The distinction between Eternal and Everlasting Life

I was very interested in your recent article in the Franciscan magazine and am confused as to the distinction between eternal life, as an attribute of the deity, and everlasting life, as referring to human beings. I can't help feeling that most Christians without a theological training, would not make such a distinction.

Response (from Nicholas): I haven’t read John’s article, but it seems to me that one clear distinction is that God’s eternal life has no beginning and no end and is an inherent attribute of God, whereas our everlasting life still begins at our birth and is something granted to us by God rather than something which we inherently possess.

John adds: In addition to what Nicholas has said about beginnings, I would like to add that all creaturely experience of time is characterised by change (as Augustine emphasised). Everlasting life will have this character, as through unending salvific process we enter ever more fully into exploration of the riches of the divine nature progressively revealed to us. The life of God, though it involves in some respects a changing relationship with creatures as they change, has also an eternal timeless dimension, for example the steadfast love of the Creator for creatures, from everlasting to everlasting.

Does QM really imply non-causality?

Does quantum physics really contend that particles can actually appear and disappear (and then reappear) into our time and space dimension without any outside cause or is it only a matter of that their measurement of them makes it appear like they do that?

Response: The correct interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is still hotly debated. It seems as if many possible interpretations (Copenhagen, Bohm, Many-worlds) are compatible with the equations and all the physical evidence. And no-one knows how to reconcile Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, let alone how/whether String/M theory is correct.

So certainly in Hawking's highly speculative cosmology and interpretation things can happen "without any outside cause" and we do know that particles spontaneously appear and disappear in the so-called Quantum Vacuum - at a micro level this is very well confirmed by observation.

However (as John keeps pointing out) it is a ridiculous abuse of language to call the Quantum Vacuum "nothing" - this so called "empty space" is teeming with energy and an almost infinite number of particles.  Even if the existence of the Universe is a consequence of the laws of physics (and you can always formulate a set of laws of physics that "require" the universe to exist) this does not, and can not, address the question of WHY the laws of physics have the form that they do.  Hawking would suggest that anthropic selection answers this but that's really begging the question.

Further Question: Does changing the very beginning of time and space from a single point to a less than distinct point really change the Big Bang’s occurrence from an external causality to itself?

Response: No it's a mathematical "trick" with no real philosophical implications, though of course it might look as though it had. As St Augustine realised in the 5th century, the "need" for God does not depend on whether there is a first moment in time - but why is there time at all? You can always mathematically re-scale "time" so that it has no beginning and re-write the laws of physics appropriately.

As noted above, no-one knows how QM and GR reconcile. QM doesn't like singularities. Until there is much clearer empirical evidence the scope for clever speculation is endless, and Hawking is very clever and certainly offers deep insights (which may or may not be correct) at a physical level.  But he is no theologian/philosopher and doesn't seem to understand that his theories have nothing to do with the existence of God at all.

If matter is eternal does that preclude the need for a creator?

If matter is eternal then doesn't that preclude the need for a creator? Doesn't it instead sort of hint at a pantheistic Einsteinian (or materialist souped up with a poetic style) sort of God. Especially since the lost Gospels suggest this?
Response: The evidence (as opposed to speculation) is that there was a Big Bang.

But as St Augustine realised, even if matter has always existed there is still the question of what causes it to exist.

The “lost” gospels are late inventions, not genuine records.