Time&Eternity

Aspects of a Theology of Time 213
within the concept of the future. Essentially, the “new” is a relational concept.
Even if the “new” that breaks through is something radically different
from that which becomes old due to this breakthrough, it is nevertheless
unrecognizable as something new unless it is related to the “old.”
Before I discuss the theological significance of the category of the “new,”
I would like to remind the reader that the concept “new” in human consciousness
is indubitably filled with affective values. The values attached to
the new tend to be quite ambivalent. A simple example: On the one hand,
we are easily attracted by the new; who would reject the most recent computer
model as a gift? On the other hand, we also surround the old with an
aura of luxury, especially when it finds its way into the display window of
an antique shop. When the main concern is the utility value of an object,
we prefer the new. If the primary concern is aesthetic value, then the old is
frequently preferred. If the category of relevance is added, then this results
in combinations that can have significant consequences. When useful, new,
and relevant—as counterparts to old, aesthetic, and irrelevant—form a
coalition, there are consequences for the future. The future then risks being
understood unilaterally as the future in the futurist sense. Its adventist character
is suppressed. If theology is relegated to the sphere of aesthetics, of the
old and the irrelevant, and becomes something that is dragged along from
the past, then it loses its eschatological character, namely, the dimension
that addresses the “new” as advent.
Restricting the concept of the new to an extrapolatively understood future
robs the new of half of its nature, namely, the dimension of surprise. A
new that does not at least bear the possibility of surprise is not new. Surprise
thus makes clear the limits of a future understood only in an extrapolative
manner. Without surprise, the future is nothing other than an extended
past. It then dissolves in a confirmation of existing conditions, for better or
for worse. What it lacks is the dynamics brought about by the surprisingly
new. Another power must therefore be added to extrapolation, namely,
what we may call “intropolation,” that is, the readiness to accept the surprisingly
new. 155 Here, the “new” is also a judgment of the “old.” It belongs
to the characteristics of Christian theology, especially to eschatology, that
coming is placed before becoming, thereby profoundly provoking the (extrapolative)
future by means of the (intropolative) advent. It is “the eternal
newness, according to which the eternal God is always his own future,” 156
that makes this possible. This, again, is linked to the fact that God should
be understood as love: “God and love never grow old. Their being is and remains
one that is coming.” 157
How then are “new” and “old” held together? What does the continuity
between the “old” and the “new” look like in eschatology? Moltmann