Time&Eternity

212 chapter 4
the future, cannot be reconciled with the insights of modern science. Such a
model tends to restrict the concept of future. The future then appears as a
reservoir of possibilities that are successively exhausted, something which
ultimately must lead to a reduction of evolutionary possibilities and complexity,
unless God is viewed as the force that continually refills this reservoir
with new possibilities. This understanding of God, however, would approximate
a “god of the gaps” concept and lead to more problems than
solutions. Here, scientific theories suggest a different understanding: Future
does not mean a reduction of possibilities, but, instead, an increase in possibilities
and complexity. The dead end of linear conceptions of time can be
avoided only by thinking of time in terms of openness toward the future.
The possible conclusion, on which science and theology can agree, is in this
case: “Time is, in a privileged sense, future.” 152
The theological distinction between futurist and adventist future is
therefore pointless if it is tied to a one-sidedly linear understanding of time.
The difference between advent and future cannot be qualified by using different
directions of time. Within the framework of a relational understanding
of time, however, this differentiation remains relevant. Here, dependence
upon the past and dependence upon the future, or determinism and
indeterminism, are no longer contrasted in order to correlate future and determinism,
on the one hand, and advent and indeterminism, on the other.
Development that is dependent upon the past is not identical to deterministic
development, and events that are dependent upon the future are not
identical to indeterministic events. Indeterminism belongs to the whole of
development. It does not compete with “normal” regularities; it occurs
within the framework of the given. The adventist future no longer has to be
conceived of as a competing indeterminism; it can just as well represent an
emerging indeterminism. 153
A relational understanding of time accentuates the adventist future as
the mode of eschatological time, since, more than the futurist future, the
adventist future guarantees the openness of the two time centers—present
and future; and it presupposes plurality and interaction. Departing from
here, attention is drawn to the category of the new, which breaks through
and makes old that which exists.
See, everything has become new! 154 —
The Category of the New
It was shown (see pp. 93–97) that the central idea of the eschatological
difference between time and eternity lies in the category of the “new.” It is
only the “new” that makes the “old” old. The category of the “new” is
linked to the privileged position of the future and to the differentiation