There is nothing in the revelation of Scripture, nothing at all, to suggest something like the “eternal now,” though there are modern philosopher/theologians who suggest it. Paul Tillich, for example, who also introduced other concepts, such as the quasi-pantheistic notion of God as the “ground of being.” Such anti-Biblical notions have been a “gateway drug” leading some to theological liberalism and even atheism. It was a cause of great spiritual harm to me personally, though my path into the Christo-Buddhistic matrix was through Bultmann. By God’s grace, I was rescued from that nonsense, but not without considerable pain.
But we do know God relates to time differently than we do. A thousand years being as a day, etc. But this is not timelessness. This is eternal spirit not being hemmed in by decay and demise like we are. We have our fleeting moments and return to dust. A thousand years is really beyond our imagination. Not so God. He acts in time and history and never wearies and never grows old. He never has less time to do what he plans.
But none of this is the artificial construct of the Eternal Now. In Scripture, we are told Jesus died for our sins, once for all. Past tense. That is the revealed truth God wanted us to have. To remake that by force fitting it into an artificial construct of time, in order to justify an artificial construct like transubstantiation, defies both reason and Scripture.
Peace,
SR
....” By God’s grace, I was rescued from that nonsense, but not without considerable pain”....
I believe you...there are many stories I could share of those who have been involved with everything from cults to false religions and those of Hinduism, New Age, and clubs/organizations who have various ‘rituals’ they involve themselves in, who do not come away from these unscathed.
I think God must be necessarily outside of time by his very nature. I think this is what is meant by the “eternal now”.
I’m no theologian, but unless I miss my guess you seem to be suggesting that God experiences aeveternity—simply time extended, whereby the past is truly past and God undergoes some kind of change in state:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aevum
God is, rather, outside time and the Creator of time. He is completely changeless, so it is impossible for Him to experience time as a change from one state to another.
Let me come at this from another way as well. Christ is a divine (not human) person. As a divine person, He shares the Eternity of God, so His sacrifice is, indeed, an eternal sacrifice. This is not just about how God the Father perceives Calvary, it’s how God the Son *offers* Himself of Calvary. In both cases, the implications are eternal.
However, all this aside, I don’t think any of this represents the true reason so many of you find this doctrine so viscerally repulsive. I will address that in the next post.