Time&Eternity

74 chapter 2
promising title Das Zeitverständnis des Neuen Testaments (The Understanding
of Time in the New Testament), can be consulted only with reservations,
however. 89 I will instead refer to a later essay 90 by the same author.
Delling starts from the basic concept of time as a natural condition.
Along with Oscar Cullmann, he sees New Testament time completely in
light of the Christ event. “Initially, time runs toward the Christ event. This
is the absolute center of meaning and core of time.” 91 Accordingly, a distinction
is made between the time that moves toward Christ and the time that
comes from the Christ event. But this differentiation does not result in a
true division of time, for, even if the Christ event is final, unique, and an eschatological
fulfillment of time, 92 it is true that: “The saving action of God
is one in past, present, and future, in anticipation, fulfillment, and consummation.”
93 For the primitive Church, the Christ event does not become an
event in the past, but rather remains present, a “now event” in which the
Church participates. 94 This does not prevent the Church from portraying
the Jesus event as a historical event in time and space, however. In the end, it
is the identity of the Crucified and Exalted One that does not make the
present time of Christians “the time ‘after Christ’ in the chronological sense,
but rather the time of Christ, the time that is conditioned by the crucified
and exalted Christ.” 95 The time of Christ is the End Time. Between Easter
and the final consummation, however, time is characterized, particularly in
Pauline thought, by “a factually grounded simultaneity” 96 of the “already”
and the “not-yet.” Christians have already been liberated from the power of
sin, but they still stand “in the struggle between self-will and the Holy Spirit.”
97 Even in the realized eschatology of the Gospel of John, the difference
between the present time of grace and the future time of consummation is
preserved. 98 Life that is lived in the not-yet of final consummation is at the
same time marked by the certainty of the already of God’s unique and final
act of salvation. If this is a correct portrayal of Christian life, waiting for the
parousia does not pose a problem. Martin Werner’s theory that the delay of
the parousia was the cause for the development of dogmas in the early
church can therefore be criticized. 99
In the New Testament, time is set teleologically by God. God is the One
acting in time; a timeless essence is not ascribed to God. For Christ, an eternal
being in God prior to his becoming human is suggested. Again, following
Cullmann, Delling does not consider the New Testament’s notion of
eternity to have been pondered philosophically, but rather describes it as
based upon linear, unlimited time. 100 Nevertheless, God is conceived as the
one who is superior to time and who controls it. 101 For the person who is
drawn into the salvation event, time is the possibility granted by God for
the purpose of realizing a new existence based on salvation. 102 A constitutive