THE SYMPHONY OF THEOLOGY is poised to celebrate its last reprise. The drama of history, having reached its resolution, is quickly drawing to a certain kind of close, which is itself a new age, remembering, “The Maker of time…is not subject to Time” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 39.12).
Eternal life with God brings an incomparable interpersonal blessing: communion with God amid the communion of the saints with God and with all who mirror God’s holy love (Luke 23:43; John 12:26; Phil. 1:23). This celebrating community embraces both the living faithful and the faithful departed who now enjoy eternal life with God (Rev. 14:1–4).
The Blessing of Fellowship Embraces the Past, Present, and Future Faithful
The church is a fellowship among the faithful now living, but it extends far wider to embrace also all who have died in faith, as well as all those yet unborn who will come to faith. Some remain pilgrims in history, while others having died in the Lord are already joyfully beholding “clearly God Himself triune and one, as He is” (Council of Florence, DS 693).
From Christ “the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Eph. 4:16; Jerome, Epis. to Eph. 2.4.16). The faithful form a society, a “people” (laos, Rev. 19:4; 21:3; cf. Rom. 9:25; 2 Cor. 6:16; 1 Pet. 2:9, 10), a kingdom (Matt. 25:34; Rev. 1:6), a city (Heb. 11:10, 16; 12:22; Rev. 3:12; 21:2), a bonded community that lives in communion with those of all ages who hunger for righteousness (Ps. 118:63; Tho. Aq., ST supp., Q21.2). These themes harmonize in the day by day common praise of the community of celebration.
There is a special union between the faithful on earth and in heaven, enabled by their mutual communion with the one Head, and with each other, a communion sustained by prayer, faith, hope, and love (Longer Catech., Eastern Orthodox Church, 262). The Westminster divines summarized, “All saints that are united to Jesus Christ their head, by his Spirit and by faith, have fellowship with him in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection and glory: and being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other’s gifts and graces” (Westminster 26.1).
The common Christian confession of “the communion of saints” (hagion koi-nonian) is found in the Apostles’ Creed and in most forms of the primitive rule of faith ecumenically received (Faustus of Riez, Caesarius of Arles, SCD 6). “Saints” refers to all baptized believers whose walk attests their faith in the power of the resurrection. It designates the common bond uniting all members of Christ’s church in heaven and earth, within and beyond history, in a real communication of spiritual riches (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 5.27). It
The Communion Is with God and Humanity in God
The community or fellowship (koinonia) of the saints is a recurrent theme of the New Testament that points both to communion with God and communion with all who share God’s life: “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3, italics added; cf. 2 Cor. 13:14; Ambrose, Of the Holy Spirit 1.12.131). The Son prayed to the Father that the whole community of faith “may be one, as we are one” (John 17:11; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 11.9).
The unity that was manifest at Pentecost is “the first fruits of that perfect union of the Son with his Father, which will be known in its fulness only when all things are consummated by Christ in his glory. The Lord who is bringing all things into full unity at the last is he who constrains us to seek the unity which he wills for his Church on earth here and now” (New Delhi Message, WCC). One baptism unites all the faithful in their diversity of callings. All are baptized into one body (1 Cor. 12:13; Ambrosiaster, Comm. on Paul, 1 Cor. 12:13).
Though the union between the saints in heaven is complete and unalloyed, the pilgrim union of saints on earth is mixed, flawed, and imperfect. Thus “there is an union, partly perfect and partly imperfect, between the saints in heaven and the saints below upon earth” (Joseph Hall, Works, 7:261). The unity felt within time is linked mysteriously to the unity of the saints experienced in eternity.
While the spiritual combat of the pilgrim church continues on earth, the worshiping community knows itself as “already set at liberty” and “is now in heaven, and triumphs over all those things overcome, and rejoices before the Lord. Yet these two churches have, notwithstanding, a communion and fellowship between themselves” (Second Helvetic Confession). The communion of saints beyond history unites and shares in Christ’s intercession for the church militant within history (Gregory I, Moralia 12; Dialogues 2; Tho. Aq., ST supp., Q71–73). This living communion is acknowledged in prayer in acts of Christian worship.
Eucharistic Communion
The communion of saints is portrayed as an already present heavenly community of angelic praise joined with the assembly of redeemed men and women: “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator” (Heb. 12:22–24a; Chrysostom, Epis. to Heb. 32.3–4). At the Lord’s Table in churches around the present world this eternal fellowship is joined and celebrated.
For this reason the Eucharist is called a holy communion. There the faithful commune with Christ and with each other. “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (1 Cor. 10:17; Augustine, Easter Sunday Sermon 227), feeding on Christ’s broken body and shed blood by which vital communion with him enables the faithful to be vitally united with each other. “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:33; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 3.6).
From the outset the disciples are portrayed as continuing in the apostles’ teaching and in fellowship with each other, breaking bread, and in prayer, confessing their faults, exhorting one another, sharing all things (Acts 2:42–44; Rom. 12:4, 5; 1 Cor. 12:12; Eph. 4:15, 16).
A Community of Full Disclosure
Full disclosure of all things characterizes this community when it is most fully being itself. In this world and flesh, we now depend upon frail words to reveal partly yet partly conceal our thoughts and feelings. Then we will not need words to let ourselves be known. The full clarity of our being will simply shine forth and achieve direct understanding (1 Cor. 8:2–3; Chrysostom, Hom. on Cor. 20.2–3; Gal. 4:9).
If to know is to love, then we will fully love, for we will fully know, knowing even as we are known (1 Cor. 13:12b). The Eucharist prepares us for this uniting and knowing by bringing us into unity with Christ and the neighbor. “Brother lives within his brother, none have secrets to conceal; Heart and mind and will and purpose, one throughout and one within” (Peter Damian, Ad perennis vitae fontem, Jacobs, SCF: 549).
God knows all events in a single cohesive act of consciousness, in contrast to the forms of finite knowing possible for creatures under the conditions of time. (John 17:24; Eph. 1:4; 2 Tim. 1:9). Divine omniscience implies that God grasps all time as if it were a single whole—now: “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Pet. 3:8; Ps. 90.4).
God’s way of experiencing time is in radical simultaneity in which past, present, and future co-inhere without being imprisoned as finite minds are in the succession of moments from past to present to future. Unlike mortals who live in time, God always was (Gen. 21:23) and will be (Deut. 5:23). God’s constancy “does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17; Didymus the Blind, Comm. on James 1.17). God embraces time in the fullest sense, whereas we experience time only in its fleeting mode of constant disappearance. Through prayer by grace the faithful participate in God’s knowing embrace of time. Time belongs to the created order, as distinct from the divine essence. With the world, time was created. Before time, nothing was but God. “There was no time, therefore, when you had not made anything, because you have made time itself” (Augustine, Conf. 11.14). Eternal life points to a regenerate life fit for life in the presence of the eternal, living God (John 5:24).
The Destiny of Those Unaware of the Gospel
God takes “no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live” (Ezek. 33:11). Are there undisclosed possibilities that might await those of cultures who may have never had adequate chance to hear the gospel? What of those utterly ignorant of God’s coming?
Compassionate Christian teaching has often searched for insights into scripture texts by which their plight might be fairly understood. It is fitting here to assess the poignant reasoning of classic Christianity with regard to those who have had no opportunity to come to the truth, as to whether or in what sense they may have a share in life eternal.
The New Testament was addressed primarily to those who are able to hear the gospel. It does not often focus speculatively on what might be the possible destiny of those who never have had such an opportunity. In intent every human is addressed by the gospel. Scripture teaches that God antecedently (before their fall and before their voluntary sin) wills the salvation of all (Eph. 1:1–9; Clement, Instr. 1.9; Tertullian, Ag. Marcion 2.4–17; John of Damascus OF 4.19–21).
The faithful pray for some way of grasping God’s deeper intention for those who fall short of the glory of God. God seeks continually to offer forgiveness and life, “if the fundamental disposition which they develop in their earthly probation has not nullified the moral possibility of their benefiting by it” (Hall, DT 10:50). Some outside the covenant (the centurion, the woman of Syrophoenicia, Mark 7:26; Matt. 8:5) showed a quality of life and faith of which Christ himself approved.
Those who lived before Christ can only be justly judged according to their responses to the preparing and common grace given them. Abraham appears in Luke 16:19–31 to be present in eternity with the saints (Augustine, Sermon 41.4). According to Paul, so do the righteous of Israel of every generation who remain faithful to the covenant (Rom. 11). Gentiles who have not heard of God’s coming will be judged fairly by the incomparably just Judge according to the light given them (Rom. 2:6–16). All humanity is offered sufficient grace to enable each to respond rightly to whatever opportunities are made possible within the conditions of a broken history. The crucial question is whether in meeting these situations they might have developed a nascent predisposition for faith such as the Letter to Hebrews ascribes to Abel (Heb. 11:4; Ephrem, Comm. on Heb. 11.4).
It is a house of “many mansions” that the Lord is preparing for the faithful (John 14:2). Although the Lord has sheep “not of this fold” (John 10:16; Augustine, Sermon 138.5), their identity is not revealed to us. What we do know is that we have been given a choice to respond to the truth. There is immense diversity among the actual histories of persons who hear and respond to the gospel and vast variety in the levels of capacity that various cultures and personal dispositions allow. There is not in the real world a simple equality of opportunity to hear God’s good news in Jesus Christ, however much it intends to reach out for all. Some of these many mansions may remain opaque to our view (Chrysostom, Hom on John 73).
The Meaning of Hell
It is only with tears that the subject of hell is contemplated by those who reach out daily in love for sinners (Lausanne Covenant).
Hell expresses the intent of the holy God to destroy sin completely and forever. Hell says not merely a temporal no but an eternal no to sin. The rejection of evil by the holy God is like a fire that burns on, a worm that dies not (Heb. 12:29; Mark 9:44–48; Aphrahat, Demonstrations).
Hell is especially for those who think they are too good to be helped by God. Hell is to be forever without God, against God. This is why the good news carries with it a stern warning: If you chose in time to live without God, you thereby choose eternally to be without God. Hell is where the unjust get their just dessert. Hell is the final state of those who are not in the book of life (Rev. 20:11–15), where “the light of the world does not shine” (Hippolytus, Ag. Plato 1). Hell is a place for those who vainly imagine themselves to be good but are not. Jesus is ready to receive into his eternal presence those who honestly know themselves to be sinners, who have turned to trust in God’s mercy.
The Plain Meaning of Bleak Words
One who perpetually has chosen the settled disposition of unfaith against faith, and the godless love of self instead of the selfless love of God, lacking that faith that is active in the works of mercy, will continue after death in a similar self-chosen condition of radical, final separation from the divine presence. Exclusion from the presence of God is the central meaning of hell. Whoever “disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven” (Matt. 10:33; Chrysostom, Hom on Matt., Hom. 34.3). “The teaching, in brief, is that unrepented sin is a fatal barrier to eternal life” (Hall, DT 10:195).
In Matthew’s version of the parable of sheep and goats, Jesus concluded with these words to those who remained totally unresponsive (i.e. dead) to grace and love: “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” Whereupon they “will go away to eternal punishment” (Matt. 25:41, 46; Chrysostom, Hom on Matt., Hom. 79.2).
The stark words “eternal punishment” and “eternal fire” have withstood numerous attempts at generous reinterpretation, but they remain obstinately in the received text (Jerome, Ag. Rufinus, FC 53:109). The text remains resilient against our attempts to soften it. Every mitigating theory is wrecked on these words, which are “not as doubtful or ambiguous as represented; and even if they were, the rule is to interpret the obscure by the plain” (Banks, MCD: 362). The problem is not that the words are obscure, but that they are all too plain (Augustine, CG 21.23; Kierkegaard, On Self-examination).
Those who refuse the mercy of God the Son thereby choose to have no share in fellowship with the Father (Matt. 25:41; Origen, Comm. on Matt. 73; Calvin, Inst. 3.23). Scriptures describe the eternal condition of the ungodly as one of infinite distance from God (Fourth Lateran Council, SCD 429). Those who die in original sin or grave personal sin, being separated from God’s righteousness, have chosen to be permanently isolated from God’s goodness. This is hell—the non-blessedness of life without God, against God (Quicunque Creed, SCD 40; Council of Valence 3, 321). “Our merciful Lord never pronounced, nor ever will pronounce, a sentence more terrible than this: to be without God in eternity is Hell. ‘Depart from Me’…. No profounder mystery is in the Apocalypse than the hallelujahs which are uttered over the demonstrations of the Divine wrath as they proceed from judgment to judgment in their direful procession” (Pope, Compend. 3:420, 422).
Sin matters to God. The holy God detests injustice and evil. Creation is a moral order in which those who break God’s rules break themselves. Those who persist in sin find themselves eternally alienated from the divine goodness. They bring upon themselves the penalty of having no share in that everlasting life of love of those who inhabit God’s kingdom.
Thus the Psalm concludes: “The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth” (Ps. 34:17). Each one through the mystery of human choice finally either receives and welcomes the glory of God’s presence or rejects it and passes into outer darkness (Chrysostom, Hom. on Phil. 6). No one but God is capable of judging those inner motives that decide the outcome.
Speaking of Hell: Some Common Misjudgments
Mischievous ideas have attached themselves to popular notions of hell. Because many have been repulsed by Christianity as a result of these dubious assumptions, it is worthwhile to correct at least four them:
The Constructive Intent of Sobering Analogies
Luther wryly commented that no picture of hell could be as bad as the reality (Sermon on John 2:3, WLS 2:626). We may imagine we are spared by the use of metaphors, yet these very metaphors only point toward the more final and serious reality.
The scriptural analogies come from bodily experiences that express despair and horror over evil—the burning of flesh, the “blackest darkness” (Jude 13), “weeping, and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12; 22:13), “unquenchable fire” (Matt. 3:12; Mark 9:43), an undying worm gnawing at the heart (Isa. 66:24). “By such expressions the Holy Spirit certainly intended to confound all our senses with dread” (Calvin, Inst. 3.25.12). If such metaphors sicken the stomach, that is their intended purpose—to spur to repentance, faith, and holiness. If the rhetoric comforted the hearer, it would not fulfill its intended function (Thomas Browne, Religio Medici 1:58).
The teaching of hell rightly calls to mind the dignity of human freedom and the high cost of its abuse. “They perish because they refused to love the truth” (2 Thess. 2:10; Cyril of Jerusalsem, Catech. Lect. 15.14–15).
Those who ascribe their misdeeds constantly to the demonic powers may be playing a deadly game of pretending to “free men from fault” by taking away their very freedom of the will (Jerome, Apology Ag. Rufinus 2.7). “They never are free from punishment who in this life did not wish to be free from sin” (Hugh of St. Victor, SCF: 469).
Whether Fire Is a Metaphorical Reference: Such Fire as God Would Know
This general observation on sobering analogies leads toward a specific application: burning by fire, which is one of the most intense forms of pain, as nurses in hospital burn units testify. The image of fire is frequently used in scripture as a metaphor to point to the ultimate destruction of all that is inconsistent with the holiness of God. If the metaphor is intended to disturb, it reaches its mark (Luke 17:29; James 3:6). It calls us to live so that we need not fear it (Luke 12:5; Rom. 13:3).
Ambrose wrote that hell is “neither a gnashing of the bodily teeth, nor a perpetual bodily fire, nor a bodily worm”, but “a quality known to God” (Ambrose, Comm. on Luke 7.204). The everlasting fire of scripture could not be a “material fire like our fire, but such fire as God would know” (John of Damascus, OF 4.27, italics added). It is less a material than a spiritual fire. We know little of it except that it exists (Augustine, CG 20.16). “The nature of that everlasting fire is different from this fire of ours, which we use for the necessary purposes of life, and which ceases to burn unless it is sustained by the fuel of some material. But that divine fire always lives by itself” (Lactantius, DI 7.21) since it arises out of the nature of God whose holiness is underived, who is incomparably alive.
Though figurative, such metaphors intend accurately to convey truthful ideas and meanings, especially the dreadful reality of loss of God as an irreversible consequence of sin (Heb. 12:29; Mark 9:44–48). The goodness of God guarantees that scripture would not unnecessarily “alarm his moral creatures with groundless fears, or to represent the consequences of sin as more dreadful than they really are” (Wakefield, CT 2:642). There has been a disproportional emphasis on the literal interpretation of figurative expressions implying a flood of vindictiveness on the part of God. Undisciplined fantasies of the zealous have ended in misleading caricatures (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 5.9–17).
The overreaction of modern optimism to these descriptions is understandable, even if undiscriminating. Hell has been seized upon as a cheap ploy for discrediting all ancient cosmologies. Yet for no period more than the modern period, with its addicted babies, genocides, and weeping forests, does the concept of hell retain its special existential significance. When unwarranted speculations are taken away from it, the classic Christian teaching of hell has much yet to say precisely to the moral dilemmas of modern consciousness.
If salvation is analogous to light, then darkness serves as its antonym. Fire suggests an eternal casting away of sin. The destiny of sin is to burn and to be completely cast away from God’s own life—as far as imaginable (Isa. 26:11; Heb. 10:27; Jude 7; Clement of Alex., Strom. 2.13.56–57). These hellish images were not intended to be taken as physiological or empirical descriptions, but as expressive of the infinite distance between God’s holiness and sin (Council of Lyons II, SCD 464).
The word Gehenna comes from the valley of Hinnom (Neh. 11:30), a bleak valley near Mount Zion long associated with idolatrous rites such as passing children through the fires of Moloch (Jer. 7:31; 32:35; 2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chron. 28:3; 33:6). There “perpetual fires were kept burning in this valley for consuming dead bodies of criminals and carcasses of animals and the refuse of the city.” Hence Gehenna came to signify a place where wickedness comes to its end (Hughes, CF: 210; cf. 2 Esdras 7:36). One gets the impression from scripture that the holiness of God is consuming sin, burning it away forever, as in a holocaust, a completely burned offering (Heb. olah kalil, holokautōma). The rejection of sin by the holy God appears to be complete and never ceasing.
The Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes (c. AD 547) pictured hell in the center of the earth. But Chrysostom had long before advised: “Do not inquire where Hell is, but how to escape it” (Chrysostom, Hom. on Rom. 31.5). With the loss of the geocentric conception of Ptolemaic science, the metaphors of above and below had to be recast in less spatially oriented terms. Hades is not merely the physical location in which this eternal distancing takes place, but more so the condition of distance itself: exclusion from the presence of God.
The Injustice of Unremedied Sin
Most of the core teaching of final separation came from the lips of Jesus himself, so cannot easily be set aside as if it were an ancillary tradition. It is hard to think of any Christian teaching that has stronger biblical precedent and greater traditional consensus than the teaching of afterlife justice (Jude 7; 2 Thess. 1:9; Mark 9:43; Matt. 13:42; Ignatius of Antioch, To the Ephesians 16.2; Justin Martyr, Apology 2.9; Fourth Lateran Council, DS 429), yet it remains controversial.
Classic Christian teaching argues that final separation is necessary because neither scripture nor rational moral justice can finally condone the victory of the unjust. It is largely those who persist in an optimistic account of human sin who “do not clearly apprehend the enduring effect of unremedied sin, and therefore cannot perceive the justice of everlasting punishment” (Hall, DT 10:195).
The more problematic alternative is to suppose that there is finally no justice—ever. No remedy for evil deeds done in history. This is a premise that thoughtful moral agents find repulsive. This is even more difficult to make consistent with all else that we know about God than the premise of hell. So it is not an evasion of the subject of hell to pursue the consequences of the injustice of unremedied sin.
Augustine found an entry point to sharpen the question: Is it fair that a sin committed in a short time could result in separation from God eternally? Some argue that an endless punitive act would be incompatible with the justice and love of God, for it would be unjust for God to allow never-ending punishment for crimes or offenses committed under conditions of finitude. Is it disproportional to mete out eternal punishment for sins committed in time?
Augustine answered by noting a common precedent of criminal law: A rape that takes minutes may have consequences for a lifetime. A murder that takes only an instant is an irreparable damage (CG 20, Tho. Aq., ST 1–2, Q87.3.1). So it is with the disobedience of humanity, as typified in scripture by Adam and Eve, whose wages were understood as death for the entire ensuing history of sin. Remember that all sin is finally against not only creatures but the Creator, not simply against oneself or one’s neighbor but against the Giver of freedom (Ps. 51:4).
If the consequences of sin extend beyond an individual’s finite life, then it is not morally scandalous for the punishment of sin also to extend beyond one’s finite life. God’s moral order prevails even where human emotions resist it. To permit suffering as a penalty for abusing freedom is not inconsistent with God’s goodness and mercy. To fail to discipline misbehavior is to invite more of it. Classic Christian teaching holds that even a briefly committed evil deed may have lasting consequences.
The intent of God in creation is primordially to “desire everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). Classic exegetes recognized a crucial distinction, however, between God’s antecedent will to save all and the consequent will of God to deal justly with the ramifications of free human choices. In this way the premise of hell is seen as an expression of the completion of the purpose of God, not a breakdown of that purpose (Cyprian, Letters; Calvin, Inst. 3.25). God foreknew, but did not predetermine the choices of the unjust that lead to separation (Council of Quiersy, SCD 316, 317).
There is no way to avoid the next subject—Satan—since this takes us directly to the Bible’s way of picturing the way we got in this predicament.
Biblical reasoning about the human future is incomplete if it lacks reference entirely to the demonic powers, and more particularly to Satan (the adversary, accuser, hater) or the Devil (diabolos, calumniator, accuser, daimonion, demon), Lucifer, the supreme embodiment of evil, the superpersonal adversary of humanity (Lactantius, DI 3.29; Tertullian, On the Soul 20; Jerome, Ag. Rufinus).
The Deceiver
Satan is the primordial adversary to God. The root meaning is one who plots furtively against another. In the Old Testament, Satan is an angelic being hostile to God, the chief of the fallen angels (Luke 4:1–4; Ephrem, Comm. on Tatian’s Diatessaron 4.4–5; Calvin, Inst. 1.14.15–18). The devil fell by pride and envy and became stubbornly determined to corrupt the world by deception (Letter of Barnabas, 19–21; Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism 6–24).
This deceiver seeks to destroy truth while seeming to defend it (Athanasius, Life of Antony; Tertullian, Ag. Praxeas 1). Satan has become through deception the god of this world (Irenaeus, Fragments 46, ANF 1:575), the author of countless idolatrous imitations of faith (Tertullian, Prescription Ag. Her. 38–40) and pretensions to divinity (Tertullian, Of the Crown 7).
The serpent that seduced Eve is an expression of an act of the adversary. Satan came in the form of a serpent in that context. By this means “death entered the world” (Wisdom 2:24). Satan was tormentor of Saul (1 Sam. 18:10), deceiver of the prophets (1 Kings 22:21–23), and tempter of Job permitted by God to test the faithful (Jerome, Ag. Jovinianus 2). The devil is portrayed as tempting Jesus to abandon his ministry even before he began it (Mark 1:13; Luke 4:1–13), pretending to be the master of the world (Matt. 4:8, 9). The enmity between the coming reign of God and the demonic powers is dramatically seen in the response to the Son made by persons possessed by demonic powers. Satan tempted Peter, for whom the Lord prayed that he might overcome temptation (Luke 22:31–32).
Satan continues to deceive the world and draw the faithful toward despair, testing faith at every vulnerable soft spot (Rev. 12:10–12; Tertullian, Spectacles 23; Oecumenius, Comm. on Apoc. 20.7–8). Satan remains “filled with fury because he knows his time is short” (Rev. 12:12; Tertullian, Spectacles 16). “And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion” (Jude 6; 7; Oecumenius, Comm. on Jude 7). “For the demons, inspired with frenzy against humans by reason of their own wickedness, pervert their minds, which already incline downwards, by various deceptive scenic representations, that they may be disabled from rising to the path that leads to heaven.” If it were possible, “they would without doubt pull down heaven itself with the rest of creation. But now this they can by no means effect, for they have not the power” (Tatian, Address to the Greeks 16).
The Power of Satan Bound
The power of Satan is already broken by the Son, who “saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on Luke, Hom. 64). The strong man Satan is being bound. The success of the seventy-two gospel witnesses over the demons was taken as evidence of their impending demise (Luke 10:17). Satan has become the “creditor” for human sin, who became wounded by his own bite, whose power is renounced in baptism (Ambrose, Letters 41.7).
The more explicit account of the angels’ fall is in Revelation 12, which describes the devil’s persecution of the church under the metaphor of a woman “clothed with the sun” (Rev. 12:1). “And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him” (Rev. 12:7–9; Oecumenius, Comm. on Apoc. 12.7–9).
The devil is not evil by created nature but by choice. He is called apostate because he was not wicked from the outset of God’s creation, but became so by the exercise of his freedom. “He alone is called wicked by preeminence,” yet not so as to imagine that he is wicked by nature (Chrysostom, Hom. on Power of Demons 2.2). “The Devil and other wicked spirits were created by God good by nature, but they became evil of their own accord” (Fourth Lateran Council, CC: 57). Because fallen angels are posited as rational creatures, they too are destined to be judged (Matt. 8:29; 1 Cor. 6:3; 2 Pet. 2:4; Chrysostom, Hom. on Cor. 16.5).
He is a destroyer of life from primordial times (John 8:44), a murderer from the beginning (Augustine, Tractates on John 42.11). “He is the father of falsehood because he generated it and was the first to use it by speaking to Adam when he substituted certain words in place of others” (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Comm. on John. 3.8.44). As primordial Deceiver he is able temporarily to play the role of prince of this world (John 14:30), yet his power is already being overcome and judged by the suffering Messiah (John 16:11; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 10.12; Luther, Answer to the Goat, LW 39:123–24). At the last judgment he will depart with the unjust into a lake of fire (Matt. 25:41). The believer’s sure defense is in attesting the merit of Christ’s death, an attestation of one willing to die for its truth (Rev. 12:11).
A pungent series of Jesus’ parables—the tares, the net, the marriage feast, the wise and foolish virgins, the talents, the pounds—focuses upon opportunities forever lost, trust abused, final exclusion and rejection. Without the theme of ultimate exclusion from the presence of the holy God, these parables lose their force.
It is not merely later church teaching but Jesus himself and the apostle Paul who constantly remind hearers that there are sins that exclude one from the kingdom of God (Matt. 5:29–30; 10:28; 23:15, 33; 1 Cor. 6:9–10; Gal. 5:20, 21; Eph. 5:5). The demonic agents have by self-determination become habitually conditioned to say no to God, so much so that finally “their disordered will shall never be taken away from them” (Tho. Aq., SCG 4.93). God does not primordially desire that any creature should be lost, but consequent to their own choice, God gives creatures the freedom that has the consequence of complete separation from the joy of the presence of God (1 Thess. 1:9; Rom. 1:10; 1 John 2:17; 1 Tim. 6:9; Augustine, Ag. Julian 2.9.32).
Finally, the victorious conclusion of the creed sings out: “I believe in the life everlasting [zōon aiōnion; Lat. vitam aeternam]” (SCD 6). The life in which we participate is everlasting, for “while it has a beginning, it will have no end” (Ursinus, Comm. Heid. Catech.: 319). “When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away” (1 Cor. 13:10).
As “God always was, and always is, and always will be,” so it follows that life with God is eternal. This means: “God always Is. For was and will be are fragments of our time…What time, measured by the course of the sun is to us, eternity is to the everlasting” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 38.7).
Eternal Life
The destiny of the righteous is eternal life in and with God. The prevailing scriptural term for the final state of the blessed is “eternal life.” This life is transmuted into a future life of glory that does not reach full expression until the general resurrection, final judgment, and the final destiny of the faithful (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 18.28–32).
The destiny of the just is called simply “life,” or “eternal life,” “the life which is life indeed” (1 Tim. 6:19; Matt. 18:8; 7:14; Augustine, Letters 130.2.3). “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24; Augustine, Tractates on John 22.6). The living God permits the new life with God to continue without ceasing. “In short, as Christ begins the glory of his body in this world with manifold diversity of gifts, and increases it by degrees, so also he will perfect it in heaven” (Calvin, Inst. 3.25.10).
Eternal life brings to completion the work of grace begun in this life, where one is delivered from sin, its roots and consequences, fulfilling God’s purpose in creation, redemption, and consummation (Hilary, Trin. 6:43–49; Calvin, Inst. 4.16, 17). The transformation begun in faithful baptism does not come to nothing but lives on. The spiritual life begun in penitent faith, imparted in spiritual rebirth, and grown by sanctifying grace lives on by completing grace. The characteristic feature of eternal life is the complete and unending enjoyment of life with God.
Eternal Life Already Experienced in the Present
The best indication of the future of life with God is the life with God already enjoyed now in the celebrating community. “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2; Augustine, Trin., 15.1.26; Tho. Aq., ST supp., Q92). The future of faith is “we shall be like him,” in relation to the Father as the Son is to the Father. Already faith shares in the life that has come from God in the Son, but then we participate fully.
Eternal life is already enjoyed (John 3:36; 1 John 5:11, 12; Bede, On 1 John 5.11–12). It is in full measure what is already experienced as the life of faith, hope, and love. “As I now feel in my heart the beginning of eternal joy, I shall after this life possess complete bliss, such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard” (Heid. Catech. Q58). The gifts of grace received in this life are firstfruits. The full harvest is to come abundantly in eternity (Rom. 8:23; Eph. 1:13, 14).
“Eternal life begins here, in our hearts; for when we begin to believe in Christ, after we have been baptized, then, according to faith and the Word, we are liberated from death, from sin, and from the devil. Therefore we have the beginning of life eternal and its first fruits in this life, a sort of mild foretaste; we have entered the lobby; but soon, divested of this flesh, we shall fully appreciate all” (Luther, Sermons on the Psalms, Ps. 45:6).
The Heavenly Abode of the Righteous
The Greek root word for heaven (ouranos) points to the endless expanse of sky lifted up above the earth. It is seen as an immeasurable vault or ceiling or unimpeded space. The same ordinary words for the sky, the upper atmosphere in Hebrew and Greek refer to the heavens, to the exalted abode of God (Luke 24:51; Augustine, Sermon 242.6).
In Christian teaching, heaven is both a place and a condition of eternal rest and joy in the Lord. It is “to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8; Chrysostom, Hom on Cor. 10.4). Heaven is where the blessed clearly see God and incomparably enjoy the blessings of divine glory (Matt. 5:12; 6:20; Luke 6:23; 1 Pet. 1:4; Chromatius, Tractate on Matt. 17.9.2–3).
Heaven is represented as a secure lodging of unutterable glory, joy, and peace (Cyril of Alex., Fragment 172, Reuss, MKGK 209). Its most prominent features are tranquillity, holiness, light, beholding, happiness, and the presence of the Lord. What happens in heaven is full and endless participation in God’s own goodness and happiness. Those “whose names are written in heaven” have “come to God.” They are “the spirits of righteous men made perfect” (Heb. 12:23).
Jesus promised his disciples: “I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2, 3; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 9). In the New Jerusalem the glorified saints will dwell in the bodies restored to them at the resurrection (Rev. 21:2; Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 5.35).
Knowing and Seeing Fully
The faithful will see God’s face (Rev. 22:4; Primasius, Comm. on Apoc. 22.4). “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12; Chrysostom, Hom. on Cor. 34.2). “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matt. 5:8; Chromatius, Tractate on Matt. 17.6.3–4). Christ prayed that the faithful would “behold my glory” (John 17:24; Leo, Sermons 95). Now we see God’s glory as if in a mirror but then “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12).
There is an intimacy in these images, like the joy of the child looking into the face of a mother. To see God is to be infinitely happy (Clement of Alex., Stromata 7.10). The saints, seeing God, do not see all that God sees, but behold the One who beholds all (Tho. Aq., ST supp., Q92.3).
This beholding takes place through the light of glory (Council of Vienne, SCD 475) and is sustained eternally without interruption (Faith of Damasus, SCD 16; Quicunque Creed, SCD 40; Leo IX, Symbol of Faith, SCD 347). The faithful live in the light of God’s countenance (Num. 6:25, 26; Ps. 67:1).
The faithful are set apart for holiness not only “while on their pilgrimage” through time but “especially after their death, when all reflective vision being done away, they behold clearly the Holy Trinity, in whose infinite light they know what concerns us” (Creed of Dositheus, 8).
The biblical images are ecstatic: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9, Isa. 64:4; Chrysostom, Hom. on Cor. 7.5–6). “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there” (Rev. 21:23–25; Apringius of Beja, Tractate on the Apoc. 21.24–26).
The blessed faithful behold in heaven what they believed by faith on earth. A deeper knowing of God will be given to the saints, greater than the fragmentary knowing of this life (John 17:3; 1 Cor. 13:12). Faith is transformed into knowledge by meeting God face to face. “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 11.15). The intellect is directly illumined by the light of glory (Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, CWS: 111 ff.).
This beholding has already begun in the faithful, “who with unveiled faces all reflect [as in a mirror] the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory” (2 Cor. 3:18; Chrysostom, Hom. on Cor. 7.5). Peter wrote to the far away faithful: “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet. 1:8, 9; Oecumenius, Comm. on 1 Pet. 1.8). In ways beyond present knowing, the glorified body will adapt to this beholding,
The Bliss of Hope Fulfilled in Perfect Willing
Those who perfectly behold the life of God eternally experience perfect enjoyment of the will. “Therefore, whoever is happy seeks nothing which does not belong to that in which true beatitude consists” (Tho. Aq., SCG 4, 92). If a joy could be imagined in which one is completely and permanently delivered from all evil, so as to share fully in the abundant good of the One who is incomparably good, that is the joy of heaven (Leo, Sermons, 21). “Final redemption restores what had been lost in the fall”—the full exercise of the free will to celebrate and reflect the divine good endlessly (John of Damascus, OF 4.27).
Only an eternal happiness that cannot end is absolute felicity, for all other modes of happiness are aware of their impending finite ending. “Here is possession displacing hope’s desire, even as vision displaces faith’s belief…. Then is our happiness complete, for the highest delight rises from our being united with what fits us best” (Tho. Aq., Sentences 1.1.1).
Words cannot express the heights of this joy. The enjoyment of the presence of God is a “joy unspeakable” (1 Pet. 1:8). Eternal life is a treasure that does not fail, that moth and rust cannot corrupt (Luke 12:33), a “crown of glory that will never fade away” (1 Pet. 5:4) “There the righteous dwell from the beginning, not ruled by necessity, but enjoying always the contemplation of the blessings which are in their view, and delighting themselves with the expectation of others ever new, and deeming those ever better than these” (Hippolytus, Ag. Plato 1).
Heaven is a very musical place (Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia: 43). The righteous are “hymned by the angels” (Hippolytus, Ag. Plato 1). Everyone there is singing God’s praise.
The Absence of Negative Obstacles (Privative Blessings)
The blessings of eternal life with God are sometimes divided into negative and positive blessings. Under negative or “privative blessings” are considered all that is promised to be absent from heaven. There will be freedom from temptation and evil. “The privative blessings are the absence of sin and of the causes of sin, viz., the flesh inciting, the devil suggesting, and world seducing” (Quenstedt; in Schmid, DT: 661). In eternal life with God there is no inordinate desire, no sin, and no consequent pain, sorrow, sickness and death that come from them.
Absent from heaven will be mental aberrations, neuroses, moral depravity, all influences of the wicked, who “shall cease from troubling” (Job 3:17). Absent from heaven is the temptation that characterizes the body-soul interface under conditions of finitude. Finite freedom is now no longer made vulnerable to anxiety and guilt. Because there is now freedom from temptation, there is freedom from the possibility of sinning. In heaven there is no constant struggle with sin or even the inclination to sin.
The glorified bodies of the celestial city are promised freedom from the drivenness of sex, guilt, fear, and anxiety (Rev. 7:16; 1 Cor. 6:13; Matt. 22:30; 1 Cor. 15:42, 43; Augustine, Contra Julian 5.61). “Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat” (Rev. 7:15, 16; Tyconius, Comm. on Apoc. 7.16).
The Heavenly Rest of the Righteous
The Letter to the Hebrews described the final state of the just as “entering their rest” (Heb. 4:1–6) from the warfare of the struggle that is required by the conditions of embodied time. It is a rest from the contradictions of human existence under bondage to sin.
This tranquility is not inaction, but unfettered vitality. The quality of life is raised not lowered in spiritual energy, being free of sin. It is more a rest of singing than sleeping, more a life of praise than sloth (Rev. 14:3; Oecumenius, Comm. on Apoc. 14.1–5).
For after final judgment the consequences of sin no more affect the faithful. They will have been freed from all that might detract the soul from God, without the tears or pain or limitations that come from sin. God will “wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4; Oecumenius, Comm. on Apoc. 21.3–5).
In this rest there is neither “pain, nor corruption, nor care, nor night, nor day measured by time…no numerous wanderings of stars, no painfully-trodden earth, no abode of paradise hard to find; no furious roaring of the sea” (Hippolytus, Ag. Plato 2). “For then the outer man will be the peaceful and unblemished possession of the inner man; then the mind, engrossed in beholding God, will be hampered by no obstacles of human weakness” (Leo, Sermons 95).
Freedom for Life (Positive Blessings)
The privative blessings of freedom from sin just described are complemented by “positive blessings” of freedom for life in the presence of God, and all that is uniquely present to the glory of God’s holiness.
Each human faculty is incomparably blessed in God’s presence: The soul is blessed with eternal life. The knowing capacity of the rational mind is blessed with enlightenment (1 Cor. 13:9–12). The will is blessed with rectitude and happiness (Ps. 17:15; Eph. 4:25; 5:27). The glorified body is blessed by the right ordering of appetitive powers. The imagination is blessed with the thought of the complete security of future blessedness without interruption (John 16:22). This is a happiness that none can take away, for it is eternal union with God (Longer Catech., Eastern Orthodox Church, 380).
The awesome fact of death that had appeared to be so overwhelming becomes itself the transition into incomparable freedom, victory, and the eternal happiness of the just (1 Cor. 15:54–57). The souls of the faithful would be withered by the holiness of God were it not that the grace of God gives strength to recognize and accept the happiness that lives eternally in God’s presence.
The Glorified Bodies of Saints
The spiritual body (soma pneumatikos) risen by faith through grace into eternal life is promised the full recovery of the condition of humanity prior to the fall: “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7). These amazing implications follow, as explained by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: The glorified body, free from death, is characterized by immortal incorruption (aphtharsia, immunity from dissolution). The perishable has become clothed “with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (1 Cor. 15:53), now beyond any feeling of discomfort or death, having put on incorruption (Rev. 21:4). Even the scars of the martyrs will enhance, not mar, the glory of their risen bodies (Augustine, CG 22.19; Tho. Aq., ST, supp., Q82.1.5).
The risen body, freed from the darkness of guilt and sin, is characterized by clarity, brightness, glory (doxa), by which the “righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43) because they fully reflect the glory of God. This same glory was anticipatively beheld by the disciples in the transfiguration (Mark 9:2).
The new creation of the risen body, freed from infirmities, is characterized by agility and power (dunamis), by which the body will move with complete ease wherever directed by the soul, as typified by Christ’s body in the resurrection (Tho. Aq., ST, supp., Q84.1).
Insofar as freed from time-space encumbrances, the risen body is to empirical eyes fully empowered by the Spirit, hence, spiritual, invisible—now characterized by subtlety, by which the soul, being filled with the divine pneuma, “assumes into itself the life of the body and raises it to its own level,” so that “the body becomes absolutely subject to the spirit” (Tho. Aq., ST, supp., Q83.2). When these changes occur, “then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’” (1 Cor. 15:54; Augustine, Sermons for Easter 233.4).
The Heavenly Gift
It seems contrary to the teaching of justification by faith through grace to say that the just receive heaven as a reward, if by reward is meant that upon which one has a claim due to autonomous human effort. The just have no claim upon final blessedness by which they might assert that it is just that they receive it.
Yet heaven is promised and given the faithful as the gracious consequence of their repentance, faith, and responsive works of love, and in this sense is called a reward not for works but for trusting in God’s good work (Luke 6:23; 35; 2 Tim. 4:14; Cyprian, Letters; Calvin, Inst. 3.18).
There will be differences in heavenly rewards as taught in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:21–23) and of the pounds (Luke 19:16–19; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on Luke, Hom. 129). The principle is, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked” (Luke 12:48; Augustine, On Grace and Free Will 3). Some apparently will be saved barely, “but only as one escaping through the flames” (1 Cor. 3:15; Chrysostom, Hom. on Cor. 7.11).
Each celestial celebrant will reflect the divine goodness in a different and individuated way (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 5.36.2; Clement of Alex., Stromata 6.13). Though each individual shares in the same salvation, the refracted glory will not be monotone, but varied (Chrysostom, To the Fallen Theodore). “The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another, and star differs from star in splendor. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor. 15:41, 42; Jerome, Ag. Pelagians 16; Clement of Alex., Stromata 6.14). “So there will also be many degrees of splendor and glory in yonder life, as St. Paul teaches in 1 Cor. 15:40; and yet all will be alike in the enjoyment of the same eternal blessedness and delight, and there will be but one glory for all, because we shall all be the children of God” (Luther, Sermons on Romans; WLS 2:622).
Each receives the recompense appropriate as judged by God’s wisdom (Matt. 16:27; Chrysostom, Hom. on Matt., Hom. 55.5). “The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor” (1 Cor. 3:8). “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly” (2 Cor. 9:6; Martyrdom of Polycarp 40; Ignatius of Antioch, To Polycarp 1.3; Tertullian, Scorpiace 6). If God is just, there are no injustices in heaven. Where seeming discrepancies or inequities may appear, they are not to be explained by human merits, but by the free grace of God (Decretum Unionis, SCD 693). “But just as small vessels can be as full as larger vessels (though the latter contain more), so everyone in heaven will be wholly fulfilled and wholly at peace” (Kasper, CCF: 345). “There will be no envy on account of unequal glory, because one love will govern all” (Augustine, Tractate on John 67.3). “And thus one will have a gift less than another in such a way that he also has the gift that he does not wish for more” (Hugh of St. Victor, SCF: 475). The glory each one reflects is measured by the strength of the love one has for God.
Marriage Feast of the Lamb
All whose lives are hid in Christ are being gathered from around the world (Mark 13:27). The dross having been burned away, the faithful will be ready to be received by their Lord (Matt. 13:41, 42). The church will be “prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (Rev. 21:2; Augustine, CG 20.17), being welcomed into the city of God (Rev. 21:8–10).
The key event of the Revelation of John is the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:7–10; Oecumenius, Comm. on Apoc. Rev. 19.7–10;), a messianic banquet in which the bride, the church, is dressed in the wedding garment, being now clothed in the righteousness of the bridegroom, Christ.
In the new heaven and earth (Rev. 21:1) at its focal center, the new Jerusalem (21:9–11), God and the Lamb are being worshiped through the Spirit. There “the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (21:34; Primasius, Comm. on Apoc. 21.27).
Triune Praise
The echoes resound eternally in the celebration of the triune God. Nothing brings more delight to the communion of saints. God is one, indivisible, the giver of all and redeemer of all. The work begun in creation, having fallen and been redeemed, is being consummated according to God’s promise.
That God the Father is Creator does not prevent the faithful from celebrating the Son through whom “all things were made, and without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3), and the Spirit who is the Eternal One through whom the creative Word speaks. The Father is truly God.
The work of redemption is the proper work of the Son, who is sent by the Father’s will and empowered by the Spirit to do all things necessary for the work of redemption. Before all ages the Son was begotten of the Father as light comes from light. The Son has come to save us from sin. The Son is truly God.
The work of consummation, completion, and sanctification is the work of the Spirit, of whom Christ said that this is the One “whom the Father will send in my name” (John 14:26). The Spirit dwells within us to enable us to conform to Christ’s likeness. The Spirit is truly God.
The mystery of the triune God is that God is Father, God is Son, and God is Spirit, and that God is one. Yet we do not say that there is one Person in God, but three Persons, and we do not say that there are three gods, but one God. “Now this is the Catholic faith, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity” (Quicunque vult). “What the Father is to us and gives to us, He is and gives through the Son, in the Holy Spirit; no one has the Father except in the Son, and no one confesses the Son except in the Holy Spirit” (Pieper, WCB: 56–57; cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 31).
Classic Christian teaching is offered as a modest gift in order to shed light on baptism and communion. Its intent is that we may know “for what purpose each of the holy mysteries of Baptism is performed, and with what reverence and order you must go from Baptism to the Holy Altar of God, and enjoy its spiritual and heavenly mysteries; that your souls being previously enlightened by the word of doctrine” may receive the gifts offered by God (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 18.32).
From Credo to Amēn
The ancient prayer of the church sums up the whole range of classic Christian teaching: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen” (Divine Liturgy of James, Early Liturgies; BCP; cf. Rev. 21:6; 22:13; Augustine, Trin. 7.4–6).
The amēn (meaning “truly, certainly”) to which we come at last in the ancient baptismal creed is more than a period (SCD 2). It is an act of whole body-soul unity, of trust, of confirmation. As the creed begins with “I believe” (credo), it ends with, “Yes, so be it,” “verily,” “I confirm it” (amēn). Jesus Christ himself is personally God’s own “Amen” (Rev. 3:14). “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the “Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God” (2 Cor. 1:20).