The 'real': Is it 'now' or the 'futurum aeternum'?

Clocktower in Prague.

A friend recently posted this quote on Facebook:

“The present moment is all that is real. The past is gone. The future is not yet. We remember the past and anticipate the future, but we always do so in the present. Reality is always now...” (Greg Boyd, Present Perfect)

I have much good to say about Boyd (and I haven't read the book, it might be good, who knows). But I believe that Boyd here relies on a tradition of thought that is deeply problematic. This way of thinking about time can at least be traced back to the Platonism of Augustine:

“How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.” (Augustine of Hippo, Confessions)

Such thinking is reflected in the popular idea of 'living in the now'. This idea, however vague it is (what does it actually mean to 'live in the now'?), hangs over us as an ideological cloud, whether negatively as a product of modern individualism and hedonism or, more positively, as an ethical demand for being present in 'the real'. Unfortunately, the product of such 'now-ism', as we might call it, is often a fragmented conception of time and history (or is it the other way round?). It's result is positivism and bondage to that 'which is', here and now.

Of course Boyd in the quote accepts that we can 'anticipate' the future, but this doesn't change the fact that what is 'real' is 'now'. Another modern proponent of this idea is the German 'spiritual teacher' Eckhart Tolle known for "the power of the now". Because of its obvious similarities, such 'now-ism' is often compared to 'buddhism' (which also talks about living in the present). But it is rarely as obviously nihilistic as buddhism: As with Augustine the popular idea is that eternity, the real or 'your real self' (in a very positive sense) is 'in the now'. The question, however, is if not such thinking eventually ends up in a kind of nihilism anyway? In such a timeless metaphysics, is there room for anything but a static idea of God? Is there room for the dynamic, living God of Christianity in this picture? Is there room for action, if history is left out? How is intentionality possible if the future is 'unreal'?

Much preferable to the 'now-istic' notion of time and the real are the notions that can be found in classical Eastern Orthodoxy (especially the Alexandrian tradition), but also in modern dialectical theologies. In these kinds of thinking the real is not so much what is in the now, while the future is relative to that through anticipation. Rather, the real is what is in the future (i.e. God's future, not any future of course), while our 'now' is only established as real relatively to this, in anticipation.

Take this passage from Clement of Alexandria:

"[...]the future of time is anticipated by the power of His volition. Further releases from evils is the beginning of salvation. We then alone, who first have touched the confines of life, are already perfect; and we already live who are separated from death. Salvation, accordingly, is the following of Christ.” (Instr. I.VI, p. 216)

To follow Christ means to anticipate the future in faith. Living 'in the now' is only possible by having a relation to the future. Of course this tradition is also heavily influenced by Platonism, but its conception of time and eternity is different than the Augustinian (the idea of faith as anticipation draws on Epicureanism and Stoicism, not Platonism). In Gregory of Nyssa, present and future is bound together in prayer: "Prayer is the enjoyment of things present and the substance of things to come." Or take an even more famous quote: ”This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him.” (De Vita Moysis, TLG 2017.042, 239). Gregory's idea is that we must always reach out for what is ahead (epektasis), and not linger on the present, since the present is always in some sense 'unreal', or at least 'empty'. The only really substantial thing is God himself, and this reality always lies ahead.

A modern example of a similar kind, is Wolfhart Pannenberg, who's thinking relies heavily on a concept of anticipation, pretty much in the style of Clement.

In Karl Barth, though of course somewhat different from Clement and Gregory, we also find an emphasis on the meaning of God's future for the now.

"The totality of our human will and intelligence, future as well as past, has been superseded by the pre-eminent, ineffable, and invisible power of our eternal future existence - Futurum aeternum - the future of the non-concrete possibility of God. This is grace." (Epistle to the Romans, p. 191)

The resurrection touches time as its frontier, simultaneously being God's no to the world (as it is) and God's yes to the world (as it will be). Also, consider what Jacques Ellul has to say on hope:

“Hope is the act whereby a person becomes aware of the distance of the Kingdom, and it clings to apocalyptic thinking. If the Kingdom is there, within easy reach, if the Kingdom is quite naturally within us, there is no need for hope. The latter is the measure of our distance from the Kingdom. Certainly the saying which attests that the Kingdom is at hand, that the Kingdom is in our midst, is truthful, but it is truthful as a saying of hope. It is not the report of an observable, measurable reality, complete with tangible consequences. It is an affirmation of a counter-reality. Humanly speaking, it is not true that the Kingdom of God is present..." (Jacques Ellul, Hope in a Time of Abandonment, p. 209)

Whatever version we choose of the now-made-real-through-anticipation-of-the-future notion of things, it seems much preferable to the Augustinian what's-real-is-the-now. Of course the latter has the seemingly pre-advantage that it seems to break with instrumental, economical and technical thinking, where the now is always just a means for something that lies ahead. But this is only seemingly so, since this reliance on the 'now' only makes us even more victimized to instrumentalism by telling us to forget the future. Still being steeped in a technological framework, nowism ties us to the means, without any possibility of criticizing the aim, which lies in an inaccesible future. But rather, the right approach to instrumentalism and similar ideologies would be, not to forget the future, but to substitute the aim of economics and technology with God.

Nowism makes us forget that we are in the midst of a battle about the aims of our existence, while a sound focus on the future as the fountain of the 'real' makes us able to choose and act. Again, only by having a sense of time, where past, now and future are bound together as real, is action and thus history possible. Only in this way is human life possible. The demand to become like the birds under the sky and the lilly on the field, is not a demand to become thoughtlessly animal-like (as in some readings of Kierkegaard). Animals properly live in 'the now'. Rather the demand requires us to put away our worries. This is only possible through hope, but hope always relates to the future.

Btw: The past is no less real than the present or the future. The resurrection is not just the salvation of the individual believer, but God's reconciliation of all things, including past, to himself. God's rule is from eternity to eternity.