Eternity
ETERNITY is the condition or attribute of divine life by which it relates with equal immediacy and potency to all times. The notion emerges at the point of contact of three distinct religious concerns. The oldest of these is the question of the state of life after death, especially in light of the continuing presence of the dead among the living as acknowledged in the various forms of the cult of the dead. A later-developing speculative concern is the question about divine creation, especially when creative power is seen as the production in a divine mind of a world of ideas, a logos or paradigm made present in this world as in an image. Finally, there is the concern with contemplative or mystical experience, especially when regarded as a way of partaking of the divine life within the conditions of present existence. Reflection on these themes converges upon the notion of a dimension of life that is "vertically" related to the "horizontal" flowing of time, that transcends time without being apart from it.
Because eternity touches each and every time, it is easily confused with the closely related concept of what "always was, is, and will be," or, in a word, the everlasting.
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