And this is eternal life,
that they may know You,
the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
Gospel of John 17:3
At that day you will know
that I am in My Father,
and you in Me, and I in you.
Gospel of John 14:20
In this chapter we will try to shed light on a concept that has often been overlooked and misunderstood, that of “eternal life”. The term eternal life is used only once in the Old Testament but appears 43 times in the New Testament. We will seek to understand the truth behind this term, and why it was ignored for so long, only to become so important in the Messianic era. We will then link the important matter of eternal life with another theme that is becoming very topical, that of union with Christ and theosis.
18.1. Eternal life and the afterlife
The expression “eternal life” often simply takes on the meaning of immortality, of life without end; it usually indicates the afterlife that is due to righteous men in eternity, in paradise, in the presence of God, as opposed to the idea of eternal damnation for the wicked, in hell, separated from God. In the collective imagination then, eternal life means life without end in the joy and peace of the Lord that will take place after death. However, we learn from the biblical text that this is not the only meaning attributed to this concept, and to understand it better, we have to start once again from the Old Testament and the meaning it had for the Jews at the time of Jesus. The expression eternal life appears for the first time in the book of the prophet Daniel:
Daniel 12:2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting [eternal] life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt.
This verse would seem to confirm the hypothesis that eternal life indicates the afterlife following the resurrection, but before coming to any conclusions, it is necessary to open a parenthesis on what the Jews believed about life after death and the resurrection.
18.2. The resurrection of the dead
In general, from ancient times, there was no pressing need for the Jews to know what would happen after death. They considered that, since there was little or no mention of it in the Torah, it was better not to inquire further. Some verses in the Bible also forbade consulting the dead,500 warning that the “hidden” things belonged to the Lord, while his people should concentrate on knowing and practising the things revealed in the law:
Deuteronomy 29:29 The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Nevertheless, there was one common idea associated with the afterlife and it was that of the Sheol, the realm of the dead, the place of shadows, located in the heart of the earth. Rather than a hell, it was a place of “non-life” to which all would descend after death, becoming dust. It is necessary to recall what we saw in the chapter on sacrifice, in which we pointed out that for the Jews, anything dead, devoid of life, was considered unclean, as something to be kept away from. Not an encouraging prospect awaited all those nearing the end of their days.
As a result, several alternative lines of thought arose, some argued that the dead would be resurrected (either before or after the coming of the Messiah), others argued that there was no resurrection of the dead and that life ceased forever once in the grave. The Pharisees were the supporters of the resurrection theory, while the Sadducees denied it.501 Jesus himself participated in the debate and refuted the Sadducees by confirming that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and rebuked them for not knowing the Scriptures.502 This diatribe continued for a long time, even among Christians after the resurrection of Jesus, so much so that Paul admonished them saying: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.”503 Nowadays, the discussion is still alive among the Jews, so that there is no single accepted theology on the subject, although, in principle, most agree on the idea of an afterlife; of a paradise Gan Eden (Garden of Eden) and a hell, Gehinnom. What we have just said would thus seem to confirm the hypothesis that the concept of eternal life, as expressed by the prophet Daniel, was indeed meant as life after the resurrection of the dead and the judgement, a thesis that was also supported by Jesus when he said that the wicked would go to eternal punishment and the righteous to eternal life.504 However, some expressions used in the New Testament, suggest that there is more to it than that.
18.3. Eternal life now?
Let us therefore see what these expressions are that need further study:
John 6:40 And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
John 6:54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
In both statements of Jesus, it seems to be implied that eternal life is something that happens before the resurrection, in the present time, and not after it. Similarly, in the following verses, the verbal predicate “to have eternal life” is conjugated in the present tense:
1 John 5:13 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.
John 6:47 Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.
What we have just seen would seem to support the hypothesis that eternal life refers to something we already possess in the present time and is not just reserved for after death. It is therefore necessary to understand what Jesus was saying, for it is a major subject and we are not the only ones looking for a response; this was a subject that Jesus' followers were evidently also passionate about, for on more than one occasion they asked him: “Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?”505 There is another statement by Jesus that may help us to understand better:
John 5:39 You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.
From this verse it would seem clear that the Jews were searching for eternal life in the Scriptures; what could this expression mean? We have seen that the subject of investigating life after death was not particularly popular, either because the Scriptures spoke little of it or because it was in some ways a forbidden activity. The Jews have always considered God's reticence in speaking about things related to the afterlife as a sign of the importance God attaches to the present life. On this perspective, it is important to live the present life we have been given, because this is God's will, and it must be honoured. So, what was Jesus referring to? What was there in the Bible that could confer eternal life? Well, they were looking for the “revelation” from God's word that confers full life. What they called “eternal life” was that moment when God's word comes alive and gives true life, not just the simple “bios” life that is destined to end, but the “zoe” life506 that emanates from God and that never ends, and is therefore eternal. This life pours forth from his word, and this is what the Jews sought eagerly in the scriptures:
An interesting insight comes from how the term “eternal life,” chayei olam was understood by Jews in Jesus’ time. While the phrase often had our understanding of life after death, chayei olam often had a different emphasis, when it was contrasted with “chayei sha’ah” (fleeting life). Chayei sha’ah, fleeting life, is living a life that is only concerned about everyday things: working, making money, eating, and sleeping. Chayei olam, “lasting life” or “a life of eternity” refers to living a life focused on matters of eternal importance. Traditionally, Jewish people have considered the study of the Bible truly living out one’s “eternal life.”507
The word olam could also refer to ancient times,508 a remote era when justice and right reigned. To have eternal life was thus an expression that meant a full, complete life, lived in righteousness, devoted to the things of God and his eternal kingdom rather than to material and transitory things; a life built on God's word, stable, eternal and never withering. This was what the Jews assiduously sought, and it was not only the never-ending life that takes place after the resurrection, but it is the true life that belongs here and now to those who, through the word, come to an intimate knowledge of God, his thoughts and will. In this perspective, let us re-read the words of Jesus:
John 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
John 5:40 But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.
Jesus was saying that if they were seeking revelation, the supreme knowledge of God that gives true life, the eternal life that does not wither, they should come to him, for he himself was the one who could reveal God. When the disciple Philip, seeking this revelation, said to Jesus: “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us”, Jesus answered him: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”509 Philip, like many others, was seeking the revelation of God, the intimate encounter with the Father, because he knew that this would confer a complete life.
We are all aware, in a conscious way, that something is missing in our lives, we perceive a kind of inner emptiness that needs to be filled in some manner. The fullness that comes from God's word can transcend the limits of what is material and fill this void. In the first letter of John, it is clearly explained that eternal life, complete life, has been revealed in Jesus and that they have seen it, witnessed it, and bear witness to it:
1 John 1:2 The life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us.
1 John 5:11 And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.
To understand this better, it is necessary to recall once again the concept of impurity that we saw earlier. Everything that was dead was considered impure since it was devoid of life. Purity and holiness came only from God and were life and light; to know God, to be intimate with him, conferred purity, hence life, eternal life. The way to access this holiness was the knowledge of his word; and Jesus said: “I’m the life”.510 What confers eternal life is intimate knowledge and identification with God, and this has been made fully accessible in Jesus. In what way? In his words, in what he said; in his actions, in all that he did; in his death, in how he gave himself for love. In all this it is possible to have full and perfect knowledge of God, of his ways, his character, his desires, his will and love, but above all, through spiritual union with Jesus, it is now possible to become partakers of his very life.
1 John 5:20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.
18.4. Knowledge
We have just seen that for the Jews, the knowledge of God was eternal life and that they sought it in his word. Jesus often rebuked them, saying that it was he, who was present in their midst, who could give them eternal life, the knowledge of God. However, it is good to clarify what is meant by “knowledge”, because for us the word has a different meaning and value than it had for the Jews. For us, in fact, knowledge means acquiring information in order to form an idea about the thing known. We have seen in the previous chapter, however, that for the Jews there were no words that had a purely intellectual meaning, and to know was more of an experiential fact, penetrating the depths of the person, almost a fusion of two people, cognitive, emotional and even physical; Adam “knew” Eve and Cain was born.511
Biblical man too had his knowledge, though it is not the intellectual knowledge of the Greek. It is not the kind of knowledge that man can have through reason alone, or perhaps not through reason at all; he is rather through body and blood, bones and bowels, through trust and anger and confusion and love and fear; through his passionate adhesion in faith to the Being whom he can never intellectually know.512
It becomes clearer why Jesus said that to know him, to become intimate to the point of merging with him, was to have eternal life here and now, since this implied experiencing the fullness of God in his person. God is inaccessible and unknowable, he belongs to another dimension and cannot be understood or grasped; Jesus brought him into this world and made him accessible, we can certainly say “on a human scale”. God became man because it was the only way in which he could reach men in a total way; as men we would never have had access to God, if God had not lowered himself by taking our own form. Those who searched the scrolls of the Bible, now had it in front of them and could access that divine revelation, which was capable of conferring life, in this dimension, now and for eternity. Jesus, the word of God incarnate.
This type of knowledge is what we called identification in the previous chapter, and it occurs when the values, character, attitudes and even emotions of one person are psychologically infused into another person, profoundly modifying his or her being and shaping their personality. In this case, however, the knowledge referred to, goes beyond the mere psychological aspect, involving also the spiritual and even the physical. The union we are talking about is, therefore, a total union, involving man in his entirety.
18.5. Union with Christ
For the Jews, “knowledge” was therefore a profound union between two people, and in our case, with God through his word; this was what every Bible-studying Israelite yearned for. The revolutionary change was that Jesus told them that if they wanted to have eternal life, that is, the extraordinary revelation and knowledge of God, they would have to unite with him. But what did this mean exactly?
The central point of this assumption concerns the fact that everything that belongs to Christ, can only be ours through a spiritual union with him. The transfer of his nature into us would take place not through emotional or intellectual suggestion, simple imitation of his qualities or legalistic appropriation of his merits, but through the incorporation of his essence into ours, resulting from a true “transfusion” of his life into us. This incorporation could be compared to the kind of assimilation that occurs when we consume food, where the nature, substance, organic characteristics and benefits of the food become a constituent part of the body that receives it, merging and forming one with it. For this reason Jesus said that if we were to have life, we should eat his flesh and drink his blood, indicating what kind of union he had in mind, a total and substantial union with him and in him, in which his very nature and essence would merge with ours until we become one with it: “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.”513 In this way the life, character, wisdom, righteousness and holiness that are in him are transferred integrally into us as “bread of life”, spiritual food, in order to transform us and give rise to a new regenerated creature. “The heart of the good news is our union with Christ and our communion with God. It is the arc of the entire biblical narrative and the core truth of the whole Bible’s teaching concerning salvation.”514
When we speak of union with Christ, we seem to be referring to some supernatural event of mystical ecstasy reserved for the few; however, it was Jesus himself who spoke of it as something normal in our relationship with him; there are many examples of this, both in metaphorical terms and in more explicit ones:
John 14:20 At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.
John 17:21-23 That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.
For the Jews, the idea that a spirit, or even the Spirit of God, could enter a person or at least descend upon him or her, was a commonly accepted fact, unlike what we think of in modern times, where pragmatism and rationalism have ruled out such a possibility, depriving us of a fundamental aspect of our existence. There are many examples in the Bible of spiritual indwelling or influence.515
Jesus, like his contemporaries, regarded spiritual union as normal and not as something special reserved for the few. A careful analysis of the 15th Chapter of John's Gospel gives us an insight into the details of how this union comes about:
John 15:4 Abide in Me, and I in you…
John 15:7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you…
John 15:9 …abide in My love.
John 15:10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.
We can deduce that: “I abide in you” is equivalent to “My words abide in you”. “Abide in me”, on the other hand, is equivalent to “Abide in my love”, which in turn consists of “Keep my commandments”, i.e., put them into practice. In summary:
In a nutshell, Jesus was saying that if we receive his word and hold it in our hearts, he dwells in us, and that if we keep his commandments, we dwell in him and we bear much fruit:
John 15:5 I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
John 15:8 By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
This process is very similar to what we have previously called identification; he who abides in him bears much fruit, that is, he who keeps his word and puts it into practice accomplishes great works, and this is the way to be his disciples and to honour God. All this confirms what we have already seen in the previous chapters about the berith of love and discipleship. How can this happen? It happens as in the parable of the sower: the sower is God, who scatters the seed (his word) abundantly on all kinds of soil (the hearts of men); some do not receive it at all; others receive it but do not hold on to it, it sprouts but then withers; others finally receive it and keep it in good soil (a good heart) and it bears much fruit. This suggests that the grace of God's word is given abundantly to all men, good and evil, just and unjust, but that only some receive it, keep it, put it into practice with perseverance and in the end, it bears fruit for eternal life.
18.6. The Holy Spirit in us
We have therefore concluded that, in order to be united with Christ and have life, now and eternally, we must keep his word and practice his commandments. This, however, would seem to be a condition not unlike what the Jews had always known and sought; for example, the commandment of love was not new: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”516 and “You shall love the Lord your God”517 were already present in the Old Testament.
The novelty was that Jesus not only gave his word, but also his Spirit, the Holy Spirit who, coming to dwell in all those who have received Jesus, helps them to understand the word and put it into practice. Together with the subjective identification based on the recognition and acceptance of his word and values, a spiritual fusion takes place that gives eternal life and bears fruit in the life of the disciple.
John 14:17 The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
The Holy Spirit, the Ruah ha-Kodesh,518 was considered by the Jews to be the divine voice of the Torah that had spoken to men. The extraordinary thing that Jesus was communicating to his disciples was that the same Spirit that had dictated the Torah would come to dwell within them and write the law in their hearts, as had been foretold by the prophets. They would no longer have to obey the prescriptions of the law in a legalistic manner, but the very source of those prescriptions would be grafted into them, becoming for them a spring of eternal life.
It is by receiving the Spirit, who is the self-love of the Father and the Son, that believers can participate in the Triune life; just as the persons of the Trinity participate in one another ad intra in addition to their shared essence, and just as the human Jesus is united to the Logos by the Spirit. This cascade of participation comes in differences of degree, but not in kind, since each is achieved by the gift of the Holy Spirit.519
A person who has truly received the gift of the Holy Spirit within himself or herself cannot fail to be transformed by this communion with God, and it is impossible for them not to produce fruit worthy of the Lord.
It is essential, however, to pay attention to one last detail: for the Jews, the glory of the Lord could leave his dwelling520 because of impurities resulting from transgressions and refusal to obey (see e.g., Ezekiel, Chapters 10th and 11th). Similarly, what the Holy Spirit accomplishes in us cannot do without our participation, but it is something that always requires obedience and perseverance in love. “Abide in me” is a command and indicates that we always have the freedom not to obey: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God”,521 recommended Paul.
18.7. Theosis
The term theosis, particularly dear to the Eastern Churches, refers to the process of divinization of man resulting from union with God through Christ. It is a very ancient theme, which goes back to the Fathers of the Church,522 but which has been lost over the centuries and was only maintained by the Eastern Churches. Today it is re-emerging as an ecumenical element, it is a fact that cannot be ignored. In fact, we have seen how many referenc