Eternity and Time

by Fr. Dumitru Staniloae

God has given us the gift of time. Through that gift, we have the opportunity to grow in response to God’s love, but we are always free to choose whether or not we wish to do so and thereby to live eternity. The life of the Trinity is the life of eternity, yet God accepted the limitations of our lives, including our mortality, in taking on human form in Jesus. Because of the incarnation of Jesus, time enters into eternity, and eternity is brought into time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Christianity

13 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 2001

Reviews

[C Jay Irwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great quick read

Dumitru is a talented theologian, expressing complicated ideas extremely well and simply. As a Catholic, I found it interesting for his approach to these metaphysical issues with an emphasis on Palamas and Maximus at the centre of the argument rather than, say, Augustine and Aquinas.

[Doug McManaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a brilliant work.

[Sonny Vargas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary work, concise but has much to offer.

[Michael Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time constitutes a creation of God to respect our free will in our movement towards him into eternity; time constitutes a separation of persons, when we love, we wait on the reciprocity of that love, thus the Trinity perfectly loves due to not having to wait. We have to die unto ourselves to have happiness, selfishness creates alienation, the monotony of Hell, only by drawing closer to God through self-sacrifice, do we become happy, when we don’t think of our own happiness. The perfect personal life constitutes perfect personal communion, and we cannot do that if we are selfish, selfishness draws us to an appearance of eternity, an eternity of Hell, where we can no longer have time, hope towards a better future moving to God.