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The concept of eternity in patristic theology

Paul Plass
Published online: 30 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Paul Plass (1982) The concept of eternity in patristic theology, Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of
Theology, 36:1, 11-25
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00393388208600005

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Studia Theohgica 36 (1982) pp. 11-25.

The Concept of Eternity in Patristic Theology

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Paul Plass
In early Christian theology 'eternal being' proved to be as elusive
a category as it was important. Nevertheless, though theologians had
not managed to sort everything out with complete conceptual precision, from a fairly early date their definition of eternity is sufficiently nuanced to be useful in answering a variety of questions. It
resembles a broad spectrum composed of several bands which easily
shade into each other across faintly marked lines as occasion demands.
'Eternity' can include:
1. God's own mode of absolutely unified existence, a state which
displays neither duration nor any sort of structure because God is
beyond all categories.
2. Duration which is both endless and changeless and distinct from
time in so far as time, entails change.
3. Duration which is endless but admits change for the better (infinite. approximation to - i.e., love for - God). Along with 2 this is
akin to the Neoplatonic idea that intelligible being is itself nontemporal yet 'strives' in a kind of timeless ontological 'process' to
return to its source.
4. The divine plan behind actual events occurring successively in
time. All of the parts of time (past/present/future) are fully realized
and simultaneously present in the preexisting plan. This is analogous
to the Platonic world of intelligible Forms, which was used in a
variety of ways and especially to rationalize the biblical notions of
providence and predestination.
5. Endless time. Few theologians would have accepted this as a
formal definition of eternity, but it was at points used as a functional,
commonsense definition.
I propose to examine passages from several theologians to illustrate
in detail these phases and their relationships to each other. Discussions of eternity (and time) are notoriously artificial and highly abstract, the more so when taken out of context, but it is precisely

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Paul Plas

those qualities which underscore the perennial difficulty of dealing

with something which lies beyond, or rather athwart human competence.
Gregory of Nyssa provides an initial example of how the definitions interlock to form a flexible tool for theological reflection. The
prime category of created being is extension (diastma), temporal and
spatial, while the Creator is wholly without dimension (Against Eu1
nomius) 1. 246. This contrast suggests simple opposition between the
'line' of time and the 'point' (or something even less) of eternity.
When Gregory says that God is 'always the same' (De Virgin. 296),
God falls at once into our first two categories, for in his own essence
he is beyond man's dimensional grasp, though we are bound to think
of him in terms of endless, changeless duration, 'Everything that is
thought about him always remains the same' (Eunomius 2.186), and
by the same token the highest love (agap) of which we are capable
is a state which is 'equal to being forever the same' (PG 46. 96B).
That is to say, for creatures eternity is conceptually changelessness
and existentially an endlessly enduring love which admits of change
for the better only in so far as it never ceases moving toward the
Creator. Only God himself is truly changeless and, even then, our
grasp of his permanence ('always the same') actually veils a radical
unity beyond duration or any other finite conception.
The conceptual difficulties of delimiting the various phases of transcendence come out again in the ontological scheme outlined in Eunomius 1. 134. Gregory distinguishes among (A) 'pre-eternal' (proaionios) God as cause, (B) the divine 'unextended hypostasis' derived
from the cause, and (C) temporal extended creation. The intermediate phase (B) linking the extremes is the Logos. Gregory grants
that 'if it were possible to show that something beyond creation had
the principle of its being in extension and if everyone could agree
that the notion of extension is applicable prior to created being, it
might make sense to deny the eternity of the Son.' But the Son is in
fact eternal in essence, and his eternity (like that of the Father) is
unextended unity. Other theological principles then fit into place
to bridge the gap between pure eternity and time. The Son is also
distinct from the Father (who is 'pre-eternal') and akin to time in
so far as he is agent of creation and incarnate redeemer. Conversely,
while creatures for their part are essentially extended, they will enjoy
post-temporal endless love, i.e., a state of duration quite different
from ordinary temporal extension.
In Origen, eternity appears in virtually all of its forms and it does so

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13

with characteristic lack of sharp focus. Since it is inadmissible that God

was ever not 'Creator', creation exists
in the sense that
the 'form and shape' of the divine plan are eternally present to him
in Wisdom or the Logos. The substantial phenomenal creation thus
preexists in Wisdom as a world of Forms including 'genera, species
and perhaps individuals as well' (De Princ. 188. 66, 13ff).2 Substantial creation itself has two aspects: an original intelligible reality
consisting of 'minds' (noes) and the spatial/temporal universe occasioned by the fall of minds from their original bliss. The fall is
caused by 'motions' rooted in free will (254. 98, 20), and time accordingly is the 'unsure, fragile' motion of minds (260.102,5) which
contrasts with their original state of stability.
We have, then, no less than four different levels: God, Wisdom,
minds before the fall, minds fallen into time/space/matter. These
junctures naturally tend to generate intermediate stages of being.
For our purposes the second last level - mind before the fall - is most
interesting because it lies on the border between the absolute eternity
of God and time.
If God creates eternally, if time is created along with our universe
and if the created universe therefore has a beginning, there is such
a thing as pre-temporal created being lying between time and the
radical eternity of the Creator. It is called 'mind' and its characteristic is unity. All rational beings (noes) were created the same (254.
98,8f), and after their fallen temporal life they again become 'one
spirit' (262.102,7) in returning to their original kensis with God
(268.97,12; cf. 216.80,If). Mind's original mode of being is in some
respects like that of Platonic intelligible being, but Origen also
thought of it in dynamic terms, i.e., as a spirit world striving toward
God.3 When he says that in the intelligible world minds 'serve God
and do his will', he is in the first instance using biblical phraseology
with its typically temporal overtones, because he can in part think
of the intelligible realm as temporal. At the same time, 'service' is
also a metaphor for a relatively abstract, more truly timeless state
of being described as 'before the aeons' (262.95,14f). Origen, in fact,
borrowed the notion of 'sacred' time and space from Jewish and
Christian Gnosticism.4 They make up a counterwork! combining
temporal and timeless features. So far as the latter are concerned,
sacred time is the pattern of our temporal world, and the use of the
word 'intelligible' (notos) in connection with it indicates the relationship of sacred time to the Platonic intelligible world. So far as
the former is concerned, the biblical tradition conceived of the

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counterworld - the Coming Age - in dynamic dramatic rather than

static structural terms. Hence Origen also speaks of a higher time
consisting of 'aeons' strung together into vast stretches. He is thus
in part simply working with a new scale of time rather than a new
mode of being, but he also envisages something lying beyond the
aeons: ['There is] something more than the aeon or more than
aeons or more than aeons of aeons, I mean that which [obtains]
when all things are not in an aeon but when God is all in all.' (314.
120.17). On the one hand, such language points to God himself,
who is 'above all time, ages and eternity' {tempus, saecula, aetemitas)
while everything else is in 'ages and times' (786.350,2If). Yet in fact
it describes created being: minds 'exist before this age and before
they began to move' because 'God never began to create them' (266),
i.e., though they are not fully coeternal with God they are pretemporal in so far as they were not created at a point in tim. The
original intelligible creation is thought of by Origen as different
from aeonic duration in quality and not merely in quantity; it is
changeless duration anchored in union with God, but changeless
only while it lasts, for a fall into time is possible.
The resurrection is naturally drawn into this complex scheme.
One might expect that, at the resurrection, time would come to an
end and man return to the supratemporal intelligible creation. Origen's peculiar eschatology, however, does not allow anything so
simple. We will not obtain perfected bodies in the twinkling of an
eye. It is rather a progressive matter: 'It will not happen all of a
sudden but gradually and by degrees, during the lapse of infinite amid
immeasurable ages' (658.287,2If). Origen's eschatology is notoriously obscure, but he apparently has in mind the transformation
of body as we know it into a spiritual substance which will continue
to exist in time (i.e., through aeons) until it finally returns as mind
to God. We must envisage vast periods of time running up to a
recapitulation of creation. Time (along with space and matter) is
then transfigured into some sort of supratemporal mode of being.
Origen probably has changeless duration in mind, though he was
later criticized for allowing a degree of change which makes subsequent fall from bliss into material existence possible and thus
renders salvation unsure (cf. 306.117,15f).
His eschatology also provides that at the last judgment God will
cause us to recollect instantaneously the whole of our lives (PG 13:
1204C). We will then transcend the ordinary limits of temporal Ufe
to see its content spread out, present all at once. Origen similarly

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describes in great detail the expansion of our knowledge beyond its

present temporal limitations once we escape our earthly body (444.
186,22ff). (The expansion is finally complete when on reaching the
intelligible world we no longer use 'food', i.e., knowledge of causes,
to 'grow' but to 'maintain' ourselves in a state of perfection: 456.
191, 20f. This distinction between 'growth' and 'maintenance' again
suggests that changing time (the aeons) is succeeded by steady,
changeless duration.) In addition, as we have seen, a supratemporal
summation or simultaneity of events on a much larger scale is part
of his conception of Wisdom as the pattern of creation. The same
idea of a timeless 'presence' of the whole of time appears in his treatment of free will in the Treatise on Prayer (PG 11.436C), where he
argues that though God preserves his sovereign freedom to act as he
sees fit, we can still exercise genuine free will because events in time
are arranged before actual creation to take account of our free will.
In this way time is a chain in which our decisions at each moment
and the foreknowledge of God are woven together. Prayers accordingly are in fact answered on two levels: (1) God foresees and has
eternally answered all requests, (2) he responds at the particular
moment of request. The first level again constitutes a timeless time
in which events that we experience successively stand together simultaneously.5 But Origen's most influential elaboration of the idea of
a timeless pattern of history is the distinction which he makes between
typological events and true 'events' corresponding to them point by
point. The former are historical, the latter timeless.
One must not think that historical events are types of other
historical events . . . they are types of intelligible realities (PG
14. 337D).
The pattern of history is not generated autonomously by the immanent
flow of events but preexists all at once beyond time, and it becomes
plausible to say that events match each other since on that plane
they are simultaneous.
For Clement of Alexandria God himself is definable for the most
part negatively (he is above space, time, name and thought, Stromata
V.XI.71), while the eternity accessible to creatures is thought of in the
familiar terms of 'rest' from the disturbances of time. Accordingly in his
eschatological scheme when souls become equal to angels they reach 'the
Lord's rest and become immutable, eternally steady light, absolutely
changeless' (VII.X.57). Clement's thought is in many respects in-

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fluenced by contemporary Gnosticism, and in a passage from the

Eclogae where it is difficult to separate his views from the Gnostic
exegesis of Scripture with which he is working, angels of the highest
rank are said to turn from providential administration of certain
areas of creation to 'rest and pure contemplation of God' (PG 9.
725B). Again, eternity is 'rest'. Elsewhere Clement identifies the
seven days spent by souk in the meadow [the fixed sphere] in Plato's
myth of Er with 'each motion of the seven [planets].' These seven
days are 'all the active creation [i.e., the created temporal universe]
which hastens toward the goal of rest.' The next stage is the journey
to heaven, i.e., to 'the eighth motion and day' (V.XIV.106).e Since
the eighth day is eternity, Clement appears to be introducing also a
dynamic factor (the eighth motion) into eternal 'rest.' In view of the
fact that he employs the Origenist notion of progress toward perfection after death, motion here may represent that progress. At the
same time the status of such progress is puzzling (is it temporal in
the ordinary sense?) and eighth motion may be designed more
specifically to bridge the gap between God's own mode of eternal
existence and time. It would then (as a 'moving rest' distinct from
both time and God's eternal Ufe) vaguely foreshadow Gregory's conception of infinite love as unbroken uniform duration.
Clement interprets the rest on the seventh day of creation as man's
rest from evils, a rest which prepares the way for the next day, described as 'primal (archegonon) and our true rest' and as .'the first
creation of true light in which all things are seen and possessed' (VI.
XVI. 138). That is to say, the eighth day is Christ's day of resurrection and in reaching it we revert to the first day of creation. Since
as creatures we cannot reach true unity, we see God only in the
Logos, and 'all the things which we see and possess' in the final day
or true rest presumably include the fully realized plan for creation,
since the content of the transtemporal first day of creation is the
intelligible world which serves as a pattern for time. Clement has
something of the sort in mind in another passage (VI.IX.75, 78f)
when he contends that the true gnostic has knowledge of all of creation from beginning to end. The Lord's words, which may be obscure
to others but are clear to him, deal with past, present and future,
and he can foreknow the future by focusing on 'intelligible reality'
and 'copying from the transcendent archetypes his own dispensation
of human affairs.' Information about the course of life can in some
way be read off the fixed transcendent plan of history. As we have
seen, in the hands of Origen such a timeless Platonic overwork! be-

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came the basis for a sophisticated typological interpretation of

history.
Clement, then, uses not only the 'negative' eternity of God's own
ineffable existence but also the 'positive' eternity of (A) timeless realized structure accessible to 'gnostic' insight and of (B) 'rest' combining at once changeless duration and continuing progress.7
When Gregory of Nazianzus speaks of eternity (ain) simply as
beginningless past and endless future (PG 36.320A), he is initially
working with a contrast between unmeasured infinity and the measured finitude of time, i.e., extension, duration or flow remains a
component of eternity.8 But ain is 'neither time nor a part of time' ;
it is a 'time-like movement and extension coextensive with eternal
beings' (the definition reappears in numerous later writers, e.g., John
of Damascus, PG 94.861B; Euthymius, PG 130.157A). Though there
is a fundamental distinction between God and all created beings
(PG 36.248D), some creatures, too, are eternal, but in a 'time-like'
way. The phrase 'time-like extension' points in the first instance to
the category of changeless duration, since true temporal extension
involves changing duration.
The complications implicit in 'time-like extension' come to the
surface in later commentaries on Gregory. Some remarks by Psellus
(quoted in Nicetas' commentary, PG 127.132OBf) show how elusive
the matter is. If we make (he says) the mental experiment of thinking
away the heavenly bodies, we ourselves still remain and our own life
still is extended (cf. Enneads III.7.12.15f). It is true that there would
be no sun, moon and stars to mark intervals, nevertheless though the
markers which create time are absent 'we are still in motion and
interval, i.e., a time-like motion and interval which is the ain of
eternal things.' 'Time', then, is duration measured by external, celestial bodies, and ain is a different sort of duration. The possibility
that in such a denuded universe duration might be measured by our
inner consciousness and therefore still be temporal is not explored,
because time is thought of as composed of parts and as a function of
the visible universe. Duration not linked to external events accordingly is wholly free of change and of parts, and therefore is not 'time.'
Psellus proceeds to summarize the distinction among 'eternal' in
the primary sense of something atemporal both in essence and act,
'temporal' in the sense of something in time both in essence and act,
and 'eternal' in the secondary sense of something atemporal in essence, temporal in act (cf. Proclus, Elements of Theology 191). He notes
that Gregory rejects this because the heavens - which are to pagans

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'eternal' in the secondary, sense - are destined to perish according

to Scripture. He (Gregory) prefers to distinguish between 'beginningless' and 'eternal' ; only God is the former, while mind or soul is the
latter. This makes God eternal in the strong sense that he has no
finite measure at all because he has no beginning or end; creatures
are eternal in the weaker sense that though they may be without end,
they do have a beginning. If God is without beginning in this sense,
his eternity can be thought of simply as absolutely infinite and changeless duration. 'Beginningless' could also mean that he alone is underived from a higher 'principle' (arche), and within a vaguely Platonic frame of reference that would suggest radical unity. But that is
not actually a factor in the discussion: eternity is simply unmeasured,
infinite changeless duration.
The notion of radical unity is, however, specifically brought up
earlier to be rejected on Gregory's behalf by Psellus (quoted in 127.
1318Af). Plotinus and Porphyry, he says, introduced a new conception of ain (in place of circular motion) :
Assigning ain to the Forms, which are motionless and without
intervals, they held that it, too, was without motion and intervals . . . As the Forms which are immaterial are without past and
future, so their measure, i.e., ain, is without past and future, and
only that which is remains, i.e., the present. The theologian [Gregory] in no way approves this doctrine. For if the mode of ain
is such that it admits no measure or interval, it must also lack
parts. From which it will follow that all eternal beings are included in a point, for that is the nature of what lacks parts.
And what could be more preposterous than that?
Absence of 'interval' and concentration in a 'partless point' presumably would mean a phase of the intelligible world so unified that its
content is, so to speak, telescoped into itself at one point and thus
has no relationship to duration or to the serial order of time.9 Gregory
does, in fact, hold that ain cannot be divided or measured by motion
as time is (PG 36.77Af) but, as we have seen, that means simply that
it is wholly uniform duration, not that is it radically dimensionless.
That appears to be the point which Psellus goes on to make; the
eternity of the intelligible world is a bare 'present' without past or
future in the sense that it endures changelessly.
Nicetas' own remarks deal with the same issues (127.1317A). Ain
is properly applied only to God, who like an endless ocean has neither
beginning nor end, while angels and souls have only no end. Nicetas

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then observes that the word ain applies to various lengths of time,
including a length not measured by any part of time (e.g., not even
by the sun's motion). This last ain (which we cannot define exactly)
is a quasi-time, 'for what time is to things subject to time ain is to
eternal things.' Ain in this sense is 'coextensive' with the pre-creation state. So far the discussion has focused on infinity of duration,
but Nicetas also notes that ain is 'one', that God is actually 'preeternal' (proainios) since he creates ain,10 and that changelessness is
also an essential feature of eternity. Oneness' here might seem to
be a gesture in the direction of a radical unity beyond duration, but
it again is no more than another way of describing the uniformity
of changeless duration.
The use of 'ain' to cover a wide range of meanings is remarked
on by Dionysius, who observes that in Scripture ainion is applied
not only to things which are truly without beginning but also to
what is very old or to what does not change; thus there can be 'ainios
time' or 'temporal ain', though commonly ain applies to what truly
exists and chronos to what comes to be. Ain in the full sense lies beyond
duration in so far as God is beyond all categories. Yet when Dionysius
says that God 'is unchanging and motionless in all motion and remains in himself in his endless motion' (PG3.931B), God's mode
of being might seem to be changeless duration, for that can well be
described in the paradox of motionless motion. At any rate, Dionysius
proceeds to distinguish four levels: (A) God (beyond ain);
ainia
things which are not actually co-eternal with God; (G) things which
participate in both ain and time; (D) things in time (PG 3.937C).
Pachymeres' paraphrase touches on the possibility that God's eternity is changeless duration (945Af). God can be called 'time' or 'day'
because time itself is changeless in so far as it persists while events
occurring in it change. For if time itself underwent change it would
have to do so in time and that leads to an infinite regress. Thus both
God and one aspect of time 'remain the same in changing', i.e., are
a changeless substrate or background, God being an infinite, time a
finite substrate. Despite this similarity between God and time, however, Pachymeres assigns an eternity beyond duration to God. It is
the eternity of angels in the first instances which is durative. They
are ainioi in the sense that they share in ain and are older than
other creatures. 'This extension of time is called ain' in Scripture.
At the same time angels' eternity is not simply a vast stretch of time.
We are told (948A) that the sign of their ain is not merely antiquity
but 'changelessness and measure-by-the-whole or, as Gregory says,

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the extension of that which truly exists/ Hence we have (A) ainia
or hyptraionia, which are divine and beyond all creation and go with
;
purely temporal things; (G) intermediate angels and souls
which share in ain in so far as they are immortal but are also in time
in so far as they 'are seen in genesis' (PG 3.945D).11 The relation
of A here to A and
in Dionysius is not entirely clear. It is clear
that the higher phase of G is not merely endless time but a distinct
ontological mode, and the phrase 'measured as a whole' suggests
that the distinction lies in a wholly changeless duration in which
past, present and future are effectively present all at once. By the
same token, still higher, more specifically divine modes would involve
a more radical unity beyond duration. For the fusion of rest and
motion in God is not changeless duration but transcends both motion and rest (PG 3.853A).
A similar scheme appears in PG 3.853B. (A) God is autoain since
his being is measured neither by time nor by ain. He is, in fact,
hib own ain.
Angels and intelligible^ are ainia, and are measured
by and share in ain. (C) Time arises fiom the motion of cosmic
bodies and is again itself said to be 'one', i.e., stable in so far as it
is the 'one extension by which temporal things are measured.' Here
ainia are 'prior' to time and lie between it and the Creator. He is
beyond 'measure', while ain measures intelligible extension, i.e., the
the changeless duration of created being which Dionysius refers to
also as the angels' 'eternal motion' (aei kinsia, 856A).
John of Scythopolis in his commentary on Dionysius (PG4.313C)
restates several central points.12 (1) God is the ain of the
which
he creates. They are 'eternal' in so far as they share in ain, which
itself is not 'ainios', for as God creates time without being temporal,
so he creates aeons without himself being ainios. (2) Ain itself is
'a fixed present which changes neither from a present nor to a future
. . . All that exists must be present to it as a whole.' It is 'endless
because it already exists as a whole . . . it is endless life . . . a life
stable and all together, already endless without variation and fixed
in unity.' (3) As visible things are images of intelligibles, so 'time
rested in what always exists and later appeared in diminished form
(kath' hypobasin) when the visible creation appeared.' Hence time is
not the actual 'motion of the intervals that are parts of time but the
procession of God's goodness into visible cieation.' That ?s to ay:
(1) The general ontological schema runs in descending order: God/
aton/eternal, intelligible creation/time. So far as the relation of the
first two stages is concerned, God is sometimes treated as prior to

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21

ain, sometimes as virtually identical with it. (2) The connection between 'endless' and 'already' in this characterization of eternity is
intended to point to a duration so uniform that all of its moments
are 'already' presently realized at any point aud therefore carcely
durational at all. The intelligible aeons which partake of ain aie
less unified than it is because they are a stage closer to the actual
extension of time. (3) As we have seen, time as a whole is ontologically
prior to the finite periods of time, and this transcendent aspect is
here closely associated with eternity. The last stage in the four-part
scheme outlined in (1) is followed by 'things in time' as ain is followed by 'things in eternity,' and so the full hierarchy is much
like that in later Neoplatonism: the One/eternity/things in eternity
= intelligible being/time/things in time.13
Many of the threads that go to make up the idea of eternity in
its various aspects are woven together in the discussion {Peri Ainos)
appended to Psellus' De Omni/aria Doctrina.1* It begins with formal
(Platonic) definitions: time is the image of eternity {ain) and eternity
is the pattern of time. The author insists that he is not introducing
Platonic Forms and that things in the higher world are, in any case,
only images of the ultimate cause, which 'in truth is not eternity
or being or stasis or kinesis or identity but is beyond conception
and language.' The images which make up the content of the transcendent world are ainia, and their eternity consists of 'togetherness
and unity.' The 'present' reality {to estos) of eternity is not separate
from the extremities of past and future; it is, rather, both the 'middle
and what is around the middle' [i.e., it is a fully realized structure
embracing all of time at once]. Time, on the other hand, 'runs out'
from eternity and can imitate its stability only in its continuous flow.
This is its transcendent, timeless aspect. One part is past, one future,
and the present has only false being. That is to say, the fully realized
scope of etemitiy is in time so narrowed down that it vanishes in an
illusory knife-edge present. Since the reality of time consists in its
sheer flow, measurement of specific spans is not an essential part of
time itself. We now are in a position to work out a complete hierarchy again like that of late NeoPlatonism: (A) the cause beyond
ain;
ain; (G) eternal things; (D) time; (E) temporal things.
Time here is 'between what is beyond time and what is in time.'
Soul is midway between ain and time, its essence being eternal, its
activity temporal (cf. De Omnifaria Doctrina, 107, p. 59).
All of this then provides a metaphysical framework for the Christian
doctrine of a renewed creation. For if it makes sense to say (as Neo-

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platonists did) that soul can lay aside its temporal mode and become
atoraos when it regains the unity of mind, why should not 'time as a
whole be resolved into eternity from which it came and under which
it was motionless? Some kind of ambition put it into motion, or
rather soul was too weak to maintain its [original] intelligible unity
and as it unwound in its search for being it created time' (cf. Plotinus, Ennead III.7-ll.20f). Thus 'the errant child will once again
be under its father.' This image is used to introduce a rather awkward interpretation of the parable of the Prodigal Son: the prime
cause is the father, eternity is the elder son who stayed at home,
time is the prodigal, and the new heaven and earth are the result
of the reunion of time and eternity.
Several phases of eternity come out in this synthesis. God, the
ultimate hyperaeonic cause, is timeless in the most radical sense.
, too, is highly unified and along with God exemplifies the absence of the dispersion characteristic of time. At the same time, ain
embodies the multiple patterns (the aionia) which time imitates. In
this respect it can figure as a simultaneous whole embracing past,
present and future. But this is not worked out. The distinctions between and ainia and between time and things in time appear
earlier in Proclus (Elements of Theology, 53), but while Proclus also
distinguishes transcendent and immanent forms of time, here we
find elaboration neither of the transcendent aspect of time nor of
the precise nature of the eternity of the new heaven and earth into
which time will flow (probably to be transfigured into changeless
duration).
If we return now to our list of conceptions of eternity available to
theologians, we can see that the first was often used in conjunction
with negative theology. In a sense, it raises the least conceptual
difficulty because it need not and cannot be discussed. For that
matter, is does not depend on a formal negative theology because
it can be a simple expression of awareness of God's transcendence.
For the most part, however, the second and third definitions provided
the working notion of eternity, especially in depictions of eternal
life. The doctrine of the Logos rested on the fourth definition, which
is very close to the Platonic understanding of the intelligible world
as a timeless structure or pattern for time. It has often been remarked
that while the hope of biblical writers is typically based on a meaning
of history which emerges from a limitless future, the Greek (or at
least the Platonic) tradition saw the future largely in terms of knowledge already learned in the past, which exemplifies reality exhaust-

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ively because it reflects a timeless paradigm (the path to eternity

may lead through memory, as Augustine knew). In its treatment
of time and eternity patristic theology took account of both of these
views.15
The root of the problem was that eternity ultimately means our
eternity and thus carries with it the enigma of the human self. The
self was in the Greek tradition primarily 'soul'. In Plato, soul is
something ambivalent, linking time and eternity often in obscure
ways, and later in Plotinus its elusive, 'amphibian' status reappears
more formally in the various levels of emanation which can be isolated. Iamblichus and other Platonists finally recognized that soul
in fact breaks through clearly defined categories, because while the
distinction between time and eternity is a fundamental reality, the
reality of soul equally dictates a new category in which time and
eternity run together ('The essence of soul is simultaneously temporal
and eternal . . . the category cf time is somehow eternalized and
eternity is temporalized'). 18 If with all their sophisticated categorical
apparatus the Neoplatonists were brought to this pass, it is not surprising that theologians should have worked out a functional understanding of 'eternity' centering around the twin notions of a timeless,
fully realized plan which guarantees the coherence of time by expressing the Creator's sovereign intention and a uniform duration
which guarantees the reliability of what follows time because it endures endlessly and is free of time's uncertainties.

NOTES
1 References are to pages of the Jaeger/Langerbeck edition of Gregory of Nyssa
except where PG refers to volume and column of the Migne edition.
2 References are to page, paragraph and line numbers of the Grgemanns/Karpp
edition of Origen's De Principiis.
3 For a (presumably) later Origenist view of the relation between Forms and
minds cf. De Prin. 280 and 282.
4 Cf. J. Danilou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, tr. J.A. Baker (London
1973) 458 f, 469 f.
5 E.G. Jay (Origen's Treatise on Prayer, London 1954) 101 cites C.S. Lewis: 'To
God (though not to me) I and the prayer I make in 1945 were just as much
present at the creation of the world as they are now and will be a million years
hence. God's creative act is timeless and tunelessly adapted to the 'free' elements within it : but this timeless adaptation meets our consciousness as a sequence
of prayer and answer.' Jay holds that Origen himself does not use the notion
of a simultaneous eternity.
6 J. Danilou (above, note 4) 125, 447f.

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7 On Clement's eschatology cf. W. Vlker, Der wahre Gnostiker nach Clemens Alexandrmus (Berlin 1952) 392f.
8 Cf. PG 37.946i : eternity (ain) is 'dimension forever flowing timelessly,' time is
'the measure of the sun's motion.' For time as essentially finite and measureable cf.
Hilary of Poitiers (PL 10.62B): the Creator is infinite, while time is signifcala
moderatio, i.e., 'articulated arrangement' or 'definite measure of extension located in time and not space.' Arnobius defines time as the 'measure of a certain
extension embraced in an unbroken, continuous series' (PL5.977A). Eternity
accordingly can be simply endless (immeasurable) duration. Isidore (PG
78.842B) contrasts God's aidiotes with the athanasia of angels and souls which
have no end but do have a beginning. When he goes on to say that there is no
number, no 'before' or 'after', no 'first', 'second' or 'third' in God because he
is 'higher than number, times or thought,' God is infinite in the sense that there
is no 'first' or 'second' because there is no beginning which can count as 'first'.
Infinite quantity in effect becomes absence of quantity and is transformed into
something qualitatively different, i.e., into eternity. Or absence of distinctions
might point to a more radical unity beyond uniform duration. Cf. the discussion in the notes at PG 3.939f : aevum (= ain) is 'the duration of angels not
subject to time because it is whole and invariable all at once.' Cf. also John
Cyparissiotes, PG 152.892f. For Augustine's concept of an angelic 'supertime'
cf. H. Urs von Balthasar, Man in History: A Theological Study (London 1968)
15f. Endless stable duration is again a factor in descriptions of eternity as 'one
day': PG 38.1029; Plotmus, Ennead IV.4.7.11.
9 An interesting line of argument in pseudo-Justin, Quaestiones ad Graecos (PG
6.1415f) apparently uses a similar conception of eternity. A Christian critic
wonders how God can exist, if (A) the universe is uncreated (as the Greeks
maintain) but (B) a God who does not create is impossible. The answer is
that since God's eternity is changeless duration, he always sustains the universe, though he has not created it at any point. The Christian then objects
that such an eternity is merely disguised time: 'If there is nothing temporal
in God, how can he always do the same thing? For 'do' cannot be thought
apart from present time. How does God have perfect dynamis and energeia if
he does the same thing endlessly?' (1421Af). One does not really dissociate
God from time simply by saying that past and future are present to him, for
his timeless present is then still grasped in temporal terms. The author himself
(1423Df) makes a distinction between God's changeless dynamis or ousia and his
energeia, which expresses itself in entirely free temporal creation and in that
form embodies a finite emanation (probol)r restriction (systol). 'The energeia
of God has a beginning and end because of emanation and restriction, not
because of any change in his dynamis.' Thus the divine energeia causes us to pass
from infancy through youth to old age without any corresponding change in the
being of God. If God's energeia were not restricted, there would be an infinity
of universes. In view of the denial of any temporal structure in God in 1415f
God's eternal dynamis may exclude even duration, though perhaps it is supposed simply to exclude tense distinctions.
10 John of Damascus similarly uses 'proainios' to separate God's mode of being
from ordinary time and from the unmeasured, time-like extension of aion.
'Before the creation of the universe when no sun divided day from night, there
was no measurable ain but only that which extended along with eternal things

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in a time-like motion and extension (to symparekteinotnenon tots aidiois hoion ti

chronikon kinma kai diastma). In this respect aion is one - as God is called ainios
or rather proainios since he made ain' (De Fide Orthodoxica II. 1 = PG 94.864A).
Nicephorus (PG 142.1224Cf) treats past, present and future as 'prototypically'
parts of ain and defines ain as a 'gathered, eternal extension containing 'forever' before and after time.' That is, time is linked to the existence of the universe, and when there is no universe there is only 'aeonic extension' (ainik
paratasis). The property of being 'gathered' is probably changeless duration,
while 'prototypical' past, present and future are the ontological roots of time's
changing duration.
11 In PG 4.389Af John of Scythopolis mentions two groups in the intermediate
class: angels and souls/the heavenly bodies.
12 Cf. PG 3.836Cf for Pachymeres' paraphrase of this passage in Dionysius.
13 P. Plass, 'Timeless Time in NeoPlatonism,' The Modem Schoolman LV (1977) 5.
For 'time resting in what always exists' cf. Plotinus 111.7.11.13: before time
existed 'it was at rest with itself in what [truly] exists.'
14 Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina, ed. L.G. Westerink (Utrecht 1948) 102
-104.
15 For the relation between the 'vertical' Greek and 'horizontal' biblical perspectives cf. Klappert, Die Eschatologie des Hebraerbriefs (Munich 1969). C.H.
Dodd (The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge 1953, 144f) notes that
rabbinic thought itself worked out a dual perspective: the horizontal 'two
ages' and a vertical contrast between life on earth and life in heaven. For astral
or heavenly eschatology cf. J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel
(Missoula 1977) 146f, 176f. Cf. H. Jonas, 'The Soul in Gnosticism and Plotinus,' in Philosophical Essays (Englewood Cliffs 1974) 327; D. Hill, Greek Words
and Hebrew Meanings (Cambridge 1967) 163f ; J. Chaix-Ruy, 'La Cit de Dieu
et la Structure du Temps chez saint Augustin,' in Augustinus Magister (Paris)
II 925f.
16 Damascius, quoted in C.G. Steel, The Changing Self: A Study on the Soul in Later
NeoPlatonism (Verhandlingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Knsten Van Belgie. Klasse den Lettern. XL Nr85) 101.