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181817

Time as gift

God's journey

Stephen Happel

pp. 133-154

Abstract

Augustine, meditating in his Confessions, maintains that the passage of time is as filled with mystery as is God. Time speaks and sings and acts, simultaneously present, drifting into the past, and anticipating in its overtones the future melody or words. The past and the future have reality only in the surplus within the present, not in a reified fashion on their own. God, in an analogous way, is eternal simultaneity, always present, yet God knows and loves all times.1 When Aquinas studies God's eternity, he notes that since it is "outside time' and "indivisible,' it can coexist with any other point in the temporal order. "The divine intellect, therefore, sees in the whole of its eternity, as being present to it, whatever takes place through the whole course of time.'2 This parallel poses the theological question of this chapter: How are God and time co-implicated? What is it about time that evokes a notion of God? What is it about God that can include a divine relationship to time?

Publication details

Published in:

Happel Stephen (2002) Metaphors for God's time in science and religion. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 133-154

DOI: 10.1057/9781403937582_7

Full citation:

Happel Stephen (2002) Time as gift: God's journey, In: Metaphors for God's time in science and religion, Dordrecht, Springer, 133–154.