There are countless scholars who have helped me in my reading of various passages of Scripture. I have gleaned insights and keys from them that have unlocked texts that once perplexed me. However, no scholar has done so much to teach me how to read the Scripture more generally than James Jordan. From Jordan I have learned skills that I bring to every text that I read and an integrative theological vision which helps to hold them together.
Jordan’s reading of Scripture, and his thought more generally, has significant breadth to it and develops out of an array of influences. One finds a constellation of insights in Jordan, all of which can assist one in reading the Scripture. However, he has always had an attraction to bigger ideas that might serve to integrate one’s wider field of intellectual enquiry. For Jordan, figures like Cornelius Van Til (presuppositionalism), Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (the cross of reality), David Dorsey/John Breck (chiastic structure), René Girard (the scapegoat mechanism), among several others have all offered radical insights that inform his approach as a whole. While Jordan’s thinking doubtless also draws upon the work of more narrowly-focused writers and their specific insights, big ideas have always been particularly important for it.
The effectiveness of Jordan in forming his readers’ entire posture of interpretation probably arises in large measure from his peculiar gifts of recognizing patterns (e.g., the Exodus pattern), developing interpretative heuristics (e.g., the priest, king, prophetic framework), and his synthesis and integration of a variety of big insights from others into an approach that offers powerful purchase upon the scriptures. There are many elements that constitute Jordan’s approach. If you have not already done so, I recommend that you read his most seminal work, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World, to learn some of its fundamentals.
Within the array of his insights and emphases, I think it is possible to identify some deeper common themes. The one that might be most deserving of attention is the part that time plays within Jordan’s theological vision and biblical hermeneutics. Along with a few other theologians and biblical scholars, Jordan has given me an appreciation of time and of temporal categories within theology.
Beyond Jordan, temporal categories were downplayed in much of the thinking to which I was exposed in my theological formation. Much modern theology, even biblical theology, is implicitly spatialized, approached as if it involved the consideration of the logical relationships between doctrines in a timeless space. Even when time is present, we may be dulled to it. For example, concepts such as ‘old covenant’ and ‘new covenant’, while referring to two ages, the second succeeding the first, can often be treated as if they were disconnected stable states of affairs to be juxtaposed as contrasting administrations. Within such approaches, there is a weak sense of the maturation of the one into the other or of the unfolding phases within each.
With the privileging of sight and space in modernity, temporal realities in theology have often been transposed into spatial categories or downplayed. Jordan’s work was the initial and primary impetus for me to give temporal categories a greater prominence in my theology. After Jordan, other theologians helped me to develop my thinking in this area—Jeremy Begbie, Catherine Pickstock, N. T. Wright, Geoffrey Wainwright, David Bentley Hart, Douglas Knight, Peter Candler, Moshe Halbertal, David Fohrman, among many others—but it was Jordan’s work to which I most often returned and to which I have always been most indebted. In him time was everywhere and, as I became attuned to it, its importance became increasingly apparent.
As moderns, our sense of time is typically formed by the clock, which divides time into discrete successive moments of uniform duration, with specific times identifiable according to a common system of measurement. Things such as timelines and our common quantitative durations of time can subtly spatialize time; the timeline, for instance, represents a period of time as uniform and present on a single axis. As our daily liturgies of labour are ordered by the clock, it is profoundly formative of our perception of time more generally. The measurement of time made possible by the clock certainly has its benefits. Sharing a set time with others and being able to measure its duration enables us to organize and synchronize activity to a degree that would be impossible otherwise. Yet the dominance of clock-time in our daily routines can leave us with a very stunted sense of time more generally. Indeed, time as it functions in theology is in almost all respects quite different from clock-time.
One of the greatest advocates of reconceptualizing time for the sake of theology has been Jeremy Begbie (Theology, Music and Time is a good place to start), who argues that music provides us with a peculiarly apt conceptual metaphor for thinking about it. I have discussed Begbie’s work at greater length here. Music also equips us to think about the unity and mutual interpenetration of times, as Henri Bergson appreciated:
Could we not say that, if these notes succeed one another, we still perceive them as if they were inside one another and their ensemble were like a living being whose parts, though distinct, interpenetrate through the very effect of their solidarity? The proof is that we break the rhythm by holding one note of the melody too long. It is not its exaggerated length as such that will avert us to our mistake, but rather the qualitative change brought to the musical phrase as a whole. One could thus conceive succession without distinction as a musical penetration, a solidarity, an intimate organization of elements of which each would be representative of the whole, indistinguishable from it, and would not isolate itself from the whole except for abstract thought. [Suzanne Guerlac, Thinking in Time: An Introduction to Henri Bergson, 62]
Such a ‘musical’ understanding of time will equip us to understand the way an institution like the Sabbath challenges the ‘homogeneous, empty time’ of modernity, functioning as a ‘higher time’ that can ‘gather, assemble, reorder, and punctuate’ our time more generally (Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, 54). The Sabbath established a weekly rhythm and temporal unit, it memorializes foundational acts of creation and redemption (the Exodus and, for Christians, the Resurrection), it gathers up the events of the past week in confession, absolution, offering, and communion, initiates the new week in reorientation and commission, and orients us towards the awaited final Sabbath.
Jordan’s emphasis upon liturgy and ritual as a ‘microchron’ of history—a symbolic performance of larger historical patterns in miniature—is important here. The ‘higher time’ of liturgy equips us for, punctuates and orders, and orients us within our quotidian existence. Likewise, liturgy is a ‘musical’ coordination of a congregation, in body, voice, and mind, that forms and integrates the human person and community and has its own unity and movement (Jordan emphasizes the unity of the temporal movement of liturgy, against its fracturing into discrete and separate elements).
The sacraments also situate us in the tension between the realized and inaugurated and awaited fulfilment. In baptism we are buried with Christ, baptized into his death, in anticipation of participation in his resurrection. In the Eucharist we memorialize his death until he comes; the past deliverance is recalled and the Wedding Supper of the Lamb is anticipated. Douglas Farrow has provocatively suggested that John Calvin’s theology of the Supper, whereby things distant can be brought near by the work of the Spirit, would be strengthened by thinking of this temporally: the Eucharist must be understood in the light of eschatology (see also the work of Geoffrey Wainwright in this regard).
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy is a core influence upon Jordan’s understanding of time. Central to much of Rosenstock-Huessy’s thought was the ‘cross of reality’, a concept which sought to capture the wrestling with forces operating on different axes that constitute our existence. Roughly characterized, the cross of reality positions human experience at the centre of forces moving backward, forward, inward, and outward. The first two of these—backward and forward—concern the past and the future respectively, while the second two—inward and outward—are chiefly (though not entirely) spatial.
In contrast to modern assumptions, within which we might fancy ourselves to live within a continuous and uniform timeline, Rosenstock-Huessy observed that the ‘time’ that we inhabit is one that must be constituted through a relationship with past and future. Our ‘time’ is formed by things such as education (where the gap between ‘distemporaries’ is traversed in the transmission of culture), marriage (within which we make vows that bind us for life, establishing a consistency across our lifespan), child-bearing (in whom we have a living investment in a time after our deaths), the receipt of a legacy (which commits us to honour and ensure the fruitfulness of the sacrifices of those that preceded us), etc.
Our ‘backward’ relationship with the past can be seen in the repeated patterns of our lives, in our loyalty to those who have preceded us (chiefly our father and mother), and in the enduring realities of an age. Rosenstock-Huessy terms this ‘epochal time’. Our ‘forward’ relationship with time, by contrast, is ‘dramatic time’, breaking with the past and its patterns and creating something new. From the perspective of the individual’s life, a wedding represents such ‘dramatic time’: the man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, creating the new common time of their marriage.
Rosenstock-Huessy’s ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ relationships, while typically more spatial in character, can also be related to time. When we are ‘lost in a moment’, we have an inward relationship to time (inward time is ‘lyrical time’), while an outward relationship to time (‘analytical time’) is very familiar to us in our various forms of time management.
Our relationship with the past and the future can break down. A revolution does not merely start something new but jettisons the past in order to do so. Decadence stagnates, failing to reach towards a future. The way time is formed by human action and relation within Rosenstock-Huessy’s work makes us more alert to the importance of things such as (inter)generational dynamics, traditions, and transitions. Times are established, passed on, ended, or remade. There are deaths and resurrections. One generation passes on its baton to the next or fumbles the process. The sacrifices of one generation are rewarded in the fruit produced by the next or betrayed by their dishonour or fruitlessness.
Similar processes define the lives of societies, communities, families, and individuals. Themes of maturation, for instance, lie near the heart of Jordan’s theology. All human life moves through stages of growth and must negotiate challenging transitions and crises. There are times of sowing and of reaping. Mid-life, for example, is a time of crisis for many as we experience radical transformations in the sense of our time. Once expansive possibilities no longer exist, and we are left with stubborn and seemingly inescapable actualities: there may be no more second chances. We taste the harvest of earlier times of sowing in our lives and can be forced to wrestle with uncomfortable questions about our character. Final horizons feel much nearer, forcing us to face questions of mortality, often for the first time. The challenge of successfully passing the baton to the next generation occupies more of our attention and questions of what we will leave behind might begin to haunt us. Our faith must grow and mature to meet several such crises: the faith of the sixteen-year-old will not be adequate for the challenges faced by those who must parent one.
Jordan discusses maturation using a pattern such as that of ‘priest-king-prophet’. The priest works in terms of the external black-and-white and perennial principles of the law (‘do this, don’t do that’). The king must internalize the law in understanding and operate in terms of wisdom. He is characterized by prudence and discretion, working in terms of a wisdom that appreciates the difference between times and discerning the actions that are appropriate in each (Ecclesiastes 3:1–8). Prophets take things a step further: as they have taken the word into them, they can speak with a creative power, building up and casting down, fashioning new worlds (e.g., Jeremiah 1:9–10).
This might be compared to the way that someone learns to play a musical instrument, moving from playing scales and simple pieces (law), to developing a more expressive style, learning skills of ornamentation and elaborating upon existing pieces (wisdom), to the creation of entirely new compositions in a distinctive style of one’s own (prophecy). Jordan’s priest-king-prophet paradigm—which is much more elaborate than this brief summary can do justice to—is helpful in a variety of contexts, not least in expressing the transforming relationship between the people of God and the Scripture: from the external word of the law, to the internalized word of song and wisdom, to the empowering and authorizing word of prophecy.
Rosenstock-Huessy’s insight into the character of time is deeply generative for theology. Unsettling and expanding our narrow modern conceptions of time, it offers us categories that are much fuller and more fitting.
Jordan’s thinking about time draws from an attentive reading of the opening chapters of Genesis. The establishment of the alternation of day and night on the first day with the creation of light, the ordering of time with the lights of the fourth day, and the completion of the sequence of the week with the rest of the seventh day are all important in Jordan’s understanding. Both in Genesis 1 and 2, Jordan alerts his readers to the implied incompleteness of the creation, that it is good but not perfect: the ground must be tilled, humanity must fill the earth, the gold of Havilah must be brought into the garden. Creation must mature, exceeding its origin.
Sabbath makes it more possible for us to step back from our labours, to memorialize the great deeds of the Lord in the past, to look towards the future. Considered in the light of Rosenstock-Huessy’s framework, it makes it possible for us to have a much more extensive sense of the time that we inhabit; it protects us from decadence, revolution, and unmindful submersion in the immediacy of the present. Each Sabbath we can sum up and complete the preceding six days and initiate the week that follows.
An emphasis upon time can also encourage a deeper sense of the transience and utter dependence of creation, something generally much less apparent where spatial categories dominate. As I have written elsewhere:
This brings into focus elements of creation that are less clear when we think of creation as if it were the construction of solid objects that endure through the homogeneous medium of time, or are subjected to its cruel ravages. Time is not just something that happens to us, but is integral to what we are. Thinking in such a manner teaches us to remember and appreciate our own finitude and to value and reflect more closely upon the changing seasons of our lives. Silence, the face over which the spirit of music hovers, reminds us of our enduring relationship to nothingness, as those who have been brought forth from it by God’s creative voice.
For Jordan, history is musical, that is, typological. History manifests the workings of a ‘higher time’ within it—a higher time represented in the ‘microchrons’ of ritual. The way that ritual microchrons relate to the larger movement of history can be seen in places such as the book of Revelation, which presents climactic events of history in terms of a heavenly liturgy. History has repeated patterns (the Exodus pattern being one such example), unity, and interpenetrating realities. Because history is typological and musical, it is prophetic: past events of redemption anticipate later events and later events recapitulate earlier ones.
Prophecy can have a ‘telescopic’ character, as prophecies can be expanded to relate to several escalating fulfilments on successive horizons. Prophecies of the new covenant, for instance, can relate to initial fulfilments in the period following the return from exile, to the dawn of the new covenant in the work of Christ, to the period following the overlap of the old covenant order and the inaugurated new covenant, and to the final consummation of all things. This offers a richer understanding of the character of redemption commonly described as ‘already/not yet’. There is a linear and teleological character to history, but also a cyclical and repeating character: directionality is not contrary to repetition.
Likewise, for Jordan history has a deep unity, a conviction that shapes the way that he reads the Scriptures. His profound instinct for intertextuality is related to his sense of the character of time and history. The narratives of Scripture manifest a higher time and play out an escalating musical movement, bound together by repeated patterns in which we can perceive the interpenetration of times, and processes of remembrance and prophetic anticipation that integrate them. The sort of historiography that arises from such a sense—and reality—of history is quite different from that which arises from the flattened time-consciousness of modernity. With the loss of a sense of the reality of a ‘higher time’ and the typological character of history that follows from it, realities such as ‘distance’ in time assume a radically different character. Considered in terms of a higher—or deeper—reality to time, it should be clear that the intervention of two thousand years could never separate our time from the presence of the once-for-all events of the cross and resurrection of Christ!
Besides this, ‘redemptive history’—which Jordan would remind us is about much more than deliverance from sin and death, including maturation and a sort of ‘holy war’ against fallen angels—has a prominence in his theology and soteriology that is typically lacking in Reformed theologies. In some such accounts, one might even be left with the impression that redemptive history is a sort of ‘making of’ account for a timeless salvation system for detached individuals. In contrast to this, for Jordan, the primary locus of salvation is the public realm of history—in the incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Christ—rather than the privacy of the individual heart. We are saved as we are caught up in a much greater ‘story’, united to Christ in his body the Church, experiencing the firstfruits of his fulfilment of the promises to Israel and realization of the hopes of the nations, and awaiting the future consummation of all creation in him.
Considered from another angle, something changed for the whole people of God at a climactic juncture in history, Hades was harrowed and the saints were raised to rule with Christ in the first resurrection. Our sense of this is strengthened in the practice of the Church year, which in its feasts foregrounds the once-for-all historical deliverance that Christ accomplished in the fulness of the times as the ground of our salvation and common life. Our soteriological vocabulary, terms such as ‘justification’, ‘adoption’, ‘sanctification’, ‘glorification’, etc., must be rooted in these historical events or they will lose their true sense. In such a vision of history, eschatology naturally has much greater prominence and traction in Jordan’s wider theology, factoring into his soteriology to a degree that it seldom does for others.
As moderns most accustomed to silent and private reading of texts from a page, we can become somewhat dulled to the temporal character of texts, to the way a text—like the events it recounts—unfolds over time. A text that is performed and heard has a more immediately apparent temporal character; it is not always already present on the space of the page but ‘arrives’ over the course of its performance. Considered as something arriving over time, rather than something always already present, its meaning is not entirely settled and can shift, surprise, or wrongfoot the hearer.
Consideration of this can train us to be attentive to texts in different ways, more alert to the process of the story’s unfolding and to states of affairs at critical junctures. Perhaps the greatest exemplar of such attention to biblical narrative of whom I know is Rabbi David Fohrman, a reader of Scripture who is peculiarly skilled at following the temporal movement of a story. He is very good at preventing the final resolution of a story to determine his reading of earlier junctures to a degree that dulls surprise or a sense of the contingency of events. He invites us to pause at key moments and consider what various parties knew, what they might have anticipated, and how they stood relative to each other. At other points he challenges us to consider what we the reader would expect to happen next, if we did not already know how the story ended. He encourages us to reflect upon counterfactual courses that events could have taken, which the reader who spatializes texts is much less likely to consider. Yet the meaning of what actually happened can be profoundly shaped by recognition of such ‘roads not taken’, much as the expectations a composer or performer has encouraged in those listening to their works must colour our understanding of the significance of the ways that they determine to confound them. Such attention can be remarkably productive of insight, yet is widely neglected by those who lack such a sense of the character of time and its importance for our reading. Also by people who fail to take time in their reading.
A further aspect of Jordan’s attention to time is encountered in more speculative works of his such as Crisis, Opportunity, and the Christian Future. A largely spatialized understanding of the Christian faith can present the entire span of post-scriptural history as a sort of essentially formless profane time detached from the sort of ‘higher time’ we encounter in the events of Scripture. Jordan parts ways with such an approach, bringing the history we inhabit into direct connection with a higher time in a variety of manners. For Jordan, history is not demoted to a largely meaningless meandering of successive events after the Ascension but is a providential maturation of humanity and spread of the Church.
This is grounded in a postmillennial vision of the kingdom of God, its growth and spread. Humanity’s maturation is not merely an uninterrupted progression but involves the death and resurrection of worlds. Writing in 1994, Jordan suggested that much history can be understood as a movement from an age of tribes, to an age of nations, to a cosmopolitan age, arguing that the West was moving towards the death of a cosmopolitan age, which would fracture into a form of neo-tribalism. There are various points at which readers might take issue with Jordan’s analysis, but his fundamental sense of the ordered character of post-scriptural history is a powerful and important one.
Jordan’s account of time can be grounded in Christ. Christ, coming in the fulness of time, is the one who was before time began and the one in whom our future is disclosed. He is the unifying theme of the entirety of history, which will be gathered up in him. He is the light of the first day and the bright Morning Star heralding the advent of the Day of the Lord, the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end.
Like many things in Jordan, his account of time is not found in any single place and several aspects of it are never directly explored, yet it pervades and informs the whole. Much of it remains implicit and underdeveloped, while manifesting something of the deeper integrity of the broader vision he presents. There are aspects of it, such as his sense of eternity and the ‘time’ of God, that remain less clear to me (I cannot recall any detailed treatment that he gives them). Primarily, however, Jordan’s work is a beginning and invitation to a fuller recovery of temporal reality in Christian thought, an invitation I hope many will take up.