Radical Orthodoxy: Theology, Philosophy, Politics, Vol. 1, Numbers 1 & 2 (August 2012): 95-120. ISSN 2050-392X Life as an Analogical Concept: Earthly and Eternal Beáta Tóth “you spare all, since all is yours, Lord, lover of life!” Wisdom 11:26 Prelude: The Paradoxical Nature of Worldly Appearance n our everyday experience life appears as fragile and ephemeral, threatened by oblivion and death. It seems to last for no more than a fleeting instant as compared to the steady existence of objects in the realm of the inanimate world: rocks and oceans, stars and atomic particles. Heaven and earth evoke an idea of eternity far more readily than a centuries-old tree or even the longest lived animal. On a first approach life and eternity seem two incompatible notions. While no life can escape the disintegration inflicted by death, what does not live might exist ceaselessly without end. Or is there still a sense in which the fleeting and the ephemeral is more lasting than the most enduring lump of matter? Is the earth or the cosmos in a way more transient than the most evanescent phenomena of life? The twentieth-century Hungarian poet, Sándor Weöres (1913-1989) forcefully captures the experience of what one may dub “the paradoxical nature of worldly appearance,” in other words, the paradoxical relationship between steadily persisting existence and the contingent occurrences of life. His poem “Eternity” I