Time&Eternity

Aspects of a Theology of Time 209
book, Negative Theologie der Zeit, philosopher Michael Theunissen chooses
a more direct path. He proceeds from the bold supposition that, when
speaking of the trinity of faith, love, and hope, Paul was thinking of the divine
Trinity. Theunissen then connects faith, as something that grows out of
the experience of fidelity, with the Father. Hope, which looks into the future,
belongs with the Son, as the one who is coming. Love, as the foundation,
is contemporized through the Spirit. Thus, Theunissen arrives at the
combinations of past/faith/Father, future/hope/Son, and present/love/Spirit.
It is interesting that, in this way, because it belongs to love as the greatest
of the three, the present takes a prominent position in Theunissen. He also
views the present as the “place” in which eternity is most readily understandable.
137 A philosophical justification for the primacy of the present is
provided by the thought that only the present exists, whereas the past no
longer exists, and the future does not-yet exist. Nevertheless, the question
then arises whether the present, as the infinitesimal point between past and
future, exists at all. Theunissen’s emphasis on the present is worth noting,
because many contemporary theologians tend to favor the future. 138
The question then arises, which mode of time should have priority, the
present or the future? Georg Picht suggested a thoughtful solution by linking
the three modalities of necessity, reality, and possibility to the three
modes of time. When the past is linked to necessity, the future to possibility,
and the present to reality, then the present must be understood as
something other than a “nothing” between past and future. It is given a
prominent position instead: “Past and future are related to (a possible)
present; necessity and possibility, to (possible) reality.” 139 It is therefore impossible
to describe the present merely as a point on a line. It must instead
be understood relationally, because “The present-ness within a communication
network constitutes reality. Outside of the multidimensionality of the
reference system in which reality appears to us, the word ‘present’ has no
possible meaning.” 140
This understanding of the present is consistent with the concept of the
light cone network. Time is both the relation of the many and the unity of
the whole. It is “a multidimensional, open structure with mobile parameters”
and, as such, “the universal horizon of the phenomenality of phenomena
as such.” 141 This temporal structure that is held together by the present
as the mode of reality is transcended, however, by the possibility of that
which can be true, 142 so that all human thought moves within the difference
of two forms of one and the same time that are not reducible to each other.
143 Whenever the question of possibility is asked, we get in touch with the
future. Even if the present as reference point is constitutive, an understanding
of time that takes seriously the modality of possibility cannot, for this