The Victory of Jesus in Barth’s Conception of Eternity

Karl Barth has developed the Boethian concept of eternity as simultaneity by placing the person of Jesus Christ at the center of God’s eternity. Even though it is a momentous achievement, Barth’s conception still stands in need of clarification or modification, for otherwise it might impugn the victory of Jesus Christ unwittingly, since it logically entails a problematic notion of the simultaneity of Jesus’ past, present, and future. It follows that his past of death is never gone but simultaneously present in the divine eternal Now. To avoid this problematic ambivalence, I will suggest that even in God’s eternity there must be the indicator of God’s Now, the flowing “now” from the past to the future. And yet, my suggestion will not depart from the concept of simultaneity in God’s omniscience.