John E.Thiel, Now and Forever: A Theological Aesthetics of Time. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2023, 203pp. $50.00

John E. Thiel's Now and Forever claims to offer a novel thesis that is said to be rarely discussed in contemporary theology: that heaven is temporal. In Chapter 1, Thiel takes the reader through a discussion of nature and grace, with occasional reflections on Kant and popular physics. The text does not engage with the philosophy of time and contains an abundance of adjectives attached to the word time that leave the question ‘what is time?’ unanswered. To be sure, Thiel does tell us that time is a created dimension of grace, but that does not sufficiently illuminate what time itself is. Readers will come across terms like existential time, tragic time, graced time, fallen time, time now, anomic time, atemporal temporality and serene time. But it is rare that the author moves towards a definition of such terms. In Chapter 2, Thiel discusses the difference between an ‘aesthetics of time’ and an ‘aesthetic of time’. The difference between the two is opaque, but the author emphasizes that he will be offering an aesthetic (instead of an aesthetics) of time. Some readers might find this puzzling since the subtitle of the book is A Theological Aesthetics of Time. Every now and then, Thiel switches back to the word aesthetics, yet the meaning of such usages is unclear. According to Thiel, the payoff from this discussion is that one learns that all time is eschatological time. Chapter 3 purports to move into a discussion of metaphysics, with most of the discussion focused on Chapter 11 from Augustine's Confessions. Thiel promotes the theory that Augustine believes that time is merely a subjective extension of the mind. Though this reading is typically said to be debunked, Thiel supports his reading of Augustine with a quotation from 11.27 wherein Augustine claims that time is not objective. Unfortunately, I was unable to find this quotation in my different translations of the Confessions. After this discussion of Augustine, Thiel moves back to popular physics before declaring that he has developed a new way of understanding God's immanence in the world. Chapter 4 seeks to address the existence of evil in God's graced time. The chapter starts out by asserting that the majority view within Hinduism is Advaita Vedanta wherein all of reality is the illusion of a non-personal deity. According to Thiel, Hinduism feels unthreatened by the tension between the existence of God and the existence of evil. As the chapter progresses, Thiel pushes the critique that theodicies lack moral sensitivity. He also claims that John Hick's ‘best possible world’ theodicy leads to the erasure of time. Chapter 5 aims to examine ‘tradition’ with the category of aesthetics. On page 119, Thiel claims that no one has yet done this. However, in a footnote, he lists several authors who could be considered as exceptions to this rule (for example, David Brown's five-volume series on theological aesthetics). We come to the conclusion in Chapter 6, where Thiel argues for a temporal heaven. Throughout the book, Thiel continually claims that the Christian tradition has tended to affirm a timeless heaven. Though he offers the reader few sources, he does provide some suggestive citations from Aquinas that do seem to imply a timeless heaven. I do not doubt Thiel's reading of Aquinas here. However, I find myself uncertain that the majority view throughout Christian history has been to affirm a timeless heaven. This is because the idea of an ongoing theosis, and other related ideas, are major eschatological themes. In previous publications, I cite people who affirm a timeless heaven, so I know that this position does exist within the Christian tradition. I just do not know how widespread it really is. After all, Amazing Grace sings about how after we have been in heaven for ten thousand years, we have no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun. All in all, I agree wholeheartedly with Thiel's thesis. I fully affirm the temporality of heaven. I think that this can easily be established on biblical and philosophical grounds. The Bible knows absolutely nothing of timeless existence and speaks of heaven in terms of life everlasting. The philosophical grounds are also quite easy to establish. Part of temporal existence is having a before and after. The afterlife comes after death. But alas, Thiel's book does not give us any transparent arguments of this sort. While the book is lucid in its writing style, there is an insufficient engagement with the relevant literature that leads Thiel to some unfortunate mischaracterizations of various views. For example, one would expect a book that claims to be about the metaphysics of time to interact with at least one book on the metaphysics of time. However, there is no engagement with the philosophy of time in this book. Some readers may find the alleged novelty of Thiel's thesis peculiar since myself and many others have published on the topic of a temporal heaven. One might think of T.F. Torrance's Space, Time, and Resurrection, or John Polkinghorne's The End of the World and the Ends of God: Science and Theology on Eschatology – not to mention the works of Antje Jackelen, N.T. Wright and Keith Ward, or the theological aesthetics of Jeremy Begbie. Another weakness of the book is the consistent mischaracterization of various views. For example, Thiel claims that process theology's emphasis on the present moment distracts from the ways in which the future is latent in the present. This is unfortunate, since process thinkers going all the way back to Whitehead have emphasized the ways in which the present encompasses all that has come before, and how God infuses the present with all future possibilities. Perhaps a deeper engagement with process metaphysics would have prevented this. Thiel's characterization of Hinduism and the problem of evil is also somewhat difficult to make sense of. Belief in a personal monotheistic deity is a very popular view within Indian philosophy, and the problem of evil has been a major topic of debate for centuries. Readers might consider Gavin Flood's Hindu Monotheism for a better understanding of Indian philosophy. From there, I recommend Arthur L. Herman's The Problem of Evil and Indian Thought, and the various entries on Indian philosophy in the Blackwell and Cambridge handbooks on the problem of evil. Overall, the discussion on the problem of evil is somewhat surprising. Recall that Thiel critiques Hick's ‘best possible world’ theodicy, and says that Hick's view leads to the erasure of time. This is a remarkable claim since Hick is critical of Leibnizian best possible world theodicies. Also, it is difficult to figure out how an open theist like Hick who believes in a temporal afterlife can be guilty of erasing time. I would have liked to see some more argument from Thiel to back up these claims. Chapter 6 also contains some random statements that are quite puzzling. On page 171, Thiel says that we should affirm God's ‘omnitemporality’. This is odd since Thiel has continually affirmed divine timelessness throughout the book, and the footnotes chide anyone who dares to affirm divine temporality. Perhaps Thiel is not using the word omnitemporality in the way that it is typically used in debates on God and time. In standard discussions, the term is an affirmation of divine temporality. Again, it seems that an insufficient engagement with the literature has led to some weaknesses in the book.