Time&Eternity

210 chapter 4
reason, be bent back onto an eternal present. One can conclude from this
that an appropriate understanding of time has, so to speak, two centers—
present and future—and therefore must always be interested in openness.
In his account of the background of eschatological thought in the twentieth
century, Ratschow identifies “a deep restructuring in the understanding
of time” as the main motif. 144 This restructuring, which already began
during the Age of Enlightenment, went in the direction of an orientation
toward the future and took shape in a belief in progress that was influential
in virtually all areas of life: “Development becomes the key that fits all
locks.” 145 Wherever the enthusiasm for progress grew, tradition—and therefore
even the past—lost its importance. The present also forfeited some of
its significance by falling victim to the search for usable development opportunities
for the future. This process was closely tied to the upswing in
science and technology.
The elaboration of the primacy of the future is quite visible in Western
philosophy during the twentieth century. Heidegger, Bloch, and Whitehead
are only three of the philosophers who also strongly influenced the eschatological
thinking of Pannenberg and Moltmann. 146
Amidst all the enthusiasm about the future, an important distinction in
the concept of the future should not be neglected. On the one hand, future
can be understood as that which results from the past and the present—
thus, as an extrapolation from that which exists, that is, a prediction that
can be more or less reliable. This idea forms the basis for the belief in
progress. If the future were not that which is set free from existing possibilities
and which can also be optimized by skillful exploitation of precisely
these possibilities, then the striving for progress and world improvement
would be without meaning. On the other hand, future can be understood
as that which comes towards me “from what is ahead.” Time flows, then, as
imagined by Augustine: from the future, through the unextended present,
into the past. 147 An understanding of time defined in such a manner is particularly
suitable for expressing the future’s own trait of unpredictability.
While purely deterministic thinking must hold to the first-mentioned understanding
(that of becoming), a more fatalistically oriented feel for life
can take refuge in the second understanding (that of coming), unless it
wishes to understand the future as the advent of the faithful God, as Moltmann
does. 148
Since these two conceptions of the future point in precisely opposite directions,
they seem at first to be irreconcilable. Which of the two variants is
then the more appropriate? It looks as if the first concept of the future is favored
strongly by a world marked by technology and feasibility: What
comes is the result of more or less well-used, actual possibilities. At first