Time&Eternity

[2]
Biblical and Theological
Conceptions of Time
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The second chapter of this study is devoted to an examination of the
complex meaning inherent in “time” in biblical and theological perspectives.
In the course of reflection, a reference framework will be developed
for problems and questions that will then be revisited—following an excursion
into the world of natural scientific models of time in chapter 3—in the
concluding fourth chapter. The question of time as a relational concept, as
discussed in chapter 1, will guide my research.
The results of the study of time concepts in the Bible are summarized in
theses on pp. 80–81. I believe two features of the biblical conception of time
are most essential. First, there is the multilayered presence of time within
the context of a simultaneous absence of an antithesis between time and
eternity. Second, there is the primacy of the fullness of time in terms of its
content over and against the formal designation of time.
The theological considerations of time are oriented toward neither a history
of theology nor a history of dogma, because, after all, one cannot speak
of a dogma of time in the proper sense. Instead, the relationship of the theological
concepts of God, time, eternity, and death is examined with respect
to its inherent potential for relationality. My argument for a relational
rather than an antithetical relationship of time to God/eternity is supported
by the depiction of three different ways of distinguishing between time and
eternity. Based on this analysis, I will suggest that, although a time-eternity
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