Time&Eternity

Aspects of a Theology of Time 185
Before I address the concept of relationality in more detail, I shall return
again to the three differentiating models that were discussed in chapter 2. I
criticized the theological model centered on the quantitative difference of
time and eternity because, among other things, it is more a combination of
belief in progress and a popular understanding of Newton’s notion of absolute
time than it is an interpretation of biblical views of time. A linear
time arrow model that is based on the Christ event as the center of time, as
described by Cullmann, is static in the sense of a uniform mechanical
movement, despite the apparent dynamism of the arrow. It became clear already
in the second chapter that such a concept is not communicative, it
cannot act to create relationships, and it does not create a relationship to
the Other. Furthermore, it now becomes clear that it also represents an inappropriate
oversimplification from a scientific viewpoint. It represents a
naïve conception, for it does not at all discuss questions about a beginning
and end of time—i.e., the questions of singularities—and because it
specifies a demarcation line, as the center of time, to which all points of the
timeline relate. In view of the model of the light cone (cf. pp. 145–49), this
linear description denies the existence of spacelike events, since it considers
a common causality of all events. It thereby also denies the finite nature of
the speed of light, since the spacelike events disappear only when the light
cone is completely opened, that is, when the speed of light is infinite. 6 The
quantitative model therefore does not do justice to the complexity of spacetime.
The fact that the conception of time inherent in the quantitative
model roughly coincides with general human experience is no reason to disregard
this criticism. To be sure, the idea of the fully opened light cone
functions in everyday life; but in light of the knowledge gained in chapter 3,
Russell’s remark, that one is nevertheless dealing with an artificial product,
is easy to understand:
Thus the concept of the present as demarcating the past from the future is an artifact,
an anthropomorphic simplification abstracted from the objective complexity of
spacetime. In reality, there is no present, only an infinite set of lightcones, events
and worldlines, a checkerboard of variously overlapping causal and acausal regimes,
crisscrossing endlessly throughout spacetime. 7
For this reason, it is certainly correct to continue searching for multitemporal
8 models. At the same time, this is an indirect confirmation of the
eschatological model of differentiation, because this model was the only one
of the three models considered that works concretely with multi-temporality
when distinguishing old and new time. Here then, one is not dealing
with the construction of a time arrow that emanates from a center of time,
but rather, above all, with the question of the presence of the end of time in