Eternal Life, Eternality, Everlasting Life

The divinely bestowed gift of blessedness in God's presence that endures without end. This relates especially to the quality of life in this age, and to both the quality and duration of life in the age to come. Key to understanding the biblical meaning of these terms is the Bible's use of the word "eternal."

Old Testament Teaching. God is eternal ( Deut 33:27 ; Psalm 10:16 ; 48:14 ). Scripture does not provide philosophical reflection on this fact but assumes it. The Lord is the Rock eternal ( Isa 26:4 ) and the eternal King ( Jer 10:10 ). God's word, rooted in his being and will, is likewise eternal ( Psalm 119:89 ), as are his righteous laws (119:60), his ways ( Hab 3:6 ), and his kingdom or dominion ( Daniel 4:3 Daniel 4:34 ). Since God is eternal, so are his love ( 1 Kings 10:9 ), his blessings ( Psalm 21:6 ), and all his other attributes and benefits. They endure without end; as long as God exists, so do they.

"His love endures forever" is repeated twenty-six times in Psalm 136 alone. Elsewhere in the psalms "forever" is used to describe God's reign ( 9:7 ), his protection ( 12:7 ), his plans ( 33:11 ), the inheritance of his people ( 37:18 ), his throne ( 55:19 ), his rule ( 66:7 ), his remembrance of his covenant ( 105:8 ), his righteousness ( 111:3 ), his faithfulness ( 117:2 ), his statutes ( Psalms 119:111 Psalms 119:152 ), and his name ( 135:13 ). Other Old Testament books offer abundant additional affirmation of these and other never-ending aspects of God or his saving provisions.

Some deny awareness of a personally significant eternity in most Old Testament Scripture and history. A prominent segment of modern biblical scholarship would concur that in Israel there was no belief in life after death. It is truth that many biblical characters, like some who study them, seem oblivious to their eschatological destiny. They show little awareness of a transcendent world order in which they will be personally involved, a divinely ordained future imposing imperatives on the present. It is likewise true that Old Testament awareness of eternal realities is less specific and complete than that of the New Testament. Yet the progressive nature of biblical revelation (as well as the necessarily restricted scope of each Old Testament book) should be borne in mind. Many central biblical doctrines (e.g., the Trinity, the incarnation, divine self-sacrifice for sin) are only adumbrated in earlier biblical history, to be fleshed out in the fullness of time. The numerous Old Testament references to the Lord's future and thus to the future of those who trust in him leave little room for insisting that the Old Testament contains no inkling of a life beyond the present world. Such insistence is understandable where Enlightenment or postmodern assumptions, methods, and conclusions are dogmatically embraced.

The Old Testament does not seem to conceive of eternity in purely abstract terms, as a static state of timelessness. The Greek word aion [aijwvn] (age, era, lengthy time, eternity) in the Septuagint and New Testament corresponds to the Hebrew Old Testament's olam ['l/[] (a long time, eternity); neither word as used in Scripture answers to the notion of "eternity" that shows up in the ancient philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. For Plato, eternity is a timeless and transcendent state totally outside the dimension of time. For Aristotle, as for Thomas Aquinas who followed him at this point, eternity "becomes known from two characteristics: first, from the fact that whatever is in eternity is interminable, that is, lacking beginning and end ; second, from the fact that eternity itself lacks successiveness, existing entirely at once [tota simul]" (Aquinas, Summa, I, 10, 1).