What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain
it to one that asketh, I know not. --Augustine, Confessiones, Bk.XI.
YESTERDAY, TODAY, FOREVER:
Time,
Times, Eternity in Biblical Perspective
by Henri Blocher,
Tyndale Bulletin 52.2 (2001) 183-202.
Summary
The topic of time and eternity in relation to
God is fraught with difficulties. Whatever hints there are from biblical
language of Scripture’s teaching, they need to be supplemented by a more global
and theological use of Scripture. The philological-exegetical arguments for the
‘classical’ view, which entails the antithesis of time and eternity, go in each
case a little beyond what the evidence clearly warrants. Sober considerations
prompt us to look for an alternative to pure timelessness, but not to go to the
opposite extreme. Scripture witnesses both to God’s unchangeable possession of
his unbounded life and to the authentic renewal of his grace every morning, a
renewal that appears to hold a true meaning for God himself.
Calvin, St. Augustine’s devotee and
putative heir, dared to disapprove of this Master’s endeavours on time and
eternity: the bishop of Hippo wasted his energy in a ‘subtle dispute’ that
‘does not fit St. Paul’s
intention’. What a warning! Especially for one who owes so much to both these
spiritual and theological fathers.
The
topic is fraught with exceptional difficulties. We find it hard to bring to the
fore notions that are so basic that we constantly think through them, and which we always presuppose without reflection. As
soon as we start asking what time is,
we no longer know, exactly as St.
Augustine confessed. Paradoxes pop up here and there, or even everywhere. Is time moving, or are we moving within time, drifting down the
river of time? If it flows, does it flow from the past or from the future? Is
the future before or behind us?
For
theologians, James Barr pinpointed the main difficulty: ‘The very serious
shortage within the Bible of the kind of actual
statement about “time” or “eternity” which could form a sufficient basis
for a Christian philosophical-theological view of time.’
Yet
the stakes are high. Any student who struggles through Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics will come to this
realisation; it is an eloquent fact that the perspicacious Barth critic Klaas
Runia wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1955 (under Berkouwer’s supervision)
on ‘Theological Time in Karl Barth’. The issue is relevant to Protestant–Roman Catholic dialogue: at a
recent session, as we were discussing prayer for the dead, distinguished
Catholic theologians offered us a remarkable argument founded on their view of
time and eternity; they proposed that they could pray today for Hitler’s conversion before
his death in 1945.
For
centuries, for more than a millennium and a half, the dominance of what we may
call the ‘classical’ doctrine remained unchallenged. Because most ‘doctors’ in
the church esteemed that it was self-evident—at least to any thinking person—they
did not make an effort to build a strong biblical platform to support it.
Today, however, the reverse situation obtains, and we cannot simply follow
tradition.
Since
we are to investigate the matter ‘in the open’, we should spell out first our
presupposition: the doctrinal harmony of θεόπνευστος Scripture, on this as
on other topics. If Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever—and,
therefore, beware of ‘strange teachings’!—his Spirit, the auctor primarius, is the same today as he was in the days of Moses,
and then of Isaiah, and then of Paul. Yet, concepts may vary! Different types
of conceptualisation (of viewpoints and schemes) may all be compatible with
each other in the service of the one truth. An exploration of that diversity,
of the conceptual distinctions between authors and epochs in the Bible, would
be a fascinating task, but it would lead us far beyond the scope of the present inquiry. It would take too
much time: it is one of those singularities that it takes time to think about
time; will it take us eternity to gain some understanding of eternity?
Markers, Clues, Helps, & Tools on the
Way
In a complex, long-standing, and delicate
area of debate, when direct, explicit evidence is lacking, methodological
considerations may be decisive. But our remarks do not deserve the title ‘On
Method’ which the needed chapter would bear; they will keep (perforce) a loose
and tentative character and only sketch what appears to be of interest to our
pursuits.
Lexical and syntactic features of biblical diction
were a mine for Oscar Cullmann and his generation. They made much of the use of
the same words for time and eternity (as we call them, that is human and divine
durations); of the contrast between καιρός and χρόνος, often combined with the antithesis between the Hebrew and Greek
minds; sometimes they drew an argument from the priority of the aspectual
viewpoint in the conjugation of verbs.
Then
came Barr, kesôd miššadday! We have been ... debarred from relying on pseudo-linguistics to
establish a scientific case. Etymology is no key to semantics; words have many
uses that may not be added to one another when we meet a given occurrence; the
symmetrical opposition of the Hebrew and the Greek mind-sets leads to an
artificial treatment of the evidence. Though controversies have not yet died
out among linguists, the idealistic, and often relativistic thesis that binds
closely together a specific language and a world-view commands little respect
among experts in the field.
On
the other hand, it should not be denied that the semantic field of a word
offers a kind of condensed memory of what has been said, using that word, on
countless occasions. The word remains a convenient peg or knot for opinions.
Consequently, the study of the frequent terms one finds in ‘talk’ on a subject
provides a convenient entry into common thinking on the subject. The arbitrary
nature of signs, as stressed by Ferdinand de
Saussure, does not negate the existence of some
relationships between language and the speakers’ life (it is not by mere chance
that the abundant vocabulary for snow, with many terms for the various
qualities of snow, is found among Eskimos, not Tuaregs). Even syntax and
declension may allow a glimpse at one way the human mind functions in ordinary experience
in its encounter with the world.
Several
studies since Cullmann and Barr have canvassed the data. It will suffice if we
summarise the conclusions. The main words in Hebrew seem to be ‘ēt, both
for specific occasions and segments of the process of time, mô’ēd for an appointed time (also zeman,
of Aramaic origin) and especially for feasts and sacred days, yôm and yāmîm, which Simon DeVries rightfully emphasised and studied, qedem for high antiquity, as also ‘ôlām,
very important for remote times, both past and future, and for a whole age, le‘ôlām
meaning ‘forever, always’, in a stronger (infinitely) or in a looser sense
(indefinitely); neִsaִh may
add the nuance of everlasting validity (from the metaphor of victory? It is
doubtful), ‘ad of perpetual continuity, as also does ’êtān. In biblical Greek καιρός and χρόνος share a large area of common
meaning (‘times and seasons’ should be taken as a hendiadys), and αἰών corresponds well with ‘ôlām. There is no clear difference
between αἰώνιος and the rare ἀΐδιος (from the same root as aἀεί); εἰς τὸ διηνεκές expresses the nuance of perpetuity.
Grosso modo,
one may say that time is predominantly mentioned in concrete situations, time
for such and such an action, or as a sum of events, but the ‘quantitative’ interest
is strong also: there is a distinct concern for chronology and the measurement
of time. Dates abound; let us remember the synchronisms of the Hebrew kings! In
Judaism, as the book of Jubilees and
the Qumran Rule
(1QS IX,12–14) demonstrate, calendar obsession becomes a major component of
piety. Why does Stephen insist so much on periods, on measured duration, in
Acts 7? Commentaries offer little help! Eternity (‘ôlām and αἰών) suggests remoteness, fullness, globality, what stands and stays...
The
priority of aspects, perfect/imperfect, in the verbal systems of both Hebrew
and Greek should not be pressed—there can be an over-reaction to older
presentations that related the tenses to past, present, and future. Of course, a Frenchman does not forget that he uses the same word temps for ‘time’ and for ‘tense’. At any
rate, both Hebrew and Greek offer many other ways (than tenses) of expressing
linear succession, chronological before and after.
Paul
Ricœur has pioneered another approach based on language, but not on vocabulary
or grammar. In an important article, he starts from literary
genres—from ‘acts of discourse’ (speech-acts, but not in the precise sense
of Austin and Searle’s theory). The first genre to consider is, obviously, narrative, but Ricœur warns against the
illusion of a purely ‘narrative theology’; he highlights the original combination with law that renders historical time essentially ethical: stories,
‘under the pressure of prescriptive material, become stories of the way of a
people with God from the viewpoint [sous
le signe] of obedience and disobedience’, and Old Testament historiography
is largely devoted to an account of Israel’s rebellions.
The amalgamation of narrative and law gives foundational events a
lasting quality, for they are not just past; the antecedence of law, being
beyond recall, saves narrative antecedence from ‘vanishing into the “just once”
and “never more”’. On that basis the people may entertain sure expectations about the
future, but prophecy breaks in and
cuts through legally-guaranteed yet fallacious assurance: this is effected by
the prophecies of woe, which come first, but, then, this reversal is itself
reversed by prophecies of weal, or rather of salvation (already Jeremiah and
Ezekiel, and above all Deutero-Isaiah).
As to the sense of time, prophecy implies the negative moment and
transition, and promotes newness as the future, giving birth to hope and to a
new relationship to the past as a treasure of unfulfilled potentialities. Wisdom writings go back to everyday
time, the time of daily life, but in union with what is ‘immemorial’, with the
claim of the original position (Pr. 8:2–32); what is immemorial for Job is the
condition of humankind, with its border-situations (in Jaspers’ sense), and ‘the everyday for Qohelet is the
everyday rediscovered by him who has looked straight in the face of death and
who has renounced the ambition to know’.
The so-called immemorial dimension meets with ethical antecedence
and confers upon events the status of universally valid archetypes (as in the
creation stories, nearer to myth than to saga). All these dimensions hymnic
time recapitulates, in the present time of worship and the presence of the
everlasting God—‘the model of biblical time rests on the polarity of narrative
and hymn, on the mediation between “telling a tale” and “praising God” by the
law and its temporal antecedence, by prophecy and its eschatological time, by wisdom
and its immemorial time.’
The philosopher’s inclinations do show in his selection of elements
and his dependence on some historico-critical hypotheses as well; nevertheless,
his insights are thought-provoking and sensitive to diversity.
First
of all and ultimately, we should find our guiding light in the content of Scripture, rather than its
form, linguistic or literary. Though there is little by way of direct, explicit
teaching on time and eternity, we should not surrender to pessimism. Some
passages at least touch upon the
issue and may give us valuable orientation.
The first ‘tablet’ of the Bible,
the Prologue of Genesis, bears signs of interest in the topic of time: one
cannot ignore the literary choice of the Week as the framework for the creation
panorama, the first word berēšît and the work of the fourth day with the role of the luminaries in
calendar determination. Does the text intend to teach the creation of time? As
a reflection of a divine archetype? Is the apparently unfinished seventh day equivalent
to the whole of human history? One meets more than once the meditation on the
contrast between the grass-like brevity of man, human life as a vanishing
vapour, and the sovereign permanence of God (Pss. 90 and 102, which Heb. 1
uses; in Is. 40 the divine permanence is attributed to the Word, which human
beings are called to hear).
The Lord’s mastery of time and ordering of times is
a central claim of the book of Daniel (2:21, cf. 7:12); it is also the great presupposition in Isaiah 40ff., when the
fulfilment of predictive prophecy is stressed as a powerful apologetic and
polemic argument—in 25:1 the theme of the plan of God already surfaces, made
long before the events take place. Qohelet, whom we have already mentioned,
develops in his own style parallel thoughts on the divine arrangements, with
their baffling and humbling diversity, the failure of our attempts at complete
systems, and yet the privileged relationship of the human heart to ‘ôlām
(3:11).
The function of memory and commemoration looms
large in both Testaments. One could also mention the Deuteronomic emphasis on today as the moment of decision or the remarkable phrase about understanding the times (1 Ch. 12:32, cf.
Est. 1:13). Micah 5:2 represents another intriguing verse: the origins (môִsā’ōt) of
the peaceful Ruler from Bethlehem
are said to be from of old, miqqedem, from the days of ‘ôlām.
Eternity? David’s time, several centuries before Micah’s (as most commentators
believe)? Creation (as André Feuillet has suggested, with a specific reference
to Gn. 3:15)?
In
the New Testament the phrase τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου (or τῶν καιρῶν) immediately catches our
attention, especially in the context of the Epistle to the Galatians where it
follows an argument based on the structure of Old Testament chronological
sequence (3:17) and illustrated by the setting of times and delays in a
father’s last will (4:2).
The scheme that governs the relationships between
epochs in biblical history provides the basis for typological exegesis, and it
is expressed in the remarkable clause: we are those εἰς οὓς τὰ τέλη τῶν αἰώνων
κατήντηκεν (1 Cor. 10:11). It may mean that the end and
goal of all ages past has dawned with Christ’s coming; it may mean that we stand at the intersection of two worlds, according to the apocalyptic pattern of the present evil αἰών and the coming, salvific one, a pattern which appears to
belong to the conceptual apparatus shared by all New Testament writers. One may
add the emphasis (especially in Hebrews) on the once-for-all event, ἐφάπαξ, and such a divine title as ‘King of the ages’ (1 Tim. 1:17).
We
grant that these pieces of evidence, though far from negligible, are not so
easy to exploit. There is room for much diversity of interpretation. Whatever
hints and indications they yield must be supplemented, therefore, by a more
global and theological use of Scripture.
Appreciable help comes from the
affinities which we may detect between given views of time/eternity and proven
components of biblical teaching: some truths of Revelation tend to favour some conceptions and render others less likely.
Along that path, one has to renounce a logic of hard and fast demonstration and
accept a logic of congruence,
pointing to what is fitting and suitable. Such a softer logic makes more room
for intuition, and is therefore more vulnerable to subjective distortions; yet
Scripture itself, with the ἔπρεπεν of Hebrews 2:10 (‘It behoved’), encourages explorers. (We are told
that even computer science has grown more and more interested in ‘fuzzy’ forms
of logic!) Arguments gain weight and strength through accumulation.
One
should thus consider the relationship of God and world, with the particular
position of humankind: most people have considered time and eternity to be the
modes of subsisting that belong to the Creator and his creatures. One should
ponder the part that history plays in biblical religion, a unique feature as
Mircea Eliade (and many others) put in bold relief.
Should
we draw on the insights or results of non-biblical philosophy and science? Many
snares lie hidden along the road; yet, in principle, since Special Revelation
does not occur in a vacuum but presupposes General Revelation (however obscured
it may be in its post-lapsarian state), since ‘all truth is God’s truth’, the
answer is yes, we should, if we can
... It is of some relevance that a cautious evaluation of the implications of
Special and General Relativity makes it difficult to maintain absolute time (at
least in the version of Newtonian time, the abstract frame of
co-ordinates), and also to deny that
time is an objective feature of the universe, irreversible (at least, again) at
the macroscopic level.
Philosophy is a choir of so many dissenting voices that it is
difficult to trust any! Paul Ricœur’s magnum
opus brilliantly brings out the constant double pull of the two decisive
references, to the cosmos and to the ‘soul’, which Aristotle and St. Augustine represent; Henri Bourgeois explicitly acknowledges his debt to Ricœur.
Conceding
some presumptive advantage to common sense is wise. Daily constraints, born of
common needs and intercourse, hold in check the most risky
speculations—whereas, in the hothouses of Academia, some plants grow into
monsters! It is salutary to remember that Friedrich Christoph Oetinger
advocated a new respect for the thinking of everyman: Inquisitio in sensum communem, Heerbrand, 1759. No crushing
contempt, therefore, of naïve imaginations of eternity, and no canonisation of
the same, either.
Time and Eternity Opposed
The ‘classical’ view of eternity, and it
entails the antithesis of time and eternity, is summarised in Boethius’
magnificent definition: interminabilis
vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio, ‘the entire, simultaneous and
perfect possession of an endless life’. St. Thomas Aquinas not only borrows it
but defends it against several possible criticisms. It is faithful to St.
Augustine, who stresses that ‘in divine eternity,
everything is wholly present, nothing passes’.
St. Augustine
clings to that understanding; Jean Mouroux quotes from his Enarratio in Psalmos, on divine years that fail not, therefore that
remain, therefore are one day, one now. This nunc stans, pure
present, totus simul, appears to be
the necessary implication of God’s fullness of being: He alone IS (the
influence of Ex. 3:14 LXX, ὁ ὤν, was foundational). It
follows from divine immutability, as St.
Thomas, especially, underlines. It agrees with the
main tendency of Greek philosophical thought, especially the Parmenidian line:
for Parmenides Being exists all at once, νῦν ἐστὶν ὁμοῦ πᾶν. On Apollo’s temple the inscription read EI, ‘Thou ART’. As to St. Augustine,
his neo-Platonic connection is well-known.
Eternity
so conceived contrasts with time. It is practically equivalent to
timelessness—and by that word it is designated, while statements like ‘God is outside time’, ‘God knows no before
and after’, ‘for God there is no past and future’, are commonly found. Meister
Eckhardt was emphatic: ‘Time prevents us from reaching the light. Nothing is more opposed to God than time.
Not only time, but attachment to time. Not only attachment, but the mere
contact of time. Not only the contact, but the mere scent or taste of time.’ Being temporal means lacking being, sliding into nothingness. Time,
Χρόνος, is identified with Κρόνος who devours his children: Tempus edax rerum, in
Ovid’s words.
Some
thinkers in the classical tradition do make efforts towards a more positive
valuation of time. Plato granted time the status of a ‘mobile image of permanent eternity’, which had, ultimately, to espouse the perfect figure of the circle:
the ancients were lost in wonder as they contemplated the cyclic regularity of
heavenly bodies, those divine living ones and rulers of time.
When St. Augustine interpreted
time as essentially bound to the life of the soul, distensio animi, he uncovered a positive feature, at least in our
modern eyes. J. Mouroux tries hard to maintain that eternity is the foundation of time as well as its
negation. Karl Barth goes even so far as to affirm that creation was effected
in time, and that God’s eternity
includes past and future as well as present—yet he really maintains the
classical view, since he rules out sequence, the succession of before and
after.
The
philological-exegetical argument for the classical view concentrates on a few
passages which already St. Augustine
mustered. The equivalence for God of a millennium and of a single day (Ps. 90
and 2 Pet. 3) is most impressive for followers of Aristotle, who defined time
as the measure of movement (Plotinus
criticised him on this count). Psalm 102:25–27 and its quotation by the Epistle
to the Hebrews (1:10–12) is brought forward, as is also John 8:58, with its
unexpected present tense, as if a past tense was not fit for deity, its
majestic I AM that echoes Exodus 3:14.
Scriptural
ways of speaking that seem to imply an infinite ‘ribbon’ of duration, together with the language of succession, are explained away as
inevitable anthropomorphisms, which unfortunately entrap popular imagination.
St. Thomas Aquinas recognises here the weakness of our human apprehensio, and he compares with
biblical statements on God’s ‘arms’ and ‘hands’.
J. Mouroux expressly deprives the prefix in fore-knowledge, predestination,
and the phrase ‘before the foundation of the world’ of any cognitive value (in
respect to the knowledge of reality as it is in
itself): they are only relevant to our feeble representation. He quotes St. Gregory of Nyssa to the effect that our minds can
only rise to the realisation of their inability to grasp what they seek.
The
foregoing considerations do carry some weight. Yet, it seems, not quite enough
to make the point. In each case, the conclusion of the argument goes a little
beyond what the evidence clearly warrants. That our measurements of time do not
apply to God does not require that he be outside temporality. That ‘his years’
do not come to an end (lō’ yittāmmû ‘are
not finished’, οὐκ ἐκλείψουσιν ‘do not fail
him’) does not entail that there is no before and after in his sight. I AM, in
itself, does not exclude ‘I was’. The ‘classical’ comment by Mouroux appears
thus to be in excess: ‘In God’s presence, times are as if they were not.’ Is this so?
Scripture,
indeed, uses anthropomorphic language; beyond that acknowledgement, I am ready
to confess that all ‘God-talk’ remains analogical. But drawing conclusions and
framing them in a univocal conceptual language (if such a language exists!) is
a delicate matter.
We are free, and obligated, to depart from a naïve-literal
understanding of Scripture’s ‘diction’ when Scripture itself indicates that we
should do so: it is clear enough for the ‘arm’ of the Lord and even for his
‘repenting’, hinnāִhēm; and the
hermeneutical task remains, then, of appropriating some positive analogical
moment. But is there any indication that God’s permanence and lordship over the
ages rules out the reality of succession for him?
In the absence of any
distinct encouragement in Scripture itself, it requires a bold move, it
involves a perilous step, if one deprives biblical phrases such as
‘predestination’ or ‘before the world began’ of most, if not all, of their
meaning. It is remarkable that some of the grand proclamations of divine
eternity expressly maintain the plurality and order of times, at least in their
wording: Jesus Christ the same yesterday,
today, and forever (Heb. 13:8); and the counterpart of the unveiling of
God’s ‘personal name’, ὁ ὢν καὶ ὀ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος—not
the simple ὁ ὤν (present participle) and
not ἔσται (future), to avoid the idea of God being still future and not yet
realised (Rev. 1:4).
The
dogmatic-philosophical argument has been the decisive one. From fullness of
being, from immutability and sovereignty, St.Augustine and those who have followed him,
until Mouroux and Paul Helm, have seen the consequence as so obvious that they have felt free to
‘de-anthropomorphise’ the ordinary language of Scripture.
We
ought to bow before the biblical authority of these themes. Immutability is not
first Platonic, it is Scriptural. There is a vibrant witness to that truth, and
not only in peripheral passages.
YHWH, no fickle deity, is never taken by surprise: in that sense,
there is nothing novel arising before his eyes. Everything is of him, through
him, and unto him. That basis of the classical case on eternity, we may not
underestimate. The audacious levity with which not a few contemporary theologians
dismiss it in a few words is appalling; or is it absent-mindedness?
Yet,
and not without fear and trembling, I dare say that I am not convinced. Is
there no other way to conceive of divine perfection? Though the classical
tradition extols the incomprehensibility of God—not seldom adorned with
Neo-Platonic hyperbole, not seldom verging on agnosticism—I cannot get rid of
the suspicion that it dictates to God what his immutable perfection must
entail. On the top of the metaphysical Everest of concepts like those of
being-itself and actus purus, reason
may grow dizzy from rarefied oxygen: what is the force of inference? I need
more Scriptural explicitness to draw the contours of mystery—lest the
mysteriousness of God’s mystery become an instrument in our hands.
J.
Mouroux is concerned, as we saw, to maintain that eternity is the foundation of
time and he knows the contrast with mythical religion. He deserves full credit
for his sensitivity and loyalty to the sacred text. But can he do justice to the truth he has perceived? A famous Orthodox
theologian—to hear from an author from another tradition—then the dean of the
Orthodox Institute of Theology in Paris,
Serge Boulgakoff, voiced the opposite conviction
in no uncertain terms, as he commented on the ‘most widespread opinion’ that
‘for God, time simply does not exist’:
First, the Bible—the divine account of God’s
relations with man, of the divine economy—represents its absolute negation.
God’s revelation to humanity and all the works of God in the world are represented
as occurring in time, for God as well as for man. Considering this merely as an
inevitable anthropomorphism, robbing it of its real character, means shattering
the whole contents of our faith and transforming God Creator Almighty, living,
loving and Saviour, into the motionless Absolute of Hinduism, in which all
concrete being is extinguished and the whole world becomes an illusion.
In a less expansive style, the nineteenth century
German theologian Isaak Dorner made a similar point, a more flexible
understanding of divine immutability must be introduced ‘if history and variety
in the world are not to be a semblance but reality and the real effect of God’. One could shorten the objection: if time does not exist for God, it
does not exist. God is the only Measure of truth and reality.
Beware
of hard logic in such matters! But if the warnings of Dorner and Boulgakoff are
only half-justified, there is already enough ground for serious concern. The
classical view of eternity may endanger the consistent reality of time,
especially the core and nucleus of historical time, that is irreversible
sequence. A conspicuous dimension of the Christian message may be put in
jeopardy, for Bruce Malina seems to suffer from myopia when he sees only a
resumption of initial conditions in the end of biblical history.
Omega does not equal Alpha! Lactantius showed a keener sense of
Christian newness vs. the common
‘Mediterranean’ depreciation of time, in his polemics against the Stoic writer
Lucilius: instead of taking the circular routes of the stars as the evidence of
their divinity, he claimed that ‘It is evident from this that they are not
gods, because it is not permitted them to deviate (exorbitare) from their prescribed orbits.’
A decisive reversal! However, not all fruitfully benefited from
this insight. History at least partially confirms suspicions. Although most
exponents of the classical conception of eternity and time did not carry the
logical tendency of their option to the disastrous end, one must note a
weakening of the biblical proclamation of the ἐφάπαξ and newness: in Scotus’ (and Osiander’s) eternal Christ, or in Karl Barth’s ‘Christological concentration’ which makes
Christ to be the really First Adam, or in Incarnationism generally.
Eternity
does provide the foundation of time as the common, unifying reference point,
but how can it found the decisive succession? If the ‘before and after’
relation is radically foreign to God? Ascribing to deity the metaphysical
archetype of created features calls for caution indeed; we may not locate in
God the duplicate (though considered to be primary, original) of all that we
see on earth, here below—certainly not creaturehood! Yet it seems proper to
look for the basis, on the Creator’s side, of essential positive features of
his works, and thus is temporal succession shown to be in biblical perspective.
Time and Eternity Allied
Sober considerations prompt us to look for
an alternative to pure timelessness, but not to go to the opposite extreme. As
it has swung away from the classical view, the pendulum, nowadays, has gone too
far in the other direction—to a virtual, or even actual, denial of eternity.
Oscar Cullmann had already come very near to making God subject to a law of
time above him (similar to the Zervan of Persian religion). Process theology
openly preaches a pitiful G(g)od, finite and correlative to the world he does
not master. Those who wish to grant God the ability to be surprised, or to
consummate his own being (unfulfilled, yet) through history, have to dodge the abundant testimony we have already rehearsed. Theirs
is an indefensible anthropomorphism, mixed with conformity to a late modern and
still romantic inversion of values (Umwertung):
the quasi worship of change and novelty.
I
am not suggesting that, after all, we sacrifice newness to immutability. On the
contrary, I am pleading against that ruinous dilemma. Scripture witnesses both to the Lord’s unchangeable
possession of his unbounded life and to the authentic renewal of his grace
every morning, a renewal that appears to hold a true meaning for God himself.
One
window on the mystery of that alliance may open if we consider the unique
privilege of the human being. Many writers have discerned that the creature
called ‘image of God’ should not be described as only temporal. In order to be conscious of time, he/she must in
some way or other rise above its flow. J. Moltmann highlighted the fact and
introduced a telling simile: ‘He is like a swimmer moving in the stream of
history—or, it may be, against the stream—but with his head out of the water in
order to get his bearings and above all to acquire a goal and a future.’ Even St. Thomas Aquinas affirms that ‘the human mind considered in
itself is, in a way, above time’ and is only subject to time per accidens.
Ecclesiastes’
fascinating theologoumenon (3:11) is
best understood along that line. ‘ôlām must have the same meaning as in verse 14 (therefore not ‘world’, a
late meaning, and textual correction is unnecessary); the whole passage
embodies a reflection on time. The 2 x 7 pairs of opposite actions
and passions recapitulate the baffling diversity of the times which God has
appointed—man is no more the master of his fate than he is the captain of his
soul. It is not the rule of chance, however.
There is a hidden beauty (v. 11a)
and perfection (v. 14b). And, then, the key element: if man feels baffled,
under the ‘inyān of verse 10, it is because he does not undergo
passively the succession of diverse times, God has placed in his heart (the
organ of thought and consciousness) the ‘ôlām —even though the human heart rises only partially above the stream and
cannot know the whole work of God, the Beauty, from beginning to end.
If
this reading does not wander too far from the sense, we may hope to get a
glimpse of eternity in our human relationship to time—in our awareness of time
and times, in memory, in anticipation and projection, in the synthesis of
moments that all this implies. Our
sharing in eternity (‘ôlām)
does not involve the abolition of the successive, but a unifying mastery over
it, a permanence through it. In human experience,
such a mastery and such a permanence are severely limited, far from extending
from beginning to end. Is not the suggestion warranted that God’s eternity
analogically means the unifying mastery, the unalterable permanence, not
partial but absolute?
The
relationship to projection (always
bound to memory) stirs the thought that the succession ‘before and after’ may
derive from action, the ability to
act. Maybe the priority of aspects in verbal conjugation could be called to
witness here! If there is the power to act, it generates a difference between before (intending, planning to act) and after (the agent has acted), between
‘imperfect’ and ‘perfect’. God’s sovereign activity may be seen as the source
of a kind of succession in his own life, towards which he is totally active; St. Thomas himself said
that we understand eternity more from the viewpoint of activity than of being, secundum operationem, magis quam secundum
esse.
The human creature is first passive: it undergoes a succession, in
the world, which God has determined; but then, as the Image-creature, the human
creature is active in turn, having a share in the power to act. May we bring
together temporality and passive determination and, then, eternity and active
determination?
The
other window would be a comparison with the other, the twin, mystery—of divine
Tri-Unity. Some parallel features may be observed, and since the mystery of the
Trinity is more fully documented in Scripture and has been more exactly
recognised in the Church, some help may come from that ‘model’.
Regarding
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Church resisted the temptation to sacrifice
the One to the Many and the Many to the One, the ruinous dilemma. Likewise, under the
blessing of biblical constraints, we strive to think both the unity of the
divine life, eternity, and the plurality of succession, together—not the one at
the expense of the other. Tradition has admitted a kinship between eternity and
oneness, and a kinship between temporality and plurality—with the degradation
of time in Neo-Platonic thought interpreted as a fall into the Multiple. Down
to Cornelius Van Til, apologetes have argued that Trinitarian plurality in the Godhead is
the foundation of true plurality in creation—a way of reasoning not unlike the
one we sketched in favour of succession.
Ἀσυγχύτως, no confusion, however!
If Trinity and eternity are twin mysteries, they are not identical twins!
Eternity qualifies the divine essence, which remains numerically one. The only
absolute difference in God—the Father is not at all the Son—is the difference
of Persons; it is possible because Persons are relations, constitutive,
subsisting relations.
The same may not be said of past, present, and future.
The mystery of divine life as both enduring and active should be approached
with other conceptual tools; these may still be in need not only of sharpening
or re-shaping, but of invention. Theological orthodoxy has recognised, however,
true, ‘objective’ diversity within the one essence, in ratione sed cum fundamento in re, such as may apply to divine eternity. The astute sixteenth century
commentator of the Summa John of
Saint-Thomas (Jean Poinsot, 1589–1644) did not hesitate to teach that ‘eternity
itself is virtually multiple’.
We
should exercise great caution regarding any correlation of Trinitarian order
and the before/after, πρότερον/ὕστερον
distinction. Nathan R. Wood boldly added the analogy of time to the Augustinian
list: time is one as God is one, he claimed; at the end, the whole of time will
have been future, and present, and past—in that order which corresponds to Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. But did he discern the right order (he denies the filioque)?
Though orthodox tradition
does suggest that the eternal Trinitarian processions are the foundations of
the missions of the Son and of the
Spirit, the current confusion of the economic Trinity with the immanent Trinity
is anathema to Evangelical theology—the underlying motive, a pernicious one,
being the divinisation of the man Jesus quâ
man.
In
biblical perspective, a mediating term operates between the mystery of God’s
own eternity, his fullness of being actively renewing itself, and that
combination of unity and diversity that obtains in time and between times,
historically: the doctrine of God’s plan.
He operates all things according to his Design, ἡ βουλὴ τοῦ θελήματος
αὐτοῦ, according to his project or purpose, his πρόθεσις.
The divine ordering of the temporal field implies two poles: the
institution of cosmic rhythms, which probably Paul has in mind in his Areopagus
address (Acts 17:26, ὁρίσας προστεταγμένους καιρούς)—setting
the stage—and the other pole of God’s fore-ordination of events and actual
interventions, the plot of the play.
As he reflects on the difficult, the
unsolved, problem of the unity of time, Paul Ricœur comes close to that
biblical insight—though he renounces it and prefers an aporetic stance: ‘There
does not exist a plot of all plots, which could be equal to the idea of one
humanity and one history.’ In a footnote, he even raises the question of a theology of history, and still denies a
‘universal super-plot’, with only the argument that we have four Gospels.
The
theme of God’s antecedent Plan, which looms large in Scripture, is one of the
most neglected ones in theology today. It should help us to think through the
relationships of time, times, and eternity. But it would not dissolve or dispel
mystery, for mystery is indeed involved: God’s eternal plan embraces our
sharing in eternity, our active determination within God’s, so that we may not
only wait but also speed the time
which the Father has set by his own authority (2 Pet. 3:12).
I
deliberately mention last this most enigmatic statement to remind ourselves
that we do not know the whole work of God from beginning to end—and should not
grieve over the good limitation our wise and gracious eternal God decided to
grant us. And so St. Augustine himself saw fit to remind his readers, in
his concluding words at the end of the eleventh book of his Confessions:
Qui intelligit, He who understands,
confiteatur
tibi, let
him bring praises to Thee,
et qui non intelligit, and he
who does not understand,
confiteatur tibi. let him bring praises to Thee.
O quam excelsus es, O how highly uplifted art Thou,
et humiles corde and those of humble hearts
sunt domus tua! are thine habitation!
Tu enim erigis For Thou liftest up
elisos, those
who are bowed down,
et non
cadunt, and they fall not,
quorum celsitudo tu es. those
whose high standing Thou art.
