Time&Eternity

Biblical and Theological Conceptions of Time 77
that presuppose the futurity of God’s reign and those that proclaim its presence
appear to contradict each other. Linnemann wants to resolve this contradiction
not by playing down the presence of God’s reign, as she believes
is done in Hans Conzelmann, Ernst Fuchs, Günther Bornkamm, and
Kümmel. 112 Rather, influenced by Martin Heidegger and Fuchs, she believes
that the aporia of the juxtaposition of the present and future qualities
of God’s reign are to be resolved in the concept of time itself. For a traditional
concept of time, which allows only for continual, ongoing time, present
and future reigns of God cannot be conceived of simultaneously. On
the other hand, an understanding of time “as time for, being with, as present”
113 permits a correspondence between relating and withdrawing, between
granting and withholding, between present and future. 114 Wherever
the traditional concept of time acts in a way that is excluding, the more
original understanding of time, as “time for,” creates new correlations.
Thus, Jesus encountered “the concept [of the basileia tou theou] in a conceptual
framework that implied the vulgar, improper concept of time and related
it to an understanding of time that conceived of time more originally as
time to.” 115 Linnemann therefore thinks that the concept of God’s reign
proves to be “the split switch that connects the track of traditional Jewish
eschatology to the path of Jesus’ specific announcement of time.” 116
Behind this distinction of time concepts, which Linnemann sees in Jesus’
proclamation, one can of course recognize the difference between
chronos and kairos. Whether the chronological concept of time should be
seen as improper and exclusive while the kairological concept is seen as original
and integrative, as Linnemann seems to suggest, remains questionable,
however. In spite of this objection, Linnemann’s attempt to provide an integrative
account of Jesus’ understanding of time seems to be an interesting
alternative to antithetical frameworks, such as those found in Fuchs.
In the debate with Cullmann, Fuchs is concerned (in 1949) with presenting
Christ as the end of history and the Law. 117 In his opinion, God did
not reveal a plan of salvation, but rather a “new” age. 118 On the cross, Christ
was the end of history, or in other words: Jesus’ cross itself was the eschaton,
the moment between the ages. 119 This “time between the ages” reappears in
Fuchs’s 1960 essay on Jesus’ understanding of time, namely, as the description
of Jesus’ presence as a “chronologically impossible time”: 120 “Jesus
claims his time as the presence prior to God’s coming, in a way that contrasts
it to every other time.” 121 Thus, Jesus distinguishes between the two
miracles of the call to freedom and the coming of God, a distinction that is
ultimately identical with the knowledge of God. Present and future hereby
relate to each other as the miracle of the call relates to the miracle of God’s
coming. 122 What remains decisive for the understanding of time is that Je-