Author: Jackelén, Antje

Source: Zygon, Volume 41, Number 4, December 2006 , pp. 955-974(20)

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Abstract:

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Unique epistemological challenges arise whenever one embarks on the critical and self-critical reflection of the nature of time and the end of time. I attempt to construct my preference for an eschatological distinction between time and eternity from within a middle way, avoiding both the hubris that claims complete comprehension and the resignation that concedes readily to know nothing. Surveying the history of reflection on this multifaceted question of time, with its ephemeral and everlasting dimensions, I argue that the eschatological interplay between the “already” and the “not yet” has much to offer: promise for the religion-science dialogue as well as hope for humanity, especially for those on society's bleakest edges. But understandings of time, to be authentically theological, must be also informed by cosmology and the physics of relativity. My proposal seeks to respect the theological and scientific interpretations of the nature of time, serving the ongoing, creative interaction of these disciplines. Between physics and theology I identify four formal differences in analyzing eschatology, all grounded in the one fundamental difference between extrapolation and promise. Discussion of what I term deficits in both the scientific and theological approaches leads to further examination of the complex relationship between time and eternity. I distinguish three models of such relationships, which I label the ontological, the quantitative, and the eschatological distinction between time and eternity. Because of the way it embraces a multiplicity of times, especially relating to the culmination and the consummation of creation, I opt for the eschatological model. The eschatological disruption of linear chronology relates well to relativ-istic physics: This model is open, dynamic, and relational, and it may add a new aspect to the debate over the block universe.

Keywords: already and not yet; apophatic surplus; Christian es-chatology; Oscar Cullmann; differentiated relationality; Freeman Dyson; Albert Einstein; eschatological difference between time and eternit; futurity; hope; modes of time; physics; potentiality; scientific eschatology; special relativity; time and eternity; time and space; Frank Tipler

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2006.00791.x

Affiliations: 1: Associate Professor of Systematic Theology/Religion and Science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 1100 E. 55th Street, Chicago, IL 60615, and director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science;, Email: ajackele@lstc.edu.

Publication date: 2006-12-01

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