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The When of Justification and Election

I was reading James Gordon's chapter on Schleiermacher in Christian Theologies of Salvation and came across an interesting line that has me thinking. He stated that for Schleiermacher, '...there is no particular change in God with reference to justification, "since God is gracious to the human race in His Son," justification does include a change of consciousness of the individuals relation to God...' (p. 297).

This quote was deeply thought provoking. It seems to me that most Christologies and theologies of salvation don't explore the question of salvation, God's action, and time. How does the traditional assumption of God being outside of time impact salvation? Is there any sense in which God has a timeline? How does the incarnation play into these discussions? Of course along with these questions also belong questions concerning the nature of time itself and causation.

That's all I have in this post are some questions. If anyone has good references that I should read on these issues, drop a comment.
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