Time&Eternity

Biblical and Theological Conceptions of Time 95
profane understanding of time. 263 Thus, in the final analysis, the accusation
of dualism does not stick, and one must instead speak of a duality. The
scheme, which is basically hierarchical, is repeatedly eclipsed by a complementary
understanding in which the lower is the distinct condition for the
possibility of the higher.
In the manner of existentialist theology, the eternity of God is understood
in light of the experience of time, not merely of physical time, but
rather via eminentiae in light of time understood as the event of the free selfcommunication
of God. God is nontemporal, but God experiences history
in the Other of the world. 264 God makes divine eternity the true meaning of
time. Time is separate from eternity, but eternity is not actually separate
from time, i.e., eternity can include the temporal, but not vice versa. The
latter does not work because time is constituted by the loving self-communication
of God to God’s Other. 265 Rahner does not see an actual difference
between time and history because, for him, time shows up only as human
history.
Here, the eschatological time difference remains implicit, so to speak. It
is true that Rahner speaks of kairos and ephapax, 266 but, strangely enough,
he does not mention the eschatological problem of the “already” and the
“not-yet” within the context of his theological remarks on the concept of
time. The “already” of consummation as a result of God’s self-communication
in the Incarnation seems curiously “timeless”; it more closely resembles
an abstract principle than it does an event. This may well be due to the fact
that Rahner does not really understand eschatology in light of the future,
but rather primarily from statements of the past that are interpreted in the
present. He does indeed emphasize that Christian eschatology “really bears
on the future, that which is still to come, in a very ordinary, empirical sense
of the word time” and may not be de-eschatologized into “something that
takes place here and now in the existence of each individual and in the decision
he takes here and now.” 267 Then, however, Rahner identifies “a forward-looking
draft of existence oriented toward the fulfillment of the end
of time” 268 as the source of revelation of the eschata. Accordingly, the future
occurs less as the breakthrough of the new than as an extrapolation of the
consummation that has already been granted: “[B]iblical eschatology must
always be read as an assertion based on the revealed present and pointing
towards the genuine future, but not as an assertion pointing back from an
anticipated future into the present. To extrapolate from the present into the
future is eschatology, to interpolate from the future into the present is apocalyptic.”
269 This, however, puts the eschatological discontinuity in danger of
complete dissolution. It is therefore not surprising that Rahner can call eternity
the “fruit of time” and that, in the context of Johannine eschatology,