Eternal Life: The Life of the Age to Come

In the next few posts, I hope to sustain a series of reflections on the meaning of Christian belief in “the life of the Age (World) to Come” which we profess in the Creed, and its implications for Christian discipleship.

What do Christians mean by “eternal life”? For most people, the term refers to never-ending existence in a place called “heaven,” where some (good) people go after they die. The more sophisticated among us might have “matured” beyond the expectation of meeting angels with harps or St. Peter at the pearly gates, but heaven still remains some sort of “destination” to which we are journeying, to which we hope to go to have “eternal life”. “When we get to heaven…”—sentences that begin like this are all part of every day “Christianese”. Since the world is a bad and miserable existence, according to such a view, the aim of the Christian life is to get the heck out of dodge. While Christians are still “on earth,” they must remember that heaven is their “true home,” and to try to take as many people as possible with them to that place where true happiness lies. Christianity, then, becomes a sort of Great Escape from this world, and Jesus is its Pioneer.

But that, I argue, is not the understanding of “eternal life” that is given to us in Scripture and Tradition. Rather, according to these, “eternal life” is something we can already experience in the present, a life that begins now, since its essence is knowing the one true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (John 17.3). In other words, eternal life has already begun for the one who knows God and Jesus Christ. It is not merely a carrot held out by God to lure us into moral living so that we can possess it after we die. To see this more clearly, we have to understand what the term “eternal life” would have meant for people in Jesus’ day.

By the first century AD, many Jewish thinkers divided history into two periods or ages: “the Present Age” (ha ‘olam ha-zeh) and “the Age to Come” (ha ‘olam ha-ba). The Present Age (or “this age”) referred to the world and the times in which they were living then: an age permeated by the forces of evil (as evidenced by the pagan domination of Israel), in which all creation was subject to the bondage of sin and death. These Jews strained forward, however, to hope in a future time, the Age to Come, in which the God of Israel would come to save not only His chosen people but also all of creation through His Messiah and reign over the renewed creation in justice, righteousness and peace. This was the age of glory promised by the prophets of Israel such as Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and, perhaps most important of these, Daniel. The Age to Come was also the age of resurrection: the God of Israel would conquer death and restore the life that was lost at the very beginning of the biblical story. Take, for example, this passage from Isaiah, in which God promises:

For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. (Isaiah 65.17-19)

Many people in Jesus’ day held to this understanding of the two ages. This is exemplified in the following Jewish text from the first century AD:

This present world is not the end; the full glory does not abide in it….But the day of judgment will be the end of this age and the beginning of the immortal age to come, in which corruption has passed away, sinful indulgence has come to an end, unbelief has been cut off, and righteousness has increased and truth has appeared….The Most High made this world for the sake of many, but the world to come for the sake of few.” (4 Ezra 7.112-115; 8.1)

Most importantly, the New Testament itself bears witness to this belief in the two ages. Not surprising, of course, since Jesus and most of its authors Jewish, after all. Here are a few examples of this two-fold division of history:

And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. (Matthew 12.32)

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. (Mark 10.29-30; see also Luke 18.29-30)

…[T]hose who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come… (Hebrews 6.4-5)

In the second text quoted above, Jesus says the “eternal life” is what is given in “the Age to Come”. Thus, “eternal life” is not simply never-ending existence, but the life of the Age to Come. The passage from Hebrews elaborates on this life. It states the Christians have already “tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the Age to Come”. According to the early Christians, that Age had already been set in motion by Jesus Christ, especially in His passion, death and resurrection. He was the Messiah who had come to inaugurate the long-promised ha ‘olam ha-ba. The two Ages were now overlapping, as it were, but the Present Age was fading and giving way to the fullness of the Age to Come, “in which corruption has passed away, sinful indulgence has come to an end, unbelief has been cut off, and righteousness has increased and truth has appeared,” to quote the author of 4 Ezra. Although the full blessings of the Age to Come had not yet arrived, those who were baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection had already begun to experience its life. The Apostle Paul put it this way:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:3-4)

This “newness of life,” therefore, isn’t something that Christians experience only on the other side of death; it is already in us now, by virtue of our baptism. The re-creation of the cosmos, “the new heavens and new earth” foretold by Isaiah, has been inaugurated by the Messiah. It breaks into the Present Age every time someone enters into the death and resurrection of Jesus. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5.17).

This is what Scripture and Tradition teach us, if we let them: “eternal life,” the life of the Age to Come, has already begun for all who are in Christ. Hence, we sing at every Divine Liturgy those words inspired by Hebrews 6.4-5, in which we celebrate the life that has been poured out to us:

We have seen the true light!
We have received the heavenly Spirit!
We have found the true faith!
Worshiping the Undivided Trinity, who has saved us!

A Jagged Little Pill

I’m still digesting this, and hope to post some reflections about it sometime in the near future.

The World Crept into the Church

The apostle John writes to the first Christians: “Do not love the world and the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 Jn 2.15-16).

But the day would come, when the Church would want to be powerful with the same power of the world and wise with the wisdom of the world and rich with the riches of the world. And God “has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts” (Lk 1.51).

Emperor Constantine was baptized and the religion of Christ, until then persecuted, humiliated and poor, became the religion of the State. Churchmen were linked to the empire and conflicts and divisions penetrated the Church of Jesus Christ.

Bishops of Rome would be popes “gloriously reigning” and the successors of Peter, Paul and the other apostles, formerly persecuted until martyrdom, would be enthroned in churches, opposite the emperor. Pontiffs, here and there, qualified as Princes of the Church, would borrow imperial regalia: the tunic, the cappamagna, the toga, the crook, the miter or imperial crown, taking the place of the robe of mockery, the reed of derision, and the crown of thorns imposed on Christ in his passion.

And more, the successors of the apostles, whom Saint Paul qualified as “despised, being hungry and thirsty, refuse of the world, offscouring of all things” would seek the easy life, comfort and luxury; they would enrich themselves, and have themselves honored as a privileged class. In brief, they would seek to install themselves at best in the “earthly city,” forgetting “the city which is to come” (Heb 13.14). They would have themselves acclaimed without ceasing in each office and on each occasion by this wish for long life: Ad multos annos! Eis polla eti! For many years, Master! One would say that the dearest wish for the successors of the martyred apostles is to live indefinitely on earth.

Considering all this, what do we have in common with those “vagabond” apostles of Christ, Paul, Peter and the others?

And the hierarchs, charged with communicating the life of Christ to men, would one day, with the connivance of emperors, arrogate to themselves the right of life and death over the children of God, unscrupulously executing those who did not share their opinions and the letter of their faith, forgetting that faith is a gratuitous gift of God.

These are not the type of men who would gather believers around the crucified Jesus and the Eucharistic table and who would bring about communion of hearts and spirits, as enjoyed by the first Christian communities. It is necessary to seek this communion from the “little brothers” and the “little sisters” of Jesus Christ, either in hidden cloistered life, or in the midst of the world, in obscure and daily labor of fathers and mothers who generously bear the concerns of a family, living from day to day.

No, Christian unity would not be brought about by pastors of the churches, of whom it is written: “Awake, O sword against my shepherd,…says the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd, that the sheep may be scattered” (Zech 13.7).

Archbishop Elias Zoghby, Ecumenical Reflections, pp. 7-8

Dr. Bradley Nassif on St. John Chrysostom

I’ve always found enlightening the “Simply Orthodox” podcasts by Dr. Bradley Nassif on Ancient Faith Radio.  They are concise, substantial and challenging.  His latest two are on St. John Chrysostom, focusing especially on this father’s social thought and the great emphasis he placed on the knowledge of Scripture.  They are well worth the time, but be forewarned that they are “teethed” and could change the way you think about things.

While you’re there, I also recommend two other episodes from this series: the ones on St. Symeon the New Theologian (Nov 2, 2007) and Fr. Alexander Schmemann (Oct 12, 2007).

Il Poverello and Fasting: Two Stories

Well, we’re almost two weeks into the Nativity Fast, and apart from a tasty accident while I was at McDonald’s for breakfast one morning (hey, I was traveling) and a brief suspension of self-restraint at Thanksgiving Dinner, I’m practically a stylite.

For your edification and encouragement during this Fast, I present two stories about a hero of mine, St. Francis of Assisi.

Brother Sylvester, the first priest in his Order, having fallen into an illness of languor brought on by excess in his mortifications, had a wish to eat some grapes. Francis, having been informed of it, hastened to procure him this relief. He took him, as well as he could, into the vineyard of one of his friends which was near the convent, and, having made him sit down near a plant of vine, he blessed it, and ordered him to eat the grapes, and ate some with him. As soon as the sick man had eaten of them, he found himself perfectly cured, and he frequently afterwards related the circumstance to his brethren with tears in his eyes as a proof of the love the holy father bore to his children….

One night, this prudent and charitable Father came to know that one of his children who had fasted too rigidly could not sleep on account of the hunger which oppressed him. Not to leave him in so deplorable a state, he sent for him, offered him some bread, and pressed him to eat of it, eating some himself first to give him confidence. The friar got over the shyness he at first felt, and took the nourishment he so greatly required, being well pleased to have been relieved from the peril his life was in, by the prudence and kindness of the Saint, and to see so edifying an example.

Fr. Candide Chalippe, The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi

Help, save, have mercy on, keep

In a previous post, I tried to say something about the two-pronged emphasis on the mercy of God and the brokenness of man in the Byzantine tradition. Yesterday, I was struck by these words in the Divine Liturgy:

Help us, save us, have mercy on us and keep us, O God, by Thy grace.

The words seem so stack, one on top of the other, each layer carrying our cry further and further into the heart of God: help, save, have mercy on, keep….

It is only the grace of God, we confess, that does all this. Embedded in this prayer is the conviction that apart from grace, our worlds would fall to pieces and our lives unravel, fray, fracture, shatter. After all, we human beings are fragile creatures of skin and bone with no hold on anything, really, much less our own existence. Take away grace, and we’ll instantaneously return to that from which we were made—dust, and from dust to that from which it was made, which is nothing.

Nothing is something to think about. Our first parents were convinced that they could have life apart from God. They chose and lived by that lie. And I? No matter how much sin has ruined my life, no matter how much I am wounded by it, I am constantly tempted to make that same mistake. But this prayer is full of sobriety. It wakes me up. Which is why I need to pray it again and again.