The Ocean and the River: A Further Wrestling

When first I set forth The Ocean and the River, I knew full well that it would stir the waters. For to speak of mercy without end and judgment without measure is to lay one’s hand upon a fire that has burned since the first man raised his eyes to Heaven. Some voices declared my words ignorant; yet others, whose faith is deep and unfeigned, answered with solemn assent, saying that they too have wrestled long with the selfsame conundrum.

One among these, a man of true devotion, spake to me of the word forever. “We, in these latter days,” said he, “know of infinity as the mathematician defines it: without limit, without end, a horizon never reached. But our fathers knew not of such a thing. To them, the word was olam in the tongue of the Hebrews, and aionios in the tongue of the Greeks. And these words meant not boundless eternity, but an age, an aeon, a span whose end was hidden, yet not unending.”

Thus did he declare that when the Scriptures speak of everlasting mercy or unending fire, they speak not of infinity as we conceive it, but of duration beyond mortal reckoning. Long, weighty, solemn; yet still bounded in the counsel of God.

This answer I did not foresee, and though it moved me to wonder, yet it brought me not to assent. For when mine ear heareth the word forever, it ringeth unto me as infinity. When my soul readeth of eternity, it beholdeth no age nor span, but an endless procession without shore or summit. Thus the paradox abideth with me still, and I find no ease in that softer reading.

Yet I must needs confess this: his stance was not born of evasion, but of study and reverence. He sought not to dismiss the difficulty, but to reckon with it in truth, showing that the meaning of words is no fixed thing, but waxeth and waneth across the ages. And though I could not take his answer as mine own, I bowed before the strength of his reasoning. Moreover, I rejoiced in his own satisfaction.

Therefore do I record this: that two men may lay hold upon the same stone and turn it in their hands, and each behold a different face thereof. And the profit lieth not in which is right, nor in which is wrong, but in the wrestling itself. For faith, and doubt, and reason are companions upon the road; and he who casteth them away walketh in peril of folly. For what we believe of eternity shapes how lightly or how gravely we weigh the suffering of the present. For doctrines are not held in the abstract alone, but lived. By hands that punish, by voices that console, and by silences that permit.

So then: I stand where I stood, yet not as I stood. For though my ground is unchanged, my sight is broadened by his. And this also is gain.

Quam iucundum est intellegi.

“How joyful it is to be understood.”

— Dr Stephen D. Jones

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