The Exalted
Christ, Like God, Is a Temporal Being
Paul
describes the exalted Christ living with God. The apostle says that Christ is
at God’s right hand (Rom. 8:34; also Col. 3:1), that God has highly exalted
Christ (Phil. 2:9), and that Christ is currently in heaven (Phil. 3:20; 1
Thess. 1:10). Since the ascended Christ lives with God, presumably Paul
conceived of Christ living God’s temporality.
Though Paul
describes God as having eternal power (Rom. 1:20), nowhere does the apostle say
that Christ lives in, or is, eternity. Unlike Isaiah, Paul does not say that
God “inhabits eternity” (Isa. 57:15). Nor does Paul state, as does Augustine, “Domine,
cum tua sit aeternitas” You, God, are, eternity). It is important to recognize
what Paul does not say in order to guard against simply assuming that he
shared the classical Christian understanding of God and eternity; that
understanding being that God lives eternity, which is non-time, non-change—a now
containing all moments at once. Augustine, for instance, defined eternity as a “never-ending
present.” For the great theologian, to live eternity means that all past time
and all future time is at once. This is, in effect, non-time. Ephraim Rader
rightly describes patristic exegesis as understanding God’s reality to be “non-temporal.”
Though Paul often expresses his desire for God to be blessed for ever and ever, exhibiting
his conviction about God’s endless duration, the nature of God’s duration is
not eternal timelessness and non-change. Rather, Paul’s letters indicate that
he understood the eternal God to live a temporal existence in which there is
past, present, and future, though for God these tenses are nonsequential. God
knows all events or moments, whether they are past or future. Paul’s statement
that God passed over formerly committed sins (Rom. 3:25) indicates that such an
understanding of God’s temporality: though the sins are in the past, God can
pass over them. Likewise, Paul’s statement in Romans 1:2 that God announced the
gospel in advance to his prophets in the holy writings indicates that the
apostle did not conceive of God living tenses sequentially as do humans.
Paul’s notion
of God’s capacity to know all time at once does not, however, entail that Paul
understood God to live in a static existence—at least in relation to God’s
creation. (L. Ann Jervis, Paul and Time: Life in the Temporality of Christ [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2023], 64-66; note that man is also said to
inhabit eternity in Psa 37:29)
God’s Tenses
Paul speaks in tenses about God’s
activity. For instance, Paul writes that God condemned (κατεκρινεν) sin in the flesh through the sending of God’s
Son (Rom. 8:3). Paul writes that God sent (εξαποστειλεν) God’s Son (Gal. 4:4). God raised Christ (ηγειρεν; 1 Cor. 15:15). These past tenses signal
divinely initiated events form the perspective of human time, yet I propose
that Paul also thinks they are a true representation of God’s history with
creation (though, again, tenses in God’s life are not confining).
That Paul thinks that God has a history
with creation may be evident in his curious mention of “the fullness of time”
(Gal. 4:4), as if God were watching the χρονος for the
right moment to send God’s Son. The phrase conveys something other than that
God and time are separate, with God watching time from a detached atemporality.
The fullness of time allows for a cosmic shift for humanity form slavery to το στοιχεια
του κοσμου (“the elemental
spirits of the world”) to the possibility of adoption as God’s children
(4:3-5), a shift comparable of inheriting (4:1-2). God is the generator of this
cosmic shift. God is also intimately connected with it. God sends God’s own
spirit into the hearts of God’s adopted, crying “Abba! Father!” (4:6)
In the present, God tests hearts and
is a witness to Paul’s exemplary behavior (1 Thess. 2:4, 10). In the future,
God will bring to completion the good work that God began (Phil. 1:6). God’s evident
activity in human time indicates a divine eventful temporality, an active
temporality that produces change—at least between God and God’s creation. Being
God, however, God lives eventful, changeful temporality without the blinkers
and boundaries of tenses as humanity experiences tenses. Paul understands God
to live tenses, although not in the way that humans do, for God does not know incompleteness,
as tenses in chronological time imply. Paul does not conceive of God’s
temporality as in any way limited by its tenses. For God, the past, present,
and future are one, but nevertheless they are still pats, present, and future rather
than a singular Now. God’s tenses do not function chronologically. God’s past,
present, and future are not sequential or discrete. The past and future are
always in the present for God. It is as if God looks at God’s past, present,
and future from a vantage point that allows God to see all of God’s time (in addition
to human time) at once. This perspective does not, however, collapse God’s
tenses into a tenseless Now. The fact that Paul believes that the living God
acts to change the circumstances between God and God’s creation indicates such.
(Ibid., 69-70)
