Time&Eternity

Aspects of a Theology of Time 197
mobile, while simultaneously adhering to Karl Barth’s talk of eternity as
“pure duration,” are interesting. The definition of time as the home that
God creates in divine eternity for that which is different from God goes beyond
the three differentiating models of time and eternity that are outlined
in chapter 2. It does not allow time to dissolve into space, even if it is very
close to spatial categories. It is also consistent with the biblical description
of the nature of God as love, if love is understood as that which, in its
essence, receives the Other. The link of eschatology to the role of the Spirit
of bringing otherness and novelty to the Father and the Son is also interesting.
61 At the same time, this connection elucidates, once again, the insurmountable
difficulty of all attempts to link a dynamic and relational timeeternity
understanding to the differentiation of the Trinitarian persons. If
Dalferth allocated the eschatological perspective to the Son, 62 then Jenson is
just as certain of his position when he links eschatology to the Spirit. While
the role of the Son remains diffuse in Jenson, in Ted Peters, it is the Spirit
that has a very weak profile. Peter’s Trinity instead resembles a duality that is
held together by the Spirit as a connecting link, 63 a difficulty that Peters
shares with all approaches that allocate to the Spirit the role of the unifier
within the Trinity.
One cannot avoid the impression that all of these Trinitarian models include
a relatively large portion of arbitrary speculation. The problems
shown on p. 109 have not yet been solved. In what is now a broader perspective,
we can see that a Trinitarian understanding of God certainly corresponds
to the paradigm that prefers relationality and thus also has a fixed
place within the framework of a study that deals with a relational theology
of time in the perspective of modern science; yet, it may not be able to explain
such a theology. The attempt to develop the most precise Trinitarian
models possible, in order to use them to explain the relationship of God,
time, and eternity, proves not to be the most fruitful path.
Nevertheless, the explicit articulation of a Trinitarian concept of God
can make an important contribution to the dialogue between science and
theology by offering a beneficial contrast to the one-dimensionality of the
Newtonian concept of God. The newly awakened interest in Trinitarian
theology also clearly shows what may appear to be self-evident to theologians,
but what is not at all so familiar to many scientists and laypersons,
namely: Not only does science change and advance in knowledge; theology
does the same thing. At the beginning of his book God and the New Physics,
Paul Davies supports the opinion that science offers a more certain path to
God than does religion; and Stephen Hawking concludes A Brief History of
Time with the remark that, if we discover a complete theory, “then we
would know the mind of God.” In both books, God remains even more ab-