Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: qua

Here are some relevant portions from from St. John of Damascus that you might find to be of interest. I chose him because his summary of Orthodox teaching is one of the most concise and easily accessible summaries of patristic thought. Note that St. John, following his understanding of Scripture and the fathers, indicates that what we humans would consider to be "eternity" is itself a created thing, and that God transcends it.

Interesting as this all is, I do not think I have encountered anywhere in Orthodoxy the idea that man was created outside of time, in the sense of transcending time as God does. I do not recall any Father ever saying that the account in Genesis 2 trumps the account in Genesis 1 -- i.e. that God created man with a physical body and a soul before the creation of a world in which to put him.

Man was certainly created with the intention of his being immortal by grace. But being immortal, as you know, is not at all the same thing as being outside of time. Man was created to exist in an age that is "coextensive with eternity."

With the fall of man and the entrance of death and corruption into the world, the passage of time takes on characteristics that it was never intended to have, so I think that it would be a mistake to say that what Adam and Eve experienced as "temporal" is exactly like what we experience as temporal. We really don't know what that existence was exactly like, but we will, we pray, find out in the age to come. Whatever it is, it will not be outside time and eternity in the way that God is.

I include the final note from St. John on the angels, because I think we would both agree that if man was created outside of time, then certainly the angels were as well. St. John makes clear that because angels are immortal by grace, and not by grace, then without that grace, they would come to a natural end (just as all living things did after the grace of immortality was lost at the time of the fall.) I would therefore have a hard time considering that any created being that is immortal by grace, and not by some property of self-existence, could be outside time.





"Concerning Aeon or Age" (St. John of Damascus):

He created the ages Who Himself was before the ages, Whom the divine David thus addresses, "From age to age Thou art". The divine apostle also says, "Through Whom He created the ages."

It must then be understood that the word age has various meanings, for it denotes many things. The life of each man is called an age. Again, a period of a thousand years is called an age. Again, the whole course of the present life is called an age: also the future life, the immortal life after the resurrection, is spoken of as an age.

Again, the word age is used to denote, not time nor yet a part of time as measured by the movement and course of the sun, that is to say, composed of days and nights, but the sort of temporal motion and interval that is co-extensive with eternity. For age is to things eternal just what time is to things temporal.

Before the world was formed, when there was as yet no sun dividing day from night, there was not an age such as could be measured, but there was the sort of temporal motion and interval that is co-extensive with eternity. And in this sense there is but one age, and God is spoken of as [proaionios] for the age or aeon itself is His creation.

For God, Who alone is without beginning, is Himself the Creator of all things, whether age or any other existing thing. And when I say God, it is evident that I mean the Father and His Only begotten Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, and His all-holy Spirit, our one God.

But we speak also of ages of ages, inasmuch as the seven ages of the present world include many ages in the sense of lives of men, and the one age embraces all the ages, and the present and the future are spoken of as age of age.

Further, everlasting life and everlasting punishment prove that the age or aeon to come is unending. For time will not be counted by days and nights even after the resurrection, but there will rather be one day with no evening, wherein the Sun of Justice will shine brightly on the just, but for the sinful there will be night profound and limitless.

In what way then will the period of one thousand years be counted which, according to Origen, is required for the complete restoration? Of all the ages, therefore, the sole creator is God Who hath also created the universe and Who was before the ages.

And from St. John of Damascus "Concerning Angels":

[An angel] is immortal, not by nature but by grace. For all that has had beginning comes also to its natural end. But God alone is eternal, or rather, He is above the Eternal: for He, the Creator of times, is not under the dominion of time, but above time.



3,378 posted on 03/08/2006 6:02:50 PM PST by Agrarian
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3355 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson