So many of us modern Christians have come to think of “heaven,” or the life that comes after death, as a sort of resumption of our previous lives. We each live our life and then death appears as the great interruption. Perhaps that interruption is short, and we “close our eyes in this life and open them in heaven,” as the popular sentiment would have it. Or, perhaps this intermission is longer and we await the resurrection of the dead at the end of history. Regardless of the length, we imagine that “life” essentially resumes, though obviously in a different venue and under improved conditions. Many disagree over the details (what will occupy our time, precisely how much or little our heavenly abode will resemble our earthly existence), but the shape of the narrative is often broadly similar.

Perhaps eternity denotes a fundamentally different relationship to time.