The Nature of Hell

A reader writes:

Recent comments by the Pope on hell and other subsequent blogging comments have raised a minor question for me about hell. It seems that many will insist that there is no physical component to hell. This assertion seems logically in conflict with church teaching that in the resurrection we will have some kind of eternal physical body. A physical body implies the possibility of physical locality. If so, then heaven and hell could have corresponding physical attributes. So a more precise phrasing of the question is: "Does the assertion that hell has no physical reality indirectly conflict with church teaching on the resurrection and the state of our resurrected bodies?"

It strikes me that there is a tertium quid here. It isn’t just a choice between saying "Hell is spiritual, so there are no bodies there and thus it has no location" and saying "Hell must have a physical location because it contains bodies."

It would be contrary to Catholic teaching to deny that the damned–after the resurrection–will have bodies. They will indeed have them, and that raises the question of where or how these bodies will exist. It might be that they will exist in a spatially extended sense in some physical location, as they do here on earth in this life. However, it could also be that they will exist in some way that does not involve a physical location, which I suppose would mean that they would be real but not extended in spacetime.

The situation is analogous to that of heaven. I sometimes point out that heaven is at least capable of receiving bodies–we know that becaue that’s where Jesus’ and Mary’s bodies are right now–but that doesn’t mean that they are extended in the natural, physical manner that they were when they were here on earth. Heaven thus might or might not involve a physical location. What it does involve, for resurrected humans, is bodies, and the same will be true of hell.

I thus tend to accept union or disunion with God as the essential characteristic of these two states and leave the question of location open. To my mind, they might or might not involve a location, though for resurrected humans, both will be an embodied state.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

250 thoughts on “The Nature of Hell”

  1. As per Aquinas, Heaven is a spirit state therefore Hell is also a spirit state.
    As per Father Edward Schillebeeck in his book, Church, the History of God, there is no Hell. If you die in mortal sin, your soul simply will no longer exist as God will not permit imperfection in the afterlife.
    And since there are no “pretty wingy thingies” aka angels i.e. said beings are mythical carryovers from ancient extinct religions, there are no “ugly wingy thingies” aka devils.

  2. Dear Realist,
    My name is spelled with an X. Since you’re such a fan, I would expect you to know this.

  3. I often wonder about the paranormal (ghosts, hauntings) and its relation to Hell. I guess this depends on whether one believes in ghosts — I tend to think that there is something to it — but are what we perceive as ghosts actually damned spirits, in Hell? Could being in Hell be simply having been left behind on earth, separated from God, resigned to roam houses and such?
    I make no pronouncements here; just a thought.

  4. With God’s mercy hopefully we will all be delivered from Evil. Still, there is the first secret of Fatima which was a vision of Hell given to the three kids. Here is Sister Lucia’s account of Hell: ” She [Our Lady of Fatima] opened Her hands once more, as She had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls [of the damned] in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. (It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons could be distinguished [from the souls of the damned] by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals.”
    We have to bear in mind of course that since this is a private revelation the faithful are not required to believe it, but it was declared worthy of belief. Personally, I believe Hell exists and I hope none of us ever find out about it’s true nature.

  5. I realize now this is something I never thought about before….I didn’t realize that the Resurrection of the Body was for everyone. Perhaps I have some leftover Protestant misunderstanding regarding the Rapture and such hooey as that.
    Jimmy if you read this and feel like elaborating on this teaching, this reader would be very appreciative.

  6. Has anyone actually found the text of the what the Pope said (besides MSM reports)? I know the original homiliy is posted at the Vatican website, but his comments about hell were (mostly) off-the-cuff and thus not included in the printed text.

  7. Realist: “As per Father Edward Schillebeeck in his book…”
    This would be an argument from Authority. I will answer that the Church Fathers, bishops, popes and numerous theologians and all saints say he’s wrong. Please trump my argument from AUTHORITY.
    As per angels: This is an unsupported statement, if you care to argue from authority then please see answer #1. If you need literature please see the Bible. If you find either un-convincing please show why.
    New Subject: When Jimmy used the term, “tertium quid” I had to look it up on Wikipedia. I noticed that in the year 2000 it was used as a legal term. If it doesn’t have a long history in the legal arguments then it’s a fair bet one of our catholic justices was sitting up at night reading his theology.

  8. I didn’t realize that the Resurrection of the Body was for everyone.
    From the Athanasian Creed:
    [H]e shall come to judge the quick and the dead. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.

  9. Where do you get this stuff? The sub-apostolic fathers? (I don’t think so) The deposit of faith? (which like these speculations -appears- to have no definable content or extension in space, time or definition) Bleh.
    You certainly don’t find it in the Bible where you do have the resurrection of the body, and visions, at least, of heaven, where there do not appear to be weird manifestations of Einsteinian-Aristotelian(now that’s an interesting concept!) physics, like freeze-frame timeless existence, or non-extension in space.
    An area, I think, where your apologetic has room for improvement and strengthening.

  10. I remember looking in Ott’s fundamentals or Catholic Dogma which states that the bodies of the damned will resurrect but will not transfigure. Only the saved will transfigure.

  11. I wish the r and the f were’nt so close together! Jimmy how about spellcheck in the com box?
    Oh, wait.. that won’t work!

  12. …which I suppose would mean that they would be real but not extended in spacetime.
    Spacetime doesn’t apply in the Spiritual Realm.
    Take for example these excerpts from St. Augustine:
    “Therefore, there is a certain created wisdom that was created before all things: the rational and intelligible mind of that chaste city of thine. It is our mother which is above and is free and “eternal in the heavens”–but in what heavens except those which praise thee, the “heaven of heavens”? This also is the “heaven of heavens” which is the Lord’s–although we find no time before it, since what has been created before all things also precedes the creation of time. Still, the eternity of the Creator himself is before it, from whom it took its beginning as created, though not in time (since time as yet was not), even though time belongs to its created nature.”
    “For when they read or hear these words, O God, they see that all times past and times future are transcended by thy eternal and stable permanence, and they see also that there is no temporal creature that is not of thy making.”
    “In eternity, God is before all things; in the temporal process, the flower is before the fruit;”

  13. *reads Esau’s post*
    I think my question doesn’t necessarily run counter to his, so bear with me, as I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this for a while….
    If, at the Eschaton, heaven and Earth will pass away and be replaced by a new heaven and a new Earth, doesn’t that suggest that a physical universe might at least be available to the reembodied souls in heaven? Otherwise, why a new Earth (matter, but no space, or at least no time) at all?

  14. “Spacetime doesn’t apply in the Spiritual Realm”
    Essau: I don’t understand. After it’s all done our bodies will be in Heaven. By their natures bodies take space. Does it not follow then that there is/will be space in Heaven? Perhaps more accurately when Heaven takes over space will not space be a sub-set of Heaven?
    ..find no time before it, since what has been created before all things also precedes the creation of time…”
    Again, time did not exsist before Heaven but what’s to stop it from continuing out infinately from here?

  15. Ed Pie:
    Remember, what’s key there is ‘eternity’.
    We’ll be living eternally and, therefore, time does not apply.
    Remember:
    “In eternity, God is before all things; in the temporal process, the flower is before the fruit;”
    It is natural that in the temporal realm, we have notion such as time, as there is a beginning as well as an end.
    However, in eternity, such a notion will not apply.
    I think if you read up on some of the Church Father’s thoughts on these things as well as some passages in Scripture that speak of such aspects (other than that which you cited above), this might become clearer.
    Of course, one may very well land on the side of theological speculation, all in all.

  16. Ed Pie:
    Keep in mind that what I said here:
    It is natural that in the temporal realm, we have notion such as time, as there is a beginning as well as an end.
    However, in eternity, such a notion will not apply.
    This is my own belief since in eternity, there is no end.
    I have speculated on such things based on some Jesuit thinking on the matter as well, so that may have very well influenced my thought on this in addition to what the Chuch Father had said.
    Again, it may very well be mere theological speculation on my part, nothing more.

  17. Sir,
    After our death we don’t know, what is our physical form,nobody knows. Jesus Christ answered as, Mt.22:30; Mk.12:25; and Lk.20:34,35. Therefore we hold on the faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ, we hold on the faith in the Scripture,beyond that our sense is nothing ,it is unnessary.
    DEO GRATIAS

  18. Therefore we hold on the faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ, we hold on the faith in the Scripture,beyond that our sense is nothing ,it is unnessary.
    Sir,
    Did you not read?
    Just as Jimmy Akin had mentioned:
    “It would be contrary to Catholic teaching to deny that the damned–after the resurrection–will have bodies.”
    Therefore, what you claim ‘unnecessary’ is not actually — in the sense that the Catholic Church, supported by both Scripture and Tradition, has taught on the matter regarding ‘physical bodies’ after the Resurrection.

  19. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:42-44).
    “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:9-10).
    If there is a spiritual body, and that body will experience those marvelous things God has prepared for him/her in heaven,then doesn’t this suggest a space-time experience in heaven?

  20. Please demonstrate to me how your citations here actually give evidence of a space-time experience in heaven?
    Time has a beginning and an end.
    It only has bearing in the temporal world.
    Eternity has no beginning or end.
    Time DOES NOT exist in eternity or it wouldn’t be ETERNITY to begin with!

  21. Time does not have a beginning and an end…nor does it need to have these attributes…
    A period of time is quantifiable, but an eternity is not…an eternity is simply all, infinite time
    Take for example, Esau, the amount of time that has transpired until now as time proceeds backward in time, into infinity…
    Time in this instance has definitely transpired…an infinite amount of time…heaven an hell have also existed during this period of time, however, the persons/beings experiencing time might not have experienced time as such…
    Perhaps the best way to determine whether time exists in eternity is to answer the question do individual events occur in heaven, non-simultaneously…if they do, then the only way to distinguish these events is temporally…
    Looking at Christopher Y’s FATIMA post as it relates to the environment we find in hell, we can see clouds moving, and the environment changing, etc…good evidence that events are unfolding non-simultaneously, which could only happen in an environment subject to time…
    Hope this helps!

  22. Time in this instance has definitely transpired…an infinite amount of time…heaven an hell have also existed during this period of time, however, the persons/beings experiencing time might not have experienced time as such…
    You are trying to create a metaphor here not unlike C.S. Lewis’ Wardrobe, which is a matter that nevertheless treats of temporal realities, as there is an actual beginning and an end.
    Eternity, by its very nature, does not exist in such a manner or else it wouldn’t be eternity to begin with.
    I would recommend that you read on the Early Church Father’s works that touch on these aspects.

  23. Puzzled, let’s get one misconception out of the way right away. It’s a commonplace for non-believers/atheists/skeptics to mock the notion of Heaven and Hell by saying “Oh, so you think if you go straight down to the centre of the earth that Satan will be sitting there on his throne prodding the damned with his pitchfork, and you say that Jesus flew straight up in the air -whoosh! – only without a plane, and got to heaven that way. Well, sorry to disillusion you, but we’ve been to outer space and we didn’t see God or angels playing harps or people sitting on clouds.”
    And then anybody with half a braincell clutches their forehead and moans softly “No, I never said Heaven was a *place*”, to which the skeptic – depending on how agnostic to a greater or lesser extent he is – will say “So it’s only a symbol” or “It’s indicative of a psychological state” or, as Realist puts it, if you’ve been a very naughty boy, you’ll just go poof! no more!
    Heaven or Hell is not a place in the sense of “Turn left at Alpha Centauri and go on for another fifty parsecs and you’re there” place. Neither is Hell a symbol, a metaphor, a purely and solely ‘spiritual’ state (by which ‘spiritual’ is understood to mean ‘not really real because only the material/physical is really real’), or a mere cessation and non-existence.
    *How* the resurrected bodies will work out I don’t know; that we are both body and soul, and cannot have one without the other, I believe. That Hell is not a location that one can pinpoint on a map; that it exists nevertheless; that there is a spiritual suffering there which is best understood by us – since we are still living in physical space/time and have no apprehension of that condition of reality – as the burning and devouring but non-consuming fire; that this is real pain and suffering and not just a feeling bad at being separated from God or lacking earthly good and pleasure, i.e. that it is *not* ‘all in the mind’ or that ‘thinking makes it so’; that we can’t console ourselves with ‘oh, God wouldn’t be so mean as to put anyone into Hell’ or, if we are forced to acknowledge that some people have done gross and hideous deeds of evil, ‘oh, they’ll simply stop existing but the nice people will keep on going’ is what the Pope is trying to get at.
    John, I would say that with regard to the Fatima or other visions, since the seers are in physical bodies exising in our mortal realm, the way the vision is translated by the earthly sensorium so as to be comprehensible means that flames, the damned burning, the hideous bestial shapes of the demons, the changing environment which is non-simultaneous, etc. are the ways in which the mind and brain turns this incomprehensible into the nearest analogy to earthly experience so as to be perceived, let alone understood. Whether, if we end up in Hell, there will ‘really’ be clouds, flames, etc. God alone knows.
    And let us pray we none of us find out by first-hand experience 😉

  24. John, I would say that with regard to the Fatima or other visions, since the seers are in physical bodies exising in our mortal realm, the way the vision is translated by the earthly sensorium so as to be comprehensible means that flames, the damned burning, the hideous bestial shapes of the demons, the changing environment which is non-simultaneous, etc. are the ways in which the mind and brain turns this incomprehensible into the nearest analogy to earthly experience so as to be perceived, let alone understood.
    Fuinseoig:
    Bravo for that!
    That’s how the human mind works and tries to relate such human experiences into something more comprehensible in terms of our present reality!

  25. When I was in nursery school I learned from my parents, my priest, and a bishop friend of our family as well as the Baltimore Catechism that Hell’s reality includes physical flames.Our bodies are there should, we be damned and conversely our bodies are in Heaven,should God have mercy on us.The bodily ressurection occurs at the Final Judgement.
    God bless you.

  26. Dan Hunter:
    I think you have missed the entire crux of the discussion.
    We were discussing about the time aspect.
    You have failed to follow the flow of the discussion, perhaps because you may not have read our preceding posts.

  27. I’ve got to admit, Dan, your post:
    When I was in nursery school I learned from my parents, my priest, and a bishop friend of our family as well as the Baltimore Catechism that Hell’s reality includes physical flames.Our bodies are there should, we be damned and conversely our bodies are in Heaven,should God have mercy on us.The bodily ressurection occurs at the Final Judgement.
    God bless you.

    Posted by: Dan Hunter | Apr 2, 2007 11:54:34 AM
    is admittedly a more polite version of John’s past post:
    I cant help but laugh at some of these posts-even looking into scripture for the answer to this simple question that most traditionally catechised second graders are all versed in the Baltimore Catechism know the answer to (not the JPII version or as taught in the church today after Vatican II as I recently attended a communion where the priest told all that his bagel if he prayed over it would become Jesus!!. )
    Posted by: John | Oct 26, 2006 4:55:45 PM
    However, as mentioned, you missed the boat on what we were actually talking about.

  28. When I was in nursery school I learned from my parents, my priest, and a bishop friend of our family as well as the Baltimore Catechism that Hell’s reality includes physical flames.

    However, as none of these sources, even the Baltimore Catechism, is a final and definitive arbiter of the extent of Catholic Tradition, the point has not been established by the evidence cited to date. In the absence of a definitive magisterial answer, the question remains in play.

  29. Esau,
    You’re now officially to blame if this thread gets hijacked.
    Maybe the hobby-horse is actually yours and not John’s?

  30. In the absence of a definitive magisterial answer, the question remains in play.
    BINGO!
    That’s one of the points behind Catholic Theology.
    Although, as I mentioned (in accordance with what I was attempting to relate to Paul in the analogy regarding doctors), Catholic Theologians, however, (should) operate based on opinions that have a basis in fact and are approved by others (e.g., the Magesterium).
    A rather rough statement since I was attempting to draw a parallel in what he had mentioned regarding doctors and how they should operate.

  31. Esau,
    You’re now officially to blame if this thread gets hijacked.
    Maybe the hobby-horse is actually yours and not John’s?
    Posted by: paul f | Apr 2, 2007 12:53:15 PM

    That’s such a ridiculous statement since one can go back to past threads (in fact, go back to the USCCB Smackdown one) and you would see that it was John who instigates such hijacks and not I.
    Here, I was merely trying to keep point on the time aspect, as my post rightly indicate.

  32. John said:

    Time does not have a beginning and an end…nor does it need to have these attributes…


    St. Augustine (writing some time before Vatican II) said:

    Thou hast made all time; and before all times Thou art, nor in any time was there not time.


    God created time — it has a beginning.
    (And no, this is not something else that Vatican II changed.)

  33. Esquire:
    Kindly take note of what St. Augustine said here:
    “Therefore, there is a certain created wisdom that was created before all things: the rational and intelligible mind of that chaste city of thine. It is our mother which is above and is free and “eternal in the heavens”–but in what heavens except those which praise thee, the “heaven of heavens”? This also is the “heaven of heavens” which is the Lord’s–although we find no time before it, since what has been created before all things also precedes the creation of time. Still, the eternity of the Creator himself is before it, from whom it took its beginning as created, though not in time (since time as yet was not), even though time belongs to its created nature.”
    Also, regarding Heaven:
    “Thus it is that the intelligible heaven came to be from thee, our God, but in such a way that it is quite another being than thou art; it is not the Selfsame. Yet we find that time is not only not before it, but not even in it, thus making it able to behold thy face forever and not ever be turnedaside. Thus, it is varied by no change at all.”

  34. Does God change?
    If so, isn’t eternity somehow analogous to time?
    If not, how does that jive with Creation and His interaction with it?
    This is an honest question.

  35. Smoky,
    My 2 cents (gratis):
    God does not change.
    Eternity is the measurement of all time, which is infinite. God exists outside of time.
    God enters into time to interact with His Creation (by which His Creation is changed, not Him).

  36. Esquire,
    Thanks, but your statement:
    God enters into time to interact with His Creation
    illustrates my difficulty. Note “God enters” and “to interact” suggest action, and therefore time.

  37. That’s just it: God is the Prime Mover — Eternal — Unchanging!
    As St. Augustine recounts:
    For then also thou shalt so rest in us as now thou workest in us; and, thus, that will be thy rest through us, as these are thy works through us. But thou, O Lord, workest evermore and art always at rest. Thou seest not in time, thou movest not in time, thou restest not in time. And yet thou makest all those things which are seen in time – indeed, the very times themselves–and everything that proceeds in and from time.
    For when they read or hear these words, O God, they see that all times past and times future are transcended by thy eternal and stable permanence, and they see also that there is no temporal creature that is not of thy making.
    But he who understands “In the beginning he made” as if it meant, “At first he made,” can truly interpret the phrase “heaven and earth” as referring only to the “matter” of heaven and earth, namely, of the prior universal, which is the intelligible and corporeal creation. For if he would try to interpret the phrase as applying to the universe already formed, it then might rightly be asked of him, “If God first made this, what then did he do afterward?” And, after the universe, he will find nothing.
    But then he must, however unwillingly, face the question, How is this the first if there is nothing afterward? But when he said that God made matter first formless and then formed, he is not being absurd if he is able to discern what precedes by eternity, and what proceeds in time; what comes from choice, and what comes from origin. In eternity, God is before all things; in the temporal process, the flower is before the fruit; in the act of choice, the fruit is before the flower; in the case of origin, sound is before the tune.
    Of these four relations, the first and last that I have referred to are understood with much difficulty. The second and third are very easily understood. For it is an uncommon and lofty vision, O Lord, to behold thy eternity immutably making mutable things, and thereby standing always before them.

    — and it is preceded by the eternity of the Creator, so that from nothing there might be made that from which something might be made.

  38. Enough about heaven. What about hell? Who made it? Do “we find that time is not only not before it, but not even in it”?

  39. I would guess that the Second Person of the Trinity has no beginning, but that His physical Incarnation as Jesus does.

  40. Note “God enters” and “to interact” suggest action, and therefore time.

    God’s actions do not involve change in himself. Either they are eternal, i.e., within the inner life of the Trinity itself, or else what we call His “actions” involve processes in time that affect the material creation but do not effect change within the Divine Nature itself.
    Thus, e.g., in the Athanasian Creed we read that God became man “not by conversion of the Godhead into Flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God.” It is human nature that is changed, not Divine.

  41. …that His physical Incarnation as Jesus does.
    If this is the case, he would still, therefore, have a beginning.
    And if so, he cannot be deemed as God since God has no beginning or end.
    Let’s explore further, how about this:
    Did God create Jesus Christ?

  42. Esau,
    Before we explore further, are you therefore suggesting that the physical Incarnation as Jesus (separate from His Divine Nature as the Second Person of the Trinity) had no beginning? What of His conception? I’m confused.

  43. Esau,
    The Baltimore Catechism comes with an Imprimatur.
    Michael Augustine,Archbishop of New York,New York September 5 1891.
    A second Imprimatur if you do not like His Excellency Bishop Michael Augustine,follows:
    Patrick Hayes DD Archbishop of NY. June 29th 1921.
    Esau if This Catechism’s teaching on hell is good for the Catholic Church it is good enough for me.
    I would love to meet you someday soon.Please send a picture of your august personage.
    God bless you and your kith and kin.

  44. Dan:
    You severely MISS the point — we were discussing TIME and not what you blurted out.

  45. Smoky,
    Christ, when we talk about his person, is divine but he has two natures through the miracle of the Incarnation and there’s not another example of any person that has two natures. This is a Miracle. But, he has two natures: divine and human.
    Now, the nature that any other human being has is what makes him distinctly human. Because, if I just say he was a person, he could be an angel. An angel is a person because they’re rational. It’s the nature of a human being that makes him a human person.
    With Christ, we have something a little bit tricky here because once we get to Christ, a lot of our Boethian definition and such kind don’t always hold up all that well because with Christ, it is His nature, the divine nature, that makes him a divine person.
    But, in the Incarnation we have added this human nature. So, what do we do with this?
    Well, the human nature of Christ, we say in Theology, is accidental to his person.
    It’s not essential for Christ to be human in order to be a person.
    He’s a divine person for all eternity.
    So, the human nature of Christ, while hypostatically joined in the person, (we say ‘hypostatically’, that simply means ‘in the person’ or the Greek word ‘hypostasis’).
    It’s still accidental to His person so that we don’t say that He is, all of a sudden, a human person; no, he’s a divine person but he also has a human nature which puts him in a unique category.
    Now, when we talk about the wills, then, in Christ; because he has two natures, he would then have two wills because the intellect and will reside in the nature.
    So, the divine nature has an intellect and will that is divine. The human nature has an intellect and will that is human. Therefore, Christ (now, a regular human being doesn’t have this – he doesn’t have 2 intellects; he has one intellect and one will) is unique in that He has two natures in his person, he has two intellects and two wills.

  46. By the way, as you could tell, I rather enjoy these kinds of topics, which is why I originally liked reading/hearing Jimmy Akin’s thoughts on such matters.
    I sorely miss Catholic Theology!

  47. Perhaps the best way to determine whether time exists in eternity is to answer the question do individual events occur in heaven, non-simultaneously
    “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.”

  48. Smoky,

    Note “God enters” and “to interact” suggest action, and therefore time.


    Perhaps the step that you are missing is that action does not require time. God is perfect action, yet exists outside of time.

  49. Carol Anne:
    Although I appreciate the devout nature of your comment, Heaven does not exist within time.
    When we ask this in the Our Father, we are simply asking that God’s Will be fulfilled on Earth since God’s Will is fulfilled in Heaven (especially since in Heaven, there is the witness of the Saints).
    As Augustine said:
    “This also is the “heaven of heavens” which is the Lord’s–although we find no time before it, since what has been created before all things also precedes the creation of time.

  50. Perhaps the step that you are missing is that action does not require time. God is perfect action, yet exists outside of time.
    Esquire:
    That’s pretty insightful there (no surprise there as evidenced by some of your past comments)!
    I believe your line of thought here is closer to the Church Father’s in this respect.

  51. Esau:
    Although I appreciate the devout nature of your comment, I didn’t say Heaven existed within time.

  52. Esquire wrote:
    Perhaps the step that you are missing is that action does not require time.
    That is an interesting statement, and perhaps it’s true. But, do you (or any other human being) understand what you wrote?

  53. Maybe I can at least get the italics turned off…
    Esau, I appreciate what you said way up there about time, and I think I grok it as well as I can–eternity isn’t just infinite time, where things keep going on forever and ever, and then all that other clever patristic stuff I obviously need to start reading.
    Not that I’m trying to hijack the thread for myself now, but when they say “new heaven and new Earth,” I take it to mean that both the spiritual and physical components of creation will be replaced or remade. Why the new Earth? I doubt we’d need a place to stand when we get our bodies back; depending on how long God lets things go, we’d be shoulder to shoulder, like in those Chick tracts where millions of anonymous saints surround a giant faceless Jesus, and that’s unaesthetic enough for me to dismiss it out of hand.
    I heard a homily once that leaned in the direction of answering my question. The priest said that all the good things we’ve had on Earth will be with us in heaven. What he was really hoping for was basketball. Perhaps it’s silly, but that was his example for whatever his point was, which I’ve completely forgotten.
    So, I’m trying to picture a basketball game in eternity. Things don’t happen sequentially, so that wouldn’t work by itself, but if there happened to be an appropriate spot on the new Earth, with space on it to move, and if time were available, couldn’t they re-enter time and space for four fifteen-minute intervals to play the game? Or would it be two thirty-minute intervals?
    I mean, otherwise, what’s it for? If heaven can receive matter, our bodies, then we shouldn’t need to occupy a universe (timeless or otherwise), but why a material, spatial universe that lacks the capacity for sequentiality? Just so it’ll be there with us (not that I’d complain)? Do we even have a hint?
    When I’ve heard people try to describe the resurrection, they always talk about having indestructible bodies that can move through walls and travel at any speed, and so on, and while it might just be a stack of metaphors for whatever’s really going to happen, it doesn’t seem like a necessary or useful analogy for “singing Hosana back and forth with all the angels,” especially with those distinctly kinetic references. It suggests to me some dynamic quality that’s even hard to mesh with “no space or time” than any of the other analogies I’ve heard.
    But I’m just speculating too.

  54. I’m not sure what you’re commenting about regarding italics, Ed — most of time, it’s used on this blog as a convention to indicate quotation, which I think is quite helpful.
    Of course, it can be overused if it’s employed for emphasis.

  55. Smoky,

    Perhaps the step that you are missing is that action does not require time.

    That is an interesting statement, and perhaps it’s true. But, do you (or any other human being) understand what you wrote?


    Does anybody really know what time it is?
    (Somebody had to say that.)
    I have an understanding of what I wrote, and it makes sense to me. But as some wise teacher once said, the real test of whether you understand something is your ability to succinctly explain it in a manner that makes it readily understandable to others. And I don’t know that I can do that.
    I’m something a Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time) and a Richard Feynman junkie, and they (as well as St. Augustine) have caused me to look at time in ways that were inconceivable (pun intended for Feynman fans) to me before.

  56. Oh, you guys are making my brain hurt – but in a good way 🙂
    Let’s take the time question, so; according to (some) cosmologists, time came into being/existence/started/became measurable/became accessible to us (and you see the difficulty from the get-go here, when we can’t even settle on a term for what the hey happened) with the Big Bang and so, to speak of ‘what happened before the Big Bang?’ is meaningless, since there was no ‘before’.
    Time, therefore, being a property of the physical universe, we can say is not the same thing as eternity; nor is eternity to be considered mere duration or extension in time. It is qualitatively different.
    How this might be is a puzzler, the same way that trying to imagine an infinite Universe nearly made me fall off my chair with dizziness back when I was fifteen and cudgelling my brains to imagine ‘out beyond the edge – and beyond – and beyond that again – no edge, no border, no contained within something else but going on and on limitlessly’. We’re creatures stuck in time at present, so any attempts we might make to imagine what eternity might be like are going to be either ‘like more and more time’ or ‘not-time but we don’t know what that’s like’.
    Personally, for ideas about “Are the flames of Hell and Purgatory physical or not?”, I find Dante’s “Divine Comedy” really helpful. For example, in the ‘Purgatorio’, when Virgil is trying to coax Dante into the final fire, he tells him it will not harm him – put the edge of your robe into the flame, and you will see it will not be burnt. Yet when Dante walked into the fire, the burning heat was so intense he would gladly have thrown himself into molten glass for relief.
    Physical flames? Not if you mean ‘real’ fire that would ‘really’ burn ‘real’ cloth (or flesh). But the purgation by fire? Oh, yes.
    *shrugs* Hey, I’m not smart enough for theology or philosophy; I’ll take any help I can get from the poets, I’m not proud 😉

  57. Ed Pie:
    If your definition of ‘eternity’ entails sequentiality, then it wouldn’t be ‘eternity’ to begin with.
    The very aspect of ‘sequentiality’ is against the very nature of ‘eternity’.
    For example, when we say God is ‘eternal’; to even suggest sequentiality as being an aspect of ‘eternity’ is a riscible notion since it would, in fact, suggest that God has a beginning, which He does not.
    In essence, sequentiality, by its very nature, has a beginning and, some can very well argue, an end as well.

  58. Perhaps the step that you are missing is that action does not require time.
    That is an interesting statement, and perhaps it’s true. But, do you (or any other human being) understand what you wrote?

    Smoky,
    When exactly did time actually come into being?

  59. That’s irrelevant to my point. Even though we can write and talk about eternity as distinct from time, I doubt that any human has the ability to comprehend such a state. I agree with the anonymous poster:
    We’re creatures stuck in time at present, so any attempts we might make to imagine what eternity might be like are going to be either ‘like more and more time’ or ‘not-time but we don’t know what that’s like’.
    That’s the basis of my response to Esquire.

  60. Esquire,
    Politely and sincerely…could you provide and an example of an action not requiring time…
    “Perhaps the step that you are missing is that action does not require time.”
    Fuinsoeig,
    You responded to my post:
    “John, I would say that with regard to the Fatima or other visions, since the seers are in physical bodies exising in our mortal realm, the way the vision is translated by the earthly sensorium so as to be comprehensible means that flames, the damned burning, the hideous bestial shapes of the demons, the changing environment which is non-simultaneous, etc. are the ways in which the mind and brain turns this incomprehensible into the nearest analogy to earthly experience so as to be perceived, let alone understood. Whether, if we end up in Hell, there will ‘really’ be clouds, flames, etc. God alone knows.”
    Besides multiple passages in the bible describing “Hell” much in the same way the seers reported Hell (fire, brimstone, etc.), we can reasonably assume that Mary had some purpose in providing a guided tour through Hell to the seers (like she knew the seers would be reporting the experience to most of the human race), and that Jesus through Mary attached some importance in the how the seers would perceive
    the experience…meaning…the whole hell tour could have been just a big “scare job”, but more likely, the seers were shown what awaits the unfortunate soul…flames, burning, moving/torturous demons, clouds, etc. all suggest movement, which suggests non-simultinaiety, which suggests a temporal environment…
    In the end though you are right…Hell is what ever God says it is, and here’s to hoping you, I, and the rest of our blogger friends get to find out from the behind the pearly gates!

  61. I was trying to lead up to something, but this point you’ve made here is best; that is, as St. Paul remarked:
    1 Corinthians 13:12
    12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

  62. Ok, I’ll buy it. The bible tells us that the Universe had a beginning and time is part of the universe thus it had a beginning (Sidetrack: You can read Peter Kreeft’s 20 Arguements for God to see why time, logically, must have a beginning).
    The bible tells us there will be an end to everything, thus and end of time.
    Then there will be a New Order that is endless(thus has a beginning but no end), perhaps eternal(no time thus no sequence of events thus no actual beginning or end). In the second, eternal, case it is more easy to imagine that since there is no time there is no space (you need time to move in to be able to be here and go to there) but the whole “eternal” concept is something completely out of human experience.

  63. “The Baltimore Catechism comes with an Imprimatur”
    So does lots of garbage (not that the Baltimore Catechism is garbage – we have used it in educating our own kids). The Imprimatur is no guarantee of orthodoxy. Period. It is only as good as the bishop who grants it.

  64. This is completely off the subject of time and eternity, but Ed Pie’s post about the priest who wanted basketball in heaven reminded me of a story of a man who died and found himself in heaven, in the gallery at a golf match. He saw a golfer trying to clear some trees 300 yards away. The guy tapped an angel on the shoulder and asked, “Who does that guy think he is, St. Peter?” The angel said, “He is St. Peter. Trouble is, he thinks he’s Tiger Woods!”

  65. “We’re creatures stuck in time at present, so any attempts we might make to imagine what eternity might be like are going to be either ‘like more and more time’ or ‘not-time but we don’t know what that’s like’.”
    Whoops – that would be me what posted that there, Smoky Mountain Timekeeper. Sorry for not identifying myself; mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
    Besides, if you guys think this is complicated to figure out, you should head on over to GetReligion.org where we’re trying to thrash out what exactly “to” means when we say (if we say? do we say? do others say we say?) we pray to the saints. To, with, through, or the heck with it, you Papists is all idolaters anyways/shut your ignorant yap, Proddy heretic?
    Oh, boy. No, to be fair, the tone is quite civil, and it is an interesting question – what, if any, term can a newspaper use to refer to the Catholic practice of invoking the help of the saints without making it sound like we’re worshipping them not God and without going into a long, involved, theological explanation.
    Any suggestions?
    (And once we’ve cleared that up and sorted out Hell, we’ll square the circle, ja?)

  66. John T,

    Politely and sincerely…could you provide and an example of an action not requiring time…


    Love

  67. I was trying to find the appropriate quote from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan where Spock mentions how Khan was attacking only in two dimensions, but oh well…
    May I throw out something to think about – it is that the discussion tends to revolve around our familiar three dimensions. Should we not accept the possibility that God exists outside our standard three dimensions and that any attempt to describe Heaven and Hell will come out woefully inadequate?
    (1 Corinthians 2:9-10)

  68. Should we not accept the possibility that God exists outside our standard three dimensions
    How about inside, outside, both, and neither. After all, an omnipresent God would cover all bases.

  69. Politely and sincerely…could you provide and an example of an action not requiring time…
    Love

    Esquire,
    I humbly disagree. Love is an act of the will. For humans, this requires some mental processing time (however brief). No action that a human can take does not require time.
    On the contrary, you argue (and likely correctly) that no action that God takes does require time.
    In this sense, “action” as it applies to us and “action” as it applies to God is like comparing apples and oranges, no?

  70. God is over all things, under all things; outside all, inside all; within but not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised up; below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath, sustaining; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling. Hildebert

  71. In this sense, “action” as it applies to us and “action” as it applies to God is like comparing apples and oranges, no?
    Is your fruit not of His tree?

  72. Is your fruit not of His tree?
    I’m not sure what you mean, or how that’s relevant to my statement. Please clarify.

  73. If your definition of ‘eternity’ entails sequentiality, then it wouldn’t be ‘eternity’ to begin with.
    I’m afraid to go back and try to figure out how I misspoke, but I was trying to contrast sequentiality with eternity, not equate the two.
    Right now, we’re in time and space and there’s no way out except through death. In heaven, we won’t need time or space or a physical object to live on, but if this new Earth thing is more or less what I’m imagining it is, space and matter that’s not just human bodies will also exist.
    If this space and matter come back into being, will it be just to look at, or will be able to enjoy it in a more direct sense, much as we do now? Will we be able to personally visit the new physical universe after the Eschaton, without being bound by it as we are today?
    If we can visit remade space and matter at will in the new heaven, could we also visit time (say, to play basketball)? God created the sequential experience, so it ought to be good, but is it good only in a medicinal sense, like purgatory?

  74. I’m making fruit punch out of apples and oranges. Is your action apart from God? “No branch can bear fruit by itself.”

  75. will be able to enjoy it in a more direct sense, much as we do now?
    You mean as you now INdirectly enjoy it through your senses and interpret it with your brain?

  76. Smoky,
    If we agree that God’s actions do not require time, that is pretty much the only point I was trying to make.

  77. Mary,
    Respectfully, I still don’t understand the point you’re making in relation to my statement.
    I was distinguishing Action (as performed by God outside of time) from action (as performed by man constrained by time) and suggesting that they must be qualitatively different. For, the only concept of “action” that we as humans can comprehend requires time.
    Esquire,
    Taking the above into account, we need to be careful about definitions here. What exactly do we mean by “action” in relation to God?

  78. Smoky,
    I would begin with the activity that takes place in the inner life of the Trinity.

  79. Oops,
    Been busy all day and now see (as someone also pointed out) that I left off the x at the end of Father Schillebeeckx’s name.
    To repeat in corrected mode:
    As per Father Edward Schillebeeckx in his book, Church, the History of God, there is no Hell. If you die in mortal sin, your soul simply will no longer exist as God will not permit imperfection in the afterlife.

  80. Esquire:
    When God created “Heaven”, it is said that its creation preceded time.
    Therefore, I would think that “time” did not come into being (at least, in my view) until the Fall of Man when we became finite in nature.
    Had we not fallen, I believe we would’ve remained in the perfection that God had created us and, therefore, co-eternal (that is, without death).
    It wasn’t until the Fall of man that death came into being and we became finite in nature.

  81. When God created “Heaven”, it is said that its creation preceded time.
    Without time, I don’t believe “preceded” has much, if any, meaning.

  82. I would think that “time” did not come into being (at least, in my view) until the Fall of Man
    Esau: this just doesn’t make any sense from a scientific point of view.
    But moreover, if time didn’t exist “before” the Fall (whatever “before” means), how could the sequence of events leading to the Fall have occurred?

  83. Furthermore, God goes through the pains of spelling-out in Genesis, through his inspired writer, that the process of creation was sequential as per the number of DAYS God spent creating the heavens and the earth.
    Ergo…we have time preceding the “Fall,” as per God’s own revelation.

  84. I was distinguishing Action (as performed by God outside of time) from action (as performed by man constrained by time) and suggesting that they must be qualitatively different.
    And I was de-suggesting it.
    For, the only concept of “action” that we as humans can comprehend requires time.
    Then drop your concept of “action”.

  85. Mary,
    Are you capable of performing an action that requires no time? Are you capable of even comprehending such an action?
    Be honest. Provide examples.

  86. I do not know Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx, nor have I read his works. Even so, I find his proposition concerning hell preposterous.
    First, the Catholic Christian doctrine of faith is a whole body, and we are not given the opportunity to accept one teaching and discard another at our discretion. To do so accepts a flaw in the source of that faith, and a flawed doctrine is unacceptable and unpalatable for those seeking a perfect Truth. As such, the doctrine must be accepted or denied in whole, either now or before the Just Judge.
    Secondly, I have noticed that those who propose to deny the existence and consequence of hell are often ones who have most to fear it. I should know, I was one. There is a story regarding St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina and one such doubter. He responded, “You will believe when you get there.”
    Lastly, if you really want to know if there is a hell, look to those who know it on earth. What fire burns the Nietzscheist’s mind and his heart to pour such passion into his nihilistic work? What unseen force seeths within the Marxist’s soul that presses him hour after hour to testify against God, especially a God who is Love? Why does the Freudian, amidst his self-gratifying debauchery, see doom and catastrophe all around him? What compels the sinner onward to greater sin like a slave ahead of stinging whips? I assure you it is hell, and I have the burns and scars to prove it.

  87. if time didn’t exist “before” the Fall (whatever “before” means), how could the sequence of events leading to the Fall have occurred?
    Did they occur? They appear to have in the Fallen view.
    Are you capable of performing an action that requires no time?
    “‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for him who believes.”

  88. Smoky,
    Are you telling me that everything God did before he created the world as we know it involved time as our concept of time is defined?
    What makes time as we know it (i.e., a beginning and end) is due to the finite nature we have.
    Let me ask you this: if we did not fall, do you think time (i.e., defined as beginning and end) would actually exist?
    We would’ve remained as we were — created in the perfection God had made us, being co-eternal beings (i.e., having a beginning but no end).

  89. Furthermore, God goes through the pains of spelling-out in Genesis, through his inspired writer, that the process of creation was sequential as per the number of DAYS God spent creating the heavens and the earth.
    Ergo…we have time preceding the “Fall,” as per God’s own revelation.

    John T:
    That’s the type of linear thinking that is more characteristic of fundamentalists.
    Unless you are, in fact, a fundamentalist, you would read the Bible (especially Genesis) in the light of what the Catechism instructs.
    Let me ask you this: Do you really think God created the world in six days?

  90. being co-eternal beings (i.e., having a beginning but no end).
    Having a beginning is not eternal.

  91. Ben:
    Consider this from Augustine:
    “Therefore, there is a certain created wisdom that was created before all things: the rational and intelligible mind of that chaste city of thine. It is our mother which is above and is free and “eternal in the heavens”–but in what heavens except those which praise thee, the “heaven of heavens”? This also is the “heaven of heavens” which is the Lord’s–although we find no time before it, since what has been created before all things also precedes the creation of time. Still, the eternity of the Creator himself is before it, from whom it took its beginning as created, though not in time (since time as yet was not), even though time belongs to its created nature.”
    Let me ask you this: are you telling me the place where God dwells actually exists within the confines of time?

  92. Having a beginning is not eternal.
    Yes, but “co-eternal” means having a beginning but no end.

  93. Actually, I was using the wrong word.
    The correct one was: aeveternal.
    Though I greatly appreciate your sarcasting and, not to mention, facetious response.

  94. Esau,
    The Resurrected Christ was in heaven, having the beatific vision. He existed in time, he moved, he ate, he spoke, he ascended. He was not locked in some statis of bliss. He had the beatific vision, in fact he had it all his life, and he lived in time.
    There’s a confusion here between God’s eternity, and the partipated eternity of the beatific vision the saints have. It would be incorrect to take the attributes of God’s eternity, and simply apply them to the saints. Scripture and Catholic theology clearly speak of heaven as a state that includes time, motion, change, etc. Look at the attributes of the resurrected body, for example. I think when people talk about heaven, they’re not referring to the beatific vision as they are to the accidental beatitude, which very much involves motion, change, and life.
    To quote passages about God’s timeless eternity does not settle the question of what “eternal life” means for God’s creatures. We’re not going to become angel intellects in heaven, we’ll still be humans. There will still be laughter, conversation, life, and joy. There will still be bodies. This tendency to want to minimize the resurrection of the body, by saying there are bodies but unextended, like points on a line, and what not, I find disturing.
    Heaven will have a strange eternal element, the beatific vision. It will also have the human elements of life we’re used to, spirtualized. We can still walk, move, laugh, converse, etc.

  95. Esau,
    To be clear. You are need to understand that eternnal life of God and eternal life of the saints is not said univocally. It is said in one sense analogically, in another sense equivocally.
    Eternity has more than one definition. In one respect it is obvious that human beings will never be “eternal” in the divine sense. Every human being was created ex nihilo, every person had a beginning. In the divine sense of eternity, a beginning is impossible. Therefore whatever eternity man enjoys, it is not the sense of God’s eternity. It is a participated eternity which has some likenesses, and some divergences.

  96. Esau:
    Let me ask you this: are you telling me the place where God dwells actually exists within the confines of time?
    No, I’m simply sayimg that without time, “precedes” has little, if any, meaning. Or to put it another way, Heaven is not dependent upon human notions of time and order.

  97. The condition of the blessed involves both time and space.
    The resurrection of the body requires bodies, which necessitates space. Furthermore, Jesus Christ resurrected and appeared in space and time. Therefore the condition of the blessed involves, or is not incompatible with, both time and space.
    Inasmuch as the blessed enjoy the beatific vision, that vision is not something which takes “time.” In a mysterious sense, that is a participation in an eternal vision.
    Don’t be afraid of your bodies. This discussion seems to want to deny the consequences resurrection of the flesh, and simply describe heaven as a purely spiritual angelic experience. Many is both body and soul. And both will find their fulfillment. Our faculties will not be useless, they will be enlivened.

  98. I think there is a lot of confusion here about what Heaven means. For one, God is immaterial. He doesn’t dwell in one realm more than anywhere else. He’s omnipresent. So talked about “the realm where God’s dwells” is arguing from a metaphor, a bad idea.
    What I mean by heaven is 1. the state of the blessed 2. the physical place, if any, where such blessed after the resurrection are congregated
    So the real question here is, “What is the life of the saints like?”
    The question is not, “What is Pure Act like?”

  99. Put it this way:
    Do the saints ever experience a before and after, in any respect?
    Yes they will. Of course they do!

  100. Do the saints ever experience a before and after, in any respect? Yes they will. Of course they do!
    Do you read palms too?

  101. The resurrected life of Christ includes time and space. Otherwise you deny the appearance of Christ’s resurrected body. Christ’s resurrected life is nothing other than a pattern of our life in heaven. The blessed bring their beatitude wherever they go.
    Our Lady appearing at Lords, angelic apparations, etc. Blessed creatures have succession. This isn’t rocket science. There is a great confusion here between:
    1. God’s eternity
    2. Man’s participated eternity as a saint
    And
    1. The eternal beatific vision
    2. Accidental beatiude- i.e. everything else
    Look at Jesus Christ. He lived his whole life, with the beatific vision, in heaven. Did he have a before and after? Did he experience motion?
    Time is simply a measure of motion. To deny time in heaven you have to deny any motion or change in heaven. And for what end?

  102. From the Catholic Encyclopedia article on, Eternity. Hopefully this can clear up some of the confusion. After discussion God’s eternity, the encyclopedia continues:
    “So far for the strict or proper notion of eternity, as applying solely to the Divine existence. There is a wide or improper sense in which we are wont to represent as eternal what is merely endless succession in time, and this even though the time in question should have had a beginning, as when we speak of the reward of the good and the punishment of the wicked as eternal, meaning by eternity only time or succession without end or limit in the future. In the Apocalypse there is a well-known passage in which a great angel is represented as standing with one foot on sea and one on land, and swearing by Him that liveth forever that time shall be no more. Whatever the meaning of the oath may be, it has found an echo in our religious terminology, and we are wont to think and say that with death, and especially with the Last Judgment, time shall cease. The meaning is not that there will be no more succession of any kind; but that there will be not substantial change or corruption in what survives death, the soul; or in the body that shall have been raised from the dead; or in the heavens and earth as they shall be renewed after Christ’s second coming. There is, moreover, an implication or connotation of the doctrine that in the future life of souls, whether in heaven or in hell, succession will be accidental, the act in which their essential happiness or misery will consist being continuous and unbroken vision and love, or blinded wrong vision and hatred, of God. This kind of duration is in our ordinary language spoken of as life or death eternal, by a kind of participation, in a wide or improper sense, in the character of the Divine eternity (Billot, op. cit., 119).”

  103. The resurrected life of Christ includes time and space. Otherwise you deny the appearance of Christ’s resurrected body.
    No. You’re simply claiming your mental understanding of a resurrected appearance to be his experience. In effect, you’ve made Jesus in your image. You don’t need to deny the appearance to realize that.
    To deny time in heaven you have to deny any motion or change in heaven. And for what end?
    You don’t need to deny what you don’t imagine. What motion or change do you imagine is going on in heaven?

  104. Esau,
    I have never heard anyone suggest that time was a by-product or effect of the fall, and I don’t believe that would be the case. Time, I believe, would have come into existence at the moment of creation.

  105. Saints,
    What’s ons example of motion?
    The use of our senses.
    The movement of our bodies, which is proper to it. Or do you expect a resurrected human body, to be paralyzed?
    Jesus become man, and had a true human nature. Mutability, succession, discersive reasoning, etc. are proper to human nature. You might as well say saying
    “The Word Was Made Flesh”
    Is putting Jesus in our image. In as sense that’s true. When we say Jesus was like us in all things but sin, we’re using our humanity as a reference point. No problem with that.
    To clarify, Christ’s resurrected body was real. If heaven is defined as the beatific vision, and Jesus, in heaven, appeared to his disciples, moved about, walked through a wall, and let himself be touched, etc, then I see no reason to negate the life of the resurrected Christ as a pattern for our resurrection. In fact, as the first-fruits from the dead, looking to Jesus Risen seems a pretty good reference point for us, who will rise in Him.

  106. Other examples of motion:
    Welcoming new arrivals to heaven.
    Praying for wayfaring souls on earth and in purgatory, which prayers will cease after the last judgment and purgatory emptied.
    Opening and shutting our eyes, seeing things.
    Hearing sounds with our ears.
    Experiencing the new heaven and the new earth.
    Looking at our loves ones.
    Looking at Jesus and Mary.
    Moving our bodies with the virtue of agility proper to a resurrected body
    Viewing light from a resurrected body, proper to its glorious state.
    And generally doing things that a disembodied soul, now with a resurrected body, can do.
    Of course there are wonderful things that eye has not seen nor ear heard, particularly the beatific vision and other things we can’t imagine. However, that doesn’t take away from those lesser aspects of beatitude proper to the existence of a being made of both Body and Soul.

  107. Is there before or after in heaven?
    Before the resurrection, the saints in heaven do not have their bodies.
    After the resurrection, the saints in heaven do have their bodies.
    Before the resurrection, heaven is full of disembodied souls.
    After the resurrection, heaven is full of resurrected individuals.
    Therefore before and after exists in heaven.
    Therefore time exists in heaven.

  108. Esau writes:
    Are you telling me that everything God did before he created the world as we know it involved time as our concept of time is defined?
    Nope. I never said that.
    Let me ask you this: if we did not fall, do you think time … would actually exist?
    Yes, absolutely. But I’ve removed your elipsis because I don’t agree with your definition.
    We would’ve remained as we were — created in the perfection God had made us
    Do you really believe that we were perfect in our pre-Fallen state? If that were true, we would never have fallen. Moreover, only God is perfect.
    being co-eternal beings (i.e., having a beginning but no end).
    Isn’t that what we are now? Doesn’t Catholicism teach that we have no end (i.e. our soul will continue on eternally after our death)?

  109. Other examples of motion:
    You fancy your poetic examples involve motion, but that’s just your imagination coloring them. I can welcome, look, pray and everything else you’ve listed without actually moving a physical body. I can even open and shut my metaphorical eyes and leap with joy.
    If heaven is defined as the beatific vision, and Jesus, in heaven, appeared to his disciples, moved about, walked through a wall, and let himself be touched, etc, then I see no reason to negate the life of the resurrected Christ as a pattern for our resurrection.
    In keeping with your pattern, you would be resurrected and then appear to someone else as having a physical body moving in space and time. The pattern does not, however, include that you yourself would experience that. Only thst you would appear to others in that way.
    Is there before or after in heaven?
    Your before and after is in your head. Your head has assigned them to heaven.

  110. I think time is here with us to stay. Since there are created beings in heaven, I think it’s fair to say that there is time in heaven.

  111. Esau,
    Time is sequence. Sequence is necessary for everything except a freeze-frame. If you say the word ‘time’ you start with an unvoiced palatal consonant, then have a long vowel, then have a voiced labial consonant. It takes sequence to say.
    God has always been Trinity, with love and communication forever. That means that sequence is part of God’s very nature, thus time is not a created thing, but rather a manifestation of God’s being. In Him we live and move and have our being, as Paul wrote, and a philosopher before him. Living and moving require sequence.
    The god of the Greeks could not move or think or communicate, because their concept of perfection did not allow for any change, and they saw movement and communication as change.
    The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob thinks and communicates. The incarnate God the Son did these things as well, and He did not become imperfect by doing so.
    I prefer the word “everlasting” to “eternity” for this reason.
    Slowboy, where in the Bible is it that it is taught that time has a beginning? Citation?
    I say that God has no beginning or ending. Esau is in effect saying that God never began and has already ended. That eternal life is identical to eternal death. I think the Bible fits more with the concept of everlasting life.
    I’m tempted to ask “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”

  112. Time is sequence…God has always been Trinity, with love and communication forever. That means that sequence is part of God’s very nature, thus time is not a created thing, but rather a manifestation of God’s being.


    Interesting. Seems to me to be a bit of anthropomorphistic bootstrapping, however.
    I do not believe that your “that means” sentence logically follows from the preceding sentence. Love and communication within the Trinity do not require sequence, and therefore your statement that “sequence is part of God’s very nature” would appear to me be false. I would welcome any sources you have for that notion, however.
    And your conclusion — that time is not created — is directly refuted by St. Augustine, among others. I would be curious, again, to know what sources you have for that conclusion.

  113. Puzzled:
    Sequence is linear and implies time and change; God does not exist or even confined by neither since He is eternal, immutable, changeless and outside of time.

  114. Smoky:
    Do you really believe that we were perfect in our pre-Fallen state? If that were true, we would never have fallen. Moreover, only God is perfect.
    The choice we made was imperfect — just as Lucifer’s.
    Man was created in a state of grace, in fact, and it was not until the Fall of Man that death came into the world and, thus, made us finite creatures.
    Human nature was created good, even in communion with the blessed Trinity which made “him.”

  115. Esau,
    How could a perfect being make an imperfect choice? Impossible!

  116. Esau,
    I have never heard anyone suggest that time was a by-product or effect of the fall, and I don’t believe that would be the case. Time, I believe, would have come into existence at the moment of creation.

    Esquire:
    I say this because it wasn’t until the Fall of Man that decay and mortality entered into his nature and we became finite creatures in the sense of death.
    Kindly explain, assuming we didn’t fall, how time, as we know it, would’ve still applied to us given that the nature of man before the Fall was that of a state of grace, in fact, actually in communion with God?

  117. In the case of God, “perfect” means, among other things, incapable of sinning.
    In the case of Adam and Eve before the fall, St. John of the Cross and the great Pope John Paul II, I believe, referred to their state as one of “original innocence.” In the state of original innocence, Adam and Eve were capable of not sinning and they were capable of sinning. They were not “perfect” in the sense of being incapable of sinning.
    St. John of the Cross compares this state of original innocence to the state of the “perfect” in the spiritual life, those who have attained spiritual marriage. They do not “know” evil, and are capable of either not sinning or sinning.
    After the fall and before attaining the state of spiritual marriage, man is incapable of not sinning.
    In heaven, in the beatific vision, man is incapable of sinning.
    I don’t think it is necessarily incorrect to refer to Adam and Eve as “perfect” before the fall, but only in the sense noted above.

  118. How could a perfect being make an imperfect choice? Impossible!
    Smoky,
    You completely disregarded my statement in its entirety.
    What I actually said is this:
    Had we not fallen, I believe we would’ve remained in the perfection that God had created us and, therefore, co-eternal (that is, without death).
    This means the maximum degree of being as far as man is concerned in which God had originally made us.
    Man can never be ‘Perfect’ since only God is perfect!

  119. Esau,
    I see nothing to prevent a creature fully in communion with God from experiencing time. I do not follow why you think (if I am reading you correctly) that time must follow death, or “finiteness.”
    I really have no reason to doubt that time existed in the Garden of Eden before the fall.

  120. Time does not require decay and mortality: it’s quite easy to envision a universe with time as we know it but without death or decay. What’s not easy (not even possible for humans) to imagine is a universe without time.
    What is your view, Esau, on scientific knowledge about the Universe before human life existed? Do you reject that there was life before human beings? Do you reject that there was a Universe before life on Earth? If there was pre-human life and even a Universe before life on Earth, was there no time?

  121. OK, I submit that we’ve been working with different definitions of “perfect”.
    Definitions are often the crux of a disagreement.

  122. Smoky and Esquire:
    I was attempting to dig up some of the same resources that I encountered during my research into Orthodox Theology back in the days.
    Although I am unable to find these, I believe the one I happened to find just now might shed some light on the matter and why I currently hold the above beliefs:

    Antiochian-Orthodox Views: Genesis 1:26
    The biblical story and proclamation portrays the archetypal Man as a perfection, He, and his counterpart and completion, woman, are hypostases, that is, persons, sharing therein a moral value rooted in the triple-personhood of the Godhead.
    Adam, in his primal creation, exists in his spiritual body and is part of the good creation, made ex nihilo: out of nothing.
    And he exists, moreover, in paradise. Yet in his creation he is given freedom of will to be himself.
    But Man’s self-will is not an accident; it is not inevitable: it is a tragedy.
    It is from the fall of man that this gross body that we know, and this world as we know it, results.
    The liturgy of St. Basil, the eucharistic service normally served on the Sundays of Great Lent in Orthodox churches, proclaims in the Anaphora (eucharistic prayer):
    “But when he (man) disobeyed thee, the true God, who had created him, and was led astray by the guile of the serpent and rendered subject to death through his own transgressions, thou didst banish him, in thy righteous judgements, O God, from paradise into this world…

    This is why I said that had we not fallen, our notions of time would not be as they are since we would have remained in Paradise, in the state of grace, in the very state of perfection God had made us, in actual communion with Him.

  123. Smoky —
    Perhaps this, too, may help — from St. Augustine:
    “For what is time? Who can readily and briefly explain this? Who can even in thought comprehend it, so as to utter a word about it? But what in discourse do we mention more familiarly and knowingly, than time? And, we understand, when we speak of it; we understand also, when we hear it spoken of by another.
    What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not: yet I say boldly that I know, that if nothing passed away, time past were not; and if nothing were coming, a time to come were not; and if nothing were, time present were not.
    Those two times then, past and to come, how are they, seeing the past now is not, and that to come is not yet?
    But the present, should it always be present, and never pass into time past, verily it should not be time, but eternity.”
    Therefore, if we were to exist eternally, it would ever be an eternal present wherein time itself does NOT exist!

  124. “You mean as you now INdirectly enjoy it through your senses and interpret it with your brain?”
    Well, approximately. I’m just assuming that our glorified eyes and ears will not be dormant, obsolete artifacts–that whatever virtue we gain in our resurrected bodies, we will not lose all their physical functions. If we gain some sort of expanded awareness of all things, then we wouldn’t have to perceive the physical universe to know everything about it and what might be going on in it, but that’s like equating knowing someone and looking at someone in your presence. If you know them perfectly, it might be just as good as beholding them, but it’s simply a different kind of thing from beholding them with your senses.
    I’m kind of surprised there haven’t been more references to the Father preceeding the Son ontologically, even though both are eternal so there’s no temporal consideration to their relationship.
    “I can welcome, look, pray and everything else you’ve listed without actually moving a physical body”
    Good point, but you’ve only pushed the problem down a level. You might not be shifting your posture in any way to do these things, but there are still neurons firing, ions moving around in your brain (never mind blood pumping to keep everything active). Um, depending on how much of what you’re doing is just mental and how much is simply the activity of the soul.
    As for the resurrected Christ experiencing space and time, I don’t think we have to assume that the Apostles’ perception of Jesus breaking bread and walking through walls was just a weak metaphor for what was really going on–not any more than it was before the crucifixion, anyway. The ascension didn’t happen until later.

  125. Esau,
    Still not getting it. You have bolded and italicized a lot of text, but none of it to my reading supports what you are saying.
    I understand that the result of the fall was banishment from paradise. I understand that the world we have now is different than the world we would have had without the fall. St. John of the Cross describes the state of spiritual marriage as a very different, virtually unrecognizable world.
    The fact that it is different says nothing about the absence (or, for that matter, the presence) of time.

  126. St. John of the Cross describes the state of spiritual marriage as a very different, virtually unrecognizable world.
    Esquire:
    That’s just it — our very notion of time (and, actually, time itself) results from the world that came to be as a result of the fall.
    I guess I am taking into account, more specifically, what Augustine says here:
    “But the present, should it always be present, and never pass into time past, verily it should not be time, but eternity.”
    So, if we hadn’t fallen, wouldn’t we have remained the spiritual creature God meant us to be in such a pure state that we were actually in active communion with God and existing in this eternal transcendence?
    If this is the case, time wouldn’t be given the above statement from Augustine as regards the nature of eternity; the state in which we would actually exist had not the Fall occurred.
    (Of course, I can be wrong and I am certainly open to correction.)

  127. Esau,
    You never addressed my question from earlier regarding whether you believe there was life and a Universe before human beings.

  128. You never addressed my question from earlier regarding whether you believe there was life and a Universe before human beings.
    It hardly dignified a response since by your very question here, it seems you do not believe in Heaven or the Angels; if you did, you wouldn’t have asked such a question to begin with.
    It almost seems, by your various posts here, as if you take more stock in the Scientific rather than the Spiritual; to which, I find there are no arguments to be had since discussion of the latter requires Faith, first and foremost, as it transcends reason by its very nature.
    However, if this was not at all the case, then you will please excuse me for my comments here. ;^)
    Mind you, all our notions of Science and the physical world we live in, including time, as our existing limited minds define it, are all the result of our Fallen nature and, therefore, a scheme in which we only see things through a glass darkly.

  129. It hardly dignified a response since by your very question here, it seems you do not believe in Heaven or the Angels; if you did, you wouldn’t have asked such a question to begin with.
    That’s a non sequitur. I can believe in God, Heaven, the Angels, all of Catholicism, and yet still believe in the Big Bang and a Universe that was several billion years old before the first humans appeared. That view is not at all inconsistent with Catholicism.

  130. This is where the Latin theologians get into trouble by trying to define everything.
    There are too many mysteries in the spiritual life. Let’s just leave it at that.

  131. That’s a non sequitur. I can believe in God, Heaven, the Angels, all of Catholicism, and yet still believe in the Big Bang and a Universe that was several billion years old before the first humans appeared. That view is not at all inconsistent with Catholicism.
    That’s not the point, Smoky —
    The fact of the matter is that it seems that you do not hold such spiritual elements in the same regard but that you seem to consider them more of having a mythical essence.
    The very fact that you had asked this in the manner that you had appeared to suggest that you do not believe in the realm of Heaven or the angels, since you gravitated more toward the Scientific and, in absence of the Science, you seem to give it no consideration whatsoever as evidenced by your previous remark:
    …this just doesn’t make any sense from a scientific point of view.
    The fact of the matter is that you cannot use Science as the Rule since Science is not absolute; furthermore, Science does not dictate God and His operation.
    Again, as I mentioned:
    Mind you, all our notions of Science and the physical world we live in, including time, as our existing limited minds define it, are all the result of our Fallen nature and, therefore, a scheme in which we only see things through a glass darkly.
    And, like my post to Esquire:
    So, if we hadn’t fallen, wouldn’t we have remained the spiritual creature God meant us to be in such a pure state that we were actually in active communion with God and existing in this eternal transcendence?
    That is, where:
    “… the present, should it always be present, and never pass into time past, verily it should not be time, but eternity.”

  132. Smokey,
    Since the Big Bang theory was given to us by a Belgian priest, I think it is higly suspect!
    (And I’m not kidding neither)
    The real brain-breakers come from them prophets of M-Theory. All those branes and strings and super-stings with the kalabi-yau super-duper symmetry for your photon, graviton, hidden sub-atomic fantasylands.
    I know everyone’s just as anxious as me for them to start making mini black holes in Genevea. It looks like we’ll have to wait longer since they broke a 50 ft magnet yesterday. :<

  133. Well. You’ve made a lot of assumptions and jumped to a lot of conclusions about my beliefs. Be careful of that. It’s always better to ask someone about their beliefs than to make assumptions.
    Hence, I asked you an honest question, which you’ve still never answered. Why not?
    You generally expect others to respond to your questions.

  134. Ed:
    You might not be shifting your posture in any way to do these things, but there are still neurons firing, ions moving around in your brain
    When Paul said, “no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God,” do you suppose Paul was saying God’s thoughts involve neurons firing and ions moving around in a brain? Is that what thinking in heaven is like?

  135. The above should have been addressed to Esau, in case it’s not clear due to caine’s post in the middle.

  136. You never addressed my question from earlier regarding whether you believe there was life and a Universe before human beings.
    Smoky:
    If it wasn’t obvious from my response, the Realm of Heaven and the Angels are such creations that existed before human beings.

  137. Thank you very much Esau.
    Just to be fully clear, then: you don’t believe that there was a time on Earth when human beings didn’t exist?

  138. Just to be fully clear, then: you don’t believe that there was a time on Earth when human beings didn’t exist?
    Is that like, “if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it fall, does it make a sound”?

  139. Esau,
    I don’t get where you’re making the leap from

    So, if we hadn’t fallen, wouldn’t we have remained the spiritual creature God meant us to be in such a pure state that we were actually in active communion with God and existing in this eternal transcendence?


    to “our notion of time being the result of our fallen nature.”
    Nor does the Augustine quote support that conclusion, and I am pretty certain (not absolutely — I’ll check later if I get a chance) that Augustine would disagree with your conclusion.
    If you can cite me any Church Father or respected theologian who believes that time did not exist before the fall, I would love to read about it.

  140. Again, as I mentioned to another on this thread, this would follow a certain linear-type thinking.
    Personally, I believe God operates outside what we might actually call “scientifically-possible”, as you might have it.
    Whose to say that the Big Bang wasn’t actually the mechanism by which God, the Prime Mover, initiated the spark for the Creation of our universe?
    Similarly, one cannot dismiss other possible notions based on certain facts as we know them to be the case since, all in all, these are all but conjectures to begin with.

  141. Whose to say that the Big Bang wasn’t actually the mechanism by which God, the Prime Mover, initiated the spark for the Creation of our universe?
    Agreed.
    Similarly, one cannot dismiss other possible notions based on certain facts as we know them to be the case since, all in all, these are all but conjectures to begin with.
    I agree again that these are all conjectures; though, some conjectures are better (based upon more evidence) than others.
    That’s all beside the point — I’ve just been trying to get to an understanding of what you, personally, believe in the matter, so that I can better understand your posts about time by reading them from your perspective.
    With this in mind, please answer my follow-up question from before:
    Do you believe (yes or no) that there was a time on Earth before human beings existed? Or — do you believe in dinosaurs?

  142. That’s just it —
    This supposes a linear construct of the events in which God made the world.
    However, my thought is since God is omnipotent, omniscient, etc.; can you actually confine Him to such a linear mode of Creation as we understand it?

  143. had we not fallen, our notions of time would not be as they are since we would have remained in Paradise… it would ever be an eternal present wherein time itself does NOT exist!
    But why “would be” an eternal present? Is it not always now? I am here now. Are you not here now? Take a look (without taking any time to think about it).

  144. Jim —
    No, it’s not since the present becomes the past and the future becomes the present; etc.
    There is that mutability that’s a consequence of time.
    Again:
    “For what is time? Who can readily and briefly explain this? Who can even in thought comprehend it, so as to utter a word about it? But what in discourse do we mention more familiarly and knowingly, than time? And, we understand, when we speak of it; we understand also, when we hear it spoken of by another.
    What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not: yet I say boldly that I know, that if nothing passed away, time past were not; and if nothing were coming, a time to come were not; and if nothing were, time present were not.
    Those two times then, past and to come, how are they, seeing the past now is not, and that to come is not yet?
    But the present, should it always be present, and never pass into time past, verily it should not be time, but eternity.”

  145. Are you not here now?
    LOL. “They hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?'” (Genesis 3)

  146. No, it’s not since the present becomes the past and the future becomes the present; etc.
    Nope. It’s always now. Even if you think it’s otherwise.

  147. Esau,
    Please come up with a new quote or explain how you think that the one you keep using makes your point. But please don’t just keep repeating it over and over again.
    It does not, for me at least, support in the least your notion that time did not exist before the fall. And again, I do not think St. Augustine would agree with you either, so I am somewhat suspect when you keep trotting out his quote.

  148. Question — do Angels age?


    Good question. Being pure spirits they cannot age in the sense of “growing older.” In other words, they do not pass through stages of life like humans.
    But I suspect the real question is, do they experience time? Without consulting Peter Kreeft (the dean of all things angelic), I must go back to St. Augustine. If his definition of time is the mind’s measure of the motion of bodies, I would have to guess that Angels do experience time. Angels, again, do not have bodies, but they interact with humans that do, both on earth and in heaven. So my guess is yes, they experience time.
    But I am not by any means an angelologist, and there may be many good arguments why a pure spirit does not experience time.

  149. Nope. It’s always now. Even if you think it’s otherwise.
    Jim:
    How old are you?
    If we existed in the Eternal Present, we would actually be God, since it is He who ultimately exists in this state.
    The very fact that we experience the passage of time as such is proof of its existence and its effects.

  150. “The separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.” — Einstein
    According to that, if angels experience time, they must be experiencing illusion.

  151. The very fact that we experience the passage of time as such is proof of its existence and its effects.
    Your “proof” is illusion Esau. Why do you believe illusion?

  152. But I suspect the real question is, do they experience time?
    That’s just it — isn’t what Augustine states here the very characteristic of eternity?
    “… the present, should it always be present, and never pass into time past, verily it should not be time, but eternity.
    If so, wouldn’t this also be a defining characteristic of beings that live in eternity?

  153. Your “proof” is illusion Esau.
    Jim:
    If it were actually an illusion, you wouldn’t be the age you are right now.

  154. If it were actually an illusion, you wouldn’t be the age you are right now.
    What age do you imagine that to be in your illusion?

  155. Gentlemen!
    Time is purely relative – as for that matter so are the concepts of “past” and “future”. Roger Penrose wrote a book called The Emperor’s New Mind that argues (and I’m probably butchering the argument) human consciousness is a phenomena that reflects a cascading “re-creation” of electrical impulses at the quantum level. There’s a mechanism of interpretation which ascribes to this activity the experienced reality of forward-moving time. But actually, the created world is not bound to relate with itself according to any set march of time in a fixed direction.
    Think of it like a piece of music. It can all simultaneously be on the same piece of paper, but its meaning to the human ear is derived by the journey from one note to the next – and that progression is something that is intrinsic to human awareness and existence. For us to understand something coherently (even on the abstract level) it has to follow some sort of forward-moving pattern.
    Why?
    Because we are incomplete – in need of fulfillment that is off somewhere in front of us, but with an echo that is burned deep in our past.
    The Father sees the whole sheet of music because he wrote it. He made the paper, the ink, the scales, the time, the intstrumentation. He knows the into, the development, the exposition, the recapitulation and the coda. We move from note to note. But the Father condescended to us by sending his Son to listen at our pace and show us the true beauty of what we were made for, leading us through the score in the correct key and tempo.
    I realize now, that I chose the wrong metaphor! Jesus is the Word made flesh, not the “note”. But it works the same way with poetry. In fact, Pre16 in “Introduction to Christianity” makes that exact comparison when he points out that God is the only author whose Word cannot be severed from him. Anyone who gets a poem published has immediately lost ownership of their word. That poem can mean something completely different to its reader then the author intended and the reader would be completely valid in their interpretation. The union between Word and Author is something always out of reach for a created being. We go from moment to moment and what we leave on paper can be picked up for any purpose by anyone. To a certain degree, it is lost from us forever. The Word of God cannot be read this way because it IS God. It never left his pen – never even left his mind!
    The past is frequently a lie to us because we have imperfect and corrupted memory. It is only by living in the Holy Spirit that the past can be illuminated to the point where what was of value is made present again in our hearts. The future is a lie to us because we fill it with structures of our own hopes and fears that subsist in our own imperfect minds and desires. Only by living in the Spirit can the future be actualized EVEN IN OUR PRESENT MOMENT as Christ promised the Apostles. “I am with you always, to the close of the age.”
    St. Patrick said it best:
    Christ with me, Christ before me,
    Christ behind me, Christ within me,
    Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
    Christ at my right, Christ at my left,
    Christ in the fort,
    Christ in the chariot seat,
    Christ in the ship’s deck,
    Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
    Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me,
    Christ in every eye that sees me,
    Christ in every ear that hears me.

  156. Because we are incomplete – in need of fulfillment that is off somewhere in front of us, but with an echo that is burned deep in our past.
    The Father sees the whole sheet of music because he wrote it. He made the paper, the ink, the scales, the time, the intstrumentation. He knows the into, the development, the exposition, the recapitulation and the coda. We move from note to note. But the Father condescended to us by sending his Son to listen at our pace and show us the true beauty of what we were made for, leading us through the score in the correct key and tempo.

    Caine —
    Augustine beat that guy to it with (note the ‘Tune’ Metaphor):
    “”At first he made,” can truly interpret the phrase “heaven and earth” as referring only to the “matter” of heaven and earth, namely, of the prior universal, which is the intelligible and corporeal creation. For if he would try to interpret the phrase as applying to the universe already formed, it then might rightly be asked of him, “If God first made this, what then did he do afterward?” And, after the universe, he will find nothing. But then he must, however unwillingly, face the question, How is this the first if there is nothing afterward? But when he said that God made matter first formless and then formed, he is not being absurd if he is able to discern what precedes by eternity, and what proceeds in time; what comes from choice, and what comes from origin. In eternity, God is before all things; in the temporal process, the flower is before the fruit; in the act of choice, the fruit is before the flower; in the case of origin, sound is before the tune. Of these four relations, the first and last that I have referred to are understood with much difficulty.
    The second and third are very easily understood.
    For it is an uncommon and lofty vision, O Lord, to behold thy eternity immutably making mutable things, and thereby standing always before them.
    Whose mind is acute enough to be able, without great labor, to discover how the sound comes before the tune? For a tune is a formed sound; and an unformed thing may exist, but a thing that does not exist cannot be formed. In the same way, matter is prior to what is made from it. It is not prior because it makes its product, for it is itself made; and its priority is not that of a time interval. For in time we do not first utter formless sounds without singing and then adapt or fashion them into the form of a song, as wood or silver from which a chest or vessel is made. Such materials precede in time the forms of the things which are made from them. But in singing this is not so.
    For when a song is sung, its sound is heard at the same time. There is not first a formless sound, which afterward is formed into a song; but just as soon as it has sounded it passes away, and you cannot find anything of it which you could gather up and shape. Therefore, the song is absorbed in its own sound and the “sound” of the song is its “matter.” But the sound is formed in order that it may be a tune. This is why, as I was saying, the matter of the sound is prior to the form of the tune. It is not “before” in the sense that it has any power of making a sound or tune. Nor is the sound itself the composer of the tune; rather, the sound is sent forth from the body and is ordered by the soul of the singer, so that from it he may form a tune. Nor is the sound first in time, for it is given forth together with the tune. Nor is it first in choice, because a sound is no better than a tune, since a tune is not merely a sound but a beautiful sound. But it is first in origin, because the tune is not formed in order that it may become a sound, but the sound is formed in order that it may become a tune. From this example, let him who is able to understand see that the matter of things was first made and was called “heaven and earth” because out of it the heaven and earth were made. This primal formlessness was not made first in time, because the form of things gives rise to time; but now, in time, it is intuited together with its form. And yet nothing can be related of this unformed matter unless it is regarded as if it were the first in the time series though the last in value — because things formed are certainly superior to things unformed — and it is preceded by the eternity of the Creator, so that from nothing there might be made that from which something might be made.”

  157. That poem can mean something completely different to its reader then the author intended and the reader would be completely valid in their interpretation.
    They’d be relatively valid.

  158. Esquire:
    Curious — how do you define time and what are its defining characteristics?

  159. Anyone who gets a poem published has immediately lost ownership of their word.
    No. His words remains his, and his own meaning remains his. But other people may have their own meaning of his words. No severing is required for that. It’s simply layering.

  160. Esquire:

    Curious — how do you define time and what are its defining characteristics?


    I guess for now I’d stick with the mind’s measure of the motion of bodies.
    And to follow up on your earlier question, both St. Augustine (City of God) and Peter Kreeft (Angels and Demons) state or suggest that angels do not experience time because they have no bodies and were created outside the order of time.
    I have found no similar suggestion that Adam & Eve (or the Blessed Mother, for that matter) were created outside of time before the fall.

  161. Wait
    I am very confused
    If Vatican II now teaches in full defection from past catholic teachings that those who deny the church, the Pope, her sacraments can be saved as stated in the Decree on Ecumenism where it states:
    “The brethren divided from us also use many liturgical actions of the Christian religion. These most certainly can truly engender a life of
    grace in ways that vary according to the condition of each Church or Community. These liturgical actions must be regarded as capable of giving access to the community of salvation.”
    And JPII prayed to pagan gods and idols at Assissi and as per Gaudium et spes that we are all in the church of Christ, then
    WHO EXACTLY THEN GOES TO HELL ANY MORE?
    Pray for a full restoration of true Catholic teachings, her catechism for our youth, the sacraments and scripture (DR instead of the NAB which cant even get the Our Father correct as it has copied from the King James)

  162. Thanks, Catelli, as always for your Christian kindness!
    Esau —
    You do realize that the Mary without an email address is not me?

  163. “Wait
    I am very confused”
    Yes. That has been clear for some time.
    If I thought you were actually looking for answers I would argue, but you are beyond the reach of reason.
    “WHO EXACTLY THEN GOES TO HELL ANY MORE?”
    The proud, for one.

  164. “do you suppose Paul was saying God’s thoughts involve neurons firing and ions moving around in a brain? Is that what thinking in heaven is like?”
    Not for God–He doesn’t have a brain (okay, Jesus does). We, however, do, and at least in this life, we use it when we for just about everything.
    I get that we’ll be outside time and things will be far beyond what we can imagine. Where I’m getting hung up is seeing all this dynamic, kinetic imagery, and then being told that our bodies will be used in praising and glorifying God forever, except that because there’s no time and space, our bodies will just be these vestigal meaty statues attached to our souls, which are what will be doing all the worshipful work.
    Just being still, beholding the Vision and loving it? Sounds great. However, this talk of jumping and dancing seems to add something substantial. Every analogy for heaven is going to be weak, but some of these seem uselessly inaccurate or disinformative if they’re even more abstract than their contexts.
    Maybe it’s just something like one’s heart leaping, but we already grasp that on some level, so why belabor the metaphor?
    When we’re done here, does anyone wanna tackle the timeless duration of purgatory, or did that get sussed out once already?

  165. Esquire —
    Consider what you wrote here:
    I guess for now I’d stick with the mind’s measure of the motion of bodies.
    And to follow up on your earlier question, both St. Augustine (City of God) and Peter Kreeft (Angels and Demons) state or suggest that angels do not experience time because they have no bodies and were created outside the order of time

    Given that, I believe you may have missed the Antiochian-Orthodox view I cited above where (just the main points from the excerpt I had actually posted):
    “The biblical story and proclamation portrays the perfection…
    Adam, in his primal creation, exists in his spiritual body and is part of the good creation, made ex nihilo: out of nothing…
    It is from the fall of man that this gross body that we know, and this world as we know it, results.
    Even St. Maximos the Confessor said concerning the Fall of Man:
    “… with the result that decay and mortality entered into nature, that he wore the coats of skin of decay and mortality.
    Therefore now man’s way of conception, gestation, birth, etc., is a result of the fall
    , it is what the Fathers called coats of skin, which he wore after the fall.”
    This is why I kept asking you:
    So, if we hadn’t fallen, wouldn’t we have remained the spiritual creature God meant us to be in such a pure state that we were actually in active communion with God and existing in this eternal transcendence?
    AND (taking from another of my previous post):
    Had we not fallen, our notions of time (and even time itself) would not be as they are since we would have remained in Paradise, in the state of grace, in the very state of perfection God had made us (as the spiritual creature we were meant to be), in actual communion with Him.
    This is why some Orthodox folks refer to the Salvation that Christ had earned for us as a sort of Restoration (although, Christ has granted us the opportunity to surpass all that).

  166. Esau,

    This is why I kept asking you:

    So, if we hadn’t fallen, wouldn’t we have remained the spiritual creature God meant us to be in such a pure state that we were actually in active communion with God and existing in this eternal transcendence?


    However else you describe his state, Adam had a material body before the fall, and his state was something less than the state of beatific vision (from which no fall could have occurred), which is the highest state of communion that humans have with God.
    I understand that decay and mortality entered into the picture after the fall. Death entered into picture after the fall. Yes, the “gross body” that we live in is a result of the fall, but it was still a material body before the fall. Yes, the “world as we know it” (ie, the “fallen world”) is a result of the fall.
    None of that suggests that time did not exist before the fall.
    Again, I ask you, can you cite any Church Father or theologian that agrees with you on this point? I have seen many that speak of time beginning with the creation of the world. I have seen none that speak of time being absent from paradise before the fall.

  167. Esquire —
    You said:
    Adam had a material body before the fall
    However, you neglected my citation of the Antiochian-Orthodox view:
    Adam, in his primal creation, exists in his spiritual body
    This is why it was said regarding The Fall:
    “… with the result that decay and mortality entered into nature, that he wore the coats of skin of decay and mortality.
    Therefore now man’s way of conception, gestation, birth, etc., is a result of the fall, it is what the Fathers called coats of skin, which he wore after the fall.”

  168. Mary Catelli:
    Just saw your post!
    My sincerest apologies — I was grasping at straws there, attempting to get a reading — my bad!

  169. The Bible says that time is part of the created universe, and thus has a beginning? Where does it say this?
    Perhaps it should be pointed out that the Bible says that after the Elementals (not the periodic table, but the unclean spirits) are melted in the heat, that God will renew – anakainw, the heavens and the Earth.
    What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
    Esquire, God made us in His Image. We aren’t anthropomorphizing God (due note the Incarnation!) he Theomorphized, -us-.. This was indeed a scandal to the Greeks.
    St. Augustine is not God, and not inerrant. And was rebuked in part at the Synod of Orange.He obviously brought elements of his prior Manicheanism and Neo-platonism with him when he converted to Christianity. Which ultimately gave rise to Calvinism.
    Communication necessarily involves sequence and duration, as does love. To say that it is all in a “moment” lacking any duration at all, such as to no more be a moment than a null is a zero, is to basically say that God is dead, and does not communicate, nor love, nor will, nor act.
    Esau, I’m talking about Jesus Christ and God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, not the deduced prime mover of Plato and Aristotle. I’m not sure we are talking about the same Being.
    Wow, so the Antiochian-Orthodox are genuine gnostics, then, Esau? Yikes!
    Do you believe that there is sequence and duration in eternity, or is eternity just another name for a black hole, a singularity? Esau, you seem to be arguing for the latter, but I might be misunderstanding you.
    Esau, if you aren’t in continual communion with God -now-, something is wrong, of the nature of an confessed mortal sin.
    I see, Esau, you are a gnostic! Just like Nicolas, and Simon the Magician! That is a very good recitation of the gnostic view of our bodies, and the relation between spirit and matter.
    Is that why you would not address my questions?

  170. The Esau count:
    Lets look at the Esau count for April 4, 2007, he posted:
    On th MP thread at:
    9:11AM
    9:32
    10:32
    1:10
    1:18
    1:34
    1:44
    1:48
    3:31
    4:50
    4:55
    Posted on the St Rabban Thread at:
    1:52
    2:33
    3:55
    4:11
    Posted on the Nature of Hell Thread at:
    9:51AM
    So starting at 9AM or so to about 5PM or 8 hours, Esau has approximately 16 posts or about 2 posts per hour and the night has only begun for him, so much more time Esau to set the world straight on the Pope, Protestanism, the church, the bible, Hell, St Rabban
    And who knows how many other imposter names he posts under like David B, Anonymous, Pope John XXIV (SuperNova)!
    I think because Esau cant find a woman to love him, he takes out his frustrations on us here who want to discuss Catholic Apologetics in a calm, rational and intelligent way, instead of all of that cut and paste and BOLD face responses that go on and on and on and on……………….

  171. The Bible says that time is part of the created universe, and thus has a beginning? Where does it say this?
    In the beginning of Genesis.
    We are told that God created the heavens and the earth. Then He separated light from darkness, and that was the first day. The first day, period. No ifs, ands, or buts. Time began only when things could change.

  172. Again…more than one “John” posting here…I’ve switched to JohnT…those offended please make a note…although in John’s defense, he does seem to have a point about a certain person’s frequent contributions, etc…although the comments about said person’s personal life appear unnecessary and a bit unkind…

  173. Time began only when things could change.
    No, time as a measure of change would only exist AFTER things changed. Not when they simply “could” change. Is separating light from darkness a change? If so, tell me WHAT changed.

  174. “And who knows how many other imposter names he posts under like David B, Anonymous, Pope John XXIV (SuperNova)!”
    I am David B. and Pope John XXIV (SuperNova), and Esau isn’t!!!

  175. John,
    You are partly correct. Esau posts frequently on a myriad of subjects (his many posts are often in response to yours You, OTOH, post frequently on ONE subject. Namely, the ‘evil’ things caused by the ‘evil’ popes as a result of the ‘evil’ Vatican II!
    We. Get. It.

  176. Puzzled,

    Communication necessarily involves sequence and duration, as does love.


    Not with God. God’s action necessarily does not involve sequence and duration. It does involve eternity.

    To say that it is all in a “moment” lacking any duration at all, such as to no more be a moment than a null is a zero, is to basically say that God is dead, and does not communicate, nor love, nor will, nor act.


    Which is why we don’t say that it is all in a “moment” (which is another temporal concept). With God they are eternal acts, with no sequence and no duration.
    Esau,
    When they say Adam had a “spiritual body” before the fall, are you reading that to mean that he did not have a material body?
    As for when time began, the Catechism has the following to say at article 338:
    Nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. the world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun.
    Time began at the creation of matter, not at the fall of man.

  177. So….the Catechism got it wrong? And St. Augustine? And St. Thomas Aquinas? They all got it wrong, when they said that time began with the creation of matter?
    And not one Church Father got it right? Not one Church Doctor got it right?
    But Esau did?
    Interesting perspective.

  178. David B.
    Thanks for the defense — I really appreciate it!
    But that reaction from John was exactly what I was waiting for!
    He just confirmed my suspicion about him.
    I just feel sorry for his family though.

  179. Esquire —
    Not that.
    Rather than repeat myself, please re-read my previous posts to you.
    In short, the world that we have come to know is a result of the Fall.

  180. Esau,
    Your previous posts provide no support for the claim that time began with the fall. Re-reading them won’t change that.
    The fact that the world we have come to know is the fallen world does not mean that time did not exist before the fall.

  181. Rather than repeat myself, please re-read my previous posts to you.
    Rather than assume that Esquire didn’t understand your previous posts, why not try to clarify your position in a different manner than repeating yourself?
    Your previous posts did not convince Esquire, and they don’t convince me…so, maybe repeating what you’ve already said won’t be helpful.

  182. Teacher #1: [ln e] + [sin^2 x + cos^2 x] = 2
    Student: Huh?
    Teacher #1: [ln e] + [sin^2 x + cos^2 x] = 2
    Student: Huh?
    Teacher #1: Again, [ln e] + [sin^2 x + cos^2 x] = 2
    Student: Huh?
    Teacher #1: Re-read what I wrote above.
    Student: Huh?
    Teacher #2: 1 + 1 = 2.
    Student: Oh.

  183. Smoky:
    I appreciate that example. Thanks!
    Esquire:
    I think we need to operate on a common understanding of time.
    As I’ve asked previously, kindly provide me with your definition of time as well as its defining characteristics.
    After so doing, I will come to my point on the matter.

  184. Esau,
    You asked previously. And I answered previously. If you’ve got a point, make it.

  185. the first day period on the surface of a planet, due to its rotation is not to be confused with the beginning of sequence and duration. Things happened before that. There was sequence and duration before that.
    Claiming that for God there is no duration and sequence is claiming something about God which He did not choose to tell us. Trying to use pagan philosophy to put God in a box which is too small for Him. All I see there is an assertion. One can assert just about anything?
    You are -presupposing- a definition for eternity and eveerlasting and forever and will never die and then trying to make everything fit your presupposition, even using your presupposition as though it were a fact with which to support your presupposition. Logical fallacies, I’m afraid.
    Carl, and you see this as a person who is unfallen? And I, who am fallen, though redeemed, would I not then have exactly the same problem understanding you? There is a reflexive error in your propositions.
    The world we have come to know is not a result of the Fall. That is a fundamental belief of gnosticism. The world we have come to know was created by God perfect and without taint. And then came the Fall, and creation was cursed – but not utterly destroyed.
    Are the Fathers and Doctors greater than the Apostles and the Prophets?

  186. Puzzled,
    If you want to rely on Scripture (which, incidentally, is what the Doctors and the Fathers rely on to demonstrate God’s existence before time), do you believe, based on Scripture, that God is unchanging?

  187. Claiming that for God there is no duration and sequence is claiming something about God which He did not choose to tell us.
    Maybe He has told you, but in your time, you just haven’t heard it yet.

  188. Esquire —
    Did you not say:
    Esquire —
    Did you not say:
    “And to follow up on your earlier question, both St. Augustine (City of God) and Peter Kreeft (Angels and Demons) state or suggest that angels do not experience time because (1) they have no bodies and were (2) created outside the order of time.” [numbers inserted are mine]
    I already treated #1, which you’ve already seen in the previous post.
    However, with regards to #2, please demonstrate to me that the angels were created outside of time.

  189. Esau,
    As I said before, I’m not an angelologist, and I don’t play one on the internet.
    I said that angels were created outside the order of time because Peter Kreeft, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas all said that angels were created outside the order of time.
    I do not have an independent proof of the matter.

  190. I thought you were familiar with a certain area of Theology, that’s all.
    I was hoping I could develop on that understanding.

  191. Esau,
    You can add Frank Sheed to the list as well. From Theology and Sanity, pp. 147-48:

    Time is the duration of that which changes; again, time is a measure of change. Either way, unless there is in existence a being that changes, there is no time either….Thus we see the fallacy of conceiving a running stream of time into which God suddenly dropped the universe. Time and the universe began together. From the moment the universe existed, it began to tick.

    I’m pretty sure the universe existed before the fall. 😛

  192. I’m pretty sure the universe existed before the fall.
    Why? Were you around to see it?

  193. When was the Fall of Man? Was that before or after the dinosaurs? Was T-Rex in the Garden of Eden?

  194. Puzzled,
    I’m guessing you won’t like Aquinas either, but he had this to say in Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. 1, Ch. 66[7]:

    Moreover, God’s understanding has no succession, as neither does his being. He is therefore an ever-abiding simultaneous whole — which belongs to the nature of eternity. On the other hand, the duration of time is stretched out through the succession of the before and after….[S]ince time lies within motion, eternity, which is completely outside motion, in no way belongs to time. Furthermore, since the being of what is eternal does not pass away, eternity is present in its presentiality to any time or instant of time.

  195. When was the Fall of Man? Was that before or after the dinosaurs? Was T-Rex in the Garden of Eden?
    It came about when it was believed.

  196. Esau,
    You can add Frank Sheed to the list as well. From Theology and Sanity, pp. 147-48:
    Time is the duration of that which changes; again, time is a measure of change. Either way, unless there is in existence a being that changes, there is no time either….Thus we see the fallacy of conceiving a running stream of time into which God suddenly dropped the universe. Time and the universe began together. From the moment the universe existed, it began to tick.
    I’m pretty sure the universe existed before the fall. 😛

    Esquire:
    You failed to actually consider what you just cited here.
    (I think you may be exhausted perhaps — understandable given your occupation)
    Here, let me number them for you:
    (1) Time is the duration of that which changes; again, time is a measure of change.
    [In regards to (1), look back on the specific quote I cited from Augustine regarding eternity]
    (2) Either way, unless there is in existence a being that changes, there is no time either….
    [Look back again to my citations regarding the Antiochian-Orthodox view as well as the other things I mentioned previously]

  197. Esau,
    Nope. Not exhausted. Just not buying it. This has ceased being a useful exercise.

  198. I think you may be exhausted perhaps
    That’s pretty arrogant of you, Esau.

  199. Esau,
    Moreover, you ignored the following from Esquire’s quote:
    Time and the universe began together. From the moment the universe existed, it began to tick.

  200. Time and the universe began together.
    Perhaps, to agree that view with Esau’s, there was no time between when the universe began and the Fall.

  201. MoreMoreover,
    unless there is in existence a being that changes, there is no time either….
    It said “being”, not “human being”.
    My handy-dandy Webster’s dictionary defines “being” as, among other definitions, “An object, idea, or symbol that exists”.
    So, allow me to rephrase that quote: unless there is in existence something that exists that changes, there is no time either.

  202. St. Thomas Aquinas says there is change and succession in heaven. He says there is time in heaven. He is a faithful representative of the Christian tradition. Hear him:
    “It is necessary to suppose that the glorified bodies are moved sometimes, since even Christ’s body was moved in His ascension, and likewise the bodies of the saints, which will arise from the earth, will ascend to the empyrean [The empyrean was the highest of the concentric spheres or heavens, and was identified by Christian writers with the abode of God. Cf. I, 56, 3]. But even after they have climbed the heavens, it is likely that they will sometimes move according as it pleases them; so that by actually putting into practice that which is in their power, they may show forth the excellence of Divine wisdom, and that furthermore their vision may be refreshed by the beauty of the variety of creatures, in which God’s wisdom will shine forth with great evidence: for sense can only perceive that which is present, although glorified bodies can perceive from a greater distance than non-glorified bodies. And yet movement will nowise diminish their happiness which consists in seeing God, for He will be everywhere present to them; thus Gregory says of the angels (Hom. xxxiv in Evang.) that “wherever they are sent their course lies in God.”
    Summa Supplement q. 84 art. 2, body
    http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5084.htm#2
    And further, the money quote:
    “Although after the resurrection the time which is the measure of the heaven’s movement will be no more, there will nevertheless be time resulting from the before and after in any kind of movement.”
    Summa Supplement, q. 84, art. 3, ad 5
    http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5084.htm#3

  203. David B posted the following in his undying support of Esau:
    “And who knows how many other imposter names he posts under like David B, Anonymous, Pope John XXIV (SuperNova)!”
    I am David B. and Pope John XXIV (SuperNova), and Esau isn’t!!!
    Posted by: David B. {Mithrandir} | Apr 4, 2007 7:35:23 PM
    John,
    You are partly correct. Esau posts frequently on a myriad of subjects (his many posts are often in response to yours You, OTOH, post frequently on ONE subject. Namely, the ‘evil’ things caused by the ‘evil’ popes as a result of the ‘evil’ Vatican II!
    We. Get. It.
    David/Esau
    Possibly when you grow up, your parents will tell you make believe time is now over and you can go back to being yourself, whomever that may be
    You know modern science (Modernism your favorite word?) and that is called a split personality
    Grow up my friend, your hobby horse and lack of defense for the errors a misguided pastoral council and banal liturgy has created is evident

  204. Grow up my friend, your hobby horse and lack of defense for the errors a misguided pastoral council and banal liturgy has created is evident
    Oh, the irony…

  205. Almost as comical as John imploring others to “discuss Catholic Apologetics in a calm, rational and intelligent way, instead of all of that cut and paste…”

  206. Biblical time lines has the Fall beginning about 6000 years ago??
    The National Geographic’s Genographic project pinpoints the real Adam at 60,000 years ago. See also the time line of our ancestors back some 200,000 years at
    https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/ (Click on Atlas of the Human Journey)
    An excerpt:
    ” DNA studies suggest that all humans today descend from a group of African ancestors who about 60,000 years ago began a remarkable journey. Follow the journey from them to you as written in your genes”.
    “Adam” is the common male ancestor of every living man. He lived in Africa some 60,000 years ago, which means that all humans lived in Africa at least at that time.
    Unlike his Biblical namesake, this Adam was not the only man alive in his era. Rather, he is unique because his descendents are the only ones to survive.
    It is important to note that Adam does not literally represent the first human. He is the coalescence point of all the genetic diversity.”

  207. “Biblical time lines has the Fall beginning about 6000 years ago??”
    If you want to interpret that particular text in a strict literal sense, which Catholics are not required, or even encouraged, to do (as opposed to the events of the Gospels).
    To argue against that (as if the 6000 year time frame is official Catholic teaching) is to set up a Straw Man.
    Also, the view that the Biblical Adam is some kind of amalgam or “coalescence” is clearly rejected. The Biblical account of the fall, though symbolic, represents real events that happened to our real first parents (even if they weren’t named “Adam and Eve”).
    Another point; if (acoording to National Geographic) all of us are descended from this one human, who was one of many of the era, what’s to keep him from being Noah, rather than Adam (or Noah’s wife, rather than Eve)?

  208. The TV evangelist said the different flesh Noah brought on board the boat included people of other races. So Noah wouldn’t be in everyone’s ancestral line after the flood.

  209. Add the story of Noah to the mythical realm of the OT. If there was a flood it was a small one, not global. Please note the many peoples/cultures that existed before and after the “noahian” flood.
    To stay on topic, these “Noah time” peoples/cultures were the same ones the developed the devil, demons and “pretty wingy thingie” myths.

  210. John,
    David B posted the following in his undying support of Esau:…
    Snore
    Possibly when you grow up, your parents will tell you make believe time is now over and you can go back to being yourself, whomever that may beYou know modern science (Modernism your favorite word?) and that is called a split personality
    John, My name IS David B. For the umpteenth time I’m not Esau.
    Grow up my friend, your hobby horse and lack of defense for the errors a misguided pastoral council and banal liturgy [sic] has created is evident
    Said the man is owns to biggest Hobby horse in town. 🙂
    How I am being a hobby horse? Unlike you, I post many opinions on many different subjects. Grow up my friend, your hobby horsing and inability to defend the errors of a misguided bishop and his schismatic followers is evident.

  211. Jimmy Akin,
    How much longer must I take John’s calumney before a certain charitable blogger we all know and love will ban him?
    please . I beg you

  212. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it. Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!

  213. David B/Esau/Pope John XXIV Supernova/David B (Mithrandir)/Anonymous posted:
    “Jimmy Akin,
    How much longer must I take John’s calumney before a certain charitable blogger we all know and love will ban him?
    please . I beg you ”
    What does one do when they can can not discuss or debate on facts, they at first slander, as you have done along with Esau, then you cry to Daddy for protection
    To think you can discuss the present state of the church and her affairs at hand without discussing the most controversial and contentious council in her history in Vatican II just goes to show that you know very little about Apologetics

  214. Amen, Mary Kay. Don’t even read his posts. You won’t read anything he hasn’t already posted (and posted and posted and posted).

  215. “If there was a flood it was a small one, not global”–
    If that is true , why wouln’t God tell Noah to move instead ? –Oh sorry You don’t believe in Scriptures—“MY BAD!”.

  216. Erick,
    If you knew the angle that Realist plays you’d know that he believes in the Gospel of Crossan and doesn’t represent the views of the Catholic Church.

  217. ATTENTION JOHN. THIS WILL BE THE LAST TIME I ANSWER YOUR POSTS.
    David B/Esau/Pope John XXIV Supernova/David B (Mithrandir)/Anonymous posted:
    I know you’re trying to get my goat by calling me Esau/anonymous.
    What does one do when they can can not discuss or debate on facts,
    I don’t know. What do you do? I have never backed down from debating you.
    they at first slander,
    Yes, you do.
    then you cry to Daddy for protection
    I like to have rational discussions, even with people who disagree with me. You haven’t try to have one with me.
    I’ll paraphrase you: To think that one can’t discuss the present state of the Church without discussing Vatican II just goes to show that you know very little about Apologetics.

  218. I think you may be exhausted perhaps
    That’s pretty arrogant of you, Esau.
    Posted by: Smoky Mountain Hiker | Apr 5, 2007 5:16:00 AM

    What was ARROGANT about that remark????
    SMOKY AND ESQUIRE:
    What I had meant when I had said that remark is that I thought that perhaps ESQUIRE MIGHT BE TIRED since he is an ATTORNEY!
    Based on the attorneys in the Law Office I work at, attorney hours tend to go forever (billable hours anyone????)
    My goodness!
    Esquire, whatever happened to your: Charity often requires we take the best interpretation of a person’s comment?
    I am thoroughly shocked by both your behaviour here — especially considering this whole ‘charity’ both of you keep preaching in terms of interpreting comments in their best light!
    I guess that only applies in mere speech only when one is attempting to aggrandize their reputation on the blog!
    Yes, indeed, this has ceased to being a useful exercise!

  219. Perhaps, to agree that view with Esau’s, there was no time between when the universe began and the Fall.
    Posted by: Darlene | Apr 5, 2007 5:26:43 AM

    Kudos, Darlene!!!
    Though not quite precisely there from where I’m coming from; however, you’re the closest one yet (very, very close)!!!
    Actually, Carl was as well when he commented:
    It is only through the Fall of Man that you see it that way.
    Posted by: Carl | Apr 4, 2007 8:31:42 PM

    The CLUE is in what had been mentioned:
    1. … unless there is in existence a being that changes, there is no time either….
    2. St. Augustine (City of God) and Peter Kreeft (Angels and Demons) state or suggest that angels do not experience time because (1) they have no bodies and were (2) created outside the order of time.”
    3. “The biblical story and proclamation portrays the perfection…
    4. Adam, in his primal creation, exists in his spiritual body and is part of the good creation, made ex nihilo: out of nothing…
    4. It is from the Fall of Man that this gross body that we know, and this world as we know it, results.
    Even St. Maximos the Confessor said concerning the Fall of Man:
    “… with the result that decay and mortality entered into nature, that he wore the coats of skin of decay and mortality.
    Therefore now man’s way of conception, gestation, birth, etc., is a result of the fall, it is what the Fathers called coats of skin, which he wore after the fall.”
    So, all in all, DARLENE & CARL, you go guys!

  220. CORRIGENDUM:
    #3 above should have read:
    “The biblical story and proclamation portrays the archetypal Man as a perfection, He, and his counterpart and completion, woman, are hypostases, that is, persons, sharing therein a moral value rooted in the triple-personhood of the Godhead.”
    Also, the second #4 should have been numbered #5.

  221. Esau writes:
    Esquire, whatever happened to your: Charity often requires we take the best interpretation of a person’s comment?
    I’m the one who interpreted your comment in an uncharitable manner, not Esquire. You suggest that I misinterpreted, and so I apologize.
    I am thoroughly shocked by both your behaviour here
    That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think? 🙂

  222. John said:

    Tim
    I never ever said the NO mass is invalid, just that the sacramental rite is questionable that is all, and that has been debated back and forth by those much more intelligent than I
    Posted by: John | Apr 8, 2007 8:03:38 AM

    Yet, John had stated in the past:

    (John’s Post re: The Novus Ordo Being “DAMNED” — EMPHASIS MINE)
    The New Mass itself is damned
    Scripture is clear where in St Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, 2:6-11, we are told that, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”.
    So every knee shall bend in the name of Jesus, but no one even knows where the tabernacle is anymore, or kneels to receive our Lord at communion! is this good for the children?
    Kneeling is a fundamental act of faith, a strong expression about Who stands at the center of one’s life and Who stands at the center of all creation.
    Being unwilling to bend the knee at the name of Jesus is the essence of evil. (Cf. Is 45:23, Rom 14:11) But when we kneel at Jesus’ name, when we bow down in service of others, and when we bend the knee in adoration, we are following in the footsteps of all the saints and angels in heaven.
    Posted by: John | Mar 29, 2007 4:50:33 PM

    AND

    (John’s Post re: The New Mass being a PROTESTANT LITURGY that yields HERETICAL BELIEF — EMPHASIS MINE)
    A Protestantized liturgy yields heretical belief, loss of the Faith, and devaluation of the priesthood. Satan has been able to accomplish more effective damage to the entire body of the Church in the past 40 years through the destruction of the Mass than ever before.
    Posted by: John | Mar 21, 2007 6:02:09 PM

    AND

    (John’s Post re: APOSTASY in Vatican II and the Pope — EMPHASIS MINE)
    The council and the teachings of the Pope were clearly apostasy!!
    Posted by: John | Mar 9, 2007 4:28:08 PM

    John has repeated this theme time and again — the Novus Ordo Missae being a damned Mass and, furthermore, nothing more than a Protestant service.
    John has also DECLARED the Second Vatican Council and the Teachings of the Pope apostasy!
    He has clearly demonstrated the EXTENT to which he would go just to bring down the Catholic Church — that is, to the treacherous extent of SPREADING LIES regarding her:

    Let us start with indisputable facts. Whether we believe it or not, and whether it seems possible to us or not, what is abundantly clear is, that after V2 the Catholic religion has been changed. In the practical order, it has been replaced by another religion, an evolving religion, a religion greatly influenced by Freemasonry and Marxism and inspired throughout by what Popes Pius IX and X clearly rejected under the designation of “Modernism.”

    In similar manner traditional Catholics are accused of being Protestants because they disobey the pope. Such accusations are false. Traditional Catholics do not “pick and choose” what they wish to believe; they are adhering with all their hearts to what the Church has always taught and always done. Nor are they disobeying the pope. They believe that the pope, being Christ’s vicar on earth and “one hierarchical person” with our Lord, is to be obeyed. They know that when Peter speaks he is infallible because it is Christ who speaks through him. They are the out and out papists and are doing nothing less than refusing to disobey Peter. In such a situation they are obliged to disobey those who falsely speak in Peter’s name. To obey modernist and heretical “popes” is to declare that they are “one hierarchical person” with our Lord and hence that Christ teaches falsely – quod absit!
    Posted by: John | Oct 16, 2006 3:27:41 AM

    AND

    A Catholic, therefore, would owe no obedience to someone who does not truly possess the Church’s authority or teaches error. Condemnations from the V-2 hierarchy shouldn’t worry those that hold fast tothe faith anymore than one would worry about being condemned by local Anglican or Lutheran bishop
    Posted by: John | Oct 18, 2006 1:43:25 PM

    You once again miss what Vatican II has done-it has reinvented past church teachings and redefined them to suit the liberal modernist and even masonic influence of the church (ecumenism is a form of secularism which masons teach)
    Posted by: John | Oct 18, 2006 5:54:31 PM

    John would go so far as to DESTROY HOLY PEOPLE LIKE MOTHER TERESA WITH OUTRIGHT CALUMNY JUST TO ADVANCE HIS SINISTER AGENDA:

    As far as Mother Teresa, she participated in Hindu ritual which is pagan as far as I can recall and for all the time she spent in India have any Hindus found Christ or was she abiding by her orders and finding what is good in all faiths and not try to convert these pagans? IF that deserves sainthood as compared to the many martyrs who died for the cause and name of Jesus Christ, his teachings uncompromised and unsoiled
    Posted by: John | Jan 26, 2007 7:45:04 AM

    John hilariously states in his most recent post:

    I dont know why people get personal here (Esau).
    Posted by: John | Apr 7, 2007 7:00:05 AM

    I take it, then, that these posts from him aren’t personal:

    Ass-au-
    I mean Esau
    Your Protestant agenda is clear
    Question Assau-How many children do you have to contribute to this Thread?
    Ohh I forgot, you are not even Married-Wonder why???
    Posted by: John | Mar 30, 2007 7:32:20 PM

    AND

    Esau
    Your imposter games are somewhat lame, grow up my unmarried sorry, fellow who sits at home with no one to love him all alone trying to make money as a frustrated Protestant on Catholics as Scott Hahn and other “former” Protestants are doing!!!
    Posted by: John | Apr 3, 2007 6:24:08 PM

    AND

    So starting at 9AM or so to about 5PM or 8 hours, Esau has approximately 16 posts or about 2 posts per hour and the night has only begun for him, so much more time Esau to set the world straight on the Pope, Protestanism, the church, the bible, Hell, St Rabban
    And who knows how many other imposter names he posts under like David B, Anonymous, Pope John XXIV (SuperNova)!
    I think because Esau cant find a woman to love him, he takes out his frustrations on us here who want to discuss Catholic Apologetics in a calm, rational and intelligent way, instead of all of that cut and paste and BOLD face responses that go on and on and on and on……………….
    Posted by: John | Apr 4, 2007 5:26:58 PM

    But, I guess since John is unable to defend his REBELLION against the Catholic Church (disguising it as TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC TEACHING), he cannot win an argument other than to personally attack those who argue for the Catholic Church, the Pope and the Modern Roman Rite!
    As I had asked him numerous times:

    For the 3rd time:
    Core to the Traditional Teachings of the Catholic Church is strict adherence to the AUTHORITY of the Pope & the Council of Bishops.
    How can I even claim to abide by Traditional Church Teachings if I have, in fact, arbitrarily substituted my own authority over that of the Church, which Christ Himself gave to the Pope & the Council of Bishops? How exactly am I unlike Martin Luther if I do the very thing he had done in the past?
    For the 8th time:
    On what AUTHORITY do you accept the actions of previous councils?
    Posted by: Esau | Mar 14, 2007 9:30:02 AM

    In fact, John has NEVER provided answers to these questions — he is UNABLE to provide a satisfactory one since the OBVIOUS ANSWER would no doubt REVEAL his actual DISDAIN for the PAPACY & Christ’s Catholic Church itself as well as the FACT that IT IS HE whose agenda is AGAINST TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC CHURCH TEACHINGS!
    This is why when ROSEMARIE & her husband submitted their arguments against John’s High Church Protestant ideas, because he could not, in fact, refute them, John took potshots as usual:

    Hey!
    Its the Ben (are you still defending Nostre Aetate with your Yiddish-have you converted to Catholicism yet?) and the Rosemarie show from Mark Shea? In case you dont know Ben is Mark Shea’s puppet
    I am amazed at all of you
    And SHALOM Ben Yachov the 4th, 5th whateve (or are you Ben Scott today???)
    Posted by: John | Mar 10, 2007 6:38:09 AM

    Yet, not only does John sink so low as to ATTACK people whose arguments he is UNABLE to REFUTE, but he also goes to the extent of MIS-REPRESENTING WHAT THEY ACTUALLY SAID!
    For example, as Innocencio had caught him:

    John,
    Please be honest. Here is the comment I responded to:
    “Our lady is holding back the hand of her beloved son from seeking retribution on those who wear the clerical cloth and those that are worshiping as humanists and not God himself. History has shown in the OT what has happened to those who deny God, and the church is already in shambles because of her denial.” Posted by: John | Feb 12, 2007 6:14:29 AM
    You are being very dishonest and should admit it.
    Take care and God bless,
    Inocencio
    J+M+J
    Posted by: Inocencio | Feb 14, 2007 2:25:41 PM

    John has also been CAUGHT PLAGERIZING other people’s opinions and DISGUISED THEM AS HIS OWN:

    John,
    Discussing this topic with you is like talking to a know-it-all teenager. You simply are not discussing so much as listening to yourself.
    Many posters have given you very detailed answer to all of your questions.
    You ignore them.
    Many posters have asked you direct questions. You ignore them.
    You cut and paste from other websites and act as though they are your words. Please make your comments and just paste a link to whatever website you want.
    Why not try to actually have a discussion and not only hear others but answer their questions?
    Take care and God bless,
    Inocencio
    J+M+J
    Posted by: Inocencio | Nov 14, 2006 2:04:45 PM

    AND

    John,
    You have it exactly backwards. Faith comes first, and obedience follows.
    This appears to be an interesting self-condemnation on your part.
    You clearly do not have obedience, and you seem to be attributing it to a lack of faith.
    (Of course, we both know that the article that you cut and paste this from was actually responding to a different question, and so this answer would have at least made sense in that context. I’ll chalk up your failure to even modify the words a little bit to laziness and not hold you to a confession of no faith.)
    Posted by: Esquire | Mar 7, 2007 11:44:23 AM

    AND

    John,
    Looks like you found a new site to cut and paste from, one that holds Benedict XVI to be a heretic.
    Garbage in, garbage out.
    Posted by: Esquire | Mar 9, 2007 7:55:48 AM

    Of course, Anon with No Name said it best:

    Gasp!
    John, ducking the question and putting forth impossible interpretations? Say it ain’t so!
    You mean he couldn’t find a cut-and-paste directly on point? Or one with logic to support it?
    Posted by: Anon | Mar 21, 2007 8:38:43 PM

    In addition, JOHN many times just OUTRIGHT LIES:

    He knows so much that he actually thinks Cardinal Law and the pedophile priests and Bishops who protect them are innocent, dont exist, that there are no gay priests and that if they are pedophiles (even with our Lord warning better a millstone be tied around ones neck than hurt a child) that they should be forgiven! What a guy this Esau is, but at the same time anyone else who doesnt fall in line with him is a schismatic, heretic, stupid, jackass, homosexual, you name it!
    What a living example of charity and Apologetics at its finest!
    Posted by: John | Apr 4, 2007 6:11:17 AM

    AND

    But you have posted time and time again that you forgive Cardinal Law and all of the pedophile priests who have harmed and deflowered our little children and have caused harm that will be felt for centuries (not one of my cousins or family who attend the NO mass will let their boys be Altar boys for fear of pedophiles) and that is just one aspect
    Your holier than thou attitude of forgiveness for pedophile clergy invoking the name of Our Lord, then blasting so many others here on this board is just so hypocritical, as is JPII worshipping with Moslems, Protestants, Hindu’s, Vodoo, etc-But then excommunicating Archbishop Lefebvre for wanting to “hold fast” to Tradition
    Hypocrites just like the Pharises
    Posted by: John | Mar 29, 2007 8:30:12 AM

    YET, this is what I have actually said about those Pedophile priests:

    (Esau’s ACTUAL Posts re: Pedophile Scums)
    Needless to say, the people in the Church, mind you, are human; and, unfortunately, there are those few who are scoundrels out there (just as there was a traitor among the 12 Apostles of Christ), but God will judge them (as well as us) in the end. Where do you think we get our priests? From Heaven? If they came from above, of course, we should expect them to be so pure and perfect. However, they come from below, from amongst mankind. Also, just because a person becomes a priest doesn’t somehow remove their human, fallen nature. To expect such perfection from mere humans is incredibly ridiculous and wildly outrageous.
    Posted by: Esau | Oct 23, 2006 10:43:36 AM

    AND

    You can’t judge the truth of a religion based on the holiness of its clergymen, because there are going to be unholy clergymen somewhere. The people in the Church, mind you, are human; and, unfortunately, there are those few who are scoundrels out there (just as there was a traitor among the 12 Apostles of Christ), but God will judge them (as well as us) in the end. For the victims, of course, this is truly a tragedy and something like this should never have happened to them – especially from someone from the ecclesiastical community.
    Posted by: Esau | Oct 19, 2006 4:46:48 PM

    Even after Easter, John has not REPENTED of his sin of lying, deception and two-faced-ness!
    Jn:8:44:
    44 You are of your father the devil: and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning: and he stood not in the truth, because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof. (DRV)

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