Misapprehending, misrepresenting, misleading, and misdirecting,to start with.
As I said, the problem is that thinking that "eternal" means "still going on." It doesn't.
What is going on is the unrolling of The God's plan. For that, He began by creating time. It's still going on. The Cross-death is not. Christ's substitutionary suffering in sacrifice at the hand of The God is over. It was finished at Calvary. His anguish for disobedient humans is not, neither His suffering for His persecuted saints. The God's progressive revelation is time-dependent. We have not yet got to the point when time and tears shall be no more (Rev. 10:6, 7:7).
I'll worry about "eternal" when it comes.
I'll worry about "eternal" when it comes.
That's what I mean. It won't come; it won't go; it doesn't stay. It IS. It is like "here." There is no "here" until there is space and the possibility of there. But in another sense we can say that eternity is always "here and now."
There was no "before" God created time, because "before" is about time. There is no "after" time ends, because after is about time.
Think about what a clock is. Time is the measure of motion, of change. But God does not change.
It's fun to think of time and motion as a kind of "projection" of eternity, as a two dimensional shadow is a projection of a solid. But it's a weak and problematic analogy.
When we say, as some of us do, that in Christ are united both Divine and Human essences in one person, with no division of the person or confusion of the natures, we are saying that this "leaks," MUST leak into all time and space, but especially that time and space which he occupied and with which he related. So, in Christ's human nature, the Sacrifice is temporal. But in his divine nature it is eternal. And in eternity "once" is equivalent to "now".
So there really is little problem in an accomplishment "once for all" which is still available in this or that time and place.
had we been there, we would have seen a shadow -- a real thing but not the complete thing -- of the Sacrifice. The cosmic victory of Golgotha is only partially visible or temporal ... and so its wonder and power reach back so far that the Fall of Adam and Eve is itself a good thing because it led to so great a redemption by so great a Redeemer. So, even in time, is its transtemporal power and nature. The truth of the fall 'comes true' not until the contest of Golgotha and the triumph of Easter.
I'm not arguing here so much as laying out another view. I don't write this to persuade so much as to describe.