Carlos Eire, Yale University: "A Brusque History of Eternity - Lecture 1: The Birth of Eternity" – November 6, 2007

Until fairly recently eternity was no mere abstraction or metaphor in the Christian tradition, but rather the ultimate destination for humankind, a metaphysical conceit with practical implications as inescapable as legal obligations, or taxes, or death. Eternity was an ineffable mystery, to be sure, but of no less value in human interaction than money itself, or crowns and thrones. In our own day, however, eternity seems a purely abstract concept best left in the hands of astrophysicists, a frightfully uncertain horizon divorced from daily life. How was it that eternity emerged in the West as something more than a mere concept? How was it that it ceased to function as an organizing principle for daily life? What difference does this history make? That is the subject of these lectures. More specifically, these lectures will explore how a transcendent higher reality has been conceived in the West, and how such conceptions relate to social, political, and economic realities. Lecture 1: "The Birth of Eternity" will trace the development of the concept of eternity in the first 15 centuries of Christian history, focusing on four of the principal ways in which eternity was made manifest in concrete ways, investing daily life with an otherworldly character: ritual, monasticism, mysticism, and church-state relations. A Spencer Trask Lecture, cosponsored by Princeton University Press.