Abstract

In Christian tradition there have been three broadly different ways in which eternity 1 has been connected with time We find a moral view: eternal life is the ‘due reward’, the ‘prize’ owed to certain states of consciousness and types of behaviour which have occurred in this life; a voluntarist theory: eternal life is the unowed and thus gratuitous gift given subsequent to the occurrence of certain conscious states and behaviour patterns; and the ‘ontological’ approach: eternal life is the final, culminating phase or development of those conscious states and patterns of action. All three of these views co-exist in Christian literature from the New Testament era on