Re: a question for monists

On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 13:19:27 -0500 Jan de Koning <jan@dekoning.ca>
writes:
>
> 3. We will die, yes, but we will be resurrected on the "last day"
> either to
> eternal "life" or to eternal "death." The words in that sentence do
> not
> mean too much in our language. Eternity id not necessarily
> "unending time"
>
> 4. "Time" is part of God's creation, so is "eternity." "Eternity"
> is
> either "eternal bliss" or "eternal punishment", but since we have no
> idea
> of the meaning of "eternity" we cannot say too much about that.
>
> 5. "Being with the Lord" "without sin" is probably the best way of
> expressing it.
>
> 6. The difficulty here is not what I wrote above, but the concepts
> of
> "time" and "eternity". Both are created by God. We are used to
> think in
> three dimensions, when we talk about earthly life. Those dimensions
> can go
> up and down, left and right, forward and backward. "Time", however,
> has
> for us only one direction. Or, has it? We still can talk about
> "earlier"
> and "later".
>
The usual term involved is /aion/, which may be duplicated as "age(s) of
ages." Louw and Nida note three senses: era, universe, world system. Of
the first they say "unlimited duration of time." The duplicated form is
applied to Christ (Revelation 1:18), the lake of fire (20:10) and the
redeemed (22:5). The duration is tied to both Christ and the church in
Ephesians 3:21; Hebrews 7:25 and I Peter 4:11.

I'm not sure what you mean by God creating both time and eternity. There
is a sense of eternity, timelessness, that applies to God, but that is
hardly created. Otherwise, the totality of time is eternity.
Dave
Received on Mon Mar 28 22:01:46 2005