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Chalice of Eternity: An Orthodox Theology of Time

Bible Studies
New Testament Jule, 10 [Print] [Share]
Old Testament Gallaher, Brandon
Textual Criticism In this article Dr Brandon Gallaher describes the major elements of an Orthodox theology of time, with particular
Isagogics reference to the theology of Fr Alexander Schmemann and St Gregory of Nyssa. Dr Gallaher asks what we mean by time
Exegetics and Hermeneutics in relation to creation and to God; what the nature of time is as experienced by us as fallen beings, as 'growth unto Does Religion Need
Biblical Archaeology death'; and how time can be experienced as renewal, as 'growth unto life in Jesus Christ', referring in particular to the Culture? (Discussion with
Bible History concept of the liturgical Eighth Day. C.S. Lewis)
Biblical Theology
Greco-Jewish Literature of the Hellenistic This morning during Matins I had a jolt of happiness, of fullness of life, and at the same time the thought: I will have
Period and the Apocrypha to die! But in such a fleeting breath of happiness, time usually gathers itself. In an instant, not only are all such breaths
Theology of happiness remembered but they are present and alivethat Holy Saturday in Paris when I was a young manand
Dogmatics many such breaks. It seems to me that eternity might be not the stopping of time, but precisely its resurrection and
Patrology gathering. The fragmentation of time, its division, is the fall of eternity. Maybe the words of Christ are about time when He
Apologetics said: not to destroy anything but will raise it all on the last day. The thirst for solitude, peace, freedom, is thirst for the
Comparative Theology liberation of time from cumbersome dead bodies, from hustle; thirst for the transformation of time into what it should The church needs
Teachings of the Oriental Christian bethe receptacle, the chalice of eternity. Liturgy is the conversion of time, its filling with eternity. There are two canonists
(Non-Chalcedonian) Churches irreconcilable types of spirituality: one that strives to liberate man from time (Buddhism, Hinduism, Nirvana, etc.); the
Moral Theology other that strives to liberate time. In genuine eternity, all is alive. The limit and the fullness: the whole of time, the whole of
Liturgical theology life is in each moment. But there is also the perpetual problem: What about the evil moments? Evil time? The terrible fear
History before dying of the drowning man, of the man falling from the tenth floor about to be crushed on the pavement? What
Ancient Church history about the tears of an abused child?
History of local and autonomous
Churches (The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann 1973-1983, p.78) [1]
History of Russian Orthodox Church
Hagiology and Hagiography Crisis is in fact very good
Church Archaeology and very beneficial
History of Religions Time cannot be understood as a part of the Doctrine of Creation, but only from within our recreation in the Body of the
History of Sects and Schisms Living Christ, the Church. Christ came to recreate all things by His cross in the Church and time itself is the space within
History of Western Denominations creation wherein this re-creation takes place. Systematic theology in the Eastern Orthodox tradition is very
Monasteries and Monasticism underdeveloped; indeed, the actual writing of Systematic Theologies has been something attained with little success until
Practical Disciplines now except by Frs. Sergii Bulgakov and Dimitru Staniloae. If a tradition of systematics is to be developed in Eastern
Liturgics Orthodoxy, one that begins to speak from and for the whole Christian Church, and if it is to begin with the Doctrine of the
Homiletics Word of God, as arguably, after Karl Barth, has become a theological necessity, then one must first theologize the space Philosophy doesn't give
Canon Law within which the cross of Jesus Christ stands. This essay will attempt to give, in broad strokes, an Eastern Orthodox you what you need to live
Religious Art
theology of time with particular emphasis on the thought of Fr. Alexander Schmemann and St. Gregory of Nyssa.
Pastoral Theology
News
Religion and World This study begins with a quotation from Schmemann, the rare Orthodox theologian who has developed a systematic
Mission of the Church Thursday, April, 04
theology of time.[2] The quotation will be helpful to us in our attempt to understand time as the space of our creation and
Social Service 16:28 Metropolitan Hilarion
re-creation in Jesus Christ, for it brings together a number of themes central to our enterprise: (a) time as understood in opens theological conference in
Church and State its relation to the Church as a receptacle of the eternal Kingdom of God; (b) time as woundedness (what Schmemann
Religion and Science University of Fribourg
calls evil time);[3] (c) the relation of time to eternity as the spiritual mode of the created where time is not understood, Friday, March, 29
Religious Education and Upbringing
like Plato, as a moving image of eternity, but eternity is understood through time as the co-presence and indwelling of 16:03 Metropolitan Hilarion
Ecumenism
distinct moments (past, present and future); (d) and memory in liturgical remembrance as the restoration of time to the receives delegation of
Auxiliary Disciplines University of Leuven
wholeness of a temporally understood eternity. This essay attempts to elaborate the broad themes central to an Orthodox
General History
theology of time under three equally broad headings: Friday, February, 01
National History
15:40 Doctor of Ministry
Slavic Studies
(I) Nature of Time: What is time? Do we only know time in knowing the things that are contained in time? What is its Distance Learning Program
Byzantology
relation to Gods mode of being? Launches
Auxiliary Historical Disciplines
Philosophy
Russian Religious Philosophy
(II) Time as Decay: How do we primarily experience time? Do we experience it as change or, more precisely, mutability, Editor's Column
that is, a growth unto death?
Philosophy of Science Christians are not born
Medieval Philosophy
Religious Studies
(III) Time as Renewal: If time is the change inherent in being created then can we experience our life as other than a in the greenhouse
growth unto death? Can we experience life as perhaps, a growth unto goodness in Christ in His Church? May, 12
Psychology
Culturology (I) Nature of Time: What is time?
Art Studies Videorecording
Literature Studies What is time? Who can explain this easily and briefly? Who can comprehend Philosophy doesn't give you
Anthropology what you need to live
Sociology this even in thought so as to articulate the answer in words? March, 19
Political Science
Giving people spiritual
Philology Yet what do we speak of, in our familiar everyday conversation, more than of time?
enrichment and theological
Economics
knowledge
Pedagogics We surely know what we mean when we speak of it.
August, 21
Logic
Natural Sciences We also know what is meant when we hear someone else taking about it. Empirical theology as the
Library Science researching strategy
Journalism What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. August, 21

If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know

Recent publications
(Confessions,11.14.17, p. 230)[4] Publications in Russian
Following these famous lines from Book XI of the Confessions St. Augustine goes on to meditate on the intricate
connections between past, present and future in human consciousness. Unlike at least one tendency in Augustine, seen
in Book XI of the Confessions, I think that it is a mistake to try to understand the nature of time abstractly, that is, I come
to understand time by abstracting myself from the stream of life and thereby think of time as something out there as the
object of my intellect. This object of time is observed by the thinker as a neutral observer who steps back from himself
and meditates upon the object thrown before his consciousness. However, Augustine also is concerned with the relation
of time to creation and eventually concludes,[5] as the quote indicates, that the thinker is always implicated by time since
he is in time. In other words, time itself is meaningless unless it presupposes created things in time including the
thinker.[6] Indeed, Augustines meditation on time in the Confessions begins with the attempt to understand the relation of
God to the world He created. Augustine attempts to respond to the question: What was God doing before He created all English-Russian Theological
Dictionary: Christianity Judaism -
things?[7] To which Augustine responds: nothing as doing (sc. creating) implies time. Time came to be with Gods act of
Islam / -
creation, for God is timeless or immutable and changeless unlike creation, which is temporal, mutable or changing.[8] .
- -
Butif Augustine does acknowledge the connection of time to creation, for him this meant our consciousness of creation, Jule, 19
which led him to collapse time past and future into the eternity of the present moment.[9] In the present moment, I am

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aware of myself as made in the image of God so that time, as the triune reality of past, present and future, becomes
unreal next to the eternal image of the Trinity. This eternal image is in the mind as a present moment of
self-consciousness.[10] I dont think this solution should be accepted because it essentially says that all change is
unreal[11] since whatever is real is wholly eternal and only God is wholly eternal and we share in Him through our
unchanging meditation on him.[12] In short, the past and future, according to one traditional theology of time, are unreal
and only the present moment as an image of eternity is real.

It is arguable, however, that if God created all things very good and to be created is to be mutable or changeable then
change as variation (past, present and future) must be good in itself. Thus the Platonic tendency to see time as a moving
:
image of eternity[13] should be avoided theologically insofar as it leads to unreal creation being collapsed into real
eternity thereby ending creations variable createdness. This collapse of time into eternity is believed by some thinkers to
be necessary because temporal creation is viewed as metaphysically evil[14] insofar as it is not eternal which is to be June, 6
good, real and invariable. On the contrary, it is arguable that the division between past, present and future in time does Publications in other
not point to the unreality of physical creation as time bound, but instead, as Fr. Pavel Florensky argued,[15] to real languages
otherness, distinction and difference in God himself as the Holy Trinity. God's life as Trinity is "perichoretic" (i.e.
indwelling, co-inherent) with each person being in the other person and all being in each and each existing in all and all
subsisting in all and all being one in this division in the perfect unity of love.[16] Therefore, in contrast to a certain
tendency in Augustine and both Eastern and Western theologies, perfection, for the created, is not to be collapsed into
the one presence of the Uncreated, insofar as God is one, present and invariable and so that time finds its true end in its
negation. Rather, the created images the Uncreateds perfection in creaturely otherness and movement towards
goodness, that is, man reflects His Creator precisely in his temporality and mutability which are "very good."[17]

Time is often connected to physical creation insofar as physical creation is characterized by change (mutability) and the
ability to changeas the mode of being of creationbeing often contrasted with God who is changeless, immutable and Martin Thomas
eternal. But I think this conceptual movement needs further clarification,[18] for are there not angels and are they not said English Cathedral Music and
to be created but eternal and immortal too? But we know that Satan and those fallen angels who followed him made a Liturgy in the Twentieth Century
August, 23
choice to change from goodness to evil, from light to darkness, yet we still call them eternal beings possessing
'immortality' albeit by grace and not of their own posession.[19] We have then in the angel a sort of oxymoron: a
changeable eternal being.

Therefore some Fathers, including Sts. Basil the Great and Maximus the Confessor, spoke of three modes of being (i.e.
time (chronos), age or creaturely eternity (aion) and the everlasting or uncreated eternity (aidios, aidiotes and sometimes
aioniosandoften evenproaionios or the pre-eternal which is ateleutetos or without an end)),[20] not just the two of time
and eternity. I will attempt to adapt these broad and rather slippery categories, in a contemporary context, based on the
fundamental distinction between the Uncreated and the created.

First, everlastingness or everexistingness (aidiotes) that is the mode of being of God who is utterly beyond the distinction Knut A. Jacobsen
between time and creaturely eternity, being and non-being since He is the pre-eternal (proaionios) God who is "endless" Young Sikhs in a Global World
Jule, 23
in the sense of being beyond duration. Everlastingness is essentially a negative or apophatic category emphasizing
Gods unknowableness. Gods unknowableness is best expressed by darkness[21]He made darkness his covering
around him, his canopy thick clouds dark with water (Ps. 18: 11)since He is unlike all else that is in being Uncreated
not created. That which is everlasting is eternity in its proper sense as it is the natural mode of God not creation. Thus
Basil speaks of the everlasting, the mode of God, as being older in being to all time and eternity [or 'age': aionos][22] in
that He is the one who created the ages.[23] Maximus likewise writes that God is simply and indefinably beyond all
beings, both what circumscribes and what is circumscribed and the nature of those [categories] without which none of
these could be, I mean, time and eternity and space, by which the universe is enclosed, since He is completely unrelated
to anything.[24] God is indefinable as the ho pro aionon Theos (Slavonic: prevechnyi Bog) which can be translated as
the pre-eternal God or God before the ages. As the Kontakion of Christmas puts it:

Today the Virgin gives birth to him who is above all being [ton huperousion], and the earth offers the cave to him
whom no one can approach; Angels with Shepherds give glory, while Magi journey with a star, for to us there has
been born a little child, God before the ages [ho pro aionon Theos].[25]

Second, we have creaturely eternity/age (aidiotes), which is the creaturely mode of being of the supra-cosmic or spiritual
creation of Godangels.[26] This mode of being is not one that excludes change but it is not bound by the distinctions of
our present times version of change. The past is not utterly past but it is contained in the present as is the future and the
future in the past and the past in the future so that eternity is a sort of perichoretic version of time. This, I would argue, is
what Schmemann was getting at when he wrote that points in time can be gathered together and encountered
simultaneously:

In an instant, not only are all such breaths of happiness remembered but they are present and alivethat Holy
Saturday in Paris when I was a young manand many such breaks. It seems to me that eternity might be not the
stopping of time, but precisely its resurrection and gathering[27]

Moreover, there is in the Kingdom of God, which is an eternal Kingdom not of this world, an enduring quality of being
where one forever praises God from one moment to the nexta sort of sempiternal or eternal durationwithout in any
way being trapped in growing old or being trapped in the inexperience of youth. In such eternal duration, the goodness of
God is always desired and always held in its fullness at the same time as that goodness continually increases our
capacity and desire for it although we never possess this goodness in its fullness. The nature of eternity can be traced to
the nature of spiritual or eternal being where the spiritual body is both faster and lighter than the physical body and so is
not constrained by the divisions of space or time at the same time as those divisions are never abolished.[28] Thus I am
arguing that creaturely eternity cannot be understood without temporal characteristics like the triune reality of past,
present and future. Temporality comes in two forms: creaturely eternity or spiritual time and time proper which we
humans now experience. Temporality is the mark of what is created whereas what is UncreatedGod aloneis
everlasting being marked by uncreated eternity.

Thirdly, we have time (chronos) proper which is the mode of being of the sensible cosmos, that is, our present sensible
creation that has man at its summit. Time in physical creation, as we now experience it under the weight of sin, is
understood as a reality with a strict division between past, present and future where the person in time, who has turned
his back on Gods grace in Jesus Christ, is prevented from being present to more than one division at once. Thus when I
err under the weight of sin I cannot be present to here and there at once since I am bound to here.

To summarize, I am arguing that in an Orthodox theology of time we should speak of two (not three) modes of being
based on the fundamental distinction between the created and the Uncreated: temporality in the dual form of time
(sensible creation: chronos) and creaturely eternity/age (supersensible creation: aion) in contradistinction to the
everlasting (aidiotes), uncreated divine eternity before every age (proaionios), as a negative or apophatic category
emphasizing Gods unknowableness.

The admittedly rather laboured distinction I have made between temporality and the everlasting is a necessary
prolegomenon to any systematic theology of time since we can then begin to understand who Jesus Christ is as the
God-Man, created and Uncreated at once, insofar as His theandric energies are simultaneously temporal and
everlasting. The cross, using our distinction, is an everlasting act of God that is love but it is such an act of love only in
time. In contemplating the cross, as a theandric act, we come to understand that Christ is the one who in showing us the
brokenness of time also reveals to us what time may become through its healing by the everlasting. Christ heals our time
(chronos), and indeed the time of the invisible creation (aeon), by making it His time of opportunity for our salvation in
Him (kairos). Time, as Christs time, becomes a means to our perfection in Him rather than the ultimate expression of our
rejection of Gods grace. Through Him in His Body the Church we come to partake in the mode of being of the invisible
creation, creaturely eternity, but this eternity or time of the invisible creation becomes wedded with our sensible time,
remade for an embodied being like man, through participating in the everlasting life of God. Time is, therefore, remade
and renewed in the Church as the Kingdom of God and we have a foretaste of this renewal in the liturgy. We shall return
to this renewal of time in Christ below.

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Furthermore, Jesus Christ is the source by which the temporal is defined and the everlasting is illumined.[29] If creations
mode of being is best seen in movement, in the interval between two points, then Gods mode of Being is best expressed
by His enduring darkness since the mode by which He is is unlike all else that is in being Uncreated not created.
Following this line of argument, we can say that the best description of Gods mode of Being (outside of saying that He is
Trinity) is to say that He is not createdUncreated. Thus when God became man in Jesus Christ it was, as it were, a
movement of darkness. But how do we perceive this movement of darkness that is the God-Man as the union of time
and the everlasting? We can only understand Jesus Christ by contemplating Gods grace that is perfectly manifest in the
weakness of the cross, Elo-i, Elo-i, lama sabach-thani? (Mark 15:34), of God crying for man to God from the depths of
hell: I called to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and thou didst hear
my voice (Jonah 2:2). We shall return to the key role Christ plays in the theology of time throughout this essay.

Temporality, then, as the fallen time of the physical world and temporality as the eternal mode of co-presence of past,
presence and future are both understood by their contents, but if we talk about a content in time or eternity then we are
thinking of time and eternity in terms of space. A content can be measured and that which can be measured can be
placed so that if that which is temporal exists insofar as to be is to be measurable then the temporal has being insofar as
it takes up a place in the hierarchy of being in which God has created the world. So a man has a natural place in Gods
cosmos just as does an angel whereas God is outside this hierarchy as completely beyond it as its, to borrow a phrase
from Maximus, unoriginate origin.[30] All of us seek our true place in this hierarchy through our inner desire or love for
God implanted by the same Uncreated God who created us. Therefore, time, as Basil defined it, is the extension
[diastema] coextensive with the existence of the cosmos,[31] that is, all created being (sensible and supersensible) is
characterized as temporal which is to be in an extension of createdness reaching towards the end of the love of God.

(II) Time as Decay: Growth unto Death

He [the passionate man] is like those who toil endlessly as they climb uphill in sand:

Even though they take long steps, their footing in the sand always slips downhill,

so that, although there is much motion, no progress results from it

(Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Moysis, 244, p.117)[32]

The first stop in our theology of time is our fallen experience of timetime as found in the sensible world; not, that is, that
sensoriness makes for fallenness. On the contrary, the demons are fallen but they are supersensible eternal beings that,
like us, experience, in eternity, temporality in a fallen mode. However, how exactly the fallen experience of eternal time of
the demons differs from the eternal temporality of the unfallen angels or the time bound fallen temporality of man or the
temporality of the garden which Adam and Eve experienced is impossible to say. What we can express fairly exactly is
how we presently experience temporality as fallen time or growth unto death, that is, our present fallen time is as
Shakespeares To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day/ To the last syllable
of recorded time,/ And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/ The way to dusty death. [] it is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full
of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.[33]

First we experience fallen time as constant change or ceaseless movement in a cycle of death that can be seen cyclically
in the seasons, which move in a circle like a snake swallowing its tail. Winter follows Autumn and Spring follows Winter
just as death follows old age and old age is not the end, for out of our death comes the birth of our descendants.[34]
Thus all of time is a perpetual repetition of death since the moment that things come into existence, changing from
non-existence into being, they straightway move back again from existence into non-being. This experience of fallen time
is what Pozzo, in Waiting For Godot, expresses when he cries furiously at Vladimir:

Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not
enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day
we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that enough for you? [Calmer] They give birth astride of a grave,
the light gleams an instant, then its night once more.[35]

Second, we experience fallen time as unending desire. Once we desire something it lacerates our whole being until we
possess it and our desire for that thing is then satiated until the thing possessed tempts us into some new perversion and
the vicious circle begins all over again. Mans life, then, is like this vicious circle insofar as he is continually turning around
while facing his own self like it was a household idol, as The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete puts it: I am become
my own idol, and have injured my soul with passions.[36] Luther expressed this fallen circularity of time well when he
says that homo in se incurvatus or man is turned in on himself.[37]

St. Gregory of Nyssa writes of negative change as what characterizes our fallen time. It is characterized by biological
duration or, in physical terms, negative motion which Gregory in a nice figure, borrowed from Eph. 4:14,[38] describes
as the character of being tossed about.[39] With negative motion one never meets ones object, but one is always in a
process of slipping away from that object even as one thinks that one possesses it. In terms of bodily desires (good in the
unfallen condition) this means that one is caught in a seemingly endless cycle of temptation and satiation where one
desire merges into another as soon as it is satisfied (if it is ever truly satisfied). Gregory has a nice image, with which we
opened this section, to convey this hopeless cyclical perpetuum mobile.It is of a man fruitlessly attempting to climb uphill
in sand and never making any progress. It is the spiritual life where ones house is built not on the rock of Christ but on
the sand of spiritual illusions:

He [the passionate man] is like those who toil endlessly as they climb uphill in sand: Even though they take long
steps, their footing in the sand always slips downhill, so that, although there is much motion, no progress results
from it[40]

Third, we see time as decay in memorySchmemanns evil time.[41] In evil time, we remember the past as perpetually
lost like a ghost that must relive its own murder.[42] Thus we remember continually and cannot change the death of our
spouse, our mother, our child, or worse, a moment of humiliation by our spouse, our mother, by us of our own child. We
cannot choose our past, for deliberation is a mark of future action in the present, the choice between what we would like
to have happened and what actually happened remains only an undying craving for another world, as T. S. Eliot
acknowledged: What might have been is an abstraction/ Remaining a perpetual possibility/ Only in a world of
speculation.[43] Perhaps this is what the ancient Greek poet Agathon meant when he wrote that For one thing is denied
even to God/ To make what has been done undone again.[44] Therefore, all in all, it seems that as the children of Adam
the Transgressor we have buried the image of God under several feet of mud. What can we do, if anything, when the
judge of all comes at the end of time? The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete puts this aspect of times and man in
times judgement in the following manner: The mind is wounded, the body is feeble, the spirit is sick, the word has lost its
power, life is ebbing, the end is at the doors. What then will you do, wretched soul, when the Judge comes to try your
case?[45] But what is the theological characteristic of all these faces of fallen time? Each of these faces of fallen time
points to our fundamental need, in time, for times renewal in Jesus Christ.

(III) Time as Renewal: Growth unto Goodness in Christ

Therefore, let not a person be grieved by the fact that his nature is mutable; rather,

by always being changed to what is better and by being transformed from glory to glory

(2 Cor 3.18), let him so be changed: by daily growth he always becomes better

and is always being perfected yet never attains perfections goal.

For perfection truly consists in never stopping our increase towards

the better nor to limit perfection with any boundary

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(Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection, p.379)[46]

Decay unto death can be renewed as a growth unto life in Jesus Christ. It was argued above that memory for man can be
the awareness that he cannot change the past. In other words, in the fallen experience of time man is impotent in the
face of the seemingly invincible movement of time[47] so that Agathon could claim that even God could not change the
past. However, as a Christian I believe otherwise in confessing Jesus Christ. Indeed, Christian faith rests upon the belief
that Agathon was and is wrong. Time, as a fallen reality crushing the being of man, seen perhaps most clearly in the
tragedy of lost time, can be redeemed, saved and liberated. Our time is renewed in the living, real memory of Jesus
Christ[48] in whose death and new life in His living Body, the Church, we are baptized. Put otherwise, in baptism, our
fallen memory is justified, illumined, sanctified and washed in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of
God.[49] Our everlasting God has come down into the broken temporality of time and renewed our memory in the saving
event of Jesus Christ, God as Man and Man for God.

Memory needs to be healed not destroyed. Often the greatest difficulties in our lives are the result of being plagued by
evil memories, which wound and lacerate us as persons. Indeed, we pray at Great Vespers that God will protect us from
vain thoughts and from evil memories.[50] An image exists for this weight of memory at the end of the Purgatorio when
Dante, after confessing to Beatrice, first drinks of the river of Lethe forgetting all the evil and sin of his past life[51] then
drinking of the river of Eune (good remembrance or good mind) and remembering everything but from the perspective
of the grace and love of God.[52] Forgiveness, then, is a process of progressive confession and absolution where we
gradually let go of the past (are freed from its chains) by confronting the past and then giving it up in forgiveness
(forgetting it without repression) so that we can regain it back from Jesus Christ through His remembrance in love. This
healed or forgiven memory is paradise regained, that is, radical innocence[53] as Yeats termed the state of learned
childlikeness after our dreaming innocence has gone through the fire of experience.

We are given this renewal of our memory, this reality of memory shining forth with the light of the new age of the coming
Kingdom of God fulfilled once for all time on the cross (It is finished!/Behold I make all things new), in the perpetual
rebirthperpetual Pentecostof the Church in its praise of God. In praising God, the Church is given the gift of the
eternal Memory of the Spirit whereby we remember the life of Christ as our very own thus redeeming all memory under
the sign of His cross. Such eternal remembrance renews the face of the earth and makes of it, as Schmemann put it, a
liturgical paradise.[54] Schmemanns theology of time is in many ways a theology of memory. For Schmemann,
memory, in the Church, becomes an ingathering of the past and future in the present worship of the Church so that we
can presently sing of Christs salvation on the cross and His triumph over history in His second and glorious coming
again as the ultimate and all-embracing today of Christ,[55] that is, Today, a sacred Pascha is revealed to us[56] or
This is the day of resurrection[57] or yet again On Mount Tabor, O Lord, Thou hast shown today the glory of Thy divine
form unto Thy chosen disciples[58] or finally, with Ephrem the Syrian, on Christs passion as our salvation now:

Open your heart,

learn in detail

his sufferings

and say to yourself:

God who is without sin

today was given up,

today was mocked,

today was abused,

today was struck,

today was scourged,

today wore

a crown of thorns,

today was crucified,

he, the heavenly Lamb[59]

In Christ, as the Lord of Time, is realized the ingathering of all moments in one moment of what we might call an 'eternal
temporality' and which Schmemann calls temps immobile,[60] that is, the co-inherence or co-presence of each part of
time to each other in the present happens in Jesus Christ. Christ is Himself the Lord of Chronos or time proper because
He is the Kyrios Kairou, Lord of the appointed time of our salvation. In Him, our broken mode of temporality, chronos, is
renewed and sanctified, ascending with Him to the Father and becoming a spiritual mode of time through its marriage
with creaturely eternity (aeon). But when He returns to us in His Body and Blood in the liturgy, which is both our ascent to
God and His descent to us, we see that our new mode of time, eternal temporality, is something radically new to creation,
sensible and spiritual at once, as it has partaken of the very mode of God Himself as everlasting Trinity (aidiotes), God
before the ages. Therefore, the central locus of this ingathering of time is our Lords anamnesis or His recollection of His
own saving actions in the liturgy in which His living memory becomes life everlasting by renewing all time in the new age
of His Kingdom. This Kingdom of Jesus Christ is the very same life we will receive at the resurrection on the last day. It
has been variously described as the eighth day or liturgy without end and it is granted as a gracious foretaste to us. It is
a sort of liturgical in-breaking of the life to come in our crooked and wounded time.

It should be noted that when, in Scripture,[61] Christ remembers His own Body and Blood broken and shed for the life of
the world, it is prior to the actual sacrifice. In other words, in Christs remembrance, memory is not merely retrospective,
in that it looks back at a life of sacrifice, but it is also simultaneously prospective in actuating prophetically the sacrifice of
the cross before it happens.[62] Likewise, our Lord as our Great High Priest remembers us and all time before the Father
in heaven when at the Anaphora on the Lords Day the priest says both retrospectively and prospectively at once:
Remembering this saving commandment and all those things which have come to pass for us: the Cross, the Tomb, the
Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the Sitting down at the right hand, and the second and glorious
Coming.[63] Christ's memory is eschatological, a remembering of the future life to come. Thus the Christian life is one of
memory eternal where we live in the liturgical ingathering of all moments by remembering, with Christ, the saving acts
that have accomplished our salvation now and to come. In the Christian life lived as anamnesis, past and future converge
in one another in the present moment of our loving memory where we taste of the new age given in our midst. Eternal
memory is not the destruction of the past as past and the future as future but their clarification and illumination in
encountering each other in our present consciousness of Jesus Christ who gives us eternal life. To borrow a phrase from
Berdyaev, Immortality is memory made clear and serene.[64]

Christ, then, as our renewed memory effecting salvation has, as Schmemann put it, power over time because He
makes time His own as its Lord and does not destroy it but burns away, with healing fire, its wounds, making it itself
through contact with Himself insofar as Eternity is not the negation of time, but times absolute wholeness, gathering and
restoration.[65] But if the Pascha of the Lord is the fulness of all saving events in Christs Kingdom not of this world and
these events are manifested in the Churchs worship, preeminently at the passing over from death to life of the Lord at
Easter, then we must say that each year we return to Pascha, Pascha does not return to us.[66] Furthermore, the cycle of
the services in which we remember our Lord, punctuated by the liturgy at any time, for the liturgy is not a part of any of
the cycles and may be celebrated at any time, is the restoration of cyclical time to an eternal temporality which renews
the seasons as no longer movement unto death but movement unto life and eternal growth in Christ through the Holy
Spirit by the will of the Father.[67]

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Time need not lacerate our life now that it is renewed in Christ because as an eternal temporality, in the liturgical
seasons, it sanctifies and ever renews the temporality of creation in the liturgy.[68] The liturgy is, to cite Schmemann
once again, the chalice of eternity[69] where we become receptacles of Christs coming again by holding in our
thankfulness the new paradise gifted to us at Golgotha. Golgotha has become a garden in the memory of God and this
garden is the Church.[70] Gregory of Nyssa, therefore, argues that the Church is the world recreated[71] and this new
world is paradise regained: Now the resurrection promises us nothing else than the restoration of the fallen to their
ancient state; for the grace we look for is a certain return to the first life, bringing back again to Paradise him who was
cast out from it.[72] Yet the recreation of the world must be received in contrition, in conversion of our minds to the form
of the mind of Christ, if Christs cry to Return again to Paradise![73] is to be effective for us. Yet, and here we wish to go
a little further with these ideas, we should not view our return to paradise as simply a reversion to an idyll of the simplicity
and innocence of Adam that denies our previous experience as if God wiped out of all the events in the past. Rather, our
new mode of being is a "radical innocence" (in Yeats' phrase) that takes into consideration our fall and redemption but
now sees all of the past wounded life from God's unending grace as necessary paradoxically to become something new
in the cosmos. This "newness" is the life of eternal temporality to which we are called in the Church, a synthesis of the
sensible and the spiritual, chronosand aeonin a living interanimated tension, where they are united and differentiated
through their mutual and total dependence on God's everlasting mode of Being.

But how does this renewal of time take place? A renewal, as we have described it, where memory is an ingathering of all
time and the Church, in its services, is a glorious non-tyrannical cycle of joy that shows us what the seasons of the earth
were meant to be. We can trace this conception of the renewal of time by turning once again to the thought of Gregory of
Nyssa. Gregory sees time as the growth into goodness in Jesus Christ manifested each Lords Day that is the eighth day
of Pascha foretasted to us in the liturgy. Gregorys retrieval of time depends on his positive understanding of change.

Positive change is what the Apostle described as forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead
(Phil. 3:13). The operative word in this passage for Gregory is epekteinomenos or straining forward to which is related to
epektasis (an important concept for Gregory) which is usually translated as stretching out of towards, but might be
translated much more literally as at out of extension. It combines two seemingly opposite conceptions: rest (to be at)
and movement (to be out of extension). Rest, in epektasis, refers to the fact that in Jesus Christ one is at or towards or
facing the Son of God. In being in Christ in the Church, we become like Adam who, had he obeyed, could have walked in
the garden in the cool of the day with God as it were with a true friend thereby moving in an unfallen way integrating his
experience into his innocence. Movement, in epektasis, refers to our moving towards what lies ahead as renewed
beings and what lies ahead is the endless mercies of the goodness of Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday and
today and for ever (Heb. 13: 8). Thus to be changing in its positive sense is to be always making progress into the
goodness of Jesus Christ of whom one partakes of personallyindeed each of us is communed by our baptismal
namerather than as an alien reality battering ones being. As Gregory puts it: For the perfection of human nature
consists perhaps in its very growth in goodness.[74] And Christ Himself, for Gregory and the Fathers, is Goodness itself.
When in Christ we strain forward to what lies ahead our desire is no tyrant which returns to lacerate our being to only
leave us as soon as its power is momentarily vanquished. Rather desire, in Jesus Christ, always impels one to draw
closer in love to the end of ones being which is the infinite life of love of the Holy Trinity we are gifted with by our
adoption as sons in Christ. Desire, then, in the positive movement towards Christ, does not vitiate the human person but
ever reintegrates it into the everlasting life of its Lord God Creator and RedeemerJesus Christ. Innocence is regained
but experience is integrated into it and not jettisoned as we are living as spiritual-physical beings who ever change for the
good as we move towards the everlasting God.

Change as change per se, for Gregory, is, in a sense, always coming to birth,[75] but in the new age of Christs
resurrection this birth is not into an endless cycle of passion, but rather it is to face God as new radically innocent beings,
having tasted of experience but returning as children to God, remade in His Son, that is, positive movement is to be
constantly being recreated, ever changing for the better by its growth in perfection.[76] The positive motion or change of
this new age combines rest and movement in returning to God. Maximus the Confessor describes this movement as an
ever-moving stability and a stable and changeless form of movement generated eternally round that which is one, unique
and always the same,[77] namely, the love of God, that is, the Holy Spirit of our agathos kai philanthropos Theos who is
forever given to each of us personally at the chalice. Furthermore, the love of Gods Spirit in Christ is recreative of our
nature and this recreation, being of God, is everlasting, which, in creaturely terms, means that growth into Christ is infinite
in dimension, as Gregory says of Moses:

He still thirsts for that with which he constantly filled himself to capacity, and he asks to attain as if he had never
partaken, beseeching God to appear to him, not according to his capacity to partake, but according to Gods true
being [...] the true sight of God consists in this, that the one who looks up to God never ceases in that desire[78].

In being created by God out of nothing creation moved from non-existence into being, but this movement very soon
turned into a growth unto death where creation slipped back from existence into the very nothingness from which God
drew it. In the gracious growth unto life in Christ things are similar but different, for like initial fallen creation there is a
movement from non-existence into being, but, differently, with this gracious perfection, creation never stops moving from
non-being to being, as God fills one up continually ever recreating and enlarging ones capacity for goodness in Jesus
Christ.[79] Moreover, although in growth unto goodness one forgets what has gone before, insofar as dwelling on sin
impedes ones continued growth, this does not, as we have been repeatedly saying, negate the stages that have gone
before. Rather what went before is a necessary foundation for what comes to be in spiritual growth. Thus sensible life is
taken up into interanimation with supersensible existence, to adapt the Chalcedonian definition to a different purpose,
without confusion, without change, without division, without separation[80] as a necessary foundation to the gains
achieved in our growth into God. Gregory writes accordingly in De Hominis Opificio: The intelligent being cannot be
incorporated in any other way than by intermingling itself with sensoriness and Sensation does not exist without matter,
nor does spiritual action exist without sensory activity.[81]

Epektasis or positive movement is the unfallen time of eternal becoming that Paradise was made to be in its
creatureliness but fell from the possibility of becoming and which is now reclaimed in the life of the Church given in our
common worship in the liturgy.[82] In Vita Moysis, Gregory characterizes this state of stretching out towards as a dynamic
stasis or rest where the everlastingness of God is married to the temporality of eternity. In facing God on the solid rock of
goodness, which is, to mix metaphors, the cross of Jesus Christ, Moses can ascend eternally the scala paradisi from
glory to glory:

In another Scriptural passage the progress is a standing still, for it says, You must stand on the rock.This is the most
marvelous thing of all: how the same thing is both a standing still and a moving. For he who ascends certainly does
not stand still, and he who stands still does not move upwards. But here the ascent takes place by means of the
standing. I mean by this that the firmer and more immovable one remains in the Good, the more he progresses in
the course of virtue [] if someone, as the Psalmist says, should pull his feet up from the mud of the pit and plant
them upon the rock (the rock is Christ who is absolute virtue), then the more steadfast and unmovable (according to
the advice of Paul) he becomes in the Good the faster he completes his course. It is like using the standing still as if
it were a wing while the heart flies upward through its stability in the good.[83]

The notion of constant change unto goodness can be seen in the concept of Sunday as the eschatological day of the
new age given in the liturgytime renewed as the eighth day without end.[84] Christ comes both to fulfill the old things
making them new and to end the old things in orderto make them new. The Church very quickly understood that Sunday
as the Lords Day on which He rose as the first day of the Jewish week following the Sabbath was not just a restatement
of the Jewish feast of Gods rest from creating the old creation of the old age, but the recreation of this age in the new
age of the Kingdom. Thus the early Christians spoke of Sunday as the eighth Paschal day[85] without end.[86] As
Orthodox Christians, we sing of this eternal day at Pascha: This is the chosen and holy day, first of Sabbaths, king and
lord of days, the feast of feasts, holy day of holy days. On this day we bless Christ forevermore.[87] More explicitly, we
see this (sans mention of the term eighth day but clearly alluding to it) in the liturgy: O Christ! Great and Holy Pascha! O
Wisdom, Word and Power of God! Grant that we may more perfectly partake of Thee in the never-ending Day of Thy
Kingdom.[88] Indeed, Bright Week itself is meant to be a living symbol of this one eighth day of the Kingdom that will not
endthe time of eternal temporality.

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Christians decided early on to not worship on the Sabbath as the day of creation but on Sunday as the day of the fruit of
Gods rest after having made the world. This fruit is the end of the world, as we know it and the new day of the
Resurrection when all things are and will be made new, as the author of the Epistle of Barnabas puts it:

He further says to them: Your new moons and Sabbaths I disdain [Isa. 1:13].Consider what He means: Not the
Sabbaths of the present era are acceptable to me, but that which I have appointed to mark the end of the world and
to usher in the eighth day, that is, the dawn of another world. This, by the way, is the reason why we joyfully
celebrate the eighth daythe same day on which Jesus rose from the dead; after which He manifested Himself and
went up to heaven[89]

Time, then, is shown as renewed in the temporality of eternity given in Christ crucified and risen and incarnated in His
living Body, the Church. This reality is gifted to us in the Eucharist each Lords Day. The seventh day of Gods rest from
creating the world as a temporal reality is recreated in the resurrection as the dynamic reposing in God of His saints in
the Kingdom of Christ not of this world, as Augustine put it:

The Lords day was made known, not to the Jews, but to Christians, by the resurrection of

the Lord, and from then it began to have its own celebration. The souls of all the saints

are, of course, at rest before the resurrection of the body, but they do not have that

activity which enlivens the bodies they received. Such action is, of course, signified by

the eighth day, which is also the first, for it does not take away that rest, but glorifies it.[90]

Thus positive movement, epektasis, is the time of the octave or eighth day of the Lord where spiritual growth is an infinite
unextended extension of the spiritual rest of the Sabbath, in other words, in positive movement in Christ, stability and
growth coincide in our Sunday worship of the Father through the Spirit in Christ. This ceaselessly renewed growth of
Sunday is the fruit of creations resting in God on the day of His creation, the Sabbath. The physical is spiritualized
without loss of its created character, which is, as we argued earlier, to be temporal and to be temporal is to be in the
extension or space of createdness reaching towards the end of the everlasting love of God in Jesus Christ.

Sunday as the eighth eternal day (an instance of eternal temporality) is a radical beginning but it is one which never
negates what came before as worthless insofar as it is the basis of the new life we have in Christ. Thus whether fallen or
in utero in Paradise the cosmic week of seven days in which we live and work the liturgy is a good gift which God gave to
man to become transformed into the likeness of His glory in that same liturgical work of the eighth day. In partaking each
week on a fixed day of the Kingdom in the precious Body and Blood of the King we are the very dynamic image of Gods
intention in His rest, and, indeed, act in that rest, of dwelling in His creation as His home. He did this in making the womb
of the Theotokos more spacious than the heavens. Resurrection is the indelible stamp of this fundamental act of
condescension. This condescension of God in Jesus Christ is our rebirth into beauty. It is a drinking of the chalice of
eternity in the Kingdom not of this world in this world each Sunday that we meet to share in the mysteries, for God has
wed Himself to our temporality and now we are no longer in chains but one with Him in Jesus Christ crucified, ever being
perfected as age meets age, glory meets glory and as God becomes all in all.

[1] The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann 1973-1983, trans. and ed. Juliana Schmemann (Crestwood,
N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2000) and cf. pp.195-196. (See the original (albeit edited): Dnevniki, 1973-1983
(Moscow: Russkii Put, 2005) and see the more complete translation of the latter: Alexandre Schmemann, Journal
(1973-1983), ed. Nikita Struve, trans. Anne Davidenkoff, Anne Kichilov and Ren Marichal (Paris: ditions des Syrtes,
2009)).

[2] Cf. Georgios I. Mantzaridis, Time and Man, trans. Julian Vulliamy (South Canaan: Penn.: St. Tikhons
Seminary Press, [1992] 1996).

[3] What about the evil moments? Evil time? The terrible fear before dying of the drowning man, of the man
falling from the tenth floor about to be crushed on the pavement? What about the tears of an abused child?
(Schmemann, Journals, p.78).

[4] Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick, Oxford Worlds Classics (Oxford/NY: OUP, 1998). (Confessions I
Introduction and Text, 3 Vols, ed. and comm. James J. ODonnell (Oxford: OUP, 1992).

[5] cf. conf. 11.30.40.

[6] cf. Mantzaridis, Time and Man, p.39.

[7] cf. conf. 11.10.12ff. and civ. Dei 11.6.

[8] cf. conf. 11.30.40.

[9] cf. conf. 11.20.26.

[10] cf. Trin. 14.5.8ff.

[11] Distentio Augustine calls it (cf. conf. 11.22.30ff.). The more positive Greek Patristic concept is diastema.
Diastema is the interval, distance, gap or extension characterizing the different modalities of creaturely being (time or
age/eternity) where there is duration and progression.

[12] Intentio for Augustine (cf. conf. 11.27.36ff. and Trin. 14).

[13] cf. Timaeus 37.

[14] G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God the freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, ed.
Austin Farrer, trans. E. M. Huggard (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1993), p.136.

[15] through space and time, everything bears the stamp of the number three, and trinity is the most basic
general characteristic of being (Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1997, p.422 [Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny: opyt pravoslavnoi theoditsei v dvenadtsati pismakh (Moscow:
Put, 1914 Reprint in Moscow by Lepta, 2002), p.596]).

[16] The life of God is one where singula sunt in singulis et omnia in singulis et singula in omnibus et omnia in
omnibus et unum omnia (Trin. 6.10.12.54-56); cf. 6.8.9.11-14 and John Damascene, De Fid. Orth. 1.8.17.296-297
(and the source in Ps-Cyril of Alexandria, De Sacrosanto Trinitate, 10, PG 77.1144B), Athanasius, Against the
Arians, 3.3, Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 31, 14; For commentary see Verna Harrison, Perichoresis in the Greek Fathers,
St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly, 35.1 (1991), pp.53-65 and R. E. Otto, The Use and Abuse of Perichoresis in
Recent Theology, Scottish Journal of Theology, 54.3 (2001), pp.366-384.).

[17] For further discussion see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume V:
The Last Act, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, [1983] 1998), pp.66-109, 212ff., 373ff.

[18] Mantzaridis, Time and Man, pp.5ff.

[19] John Damascene, De Fid. Orth. 2.3-4 and 27.

[20] On the ambiguity of all these terms and the plurality of the senses of "eternity" in the Fathers see Paul Plass
"The concept of eternity in patristic theology", Studia Theologica-Nordic Journal of Theology, 36:1, (1982), pp.11-25.

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[21] e.g. Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, The Mystical Theology,1.1-3 [PG 3.997A-1001A/PTS 36, pp.141-144].

[22] Basil the Great, Against Eunomios, 2.17 [PG 29.608C ll.56-57/SC 305]. (Against Eunomius, trans. Mark
Delcogliano and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, FC v.122, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2011),
p.154). See Mantzaridis, Time and Man, p.7.

[23] cf. Basil the Great, Against Eunomios, 2.17 [PG. 29.608C ll.40-41/SC 305]. (Against Eunomius, FC v.122,
p.154).

[24] Maximus the Confessor, Amb.10.26 [PG.91.1153B] in Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London/NY:
Routledge, 1996), pp.124-125 and compare Amb.10.31 [PG 91.1164B-C], 10.41 [PG 91.1188A-B], Centuries on
Theology, 1.69 and Various Texts on Theology [etc.], (Philokalia II) 5.47-48. Also see Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite: "One can take eternity and time to be predicates of God since, being the Ancient of Days, he is the cause
of all time and eternity. Yet he is before time and beyond time and is the source of the variety of time and of seasons.
Or, again, he precedes the eternal ages [aionon], for he is there before eternity and above eternity, and 'his kingdom is
an everlasting kingdom'" (Divine Names,10.3 [PG 3.940A/PTS 33, pp.216-217) (Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete
Works, trans. Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem, The Classics of Western Spirituality (NY: Paulist Press, 1987), p.121).
For earlier affirmations of God being incomparable to His creation being uncreated see Irenaeus Against
Heresies 2.25.3, 4.11.2, 4.38.1 and 4 as well as Novatians De Trinitate 2.

[25] Kontakion for the Nativity of our Lord and God and Saviour, Jesus Christ in Tone 3, The Divine Liturgy of Our
Father Among the Saints John Chrysostom, U.K. Ecumenical Patriarchate text (Oxford: OUP, 1995), pp.72-73.

[26] cf. Basil the Great, Against Eunomios, 2.13 [PG 29.596b ll.18-22/SC 305]. (Against Eunomius, FC v.122,
p.147).

[27] Schmemann, Journals, p.78.

[28] cf. Athanasius, De Vita Antonii, 31ff. where the action of the fallen angels subtle bodies is described.

[29] "Because of Christor rather, the whole mystery of Christall the ages of time and the beings within those
ages have received their beginning and end in Christ. For the union between a limit of the ages and limitlessness,
between measure and immeasurability, between finitude and infinity, between Creator and creation, between rest and
motion, was conceived before the ages" (Maximus the Confessor, Ad Thalassium 60 [CCSG 22:75], On the Cosmic
Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings from Maximus the Confessor, trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis
Wilkens (NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2003), p.125).

[30] Maximus the Confessor, Fifth Century on Theology in The Philokalia, Vol. II, trans. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip
Sherrard, Kallistos Ware [etc.] (London/Boston: Faber & Faber, 1990), 69, p.128.

[31] Basil the Great, Against Eunomios,1.21 [PG 29.560B ll. 28-30/SC 209]. (Against Eunomius, FC v.122, p.122).
See Mantzaridis, Time and Man, p.5.

[32] Gregory of Nyssa: The Life of Moses [Vita Moysis], trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson (NY:
Paulist Press, 1978), 244, p.117 [GNO VII.1, 118, 13-17].

[33] Shakespeare, Macbeth, V.v. ll. 19-27 in The Riverside Shakespeare, Gen. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974), pp.1306-1342 at 1337.

[34] See Shakespeare, As You Like It, II.vii ll. 139-166 in The Riverside Shakespeare, pp.365-402 at 381-382.

[35] Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Act Two (London: Faber and Faber, 2010), p.86.

[36] The Great Canon: The Work of Saint Andrew of Crete, Song 4, Tone 8, Troparion 26, Translator not listed
(Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1976), p.59. Also found at The Great Canon.<http://www.orthodox.net
/greatlent/great-canon-fifth-week.html> (Last accessed: 7 June 2012).

[37] Martin Luther, Rmerbriefvorlesung (1515/16), WA 56: 304, ll. 25-29, 355, l. 28 and 356, ll. 5-6 (Lectures on
Romans: Glosses and Scholia, ed. Hilton C. Oswald, Luther's Works, Vol. 25 (Saint Louis: Concordia Pub. House,
1972), 5:4, p.291 and 8:3, p.345).

[38] so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the
cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles (Eph. 4:14).

[39] Gregory of Nyssa, On The Sixth Psalm, Concerning the Octave by St. Gregory of Nyssa, trans. Casimir
McCambley, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 32.1 (1987), pp.39-50 at 48 [GNO V.189, 2]. Archived here:
<www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu> (Last accessed: 7 June 2012).

[40] Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Moysis, II, 244, p.117 [GNO VII.1, 118, 13-17].

[41] Schmemann, Journals, p.78.

[42] As in the last lines of the character of the Old Man in Yeats late short play Purgatory: How quickly it returns
beatbeat!/ Her mind cannot hold up that dream./ Twice a murderer and all for nothing,/ And she must animate
that dead night/ Not once but many times!/ O God,/ Release my mother's soul from its dream!/ Mankind can do no
more. Appease/ The misery of the living and the remorse of the dead (Purgatory in Yeatss Poetry, Drama and
Prose, A Norton Critical Edition, ed. James Pethica (NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000), pp.169-174 at 174).

[43] T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, I, ll.6-8 in Four Quartets in The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950 (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1971), pp.117ff.

[44] Cited in Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. VI.2 1139b10, trans. J. A. K. Thomson and Hugh Tredennick
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), p.206. [Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta, ed. August Nauck (Leipzig: Teubner,
1856), fr. 5, p.593]

[45] The Great Canon: The Work of Saint Andrew of Crete, Song 9, Tone 6, Troparion 1, p.74.

[46] Gregory of Nyssa, On PerfectionPeri Teleiottos, trans. Casimir McCambley, The Greek Orthodox
Theological Review 29. 4 (1984), pp.349-79 at 379 [GNO, 8.1, 213-214].

[47] Thus, for example, for Shakespeare, time was this bloody tyrant Time (Son. 16, l. 2 in The Riverside
Shakespeare in p.1752) and Devouring Time (Son. 19, l. 1 in The Riverside Shakespeare, pp.1752-1753).

[48] Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, trans. Paul Kachur (Crestwood, N.Y: St. Vladimir's
Seminary Press, 1988), pp.123ff.

[49] Baptism, ed. Paul Lazor (NY: Department of Religious Education, The Orthodox Church in America, 1972),
p.64.

[50] Great Vespers, ed. Igor Soroka (South Canaan, Pennsylvania: St. Tikhons Seminary Press, 1992), p.77.

[51] cf. Commedia. Purg. Canto 31.

[52] cf. Commedia. Purg. Canto 33.

[53] The relevant passage runs thus: Considering that, all hatred driven hence,/ The soul recovers radical
innocence/ And learns at last that it is self-delighting,/ Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,/ And that its own sweet will is

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Heavens will;/ She can though every face should scowl/ And every windy quarter howl/ Or every bellows burst, be
happy still (W. B. Yeats, A Prayer For My Daughter, ll. 65-72 in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (London:
MacMillan, 1987). pp.211-214 at 214). Yeats is said to have derived this idea from William Blake. In the Blakean
context, critics refer to the notion as organized innocence: cf. Inscription in the manuscript of The Four Zoas (The
Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David. V. Erdman, Commentary by Harold Bloom, Newly Revised
Ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1982), pp.697, 838) and Jerusalem, Chapter 1, Plate 17, ll. 29-47 (ibid, p.162).

[54] Schmemann, Journals, p.119.

[55] Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1990), p.84.

[56] Matins of Pascha, Canon, The Paschal Verses in The Paschal Service, eds. John Erikson and Paul Lazor
(n.p.: Department of Religious Education, Orthodox Church in America, 1997), p.43.

[57] ibid., p.45

[58] Great Vespers of the Feast of the Holy Transfiguration, Aposticha, Tone 6 in The Festal Menaion, trans.
Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1969; Reprint: South Canaan, PA: St.
Tikhons Seminary Press, 1994), p.477.

[59] Discourse On the Passion of the Saviour by Our Venerable Father Ephrem the Syrian [Greek text published
in Thessaloniki by K.G Phrantzolas in 1988], trans. Arch. Ephrem Lash (last updated 3 November 2008) at
<http://www.anastasis.org.uk/PassSer.htm> (last accessed: 7 June 2012)

[60] Schmemann, Journals, pp.180, 219, 286 and 323.

[61] cf. Mat. 26: 20-30, Mk. 14: 17-26 and Lk. 22: 14-23.

[62] Mantzaridis, Time and Man, pp.101-102.

[63] The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostomin The Divine Liturgy According to St. John Chrysostom with
appendices, 2nd Ed. [OCA priests service book] (South Canaan, Pa: St. Tikhons Seminary Press, 1977), pp.29-87 at
65.

[64] Nicolas Berdyaev, The Divine and the Human, trans. R. M. French (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1949), p.158.

[65] Schmemann, Great Lent, p.82 and Journals, p.11.

[66] ibid., p.219.

[67] ibid., p.274.

[68] cf. Thomas Merton, Time and the liturgy, Worship, 31.1 (D 1956), pp.2-10 at 4-5.

[69] Schmemann, Journals,p.78.

[70] Two hymns from the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross bring across this realization: The tree of true life
was planted in the place of the skull, and upon it hast Thou, the eternal King, worked salvation in the midst of the
earth and Come, ye people, and looking on this marvelous wonder, let us venerate the might of the Cross. For a tree
put forth the fruit of death in Paradise; but life is the flower of this Tree on which the sinless Lord was nailed (Great
Vespers-Tone 1 and Mattins-Tone 5 in The Festal Menaion, pp.137, 156).

[71] The establishment of the Church is a re-creation of the world (Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on the
Canticle, Sermon 13 [PG 44.1049B-1052A] cited in From Glory to Glory: Texts From Gregory of Nyssas Mystical
Writings, Selected With Introduction By Jean Danilou, trans and ed. Herbert Musurillo (London: John Murray, 1962),
No. 77, p.273).

[72] Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio, XVII. 2, trans. Henry Austin Wilson, eds. and trans. William Moore
and Henry Austin Wilson, A Select Library of the Christian Church, NPNF, Vol. 5, 2nd Series, eds. Philip Schaff and
Henry Wace (NY/Oxford and London: The Christian Literature Company/ Parker & Co., 1893), pp.386-427 at 407.

[73] Tone 7. Ikos. Matins on The 3rd Sunday in Lent for the Adoration of the Cross' in The Lenten Triodion, trans.
Mother Mary and Arch. Kallistos Ware (London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1977, 1978), pp.342-343.

[74] Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Moysis I, 10, p.31 [GNO 7.1, 5, 2-4].

[75] ibid.,II, 3, p.55 [GNO,7.1, 34, 6].

[76] Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on the Canticle [PG 44.944B-C] cited in From Glory to Glory, p.66.

[77] Maximus the Confessor, Fifth Century of Various Texts, The Philokalia, Vol. II, 48, p.272.

[78] Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Moysis, II, 230, 233, pp. 114-115 [GNO, 7.1, 114].

[79] cf. Jean Danilou, Le Problme du Changement Chez Grgoire de Nysse", Archives de Philosophie XXIX.III
(Juillet-Septembre 1966), pp.323-347 at 330-331 and 337-338.

[80] Henricus Denzinger and Adolfus Schnmetzer, eds., Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum
De Rebus Fidei et Morum, eds. 36ed (Barcelona/Freiberg im Breisgau/Rome: Herder, 1976), 302, p.108

[81] Gregory of Nyssa, De Hominis Opificio, op. 8; I, PG 44.145 B and 14; I, 176B cited in Hans Urs von
Balthasar, Presence and Thought: An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa, trans. Mark Sebanc
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, [1988] 1995), p.59.

[82] In time God would have given man the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Mans sin was then
presumption or not waiting on God for His gift of perfection but seizing it of his own accord. This is given perfect form
in the Commedia where Dante does not merely stay in the Earthly Paradise once he finishes ascending the Mountain
of Purgatory (purified in Lethe and Euno) but he ascends to the very face of God to partake of perfection (Purgatorio
33, ll. 145-146). Man is made to rise above or go beyond his nature, for the meaning of his nature, which is the divine
goodness, lies ultimately outside of himself in the Good God given to us in Christ. Now if man had been patient he
would have received in time the solid food of perfection but instead, as Ephrem the Syrian argued, he gave in to the
deception of the serpent seizing his inheritance before he had reached spiritual majority thereby forfeiting all rights to
that blessing of a good ascent: He [Satan] deceived the husbandman/ so that he plucked prematurely/ the fruit which
gives forth its sweetness/ only in due season/ a fruit that, out of season,/ proves bitter to him who plucks it./ Through
a ruse did the serpent/ reveal the truth,/ knowing well the result/ would be the opposite, because of their/
presumption;/ for blessing becomes a curse/ to him who seizes it in sin (Hymns on Paradise, trans. Sebastian Brock
(Crestwood, N. Y.: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1990), pp.77-188 at Hymn XII.3 p.161). See also Ephrems The
Commentary on Genesis (Section 2, 23 in Hymns on Paradise, pp.197-227 at 214) and Gregory Nazianzen, Or.45.8
(Second Paschal Oration).

[83] Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Moysis, II, 243-244, pp.117-118 [GNO,7.1, 118]. See also On Perfection, p.379
[GNO,8.1, 213-214].

[84] The ideas origin is in Jewish Apocalyptic literature (II. Enoch 33: 1-2; cf. 28:5although this may be a
Christian interpolation, as is argued by Jean Danilou (The Bible and Liturgy, No translator listed (London: Darton,
Longman & Todd, 1951, 1960), p.256)) where 7 ages of 1000 years are followed by an eighth 1000 year Messianic

8 of 9 15/03/2017 11:44
Chalice of Eternity: An Orthodox Theology of Time : theological porta... http://www.bogoslov.ru/en/text/2668945.html#_ftn1

age without end (1000 is a purely symbolic number pointing to perfection).

[85] For it followed Saturday as the seventh day of the resurrection.

[86] For it was one eternal day outside of the ordinary time scheme of 7 days as well as simultaneously being the
first day following the Sabbath.

[87] Matins of Pascha, Canon, Ode VIII, Irmos, The Paschal Service, p.36.

[88] The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom,p.82.

[89] The Epistle of Barnabas in The Didache, The Epistle of Barnabas [etc.], trans and ed. James A. Kleist, ACW.
No. 6 (Westminster Maryland/London: Newman Press, Longmans, Green and Co., 1961), 15:8-9, pp.27-65 at 59-60;
All of the numerous texts on the octave are given in Jean Danilous The Bible and Liturgy, pp.255ff..

[90] Ep. 55, 13, 23, Letters 1-99, The Works of Saint Augustine, A Translation for the 21st Century, Part II: Letters,
Volume 1: Letters 1-99, trans. and ed. Roland Teske and John E. Rotelle (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press,
2001), pp.215-236 at 227.

Philosophy, Patrology, Sacramental Theology, Ecclesiology, Liturgical theology

Keywords:
Theology, Philosophy, Eucharist
See also:
SVS Dean is guest theologian for Big Questions Online forum
Forthcoming Journal: Synesis
St Petersburg Theological Academy: IV International Scientific and Theological Conference begins work
12-14 November: St Tikhons University to hold conference on Byzantine hagiography: themes, texts and projects.
Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology
Eucharist & Ecclesiology Call for Papers
The Return of Gnosticism

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