Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

The cycle of birth, growth, decay and death
Through which plants, animals, human beings
and institutions all pass suggests the rotating
wheel -- ever in movement yet ever returning
upon itself. The wheel offers a way of escape
from this endless and meaningless movement.
One can find a way to the centre where all is
still, and one can observe the ceaseless
movement without being involved in it.
There are many spokes connecting the
circumference with the centre. The wise man
will not quarrel about which spoke should be
chosen. Any one will do, provided it leads to
the centre. Dispute among the different
‘ways’ of salvation is pointless; all that
matters is that those who follow them should
find their way to that timeless, motionless
centre where all is peace, and where one can
understand all the endless movement and
change which makes up human history --
understand that it goes nowhere and means
nothing (Newbigin, 1969:65, in Anderson,
1984:21).
As mentioned earlier, Lesslie Newbigin’s identification of the dualism of public facts
and private values has been important. It means that two dimensions of time and reality
are now commonly embraced by a growing percentage of the global populus. At work
and school, time is linear and the modernist, scientific worldview dominates. In their
personal life, however, life is often spiritual, multi-dimensionally animated, and time and
reality are less defined. Here again, the Western postmodern draws closer to the
worldviews that dominate other regions of the globe.
All religions embrace, with variations, some notion of time. For Judaism, Christianity
and Islam, time is linear, corporeal life ends at death, and beyond that, there is some sort
of judgment, and/or after-life. For these faiths, there is usually no recurrent life
dimension, or embrace of cyclical, or circular time dimensions. Postmoderns, pluralists
and various others challenge the notion of linear time embedded within the doctrines of
the major religions.
My primary concern is that if one discounts the biblical, linear concept of time, then
critical biblical doctrines of sin, hell, death, judgment, etc., become meaningless. Even
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University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa