Time&Eternity

Biblical and Theological Conceptions of Time 117
a consistent assignment of the persons of the Trinity and of the temporal relationships.
In order to create a sufficient basis for further reflections in chapter 4,
the Trinitarian-theological outlook had to be expanded by an anthropological
perspective. This occurred in light of the phenomenon of death, where
time and eternity indeed confront each other most clearly, but where, simultaneously,
that which holds the two together, namely, relation, experiences
its deepest crisis.
Until now, questions of definition related to the concepts of time and
eternity have hardly been addressed. I chose this path consciously, in order
not to limit myself from the very beginning by using the conceptual definitions
of classical philosophy, for example. I did not want to offer definitions
of the concepts per se, but rather, I made the attempt to start from relationality.
The ensuing process led to the emergent portrayal of eternity as the
Other of time. Until now, this way of talking has admittedly been rather
imprecise. Tentatively, I will now provide some further clarification.
Speaking of the Other does not imply a negative, but rather a positive
Other. It is about a basic differentiation having simultaneous relatedness.
This, in turn, suggests that one is dealing with an effective Other, that is,
one is not concerned with a negative abstract, but with a positive concrete.
Speaking of the Other may assist us in escaping the pressure of a static dualism,
without our simultaneously falling into the other extreme, namely,
into complete relativism. The static exclusivity of a Platonic or Cartesian
dualism can be overcome without thereby forfeiting the clear possibilities
for differentiation. In other words: Duality—yes; ontological statics—no. It
appears that a static dualism of res cogitans and res extensa is by no means insurmountable
if Augustine could already locate time as extension [distentio]
in the mind.
The concept of the Other should help us to achieve a dynamic methodology
that deals with relation and movement. The focus of interest is thereby
shifted from the essence of the concepts to their relation to one another,
from the ontological status to the dynamic nature of the interaction, from a
subject-object relation to a subject-subject relation. As things now stand,
the lack of clarity in the concept of the Other appears to be the price that
must be paid for achieving this dynamism.
When I look back to the insights that we have gained until now and forward
to the topics in the next chapter, I see a certain confirmation of my
own reflections in Emmanuel Lévinas. In Time and the Other, 415 Lévinas
does not describe time as a degradation of eternity, “but as the relationship
to that which—of itself unassimilable, absolutely other—would not allow