Partaking of the Divine Essence and Eternity

[Trevor_Stamm]

A little thought to throw out there. Perfectly willing to retract if it is flawed and defeated, would like to see where this goes.

It would seem the saints who are in heaven possessing the beatific vision and partaking in the Divine Essence do not possess all abilities of the Divine Essence. Example, eternity is a characteristic of God of which He holds alone. If the saints possessed this quality, they would be outside of time and would have experienced all time that would be and is. They are awaiting their bodies in the resurrection, ergo they do not possess the quality of eternity/timelessness.

We could argue for aeviternity here but one step at a time

Thoughts?

 

[bmullins]

If they are present with God who is outside of time… then how can they be trapped by time away from him?

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

If they are present with God who is outside of time… then how can they be trapped by time away from him?

Not being offensive or provocative so don’t take it the wrong way but,

1. Address the point made.
2. Explain how time “traps” us away from God.

We are not angels created in aeviternity but in time. As it would seem that time and space is the way we express our liturgical worship to God for that is how we were made and that is how we will live forever in a new heavens and new earth in a glorified body.

 

[tonyrey]

Example, eternity is a characteristic of God of which He holds alone. If the saints possessed this quality, they would be outside of time and would have experienced all time that would be and is.

I don’t think it follows from fact that the saints are outside time they experience all time that would be and is. Such experience would amount to omniscience which is beyond the power of anyone except God!

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

I don’t think it follows from fact that the saints are outside time they experience all time that would be and is. Such experience would amount to omniscience which is beyond the power of anyone except God!

Very true.

Found a very interesting quote by Frank Sheed on the subject in Theology and Sanity,

Chapter 11, “Aeviternity is the proper sphere of every created spirit, and therefore of the human soul.
But the soul’s special relation to the matter of the human body gives it a necessary and proper relation to continuous time (which is the body’s duration) which other spirits are not troubled by.
At death, this distracting relation to matter’s time ceases to affect the soul,
so that it can experience its proper aeviternity.”

Chapter 24, “Aeviternity, we have seen in chapter xi, is the proper duration of spirit:
in heaven the spirit abides,
with no distracting awareness of moments flowing away,
nor any weariness from needs or powers unsatisfied to make it restless for change,
in the bliss of a total experience.
Even when the body is restored to it at the Last Day,
its awareness of the body’s less perfect hold upon an abiding present will not be a distraction,
for the body will no longer draw the spirit downward to its own lesser level of being.
The detail of this new relation of soul and body is beyond us;
but the reality of it is certain.”

I rephrase my statement I made in another thread about time and space being our way of liturgical worship to God even when we are in our glorified bodies. It would seem that our continuum will be an aevum state but in a spatial way of existence differing from angel’s aevum state of existence.