We humans have repeatedly contemplated the idea of living forever in myths, fairy tales, philosophy, religion and science. More recently, however, skeptics of the benefits of eternal life have abounded. Bernard Williams famously argued that immortality would inevitably get boring.  But whether or not he was right, the temporal limits of our lives – that we are born at some time, and that we die at some time – are some of our most defining characteristics. Life as we know it would be very different if it wasn’t finite in its temporal extent.

Not so for the God of Christianity. According to the Bible, God “is before all things” (Col. 1:17), and God’s “years have no end” (Ps. 102:27). God is, in a word, eternal. That’s a very different way to be from ours. And it’s not surprising that God’s relationship to time is thought to be so utterly different. After all, God is supposed to be the creator of the universe, the ultimate being that controls and watches over everything else.

But what exactly does it mean to say something or someone is eternal? One idea that has been treated kindly by philosophical and theological tradition (at least until recent times), is the idea of eternity as a timeless realm. Note that that’s not just having a life that is infinite in its temporal extent. It’s not just having lived forever and living forever (‘sempiternally’). In fact, it’s not living at any time at all; it’s living beyond time, timelessly.

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"Einstein is often quoted as saying that for ‘us believing physicists, the distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion’"

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This idea of a timeless eternity has fascinated thinkers throughout history. Already Plato contrasts the eternal forms with the created world of change and becoming. The forms can never grow older; they simply are. In many places, Plato seems to express an idea of eternity as a timeless realm, and even as timeless duration. The eternal forms are opposed to the temporal order, which is ‘the moving image of eternity’.