through the Logos everything was made, it effectively affirms that the natural existence of the world is existence in the personhood of God, that is, in his hypostasis; this means that the whole creation is brought to unity in the hypostasis of the Logos and that the link between God and the world is nonnatural (i.e., nonontological, nonphysical, nonbiological, etc.), but hypostatic, which can be expressed as the relationship between the Divine and the world in the personhood of God. The creation of the world and its existence have sense, then, only in relation to the person who is acting as the creator and provider of the meaning of existence: there cannot be impersonal creation as well as existence.

The universe, however, being created by God, is not capable of knowing that it has its creator, for impersonal physical objects are not hypostatic creatures: they have no ability to contemplate their own existence and relate it to their ultimate source. Thus the intelligibility of the universe and its meaning are accessible only to hypostatic human beings, who are created in the Divine image, and whose hypostasis is capable of personifying objects in the universe, that is, making the universe self-conscious of its own existence and origin. Maximus the Confessor strongly argued that man as a person cannot be isolated from the fact that human nature is itself enhypostacized. In other words, it is hypostatically inherent in the Logos; this means that a personal relationship with God cannot be excluded from human nature and is identical with fully realized human existence.

The term hypostatically inherent refers theologically to the Greek words enhypostatic or enhypostasis, which were introduced into heology by Leontius of Byzantium in the context of christological discussion of the sixth to seventh centuries, and whose meaning (appropriate for the purposes of our research) in Greek Patristic usage can be described as: "being, existing in an hypostasis or Person," "subsistent in, inherent."

One can refer to a theological view of "participation" in the Divine in order to illustrate the idea of "hypostatic inherence" of the universe in the Logos of God. When it is said that created beings know about God, it means that they participate in God through a mode which is distinct from his essence (uncreated energies, for example). However, the very ability to participate in God is willed by God himself, for it is God who brought into existence participating beings; the knowledge of why this participation is possible at all is concealed by God from participating beings and known only to himself.

It was natural, then, for Maximus the Confessor to argue that "everything that derives its existence from participating in some other reality presupposes the ontological priority of that other reality"; he meant the priority of the Logos of God with respect to all other created things which do participate in him. The "hypostatic inherence" of the universe in the Logos of God can then be interpreted in Maximus’s words as the Logos’s eternal manifestations in different modes of participation by created beings in him. This participation takes place in spite of the fact that the Logos is eternally invisible (i.e., ontologically distinct from creation) to all in virtue of the surpassing nature of his hidden activity. But this participation does not assume any ontological causation; for to participate in the Logos means to be made by the Logos a participating being, that is, to be made as a being in the hypostatis of the Logos himself. This implies that existence through participation in the Logos is subsistence in his personhood, that is, the inherence in his hypostasis. In short, one can say that hypostatic inherence in the Logos is the same as participation in his person.

----------------

 

Part II of "The Universe as ‘Hypostatic Inherence’ in the Logos of God"
from Light from the East: Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Alexei Nesteruk
Pages 114-117


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Another example, which illustrates what the existence in a hypostasis or person means, can be brought from a sphere of theological anthropology, which asserts that "man is hypostasis [personality] of the cosmos, is conscious and person self-expression; it is he who give meaning to things and who has to transfigure them. For the universe, man it is hope to receive grace and to be united with God." The universe as the expressed and articulated existence is possible only in human hypostasis, that is, it acquires some qualities of existence if it is reflected in the personality of humanity. Using the words of Masximus the Confessor, every intellection about the universe inheres as a quality in an apprehending being. The universe thus acquires qualitative existence in the being who apprehends it. The link between the universe as articulated existence and the apprehending being is not ontological, but rather hypostatic or personal. A Patristic theologian would say that existence of the universe as the articulated existence is hypostatic existence, that is, the universe is enhypostatic.

Can, then, hypostatic human beings, because of apprehension of the universe as inherent in the Logos, interact with the Logos and change him? Maximus the Confessor has already prepared a response to this by saying that the Logos, who is beyond intellection, unites himself to human intellection, which is purified from any manifold and temporality, and makes it his own, giving it rest from those things which by nature change and diversify it with many conceptual forms they impose upon it. This means that human intellection of the universe does not affect the Logos, which is beyond intellection. The link between the Logos and the world is not subject to temporal change and instability of nature, which human intellect operates with. The world is in the hypostasis of the Logos of God from ages to ages, so that the Logos experiences the world as being in rest from his works, "just as God did from His (Gen. 2:2; Heb. 4:10). "

One should not think that the ideas about "hypostasis" are some outdated relics of the old tradition, which have no links with modern philosophical development and its fusion with theology. For example, the term hypostasis was used by a contemporary French phenomenological philosopher Emmanuel Levinas in a very special way that will be useful for elucidating our thought. Levinas puts a stress on the difference between the transitive existence of beings, through relationships, for example, and the absolutely intransitive element of one’s own existing as freed from intentionality and relationship. The existent and its existing do not coincide in every creature. For it, according to Levinas, the existent "contracts" its existing, if forms an event which he calls hypostasis. One can say that the hypostatic existence of human beings, as existents (and of the whole humankind), is the event of contracting by them their existing. What will happen, then, if we consider the situations when the existent cannot contract it’s own existing, but can be existent in the existing of the other? Are we still obliged to talk about the "event" of hypostatic existence? For example, some physical object has no inclination to perceive it own existence. This means that it is existent without its own existing. But, at the same time, the same object can be articulated in the existing of a human being, so that it contracts its existing in the other, that is, in the human being. A human being, being itself a hypostatic event, makes the contraction of an existent physical object its existing in the apprehension of human being an event, so that the "hypostatic inherence" of a physical object, in the knowing subject, has some features of temporality and emergence, which follow from the event of human hypostasis. The situation drastically changes if the existent receives its existing from the Logos of God whose hypostatic ever-being is not involved in any chain of worldly relations and events; in this case the "hypostatic inherence" as contraction by the universe of its existing in the hypostasis of the Logos of God has no features of emergence and temporality. This is the reason why we do not want to express the existence of the universe in the person of the Logos of God, in order to deliver the reader from the temptation to think about the universe as "personalized" by the Logos. Personalization is an emergent notion usually applied to something which has already been in existence. This is why the Greek term enhypostasization would be more appropriate for us in order to affirm that "the universe is enhypostasized by the Logos of God." We express this thought by using the language of "hypostatic inherence" in order to make it easier for a modern reader to comprehend the term; by so doing we avoid the danger of affirming the link between God and the world in emergent terms.

The creation and existence of the universe thus can be seen as enhypostatic in two senses: (1) the universe as mere nature exists in the hypostasis of the Logos; (2) but the very knowledge of this, that is, the transcendence beyond substance from within the universe, can only be achieved if nature is contemplated in the human hypostases (which in turn exist in the hypostasis of the Logos.) The universe thus acquires the features of its hypostatic inherence in a twofold sense: in the Logos of God who brings the matter into existence through His effected words, and in hypostatic human beings, who through analysis and differentiation of this matter lead the universe to self-awareness of its purpose and end, that is, to realized existence in and for God. It is in this sense that one can argue that human beings are co creators of the universe: the universe is brought into being as the meaningful and self-conscious existence in the personhood of humanity. The universe, as articulated existence in the human hypostasis, can be treated in turn as the hypostatic event, contingent upon the human phenomenon, which constitutes an element of God’s economy for salvation.

One then concludes that the link between the Logos of God and the universe is hypostatic, that is, the universe is seen as hypostatic inherence in the Logos of God. But this signifies that one the universe is apprehended by us in its connection and unity with the primordial ground of the Logos, it becomes for us something greater and other than "only the universe," because the specific "worldly" character of the universe is overcome without the universe itself being "removed" or "eliminated." The meaninglessness of the universe, its pure factuality and impersonality, its indifference to the Divine truth, are overcome. This signifies that the presence of God in the world can only be detected through manifestations of the enhypostatic mode of the world’s existence.

A word of caution must be said if one attempts to treat the notion of the hypostatic inherence in terms of the bilateral relationship between God and the world. We stress the Patristic belief that God is hypostatic being but the world is not. Since the link between God and the world is hypostatic (as we have argued above), any bilateral relationship between God and the world would only be possible if the world as the world might be understood as the relationship between two persons: God and the world. But it is exactly at this point that our position states clearly that the created world as such is not hypostasis at all, it has a mode of existence which is inherent in the hypostasis of the Logos of God, and that is why the relationship between the Logos and the world is established through the one-way diastema, that is, as the permeation from God to the world, but not vice versa.

The claim of the so-called generic panentheism about the bilateral relationship between God and the world, as seen through Patristic eyes, runs the risk of affirming something similar to the old Patristic idea of perichoresis (co-inherence) of God to the world. Certainly this similarity must be analyzed which caution, for it must no be understood as analogous to the Trinitarian formula of co-inherence as interpenetration and mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity (in would be a theological nonsense to affirm that created nature is capable of interpenetrating the Divine. ) It can rather be paralleled with perichoresis in the christological context as the interchange and reciprocity of the human nature with the divine nature in Christ. Then, by analogy, one might affirm panentheistically the perichoresis of the Divine and the created in the sense of "interchange" and "reciprocity" (bilateral relationship) between God and the world. But even in this, so to speak "weak" form of the perichoresis, panentheism must not forget the origin of this perichoresis, i.e. that it proceeds from the personhood of the Divinity, not from the matter of the world. The Divine, having once permeated through the world, bestows on its matter an ineffable perichoresis with itself. The interchange or reciprocity of the Divine and the created is ultimately initiated and held by the hypostasis of the Logos of God. One can see again that the process of the Divine permeation of the world is one-sided and entirely determined by the Logos himself. This has been demonstrated by God through the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus Christ.

The world as such has no hypostasis of its own and cannot initiate and sustain the perichoresis to the Divine. It is possible, however, to speak about hypostatic agencies in the world, i.e. human beings, through whom the world acquires some personal qualities, in the sense we have explained above. Human beings can initiate the interchange between the world and God through the apprehension of the created universe, so that the world, being articulated by human beings, is related to God as its uncreated source. Any panentheistic claim, then, about the world which is brought to godself must be understood in the context of human deification and involvement of the world in the transfiguration, which brings it back to the union with God. But all this is initiated by the Logos of God, who created human beings with such logoi as to allow human beings to relate to God through personal interaction as well as through apprehension of the universe created by him. This is the reason why the universe, being personified by human beings, still exhibits its hypostatic inherence in the Logos of God. Human beings thus become the locus points in creation through whom the evidence of the hypostatic inherence of the universe in the Logos can be seen.

From what we have said above namely, that the presence of God in the universe can be detected only through the enhypostatic mode of the universe’s existence, it is clear that science is closely connected with the articulation of the created nature of things and their foundation in the effected words of God-Person, and it cannot be alienated from theology at all; for, by its function, science articulates the human participation in creation and through it the participation in the relationship between world and God. This relationship is articulated by created human beings who are the inevitable part of this relationship.

Human consciousness thus cannot be alienated from physical research and its theological generalizations, being in fact a part of those equations which drive the whole universe. It is clear, then, that any knowledge of things, and their ultimate foundations (the logoi) must involve subjects of knowledge in the entirety of their human constitution. The theistic inferences made in this perspective have by their constitution the hypostatic dimension pointing toward the source of the personalized existence of everything, that is, to God. The mediation between science and theology then acquires a strong anthropological dimension, which manifests that both modes of articulation of God’s creation—through science discursively and through religion mystically and liturgically—have a common source of origin which is the human intentional subjectivity and transcending spirituality which manifest the essence of human being-in-the-world-with-God.

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FROM PAGE 6 OF ESSENCE/ENERGIES

Theoria said...
Corey:
I'm still seeking some resolution. I'm hearing you, D (and PoW?), argue that a finite being can become infinitized. But, in my thinking, the actuality of infinity belongs solely to God; it is the Essence beyond human capacities. So, to me, it seems that you are collapsing the very distinction that you've been working so hard to establish. I'm confused.

What I was trying to get at was this: I believe that Creation has infinitude hidden within it because of it's origination and essential purpose: the SELF-REVELATION of God's infinite beauty. To me, things like fractals, pi, and other stuff are indications of this hidden infinitude. But this capacity for infinitude in finite relations essentially deals with what Greg calls the contingent "inexhaustible expression" of God's beauty. I think that the qualititative distinction that you are looking for is not the existence of infinitude per se in some thing, specifically since we are dealing with a RELATIONAL/AESTHETIC metaphysic. This is what Greg says...

From Trinity and Process...page 378-379 (emphases mine) The section is called: "The Trinity and the Beauty of God: The Unsurpassable Intensity and Inexhaustible Expression of God's Triune Beauty"

"Since God has freely chosen to actualize God's potentiality to be Creator to a non-divine world, God can create and appreciate the aesthetic value (and hence the moral value) of a non-divine world. The world becomes part of God's concrete contingent experience, and is, in this sense, constitutive of God. To this extent, we side with Hartshorne over and against the classical tradition.

But we further hold, this God-defining zenith of aesthetic intensity has been constituted in the triune sociality of God from eternity. This is necessary, and as such it is neither increased or diminished by the contingent and temporal affairs of the world. Rather, God's experience of the contingent world--indeed, the entirety of God's "contingent pole" --serves to express the eternal divine intensity of Gd's triune self-experience.

Hence, God enjoys the world--the world "means something" to God--not as an essential element in God's necessary self-constitution, but as an expression of God's self-constitution. The world provides new occasion for the unsurpassable beauty of God, defined in terms of divine intensity, to be expressed and in a sense "repeated" in a novel form.

The entire process of the contingent, temporal order, then can be said to be constituted by God's aim at expressing Godself--the infinite delight of the triune sociality--ad extra. Since God's deity-defining intensity of aesthetic satisfaction is infinite, the potential for expressing this delightful beauty is inexhaustible.

Hartshorne rightly argues that the possibilities for finite harmonies has no upper limit. (Theoria's Note: This is EXACTLY what Sri Aurobindo says about the connections that the Overmind and Supermind make) But the endlessness of these possibilities does not necessitate the endless increase of the intensity of God's self-defining experience: it rather necessitates the inexhaustible richness of the contingent ways in which God can express this One's insurpassable intensity. An eternity of progress shall not exhaust it.

Only Big-G God has unsurpassable intensity of beautiful experience. Only God has any dimensions of infinity essentially and necessarily. This doesn't mean that the finite world cannot have expressive forms of the infinity that God IS within it.

I hope this helps.

FROM PAGE 6 OF ESSENCE ENERGIES

Theoria said...
What Sri Aurobindo basically says about WHY the Absolute created...

The Universe Created for Further Delight/Ananda
The Absolute wished even greater Delight, the delight of being in infinite and diverse forms in a created universe. Thus the further and greater delight was the reason for creation. [Delight is the secret, the purpose and reason of creation, of why the One manifest the creation (the Many. Delight of Being (Ananda) moving to delight of Becoming is the root reason for the creation.].

************************************

From Greg...(emphases mine)

"The entire process of the contingent, temporal order, then can be said to be constituted by God's aim at expressing Godself--the infinite delight of the triune sociality--ad extra. Since God's deity-defining intensity of aesthetic satisfaction is infinite, the potential for expressing this delightful beauty is inexhaustible."

My, my, my!

 

Whether a model is cards (2-D or 3-D) or rivers, they HAVE to be complex (yet clear) enough to handle a sub-concept such as "remain beyond" to be of much use.

 

(Bradshaw as author)   

There are here two distinct ways in which God can be referred to as Time. One is in reference to time in the proper sense, "the procession of the goodness of God in creating sensibles." Time in this sense is God just as any of the divine processions is God, although He also remains beyond it as its source. (Indeed, it was "once at rest in He Who Always Is," prior to its shining forth in the creation of the sensible world.) Second there is time as "the movement of temporal intervals," that which is measured by time in the first sense. God can also be called Time in this sense, just as He can be called by the name of any of His creatures, since they pre-exist in Him as their cause. By way of analogy, we might distinguish two ways in which God can be referred to as the Good: goodness as a divine procession, and "the good" as referring collectively to those creatures that partake of the Good in the first sense. John (John of Scythopolis) is careful to qualify this second way of referring to God as Time by the adjectives "supereternally and timelessly," so as to make it clear that in using the name of creatures for God there is no diminishment of divine transcendence.

 

http://www.uky.edu/~dbradsh/papers/Christian%20Approach%20to%20Phil%20of%20Time.pdf

FROM PAGE 7 OF ESSENCE/ENERGIES

jefscott said...
The only way I could imagine us not knowing anything of God's essence is if God's becoming is so radical that, like Corey says, God is not even temporal, sans creation. If God is not essentially temporal, then I would definitely say that all we know of Him as a person is contingent only. Because if He is atemporal, then I would have to conclude that He has not always been a person.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 7/26/2007 10:43:56 AM (GMT-5)

OK, WHAT DO WE MAKE OF THIS? (below) WHAT DOES IT MEAN? WHAT DOES IT NOT MEAN?

THEN, SECONDLY, WHAT DOES THAT OFFER TO, FOR, OR IN OPPOSITION TO OTHER THOUGHTS WE'VE HAD?

(Dionysius) "Viewing time and eternity as divine processions is a striking innovation, but it also raises many questions. Most obviously, what becomes of the traditional view that time is a feature of the physical cosmos? How can this be, if it is also a divine procession, and thus one way of apprehending God himself?"

"A Christian Approach to the Philosophy of Time."        http://www.uky.edu/~dbradsh/papers/Christian%20Approach%20to%20Phil%20of%20Time.pdf

 

 

LOOKING AT JUST A LITTLE BIT AT A TIME...

(by John of Scythopolis) "...notes repeatedly that God is eternal by Himself being Eternity, whereas creatures are eternal by partaking of eternity.²⁵ Yet he does not neglect that God can also be identified with Time."

 

 

(article's author--Bradshaw)   

There are here two distinct ways in which God can be referred to as Time. One is in reference to time in the proper sense, "the procession of the goodness of God in creating sensibles." Time in this sense is God just as any of the divine processions is God, although He also remains beyond it as its source. (Indeed, it was "once at rest in He Who Always Is," prior to its shining forth in the creation of the sensible world.) Second there is time as "the movement of temporal intervals," that which is measured by time in the first sense. God can also be called Time in this sense, just as He can be called by the name of any of His creatures, since they pre-exist in Him as their cause. By way of analogy, we might distinguish two ways in which God can be referred to as the Good: goodness as a divine procession, and "the good" as referring collectively to those creatures that partake of the Good in the first sense. John (Scythopolis) is careful to qualify this second way of referring to God as Time by the adjectives "supereternally and timelessly," so as to make it clear that in using the name of creatures for God there is no diminishment of divine transcendence.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 7/29/2007 11:24:44 AM (GMT-5)

test

THIS is for Jefscott and SerialForeknowledge.

Clete, I'm going to bed now. But I found something I can post here for you tomorrow.

Bruce

Here is something I read last night, that goes well with the intent of this thread, to go "deeper" on the topic of time.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, "The Orthodox Way," from the chapter called "Epilogue: God as Eternity," pages 137-138

A Journey into the Infinite

This resurrection kingdom, in which we shall by God's mercy dwell with our soul and body reunited, is in the third place a kingdom which shall have "no end". Its eternity and infinity are beyond the scope of our fallen imagination, but of two things at any rate we may be sure. First, perfection is not uniform but diversified. Secondly, perfection is not static but dynamic.

First, eternity signifies an inexhaustible variety. If it is true of our experience in this life that holiness is not monotonous but always different, must this not be true also, and to an incompara­bly higher degree, of the future life? God promises to us: "To him that overcomes will I give...a white stone, and on the stone a new name written, which no man knows except the one who receives it" (Rev. 2:17). Even in the Age to come, the inner meaning of my unique personhood will continue to be eternally a secret between God and me. In God's kingdom each is one with all the others, yet each is distinctively himself, bearing the same de-lineaments as he had in this life, yet with these characteristics healed, renewed and glorified. In the words of St Isaias of Sketis:

The Lord Jesus in his mercy grants rest to each according to his works—to the great according to his greatness and to the little according to his littleness; for he said, "In my Father's house are many mansions" (John 14:2). Though the kingdom is one, yet in the one kingdom each finds his own special place and his own special work.

Secondly, eternity signifies unending progress, a never-ceas­ing advance. As J.R.R. Tolkien has said, "Roads go ever ever on". This is true of the spiritual Way, not only in the present life, but also in the Age to come. We move constantly onwards. And it is forward that we go, not back. The Age to come is not simply a return to the beginning, a restoration of the original state of perfection in Paradise, but it is a fresh departure. There is to be a new heaven and a new earth; and the last things will be greater than the first.

"Here below", says Newman, "to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." But is this the case only here below? St Gregory of Nyssa believed that even in heaven perfec­tion is growth. In a fine paradox he says that the essence of perfection consists precisely in never becoming perfect, but in always reaching forward to some higher perfection that lies be­yond. Because God is infinite, this constant "reaching forward" or epektasis, as the Greek Fathers termed it, proves limitless. The soul possesses God, and yet still seeks him; her joy is full, and yet grows always more intense. God grows ever nearer to us, yet he still remains the Other; we behold him face to face, yet we still continue to advance further and further into the divine mystery. Although strangers no longer, we do not cease to be pilgrims. We go forward "from glory to glory" (2 Cor. 3:18), and then to a glory that is greater still. Never, in all eternity, shall we reach a point where we have accomplished all that there is to do, or discovered all that there is to know. "Not only in this present age but also in the Age to come," says St Irenaeus, "God will always have something more to teach man, and man will always have something more to learn from God."

 

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 12/3/2007 10:14:34 AM (GMT-6)