Alexander Garton-Eisenacher

While Karl Barth balances the reliability of revelation with divine counterfactual freedom through the _analogia temporalis_, Robert Jenson rejects this form of analogy, arguing that it posits an unknowable reality of God behind revelation. He instead transposes metaphysics into narratological terms, arguing that this secures the reliability of revelation _and_ divine freedom, since it means God is future to (and so undetermined by) events in time. This metric for divine freedom cannot, however, replace counterfactual possibility; hence, the _analogia temporalis_ (presupposed in counterfactuals) re-emerges in Jenson’s theology. This form of analogy is essential in balancing the reliability of revelation with divine freedom.

Christianity claims that the incarnation provides reliable knowledge about God but also that the incarnation was undertaken freely and thus need not have happened. Alexander Garton-Eisenacher resolves this tension between epistemological reliability and divine freedom, building particularly from the work of Karl Barth. Garton-Eisenacher offers a fresh reading of the Church Dogmatics that demonstrates how Barth’s theology provides a promising starting point but notes that his argument is ultimately undermined by the doctrine of eternity within which it is framed. The author overcomes this issue by showing how the promising motifs employed by Barth can be authentically derived from the classical doctrine of eternity instead. In so doing, this work shows that reading classical eternity against a Barthian background also serves to draw out a more temporal interpretation of the doctrine than its contemporary characterization, reclaiming it as a viable Christian understanding of God’s relationship to time.

This article analyses the parallels between the pre-Qin Daoist notion of heng 恒 as a constancy that is nevertheless ceaselessly in motion, and Karl Barth’s concept of Beständigkeit as God’s constancy throughout infinite transformation. Underlying both concepts is an understanding of the ultimate origin (whether dao 道 or the Christian God) as irreducibly temporal in nature. Stemming from this conviction, both systems of thought ultimately identify the continuous change of the ultimate origin with the flow of time in the universe. The commonalities found between these two traditions provide fresh resources to advance the study of both. On the one hand, Barth’s deliberate juxtaposition of contrary statements to illustrate the union of permanence and transience in Beständigkeit challenges the frequent assumption that similar juxtapositions in the pre-Qin texts comprise careless inconsistency or outright incoherence. By extension, Barth’s metaphysical underpinning of this juxtaposition offers a compelling framework to explicate the Daoist notion of heng. On the other hand, the pre-Qin texts’ confluence of permanence and freedom in the principle of ziran 自然 offers a new lens through which to read and hence redeem Barth’s oft-critiqued attempt to combine the irrevocability and ongoing freedom of God’s decision of election.

Recent scholarship on the philosophy of time in pre-Qin Daoist thought has not yet produced a thorough examination of dao’s relationship to time. This essay resolves this omission through a systematic study of the concept heng 恒 in pre-Qin Daoist literature. While principally expressing the ‘constancy’ of dao, heng also significantly presupposes dao’s ability to change. This change is characterized in the texts as a cyclical movement of ‘return’ and identified with the universe’s circular metanarrative of generation and reintegration. The essay turns to examine pre-Qin Daoist literature’s use of primal wu 無 metaphors to describe dao. It concludes that they present dao as undifferentiated infinitude, liberating dao as heng from the tense structure of past-present-future that divides life in time. These metaphors further associate the movement of dao with the flow of time, reformulating time’s relentless ever-greater advancement into an endless cycle of creative transformation.