Time&Eternity

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the midst of time. It is the attempt to speak of time as relationship creating,
relational, and dynamic.
The ontological model of differentiation largely avoids the criticism of
modern physics because its center—the contrast of time and eternity—is
not relevant to science. The problematization of past, future, and present in
Augustine nevertheless gives this model of differentiation a greater proximity
to modern physics than the quantitative model possesses. The three times
of Augustine—the present of the past, the present of the present, and the
present of the future—have more in common with the light cone grid than
with Cullmann’s straight line.
A Relational Understanding of Time
If, during the course of this study, the search for relationality has moved
more and more to the center, this should not imply that there has never
been a relational understanding of time in the history of theology. In Space,
Time and Incarnation, Thomas F. Torrance has indicated that both relational
and static models have figured in the world of theological concepts. He
looks at parts of the history of theology from the point of view of these two
competing concepts of space and time: the so-called container model,
which goes back to Aristotle, and the more Platonic, relational model. 9 Torrance
himself prefers the relational model. While patristic and Reformed 10
theology proceeded from a relational concept of space, Lutheran theology
received the container model, allied itself with the Newtonian understanding
of space, time, and God, and thus burdened all of modern Protestant
theology with numerous problems that led, above all, to deism and the dualism
of space–matter, God–World, and spirit–nature. According to Torrance,
this development resulted in objectivist, rigid, and closed theological
frameworks. 11
Following the definitive collapse of the container model in the wake of
the theories of relativity, Torrance sees the alternative in the conceptual integration
of ontological and dynamic starting points. On the one hand, as the
transcendent Creator, God does not have a spatial or temporal relationship
to the world. On the other hand, because the creation has a relationship as
object to God, who is its preserver, God cannot be imagined without space
and time as the relation continuum. Space and time are the medium of the
presence and the action of God. 12 For this reason, God does not dissolve
into space and time, but rather space and time, as created forms of rationality,
are to be strictly distinguished from the eternal rationality of God. 13
Here, Torrance allies himself with the Barthian tradition, but he also recognizes
the difficulty of this model, namely, that God ultimately remains completely
incomprehensible. In other words, ultimately the distinction within