Time&Eternity

96 chapter 2
which he understands as “in-existence of eternity in time,” “eternity
emerges out of time.” 270
Given this method of extrapolation, the question arises: Can there be
anything really new? How much innovation can be expected in this framework?
Well, Rahner expects the dissolution of time, because the final realization
of the consummation that has already happened cannot take place
on this time axis; 271 and he anticipates the individual event of consummation
in human death, by means of which ultimate consummation, as Philip
Geister expresses it, “is gradually ‘ratified.’” 272 “Eschatological consummation
appears to be like a cosmic puzzle into which a new part is added every
time a person dies, until finally it is completed—at the end of time and the
cosmos.” 273 Later, I will return to alternative ways of understanding death.
In the meantime, it should suffice here to say that Rahner’s implicit eschatological
time difference definitely overcomes a static dualism, but its way of
juxtaposing time and eternity largely remains hostage to an anthropocentric
and individualistic approach. 274
Wolfhart Pannenberg’s method is more explicitly eschatological. Pannenberg
repeatedly stresses that God’s eternity enters time along with the
eschatological future and, from there, is creatively present to every temporal
thing that precedes this future. 275 This creative presence means that that
which exists in time—based on that which will emerge as its true identity at
the end of time and history—is already now participating in eternity. 276 An
event that has not yet occurred thus determines the present as if it were already
a historical fact. That which will not fully occur until the eschatological
future is already manifest: “the truth of things that will be revealed in the
future, their true essence that will come to light in the eschaton, generally
defines already their present existence.” 277 How is this possible? Pannenberg
does not provide a direct explanation. The biblical reference that he cites
(“.l.l. what we will be has not yet been revealed,” 1 John 3:2) 278 admittedly
emphasizes the “not-yet,” but it says nothing about the powerful “already”
that is related to participation in eternity. Instead, Pannenberg resorts to the
historical past by saying that only in the history of Jesus of Nazareth did the
eschatological future, and, with it, the eternity of God, actually enter into
the historical present. 279 Pannenberg offers contradictory information regarding
the degree of discontinuity between that which is and that which is
to come. On the one hand, the eschatological future faces present reality,
which should already be conceived as its own eschatological manifestation
in the process of becoming, “not as a totally different reality.” 280 On the other
hand, because of sin, the participation of created beings in the eternity of
God is “possible, however, only on the condition of a radical change.” 281
Like Rahner, Pannenberg also does not make use of the terminology of