I said "with regard to humans, the Bible speaks of 'eternal life' as life that never ends, not life that has no beginning or end." God is truly and fully eternal in both directions, in contrast.

Psalm 90.2: "...from everlasting to everlasting, you are God."

God is a different entity and being than humans are.

Is God eternal? If eternal doesn't mean without beginning, when was God born?

Great question. Thanks for talking with me. I don't think "eternal" is a misused term, but with regard to humans, the Bible speaks of "eternal life" as life that never ends, not life that has no beginning or end. Christianity unequivocally teaches that time for humans is linear and that we human beings will be held responsible for the deeds done in this life since God will judge us at the end of this life (Heb. 9.27). Belief in reincarnation or any other intermediate existence between the here and the hereafter is thus ruled out in the tenets of the Christian faith.

I would agree with you that an identity is formed through one's experiences in a physical body. We become who we are by the lives that we live and the decisions that we make. I would contend, however, that even babies have an identity. With a distinct and unique DNA structure, separating them in contradistinction from any other individual, babies also exhibit peculiar and individual personality traits that mark them out as distinct identities, despite their scant experience repertoire.

So do you feel that retaining one's identity is part of "eternal" life? Or is "eternal" a misused term? My knowledge is that an identity is formed through one's experiences in a physical body. Something with a beginning by definition cannot be eternal, so if we can have "eternal life" doesn't that mean my life existed before this identity? If so, could that life have existed in other identities?

Great questions. Thanks. Of course God is omnipotent (though omnipotence has never been adequately defined). What we generally take it to mean is that God is able to do all that God intends to do, which doesn't take us very far theologically or philosophically.

The Bible teaches that God enters into those who choose to love him, immediately forgives their sins, but then begins the lifelong process of building them into the kind of person he wants them to be. Let's look at a few Bible texts to answer your question.

Philippians 1.6: "...that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ." God never interferes with our free will. Even when people commit their lives to him, the process of becoming God-like in our attitudes and behavior is a gradual one of growth and process, a mutuality of divine regeneration and human will.

Romans 12.2: "Don't be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." God works in us to change the way we think and act to conform to his nature. It's a process. We must cooperate with God in this operation.

Philippians 2.13: "...for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." God works in us to shape us and accomplish his purposes in us. Our work is also essential (Phil. 2.12), though he is the one who gives us the power to perform it.

Our relationship with God is always one of love, never one of coercion. God works to eliminate what naturally controls us (sin nature) and enables us to live by the Spirit (Rom. 8.5-17). God works in us, and we have an obligation to live according to what God is doing in us.

> God is working to eliminate

This puzzles me a great deal!

Are you saying that your god is not omnipotent? You are saying he has to put in actual work? Wouldn't an omnipotent god just snap his fingers and it is done? Wouldn't this be such a trivial and non-thing compared to creating the universe and everything inside it?

I just do not get this "god has to work" when you claim this is an omnipotent god.

We know that identities persist, because when Moses and Elijah came down to visit Jesus on what we call the Mount of Transfiguration, they were still Moses and Elijah and identifiable as such.

God is remaking his people. 1 Corinthians 3.13-15 (also 1 Pet. 1.7) lets us know that here, and especially in the afterlife, God is working to eliminate all that negative stuff that has no place in the life of a believer, but in the afterlife it will be purged out completely. Also Phil. 1.6.

So it's all fine that the molecules that are in you weren't spontaneously generated, but are various chemicals and substances that have been around. It's the cycle of life to recycle nutrients in the soil, into plants, into our mouths, into our bodies, and back out through skin exfoliation, sweat, and excretion. But you know that, despite your spuriously-termed "indoctrination...in the...cult."

1 Cor. 15.37 lets us know that what comes up (wheat) is different from the seed ((piece of grain seed). So also the new body will be different from the old, but still a recognizable identity (back to the Moses and Elijah example, or even Samuel in 1 Sam. 28.12-20).

So, now let's turn to some of your fairy-tale-ish misunderstandings of heaven. No gold streets—we know it's a metaphor because Rev. 21.21 says it was "pure gold, like transparent glass." It's an image of beauty and value.

It's not a place of unending leisure. Just as the Garden of Eden was a place of responsible activity, so will heaven be that (Lk. 19.12-19). We'll be active and loving it, finding both fulfillment and pleasure in what we do.

Nobody plays the harp. Rev. 14.2 says harps, but we know that all the imagery of heaven is symbolic to express the inexpressible. Music in this life is known to suggest power, beauty, ecstasy, pleasure, and infinity. Crowns suggest splendor, power, and joy. Gold doesn't rust or corrode. C.S. Lewis quips, "People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs."

And we don't become perfect clones of Christ. 1 John 3.2 says, "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." It's not that we'll all be Jesus clones, but that his resurrection body is the prototype for our own. We'll have a body like his that is imperishable, in glory and wholeness, transformed and adopted to the new world (1 Cor. 15.42-44). Whoever is there will still be recognizable, but utterly transformed.

Do identities persist in the afterlife. What if you're kind of an asshole?

I have no problem with the concept of eternal life. (No beginning, no end)

I believe that the life in me has been here forever, just like the water in my glass has always been molecules of hydrogen and oxygen since the Big Bang. My indoctrination as a child was in the Fundementalist Baptist cult, and I was told that I would walk on streets of gold and be with everyone who had died before. I was told that people who were "unwhole" would be made whole, and that we would live an unending life of leisure in gold city. So if I wind up in heaven living next to a bunch of idiots who play their harps at 3 in the freakin' morning and don't clean up after their cherubs, am I going to have to put up with that FOREVER?

On the other hand, if we all become perfect clones of Christ, what is the purpose of eternal life as individuals? What is the difference between that and just dispersing into the cosmos besides a tax exempt status?