Time&Eternity

No Concept of Time without Narrated Time 41
The passages cited here do not provide a definitive verdict on the question
of whether they represent an expression of the trivialization of the relationship
between time and eternity or a carefully considered theological position.
However, this stanza is not an isolated case. In a hymn of springtime,
for example, it says that we small creatures stand before greatness and
humbly see eternity in all things. 200
Time appears to swell, and even to absorb eternity into itself. The sovereign
privilege of interpreting life in time is something that has apparently
been lost from eternity. One might even question whether a reversal in correlations
has taken place. If, in the past, eternity was the authority to which
time had to answer, then now, eternity is forced to give an account, before
the forum of time, of what it is capable of performing.
From this perspective, the words bis ich dich nach dieser Zeit lieb und lob
in Ewigkeit (until, after this time, I will love and praise you in eternity) by
Paul Gerhardt appear to belong to a completely different world. An eternity
seems to lie between his view of the world and the enthusiasm of Jonas Jonson:
Himmel på jorden, här får vi leva,
älska och ge, burna av glädje .l.l.
Öva er barn, att leva i Anden,
himlen är här, evig i tiden! 201
Here, there is little to remind us of the endless, qualitative difference between
eternity and time for which dialectical theology had once argued. 202
It remains to be asked: What was and is the function of the rhetoric regarding
eternity? And how does God relate to time and eternity?
“ihm gehört der Raum, die Zeit, sein ist auch
die Ewigkeit” 203 —Space, Time, and Eternity
Before turning to the question of the relationship of God to time, I will
look at the relationships between space, time, and eternity. First, one notices
that the combination of time and space occurs almost exclusively in
hymns of the twentieth century. 204 It does not occur at all in GL. Ps90
speaks repeatedly of space and frequently of time, but it does not combine
the two concepts. 205
In Swedish, there are two terms for space, namely, rum, which means
space and room, and, rymd, which refers to space and outer space. This corresponds
more or less to the use of place and space in the two Englishlanguage
books. Rymd is used primarily in hymns that were either written
between 1960 and 1984 or revised during the same period to include the
word rymd. 206 What was originally only an earthly and inner-temporal per-