| Advent and time between Since the advent of Jesus Christ, we live in a time that has been radically intersected by God through incarnation in which human possibility is now inscribed in the horizon of God in Christ. Another time has begun as a new trajectory within creation, anticipating its true end in Christ. Time between is inscribed in Christian identity and experience as a movement on the way and between the advent and parousia of Christ (Rosenzweig). Christian time is time between in which no time in Christian memory is closer or further from the truth of Jesus Christ and our integral humanity with its horizon in Christ. If for Christians every time is between advent and parousia, all times are therefore one in Christ even as anyone’s time is distinctive in Christian experience. This oneness of all times in time between offers the possibility of grace, for no time and therefore perspective is privileged above another in time between all times. It is foolish to assume that in any one time we have a better grasp of the Word becoming flesh than at any other time. What is known in one time is different and may or may not be applicable to our time. Our time is not superior to interpretive possibilities in other times, for any time exhibits both clear and confused evaluations for human life. Every Christian has lived or is living, or yet will live in time between the two crucial times of God’s story in Christ. According to the Spirit’s presence and guidance into all truth, the community of believers is always living in time between. There is no disclosure that is nearer or better in one time than in any other, even if in our memory of any number of these times, there are qualitative differences between interpretations and their effects. v In time between, Jesus is not an object of the past as he is in the modern divorce of history from faith in historicism. From an assumed position of superior insight into historic events, historicism isolates Jesus of Nazareth from Christian faith and proclamation to establish what really happened. Christian faith and proclamation are presumed distortions of Jesus’ original identity and context that can now be ascertained sociologically and politically. Historicist strategies assume that it is possible to uncover the authentic identity and occurrence of Jesus of Nazareth without the superfluous overlay of Christian interpretation. Yet this approach negates any capacity for the message and events concerning Jesus to signify otherwise than by such adjudications on his life. In historicist profiles of Jesus of Nazareth divorced from faith, Jesus becomes a historical curiosity that is irrelevant to contemporary human life. This approach is antithetical to Christian reality as time between experienced through the Holy Spirit. In New Testament testimony, Christian
faith is in the reality of Jesus Christ crucified and risen, who through the Spirit
remains contemporary without receding into the past. In biblical testimony, the
past is remembered as anticipation of God’s future and renewal to be experienced
in grace. The experience of faith as life in the Spirit therefore always occurs
within the reality of time between. Christian time is in a constant state
of renewal, its significance existing not in imperious adjudications on a past
that is always receding away but in a past that is always becoming contemporary
in Christ. Faith as life in the Spirit means living
on the cusp of a future disclosed in The gaze of historicism, endorsed theologically
in the forums of assumed relevance with other discourses, can only render Christian
faith irrelevant. The gaze of historicism is without the living Word. v God’s own Word, who became flesh in incarnation, defining our humanity in grace and truth, continues to be present, creatively in expression of this same disclosure in the Spirit. This occurs with all the scope of the Word’s creativity from the beginning. The Spirit is intrinsic to the triune movement of the Son coming from the Father and returning to the Father, and articulation of this movement within subsequent Christian testimony. The Spirit is the very dynamic of the Word who became flesh also becoming flesh in the lives and testimony in word and deed of the siblings of Christ as children of God. Without the Spirit, there is no experience, comprehension and articulation of a new trajectory within humanity. The Spirit gives new life and illuminates the word in Christ as the definitive exposition of God. The glory of grace and truth in the Word who became flesh can only be illuminated by the Spirit as encountered in time between all times. Without the Spirit disclosing God’s glory or beauty as grace and truth in Christ, there can only be variations on human speculation about any divine reality. John reminds us that no one has ever seen God. The limits of human finitude finally negate the projects of humans in the absence of any source of life that can surpass these. The possibility of Christian testimony to a new trajectory within humanity and resourced by triune love is given beyond human initiative and therefore beyond the scope of human idealism, pessimism or desire, even if these are given a religious guise. The uniqueness of Christian testimony is negated by reduction to comparative religious phenomena—whether as the nineteenth century evaluation of religion’s deputed evolution or contemporary connivance at the assumed equivalence of all religious phenomena. Christian testimony to triune reality—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—cannot be certified within the disciplines of human knowledge, even if they purport to be spiritual. v In Christian testimony, God alone reveals God as demonstrative love in Jesus Christ and legitimates this revelation through a new trajectory within humanity as birth from above or life in the Spirit. It is not unusual then that the Spirit’s elusive source and transformation is articulated by analogy to the wind—the Spirit’s presence and effects are known but the Spirit’s coming and going from whence to where remain inscrutable. John has no account of the miraculous source of Jesus’ birth as do Matthew and Luke. In John, Jesus comes from God and returns to God within the intimate relationship of beloved Son of the Father. That he is sent by the Father in outgoing love for all creation is interwoven throughout. John goes back to time immemorial to stress that the Word always with God, the source of all things, without whom there is no life, is also the Word who became flesh, full of grace and truth, of whose fullness we have received grace upon grace. In John, the natal image of Matthew and Luke is enlarged to a narrative embracing all time, creation and human rebirth. What is distinctly related to the image of conception by the Spirit is in John, a new community of disciples who are born of the Spirit. If two gospel writers tell us that Jesus’ life and mission cannot be conceived apart from the Spirit of God, John tells us that the new community of disciples have their life from nowhere else but God—the triune communion in which the community of Christ now participates, of whom Jesus declares that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you. Such intimate communion occurs in the uniqueness of Christian time as time between, which is distinctive in each instance of time, even as it is one with all other times in Jesus Christ. |
