Time&Eternity

Aspects of a Theology of Time 223
Augustine, time is therefore oriented from the future toward the past. It is
characterized as irreversible. This time arrow can evidently be distinguished
in its direction from the time arrow that belongs to thermodynamics (see
pp. 166–68), which is oriented from the past toward the future. Although
Moltmann refers to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, he does not make
this difference a topic of discussion. 190 His reception of scientific concepts
seems somewhat strange when he says: “Reversible time is a kind of timeless
time, for this form of time is itself timeless, like Newton’s absolute time.” 191
As shown in chapter 3, reversible time is not “timeless” at all; reversibility of
time does not mean that t = 0, but rather that +t and –t yield the same result.
Furthermore, the meaning of the relation of space and time (see pp.
140–49) to each other does not appear to be taken seriously when Moltmann
asserts that creation begins in time and will be consummated in
space. 192 Whereas the space of creation is simultaneously outside and inside
God, 193 time remains without a direct relation to God. A type of eternity
does, in fact, stand in relation to time, but time does not of itself have a relation
to eternity; temporality reflects instead the absence of God. 194 The
“source” of time is not eternity; instead, the future—understood as advent,
not as future 195 —is the transcendental possibility of time per se and the unity
of time. 196
In contrast, in another passage, Moltmann says that, at the moment of
origin, time emerged from eternity. 197 Temporal creation is an open system
(cf. pp. 166–72). The “essence” of its time is future, but the “constituting
category” of this time is the present. Precisely where the difference between
the essence and source of time and its constitutive category lies remains incomprehensible.
Thus, the primacy of the future and the primacy of the
present seem to compete with each other. Moltmann needs the primacy of
the future for establishing the eschatological “time arrow” and the primacy
of the present for anchoring eternity in existence. Because future and past
are categories of nonexistence—the future is not yet and the past is no
longer—only the present remains as the category of existence and of eternity
in time. The “now” of the present “is ‘the event of eternity in Being.’” 198
Moltmann can also say of the Sabbath, however, that it is “the dynamic
presence of eternity in time” 199 and that, in the sabbatical rhythm, time is
regenerated out of the presence of eternity. In the rhythm of the Sabbath,
“interruptions of ‘time’s flow,’ earthly creation—human beings, animals
and the earth—vibrate in the cosmic liturgy of eternity.” 200 How this is
compatible with temporality as the reflection of God’s absence remains a
mystery. Then again, Moltmann emphasizes that the unity of eternity and
time does not lie in an eternal present, but instead in the creative Word of
God, 201 which, in turn, is not necessarily consistent with the statement that