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What Is Established By Love Will Never Be Eternally Lost

What Is Established By Love Will Never Be Eternally Lost

Last updated on: October 15, 2025 at 1:32 am by Henry Karlson

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What Is Established By Love Will Never Be Eternally Lost 2025-10-15T01:32:07-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Joaquín Martínez: Creation — Fresco In Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City, Mexico / Wikimedia Commons

The world and all that is in it is itself a part of God’s divine revelation: God established it in a word because it is in and through the Word, the Logos, that it was (or is) made. Everything participates in the Word by reflecting that word in themselves. Everything has their own particular word, their own essence, given to it by the Word of God:

Words exist only because there is the Word, and there are idea-meanings only because the Idea-Meaning exists. There is Sophia, the Soul of the world, the Wisdom of the world, as the all-perfected organism of ideas, as the Pleroma, the fullness of meaning. It is the intelligible basis of the world, the world as cosmos. Here ideas are seen one in the other, are reflected one in the other, here the communism of being really reigns, here the closed number, the fullness of ideas, exists. [1]

All things can be said to reflect God, to speak about God, to everyone who properly attunes to the way creation is speaking as a reflection of the divine speech of the Word. This is why science is important, because science is one of many ways for us to get to know or listen to the words established by the Word.

When talking about the act of creation, especially the way creation is established by the Word, we must understand this act for God is not temporal but eternal; God’s actions, God’s activities, God’s energies are uncreated and eternal with God (which is why we can talk about the act of creation being in the past, but also in the present and in the future):

If we speak of the “Word” of God through which the world is created, this is not a distinct word of command spoken at some definite moment (what moment and the moment of what time?) but rather the eternal Word of God, the Word as Logos or Meaning, eternally “spoken” by Him and through the force of which the world is and is grounded. [2]

Creation is an eternal event of the Godhead, though in that event, time itself is made, giving a temporal mode of being for those who are created. Time has a beginning, a middle, and an end, giving all those living and existing in and with time various beginnings and endings throughout their lives, even as they experience their original beginning points to the fact they will have an end to their temporal existence (i.e., death). Since this temporality is given to creation by God, it must be understood as a gift, something good which creation and all created beings are to enjoy. Temporal existence, even if it is not the final mode of existence for created beings, is to be cherished, and those who are conscious of it should embrace the good instead of denigrate it, as some, sadly seem to do.

We can call our temporal origin, or the temporal mode of being for all creation, as the birthing process for eternity, but only if we understand this metaphorically. Temporality is not a curse, and so, it must not be seen as the result of sin. Nonetheless, sin can influence temporal being, causing how we experience our temporal existence, that is, we experience it through the lens of sin instead of the original good given to it at the beginning of its existence. Sin is its own curse, its own punishment, but it is also something which God, in the incarnation, overcomes; the restoration of all things in the eschaton, represented in Scripture by the general resurrection of the dead at the end of time, indicates that the Logos will collect all the logoi of creation, heal them from the corruption which sin has caused them, and then re-establish (or recreate) them in eternity. However, what happened in time, the way temporal creation acted in time, will have a role in determining what eternity will be like. Temporal life is not a waste. It is what helps us establish who we will be for eternity.

The incarnation established the link or bridge which connects heaven with earth, eternity with time, so that the divine life is open up to created subjects, that those born in time can and will participate in the eternity of God. Jesus, in his person, unites all all things, making them one. We observe in him two natures which are working together, one uncreated and eternal, one created and born in time. In him, therefore, God acts with us in both an eternal fashion, in God’s eternal activity, and in a temporal fashion. It is God’s love which makes this possible, for it is this love which has God the Word embrace the kenosis of the incarnation all the way to the cross so that creation can be lifted up in the way God “descended” into it. If we want to join ourselves to him, to Jesus, we must embrace the way of love. We must act in union with Jesus and his actions, in and with his love, going all the way to the cross with him so that we can build up the world around us:

True mysticism is authenticated by the love that contemplatives show toward others in humble service. This alone, the acceptance of others in self-sacrificing love, proves that they have experienced a true love and freedom from the Source of all beauty and goodness. Any mysticism that does not reap a harvest in shared love toward others in the building of a better world according to God’s eternal plan in the creative Logos, Jesus Christ, God-Man, is a deception and in the end is dehumanizing.[3]

The way of love, as demonstrated by Jesus, is the way of self-sacrificial love, not out of self-hatred and the desire to annihilate ourselves, but out of a desire to give all that we are to our beloved. When we follow the way of love, we will find that instead of being diminished by our self-sacrificial actions, we will rise up and be made greater. This is what Christ’s resurrection from the dead shows us. What is given to others in love will be approved by God, and in that approval, God will build up and reestablish and glorify the love which is found. The more we give ourselves to others out of love, the greater the grace God will give us, allowing us to become that much greater in return. What is freely give to others out of love will not leave us at a loss, but rather, will be the foundation of our growth. Jesus made this possible, for it is in and through his work, the work of the Logos made flesh, in his death and resurrection, he transverses the whole of being and collects all that is established in love and joins them to himself so that they can and will be glorified in and with him in his resurrection from the dead.

[1] Sergii Bulgakov, Philosophy of the Name. trans. Thomas Allan Smith (Ithaca: Northern Illinois University Press, 2022), 89.

[2] S. L. Frank, The Unknowable: An Ontological Introduction To The Philosophy of Religion. Trans. Boris Jakim (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2020), 269.

[3] George A. Maloney, SJ, Called To Be Free (New York: Alba House, 2001), 111.

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N.B.: While I read comments to moderate them, I rarely respond to them. If I don’t respond to your comment directly, don’t assume I am unthankful for it. I appreciate it. But I want readers to feel free to ask questions, and hopefully, dialogue with each other. I have shared what I wanted to say, though some responses will get a brief reply by me, or, if I find it interesting and something I can engage fully, as the foundation for another post. I have had many posts inspired or improved upon thanks to my readers.

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