Time&Eternity

92 chapter 2
scendent, the connectedness of time and eternity, and the experience of
eternity. 244 Apart from such mystical moments—he may have been thinking
of the vision of Ostia 245 —Augustine does not anticipate a future fulfillment
of time in eternity: “For Augustine, in human history, a person always
remains the same distance from God’s eternity.” 246 Thus, for Augustine, the
essential difference between eternity and time continues to be the prevailing
one. A dynamic relationship of the two to each other, which may entail a relationship
to eternity that has implications for the concrete shaping of one’s
time, remains out of question. For this reason, Duchrow and Dalferth have
correctly concluded that nature and the world are left to their own devices.
If de-temporalization is the goal of life, questions regarding the concrete
shaping of time lose their urgency. 247
The strength of the ontological distinction between time and eternity
lies in its prevention of an idolization of time, by qualifying time as being
created vis-à-vis uncreated eternity, and in its presentation of God’s eternity
as the condition for the possibility of time. Whether the ontological distinction
must necessarily lead to a description of time as nothing more than a
deficient mode of being, however, remains questionable. At any rate, the
ontological distinction is not sufficient for a theological reflection that takes
seriously the specific eschatological tension between the already and the
not-yet observed in the New Testament. Above all, it does not suffice when
the “already” is taken to imply more than merely a momentary glimpse into
eternity in the praesens attentio of the individual soul, when this “already,”
for instance, is taken to have consequences for how the person in whom this
soul resides relates to other humans and to the world.
The ontological difference between time and eternity causes difficulties
not only for anthropology. There are also problems with respect to Christology:
Given the ontological difference, is it conceivable that the Incarnation
introduces something qualitatively new, or does the static nature of the ontological
difference prohibit such dynamics? If the Incarnation also means
in-temporization of the eternal, does it then alter the ontological distinction?
Would it not then be necessary to modify, in a relational direction, the
notion of God’s immutability, absoluteness, and impassibility that is implied
by the ontological distinction? Thus, the that of the ontological distinction
presses toward the how, and not primarily toward the how of the
difference between time and eternity, but rather, and above all, toward the
how of the relationship between the two. The merely negative other seeks a
positive other.