Are you eternally enchanted?
He has set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
Journey with me back to the beginning, to the edge of time tethered to eternity. Ecclesiastes embodies the memory of ancient wisdom. What is meant by eternity? The word hints at perpetuity, antiquity, concealed, vanishing point, time out of mind. Time itself is a limited form of being. Because we are finite eternity can only be glimpsed in the periphery of our minds . It is the natural inclination of the finite to desire the infinite. Research suggests that just as all human babies are destined to acquire language and learn to walk. Similarly, children are born believers in some kind of god.
Context: What did the original audience know and understand?
The search for the eternal is ubiquitous throughout recorded human history. Ancient Sumerian literature (2100-1200BC) recounts the earliest recorded tale of one man’s search for eternity. “Gilgamesh, what you seek you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his lot, eternal life they withheld. Let your every day be full of joy, love the child that holds your hand, let your wife delight in your embrace, for these alone are the concerns of humanity.” The first named poet, Enheduanna (2286BC) ,“high priestess, ornament of heaven”, daughter of Sargon of Akkad, wrote devotedly about the divine realm and her god. Her poems influenced the Hebrew Old Testament, the epics of Homer, and Christian hymns.
About the time the Sumerians were writing The Epic of Gilgamesh, a lonely shepherd encountered eternity when he paused to see a burning bush on the Mountain of God (Exodus 3: 1-14). There God told Moses to take off his sandals because he was standing on holy ground. God identified himself as I AM, the name by which he is known from all generations: I AM WHO I AM. Not “I was” or “I will be” or “I’m in the process of change or becoming,” but “I AM WHO I AM.” This is the name of God, the one whose being is always present and without whose being nothing else could possibly be. Elizabeth Barrett Browning poignantly observed: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes… only he who sees.”
Historical Progression: Creation is uniquely enchanted by the Incarnation of God. Christ merged the eternal with the temporal. The poetic prologue of the Gospel of John encapsulates eternity in the Word (Logos). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it… The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1-5, 14). Christ in his person is eternally the Word who brought the universe into orderly existence. He entered into human form and time so that we may attain harmony with God and his creation. The ancient Greek philosophers seem to grasp the importance of the Word. They understood it to be the divine logic that gives order to the universe, making it possible for human beings to live in harmony. They also recognized the necessity of a “first cause” God, the originator of all that is.
As ephemeral creatures it is beyond our ability to fully comprehend or describe the eternal. St. Basil the Great meditated on the eternal Essence of God (AD330-379) and wrote, “If you wish to speak or hear about God, renounce your own body, renounce your bodily senses, abandon the earth, abandon the sea, make the air to be beneath you; pass over the seasons of the year, their orderly arrangement, the adornments of the earth; stand above the ether, traverse the stars, their splendor, grandeur, the profit which they provide for the whole world, their good order, brightness, arrangement, movement, and the bond or distance between them. Having passed through all this in your mind, go about heaven and, standing above it, with your thought alone, observe the beauties which are there: the armies of angels which are above the heavens, the chiefs of the archangels, the glory of the Dominions, the presiding of the Thrones, the Powers, Principalities, Authorities. Having gone past all this and left below the whole of creation in your thoughts, raising your mind beyond the boundaries of it, present to your mind the Essence of God, unmoving, unchanging, unalterable, dispassionate, simple, incomplex, indivisible, unapproachable light, unutterable power, infinite magnitude, resplendent glory, most desired goodness, immeasurable beauty that powerfully strikes the wounded soul, but cannot worthily be depicted in words.”
The Enlightenment ushered in an age of disenchantment. Declaring God dead (Nietzsche) and mankind as mere animals (Darwin), the loss of the divine standard of goodness, truth, and beauty necessarily reduced everything down to the measure of man. Fyodor Dostoevsky saw the dark clouds fomented by such propositions and warned that without an eternal and transcendent God a decent into nihilism (nothing) was inevitable. His insight proved to be prescient. Within four decades of his death Russia fell to the godless governance of communism. Today nihilism permeates the West. Incidentally, nihilism was coined by Germans during the nineteenth century and has come to designate a philosophy of moral conviction that there is nothing of value in existence, that all values are empty and worthless. Human life is fundamentally meaningless. Bertram Russel, 20th century atheist, honestly admitted that without God there is no purpose or meaning to life. As the teacher of Ecclesiastes said, “All is vanity and a chasing after the wind.” The collective soul weeps the loss. Clearly human beings cannot escape the reality and necessity of eternity and an eternal God. They are embedded in our being.
Conclusion: Are you eternally enchanted? Apart from the Enlightenment, history records an uninterrupted desire for eternity, something human beings endlessly pursue yet hardly comprehend. GK Chesterton eloquently captures the eternal animation on display in our temporal world. “Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” God never ceases to allure, attract, captivate, charm, and fascinate his creation. He appeals to our deepest desires. Yet he is temperate in his approach. “He cannot ravish, he can only woo.” (CS Lewis). And we are enchanted… only if we choose to see.
Sources: Legacy: The Search for Ancient Cultures, Michael Wood; Born Believers, Justin Barrett; Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky; Defending Your Faith, RC Sproul; The Age of Nihilism, John Strickland