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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
The time of which Paul speaks in this passage which ‘had fully come’ was not the time of the culmination of some natural process of evolution and development. Rather the time was ‘full’ because it had been ordained to be so by the appointment of God.2 It was in God's good and own time that the Son was sent. This concept of a time that is God's has been analysed at length by Karl Barth, particularly in the section ‘Man in His Time’ in Church Dogmatics, III/11.3 For Barth all time is God's time, for time is not some absolute standing outside and against God. There is no god called Chronos rivalling God and imposing conditions upon him.4 Nor is the relationship between God and time merely an extrinsic one; rather there is given an essential relationship, for ‘even the eternal God does not live without time.
page 197 note 2 For the biblical conceptualites of time, cf. Barr, James, Biblical Words for Time (S.C.M. Press, London, 1962).Google Scholar
page 197 note 3 cf. Church Dogmatics, III/II (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1960), pp. 437–640.Google Scholar
page 197 note 4 cf. Barth, op. cit., p. 456.
page 197 note 5 Barth, op. cit., p. 437.
page 197 note 6 Barth, op. cit., p. 522.
page 197 note 7 In The Reality of God (S.C.M. Press, London, 1967), pp. 144–163Google Scholar. The relevant passage from Heidegger reads: ‘The fact that the traditional conception of “eternity” as signifying the “standing now” (nunc starts), has been drawn from the ordinary way of understanding time and has been defined with an orientation towards the idea of “constant” presence-at-hand, need not be discussed in detail. If God's eternity can be “construed” philosophically, then it may be understood only as a more primordial temporality which is “infinite”. Whether the way afforded by the via negationis et eminentiae is a possible one, remains to be seen’ (Being and Time, trs. Macquarrie, John and Robinson, Edward, S.C.M. Press, London, 1962, p. 499, n. xiii).Google Scholar
page 198 note 1 Ogden, op. cit., p. 154.
page 198 note 2 Barth, op. cit., p. 522.
page 198 note 3 We may refer here for a fuller treatment to the following: Heidegger, op. cit.; Merleau-Ponty, M., The Phenomenology of Perception, trs. Smith, Colin (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962)Google Scholar; Sartre, J.-P., Being and Nothingness, trs. Baines, Hazel (The Citadel Press, New York, 1966).Google Scholar
page 199 note 1 The paradoxes of Zeno show up the inconsistencies of regarding ‘time’ purely in a geometric and linear manner.
page 199 note 2 ‘ … temporality is the being of the For-itself in so far as the For-itself has to be its being ecstatically. Temporality is not, but the For-itself temporalises itself by existing’ (Sartre, op. cit., p. II2; cf. also pp. 106, 118).
page 199 note 3 This unitary view was anticipated by Augustine when he wrote: ‘nee proprie dicitur tempora sunt tria: praeteritum, praesens et futurum; sed fortasse proprie diceretur: Tempora sunt tria, praesens de praeteritis, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris. Sunt enim haec in anima tria quaedam et alibi ea non video: praesens de praeteritis memoria; praesens de praesentibus continuis, praesens de futuris exspectatio’ (Confessiones, XI, 26).
page 200 note 1 2 Pet. 1.4.
page 200 note 2 cf. Col. 1.5, Heb. 2.10, 4.15, 2.17–18.
page 201 note 1 The New Essence of Christianity (Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1966), P.87.Google Scholar
page 201 note 2 Rahner, Karl, ‘Theos in the New Testament’, Theological Investigations, vol. I, translated Ernst, Cornelius, O.P. (Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1961), P.94.Google Scholar
page 201 note 3 Lev. 26.12. Cf. also Deut 7.6, 14.2, 28.18. For the New Testament cf., e.g., I Cor. 17.28, 2 Cor. 6.16, Heb. 8.10, Rev. 21.7.
page 201 note 4 Exod. 20.2, Deut. 5.6.
page 202 note 1 Such could also be seen as the implication of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, or, perhaps, more correctly, as a formulation of what that doctrine aims at expressing.
page 202 note 2 Rahner, Compare Karl, ‘On the Theology of the Incarnation’, Theological Investigations, vol. IV, trs. Smyth, Kevin (Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1966), pp. 107ffGoogle Scholar; ‘Current Problems in Christology’, op. cit., vol. I, p. 168.
page 202 note 3 The Humanity of God (Collins Fontana Library, London, 1967), p. 47Google Scholar; cf. also Church Dogmatics, IV/1, pp. 183ff. Compare also the fundamentally different, but not perhaps unrelated, approach of Hartshorne, Charles in The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1948).Google Scholar
page 203 note 1 Torrance, T. F., Theology in Reconstruction (S.C.M. Press, London, 1956), pp. 234, 263.Google Scholar
page 203 note 2 Barth, , The Humanity of God, p. 46. Italics in original.Google Scholar
page 203 note 3 cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/1, p. 186.
page 203 note 4 The reference here to the Kantian noumenon is by way of illustration only, and refers to what might be termed the ‘orthodox’ interpretation of Kant according to which the ‘really real’ (i.e. the noumenon) is hidden behind the appearances (the phenomena) of our everyday perceptions and is thus, strictly speaking, unknowable. That Kant's intent in making this distinction has little in common with such ‘orthodoxy’ is of no importance here.
page 204 note 1 We are thinking here particularly of those works referred to above; to which may be added for a theological approach Rahner, Karl, Spirit in the World, trs. Dych, William, S.J., (Sheed and Ward, London, 1968).Google Scholar
page 205 note 1 cf. Rahner, ‘Current Problems in Christology’, pp. I59ff. Also Hartshorne, op. cit., passim.
page 205 note 2 Rahner, art. cit., p. 165.
page 205 note 3 cf. Rahner, ‘On the Theology of the Incarnation’, pp. 112ff.
page 207 note 1 Consider the statement by Wittgenstein: ‘If a lion could talk, we could not understand him’ (Philosophical Investigations, trs. Anscombe, G. E. M. [Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1953], p. 223e).Google Scholar
page 207 note 2 On the theology of death cf. especially Rahner, The Theology of Death, trs. Kenkey, Charles H. (Herder–Burns and Oates, London, 1961).Google Scholar
page 208 note 1 The phrase so beloved of the medievals, ‘the imitation of Christ’, must be treated with great caution. On the problems and dangers of attempting to guide action by means of predetermined rules, see the analysis of the ‘Unhappy Consciousness’ given by Hegel in The Phenomenology of Mind, trs. J. Baillie, B. (Swann Sonneschein, London, 1910), pp. 200–219.Google Scholar
page 209 note 1 It may be said that to say man is the kind of being we have described and to add that Christ is the one who has shown this to us, is to give a ‘nature’ to man, a pattern even to be followed. But it is one thing to say man must conform himself to some predetermined pattern constituted in total independence of himself and that unthinkingly, and another to say that man is such that the formation of his life is his own responsibility. In the first case man has his nature given completed to him, in the latter man has his being as incomplete, as task. Cf. further Section III below.
page 209 note 2 cf. Rahner, The Theology of Death, for a fuller treatment.
page 210 note 1 cf. Rahner, ‘Current Problems in Christology’, pp. 162ff.
page 210 note 2 Christ may here be seen as returning to a more covenantal attitude to law, but there remain significant differences.
page 211 note 1 This clearly has ethical implications, but they cannot be gone into here.
page 212 note 1 Sartre expresses this duality in temporal being in which responsibility for one's being and for the future is linked with the past, when he writes: ‘while choosing the meaning of its situation and while constituting itself as the foundation of itself in the situation, [it does] not chose its position’ (Being and Nothingness, p. 59). Italics in original.
page 213 note 1 Of course the attitude of others to my acts may be one of rejection or of indifference, but this does not alter the fact that they act in the context of my act. They could neither reject nor be indifferent to me if I had not acted.
page 213 note 2 It is not necessary, at this stage, that I be conscious of or recognise the ‘fact’ of Jesus Christ. By existing he has provided me with a past with or without my acknowledgment. It is for this reason that we have maintained that redemption is primarily an ontological event. Explicit knowledge and acknowledgment may, however, be necessary for a full and personally responsible appropriation of Christ's act.
page 213 note 3 ‘Community’ here does not mean in the first place the ‘community of the church’ where ‘church’ means the empirical structures of the ‘churches’.
page 214 note 1 cf. also John 15; 1 Cor. 12.26; 2 Cor. 1.5; Phil. 3.10; 1 Pet. 4.13, 5.1.
page 214 note 2 cf., e.g., Rom. 8.12–23; 2 Cor. 6.18; Gal. 3.26, 3.29–4.9; Eph. 1.5, 3.6, 4.13ff; Heb. 12.5ff; Titus 3–3.
page 215 note 1 Heb. 11.8. Sartre, though for different reasons, makes a similar point when he writes: ‘what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God’ (Existentialism and Humanism, trs. Mairet, Philip [Methuen, London, 1948], p. 56).Google Scholar
page 216 note 1 The prophecy of Jeremiah (31.31–34) may be considered in this context.