by Anthony Esolen

But first a note. Be sure to tune in tomorrow night - Thursday, April 24th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the death of Pope Francis, plans for Saturday's papal funeral, the conclave that will begin soon after, as well as other issues in the global Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column.

The eternal does not "develop." That is a contradiction in terms. So says our Lord, in the days before his Passion, when he spoke to his disciples of the last days and the coming of the Son of Man in glory. "Heaven and earth will pass away," he says, "but my words will not pass away." (Matthew 24:35)

His saying so can become too familiar to us. We hear it at Mass every year, but it must have left the disciples dumbstruck. Moses does not say that about himself. Isaiah and Jeremiah do not say it. Such a statement is predicated only of God - as Jesus and his disciples knew. "Lift up your eyes to the heavens," says God, "and look at the earth beneath: for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever." (Isaiah 51:6).

The prophecy stands on the border of time and eternity. It is meant not only to convey the future, as Jesus does when he says that the last days shall be as in the days of Noah. (Matthew 24:37) It is meant to turn their eyes beyond time, above the stars, for "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1) They have their morning and their evening. They will pass away, but the Word of God, through whom all things were made (John 1:3), "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15), "Alpha and Omega, the first and the last" (Revelation 1:8), is beyond time, for time, bound to heaven and earth, is also a creature.

Now, at the heart of all modernist notions of evolution lies a trust in time. Given enough time to work in, and the fits and starts of experimentation, whether technological, artistic, intellectual, or political, human beings become better and their lives freer.

With many reservations, we can admit that there is something to this sense of development. It is better, more culturally advanced, to be Wagner composing Lohengrin, than to be an aboriginal wailing out a war dance in the night. Yet Homer composed the Odyssey about 2,700 years ago, and many people say it is unsurpassed for poetic grandeur, coherence, beauty, and psychological insight. Or if it is surpassed, only Dante's Commedia stands above it, and that poem is itself more than 700 years old.

Most of the important ancient Greek cities had public works of astonishing beauty, such as the Parthenon in Athens, or the temple of Diana at Ephesus; do our cities of similar size boast the like?

But even if our progress in cultural matters were regular, reliable, and noticeable (it is not), that still does not mean that Christ and His words are subject to the same experimentation with its successes and failures - for success and failure are but the ratchet-gears of cultural change, and they have a habit of lurching or sticking or slipping even so.

We may learn more about Christ, as through the Holy Spirit He reveals more of Himself, more of the truth, insofar as we are capable of receiving it. But we cannot learn anything other about Him, anything that would contradict what went before; as if some prior truth should vanish like the dinosaurs, or should be cast aside like the horse and buggy.

To believe that the Word of God is the Word of God, not some human word subject to change, is to understand also that God, who used to speak through the prophets, and who gave the Law to Moses by the ministry of angels, "in these last days he...