Time&Eternity

220 chapter 4
But how can something not yet exist and yet already exist? Is this not a paradox
that one simply has to accept, unless, for the sake of intellectual honesty,
one merely rejects it altogether?
One way out would be to declare that this dilemma is only an apparent
contradiction. Ratschow chooses this solution when he presents the view
that the paradoxical relation of the “already” and the “not-yet” has in fact
nothing to do with temporal categories. In his opinion, the issue instead
concerns the relationship of hiddenness and clarity. 183 Ratschow thus attempts
to circumvent aspects of time by making eschatology a question of
hiddenness and unveiled emergence. This combination is distinguished
from the concepts of promise and fulfillment inasmuch as that which is
promised actually already exists. The End Time has dawned, but is hidden.
The obvious strength of this approach consists in detemporalizing the problems
by elevating them beyond a merely linear understanding of time without
thus succumbing to an existential reduction, that is, an exclusive focus
on the moment of individual existence. Furthermore, this also takes into account
the insight that time cannot simply be abstracted, but instead has to
be seen as “time for something.” The weakness of this approach, however, is
its fading out of history and history’s significance. The hidden God, whose
unveiled emergence must be awaited, seems to be a God who has largely
been removed from history. It is also difficult to see how an “already” and a
“not-yet” understood in this way can become relevant for shaping the
world. If everything already exists and simply awaits its unveiling, then
what could I still contribute, except perhaps the longing for my own death?
With regard to a theology of time, Ratschow does not quite live up to the
standards that he himself previously set. 184
Moltmann’s eschatological concept in The Coming of God offers an alternative
to this “unhistoricalness” in Ratschow. Without getting entangled in
either individual eschatology or universal-historical eschatology, Moltmann
sees in the coming God a possibility for conceiving both, i.e., of not having
to sacrifice either earth for heaven or heaven for earth. 185 History does not
become universal history; instead, it becomes a place of struggle and of messianic
hope. For this reason, he also cannot—as Ratschow does—dismiss
chiliasm as an idea that misses the basic concept of Christian eschatological
thought. 186 Properly understood, chiliasm does both: It conceives of and anticipates
crises of an apocalyptic nature, and it calls for responsibility for the
world. Moltmann therefore also rejects the notion of a “final Big Bang” and
speaks instead of a chiliastic eschatology of transition. This model has
strengths in that it mercilessly criticizes various types of millenarianism by
claiming responsibility for the world, precisely in the face of the eschaton,
and by overcoming individualistic salvation by means of social physicality. 187