Page History

...

Another characterization that may help to answer the obvious question of just how we go about serving the transient goods of the parts, etc. is to say that we are each called to make the best possible use of the past in order to make the best possible contribution to the future – -- or, conversely, to make the best possible contribution to the future by making the best possible use of the past. Of course, "best possible" isn't all that much clearer than "greatest possible." But what I have in mind is doing all that one can to consummate or redeem the past by creatively appropriating as much of it as possible without eliminating any more of it than absolutely necessary in order to transmit as much harmonized contrast to the future as one can.

...

Given the insight, on the other hand, that God and everything else concrete transcends itself by real internal relations to both the past and the future, we are free to think of all things as, in their different ways, consummators and thereby beneficiaries no less than as creators and thereby benefactors. In other words, God is as really our beneficiary as we are God's, and we and our fellow creatures are as really benefactors – -- of God as well as