HOw do we enter eternity without changing it?

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MarcoPG

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Did God create eternity is not the quesiton!

Hello 😛
That God created eternity is also an issue, because if it was there with God, it would be God, so I think eternity is a negation of time and space, and a concept we made to understand better, not fully. Or is God eternity itself?

Well, but the quesiton is: Eternity is unchangeable, isn’t it? How do we enter it without changing it? Or can it perhaps change?

Is it right to think that according to catholic doctrine, we are already where we will be, just potentially as long as we live?
For instance, if I commit mortal sin, I am already in Hell, but this can change with Confession, so Eternity is only potential and ineffable as long as we are here…we lack of words, or am I too stupid to find some?

Thank you for your thoughts
 
HUMAN TIME SHARES IN GOD’S ETERNITY
Pope John Paul II

Holy Father reflects on mystery of Christ’s Incarnation during Vespers on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1996.
  1. “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, … so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5).
We have reached the end of a solar year: in a few hours 1996 will give way to the new year, after reaching, so to speak, its chronological fullness and the climax of the journey begun 366 days ago.

We could say that the expression “when the time had fully come” has a “historical” value because it reminds us that the year now ending is bringing us rapidly closer to the beginning of the third millennium. Nevertheless, with this phrase in the Letter to the Galatians St Paul wishes to call to mind a deeper dimension which refers to all that was fulfilled in the cave at Bethlehem: “God sent forth” into the world “his Son, born of woman” (Gal 4:4). The mysterious event of the Holy Night lives again in these words: the only-begotten and eternal Son of God “by the power of the Holy Spirit became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made man” (Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed). He entered the history of mankind and, as it were, surpassed it.

Called to be God’s adoptive children

Can God’s entry into history be otherwise defined than as a transcending of history itself? When God became man, time, in its sequence of years, centuries and millenniums, was brought into the dimension of divine eternity: in fact, by coming into the world through his Only-Begotten Son, God wanted to unite the dimensions of time and eternity. Referring to this, today’s liturgy makes us aware of a new vision: by the Incarnation of the Word, human time is called to share in the eternity of God.

…
 
WE do not change eternity because we are entirely conformed to it. When two things are entirely the same, there is no change by the combining of them.

That is my simple thought on the matter.

Peace
James
 
I’ve understood eternity as a state of existence which encompasses all of time and space.
 
Amandil said:
I’ve understood eternity as a state of existence which encompasses all of time and space.
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I understand, but I wouldn’t think of it that way. surey God sees all of time and space at once, but eternity os not only one eternal present, but also it doesn’t change, so it is not even “present” in dinstinction to past or future. It has no end, like aeveternity, but it also has no beginning. Thus it is more than just all of time and space together in a present. I guess it is the best we people can say about it, true 🙂

Saint Augustine says god is the author of eternity, or the source of it. This makes me think we do not change eternity, we are changed by it, as said by someone else.
 
Sorry I can’t edit anymore

…following my previous thought: the issue is eternity is immutable. So how do we enter it without changing it, because there is a time we aren’t in eternity (at least not fully?), and then we will be. How is this not a change?

It may be that eternity contains the possibility of us being there. That would be change, too. Potentiality is change.
The only possibility for that to be true is that eternity is an attribute of God, Whose will is eternal creative action and dynamism. And we know God’s will is also God love, which brings eternity but also freedom into existence. This really cannot be understood without revelation. God will is above everything, including eternity.

Or maybe we already are in eternity, but I wouldn’t get it either. 😊
 
MarcoPG said:
Did God create eternity is not the quesiton!

Hello 😛
That God created eternity is also an issue, because if it was there with God, it would be God, so I think eternity is a negation of time and space, and a concept we made to understand better, not fully. Or is God eternity itself?

Well, but the quesiton is: Eternity is unchangeable, isn’t it? How do we enter it without changing it? Or can it perhaps change?

Is it right to think that according to catholic doctrine, we are already where we will be, just potentially as long as we live?
For instance, if I commit mortal sin, I am already in Hell, but this can change with Confession, so Eternity is only potential and ineffable as long as we are here…we lack of words, or am I too stupid to find some?

Thank you for your thoughts
Click to expand...
There are, if you will, different kinds of eternity. God is eternal, because being the Uncreated Creator, He is completely outside of time. He has neither beginning nor end.

All creatures have a beginning: all of them receive their being from God. Some creatures–the spiritual ones; that is, men and angels–have a beginning, but no end. That is, God has decreed that they should receive their being from Him, and never lose it. Merely material creatures, however, cease to exist when they perish.

Strictly speaking, then, only God is eternal: only He is without beginning and without end.

Merely material creatures are strictly temporal: they have a beginning and an end.

Spiritual creatures (men and angels), however, possess a kind of eternity, because they have no end. Philosophers call the situation of spiritual creatures “aeviternity.”

So, when we say that we “enter eternity,” it is, basically, a figure of speech for going to Heaven (or Hell); that is, the final, permanent state that we will have after death. We change nothing of God’s eternity (or any other attribute of God, for that matter) by going to our final destiny.
 
I hope I still can post in this thread :o

So the Incarnation is another question: I can see why when GOd took on a human nature, He Himself wouldn’t change. But the fact that he takes it in time, does it change eternity, sinc there was a moment when he hadn’t this human nature? In eternity, did he have a body? I would say no. But how then can Jesus ascend and return to eternity with a body, since in eternity he didn’t have one?

It may be that in the eternal now he always had a body, but not taken on yet. But that doesn’t realy make it clearer. It would have been a potential body, but in God there is no potentiality, since he is pure and immmediate action, even if this is no movement nor change…mh. It’s complicated to see how God would have foreseen in the eternal now that he would take on a body without already having it in this same eternal now.
 
MarcoPG said:
Did God create eternity is not the quesiton!

Hello 😛
That God created eternity is also an issue, because if it was there with God, it would be God, so I think eternity is a negation of time and space, and a concept we made to understand better, not fully. Or is God eternity itself?

Well, but the quesiton is: Eternity is unchangeable, isn’t it? How do we enter it without changing it? Or can it perhaps change?

Is it right to think that according to catholic doctrine, we are already where we will be, just potentially as long as we live?
For instance, if I commit mortal sin, I am already in Hell, but this can change with Confession, so Eternity is only potential and ineffable as long as we are here…we lack of words, or am I too stupid to find some?

Thank you for your thoughts
Click to expand...
I look to Judaism for the answer to the question, the Tanya. The problem as you have your issue stated is an assumption that we somehow exist independently from God; Judaism, on the other hand, believes that nothing exists besides God. If we were to come to God face-to-face, we would simply cease to exist
 
Robert_Sock said:
I look to Judaism for the answer to the question, the Tanya. The problem as you have your issue stated is an assumption that we somehow exist independently from God; Judaism, on the other hand, believes that nothing exists besides God. If we were to come to God face-to-face, we would simply cease to exist
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Thank you Robert,
What about the post previous to yours?
 
MarcoPG said:
I hope I still can post in this thread :o

So the Incarnation is another question: I can see why when GOd took on a human nature, He Himself wouldn’t change. But the fact that he takes it in time, does it change eternity, sinc there was a moment when he hadn’t this human nature? In eternity, did he have a body? I would say no. But how then can Jesus ascend and return to eternity with a body, since in eternity he didn’t have one?

It may be that in the eternal now he always had a body, but not taken on yet. But that doesn’t realy make it clearer. It would have been a potential body, but in God there is no potentiality, since he is pure and immmediate action, even if this is no movement nor change…mh. It’s complicated to see how God would have foreseen in the eternal now that he would take on a body without already having it in this same eternal now.
Click to expand...
With the fence that I built, it was an object in my thoughts, complete, long before it was an object around our home. I knew it, knew it would one day be an object others could see and know as I knew it before it was knowable to them.

Then what I knew as a complete object in my thoughts with a known date of when others would experience it began to be “conceived” in the real world - CAD drawings on my computer, my habits of design laying out the material structure. It was not different than I had known and still know as a complete fence in my thoughts, and what I was doing now in conceiving it was also known in my thoughts from the beginning.

Finally I began digging post holes, cutting timbers, pouring concrete in the post holes around the posts, nailing boards between the posts, etc., all of which were always known as the fence becoming flesh, the fence that was always a known object to me.

And now the fence I know is visible to the world, with its accidental defects of bent nails, knot holes, etc.

In God, Jesus was always known, always known as at the right time being also known by us and always known as at the right time ascending to heaven.

This is a similitude, maybe not the best, but I look at the way God knows, being rational, as similar to how I know, within myself and then with what I make known to others. I know always (so to speak) while my neighbors only know what they can see concerning what I know. My knowing did not leave my thoughts when the fence became real, and then somehow will return to my mind if the fence is ever torn up - the fence is always in me. The Son of the Father never left the knowing of the Father to take on flesh, but the Son joined his knowing to a human intellect of a soul with its body, so that humanly he knew he was the Son of God and human as a human object we all can see. It is as if my fence suddenly had understanding and knew it was not just itself but it was also really the fence in my thoughts, the same being, all the while it was being built, knowing its fullness but also knowing I was nailing on boards.
 
MarcoPG said:
Did God create eternity is not the quesiton!

Hello 😛
That God created eternity is also an issue, …
…
… so Eternity is only potential and ineffable as long as we are here…we lack of words, or am I too stupid to find some?

Thank you for your thoughts
Click to expand...
Nothing is eternal but except God. For eternity there is no the end and for past eternity there is no the beginning. Everything was created in a time so everything has a beginning but except God.

The issue with future!

The entity of something can stand and go on with creative action and manifestation of God. So we can be not eternal but we can be part of eternal creative action and manifestation of God.
 
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