The assumption of suffering in God raises a crucial metaphysical and theological problem: How can suffering, in its full brokenness, be taken on by God in a way that takes it seriously as suffering, while simultaneously being read from the perspective of the eternal redemption that has always already taken place? This paradox necessitates the concept of dis-continuous persistence, where suffering is actively assumed by God and persists in divine remembrance, yet is read within the horizon of its already accomplished redemption. Barth's discussion of divine constancy (Beständigkeit) highlights this tension between divine empathy and impassibility but does not resolve the theoretical problem of how suffering's brokenness persists in its assumption.
However, this issue can be contoured through the threefold transition in metaphysics from the classical notion of 'substantia permanetia' to Kant's 'Beharrlichkeit der Substanz' in the second analogy (which is relational, not substantial), and finally to Heidegger's notion of 'Bestand'. Kant's second analogy frames persistence as a relational causality rather than an ontological permanence, while Heidegger's Bestand problematizes the metaphysical stability of being under conditions of fragility and temporality. Heidegger's approach opens the possibility to articulate dis-continuity not as a failure of coherence but as the mode in which suffering persists in its ruptured and unredeemed reality, even as it is read from the eternal redemption.
This paper proposes a theological and metaphysical vocabulary for dis-continuous persistence, rooted in the tension between divine constancy and human finitude. It seeks to articulate how God's 'active' empathy towards suffering grants it persistence as suffering while also framing it within the horizon of redemption that does not dissolve its brokenness into totality.