Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 52:2 (NA 2001)
Article: Yesterday, Today, Forever Time, Times, Eternity In Biblical Perspective
Author: Henri A. G. Blocher

TynBul 52:2 (2001) p. 183

Yesterday, Today, Forever
Time, Times, Eternity In Biblical Perspective

Henri Blocher

Summary

The topic of time and eternity in relation to God is fraught with difficulties. Whatever hints there are from biblical language of Scripture’s teaching, they need to be supplemented by a more global and theological use of Scripture. The philological-exegetical arguments for the ‘classical’ view, which entails the antithesis of time and eternity, go in each case a little beyond what the evidence clearly warrants. Sober considerations prompt us to look for an alternative to pure timelessness, but not to go to the opposite extreme. Scripture witnesses both to God’s unchangeable possession of his unbounded life and to the authentic renewal of his grace every morning, a renewal that appears to hold a true meaning for God himself.

Calvin, St. Augustine’s devotee and putative heir, dared to disapprove of this Master’s endeavours on time and eternity: the bishop of Hippo wasted his energy in a ‘subtle dispute’ that ‘does not fit St. Paul’s intention’.1 What a warning! Especially for one who owes so much to both these spiritual and theological fathers.

The topic is fraught with exceptional difficulties. We find it hard to bring to the fore notions that are so basic that we constantly think through them, and which we always presuppose without reflection. As soon as we start asking what time is, we no longer know, exactly as St. Augustine confessed.2 Paradoxes pop up here and there, or even

TynBul 52:2 (2001) p. 184

everywhere. Is time moving, or are we moving within time, drifting down the river of time? If it flows, does it flow from the past or from the future? Is the future before or behind us?3

For theologians, James Barr pinpointed the main difficulty: ‘The very serious shortage within the Bible of the kind of actual statement about “time” or “eternity” which could form a sufficient basis for a Christian philosophical-theological view of time.’4

Yet the stakes are high. Any student who struggles through Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics will come to this realisation; it is an eloquent fact that the perspicacious Barth critic Klaas Runia wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1955 (under Berkouwer’s supervision) on ‘Theological Time in Karl Barth’.5 The issue is relevant to Protestant–Roman Catholic...