“The world is created in 7 days, and man grows in periods of 7 days … therefore some think … that perhaps in the 7th age [millennium] this world will be re-made. Yet the knowledge of the Church is not in these. The Church believes that the universe is in the will of God, and as this world was made out of nothing for the good [of men], it will be re-made in perfection again for the good. This will happen when there will be left to the world no virtue, start and perfection of which is love. For love God made everything and for love has given us his only begotten Son. Thus He Himself reveals the signs of the end, saying that love will be absent. The love of the many will turn cold, because transgression will increase, and who shall endure to the end, will be saved” (Symeon of Thessaloniki, Responses to an Archpriest, 65, Patrologia Graeca 155.920).
“To the end has the beginning, and to the beginning the end“, St Symeon the New Theologian writes about the man who becomes godly and enlightened. Each moment of the worldly time is in its deep the one spring, each moment is the first moment. When beginning and end are One, simultaneously completed and dynamic presence of the infinity, time is elevated to its true measure: “supreme quietness is the measure of all motion … the supreme presence, the eternity, is the measure of all time”, Nicholas of Cusa writes (De docta ignorantia I.23).
Even in our days some prefer to date the world according to medieval estimations. And there are others who see in such attitudes not only an anachronism, but a political danger. About these in the next post.
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