How to Inhabit Time

Starred review from July 18, 2022
Smith (On the Road with Saint Augustine), a philosophy professor at Calvin University, delivers a lyrical exploration of how faith intersects with history and time. He posits that many Christians live “nowhen” and “imagine themselves wholly governed by timeless principles, unchanging convictions, expressing an idealism that assumes they are wholly governed by eternal ideas untainted by history.” This denial of time’s influence, Smith contends, ignores history’s role in shaping the present and blinkers Christians’ “sense of place in God’s story.” The author suggests that history is inescapable, but not predetermined, and that it’s rife with possibilities because there are always aspects of the past that provide “fertile soil for a different future.” He notes that Christians have a distinct way of keeping time because they “are citizens of a kingdom that will arrive from the future,” and he urges them to “inhabit the present” while looking ahead and preparing for the kingdom. The theology’s focus on the temporal dimension of Christianity yields novel insights, and the prose is elegant and lucid. This incisive and eloquent volume will expand readers’ minds.