Triune Time

Jenson writes: “Time is because the Spirit is not the Father, and beacuse both meet in the Son. Time is because God is his own origin and as such is not his goal; because God is his own goal and as such is not the ‘natural’ result of his own being as origin; because origin and goal in God are an irreversibly ordered pair; and because the Father and Spirit meet and are reconciled in the Son.”

To unravel a bit: Time means origination, growth, completion. Time, in Jenson’s view, is not mere fate, but surprise and fresh direction. That is possible in creation because in the inner life of the Trinity there is origination that is not identical to the goal, and goal that is not identical to origination, and because there is an order between the two – the Father’s begetting of the Son in the Spirit is not the Son’s begetting of the Father.