A creaturely form of eternity
A wonderful passage from Douglas Farrow, working from Irenaeus’ Adversus omnes haereses:
In the light of the ascension of Jesus, the eternal is something to which the temporal may aspire without abandoning its temporality. There is in fact a creaturely form of eternity, consisting in an existence that is fully engaged with God, open to the inexhaustible possibilities generated by communion with God. If the temporal world is not yet so engaged, its very temporality is the consequence of God’s invitation to such engagement; it has, therefore, a proleptic reality lent to it by God himself along the way of that invitation. (Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology, pp. 50–51)
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