Ye Cannot in your Present State Understand Eternity

Last summer I was struck by a poem written by Samuel Menashe in First Things entitled "Nothing New". How or when does now become then? I think C.S. Lewis was on to this question and perhaps even on to the poet's point when he considered salvation, damnation, time, and eternity in The Great Divorce:

"'Son,' he said, 'ye cannot in your present state understand eternity... But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only in this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, 'Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say 'We have never lived anywhere except Heaven,' and the Lost, 'We were always in Hell.' And both will speak truly."

[The Great Divorce (CH. 9)]

This line from Samuel's poem brought The Great Divorce to mind: "That all was done before I was born to behold the sky at dawn once more..." Indeed, at "...the end of all things, when the sun rises here...the Blessed will say 'We have never lived anywhere except Heaven.'"

Relevant Listening / Reading:

Peter Kreeft on Time and Eternity, Oxford Conference July 2002

"The relation between faith and reason becomes radically different once a person has made the act of faith." - Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. in his article, Mere Apologetics.