Time in Eternity Quotes

“This is why “the priority of undivided infinite space [and time] with regard to any specific conceptions of spatial and temporal units and as a condition of their possibility is so important.” This is also why divine omnipresence is “inexplicable” without a concept of space in which “the space of God’s omnipresence is not a container space.” In this way the distinction between God and world is upheld. God is present to the world but never a component in it (except for the Incarnation).”
― Robert John Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction

“The future is not totally different from the present; instead the present is a manifestation of the future. “The relation of the essential reality of things to their present appearance is mediated by the relation between eternity and time.”
― Robert John Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction

“Pannenberg understands God as Trinity to be at work in the world, both continually appearing in history as the “arrival” of the immediate future and as reaching back from the eschatological future to the Easter event in order to transform the world into the New Creation. In a breathtaking move, Pannenberg thematizes the latter as “prolepsis”: although the New Creation still lies in our future, or more correctly in the “future of our future,” the Easter event is already and normatively a manifestation in our time and history of what is the not-yet still-future eschatological-apocalyptic destiny for all the world.”
― Robert John Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction

“If ours is a world of epistemic distance, then just as historical and personal events can be interpreted both theistically and atheistically, so should science, the theistically neutral epistemic tool for discovery in nature, be interpretable both theistically and atheistically. Thus ours is a world in which “theology and science” is not only intellectually possible but actually required if we are to make a scholarly and convincing case for a theistic interpretation of natural science that is more robust than its atheistic interpretation. In sum, a world created by God for the possibility of moral growth is also a world in which science is possible and a world in which the field of “theology and science” is required to produce a convincing theistic interpretation of science against its competitors.”
― Robert John Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction

“It should go without saying that methodological naturalism does not commit one to metaphysical naturalism and thus atheism. Unfortunately, the conflation of methodological and metaphysical naturalism is frequent within current popular literature, especially among “militant atheists,” who claim that science strongly supports atheism, and by some of the leading voices of Intelligent Design.”
― Robert John Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction

“If by following Pannenberg we believe that the eschaton, as “now” and “future,” has already appeared proleptically in the events of Easter while yet remaining still to come, we might expect that the universe already has a more complex topology than that of ordinary spacetime in which simple worldlines trace out the history of particles. We might even expect to find hints of this more complex topology prefigured within the theories of physics and cosmology.”
― Robert John Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction

“Surprisingly now, over a half a century later, time symmetric approaches to electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, gravity, and cosmology might be consonant with the kind of eschatology that a theist such as Pannenberg supports.”
― Robert John Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction