What is eternal life after death? -Mathematical relations and physical laws are eternal. -Biblical understandings of eternity. Tillich: Eternity is a dimension above time enabling us to perceive events happening in temporal sequence. “Our lives are limited in time but fulfilled by our participation in everlasting eternity.” When we die, our family, friends, colleagues, & citizens remember us. Whitehead: We are remembered in the Mind of God by our participation in the eternal, consequent divine life.

1. UNDERSTANDING ETERNITY
Paul H. Carr, PhD.
Theologians Paul Tillich and
Alfred N. Whitehead update
God and the Bible for our
time.

2. UNDERSTANDING ETERNITY
• Mathematical relations and physical laws are eternal.
• Biblical understandings of eternity.
• Tillich: Eternity is a dimension above time enabling us
to perceive events happening in temporal sequence.
“Our lives are limited in time but fulfilled by our
participation in everlasting eternity.”
When we die, our family, friends, colleagues, &
citizens remember us.
• Whitehead: We are remembered in the Mind of
God by our participation in the eternal,
consequent divine life.

3. Oxford English Dictionary Definition
ETERNITY:
• Infinite or unending time.
‘their love was sealed for eternity’
• A state to which time has no application;
timelessness.
‘the encounter between time and eternity’
• Theology Endless life after death.
‘immortal souls destined for eternity’

4. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS ARE
ETERNAL AND INDEPENDENT OF THEIR
REPRESENTATION
I + II = III (Roman Numerals)
0 + 1 + 2 = 3 (Our Arabic decimal numbers)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11……20 ….30… 100 ….1000….10000
V is 5 , X is 10. C is 100. M is 1000. (Roman number system)

5. PHYICAL LAWS ARE ETERNAL
NEWTON’S LAW OF PHYSICS (1600s)
Force = Mass x Acceleration.
Acceleration is the change in velocity “v” with time
EINSTEIN’S REATIVISTIC LAW OF PHYSICS (1905)
Force = Mass (1 - (v/c)2 )-1/2 x Acceleration
where c is the velocity of light = 300,000,000 meters per second
The horse-drawn vehicles Newton’s day had a velocity v much
less than the c of light, so Newton’s law is still valid for low
velocities.

6. King James
Bible
vs
Newer
Translations
As I interpret the
following biblical
passages on eternity,
should I use the King
James translation of
the Bible or the
modern ones?

7. St. Paul’s Letter to 2 Corinthians 4. ETERNITY
16. Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though
our outer nature is wasting away, yet our inner
is being renewed day by day.
17 For our light affliction, which is but for a
moment, is working for us a far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory,
18 while we do not look at the things which are
seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the
things which are seen are temporary, but the
things which are not seen are eternal.

8. As we watch our children grow from birth to
middle age, what we see of them is temporary.
What is the eternal element that lets us identify
them immediately?
Is it something, like their essential
personality, sometimes called their soul?

9. Hymn by Ernest W. Shurtleff (1887)
1 Lead on, O King eternal,
the day of march has come;
-----------------
2 Lead on, O King eternal,
till sin's fierce war shall cease,
and holiness shall whisper
the sweet amen of peace.
For not with swords' loud clashing
or roll of stirring drums
with deeds of love and mercy
the heavenly kingdom comes.

10. Swallowtail Butterfly
with Divine Proportion 1.618
Foreword by Philip Hefner
The desire for beauty is eternal
in human history.
Individuals and cultures hold to
what they consider beautiful.
The thirst for beauty that
permeates our lives is an
opening to transcendence.

11. For me, Beauty a
delicate dance between
mystical, subjective
perceptions and and the
scientific objective
processes that maintain
life.
Our perception of
beauty is eternal: from
childhood to old age.

12. The world’s religions promise eternal life.
-When a burial site contains objects that the deceased might use
in an afterlife, anthropologists identify it as a human grave.
-Belief in an afterlife characterizes us as human.
-The Egyptian civilization amplified this yearning for “life after
death” by constructing massive pyramids for deceased
Pharaohs. The Pharaohs’ subjects participated vicariously.

13. UNDERSTANDING ETERNITY
Theologians Paul Tillich and Alfred N.
Whitehead update God and the Bible for our
time.

14. As a German WWI
Chaplain, Tillich
experienced the
mass burials of his
fellow soldiers.
Tillich later
wrote,
“Love is
stronger than
death.”

15. • TILLICH’S ETERNAL LIFE
• For Tillich, the Eternal
(God) is not endless time,
but a dimension beyond
space and time that
enables us to perceive
events as happening in
temporal sequence.
• “The eternal stands
above past and future.”
• “There is eternity
above time.”
Google: “Eternal
Now Paul Tillich
pdf.”

16. “A time to be born and a time to die…
God has put Eternity in their hearts. Ecc. 3:11.”
St Augustine.
God created the universe with time, not in time.
There was no time before The Beginning.
Paul Tillich in his sermon “The Eternal Now” wrote,
“Our lives are limited in time but fulfilled by our participation in
what is Eternal.”
For Tillich, “We come from the eternal ground of time and return to
the eternal ground of time and
have received a limited span of time as our time.”
Similarly Thoreau states, “The pen is soon destroyed but the
poem lives on.”

17. It is in giving we receive,
It is in pardoning we are
pardoned.
It is in dying we are
born to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi’s
Prayer
1182 – 1226

19. The Hebrew word ‫(אדמה‬adamah) is the feminine form of ‫אדם‬meaning "ground" (see
Genesis 2:7).
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.”
We are made of star dust!

20. 1.God is not a finite being, but the Ground of All
Being. Being includes personal relations
2.Jesus, God’s Son, Personification of God,
Bearer of the New Being,
3.The Kingdom of God as Goal, End of History

21. CO2
21
Plants are “a ground of all being,” enabling animal and human life.
Tillich was a pan-theist, God is immanent in all of creation.
Tillich was also a pan-en-theist. All is in a transcendent God.

22. Whitehead & Hartshorne’s process
philosophy- theology has a di-polar God:
Primordial and Transcendent.
(1)The primordial-transcendent pole:
eternal ground of universals, creativity,
envisioning unrealized possibilities.
(2) Consequent-immanent pole
Comprehends, experiences, & interacts with
the world, including humans and
incorporates them into God’s emerging being.
(Primordial) “God creates the world,
The world creates the (Consequential) God.”
“For God the conceptual is prior to the physical.
For the World, the physical is prior to the conceptual.”
Charles Hartshorne
(1897-2000)
Henry N. Wieman (1884-1975)
Karl E. Peters (1938 -
Joseph Bracken (1930 –
Thomas J. Oord (1965-

23. Whitehead’s Process Theology
God does not control but grants freedom. Air molecules are free to
form natural hurricanes and humans commit murder, as when Cain
killed his brother Abel.
Nevertheless, God’s creative aim lures the universe towards the goal
of greater beauty.
At the heart of the nature of things, there is always the dream of
youth and the harvest of tragedy. The Adventure of the Universe
starts with a dream and reaps tragic beauty." A. N. Whitehead’s “Adventure of Ideas”
We have “eternal life” by participating in the consequent, immortal,
eternal “Divine Life.”
We are remembered in the consequent “mind of God.”
“Now I know in part, then shall I know even as I am fully known.”
St. Paul in I Cor.13:12

24. Chapter 11. Joseph Bracken S. J.
Whiteheadian Creation of our Souls.
God’s aim gives initial direction and
empowers us to become ourselves by
our self-constituting decisions.
God thus creates and sustains our souls
as they emerges from the infrastructure
of our brains and nervous system.
Life after death for human beings and
the transformation of the physical
universe comes through progressive
incorporation into the divine
communitarian life (God’s consequent
nature).

25. Chapter 11. Emergent Monism and the Classical Doctrine of the Soul by Joseph Bracken, S.J.

26. THE PROCESS VISION
Because everything is related;
Because the decision of each event matters for all events;
Because freedom is a reality;
The greatest power is not coercive force,
But patient, creative, persuading, redeeming, gracious love.
This is God's power,
Which continually works to lure the whole creation:
To bring enriching diversity and intensity out of struggle;
To overcome destructive conflict with greater harmonies;
To redeem the evil wrought in death and
Disaster with new life.

27. • Whitehead’s Process
Theology
• We have “eternal life” by
participating in the consequent,
immortal, eternal “Divine Life.”
We are remembered in the
“mind of God.”
• “Now I know in part, then
shall I know even as I am fully
known.” St. Paul in I
Cor.13:12
• Nevertheless, God’s
creative aim lures the
universe towards the
goal of greater beauty.
• BEAUTY IN SCIENCE & SPIRIT
•

28. Swallowtail Butterfly
with Divine Proportion 1.618
Conclusion, “Beauty in Science & Spirit”
Whitehead believed that philosophy-
theology was a rewrite of Plato’s vision
that beauty is our way of experiencing the
spiritual.
Whitehead’s process thought asserts
that the universe is not static but an
evolving and continuing creation, whose
intricacies result in continuing scientific
discoveries.
Let us pray for the wisdom to use the
power of scientific knowledge as
responsible created co-creators and not as
destroyers of our earth through the
unintended consequences of our
technology.
As created and creating creatures, we
can profit from religious wisdom. In it,
there is hope that the continuing creation
is converging toward its ultimate
consummation of greater beauty.

29. Carl Jung, during his NDE, was inside a Hindu temple
hoping that the ultimate mystery of
his existence and of life’s purpose would be revealed.
We all live and learn.
Does the wisdom gained through my 87 years include
learning the ultimate mystery of my existence and the
purpose of life?
In the meantime, I am thankful for the gift of life.

30. Thankfulness
Wanting what you have.
Rather than
Getting what you want.
From a radio sermon cited by a
prisoner on death row.

31. My family Thanksgiving 1995

32. As I yearn for the life eternal,
I am thankful for the gift of my finite life.
• I am thankful for my parents, mother of my daughters
• the sacrificial death of the plants and animals that have
enabled my life, and
• the stardust of which I am made.
I am a finite being, continuing the being of my family,
nation, civilization, Earth, and Cosmos
(Tillich’s God as the Ground of all Being,
Whitehead’s consequent nature of God.)
As cosmic being, I am also thankful for the
87 free trips I have had around the sun.

33. UNDERSTANDING ETERNITY
• Mathematical relations and physical laws are eternal.
• Biblical understandings of eternity.
• Tillich: Eternity is a dimension above time enabling us
to perceive events happening in temporal sequence.
“Our lives are limited in time but fulfilled by our
participation in everlasting eternity.”
When we die, our family, friends, colleagues, &
citizens remember us.
• Whitehead: We are remembered in the Mind of
God by our participation in the eternal,
consequent divine life.

34. Paul Tillich’s theology for our time
https://www.slideshare.net/paulhcarr/paul-tillichs-theology-for-our-time
A link to this PowerPoint talk and others may be found on
my web page
www.MirrorOfNature.org
You can also find my web page by Googling my name:
Paul H. Carr (paulcarr@alum.mit.edu)

35. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

36. 36
Tillich Memorial Park, New Harmony, IN
Under the conditions of existence, we are estranged or separated from our
essential selves (what we ought to and could be.) We our re-united with our
true selves by the power of the New Being and Creation in Jesus the Christ.

37. For Boston University theologian Wesley Wildman, ultimate reality is
Tillich’s God beyond the God of anthropomorphism and nationalism.
Instead of ”God is on our side,”
God beyond God believers ask,
“Are we on God’s side?”
What if God is not a human-like
personal being but the
God Beyond God of the
Christian mystical traditions?
What if God is the ultimate reality
beyond all beings, including
beyond all divine beings, indeed
beyond all Being?