Eternity! Something without end! Something that never, ever ends! “Truly, the most terrifying thing!” Have we really understood it? And with what kind of mind? And what exactly are we supposed to understand? The incomprehensible?!
It is by nature impossible for our limited mind to grasp the boundlessness of eternity. It exceeds its capacities.
We cannot even understand the “mystery” of the bee, so how could we understand the mystery of life after death? We cannot understand what is right in front of us, what we touch, what our senses perceive—so how could we understand life after death, which we neither see nor touch nor perceive with the senses?!
Even if our mind were “all-powerful,” it would still be impossible to grasp eternity! Because, being finite, it instinctively imposes an end on what is endless! Yet eternity has no end—otherwise, it would not be eternity.
So then, how did this super-rational idea of eternity enter our history? The question becomes even more difficult if we consider that belief in eternity existed in humanity thousands of years before Christ—at a time when the human mind was supposedly extremely primitive.
Indeed! Primitive peoples believed that when a person dies, he passes into another, immortal world. For this reason, they placed the dead in coffins shaped like boats, as a sign that they were sailing toward immortality. (E. O. James, The Origins of Religion, 1937, London, pp. 68–87.)
Questions:
How did these “primitive” people even come to say that their dead (who would soon turn to dust…) pass into eternity?
And why did they not say that the dead live after death for a few years—ten, twenty, or even a hundred years—but instead for eternity?
Even animals, when they die, decay and turn to dust. Yet no one said that animals pass into eternity—only humans. Why?
On what basis did they believe and speak of things completely beyond human understanding?
They must have heard it from somewhere. From where? From another human being? But immortality is a concept that transcends human thought. Therefore, by necessity, they must have heard it from some “Being” above and beyond man. And who is this Being? Who else but the immortal God?!
The German researcher H. Feldmann, after many years of research, concluded that a common tradition among primitive peoples concerning the origin of humanity was that “the first humans on earth lived in great happiness, without sickness and without death (immortal!). But they did something wrong; from then on, their life was ruined.” This resembles the story of the first humans as recorded in the Bible.
According to this, God placed the first humans in Paradise with the purpose that they would live immortally, eternally. They knew this. Thus, they had knowledge of immortal and eternal life. They passed it on to their children, and their children to their children, and so on. In this way, the idea of eternity entered human history from its very beginning, which is why it already existed among ancient peoples.
Immortality, therefore, is not an invention of man, but a gift of the Creator and true God to His creation, man. From here, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, etc., took it and transformed it into either nirvana, reincarnation, or other concepts.
The issue is not simply believing in life after death — eternal life — but in the truth — that is, in what this eternal life truly is. And Christ proclaims the truth again and again throughout His Gospel. And Christ does not lie.
More on this series: Soul Saturdays and the Orthodox View of the Purgatory
Leave a Reply