Future as God's Gift: Explorations in Christian Eschatology

THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY Explorations in Contemporary Theology Edited by ALISTAIR I. MCFADYEN MARCEL SAROT ANTHONY THISELTON

THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY Explorations in Contemporary Theology Edited by ALISTAIR I. MCFADYEN MARCEL SAROT ANTHONY THISELTON

The Society for the Study of Theology aims to promote excellence in the study of Christian Theology by facilitating and shaping theological thought, conversation and community. In particular, the Society's object is to identify and to discuss important themes, questions and dialogues which call for theological engagement; to explore the nature of and to foster theological integrity, responsibility and vocation in academy, church and other areas of public life. The life of the Society is centred on its annual conference, which is unified around a particular theme each year. The Society intends to further the discussion of its conference themes by publishing papers from the conference, together with some especially commissioned articles, in a series of books to be published annually.

The Future as God's Gift

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The Future as God's Gift Explorations in Christian Eschatology

Edited by DAVID FERGUSSON and MARCEL SAROT

T&T CLARK EDINBURGH

T&T CLARK LTD 59 GEORGE STREET EDINBURGH EH2 2 LQ SCOTLAND www.tandtclark.co.uk Copyright CO T&T Clark Ltd, 2000

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of T&T Clark Ltd. First published 2000 ISBN 0 567 08727 1

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

Contents Acknowledgements 1

Introduction David Fergusson

ix 1

Main Papers 2 Signs of the Times: Towards a Theology for the Year 2000 as a Grammar of Grace, Truth and Eschatology in Contexts of So-Called Postmodernity Anthonv C. Thiselton

9

3 The Shape of Time Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart

41

4

73

Imagining the Future Garrett Green

5 The Future of Creation: Ecology and Eschatology Peter Scott

89

6

Practice of Hope: The Messianic Movement of the People who Practice Hope in Asia Kim Yong-Bock

115

1

Is the World Coming to an End or Has Its Future already Begun? Christian Eschatology, Modern Utopianism and Exterminism Jtirgen Moltmann

129

viii

Contents

Conference Responses 8 Dogmatic Theses on Eschatology Colin Gunton

139

9 Living with Eschatological Hope Harriet A. Harris

145

10 Eschatology as a Challenge for Theology Daniel W. Hardy

151

Short Papers 11 Eschatology and Time: Reversal of the Time Direction? Luco J. Van den Brom

159

12 The Final Crucible: Last Judgement and the Dead-End of Sin Niels Henrik Gregersen

169

13 Eschatology with a Vengeance: Hell as the Greatest Conceivable Evil Wilko van Holten

181

14 John Zizioulas on the Eschatology of the Person Douglas Knight

189

Additional Essays 15 Eucharist, Eschatology and Ethics Douglas Farrow

199

16 Last Things First? The Century of Eschatology in Retrospect Christoph Schwobel

217

List of Contributors

243

Index of Names

245

Index of Subjects

251

Acknowledgements The essays comprising this volume represent a selection of the proceedings of the conference of the Society for the Study of Theology held at the University of Edinburgh in April, 1999. Also included are two additional essays which were solicited from other members of the society. We wish to extend our sincere thanks to the contributors for their willingness to revise their papers in a form appropriate to this volume, and also to Margaret Kohl for her work in translating Professor Moltmann's essay. We are also grateful to Mr. Maarten Wisse for his assistance in the production of the camera-ready manuscript. Further thanks are due to the committee of the Society for the Study of Theology for their invitation to edit this volume, and to the publishers for their assistance in the rapid preparation of the material for publication. Aberdeen/Utrecht, December 1999

David Fergusson & Marcel Sarot

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1. Introduction David Fergusson One of the distinctive features of twentieth-century theology has been the recovery of interest and confidence in eschatology.1 Whereas Kant2 treated eschatological doctrines as regulative images to facilitate a greater moral seriousness, and Schleiermacher^ relegated these to a tentative (though not insignificant) outworking of principles established much earlier in his dogmatics, modern theology, partly in the wake of biblical criticism, has rediscovered the centrality of eschatology for all forms of Christian discourse, Karl Barth complained that Protestant theology had lulled its audience to sleep by adding at the conclusion of Christian dogmatics a perfectly harmless chapter entitled - 'Eschatology,'4 but since then theology has been reawakened to the vitality and necessity of this subject. This is true no! only of dialectical theology but of many influential approaches throughout the oikumene. As an index to this one might register the frequency of eschatological allusion in Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982). Us theology is governed by a strong eschatological orientation. We read that baptism is a sign of the kingdom and the life to come; that the eucharist offers a foretaste of the renewal of creation and an anticipation of the coming of the kingdom in Christ; and that the church in its ministry is called to proclaim and prefigure the kingdom of God. Interest in eschatology should not be viewed, therefore, merely as a passing fad amidst fin-de-siecle speculation.5 Yet notwithstanding this, the manner in which the new millennium is being approached raises some pertinent challenges for modern theology. Conflicting trends can be identified These include a facile optimism largely driven by Western 'The term 'eschatology' first appears in the last section of Abraham Calov's Systema locorum Theologicorum (1677). Cf. Gerhard Sauter, 'The Concept and Task of Eschatology: Theological and Philosophical Reflections,' Scottish Journal of Theology 41 (1988), 499. 2 lmmanuel Kant, "The End of All Things,' in: Kant, Religion and Rational Theology (Cambridge 1996), 217-232 3 Fnednch Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (Edinburgh 1928), 696ff 4 Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (London 1933), 500. "Two previous conferences of The Society for the Study of Theology were dedicated to discussion of eschatology. These took place in 1952 and 1969. The proceedings can be found in William Manson et al., Eschatology (Edinburgh 1953); G.B. Caird (ed.), The Christian Hope (London 1970)

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David Fergusson

economic growth and material prosperity, the loss of political hope at the end of the most violent century in human history, the resurgence of apocalyptic fear fuelled by nuclear and ecological threats, musings of scientists on the final moments of the universe's history,6 and the sheer fascination and excitement engendered by a decisive point in the calendar. Following the demise of communist regimes in Europe, questions are also being raised about whether there remain any secular ideologies which offer grounds for political hope. Can humanism sustain the human spirit in its highest endeavours?7 The recent study of Schwartz, alluded to by Bauckham and Hart, notes the frenzied mood that generally accompanies the arrival of a new century. Yet this time round grand cosmic optimism has been suppressed either through a sober reading of history or merely for the sake of throwing a big party. Popular interest in the future and the last things may serve to remind us of the influence of apocalyptic thought throughout church history. This is not apparent from the works of the leading theologians of the middle ages, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, for long the staple diet of the theological syllabus. Yet studies of religious culture today reveal both the prevalence and power of eschatological images and apocalyptic rhetoric at a popular level.8 These are largely derived from Scripture, especially the Apocalypse, and they require not suppression but judicious theological assessment. Moltmann's essay is a reminder of the way in which his own eschatology9 has recently grappled with themes such as a millenarianism and the parousia. Hitherto, these have tended to be neglected in academic study notwithstanding the eschatological turn of modern theology. In face of current speculation about the future, two recurring features of the essays contained in this volume call for comment. On the one hand, there is an insistence that eschatology is not to be equated with futurology, while, on the other, there is a concern to present eschatology as informing, enlivening and signifying present activity and hope. The manner in which these two dispositions are embraced reveals much about contemporary approaches. We misread eschatology if we imagine it as concerned with dateable events which will come to pass at the end of a time-line. Its subject matter is not to be located by a calendarist. Thus Bauckham and Hart, citing 6 Cf. the bizarre scientific eschatology discussed by Frank Tipler, The Physics of Immortality (London, 1995). I have tried to respond to this in The Cosmos and the Creator (London 1998), 87-92. 7 My Aberdeen colleague Gordon Graham has argued that humanism is inadequate as a philosophy of hope, and that only something like a theology of divine promise can prevent moral and political nihilism. Cf. Evil and Christian Ethics (Cambridge 2000). 8 E.g., Richard Kyle, Awaiting the Millennium: A History of End-time Thinking (Leicester 1998). 9 Cf. Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God (London 1996).

Introduction

3

Jiingel, assert that eschatology has to do not with anything that can emerge or be constructed from out of the present but with a new reality made possible by divine action. Death and resurrection are dialectically related, as Gunton also claims, though there is a further sense in which they are co-ordinated. Yet the latter does not emerge naturally from the former. It is given and comes to us from beyond any immanent possibilities. Nonetheless, the new creation is not ex nihilo. It is ex vetere, a remaking of the old. This vision of a new earth, which is given and anticipated in Christ and his ongoing activity through the Spirit, provides a horizon against which present reality can be relocated. The possibility not of evolutionary progress, but of eschatological salvation is one that transforms the present. Furthermore, it is a possibility that governs not just the last stages and participants of history, or the final three minutes of the cosmos, but all who have ever lived. In this respect, as Gunton further reminds us, eschatology needs to reckon with the deaths of all who have been and will be, not least those who have died in childhood. By contrast with varieties of secular hope, the Christian faith suggests a fruitful outcome not for those who are privileged to succeed at the end, but for all who have ever lived. The sign of this is the resurrection of Christ. This is described by the New Testament writers in terms which show its integral connection with social hopes for the coming kingdom of God.10 In enabling us to rethink the present, Christian hope offers resources which counter the Marxist complaint that it must inevitably distract us with false consolation. It need not become a demobilising ideology. The correlation of present reality and future hope is worked out in different ways in these essays. From an Asian perspective, Kim Yong-Bock argues that hope is not Utopian but is embedded in a praxis which includes a vision for the life not only of human beings but for the whole planet. To promote such a praxis, he calls for an alliance of Christian theology which other religions and traditions of wisdom found throughout the world. This practical orientation of theology doubtless raises questions as to how one handles conflicting truth claims, yet its ethical intention to find common ground is paramount, particularly at a time of increasing globalisation. There is in this and other contributions a hostility to Platonist trends of thought which tend to view material reality and embodied existence as transient and less real than the purer spiritual world into which we enter at death. Here we find expression also being given to genuine feminist and ecological anxieties about the denigration of nature and the body. Thus Scott reminds us 10 Cf. 'In proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus, the first Christians regarded this as a sign of the imminence of God's reign and a demonstration of that which is to come.' Christopher Rowland, 'Interpreting the Resurrection,' in: Paul Avis (ed.), The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (London 1993). "^ -76.

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David Fergusson

painfully of the way in which non-human nature and animals were, despite the witness of the Bible, so often excluded from Christian visions of eternal life. In this connection, he recalls Rahner's dictum that eschatological fulfilment is not the denial of creatureliness. This, of course, is as much a political problem as it is a theological one. Harris points to the subversive potential within eschatology. Its images attest the precariousness of much that is precious, while pointing towards the need for redemption from what is futile and evil. Images of God's future have the capacity to name the present, thus enabling authentic Christian life and witness in the world. Yet we should not underestimate the popular appeal of Platonist or even Marcionite trends of thought. Those for whom physical or even mental suffering has become an intolerable burden must find alluring the release here suggested.11 Gunton also points to the way in which divine eternity must be conceived not as sheer timelessness - thus implying the unreality of time - but as embracing and hence making significant the history of creatures. This includes the incarnate life of Christ which corresponds to the eternal begetting of the Son by the Father. This theme is developed by Van den Brom in his important criticism of the eschatologies of Pannenberg and Moltmann which must assume, he claims, a spatialising of time and a block universe which make much that is central to the language of hope, freedom, intention and expectation unreal. He argues that these eschatologies, in excluding the contingency of secondary causes, are even more determinist than the classical Reformed doctrine of the eternal decree. Furthermore, the co-ordination of the doctrine of creation with eschatology suggests that the end is to be thought not so much as a finis but as a telos willed by God. Eschatology here becomes not discourse about the four last things, but a vision which determines what we make of the past and the present. Where hope is disconnected finally from present time, history, and embodied existence, the co-ordination of creation with eschatology is lost. The new creation becomes not the transformation of the old but a second creation out of nothing. To resist this, eschatology requires to maintain its rootedness within the world of Old Testament hopes and to foster a dialogue with contemporary Judaism.12 Hardy inveighs against "This point is well made by Fergus Kerr in his study of Wittgenstein. 'The only real problem for theologians in reading Wittgenstein lies in reluctance to acknowledge that the myth of the soul, even after all these centuries of official ecclesiastical rejection, has as strong a grip on our imagination as it ever had on Origen or his monkish followers.' Theology After Wittgenstein (Oxford 1986), 169. 12 Walter Brueggemann has recently argued that an important function of Old Testament theology is to remind the church of the elusiveness, materiality and concreteness of Yahweh's dealing with Israel. In this respect, it stands as a corrective to Hellenizing trends. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis 1997), 730.

Introduction u

5

disconnected abstractions" which foster an eschatology apart from economics, ecology and politics. The exploration of God's final goodness requires assessment of its relationship to everything else. In this respect, the fields of eschatology and theology become pretty much co-extensive. This is further illustrated by Knight's exploration of Zizioulas' eschatology. Here he shows its significance, in light of the doctrines of the Trinity and creation, for an understanding of human personhood and its ethical significance. The status and function of eschatological imagery remain a central issue for theological hermeneutics. Are we to read these images as coded signals from a future realm, or as furnishing the initiated with esoteric insights? Green argues that images are indispensable as the only vehicles available to our imaginations for expressing a vision of the world to come. Faithfulness to the insight of prophets and apostles demands that we continue to employ their eschatological imagery This is because their testimony to Jesus is inextricably bound up with hopeful expectation of the future. Again it is asserted that this is not an advance report of how history will turn out so much as faithfulness to Christ. Here we approach the motive behind eschatological speech and its only reasonable justification. If we are to trust the content of the Bible's witness to Jesus Christ, then we cannot but remain faithful to the expectation created by his resurrection from the dead. The subject of this action is the God of Israel, the creator of the world. In this respect, the eschatological representations of Scripture cannot be abandoned but must be seen as real though imaginative discourse which is analogically related to the content of hope. This side of eternity hope cannot be conceptualised in any other way. The preacher in the season of Advent is thus charged not with discarding or demythologising the language of Scripture, so much as reappropriating its imaginative power. The christocentrisrn of Green's approach is also reflected in an additional paper by Farrow which was solicited for this collection. He makes the simple though far-reaching remark that our final destiny is bound up with that of Jesus. Again we touch the nerve-centre of Christian eschatology. Our solidarity with Jesus and the way in which he shapes both present reality and future hope is expressed in the eucharist. By contrasting Origen and Augustine with Irenaeus, Farrow suggests that if we think of Jesus as both present and absent eschatologically then we might avoid the incursion of Platonist or Gnostic habits in our understanding of the relationship between this world and the next. This lends itself to an ethic neither of escape nor triumphalism, but of costly and patient witness. In this ambitious argument, Farrow urges temporal rather than spatial categories for dealing with the presence and absence of Christ. The eucharist is a point of convergence between these since the Christ who will come again is already in our midst redeeming the present. He even claims that the threefold confession of the

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David Fergusson

eucharistic prayer - Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again - might justifiably be claimed as the articulus stands. This eschatological focus to the understanding of the real presence reminds us that it is not by virtue of our intrinsic immortality that we shall inherit the kingdom of God. This notion exercises a powerful hold on the ways we describe life after death. It is here suggested, however, that we shall be raised by Christ's prior movement towards us, a movement that is promised and anticipated in the church's celebration of the sacrament. The relative lack of attention to Marxism in this collection perhaps indicates that modern nihilism and complacency are experienced as greater contemporary threats. Thiselton's paper shows how these are closely related in at least some forms of contemporary American pragmatism. While arguing for the compatibility of French strategies of suspicion with much in Christian discourse, he also challenges the complacency and false optimism of Richard Rorty's brand of postmodernism. The progress!vism of neopragmatist philosophy reduces theology, he argues, to the status of a commodity shaped by consumer tastes. By contrast, the more sombre tone of philosophies of suspicion since Nietzsche share something significant with a theology of the cross which also unmasks human pretension and the drive for power. What prevents the preaching of the cross from itself degenerating into a false rhetoric is its unavoidable ethical orientation towards the weak, the powerless and the marginalised. And what prevents it from collapsing into nihilism is the way in which it displays the character of grace and promise. Eschatological hope therefore informs both belief and action. It has a this-worldly, energising significance. A curious feature of the eschatological determination of all theology - a determination represented by all of the aforementioned essays - is the corresponding lack of attention in recent thought to the traditional themes of Christian eschatology. What are we to make of death, resurrection, millenarianism, judgement, purgatory, heaven and hell? We have already noted Moltmann's recent attention to the prominence of millenarian themes in Christian thought. Several of the other essayists also re-open discussion of these loci, while Schwobel in his survey of recent eschatological thought refers to the 'hyper-inflation' of eschatological language which leads to a regrettable neglect of specific themes. Van Holten points to the discussion amongst analytic philosophers of the way in which the traditional notion of hell as eternal torment produces an incontrovertible challenge to divine goodness. Considered as retribution, an unending torture for finite sin seems disproportionate to the requirements of both justice and mercy. Yet this raises further questions about the correct reading of Scripture and the controversial claim, set out on Molinist lines, that there is no possible universe in which some free creatures are not worthy of damnation. Gregersen's paper maintains the language of the last judgement not so much

Introduction

1

from a retributive as from a redemptive perspective. The exposure of our motives, actions and effects is necessary if we are to be purged. Since the judge is Christ, who is also our advocate, the last judgement ought also to be the occasion for our salvation. This, however, does not commit us to a universalism in which all are saved. The possibility of human rejection remains. This leads Gregersen to a reassessment of hell not as eternal torment but as annihilation. Together these essays testify to the vigour of eschatological debate today, and to the perennial interest in questions concerning hope, death and destiny, both human and cosmic. While we cannot pretend to a comprehensive coverage of every theme, these essays, nonetheless, provide a range of valuable reflections upon both the shape and content of eschatological language at the turn of the millennium. In gathering them together in this form it is hoped that they will occasion further discussion in both church and academy.

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2. Signs of the Times Towards a Theology for the Year 2000 as a Grammar of Grace, Truth and Eschatology in Contexts of So-Called Postmodernitv Anthony C. Thiselton The first part of the title was suggested to me, not chosen by me.1 For me, it raises at least three concerns. First, it invites a danger of pontificating about generalities It risks replacing specific concrete questions by abstract formulations. Second, it risks a serious mis-match between a hopeful and portentous title and becoming mired into the well-worn grooves of playing black chess pieces on behalf of theology in reactive mode while initiatives have been surrendered to socio-economic, political, or intellectual trends outside theology Although, as Tillich urged there is a place for 'answering theology/ all theology cannot be subsumed under this model. Third, it invites the kind of extrapolation from trends in the present which David Tracy, Jiirgen Moltmann and Karl Rahner distinguish firmly from Christian eschatology with its different dimension of new creation and surprise. Thus Tracy observes: 'To propose that what we can most expect is the unexpected is not Utopian but cold reality.'2 Moltmann points out that Bunder pressure of "progress" ... "What next?" is a typical modern question - generally an American one/3 In another volume also he draws a distinction between futurum which "develops out of the past (and] is already implicit' and the logic of eschatology in

1 An earlier version of this paper was delivered as Presidential Paper at the 1999 Conference of the SST Although the title of the Presidential Paper is often determined by the President, 1 accepted the Committee's request in appreciation of the honour of being elected President of this Society for 1999 and 2000. 2 David Tracy, 'Some Concluding Reflections on the Conference,' in: Hans Kung & David Tracy (eds.). Paradigm Change in Theology: A Symposium for the Future (Edinburgh 1989), 470 (my italics). 3 Jiirgen Moltmann, 'Can Christian Eschatology become Post-modem? Response to Miroslav Volf in: Richard Bauckham (ed.), God Will Be All in All: The Eschatology of Jiirgen Moltmann (Edinburgh 1999), 259.

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Anthony C. Thiselton

which adventus may combine divine promise with unexpected novelty.4 Eschatology 'transcends all remembered, experienced, and still-to-beexperienced presents.'5 Karl Rahner distinguishes between 'the future which does not evolve ... [but] springs out upon us, rips up the nets of all our plans' and 'the false "future" which we ourselves have constructed.'6 This contrast between futurology and eschatology will be fundamental to the argument of this paper.

1. Is the Notion of a Theology for the Year 2000' Viable? This question forms the first of six which we shall formulate and address. Each of these six questions will introduce, in turn, six specific theses. These will, like the first, contain two distinct components. Thesis la

Thesis 1 b

To attempt to formulate a 'Theology for the Year 2000' and beyond becomes viable if this task is construed as taking moral responsibility for the shaping of a transformative discipline in which much is at stake. It loses viability if it is conceived only or primarily as a merely reactive agenda to futurological extrapolations from present trends. In terms of content, such an agenda will entail a creative and critical engagement with a so-called postmodern context or mind-set, but also avoids compromising a genuinely theological grammar of grace, truth and eschatology.

Our observations about the logical distinctions between futurology and eschatology underlined by Tracy and by Moltmann, among others, might seem to suggest that we cannot attempt to formulate an agenda for theology ahead of our own times. However, their warnings concern the fallibility and seductions of extrapolating from the past and present as being of a different order from the more solid realities that depend on eschatological promise and the gift of new creation. They pave the way for what we wish to explore about the logical grammar of grace or gift. The title of this volume speaks of the future as 'God's gift' in contrast to a progressivist pragmatism of human achievement and social construction. On the very same page as that on which he excludes mere prediction on the ground of 'the unexpected,' David Tracy also asserts, 'The signs of the times are once again upon us. 4 J. Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (London 1996), 25; cf. 25-29. Moltmann observes that 'Zukunft is not a translation of the Latin Futurum. It is a translation of adventus. But adventus, in its turn, is a rendering of the Greek wordparousia ...' (25). 5 Moltmann, 'The Interlaced Times of History,' in: Kilng & Tracy (eds.), Paradigm Change, 326; cf. 320-339 6 Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations Vol. 10 (London 1973), 237.

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11

These signs are signs of the priority of the future; of possibilities we have not yet dared to imagine; of promises and threats like nuclear holocaust, massive global suffering and oppression, endemic sexism, racism, and ecological disaster we have not yet fully faced; of the full actuality of the always-already-not-yet-event of Jesus Christ in our midst.'7 The Synoptic Gospels discourage placing too much weight on 'signs of the times/ and warn us against seeking them (Mark 8:11-13; par. Matt. 16:1-4; Luke 11:16; 12:54-56; also cf. John 6:30).8 On the other hand, certain signs may be identified from time to time which point beyond themselves and require responsible understanding and interpretation (Mark 13:28-29; par Matt. 24:32, 33; Luke 21:29, 30). To be blind to what may be discerned for constructive action is sheer irresponsibility. Daniel Hardy holds together these two sides with explicit reference to the future of theology In his essay "The Future of Theology in a Complex World' he concedes that to attempt to address this subject may be perceived as 'presumptuous/ Nevertheless, he continues, 4We are morally responsible for the future of theology. Not only in what we say, but in the manner in which we deal with the questions and disagreements with which we shall be concerned, we are exemplifying theology and fashioning it for the future.'9 David Ford underlines the point that even if some onlookers, or even some theologians, construe theological projects which address issues of truth merely as disguised bids for power, this should not deter us from taking full moral responsibility for our subject in the context of the university, 10 Too much is at stake in the transformative potential of theology to allow us to retreat from including within its agenda questions of truth, meaning and value. The very accountability raised by the financial and public sources needed to sustain theological exploration make retreat into mere supposedly value-neutral phenomenological description more like a betrayal of public responsibility than an outworking of it. Ford insists: 'Theological and religious studies deals with questions of meaning, truth, beauty, and practice raised in relation to religions and pursued through a range of academic disciplines' (his italics).11 It is imperative as a matter of ethical responsibility and accountability to society. Ford continues, to sustain 4 an ethical coherence ... for this field' as

D Tracy, "Some Concluding Reflections,' in: Kiing & Tracy (eds.), Paradigm Change,

470.

8

Paul discourages 'seeking1 a sign (1 Cor. 1:22) but he also speaks more positively of 'signs of a true apostle' (2 Cor. 12:12). Cf. also Mark 13:24-25; Luke 21:25. 9 Daniel W Hardy, God's Wavs with the World: Thinking and Practising Christian Faith (Edinburgh 1996). 31; cf. 31-50. 10 David F Ford, 'Theology and Religious Studies at the Turn of the Millennium,' Teaching Theology and Religion \ (1998), 5; cf. 4-12. 11 Ford, 'Theology and Religious Studies,' 6.

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Anthony C. This el ton 12

it moves into the future. He allows for a duality of responsibilities which relate respectively to the academy and to religious communities.13 The very term 'ethical coherence,' however, begins to enter an area where questions are raised by the controversial notion of 'postmodernity.' Certainly, as Richard Roberts rightly insists, it runs counter to any analysis of our social and cultural situation to conceive of the premodern, modern, and postmodern as three neatly sequential stages of development rather than three sources of conflicting cross-currents which seek to draw us in different directions simultaneously through choppy waters.14 In his response to Richard Robert's essay, Daniel Hardy firmly agrees that premodernity, modernity, and postmodernity 'co-exist,' but interprets this as indicating that linkages and a sense of social cohesion or provisional wholeness need not and should not be entirely lost.15 The moral responsibility for shaping theological methods and agenda arises precisely because theology 'enhances or destroys relationship to God, others, and the world' and may promote some kind of vision of 'deep unity between peoples ... based on their service of a common good.'16 Miroslav Volf identifies similar issues, focussing in particular on the phenomenon of consumerism, which Roberts has described in terms of 'an ever expanding market society ... driven forward by the rhetoric of "choice."'17 With Roberts, Volf observes 'a plurality of often contradictory social worlds' which generate centrifugal force. However, he also notes a centripetal counter-movement of 'the process of globalization.' Just as Dan Hardy responds to Richard Roberts not to surrender a vision of unity too hastily, so Jiirgen Moltmann responds to Miroslav Volf that present-day society is not simply or even primarily marked by 'diversity, complexity and plurality.'18 Moltmann asserts: 'The trend towards the globalization of the free market society is reducing the world to uniformity. First, China is Coca Cola-ized, then Moscow is Macdonald-ized, and in the end the world everywhere looks just the same as it does in Chicago, London, and New York: the same clothes, the same high-rise blocks, the same brand names on what we buy. The cultural multiplicity and diversity of the different peoples 12

Ford, 'Theology and Religious Studies,' 6. Ford, 'Theology and Religious Studies,' 8. In 1982 I published an essay specifically on these dual responsibilities under the title 'Academic Freedom, Religious Tradition, and the Morality of Christian Scholarship,' in: Mark Santer (ed.), Their Lord and Ours: Approaches to Authority, Community and the Unity of the Church (London 1982), 20-45. 14 R.H. Roberts, 'A Postmodern Church?', in: D.S. Ford & D.L. Stamps (eds.), Essentials of Christian Community (Edinburgh 1996), 179-195. 15 D.W. Hardy, in: Ford & Stamps (eds.), Essentials, 336-337. 16 D.W. Hardy, 'The Future of Theology,' in: God's Ways with the World, 31, 33. I7 Miroslav Volf, 'Introduction,' in: M. Volf, C. Krieg & T. Kucharz (eds.), The Future of Theology (Grand Rapids 1996), esp. x; and R.H. Roberts, 'Postmodern Church?', 182. 18 Moltmann, 'Can Christian Eschatology become Post-Modern?', 259-264. 13

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which once existed is now processed into folklore, and is then marketed by the tourist industry/19 We may sum up some of our arguments under this first question and first thesis in terms of some cross-references to other essays or papers within this volume. First, the use of 'post' in the term postmodernity should not seduce us into imagining that this complexity of attitudes, assumptions and mindset is either sequentially subsequent to 'modernity' nor necessarily an 'improved' progress!vist 'advance' on modernity in every aspect. Further, Kim Yong-Bock's paper challenges both an over-optimistic progressivism and secular futurology, and any unduly simplistic diagnosis of so-called radical pluralism, as if centripetal and globalizing forces were not equally active alongside those in fragmentation and pluralism. A healthy reminder of the ambivalence and negative aspects of postmodernity is well identified in Moltmann's preference for the term sub-modernity^ Second, several papers draw attention to the transformative potential of theology, especially of Christian theology, in ways that raise the stakes for our taking moral responsibility for how it is shaped. Thus Garrett Green underlines what he calls 'the imaginative character of the Christian vision of another world ... an alternative vision of the world in which the world is ... transformed imaginatively.'21 Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart head one of their sections 'The Shape of Living and the Shape of Time' and speak subsequently of 'expanding our perceived horizons of possibility ... If there is no ultimate meaning, no final truth, ... then it is possible to ignore with impunity the piercing eyes of the starving child or the bewildered ~ ,2? refugee ... ~ Third, this last statement brings us back to the need for a theological grammar of grace, truth and eschatology which has not been compromised by a need to engage with a postmodern climate. Theology makes truthclaims which transcend the merely local or pragmatic. Truth is more than seeking k justification' (to use Richard Rorty's language) in the eyes of some specific local community who determines what counts as 'true.' If the future is 'God's gift' of grace, social constructivism cannot tell the whole story, and other essays in this volume confirm our distinction between eschatology and futurology. Thus Bauckham and Hart warn us against 'substituting immanent for transcendent eschatology' which appears to undergird the illusory progressivism of the Enlightenment myth of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and beyond. Here hope rests not in divine promise but on 'the mastery of the future by human rationality and freedom, education 19

Moltmann, 'Can Christian Eschatology become Post-Modem?', 263. Jiirgen Moltmann, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology (London 1999), 11-17; cf. 3-45. 21 In this volume, 70. 72 In this volume, 48, 53, 57. 20

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and technology.' Their later allusion to Jiingel on the ontology of possibility presses this further.24 Progressivism of this kind finds no place at all in Kim Yong-Bock's approach to eschatology. All this invites us to explore a second question and thesis.

2. What Kind of Postmodernity? Ideological Suspicion in Continental Europe or Ethnocentric-Consumerist Neo-Pragmatism in America? Thesis 2a

Thesis 2b

The postmodern condition in Continental Europe draws on critical suspicions that some truth-claims may all too often represent disguised bids for power. The postmodern condition in America more optimistically tests truth-claims by what can be justified as furthering 'progress' for ethnocentric or 'local' communities who buy into them as consumers. Whereas many see the latter mindset as less threatening to theology than the former, we argue the reverse. The critical, pessimistic suspicion of European postmodernity can serve to filter authentic truth-claims from those which seek to legitimate power and interests through idols of 'religion.' The optimistic progressivism of American ethnocentric neopragmatism reduces theology and ethics to the status of a commodity shaped by consumer-choice.

Pauline M. Rosenau also distinguishes firmly between these two types of postmodernity. However, she regards the mood of the phenomenon in Continental Europe as 'skeptical' and potentially more seriously destructive than 'affirmative' elements within what she perceives as the more optimistic Anglo-American tradition.25 This is not to forget that in the end she regards both mind-sets as inconsistent and self-defeating. I have argued elsewhere that the ideological suspicion of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and even Friedrich Nietzche before them, embody elements of prophetic value for truth-claims in theology.26 Because 23

In this volume, 39. In this volume, 60-61. 25 P.M. Rosenau, Post Modernism and the Social Sciences (Princeton NJ 1992). 26 A.C. Thiselton, Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise (Edinburgh 1995); cf. also New Horizons in Hermeneutics (London 1992), 80141, 379-409, 495-508 in contrast to the mistaken verdict of Linda Woodhead on my work in 'Theology and the Fragmentation of the Self,' InternationalJournal of Systematic Theology 1 (1999), 68-69; cf 53-72. 24

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of its more self-aware, self-critical philosophical tradition, a balance sheet which both informs and distorts a theological grammar of truth may be derived from the ideological suspicion of Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. By contrast the American pragmatic tradition has assumed the status of a 'scaffolding1 (in the sense in which Wittgenstein uses this term) which redefines truth in consumerist terms. When this is imported into theology, the result is the systematic distortion of the task of theology for the new millennium. 'Truth' becomes a pragmatic social construct. This leaves no room for the contribution of grace and Christian eschatology to the logical grammar of truth. In much American theology this emerges as a focus on narrative as against history, on practices as against epistemology, and on the supposedly incommensurable truth-claims of local communities as against the global community (vertically through history and promise; horizontally by including Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free) of the 'one Body' of Christ. In his Truth and Progress Richard Rorty would have us believe that if we follow the path indicated by William James, John Dewey, W.V.O. Quine, Hilary Putnam and (by implication) Stanley Fish, we shall come to see that the grammar of truth consists in nothing more or less than what can be justified (i.e., is accepted as a justification) as of use or utility within a liberal democratic society, or more particularly within specific local ('ethnocentric') communities within it. Other grammars of truth which may entail ontology, metaphysics and transcontextual or transpragmatic criteria define themselves as prime candidates for the great 'rubbish-disposal projects' of pragmatic American philosophy.27 What AJ. Ayer called exposing 'non-sense' from an empiricist-positivist viewpoint, and Richard Rorty calls 'rubbish-disposal' from a pragmatist angle, Gayatn Spivak and Jacques Derrida call 'cutting away,' 'erasing,' or deconstructing. Spivak, Derrida's close collaborator and translator, points out that Derrida singled out Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl and Heidegger as his wacknowledged "pre-cursors" ... Nietzsche cut away the grounds of knowing; Freud ... put the psyche in question; Heidegger ... put Being under erasure/28 Where Nietzsche comes closest to Rorty is in his claim that 'what is believed to be true' has the 'highest importance,' while 'what is true' remains % a matter of absolute indifference.'29

27

Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers Vol. 3 (Cambridge 1998), 10; cf. 1-15 Cf. also esp. 19-42, 153-165 and 433-62. See also his Objectivism, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers Vol. 1 (Cambridge 1991). 28 G Spivak. 'Translator's Preface,' in: J. Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore 1976), xxi. 29 F. Nietzsche, Complete Works (18 vols. London 1909-13), Vol. 16, The Antichrist, aphorisms 13 & 23 (in improved translation by R.J. Hollingdale, London 1990).

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Barthes has an entirely valid 'feeling of impatience at the "naturalness" with which newspapers, art, and common sense constantly dress up reality.'30 The use of a semiotic code relating to dress-style or furniturestyles for example may serve to make claims to belong to a social 'management' or 'professional' group.31 On the other hand, Barthes does not exclude the possibility that what is chosen may depend on judgements about the weather or comfort in its home. This self-critical and socio-critical awareness of issues of language and truth serves theology positively. The regular occurrence of social construction, which Barthes unmasks, assists in disentangling counterfeit religion or idolatry from genuine responses to divine grace. This differs, however, from Rorty's view that all 'truthclaims' are exhaustively and without remainder to be counted as true-orfalse on the basis of a consensus of consumer choices within a series of local communities in a liberal democracy. It is a necessary stock-in-trade of any serious course in the philosophy of religion to take account of the need to explore controlling models and metaphors in religious language, and to disentangle those which may embody cognitive truth-claims from those which may appear to do so while merely expressing recommendations, attitudes, or emotive slogans. Derrida merely raises the stakes, but hardly invents the problem when he calls our attention to metaphors which 'derive from a theory of value and not only from a theory of signification.^2 In the same way, while most theologians would find it difficult to follow Foucault in the extent and range of his social constructivism, no 'theology for the year 2000' should fail to gain sensitivity and critical resources from his work on discourses of power. Knowledge in the shape of bureaucracy, professionalism, records, medical and social data can indeed be absorbed into the processes of regimentation and domination which often characterize 'the smiling face in the white coat' in prisons, hospitals, and other 'regime-focussed' institutions.33 The proof (if any were needed) that all this is fundamental for theology at the turn of the millennium as part of its critical resources can be seen in theological publications which explore relations between truth-claims, knowledge and power in social and ecclesial institutions.34 However, this need not lead, and should not lead, to the denigration of epistemology, which we find in much 'postmodern' or 'non-foundationalist' American theology. 30

R. Barthes, Mythologies (London 1972), 11. R. Barthes, Elements ofSemiology (London 1967), 58-88. 32 J. Derrida, 'White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy,' in: Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (New York 1982), 217-218 (his italics); cf. 207-271. 33 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York 1977), e.g., 138, 176-77. 34 E.g., Christine Firer Hinze, Comprehending Power in Christian Social Ethics (Atlanta 1995), 85-97; 108-126; 146-163; E.A. Castelli, Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (Louisville 1991), 35-58, 119-124; S.D. Moore, Poststructuaralism and the New Testament: Derrida and Foucault at the Foot of the Cross (Minneapolis 1994). 31

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Rorty claims that the task of 'getting reality right' dissolves into nothing, or is mere rubbish to be removed: 'There is no such task, because there is no Way the World is. 3" Rorty 'finds persuasive' the controversial aphorism of William James that "The true" ... is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as "the right'1 is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.36 The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief../' ^What proves itself to be good* resonates with two contexts in American society at large: what proves itself to be deemed good in the eyes of consumers', and what proves itself to be good within the trajectory of a progress-orientated futurology. For Putnam any notion of the world 'as it is in itself remains identical to a 'world' considered wholly by human needs, choices, and interests, i.e. the world of consumers in the market place,38 Rorty provides his most transparent and explicit bonding between pragmatism and consumerism when he proposes that the grammar of truth has no residue of content beyond what may be offered as a justification for holding a belief or for pursuing a course of action. He adds: 'But ... if we say "justified" rather than "true"' (as he advocates) then 'justification is always relative to an audience.'39 The audience, not the speaker, the consumer, not the producer, defines the criteria for what counts as 'true.' We can now see more clearly how different the European and American moods become If the European movement generates in John Caputo's phrase 'the great project of hermeneutical trouble-making' which causes 'worries' that are 'only for the hardy' this serves as an area with which theology must engage and to which it must listen. By contrast, the very opposite to 'worrying' emerges from the American pragmatic agenda. Stanley Fish learns here how to 'stop worrying'', and Richard Rorty 'dissolves* (re-applying the term from Wittgenstein) the supposed pseudoproblems of the grammar of truth. The upshot is to provide a brash, selfaffirming philosophy of futurological progress which waves away any cause for heart-searching and discomfort as the part of the 'rubbish-disposal projects' which American philosophers are called upon to undertake.40 In his Doing What Comes Naturally, Stanley Fish adopts the standard strategy of American neo-pragmatism. If opponents produce 'problems,' Fish and Rortv need only (in their eyes) reply 'So what?' As we shall see, ^ R. Rorty, Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers Vol. 3 (Cambridge 1998), 25. 36 Cited Rorty, Truth and Progress, 21, from W. James, Pragmatism and the Meaning of Truth (Cambridge, Mass 1975), 106 (my italics). 37 Rorty, Truth and Progress, and James, Pragmatism, 42. 38 See H. Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass 1992) esp. Ch. 5. 39 R Rorty, Truth and Progress, 4. 40 R Rorty, Truth and Progress, 10; J.D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics (Bloomington 1987), 2 S Fish. Is There a Text in This Class (Baltimore 1980), 1-17.

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for them, 'serious man' is passe; only 'rhetorical man' remains. Hence, by giving undue privilege to a version of the early paradigm-theory of Thomas Kuhn, and by giving Richard Rorty 'the last word' in his essay on rhetoric, Fish not only endorses the view that 'there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community' but also concludes: 'There are "two ways of thinking about various things" ... It is the difference between serious and rhetorical man.'41 'Serious man' is dogged by self-imposed burdens of moral responsibility. 'Rhetorical' man 'sees through' philosophy and theology to the 'pragmatist' assumption that only socio-political forces of persuasion instrumentally determine who are 'winners' in the market place of life and thought. It might be thought that such a world-view is so patently secular that theology would hardly offer it hospitality within its internal communities. Especially but not exclusively in America, however, this is far from being the case. A loss of confidence by many theologians in the very possibility, need, or relevance of epistemology and ontology for theology is a symptom of the seduction, while history and effective traditions (Wirkungsgeschichte) are too readily lost from view as the focus shifts to local or 'narrative' communities whose truth-claims are often said to be incommensurable. Some conservatives see this as an alibi for rejecting 'historical-critical' scholarship as 'rationalist,' and history and knowledge come to be replaced by role-performance (linguistic or social), regardless of the presuppositions or foundations which are necessary to give currency to truth and language beyond the socially constructed worlds of consumers.

3. Why Should a Pragmatic-Progressivist Grammar of Truth Prove to Be so Seductive to Theology Especially in America? Thesis 3a Thesis 3b

The American pragmatic tradition has its origins in the secularization of New England Puritan theology and achieves the status in some quarters of the 'scaffolding of our thought.' A neo-pragmatic grammar of truth distorts theology if or when it isfiltered through such writers as Fish and Rorty.

I am in part indebted to my American collaborator and friend Roger Lundin, whose specialisms include literary theory, American literature, and the

41 S. Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Oxford 1989), 487 (from Kuhn, but note the predictable and unfortunate appeal still to the 1962 edition without reference to Kuhn's later quasi-retractions or modifications) and 501-502 (alluding to Rorty); from 'Rhetoric,' 471-502.

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42

history of ideas, for thesis 3a. In his discussion of the background surrounding Emily Dickinson Lundin, points out that 'experiential acquaintance with the grace of God' replaced any notion of being born into a Christian tradition. Together with 'experience' went 'testimony' and 'community/ but the local community not a universal community. 'In the seventeenth century. Puritan leaders had required lengthy narrative accounts of the soul's struggles and the Spirit's blessings as evidence of the applicant's "acquaintance with the grace of God." These narratives often scaled the bright peaks of spiritual bliss and traversed the darkened valleys of sin and despair They were elaborate dramatic tales of the special providences of God1 and as well as concerning 'the individual soul' they projected also 'the future of God's covenanted people in the New World.'43 The building blocks begin to emerge: narrative, experience, struggle issuing in 'winning/ and a futurology. The context is a local community of the present, not a historic global community born within traditions. Lundin speaks of 'one of the paradoxes at the heart of American experience ... a tradition of disclaiming tradition/44 As communities sought to be faithful to God and prospered, a robust optimistic correlation between well being and the right, or between the successful and the true, became a habit of mind. Liberation from earlier traditions left behind in the Old World revealed itself in the shape of 'Progress/ i.e., futurology. Rorty, it seems, fails to note self-critically how, in Wittgenstein's language, this mind-set of predictable extrapolated optimism becomes 'the scaffolding of [our] thoughts'; 'hinges' on which enquiries turn, which precisely because they are never doubted come to 'lie apart from the route travelled by enquiry' and eventually become 'fossilized/45 Ironically in view of American 'non-foundationalism' (which often mistakenly appeals to Wittgenstein) Wittgenstein observes that such ways of seeing things function "as a foundation for research and action' often 'isolated from doubt/46

42 R. Lundin, 'Reading America, Hermeneutics in the City Upon a Hill,' Conference paper Crossing the Boundaries Interpretive Theory and the Christian Faith (Gloucester, Mass, Apl. 16-19, 1998, awaiting publication); also R. Lundin, The Culture of Interpretation: Christian Faith and the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids 1993); R. Lundin (ed.), Disciplining Hermeneutics (Leicester 1997), R. Lundin, Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief (Grand Rapids 1998) and (with Thiselton & Walhout) The Promise of Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids 1999). 43 Lundin, Emily Dickinson, 49. 44 Lundin, The Culture of Interpretation 140-141; cf. also Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley 1985), 56—62. 45 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (Oxford 1969), sects 211, 343 and 655, 88, 657 respectively 46 Wittgenstein, On Certainty, sect. 87 (his italics); discussed further in A.C. Thiselton, The Two Horizons (Grand Rapids 1980), 392-401.

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Confidence in the unstoppable progress of the mastery of nature by natural sciences hastens a movement away from earlier Puritan interpretations of providence and nurtures the rule of human self-reliance. Lundin endorses the verdict of Sac van Bercovitch that 'they substituted a regional for a biblical past, consecrated the American present as a movement from promises to fulfilment, and translated fulfilment, from its meaning within ... sacred history into a metaphor for limitless secular improvement.'47 Thus Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) comes to set up an implicit contrast between criteria of the true or good based on the will of God and criteria dependent on 'the benefits of humanity.' Acts are good, or opinions 'true' when these are 'beneficial to us.'48 In Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) we encounter a political philosophy which clearly embodied pragmatic progressivism: in the 1830s he compared his own political movement as 'the party of the Future' while labelling his opponents 'the party of the Past.' William James and John Dewey saw him as a liberating and inspiring mentor who saw 'boundless possibilities' for a self-achieved future.49 Rorty transposes this into a postmodern key. On his definition of 'truth,' 'nobody should even to try to specify the nature of truth ... Truth is not a goal of inquiry. If "truth" is the name of such a goal then, indeed, there is no truth ... There is nothing to the notion of objectivity save that of intersubjective agreement.'50 Rorty disarmingly concedes the circularity of his own arguments; but this does not matter to him. 'There is no central faculty, no central self, called "reason."'51 We cannot go beyond epistemological behaviourism, not only conditioned by, but also constructed by, the 'contingencies' of language, selfhood and community.52 'Irony' comes down to futurology: our accounts of present or future achievements remain irredeemably 'Whiggish.'53 'Solidarity' with a community of enquiries within which consensus emerges defines what we call 'truth' in a democratic society.54 Ethics becomes a matter of raw consequentialism in 47

S. Bercovitch, The Rites of Assent: Transformations in the Symbolic Construction of America (New York 1993), 147; cited by R. Lundin, 'Reading America,' 10. 48 Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, conveniently available in: N. Baym et al., The Norton Anthology of American Literature \ (New York41994), 524. 49 On the further development of the American pragmatic tradition see R.S. Corrington, The Community of Interpreters: On the Hermeneutics of Nature and the Bible in the American Philosophical Tradition (Macon, Ga 1987) 50 Rorty, Truth and Progress, 3, 6-8. 5I R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge 1989), 33 (Might this fall under the same criticism by Linda Woodhead as above). 52 Rorty, Contingency, 3-69. 53 Rorty, Contingency, 73-137. 54 Rorty, Truth and Progress, 1-163; Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, 35-77; Rorty, Contingency, 141-198.

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social practices, concerning which we may ask 'what?' or 'how?' but not 'why?'55 A parallel may be suggested with the seductions which held in thrall a large segment of British intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s who had not noticed the 'scaffolding' of empiricist assumptions in British traditions. Precisely with the kind of self-assured self-confidence with which Fish and Rorty write, A.J. Aver thought that he had shown that all language that was not either empirically verifiable or logically analytic was 'non-sense' (cf. 'rubbish' in Rorty, or 'without consequences' in Fish).56 It took less than twenty years to unmask Ayer's work as merely a positivist world-view dressed up in the disguise of a theory of language. Once its sheer secularity and reductionism as a world-view had been exposed, logical positivism lost its spell, and the positivist scaffolding' came to view. Just as half a century ago a British public wondered why they had ever accepted the initial assumption laid down by Ayer, how long will it be before what Rorty concedes amounts to a circular argument grounded simply in 'what a democratic society does' also loses its spell? There can be no doubt that in American theology a so-called post-critical or post-liberal emphasis upon 'what communities do' in contrast to Cartesian questions about epistemological foundations finds various levels and forms of expression among numerous writers. Notably Peter Ochs includes in his anthology of Tostcritical' writers George Lindbeck, Stanley Hauerwas, and (for example) John E. Smith's essay 'Jonathan Edwards: Piety and its Fruits/5 In his larger work of 1998 Peter Ochs associates the legacy of C.S. Peirce and pragmatism explicitly with Frei, Lindbeck, Hauerwas, and Gregory Jones, and with such Jewish interpreters as Moshe Greenberg and Michael Fishbane.58 We alluded above to Robert Corrington's convincing arguments about a distinctively American hermeneutic of 'effects,' as against fcgivens/S9 Christopher Norris identifies a distinctively American "pragmatist cultural politics,' while Jonathan Culler speaks of the 'complacency* of a neo-pragmatism characteristic of'the Age of Reagan.'60

55

Rorty, Contingency, 141-198. A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936; New York21946). Peter Ochs (ed.) The Return to Scripture in Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Postcritical Scriptural Interpretation (New York 1993), 83-103, (cf. also G. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine [London 1984], 308-326; also S. Hauerwas in: Volf et al. [eds.], Future, 26-34, esp. 27); and 277-291. 58 Peter Ochs, Peirce, Pragmatism and the Logic of Scripture (Cambridge 1998) 18, 290325. 59 R.S Corrington, The Community of Interpreters: On the Hermeneutics of Nature and the Bible in the American Philosophical Tradition (Macon, Ga 1997), 1-29,43-46. 60 C. Norris, Contest of Faculties (London 1985), 162; J. Culler, Framing the Sign (Oxford 1988), 55 56 57

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All the same, it does not remain entirely accurate to lump together the more sophisticated pragmatism of the later Peirce, with the neo-pragmatism of Rorty, Fish, and others who transform epistemology into no more than an instrumental device to promote 'rhetorical' truth-claims. This leads to a fourth thesis.

4. How May a Theology for the Year 2000 Best Clarify the Difference between a Fruitful, Critical Pragmatism of Proven Wisdom and a Postmodern Pragmatism of Consumerism and Ethnocentric Pluralism? Thesis 4a Peirce's attempt to 'supplement' epistemological determinacy by life-related pragmatic criteria may cohere with theological grammars of truth without thereby reducing theology to consumerism or rhetoric. Thesis 4b Rorty's attempt to 'replace' epistemological determinacy by ethnocentric pragmatic criteria distorts and destroys theological grammars of truth, and thereby necessarily reduces theology to consumerism and rhetoric. The 're-reading' of C.S. Peirce by Peter Ochs clearly serves to distinguish the pragmatism of Peirce from the more reductionist claims of Rorty. Nevertheless even Ochs notes 'two conflicting models' in Peirce's early work.61 Since Peirce believes that there is no 'given' apart from signs, signrelations and human behaviour, the emphasis in questions about meaning falls largely on 'cash-currency.' At the same time in his later work Peirce avoids reducing truth exhaustively to this level. Thus in 'What Pragmatism Is' (1905) Peirce explicitly includes within his 'pragmatic maxim' of'practical consequences' an 'intellectual conception' of conditional propositions of the form 'if/?, then q.'62 In other words, Peirce's broad appeal to the words of Jesus 'by their fruits ye shall know them' supplements but does not replace enquiry about logical relations between concepts.63 Even if Peirce anticipates some aspects of what later becomes a local contextualism in Rorty, as Apel argues, it is possible to interpret Peirce as offering an 'enlargement' of epistemology, not its reduction or replacement by raw consequentialism.64 Indeed even Dewey, to whom Rorty appeals as 61

Ochs, Peirce, 58-59. C.S. Peirce, 'What Pragmatism Is,' Monist 15 (1905), 161-181 rpt. in his Collected Papers (Cambridge 1935/1958) vol. 5. "Ochs, Peirce, 187; cf. 185-191. On the primary sources in Peirce, also 347, notes 13-15. 64 Karl-Otto Apel, Towards a Transformation of Philosophy (London 1980), 46; cf. 58-60, 80-92, 101-135. 62

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his own inspiration, gives due warning that raw pragmatism will too readily breed a scepticism which paralyses moral effort and the notion that 'might is right.' These approaches, Cornel West notes, differ from Rorty's ethical complacency.65 In the analysis presented by Ochs, Peirce came to see in his later work that his earlier writings had uncritically 'sought to replace rather than help correct* (my italics) an over-reliance on human reason alone. Ochs writes with a respect for traditions, which finds no parallel in Rorty.66 This brings us to a fundamental question for our main task of exploring 'Theology for the Year 2000.' Do the so-called postliberal, postcritical, or self-styled knon-foundationalist' theologians of American thought who stand in the Peirce-Dewey frame of reference remain entirely free from the epistemological reductionism and community-centredness of the earlier Peirce and Rorty's neo-pragmatism? On one side, Ochs eagerly stands alongside Frei, Lindbeck, Hauerwas and theologians often associated with 'narrative theology.' Later Peirce saw that these cognitive dimensions needed to be subsumed into a more comprehensive paradigm, and not simply rejected. Where Rorty would speak of 'rubbish-disposal' in this context, Peirce conceived of his own later work as one of "repair/67 Practical 'wisdom' embraces both elements.68 George Lindbeck, however, argues that 'the ultimate test' of postliberal theology 'is performance.' Even allowing for the ecumenical aims of his work, we find it problematic that he groups together 'an experientialexpressive model' which focusses on 'experience' as an 'alternative' (his word) to a so-called cultural-linguistic model.69 Lindbeck's unduly pragmatic classificatory method fails to integrate the cognitive and pragmatic with the degree of subtle interaction that characterizes both human language and more complex grammars of truth.70 Indeed he views these models as 'fundamentally different notions of what religion is.'71 Further, his borrowing from the philosophy of science the term 'incommensurable' without a rigorously critical exposition of its range of meanings brings us too easily to Rorty's 'local' or 'ethnocentric' stance. There is insufficient argument to lead us back to a more judicious and rounded understanding of how this term becomes transposed into different keys in the respective repertoire of philosophy of science, postmodern philosophy, and what he far too simply lumps together as 'propositionalism.'72 65 Cornel West, 'The Politics of American Neo-Pragmatism,' in: J. Rajchman & C. West (eds.), Post-Analytic Philosophy (New York 1985), 267. ^Ochs, Peirce, 3-19, 23-26, 36-50 (cf. the critique of the earlier work in 55-103). 67 Ochs, Peirce, 59,61,62. 68 Ochs, Peirce, 58-64. 69 Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 31^0. 70 Lmdbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 41-42; cf. 47-52. 71 Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 41. 72 Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 48-51.

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Rorty uses the term 'ethnocentrism' to replace the more obvious word 'relativism' which he rejects. This new preferred term identifies the distinctive practices of particular communities, which depend, in effect, on consumer-choice. To claim that 'truth' may be reduced to what beliefs can be justified to a specific audience-community is not, Rorty claims, to dissolve 'truth' into relativism. It is to acknowledge the pluralism and diversity of contingent ethnocentric communities in a continent-wide democracy. Truth' is relative to 'our' practices. Tellingly, Rorty declares: 'I have tried to sketch the connections between antirepresentationalism, ethnocentrism, and the virtues of the socio-political culture of the liberal democracies. As I have repeatedly suggested, I view the position developed in these essays as continuous with Dewey 's - the figure who, in the decade since I wrote Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1979] has, in my imagination, gradually eclipsed Wittgenstein and Heidegger.'73 There we have it: a distinctively American progressivist pragmatism tied into futurology, and the ethnocentrism of a series of communities whose truth-claims are incommensurable because we can only ask what is justifiable to each them, never to all of them. The influence of Rorty and Fish in American theology comes through a one-sided misappropriation of the later Wittgenstein, partly through an unaccountably 'postmodern' reading of Gadamer, and partly through an uncritical transposition of 'incommensurability' from the earlier Kuhn and philosophy of science. Many have offered criticisms of Fish and Rorty's reading of Wittgenstein. This Tendenz began with Rorty's re-reading of philosophers through neo-pragmatic spectacles in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). Jane Heal and Richard Bernstein are among those who question this reading by Rorty, just as I have questioned Fish's use of Wittgenstein.74 To be sure Rorty discusses various interpretations of Wittgenstein in secondary literature.75 However, in his later works this is mainly in relation to 'anti-realism' and to issues of 'theory.' Rorty never fully takes account of Wittgenstein's observation that for someone attempting to understand human beings, 'the common behaviour of mankind (die gemeinsame menschliche Handlungsweise) is the system of reference by which we interpret an unknown language.'76 Understanding pain-behaviour does not depend on observing the practices of a community 73

Rorty, Objectivity, Relativity and Truth, 16 (my italics); cf. 1-17. Jane Heal, 'Pragmatism and Choosing to Believe,' in: A.R. Malachowski (ed.), Reading Rorty: Critical Responses to 'Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature' and Beyond (Oxford 1990), 101-114; R.J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia 1991), 197207 and The New Constellation (Cambridge 1991), 15-30, 230-292. Cf. Thiselton, New Horizons, 540-550. 75 Rorty, Truth and Progress, 33-40, 103-107, 331-333; and Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, 2-7, 144-148. 76 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Sect. 206. 74

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whose truth-claims are incommensurable with others, but on observing 'the pain-behaviour ... of a living human being.'77 If an alien from space witnesses someone shaking up and down and uttering 'bleating noises,' it is in relation to understanding what it is to be human that this will be perceived as laughter. It is not simply context-relative to some given community. Wittgenstein insists that such concepts as 'repentance,' 'pain' or 'love' depend on experiencing or engaging with the human as human, or 'the whole hurly-burly of human actions.'78 In the same way Georgia Warnke and Karl-Otto Apel expose the inadequacy of the misplaced appeals by Rorty and Fish to Gadamer's supposed denigration of rationality and epistemology. 9 It is not as if Rorty and Fish manage entirely to avoid any appeal to 'foundations.' The new 'foundation' has become in effect, even if not in intention, simply 'This is what we (or "our people") do.' This even produces a self-conscious style in some American theology which seems to many uncongenial, even pretentious if it were not a symptom of the new 'foundation* of peer-group practices. Thus Rorty often uses such phrases as 'we pragmatists think ..." as if he were duly appointed spokesperson of a 'local' community of neo-pragmatists.80 This finds echoes also of style in such works as Stephen Fowl's recent Engaging with Scripture. The superb theological hermeneutics towards the end of this book is marred by a repetitive appeal to peer-group categorization in the opening sections: 'Watson and I ... Both of us ... Quids' ... and my arguments overlap ... Jeanrond and I agree ... the guild of biblical scholars ...' 8l Although appeals to 'communities' are often thought to be 'non-foundationalist' in America, do they not simply replace a foundation of rationality and argument, or of creeds based on epistemological testimony, by a new 'foundation' of community practices! Margaret Thatcher hinted at such a foundation when she asked the widely reported question about a candidate considered for promotion: 'but is he really one of usT Here indeed is Rorty's 'ethnocentrism.' Similarly, while he cannot be accused of consumerism (which he explicitly recognizes as a looming danger for theology), Hauerwas finds it 'puzzling' that theologians in universities 'come to the defence of the human, the rational ...' when a community of faith should adhere to the distinctive 'story' that binds it "Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Sect. 281. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel, Sect. 567. 79 G. Warnke, Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason (Cambridge 1987) and K.-O. Apel, 'Regulative Ideas or Truth Happenings?' in: L.E. Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, 67-94. 80 Rorty, Truth and Progress, 39 85 S.E. Fowl. Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation (Oxford 1998) 22, 23, 25 29, in contrast to an excellent discussion of subject-matter in 161-178. 78

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together. By contrast, the British theologian Nicholas Lash seeks an interaction 'between narrative and metaphysics' which avoids Rorty's pragmatism while addressing the both ... and ... which the later Peirce also addressed.83 One unwelcome symptom of pragmatic consumerism in theology is the tendency to pursue the method of cartography, most especially by mapping the 'positions' of writers without regard to their ongoing development or the complexity of differing networks of beliefs within a diversity of dynamic traditions. From the turn of the last century onwards too much American theology has operated by this method: a mapping of theological terrain in which market-competitors, with their goods and services, take up categorized 'positions' on the display shelf. Such an imposition of 'categories' or pre-shaped pigeon-holes in advance of understanding remains profoundly unhermeneutical. This is precisely what Hans-Georg Gadamer means by 'method' when he rejects the notion of providing a network or grid of prior questions, concepts, or spaces into which that which we seek to understand must fit. Such a 'method' cannot fail to prevent understanding, and cannot therefore be commended even as a didactic exercise. As Gadamer notes, it has to do with 'preserving one's own "position"' in the market, and fails to 'break into my egocentredness.'84 This places premature 'explanation' (Erklarung) before understanding (Verstehen). 'Positions' in systematic theology are no more than provisional crosssections of developing traditions and growth in thought. One hermeneutical corrective to consumerist categorization is to place historical theology and theologians before systematics in a teaching course, and to be wary of teaching theology by de-contextualized 'mapping.' Too often 'positions' are set out like packages lumped together in packaging designed to influence consumer choice in a free market. This sacrifices truth and integrity for a pragmatic rhetoric of persuasion. Such a rhetoric may be enhanced by connecting it with progressivism. An appropriate Rortian ploy would be to utilize the prefix 'post-' to designate the preferred view, implying a rhetoric of the passe for other less favoured 'positions.' Such terms as postliberal, and postmodern or 'postdualist,' 'postnoeticentric' seem sometimes to be used to this effect.85 Yet Kim Yong-Bock and explicitly Bauckham and Hart

82

S. Hauerwas, 'No Enemy, No Christianity...', in: Volf et al. (eds.), Future, 27; cf. 26-34. N. Lash, Theology on the Way to Emmaus (London 1986), 119. H.-G. Gadamer, 'Reflections on my Philosophical Journey,' in: Lewis E. Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Chicago 1997), 36, 46; cf. 3-63, and Truth and Method (second Eng. edn. London 1989), 3-30 and 265-370. 85 Cf. S.J. Grenz's use of such terms in A Primer of Postmodernism (Grand Rapids 1996), 161. 83 M

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unmask this as seductive illusion: 'progress itself has turned threatening.'86 Theology looks to eschatology, not to futurology.

5. Epistemology or Rhetoric? Does the New Testament Have a Voice? Thesis 5a

The church of ancient Corinth offers a model of postmodern 'rhetorical man.' Thesis 5b Paul identifies this as a subversion of Christian grace, truth, and eschatology which must be subverted, in turn, by the proclamation of the cross. For Stanley Fish and Richard Lanham nothing distinguishes two major world-views more sharply than the vast divide between ''homo seriosus or Serious Man' and 'homo rhetoricus,'87 'The contrast ... can hardly be exaggerated ... The ground is itselffoundational.^* 'Serious Man possesses a central self, an irreducible identity' and he/she can be characterized by 'sincerity, faithfulness to the self.'89 On the other hand 'Rhetorical man ... is an actor ,.. centred in ... local events ... Rhetorical man is trained not to discover reality but to manipulate it. Reality is ... what is useful"^ This is the so-called postmodern sea change. It enjoys hospitality not only in secular world-views, but also in theology and in biblical studies.91 A flood of research on the Corinthian epistles since around 1990 offers a consensus on 'rhetoric,' 'audience,' 'performance' and social status at Corinth. Stephen Pogoloff even notes how the current interest in rhetoric in biblical scholarship 'is tied to a major shift in world-view. This ... antifoundational world view can lead us to reformulate interpretation itself as a rhetorical enterprise.'92 This, however, he argues is the sophia logon beloved at Corinth, which Paul repudiates (1 Cor. 1:17; cf. 2:l-5).93 Pogoloff compares the rhetorical competitions (agona logon) held at Rome 86

In this volume, 44. Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally, 482. 88 Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally (my italics). 89 Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally. Fish cites R. Lanham, The Motives of Eloquence (New Haven 1976), 1. 90 Cited from Lanham, Motives, 4, in: Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally, 483 (my italics). 91 On the turn to 'rhetoric' in biblical studies, cf. Duane F. Watson & Alan J. Hauser, Rhetorical Criticism of the Bible: A Comprehensive Bibliography with Notes on History and Method (Leiden 1994), Stanley E. Porter & Thomas H. Olbricht (eds.) Rhetoric and the New Testament (Sheffield 1993); D.F. Watson, Persuasive Artistry (Sheffield 1991). 92 S.M. Pogoloff, Logos and Sophia: The Rhetorical Situation of I Corinthians (Atlanta 1992), 8. 93 Pogoloff, Logos and Sophia, 10. 87

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with the approval of the rhetorical giants Cicero, Quintillian and Seneca, with the quite different, manipulative, applause-seeking, audience-orientated rhetorical contests held in many provincial centres such as Corinth.94 Seneca and Quintillian note that in good, solid, classical Roman rhetoric the issues turn upon the well-articulated, clear, communication of the truth of an argument. But the kind of rhetoric which captured Corinthian minds around AD 51-55 was whatever 'won approval for yourself [the rhetorician] rather than the case ... Every effusion is greeted with a storm of ready-made applause ... The result is vanity and empty self-sufficiency ... intoxicated by the wild enthusiasm of their fellow-pupils' (i.e., 'truth' becomes what 'wins' in peer-group consensus and performance).95 Rhetoricians were not communicators of truth, but 'performers' whose aim was to 'win' the approval of the audience whether they thought their case was true or not. Aristotle, Quintillian, Cicero and Seneca were 'homo seriosus' (Fish) who valued truth and sincerity, while the expectations of Corinth were directed towards homo rhetoricus, more like a late twentieth-century chatshow host or 'actor' (Fish). Pogoloff discusses the divisive and competitive tendencies which replaced questions of truth by 'performance' in which 'winners' were judged by the consumer (cf. 1 Cor. 4:7-13). Endorsements of, and parallels with, Pogoloff s portrayal abound in recent literature.96 Witherington admirably captures the mood. Like a modern/postmodern pragmatic-consumerist culture, in Paul's time many in Corinth were 'statushungry people.'97 The new religion, with its 'spiritual gifts' and 'rights' (cf. exesti/exousia 1 Cor. 6:12; 10:23) and its supposed autonomy had affinities with a Sophistic rhetoric of 'manipulation.'98 The Corinthians felt that they had the right to judge Paul and his message, and were evaluating him by the same criteria by which popular orators ... were judged. Paul disputed this right.'99 For 'truth' based on pragmatic success and consumer choice generated a different spirituality, theology and life-style from truth based on the criterion of the cross. Wolfgang Schrage, on the other side, sees that for Paul the proclamation of the cross constitutes the 'ground and criterion of community and apostle' 94

Pogoloff, Logos and Sophia, 173-196; also 129-172. Seneca (Elder), Controversiae 9:1; Quintillian, Institutio Oratoria 11:2:9, 12; further, Pogoloff, Logos and Sophia, 175-178. 96 E.g., A.D. Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth (Leiden 1993) 23-58; D. Litfin, St Paul's Theology of Proclamation: 1 Corinthians 1-4 and Greco-Roman Rhetoric (Cambridge 1994); B. Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids 1995), 20-48; B.W. Winter, Philo and Paul among the Sophists (Cambridge 1997), 113-201. 97 Witherington, Conflict, 20, 24. 98 Witherington, Conflict, 42. 99 Witherington, Conflict, 47. 95

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100

alike. If this kerygma is the criterion of the entire Christian community globally (not a series of incommensurably-justified communities) any emphasis on 'community' gains a proper 'foundationaF epistemological footing. Alexandra Brown constructively and decisively breaks the Rortian and postmodernist polarization between 'performance' and epistemology.101 The cross addresses Corinth transformatively and eventfully in such a way as to transpose the boundaries and content of their epistemology from one of self-affirming, local, group-centredness to a knowing-in-love by grace of global proportions. If it is 'given ' through grace, this logically excludes, we may infer, a knowledge born of social construction. If'grace' however, is also socially constructed, grace is no longer grace, and Christian faith collapses into a secular world-view. In Paul's language, it becomes sheer 'folly'(1 Cor. 1:24). Raymond Pickett also speaks of Paul's proclaiming the cross as 'performing an act of projecting ... a meaning.'102 This event brings about a transvaluation of the social identities or corporate identity of the Corinthian church.103 The 'world' of knowledge and behaviour which the cross 'founds' o r v re-founds' is that which is 'congruous with the gospel of "Jesus Christ and him crucified.'"104 In contrast to a pragmatism in which consumer and audience call the tune and determine what counts as 'true,' the argument in 1:10-4:21 'is dependent on their recognition that the event of Christ's death is, so to speak, the very ground of their being.'105 It addresses their "identity crisis/ It would be naive to argue that neither Paul nor Corinth fully understood 'pluralism/ Corinth was re-founded as a Roman city on Greek soil in 44 BC, and settled with freedpersons and veterans by Julius Caesar. Freedpersons had almost always proved their worth either by initiative, ambition, and entrepreneurial skills, or by skills of literacy or competency in various areas of life. Corinth soon became a mecca for those who sought business opportunities from Asia, from Italy, or from North or South, including Jews. It stood on the narrow Isthmus with the harbour of Laecheum facing West, and the harbour of Cenchreae facing East, as an unavoidable crossroads for trade, commerce, business and social intercourse between East and West, North and South. Various sub-systems of influence by patrons, accumulation of wealth through the right networks, and means of gaining favour, 100

W. Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther Vol. 2 (Zurich 1995), 165. A.R. Brown, The Cross and Human Transformation: Paul's Apocalyptic Word in 1 Corinthians (Minneapolis 1995), 3-12, 34-64 on apocalyptic and epistemology, 65-96 on speech-acts; and 97-169 on epistemological appropriation of the cross. 102 R. Pickett, The Cross in Corinth: The Social Significance of the Death of Jesus (Sheffield 1997), 24, 25. 103 Picket, Cross. 58-84. 104 Picket, Cross, 59. 105 Picket, Cross, 59 101

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honour or prestige, saturated the whole of society from slave to city benefactor. The extant Latin inscriptions which lie open to public view at the site of ancient Corinth today readily bring all this to life.106 Paul did not infer from these social phenomena that all that Christians can do is to exhibit performances and practices in the belief that what is perceived as 'true' within each sub-system or peer-group is bounded by an 'ugly ditch' of epistemological incommensurability. He had the advantage of not having been brainwashed by a Rorty-like or downright Fishy interpretation of Wittgenstein, or by thinking that democratic consensus within local communities was the 'unsurpassable' criterion of truth. Indeed he insisted on the trans-local, trans-contextual significance of apostolicity, the church and the cross.107 'We the Paul group ...', 'We the Apollos group ...' (1:12) was not good enough. Part of the offence of the gospel was its transformation of 'rhetorical man' into 'serious man,' i.e., one who on the basis of the truth of Christian theology took responsibility for the weak, the despised and those who were not 'winners' in the Corinthian congregation. Ahead of his time, Karl Barth diagnosed the problem as the Corinthians' bold confidence not in the 'given' of the gift of grace but in 'the enthusiasm with which they believe ... in their own belief in God.'108 Sometimes the claim that only Christianity can provide a viable alternative to such social contructivism is described as 'triumphalist.' Antoinette Wire fully accepts the portrait of Corinthian theology as one of rhetorical self-affirmation in the Spirit but casts Paul in the role of a manipulator who is no less 'rhetorical.'109 However, such an analysis fails to explain adequately Paul's consistent concern for 'the weak,' 'the other' and the disempowered, primarily on the basis of grace (4:7). Is identification with 'the man for others,' as Paul urges 'triumphalist'? While the Corinthians claim to 'reign as kings,' the apostolic witnesses are perceived at Corinth 'as it were, as the world's scum, the scrapings from everybody's shoes' (1 Cor. 4:8,13; my translation). The work of John D. Moores on 'rationality' in Paul well illustrates and instantiates how modern/postmodern theories of language, truth and signs may be tested in relation to Pauline texts without hermeneutical anachronism. Moores is fully conversant with the theories of Umberto Eco, Luis Prieto and Jacques Derrida, and explores Paul's use of enthymemes 106

The literature is too vast to cite here. However, cf. J.K. Chow, Patronage and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth (Sheffield 1992). 107 Cf. W. Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther Vol. 1 (Zurich 1991), 99-101; J.H. Schutz, Paul and the Anatomy of Apostolic Authority (Cambridge 1975) 187-203; J.A. Crafton, The Agency of the Apostle (Sheffield 1991), 62-63. 108 Karl Barth, The Resurrection of the Dead (London 1933), 17. 109 A.C. Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul's Rhetoric (Minneapolis 1990), 9-38.

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rather than a bald deductive and inductive logic, without sacrifice of rationality.110 Moores insists, Taul ... does not think (as some modern upholders of the importance of the reception factor do) that the identity of the message in a piece of communication is in any sense determined by what it means for those at the receiving end. For him it is rather their identity than that of the message which is determined by their response. To subject him to the criteria of present-day reception or reader-response theory would be to turn his ideas on the subject upside down.'111

6. Towards a Grammar of Grace, Truth and Christian Eschatology Thesis 6a

Theology for the Year 2000 requires a multiform grammar of truth which, while recognizing the limits of reason, does not thereby reduce it to the merely local or instrumental or rhetorical. It will also respect history, traditions and wisdom. Thesis 6b Theology for the Year 2000 will locate its grammar of truth within a decisive framework of grace and eschatology and will permit the grammar of each to interpret transformatively. To suggest that truth is manifold and multiform does not entail the proposition that each context in which truth occurs has no logical or semantic relationship to others in which it also occurs. If Rorty and Fish had been true to their contextual insights, it would have been apparent that each 'theory of truth' may be what Wittgenstein observes concerning notions of referential meaning; they may be 'appropriate but only for this ... circumscribed region,""2 No doubt Fish may be swayed by legal contexts in which 'truth' often seems to be defined by what a judge or jury counts as true. But we are not claiming that all life or all of theology depends on what Lindbeck terms a cogmtive-propositional model. Many philosophers of logic distinguish between the logical grammar of 'correspondence-as-correlation' and a more atomistic, isomorphic theory which may well fall victim more readily to Rorty's criticisms of 'representationalisnV in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Correspondenceas-correlation leaves room for Wittgenstein's valid recognition that often 'what I hold to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions.'113 Each

n °J.D Moores, Wrestling with Rationality in Paul: Romans 1-8 in a New Perspective (Cambridge 1995), 21-32 (first and last italics mine; middle italics, Moores's) and throughout. 111 Moores, Wrestling, 133-134. 112 L Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Sect. 3. m I Wittgenstein, On Certainty, Sect. 225.

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twig of the nest remains interlaced with 'what lies round it.'114 The very fact that 'what counts as a test' for a truth-claim depends on what is being asserted in varied situations in life underlines the axiom that no single grammar of truth can do justice to the complexities and particularities of human life. One version of a 'weak' correspondence-as-correlation theory can be found in J.L. Austin. In his essay Truth,' Austin entertains his readers with a series of truth-claims that are 'broadly' true. We cannot do without them in everyday life. Further, since Christian eschatology still reflects a dialectic of fulfilment and non-fulfilment, the notion of a 'loose' (provisional, proximate) fit in theological statements also has a place, in spite of Rorty's rejection of the whole grammar of any 'fit' with reality. Austin observes, 'Statements fit the facts more or less loosely, in different ways on different occasions.'115 Thus whether we judge such examples of propositions as 'Belfast is North of London' or 'the galaxy is shaped like a fried egg' as 'fitting' reality (i.e., true) will depend on whether the contexts concern cartography and astronomy or explaining about Belfast or galaxies to a child over the breakfast table. Some British theologians have appealed to the notion of 'a loose fit' in the context of Christology. The debate between Maurice Wiles, Peter Baelz, John Robinson and others in the early 1970s about how 'two stories' might replace a Chalcedonian metaphysic of 'two storeys' raised questions about whether New Testament Christology projected a 'loose fit' between the career of Jesus of Nazareth and the public world of empirical or historical observation.116 The turn from historical enquiry to literary theory in many areas of biblical studies has provided some more promising and constructive explanations of the artistry of biblical narratives than many hypotheses about clumsy editing and the failure of biblical redactors to note when their supposed scissors-and-paste editing produced mismatching duplicate sources or gross errors in historical reconstruction. Thus Robert Alter argues that the differences between the accounts of David's rise to kingship in 1 Samuel 16:12,13 and in 1 Samuel 17 to 2 Samuel 5:5 rest on a need to present a stereoscopic dialectic between divine election and the hurly-burly of human life, rather than on an uncritical use of incompatible historical sources.117 Numerous writers have expounded different patterns and tempos of narrative time in the Synoptic Gospels to account for apparently 114

Wittgenstein, On Certainty, Sect. 144. J.L. Austin, Truth,' in: Philosophical Papers (Oxford 1961), rpt. in: G. Pitcher (ed.), Truth (Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1964), 28; cf. 18-31. 1I6 S.W. Sykes & J.P. Clayton (eds.), Christ, Faith and History: Cambridge Studies in Christology (Cambridge 1972), esp. 1-38 (M.F. Wiles and P. Baelz). M7 R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York 1981), 147-154. Cf. W.A. Kort, Story, Text and Scripture (University Park, Pa 1988). 115

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insoluble "historical' problems. Nevertheless this should not lead to a L postmodern' retreat from history, rationality and epistemology, in favour of a study of 'rhetorical strategies' that are only rhetoric. None of this gives us leave to translate all historical knowledge into mere strategies of rhetoric or of "successful' impacts on a community of readers. It may, on the other hand, allow us the additional resource of tracing the witness of successive communities of interpretation in exploring and comparing multiple textual interactions with a stable history of reception. Hans Robert Jauss's utilization of H.-G. Gadamer's exposition of Wirkungsgeschichte in terms of the historical interpretations of texts against the background of successive horizons of expectation, each explored in the light of continuities or changes which preceded it, can assist in restoring what Kevin Vanhoozer calls "literary knowledge/118 Here the logical grammar of truth shifts again. This is truth which, in Pannenberg's phrase "must prove itself anew.'119 Contrary to what might be inferred from Rorty's discussion of his work, Gadamer insists that temporal processes, with their mixture of continuities and changes, allow a 'provocation' that impinges upon our prior horizons in such a way as to challenge and to transform "our prejudices.'120 Gadamer virtually repudiates the notion of vrhetorical man' when he writes; 4To reach an understanding ... is not merely a matter of putting oneself forward and successfully asserting one's own point of view, but of being transformed ... We do not remain what we were/ 121 In Jauss's reception theory we encounter reactualizations of texts not in community-contexts abstracted from traditions and deemed to be incommensurable but within a history of continuities and discontinuities: the transformative effects of texts operate in communities which share a stable core of tradition while also embodying different social and theological contexts. To illustrate: part of the 'meaning' of 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 may be explicated not solely or exclusively in the reconstruction of the worlds of Paul and of Corinth, but also in the shifts of hermeneutical agenda which lead Basil the Great and Athanasius to address questions about the personhood and deity of the Holy Spirit, while Luther and Calvin let the text address epistemological questions concerning truth revealed by the Holy Spirit. In Jauss's reception history, the sequence of each agenda remains significant. For our pan, one particular value of paying attention to the posthistory or reception-history of the text is to break the spell of the pragmatic futurology !I8 H R. Jauss, Towards an Aesthetic of Reception (Minneapolis 1982), esp. 3-45, 110-138; and Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics (Minneapolis 1982). I19 W, Pannenberg, 'What is Truth?', in: Basic Questions in Theology Vol. 2. (London 1971), H;cf. 1-27. 120 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 299. 121 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 379.

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which treats present and potentially future communities as determinants of truth, while ignoring the larger horizon of truth disclosed through the continuities and discontinuities of a history and tradition of effects. But, as Lundin's analysis showed so clearly, this recognition does not fit well with the 'new frontier' mentality of much American progressive theology which often gives less attention to tradition than to novelty. Gadamer's linkages between truth and Wirkungsgeschichte, Bildung and phronesis may become lost in the concern for technology and how the present generation utilizes it to construct a future.122 Karl Rahner shares Gadamer's conviction that surrender to selfaffirming, seductively assertive, rhetoric will come to destroy reverence for truth, and to devalue its currency until it is perceived to be merely instrumental.123 Rahner and Gadamer have the same profound concerns about the impact of propaganda and mass-advertising in consumerdominated societies: 'What one has to exercise above all is the ear.'124 A fortiori the worlds of virtual reality and the social constructions of the web and internet provide models which may well generate even more pragmatic, instrumentalist scepticism. In this context David Ford insists that to refuse to surrender epistemology remains part of the public responsibility of theology. He quotes the axiom formulated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 'He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.'125 At this point our distinction between the grammar of futurology and the grammar of Christian eschatology returns to re-enter the picture, together with the second part of our sixth thesis. For, against most trends in postmodernity/submodernity, Pannenberg insists that 'the unity of truth is constituted only by the proleptic revelation of God in Jesus Christ.'126 He agrees that in history truth does not exist 'as a finished product' in the abstract.127 Nevertheless, eschatology combines the themes of the final judgement (the definitive verdict on a completed process); the new creation of resurrection (which displays both continuity and discontinuity with the old); and a link with the present not in terms of extrapolation but in terms of adventus and newness within a frame of divine faithfulness to promise. On the subject of promise, many writers, in which I include myself, have argued that speech-acts of promise would collapse if we are left only with unqualified textual indeterminancy. If there is no specificity to a promise, 122

Gadamer, Truth and Method, 9-19; 277-306; and 340-379. Rahner, Theological Investigations Vol. 7 (London 1971), 230-233. Gadamer, 'Philosophical Journey,' 17; cf. 3-63. 125 David F. Ford, 'Epilogue,' in: Ford (ed.), The Modern Theologians, 721-722. I26 Pannenberg, 'What is Truth?', 27. 127 Pannenberg, 'What is Truth?', 21. 123

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n

it is not a promise * Further, if there is no temporal interval in which faithfulness to the promise can be maintained and finally effected, faithfulness to promise becomes logically empty. Pannenberg also clarifies a further logical distinction which limits the determinative role of human wishes and needs. He notes the different linguistic currencies of eschatological promise and eschatological threat or warning}29 As if against Rorty, he argues that 'we can understand the present precisely as fragmentary only in the light of our knowledge of its ultimate wholeness,'130 'The promise links our present ... to God s future, but at the same time keeps them apart.'1M John Macquarrie argues that we should not simply sweep aside F.H. Bradley's insight that only the whole as a whole can be wholly true. Once we lose the unified vision of an eschatological final judgement and the goal of a completed new creation when this 'whole' will become publicly transparent, the grammar of truth fragments into instrumental components locked into different (some say incommensurable) communities of contextual-pragmatic justification. Yet such a unifying vision of truth lies ahead as a theological entailment of divine new criterion. Macquarrie urges, 'They do not freeze the question, but open up the possibility of new insights/^ However, these 'new' insights are more than merely 'useful' insights. If the truth of Christian theology draws its currency as an anticipation of God's final judgement and glory in as far as these may be appropriated in the present (even if in fragmentary and provisional forms), then, as Jiirgen Moltmann expresses it, the functional, the utilitarian, the drive to achieve has no place: 'To glorify God means to love God for his own sake, and to enjoy God as he is in himself ... All moral purposes are excluded The praise of God has ...no utility ... The glorification of God has this in common with the child's self-forgetting delight in its game ...an echo of the Creator's good pleasure in the creations of his /ove.'133 The grammar of truth and of divine promise brings us inevitably to the grammar of divine grace. Just as truth in theology has over-arching unity of future vision, but is also instantiated in many everyday contexts in many contextual grammars, so grace, charis, is 'given' both as 'countless charismata' and as 'charis ... , life drawn from the fulness of God/134 128 See Lundm, Thiselton & Walhout, Promise of Hermeneutics, esp. 209-239 (Thiselton); Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 2, 202; Vol. 3, 527-555; and Moltmann, Coming of GoJ,282-295. 129 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 3, 541. 1 M) Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 3, 543. m Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 3, 545. S32 J Macquame, Thinking about God (London 1975), 25. Cf. F.H. Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality (Oxford 1914). 133 Moltmann, The Coming of God, 323 (my italics); cf. also 257-272, 308-339. t>4 Moltmann, The Coming of God, 337.

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Where Moltmann speaks of the self-giving of the 'fulness' of God, David Ford speaks of the subject-matter of theology as 'the many-faceted richness' which comes ultimately from 'the abundance of God.'135 Yet, if the logical grammar of grace entails that the future is 'God's gift,' it is difficult to see how this can fail to exclude any grammar of social pragmatism in which reality and truth become wholly human constructs and achievements. To be sure, one alternative might be to abolish a theology of grace. However, what would then remain of Christian theology and Christian identity? Is not grace irreducible also in Judaism and other theistic religions? In Wittgenstein's simile which describes such an alternative, it would be to 'saw off the branch on which I am sitting.' Giving, Wittgenstein further observes, carries a logical grammar of consequences: 'Why can't my right hand give my left hand money? My right hand can put it into my left hand. My right hand can write a deed of gift and my left hand a receipt. But the further practical consequences would not be those of a gift.'136 So what are the 'consequences' of grace-gift in theology? If we view positively the role of tradition, reception-history, and Wirkungsgeschichte in theology, it may be logically possible to argue that corporate or structural grace to humankind filters through legacies of teaching, wisdom and practices of goodness and thereby may be inherited through others from God. Yet if Lundin's analysis of the antipathy towards tradition which may be found in American pragmatism carries conviction, this is not the kind of grammar which coheres with a progressivist account of human achievement. By contrast, Karl Barth brings together coherently an understanding of grace as God's self-imparting, (his gift of himself rather than of 'religion '); his understanding of truth in terms of God's readiness to be known where or when he wills; and covenantal promise as the guarantee eschatological consummation.137 This should not be interpreted, with Robert Jenson, as 'postmodern,' except in the most simplistic sense.138 For this perpetuates the mere equation of 'postmodernity' with a rejection of the epistemology of Enlightenment rationalism or of the specific 'basic beliefs' of so-called classical foundationalism (i.e. that of Descartes, centred in the self). However, this does not demand that all truth-questions are disengaged from epistemological issues of any kind in all traditions of epistemology in e.g., Hebrew, Greek, Christian, Patristic, mediaeval and post-Hegelian thought. Eschatology provides a paradigm case for Barth's emphasis on the distinction between divine grace and the capacities of the human self as 135

Ford, 'Epilogue,' 720-721. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Sect. 268. 7 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (14 vols. Edinburgh 1957-1975 I/I Sects 1, 4, 6, 7; II/2 sects 27, 32-39. I38 R.W. Jenson, 'Karl Barth,' in: Ford (ed.), Modern Theologians, 22; cf. 21-36. 136

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such. The immortality of the soul, which is not part of biblical or Christian eschatology, presupposes some innate capacity of the self to survive death by virtue of who or what it is. The resurrection of the dead, by contrast, rests on a grammar of gracious new creation whereby God chooses to enact 'a primal miracle, like the creation of the world' entailed in sharing in the dying-and-having-been-raised of Christ.139 Earth's portrait of the issues at Corinth entirely captures this perspective in ways that cohere with our arguments about Paul and Corinth above. The Corinthians believe 'in their own beliefs'; however for Paul the source of truth is not the bringing of success and self-affirmation to a community. It is whether truth-claims will be shown to correspond to the definitive verdict of the last judgement (lCor.4:5). 140 Explicit connections in the New Testament between epistemology and eschatology are identified in the context of the grace of the cross by J. Louis Martyn. Martyn declares, 'Paul's statements establish an inextricable connection between eschatology and epistemology.'141 Those who called themselves 'spiritual people' at Corinth had already pre-empted and utilized the contrast between 'ordinary human knowledge' (knowing kata sarka) and revealed 'spiritual' knowledge (knowing kata pneumd). However, for Paul, Martyn writes, wthe implied opposite of knowing kata sarka is not knowing kata pneuma, but rather knowing kata stauron. He who recognizes his life to be God's gift at \hejuncture of the ages recognizes also that until he is completely and exclusively in the new age, his knowing kata pneuma can occur only in the form of knowing kata stauron. For until the parousia, the cross is and remains the eschatological crisis.'142 While Rorty's claim that truth is "not a goal of enquiry' has validity in one sense, such a view is profoundly mistaken and a distraction for theology in a more important sense. In as far as an eschatology of the last judgement identifies truth with a future verdict of God, the notion that truth is determined by what consumerist preferences dictate both remains incompatible with theism and especially with Christian eschatology, and carries selfdefeating entailments which we have tried to identify above. On the other hand, 'goal' should not be taken to imply a final resting-place. The God of the future remains living and active, and if we may venture to exercise imagination about whatever 'Heaven' may denote, the heavenly life can

139 W. Kiinneth, The Theology of the Resurrection (London 1965), 39; cf. O. Cullmann, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead (London 1958), 55 and throughout. 140 K. Barth. Resurrection, 18. 141 J.L. Martyn, 'Epistemology at the Turn of the Ages: 2 Cor. 5:16' in: W.R. Farmer, C.F.D. Moule & R.R. Niebuhr (eds.), Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presented to John Knox (Cambridge 1967), 272; cf. 269-287. 142 Martyn, 'Epistemology,' 285

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hardly fail to be characterized by the creativity and livingness of God's own presence which makes 'glory' an open-ended crescendo, not a full-stop. The grammar of resurrection is God's creative act, which also rests on grace. Our limited imaginations need not limit the open-ended glory. Luther writes of the resurrection mode of existence: 'Be content to hear what God will do. Then leave it to him what will become of it.'143 A theology for the year 2000 will explore further the dimensions of eschatological promise, but keep the grammar of grace and the nature and activity of God fully in view as that which grounds and shapes Christian eschatology. It is no accident that Paul chooses to expound the inexhaustible versatility of God as the creator of richness and diversity in creation as the key to what the resurrection of somatic existence in all its fulness might entail (1 Cor. 15: 35-44). This understanding of God as the ground of the resurrection fulness of life is not disengaged from epistemology: many Corinthians have missed the point agnosian gar theou tines echousin: they lack knowledge (1 Cor. 15:34). This coheres entirely with Martyn's juxtaposition of knowledge, eschatology and the cross. 'Knowledge' is inextricably bound up with respect, care and love for the other as 'other' as epitomized in the paradigm case of Jesus Christ as 'the Man for others' (Bonhoeffer) and 'the Man for God' (Barth). This qualifies Paul's ambivalence towards gnosis throughout 1 Corinthians. If gnosis facilitates concern on the part of 'the strong' for 'the weak,' knowledge becomes a gift (within the grammar of grace) for which Paul can give genuine thanks to God (1 Cor. l:5b). It does not follow that simply because Cartesian and Enlightenment rationalism had promoted certain theories of knowledge more appropriate for the natural sciences, theology should appeal to postmodern devaluations of all epistemologies as a constructive strategy. In conservative circles this is often seen as the quickest and easiest way of relegating all uses of historical-critical methods in Rorty's rubbish disposal bin, to clear the decks for an agenda of uncritical community-confessionalism. Yet, as Pannenberg urges, this disengages theology from any seriously critical capacity both to test its own truth-claims and to engage with other academic disciplines. It is essential that a theology for the year 2000 should engage and interact with social sciences, philosophy, literary theory, linguistics, semiotics, cultural studies, art, critical theory and a host of other disciplines. I have gained immeasurably from collaborative work with colleagues in philosophy, linguistics, semantics, politics, literary theory and critical theory. Although the devaluing of epistemology allegedly comes from writers in certain other disciplines, especially literary and political deconstructionism, 143 Martin Luther, Luther's Works Vol. 28 (St Louis 1973), 180 (my italics); also Luther, WA 36, 647.

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the surrender of epistemological truth-claims disastrously hinders necessary? interaction with the resources of other academic disciplines. Why should any other discipline bother to spend time and energy with a community which can say little more than: "this is our story: this is what we do"! At best, religious activities and texts become phenomena to be understood wholly within the terms of the methods used in other disciplines rather than capable of being understood on the basis of their own truthclaims, and such communities of faith could offer little in interactive return. While some writers argue that such categories as 'canon' or 'story' are more faithful to theology than epistemology (as if these were alternatives) W. Jay Wood (1998) more constructively and convincingly argues that for theologians and others epistemology takes its place as an intellectual virtue of positive ethical as well as noetic currency.144 For Jay Wood, however, epistemology entails tradition and wisdom as habits of mind; not simply 'knowledge' construed in accordance with paradigms drawn from certain sciences or technologies. For Paul, to live out Christian identity, i.e., that which instantiates the work of Christ, requires reflection on Christian tradition as part of a theological and moral responsibility. These considerations must also feature in a theology for the year 2000. Above all, however, theology concerns the God whose grace, presence, promise and new creation is itself inexhaustible.145 Theology for the year 2000 is stamped with this quality when we reflect that eschatological promise identifies grace, truth and promise with God himself. This promise points to the openness of a future that is boundless because 'God will be all in all." Meanwhile an eschatology of both 'now' and 'then' permits the writer of the Fourth Gospel to declare that grace and truth may already be 'seen1 in Jesus Christ as the instantiation and embodiment of the Divine /ogos(John

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W.J Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Leicester 1998), as against e.g. (also recently) W.J. Abraham, Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology (Oxford 1998). 145 Cf Ford, 'Epilogue/ 720-721.

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3. The Shape of Time Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart

1. What Is Time? The phrase "the shape of time' is the application of a spatial metaphor to time. This particular metaphor is an unusual one (perhaps formed by Fordian analogy with 'the shape of living'), but thinking and talking of time in spatial images are not at all unusual. They are habitual. We seem hardly able to think of time at all without imaging it as space. Such spatial images can be divided into static ones time as we represent it on chronological charts and calendars, the time line which modern people especially tend to visualise when trying to think abstractly of time - and dynamic ones - in which either time moves (passes, flows, flies, comes) or things move in time (come to be, pass away, approach, advance, leave behind). The year 2000 approaches, we are about to enter the new millennium; et cetera. We even say that events 'take place/ while, of our usual terms for the tenses, 'past1 and "present' were spatial before they were temporal terms. These pervasive spatial images of time presumably reflect the fact that space is visually perceived while time is not, except indirectly (every movement in space also takes place in time, and so time can be observed indirectly in the spatial movements of heavenly bodies, sundials and clocks). So pervasive are they that it seems likely that there is much that we could not say about time or our experience of time without them. At the same time, we must recognise that they are metaphorical images. If we could say nothing of time that we could not also say of space, we should be completely at a loss as to what time is. The problem of knowing what time is can be understood as the problem of differentiating it from space, and for this purpose we must examine especially the uniquely temporal ways in which our language speaks of time. There would seem to be two: the tensed statements in which we regard events or things as past, present and future, often by means of the three verbal tenses; and the statements which relate one event to another as 'earlier' or 'later.' These latter kinds of statement

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may use comparative adjectives and adverbs ('ten years earlier than') or absolute dates ('in 50 BCE and in 40 BCE'). While these two forms of statement use uniquely temporal terms, we should also notice that each lends itself to one of the two kinds of spatial imagery. The second evokes the image of events laid out in a series, one in front of another, along a line, and is readily expressed in calendrical forms. In these static images, just as in the temporal statements to which they correspond, we do not need to know where our present is in order to make sense of them. The tensed statements on the other hand, speak of what is past, present and future from the perspective of our present, or at least from the perspective of some specified present. They invite imagining in the dynamic spatial images of time moving from the past to the present and into the future, or vice versa, or of events arriving from the future and passing into the past. We think, in this case, not of a static arrangement of events laid one after another, but of the way the past determines the present and the future, or of the way the future becomes present and then past, or of the way we leave our past behind as we move into the future. It is also noteworthy that the tensed statements portray time as we perceive it from a position within time, while in those which state only the temporal relation and distance between events, without invoking the tenses, we view time, as it were, from an imaginative standpoint outside it. While it is no doubt true that the former is closer to our subjective experience than the latter, it does not necessarily follow that the latter brings us closer to the objective reality of time. These two ways of thinking and speaking about time have, since the famous argument of J.M.E. McTaggart (1908),1 been called A-series time (past, present, future) and B-series time (earlier and later). Philosophers of time in the British analytic tradition have, roughly speaking, divided into those for whom the A-series is reducible to the B-series and those for whom the B-series is reducible to the A-series. Two kinds of theory of time result. In the B-theory, there is no temporal becoming. That from the future in which events do not yet exist, or exist only as possible or potential, events become actual in the present and then pass into the past is an illusion that results from our own position in time (as a traveller in space might suppose the land beyond the horizon only to come to be when it comes into her view). The reality of the temporal dimension is described only by the Bseries of earlier and later events. There is no temporal movement, only a temporal series of relationships or a temporal arrangement of events. This is a strictly 'linear' view of time, in that time is continuous and homogeneous, 'J.M.E. McTaggart, The Nature of Existence Vol. 2 (Cambridge 1927), Book 5 Ch. 33, reprinted in: R.M. Gale (ed.), The Philosophy of Time (London 1968) 86-97.

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with no ontologicai distinctions between past, present and future. Time, on this theory, is differentiated from space only in the use of such terms as 'earlier1 and k later* (rather than, e.g., 'near to' and 'far from') to describe the series as a temporal rather than a spatial one, and in the claim that time has a single, intrinsic direction, as space does not. It is noteworthy how easily this understanding of time slips into the notion of a spatial series of substances co-existing simultaneously in some kind of meta-time. Some forms of B-theory deliberately make this move, understanding time as unreal and all events as really simultaneous, and there are debatable interpretations of modern physics which reach the same conclusion. It is questionable whether the B-theory strips our understanding of time down to reality or strips away part of what is essential to time as we understand it in distinction from space. It is important to recall that neither the Aseries nor the B-series depends on a spatial metaphor, so that neither is more fundamentally temporal than the other. The best defence of an A-theory of time is probably one which disputes that B-series statements constitute a way of thinking and talking about time that is truly independent of A-series statements When we say that X occurs earlier than Y, do we not mean that at the time of X Y does not yet exist? We seem able to eliminate temporal becoming from our understanding of time only by representing time in a particular kind of spatial model (the linear series) that fails to differentiate time from space. For an A-theory of time, space is the dimension in which things co-exist alongside one another, but time is the dimension in which things come to be and pass away. If this is not what time is, it is hard to see that we have any idea at all of what it distinctively is. If this is what time is, its peculiarity of unique intrinsic direction, which the B-theory must maintain but to which it can give no support, becomes intelligible as coherent with the ontologicai difference between future, present and past. Time is not, like space, a dimension in which things can move back and forth without ontologicai change, but a dimension in which the possible and the potential become actual but not vice versa. The popularity of the B-theory of time in recent decades in both analytical philosophy and philosophy of science coincides with the unprecedented importance of the B-series in the social life of the modern period. The representation of time in purely quantitative and homogeneous terms as clock-time and calendar time, time as it can be represented in the static spatial image of the time line, the time chart or the appointments diary, is characteristic of modern Western culture. Curiously it lends itself both to the sense of time as under our control by planning and to the sense of being regulated by time as a rigid structure imposed on our lives. One of us has a count-down-to-the-millennium calendar. With a page to be torn off each day, each time revealing the next day's page with some interesting fact about the previous millennium on it, it illustrates how artificial and

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disappointing is the attempt to inject into a purely B-series representation of time something of the qualitatively new future, with its hopes and surprises, that belongs to A-series time. The representation of time as though we were viewing it from 'nowhen' and then locating our own present in it, observing that too from outside, has undoubtedly proved useful, but it is also reductive and as such oppressive when allowed to dominate life.

2. The Fundamental Shape of Temporal Experience There appear to be universal constants to the experience of time, which are construed differently in particular cultural constructions of time: (1) The three tenses of past, present and future in which the activities of memory and anticipation take place. The present of experience is not the mere limit of past and future, but the 'thick present' in which the just-past and the just-to-come are held together in retentive memory and continuous projection, forming a constantly changing durational now. The longer range and essentially imaginative activities of memory and hope (not, of course, to be confined to those of the individual) are constantly re-configuring past and future in relation to the present and to each other in ways which, while consistent with the irreversibility of time, transcend a merely linear understanding of the way times are related to each other. (2) Time is the medium of successiveness in which things come to be. Successiveness is the characteristic of being in time which enables a cumulative process through which people and things become who and what they are. It is not possible to conceive of being who you are without the temporal experience that has made you who you are. St Andrews could not be what it is without the many generations of humans who have made it what it is. The earth could not be what it is without the aeons of natural processes from which its present state results. Successiveness as the medium of coming to be is from this point of view usually experienced as a good. (3) Time is the medium of transience in which all things pass away. Whereas in (2) the past is the sphere of permanent achievements and developments which contribute to the future, in (3) the past is the sphere of loss, into which all things pass sooner or later. Transience means that nothing in time has a permanent future in time. Not only persons and living things, which all die, but every happy experience, every form of beauty, everything of value passes away. Time as the medium of transience is therefore usually experienced as tragic.

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(4) Cycles, rhythms and narrativity. The cycles of nature (night and day, the lunar period, the seasons of the year) form rhythms for human life, which are partly even incorporated in our own biology. Moreover, human life has its own cycle (birth - growth to maturity - decay - death) which incorporates these rhythms into a larger pattern. But the accumulation of experience and memory also gives human life a kind of narrative progression which transcends the cyclical. The times - birthdays, for example - come round again, but they are not the same: we have changed. The universal human habit of telling stories, which unfold in time and in which not only is the old repeated but the new occurs, witnesses the intrinsic narrativity of human life, both individual and social. The more that endlessly diversifying novelty is experienced over longer and longer temporal periods, the more the cyclical in human experience is subordinated to the narrative or historical. (5) Quantitative and qualitative time. All societies have some notion of and use for quantitative time (i.e., the measurement of time in regular periods originally provided by the natural cycles), even though this has become much more prominent in modern society than before. But human experience also registers some times as significant times - significant in a very wide variety of ways. Among these there are steps from the past into the future, whose significance lies in their place in a forward-moving narrative, but also the discontinuous moment, whose significance lies in itself, apart from its place in a temporal succession of events. In other words, the quality may be either related or unrelated to successiveness. (6) The future as openness for the new. As the old passes, the new arrives and may be better. Certainly it seems intrinsic to human experience to hope that it will be, such that we regard despair as a condition in which humans cannot flourish. In hope the future is experienced as more than the product of past and future; it is experienced as the sphere of possibilities which qualitatively transcend past and future. These can be actualised in progress that builds on the past, or they may break into the present as unpredictable and discontinuous novelty. This point will be elaborated later in this paper.

3. Ways of Constructing the Shape of Time In all cultures these fundamental features of temporal experience are structured into a conceptual framework or a metanarrative that determines attitudes to past, present and future and the ways in which memory and anticipation imagine time. The following are some of the more important.

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(1) Cyclical time. What often goes by this name is rarely cyclical time in the strict sense. The idea is not that identically the same events constantly recur, but that the significance of time is found in what is repetitive rather than in what is novel. Since the irreversibility of time is not denied, the spiral rather than the circle might be the more appropriate image.2 This kind of construction of time is found in many ancient agrarian societies for which the significant features of the experience of time are the recurring natural cycles of day and night, sun and moon, and the seasons of the year. For this way of thinking the significantly new is always the old returning ('there is nothing new under the sun'). Transience is cancelled by novelty but this novelty does not transcend the old. Old and new recur in a stable balance. There is also often the myth of a primordial time, from which the temporal process, always in danger of lapsing into death, decay and loss, can be renewed. In so far as this construction of time reproduces the cycles of nature in which we still live, something of it is still possible for us, but it can no longer provide an over-arching temporal framework. Even in our experience of nature, historical time (meaning time in which difference and change are as important as sameness) constantly intrudes: we know that nature has its own history of change even more extensive than ours. We see our own history changing nature, and we fear for its future. There is no primordial origin from which to renew the cycle. (2) Platonist time. While (1) assimilates time as far as possible to changelessness, Platonism devalues time precisely because it is the medium of change. Temporality (becoming) is set in opposition to being. What comes into existence and passes away, the changeable and unstable, is contrasted with the truly real, which is immutable and eternal (timeless). A model of reality as what is timelessly true like the truths of mathematics lies behind this construction of time (as it also does for some modern advocates of the B-theory of time), and it has also often been linked with the experience of meaning in the apparently timeless moment. The failure of Platonism lies in its failure to distinguish successiveness, in which all created things become what they are, and transience, in which all things pass away. Human identity is inescapably narrative identity. We can imagine a lived human life being taken as a diachronic whole into eternity, but we cannot imagine human identity as the true self abstracted from its becoming in time. (3) Christian time. In the Christian tradition, despite its diversity and the influence of Platonic and modern constructions of time, the shape of time has been determined by the biblical metanarrative of the world's history 2 The circle is sometimes used differently as an image of eternity, contrasted with time, as in (2) below.

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with God from creation to the eschatological kingdom. The temporal process is bounded by the protological and the eschatological acts of divine creation. Both time and space are dimensions in which, not only natural and human events unfold, but also God himself acts and relates and identifies. God is known in the combination of the telling of God's temporal story with the world and the recognition that God in God's unique eternity also transcends the story. For this Christian metanarrative of God's history with the world the story of Jesus Christ is determinative. The Christian shape of time can be best seen by correlating with the three key moments of this story (incarnation, cross and resurrection) three of the constant features of human experience of time: successiveness, transience and the openness of the future to the new. All three are redeemed in Christ. In his incarnate life he becomes who he is in his human identity in the successiveness of time, which is essential to all creaturely becoming and identity. In his death, he is subject both to the transience which brings all things to nothing and to the human evil that exploits this negating power of time. In his resurrection, he is the promise of a new future which takes successiveness into eternity and redeems the transient from the past. The future is thus defined as the eschatologically new, as the future that takes the temporal beyond time, as the radically new future which can only be the gift of the transcendent God. Christian theology can therefore fully recognise both the essential value of successiveness for creaturely becoming and the tragedy and loss intrinsic to time as transience only in so far as it also maintains a truly transcendent eschatology. The present cannot be fulfilled nor the past restored within time, but only by the God who transcends time. (4) Modern progressivist time. The idea of progress, the great myth by which the whole modern age since the Enlightenment has lived, owed much to the Christian tradition, but it differed crucially in substituting immanent for transcendent eschatology. Utopia (or never-ending improvement) became the goal of history, in the sense that a kind of immanent teleology within the historical process combined with the mastery of the future by human rationality and freedom, education and technology, would produce Utopia from the resources of history itself. It is in this ideology above all that time came to be conceived in a purely linear manner, as (in the phrase Oscar Cullmann misleadingly used to describe the biblical shape of time) an upward sloping line. The reckoning of time in centuries AD (or CE), though of course of much older origin, only really became regular and popular at the beginning of the modern period. It proved highly congenial to the idea of progress, suggesting as it does a constant forward movement in unlimited extension into the future and (since the AD era was conceived as universal, unlike the local eras it supplanted) representing this as the universal progress of human history as such. The linear image of time as an endless

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sequence of decades and centuries also suggests a purely quantitative and homogeneous view of time, measured by the ubiquitous clocks that were formative of modern civilisation. It allows one to focus on the continuous, steadily forward-moving advance of history, ignoring the transience and mortality, the discontinuities and tragic loss of real time and history. It served the ideology of progress in its role as a kind of immanent theodicy or justification of history, in which the evils of history and its victims could be forgotten in the past, left behind by the movement towards a better future. In this purely linear view of time they had to be forgotten, for they could not be redeemed. The Utopian future - since it is merely the end or the neverending continuation of the straight line - cannot affect the past or raise the dead. Lacking transcendent eschatology but seeking meaning in the future projected by mere linear successiveness, modern progressivism has had to ignore transience probably more than any other cultural construction of the shape of time has done. As for the new future, modern progressivism emerges as oddly and significantly ambivalent. On the one hand, the optimism of inevitable progress relied on the magic of the limitless future as the sphere of vast hopes, while on the other hand it aimed at ever-increasing mastery over the future, especially through technology. The success of this technological project has led many to a sense of the future as mere continuation of the present, planned and controlled by those who are the masters of the present. (5) Postmodern time. It is arguable that, whereas pre-modern (traditional) societies gave priority to the past and modern (progressive) society gave priority to the ftiture, with the decline of the idea of progress a postmodern society is emerging in which priority is given to the present. In contemporary Western society, with its throwaway culture, its emphasis on the immediate and the instantaneous, its feverish drive to squeeze as much as possible into time as a limited commodity, its fragmentation of time into allocated quantities, and its obsessive organisation of time, we live increasingly in the present and its prolongation. More than one observer speaks of the 'compressed time' in which we live.3 Progressivist confidence in the future has given way to uncertainty and fear of the consequences of the very technological progress that once sustained immense optimism. The ideology of progress was, in one respect, a means of enabling people to cope with accelerating change by the assurance that the new would usually be better. While change continues to escalate, such assurance is less readily available. Hence, perhaps, the postmodern embrace of the transient. 3 J. Chesneaux, Brave Modern World: The Prospects for Survival (London 1992), 17; H. Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern: A History (London 1995), 227-229; D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodemity (Oxford 1990), 284-387.

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Whereas for modernity the principal good was cumulative achievement along the upward sloping line of time, for postmodernity the principal good is accumulating experiences, continually plunging into the discontinuous moment, in search not of eternity but of ecstatic momentariness. For life as progress read life as tourism. The postmodernist incredulity towards all metanarratives deprives successiveness of meaning, not only on the historical scale but also at the point where individuals find the meaning of their own lives in relation to larger stories. While postmodernist theory exposes all metanarratives to a devastating hermeneutic of suspicion, postmodern culture deconstructs any narrative coherence individuals might seek in their own lives, turning all story-telling into the kind of play-acting fictions of freely constructed and exchangeable identities that flourish in cyberspace. And yet old-fashioned narrativity - as in many a television soap - seems to survive all postmodernist subversion, while a new-fashioned fear of the future - of ecological disaster, of disintegrating social order and rising violence, of the unfamiliar and the unpredictable in biotechnology - is not incompatible with the hedonistic escapism of postmodern transience.

4. The Decline of Progress and the Shapelessness of Time at the Turn of the Millennium The Year 2000 At the end of the century George Steiner calls 'the most bestial [period] in human history*4 Utopias are discredited, postmodernism exposes the myth of progress as an ideology of domination and the cycles of nature in which humans have always lived are increasingly disturbed by the malign consequences of the attempt to master nature and the future technologically. Time itself, it seems, has no shape, perhaps not even, in light of quantum physics and scientific cosmological speculation, its familiar irreversible arrow-like path. To gauge and to illustrate the contemporary sense of the decline of progress and its gradually emerging, shapeless aftermath, we shall offer two very different approaches, each no more than a revealing fragment. The first is the imminent approach of the third millennium. It is difficult to penetrate the journalistic and commercial hype to any genuine sense of the significance of the year 2000 for our society. For all the supposedly Christian meaning of the year, the churches, however worthy their efforts in themselves, give the impression of trying hard to secure a Christian place on 4

G Sterner. Errata An Examined Life (London 1997), 103.

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an already rolling bandwagon. In truth, the significance of the year, if there is one, is secular - more precisely progressivist. It was the Enlightenment myth of progress which made measuring our progress in centuries appealing and the ends of centuries irresistible occasions for celebrating progress, taking stock, and looking with eager optimism into the dawning century ahead. It is the ghost of this progressivist fascination with the turns of centuries that suggests the turn of the millennium ought to be an event of extraordinary excitement and significance. The lure of the third millennium was already felt at the end of the nineteenth century, when a columnist for the Spectator wrote: The fact that we are approaching the end of another century of our era, strongly affects the popular imagination. It is supposed that, in some undefined way, we must be better or worse merely because of this chronological fact. Were it the end, not of the nineteenth [century], but of the twentieth, we should be still more excited. Even now, the idea of that Annus Mirabilis, the Year of Grace 2000, begins to affect us. We feel that if we could live to witness its advent, we should witness an immense event. We should almost expect something to happen in the Cosmos, so that we might read the great date written on the skies.5 The author's tone is a little ironic, but the mood he reflects is the famous fin de siecle mood of 1890s Europe. If fin de siecle created such an outpouring of angst and excitement, what, he not unreasonably wonders, would//'# de millenaire - the approach of the third millennium - be like? The fin de siecle mood of the 1890s entailed a process of assessment of the progress of civilisation, at the end of a century whose elite, at least, considered it indisputably the century of progress, when civilisation had advanced more than in the rest of human history. The mood was an unstable mixture of optimism and pessimism, the assessment a kind of weighing of progress and decadence in the balance. On the one hand, Max Nordau lamented the feeling of imminent perdition which he detected among intellectuals ('vague qualms of the Dusk of Nations, in which all suns and all stars are gradually waning, and mankind with all its institutions and creations is perishing in the midst of a dying world').6 On the other hand, Frederic Harrison expressed the more prevalent, upbeat anticipation of a twentieth century propelled by the accelerating momentum of the nineteenth into a qualitatively better era: 'We are on the threshold of a great time, even 5

Quoted in H. Schwartz, Century's End: A Cultural History of the Fin de Siecle from the 990s through the 1990s (New York 1990), 275. 6 M. Nordau, Degeneration (London 1895), 2, quoted in: C. Townshend, 'The Fin de Siecle,' in: A. Dancher (ed.), Fin de Siecle: The Meaning of the Twentieth Century (London 1995), 201.

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if our time itself is not great. In science, in religion, in social organisation, we all know what things are in the air.... It is the age of great expectation and unwearied striving after better things.'7 Enthusiasm was not uncritical: there were end-of-century failures which required to be surmounted in the better future. So, rather in the spirit of new year resolutions, some writers offered new century resolutions, Alfred Russel Wallace assessed the past century in a book called The Wonderful Century published in 1898 (notice, incidentally, how unlikely it is that a book published in 1998 could describe the twentieth century in such a title). He catalogued the extraordinary technological advances of the century, but castigated his contemporaries for neglecting hypnotism and phrenology while taking up the harmful practice of vaccination.8 More significantly (so it seems with hindsight), he deplored the militarism which harnessed technological advance to the development of ever deadlier machines of war, ; But the dogmatic optimism of the century was not easily crushed. Alexander Sutherland, writing a year later under the title 'The Natural Decline of Warfare/ argued that a trajectory of progress over recent centuries pointed to the elimination of warfare in the not too distant future. At the end of the century, he pointed out, it was already the case that absolute peace reigned among civilised nations, though not yet on the borders of the civilised world10 (the Anglo-Boer war began that same year, 1899). This is the kind of thinking which lay in the background to the devastating effect which the First World War was to have on progressivist optimism just a few years into the new century on which so much expectation had so recently been focused. If the sense that the turn of the millennium ought to be a fin de siecle to the power of ten is what accounts for the rather synthetic excitement about it, it is clear that it is not in fact turning out to be of any such significance. Books which take the turn of the millennium as a cue for a back-and-forthlooking assessment of where we are and how we should be aiming to get where we wish have been appearing steadily,11 but even the optimists are highly chastened, while secular pessimism focuses not merely on decadence, as in the 1890s, but on truly apocalyptic danger. Shall We Make 7 Quoted in; D. Thompson, The End of Time: Faith and Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium (London 1997), 119. 8 Townshend, The Fin de Siecle,' 202. "Townshend, 'The Fin de Siecle,1 208-209. 10 Townshend, 'The Fin de Siecle,' 207-208. 11 E.g., R. Williams, Towards 2000 (London 1983); R.M. Kidder (ed.), An Agenda for the 21st Century (Cambridge 1987); J. Kleist & B.A. Butterfield (eds.), Breakdowns: The Destiny of the Twentieth Century (New York 1994); Dancher (ed.), Fin de Siecle; P.M. Stearns, Millennium III Century XXI (Boulder 1998).

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the Year 2000? (the title of a book published in 1985)12 captures this mood. One of the most recent of these stock-taking books, called The Age of Anxiety, aims to encounter the 'millennial anxiety,' the fear of the future which characterises British society in the 1990s. The book's authors offer varying degrees, none too extreme, of optimism and pessimism. They take the anxiety seriously, and none proposes a return to the ebullient optimism of the nineteenth-century myth, on which the editors comment: 'For perfectibility read corruptibility, for belief in progress read naivete.'13 But it is surely no accident that the scientist among the authors retains more than his co-authors do of the nineteenth-century's faith in progress, science-based as that was to a large extent. He ends by exhorting us, 'if the going gets really anxious,' to try to believe that science reassures.14 But he would probably not be surprised if most of his readers failed to believe this. The difference from the 1890's resembles a paradigm shift. Then it was a matter of drawing up a balance sheet of successes and failures of the century: credit for building the railways, debit for stockpiling armaments, and so on. The difference now is not just that many find our balance sheet to be more or less in overall debit. Nor is it just that we disagree about the evaluation of many changes (is the decline of the traditional family progress or regress?). The most disturbing thing is that progress itself has turned threatening. The exponential continuation of the line of nineteenth-century progress is putting the future of the planet itself in the balance. The dominant myth of the whole modern age - the idea of historical progress has not only failed us but turned against us. The more this is recognised, the more the fin de millenaire ought surely to be a time to assess not progress, but the myth of progress itself. Instead it looks as though it will see neither an optimistic celebration of twentieth-century progress nor a search for a serious alternative to the failed metanarrative of modernity, but merely a postmodern party. (The millennium dome, in its resemblance to a vast mushroom or a tent, more aptly symbolises postmodern ephemerality than modern progress.) Nothing illustrates the shapelessness of time in the wake of the decline of progress better than the triviality of the event that the turn of the millennium is turning out to be. Christianity has a stake in this. To a lesser or greater degree much of modern Christianity assimilated its own metanarrative to the modern one, recognising the latter virtually as the legitimate heir of the traditional Christian approach. Indeed, the myth of progress has probably survived in some Christian circles more vigorously than in most other places. In the aftermath of the decline of progress, can there still be a Christian shape to time? I2 J.G. de Beus, Shall We Make the Year 2000? The Decisive Challenge to Western Civilization (London 1985). 13 S. Dunant & R. Porter (eds.), The Age of Anxiety (1996; London 21997), xv. 14 G. Watts, 'Can Science Reassure?', in: Dunant & Porter (eds.), The Age of Anxiety, 187.

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A Story of the Approaching End of Time Despite its title, there is nothing conventionally apocalyptic about John Updike's novel, Toward the End of Time (1997).15 Rather it is a richly imaginative exploration of the contemporary sense of time in the aftermath of progress. The novel is set in the year 2020, a few years after a nuclear war between China and the USA has devastated large parts of America and even larger parts of Asia. Its effect on the area north of Boston where the narrator, Ben Turnbull, lives in retirement is largely indirect, as in the breakdown of law and order owing to the collapse of central government. But the sense that human civilisation has gone, perhaps irrevocably, into steep decline pervades the book Its symbol is the huge abandoned space satellite that hangs in the sky like a second moon. It was put up before the war, but after the war governments were unable to maintain the shuttle ships to and from it. By means of its surviving television link with earth, the deaths, one by one, of the members of the space colony were viewed on earth. The fate of this second moon perhaps presages the fate of humanity on earth itself (36). From the narrator's perspective it seems that the decline of humanity should come as no surprise. Already in the twentieth century the Holocaust had 'ended forever Europe's concept of itself as civilised and of the Western world as proceeding under a benign special Providence' (20). In place of providence there is biology - not the optimistic, anthropocentric evolutionism that accompanied the rise of the idea of historical progress, but the evolutionary process that owes the human species no particular favours and is more likely to ensure its replacement than its survival. Once 'the hominids were just a two-footed furry footnote lost amid the thundering herds of penssodactyls. Why does the thought make us happy?' (53). Homo sapiens took over the world by wholesale slaughter of other species, including other hominids (27-28, 211); now that humanity is in decline through turning its slaughtering instinct on itself, it is only natural that other species should move in again (53). Nature is resilient, but human beings only a phase in its aeonic process. As the dinosaurs were dominant once, then the mammals, and humanity recently, so perhaps the future belongs to the metallobioforms. The evolutionary process favours the continuance of life but is indifferent to the fate of humanity as such. Flushing a dead millipede down the toilet, Ben asks: 'Until the flush toilet, did men have any true concept of the end of the world?' (163). The metallobioforms are species of inorganic life which have been evolving, unnoticed until recently, since the early stages of the industrial revolution, when the chemical and radioactive conditions produced by some industrial processes gave rise to minute metal species. Since then they have 5 Page references in the text are to the Penguin edition (1999).aaaa

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been 'biding their time as did our own mammalian ancestors during the long age of the dinosaurs' (110), growing larger and perfecting their ability to destroy any organic creatures, shredding them like chain saws. The metallobioforms lurk in the background of the novel, a menace to the human future resulting, ironically, from humanity's own technological progress. As an image they combine the sense that human technological development has turned against humanity with evolution's indifference to human survival. Unlike the superhumans of the future often depicted in science fiction, the metallobioforms are not super-intelligent post-humans into which humans have intentionally evolved or even artificial mechanical intelligences of human creation. They are an accidental by-product of human technology, primitive, mindless and destructive, as human technology itself has become. Ben, who reads the Scientific American rather than novels, preferring scientific cosmology with its utter lack of human meaning to the no more meaningful triviality and repetitiveness of human experience, scatters his narrative with scientific and pseudo-scientific speculations about time and the cosmos. He plays with the quantum theory fantasy of a time line that is constantly branching into other possible worlds in addition to our own (1617). He knows about the anthropic principle (151-152) and Frank Tippler's bizarre vision of a kind of meta-technological general resurrection at the end of cosmic history (101). Ben is the twentieth-century man for whom such scientific myths and metanarratives substitute for religious ones, offering not meaning but the dismal substitute for meaning that is all there is to be had. They serve to set the mere year of his life that the novel records in its temporal context of the many billions of years of cosmic history from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch, as well as against the background of the evolutionary history of life on this planet, and of recorded human history, which is evoked in a series of historical flash-backs to events around the three turns of the millennium from 1000 BC to AD 1000. The novel succeeds in thus ranging over all time while keeping its egocentric focus on Ben's close observation of his own decaying life. The time of the novel is cosmic, natural, historical, but scarcely at all the organizational clock time which Ben left behind when he stopped commuting to work. The dominant image of time in the novel is of senescence, decay, entropy and futility. Ben's own aging parallels that of 'our dwindled, senile world' (40), and the decay of the world anticipates the entropic process of collapse to which the whole universe is ultimately destined: 'The very short view alone is bearable' (329). Ben's 'unfocussed dread of time' (3), with which the novel opens, dominates the mood of the whole book. Time is the arrow whose unstoppable and irreversible course leads inexorably from Big Bang to Big Crunch (214). But another image of time is the annual cycle of the seasons, with its recurrent evidence of nature's fecundity and resilience. The novel takes place over precisely a year, whose passing is meticulously and

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beautifully described in the constant observations of changing nature, especially in Ben s garden. There are glimpses of hope in this: 'Men die, but mankind is as tough and resilient as the living wood that groans and sighs outside my window,' Perhaps in this new dark age, new technologies will develop as they did in the so-called Dark Ages of Europe (278). But Ben is little cheered even by his ten grandchildren, who represent his biological after-life. They are no real substitute for lost religious hopes of personal immortality (74), and he fears in any case a future unimaginably worse than the past for them: 'The doughboys who swarmed out of the trenches into clouds of mustard gas had geniuses for generals by comparison' (78). Ben had retired to his country home 'to get back to nature and to my own human basics before saying goodbye to everything' (5). He does appreciate the intricate beauties of nature now that he feels his time for observing them is fast diminishing. His own human basics turn out to be his carnality. His one escape from the relentless process of senescence is in the exercise of his sexual potency, intimately described in self-indulgent detail resembling the rich descriptions of nature in which the novel abounds. It is the way he shares the tough resilience of nature. And so the turning-point of the book is the prostate operation that robs him of it. It is 'my own disaster' (283), his individual version of humanity's nuclear holocaust. In the mere sense of being still alive, he experiences a 'pitiable but delicious reprieve from timelessness' (299). Biological time, in which all things pass away, is all we have. In the closing pages of the novel Ben seems to reach some reconciliation with this all that there is: next year's buds already in place on the lilac, his eleventh grandchild expected in the new year (333-334). But the final image is of small moths which in this unseasonably warm November have hatched too early. v ln the early dark they flip and flutter a foot or two above the asphalt, as if trapped in a narrow wedge of space-time beneath the obliterating imminence of winter' (334). The world of this novel is one in which technology and science have put an end, both in theory and in catastrophic fact, to the historical optimism of the modern world, with its confidence that providence, evolution or sheer human power and ingenuity ensured a Utopian future. This is the world reduced to biology and cosmology, indifferent both to human survival and to human flourishing. Human history collapses back into nature, and time's irreversible arrow points only to nothingness in the end. Even the cycles of nature, though they are all we have, can no longer console us with the image of eternal renewal. The individual is not content to be lost in the transmission of his or her genes, and we know that they are overridden by the ongoing time of historical decline and cosmic entropy. Only if we stay with 'the very short view' that alone is bearable (329) is our being part of nature a transient consolation. The present is all we have, not in the radically postmodernist sense, but in a sense that certainly reflects something significant

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about the contemporary sense of time: the fascination with popularised scientific cosmology and Darwinianism, the turning from technology to nature, the obsession with the sheer biological vitality of sex, and the retreat from a world without future to the small consolations of a private present.

5. The Shape of Living and the Shape of Time The thought that 'this is all there is' is finally a crushing one for the human spirit, a fact reflected in the fascination with despair so characteristic of late Western culture (not least, worryingly, among those in whose hands the future lies - the young). We are encouraged bravely to face the spectres of meaninglessness, purposelessness and hopelessness, as if the route to our true humanity lay precisely in an ennobling acceptance of our own insignificance, both personally and as a species; but the effects seem rather to be dehumanising and demeaning. The vision of human life and culture as the accidental by-products of an evolutionary bid for self-perpetuation by genes, for example, is notoriously incapable of accounting for their most distinctive and valued aspects. We should not underestimate the widespread subliminal impact of such visions on that number in our society for whom, it seems, goodness, truth and beauty have ceased to be or failed ever to become matters of any very serious or shared concern. The practical implications for the common good of this sapping of the human spirit are worrying. All that we habitually identify as 'distinctively human' appears, when the matter is carefully weighed, to be contingent on the assumption of meaningfulness. This is true whether we are thinking, at one end of the scale, of that local meaningfulness which undergirds every communicative act of selftranscendence (the conversation with a friend or colleague, the interpretation of a text, a gesture, an action or a work of art), or, at the other, the overarching cosmic meaningfulness which pertains to questions of human hope. It will not suffice to appeal, as many postmodernists do, to the human capacity for invention and creativity as the source of all meaning, viewing truth, goodness, purposefulness and beauty as the local and conventional products of our poetic spontaneity.16 As George Steiner observes, there are few deconstructionists among the poets and the artists in human society.17 The most 'creative' people, that is to say, are precisely those who most vigorously resist the ascription of ultimate meaninglessness and formlessness to the world and its history. Their art, like the most basic and mundane linguistic exchanges, assumes the real presence of that which cannot in fact ever be demonstrated; namely, a meaningfulness which transcends the level l6 17

See, e.g., Don CupiK, Radicals and the Future of the Church (London 1989), 15. George Steiner, Real Presences: Is there Anything in what We Say? (London 1989), 227.

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of the symbolic and inheres in the nature of the real itself. Human creativity, artistic or otherwise, is never ex nihilo, but is a response to constant epiphanies through which reality impinges upon our existence. In the final analysis, Sterner insists, this 'wager' on the meaningfulness of meaning is precisely a wager on transcendence, on 'that in being which is not ours.'18 In some sense, he suggests, it is a wager on 'God.' What, though, of the meaningfulness of the human story as a whole? In this context the problem is precisely that so much of what we experience of life conflicts with that wager on meaning of which Steiner speaks. The Ben Turnbulls of our world are not wholly deluded. Yet our deepest intuitions, our gut feelings, resonate sympathetically with the wager. We protest against the horror of history and the concomitant terror which that horror inspires in us. The question is about how we should respond to these. The problem with the myth of progress was not its essential hopefulness, but rather its inability to face or to deal with the way the world and we actually are, and the lack of any serious indication that things are either getting or going to get better. By mistakenly investing its faith in a glorious future which would grow naturally out of the present, therefore, the myth pointed to a meaningfulness which did not and could never exist within the terms of nature and history themselves. Its hope proved to be a false hope and so it had to come to an end, for false hopes inculcate only despair. Postmodernity has exposed the ideology of the myth. Yet its own essential hopelessness leaves us no better off, offering us only the temporary analgesic of 'play' in place of modernity's false diagnosis. The raw nerve which this unmasking of the myth exposes serves, though, to reinforce the question which comes so naturally to our humanity: is this the promised end? The structure of human living is tied closely to the shape of time. We are temporal beings in the obvious sense that our existence is bounded within particular temporal markers; the horizons of our personal birth and death; the given if blurred limits of that ever changing 'thick' present where consciousness is located This particularity is important; but it does not render either the limits of our personal being or a static and inert existence. On the contrary, who we are and how we act in our present are decisively shaped by constant (some more and some less successful) bids to transcend our temporal particularity. We do not stand still, but are forever moving backwards and forwards in time as we are shaped by and impose shape on our bounded present. In the freedom granted by imagination we discover that this boundedness has its own proper limits and can be transcended without being abandoned. We should not underestimate either the power or

!H

Sterner, Real Presences, 226. See also 3-4.

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the significance of this vital form of time-travel, or we shall badly misunderstand the nature of our present existence.19 We have already alluded to the significance of personal and social narratives the cumulative impact of which bear upon us in all that we do and say. It is not for nothing that romantic myths of tribal origins have often been invented and exploited by political propagandists, or that some totalitarian states have banned all 'history' except certain carefully censored versions. Our sense of where we have come from and who we have been bears powerfully (if often subliminally) upon our sense of who and where we are, and shapes our priorities, our desires, and our patterns of behaviour in the here and now; sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. At the level of the personal too, memory is a profound shaping force which grants us our identity. It is memory which reminds us of our personal heritage, bearing into our presence (often unbidden) people, events, places which define the shape of our personal story to good or ill effect. The shape of time becomes fluid as we are translated to some other moment in the story, often very vividly, and evoking the emotional and spiritual charge attaching to the original. Thus R.S. Thomas's poem 'No Time' evokes memory's capacity to transcend the painful particularity of loss: ... Impalpable, invisible, she comes to me still, as she would do, and I at my reading. There is a tremor of light, as of a bird crossing the sun's path, and I look up in recognition of a presence in absence. Not a word, not a sound, as she goes her way, but a scent lingering which is that of time immolating itself in love's fire.20

19

Furthermore, we might observe that these frequent bids for diachronic self-transcendence are otherwise similar in structure to their equally frequent synchronic counterparts in which we seek to communicate with and to understand others. Here too we are involved in imaginative ventures which enable our particularity to be transcended rather than abrogated. Particularity thus furnishes a necessary base for our heuristic bids for truth rather than a prison which isolates us from it. 20 R.S. Thomas, No Truce With the Furies (Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1995), 32.

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Such rendering of presence is an important part of the abiding positive contribution made by otherwise absent members of our personal community of the heart or the face.21 We should not forget, though, that memories can crush and bind as well as empower and release. Those of us who live with heavy burdens of guilt, allowing our identity to be shaped beyond measure by particular actions or choices in their past; those whose lives in relation are twisted by long-harboured bitterness, resentment or hatred; those for whom past failures throw up seemingly insurmountable psychological obstacles blocking the path ahead: we know what it is to be haunted by the presence of the past. And that presence exercises a debilitating and enervating influence upon our present unless and until we face and redeem it. So our human existence is shaped in various ways by the present-past. More fundamentally still our existence is shaped by the present-future. Here the vectorial quality of human life is even more apparent, for here we do not simply leap imaginatively into the future; we actually move into the future, and shape it in doing so. Quite apart from complex philosophicoscientific arguments about whether anything actually 'moves' at all, the force of the metaphor as applied to us here is important in indicating the moral dimension of our human becoming. The transition from present to present, the movement towards future, is not just something which happens to us (although it is something about which we have no real choice, try though we might to deny its more immediate implications), it is equally and vitally something which we do. Our capacity to imagine future, to render a state of affairs other than the actual, is at the core of this activity. While there is an equal amount which might be said here about fear, we shall limit ourselves (for reasons having to do with the shape of both space and time) mostly to consideration of the capacity for hope.

6. Hope and the Human Hope is among those capacities or activities which mark off the territory of the distinctively human within our world. The quest for meaning, truth, goodness and beauty is closely bound up with hope as an activity of imagination in which we seek to transcend the boundaries of the present, to go beyond the given, outwards and forwards, in search of something more, 21 See David F Ford, Self and Salvation (Cambridge 1999), 17: 'We live before the faces of others. Some are there physically, others in memory or anticipation. We have been formed face to face from our earliest days, deeper than conscious memory.' See also 23-24. Also The Shape of Living (London 1997), 1 Such 'absentee' members of this community may, of course, both be present to us in our own present, yet their pastness (perhaps particular moments of it) still presented regularly in imagination as a particular, distinct and defining, 'face' which shapes our identitv

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something better, than the given affords us. One writer puts the matter starkly: 'Hope comes close to being the very heart and centre of a human being.'22 Humans, we might say, are essentially insatiable, driven forwards by a desire for contact with a reality the fullness of which constantly eludes us. Steiner's 'wager on transcendence' is thus precisely a hopeful venture: we step out in faith, trusting that there is something more, something better, something worthwhile, to be discovered or encountered, and that we shall duly be able to make contact with it. 'The truth is that the most fundamental and universal drive of man is toward objects, toward reality. We hope that we can reach this goal, we hope that there will be a response, physiological or psychological, from the world/23 From the simplest purposeful action (beginning with getting out of bed in the morning) to the most complex scientific, artistic or political engagement with the human condition, humanity lives not only by instinct and by desire but also by hope. We live, that is to say, by stepping outwards and forwards from our present location in the hope that something positive will come of doing so. Hope is a matter of both knowledge and will (we know what has happened before, and we know what we desire) but it is characterised above all by the application of imagination and trust to a future which is essentially open and unknown. In his magisterial study of the nature of language and translation, After Babel, George Steiner observes the impact of grammar upon this vectorial dimension of human existence. 'Language,' Steiner writes, 'happens in time but also, very largely, creates the time in which it happens.'24 Language, that is to say, shapes our perception of the moment of speech or thought as present, and of other times as either past or future. Especially in the case of the future this capacity to transcend the present, to speak of or imagine a state of affairs other than the present, is vital to the direction of our ways of being in the world. 'The status of the future of the verb is at the core of existence. It shapes the image we carry of the meaning of life, and of our personal place in that meaning.'25 'We move forwards in the slipstream of the statements we make about tomorrow morning.'26 Our capacity to move forwards, to transcend the givenness of the present is, in other words, closely tied to our capacity to speak the future into existence, to fashion an imagined tomorrow or next year and to bring it to expression. Through the imaginative construction and projection of what Steiner dubs 'axiomatic fictions' with respect to the future we are, as it were, drawn forward in their wake and live towards tomorrow rather than being absorbed by a closed and hopeless present. Conversely, possession of a future tense is the preserve of 22

Lynch, Images of Hope, 31. Original emphasis. Lynch, Images of Hope, 44. Lynch, Images of Hope, 144. 25 George Steiner, After Babel (Oxford 21992), 145.aaa 26 Steiner, After Babel, 168. 23 24

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those who are able to imagine otherwise, to envisage the possibility of change; to hope. It is no accident, Steiner avers, that the species we know to possess a highly developed set of languages should also be found at the top of the evolutionary tree. Imagination and hope, which are closely tied to our ability to speak the future, are capacities which fit us for survival. 'Natural selection has favoured the subjunctive.'27 This account concurs with that of the Jesuit writer William Lynch who, in a lengthy consideration of hope, imagination and mental health, describes hope as a constant decision to move into the future, a bid to transcend the present with its perceived limits and difficulties, to imagine a way out of that which constrains and threatens to engulf or imprison us into a brighter and better alternative. Thus, hope is that which insists on expanding our perceived horizons of possibility, broadening the landscape of reality in such a way as to set our present circumstance in a wider perspective and thereby to rob it of its absoluteness. Even in the most difficult and threatening of situations hope Ms always slow to admit that all the facts are in, that all the doors have been tried, and that it is defeated.'28 Hope, in such an account of things, is essentially liberating and invigorating with respect to our present existence. Hope transfigures every empirical present by relating it to a vision of the future. It is vital to state this clearly, for where religious hope has received a bad press it has often been due to a perception of it as an essentially quietist and other-worldly attitude which robs us of the will to struggle against various ills in this world. Thus Karl Marx's description of religion as 'the opiate of the people' correctly identified the power of hope over our ways of being in the present, but misconstrued its essential dynamic. Religion, in Marx's account, offers a cosmic aspirin, an analgesic deliberately administered by the rich and powerful to dull the pain of the workers' lot and thereby prevent the otherwise inevitable eventual reaction to sustained injustice, exploitation and deprivation. Visions of an otherworldly future, Marx assumes, are effective in numbing the oppressed masses to the dark reality of hell on earth, and thereby render them too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly (political) use. As we shall see duly, there is an important sense in which distinctively Christian hope is indeed invested in the imagination of the 'other-worldly.' To construe it as quietist, however, is entirely to misconstrue both its intentions for and its impact upon the shape of life in the here and now. In his encyclopaedic analysis of the structure and significances of hope for the shape of human living Ernst Bloch observes: 'The pull towards what is lacking never ends. ... The lack of what we dream about hurts not less, but 27 2g

Sterner, After Babel, 228. Lynch, Images of Hope, 35

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more. It thus prevents us from getting used to deprivation.'29 Jiirgen Moltmann discerns this same logic in the structure of Christian hope: 'Faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.'30 Hope transfigures the present precisely by enabling us to transcend it imaginatively and, upon our return, to perceive all too clearly its lacks and needs. According to the popular proverb 'You don't miss what you have never had.' But to imagine is, for all practical purposes, already to have had, to have tasted the fruit which lies beyond, to have one's appetite for the possible thoroughly whetted so that the actual begins to taste sour by comparison. Soon hope begins to devise imaginative strategies for escape.

7. 'No Future'? The Ethical Deficit of an Absolute Present It is a pathological lack of hope, hopelessness which saps our energy and imprisons us within the tyranny of an absolute present. A serious failure of imagination renders us incapable of transcending the apparent limits of the here and now. With quite literally nothing to look forward to ('No future for you and me!' as one classic punk-rock lyric has it) we have little choice but to adjust to a cyclical pattern in which the same old dead-end options present themselves with a sickening regularity, each inviting just one more exploration which we know perfectly well will end in the brick wall of impossibility and failure. In our own society this hopelessness is worryingly apparent. Overwhelmed by the enormity of the ideology of indeterminacy and relativism (epistemic, moral, aesthetic, religious), crushed by the thought of ultimate nothingness, having had its hopes temporarily raised by the myth of progress only to see them dashed again, the West has for some decades been presenting symptoms of corporate stress disorder. A deep-rooted sense of ultimate meaninglessness is having practical knock-on effects in everyday and local contexts. The sphere of private interest expands constantly at the expense of concern for an identifiable common good and projects designed to facilitate it. The death of truth threatens to lead inexorably to the death of human culture in the sense of 'a creative project in which human beings 29 30

Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, 3 Vols. (Oxford 1986), 451. Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (London 1967), 21.

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have an ethical, artistic and political role to play.' No one, it seems, wants to be bothered very much any more with anything or anyone else. Ironically, while postmodermty offers a telling deconstruction of the wedding of the narrative of 'progress' to oppression and the concerns of capitalism, its own preoccupation with hopelessness renders it incapable of offering an alternative, morally more adequate, basis for the shaping of human life. The 'time-space compression' 2 which has arisen out of modernity'saaaaaaaa technological engagement with the world was in substantial part orientated from the outset towards demands for increased productivity and the marketstimulated and seemingly insatiable appetite for 'more, better and now' which is the hallmark of contemporary capitalist societies. The myth of progress was predicated on the assumption of limitless resources (material, moral, spiritual, and intellectual) and an optimistic projection of growth. In reality, though, its philosophy proved to be practising exactly what capitalism preached; drawing on what turned out to be a largely fictitious capital in order to fund the progress which (through growth) it hoped would eventually repay its mounting debts to humanity. As investments go this proved not to be a shrewd one Modernity's failure to take sufficient account either of the transience and loss which mark our world, or of the moral and spiritual limitations of its human occupants, led to the non-sustainability of the growth envisaged in the Enlightenment project, and the eventual bankruptcy of despair, not to mention the massive attendant environmental and economic damage done to so many. The market, like many other parasitic organisms, is infinitely flexible and adaptable and, even as its original host perished, quickly discovered a new one in its postmodern replacement. In fact, it has been argued that postmodernity is as much the child of capitalist concerns and practices as their unwitting host (at which point the metaphors get hopelessly and horribly mixed and are best set aside!). Thus David Harvey suggests that the culture of rapid industrial mass production, of the instant and the disposable, of ever changing fads and fashions, has inculcated a wider sense of the insignificance of the particular and the intrinsic ephemerality of much else in life (including values and codes of behaviour), and has heightened our sense of the prospects for the instant obsolescence of human life itself.33 In related vein Richard Kearney reminds us of the effective commodification and marketing of such simulacra as the image and other virtual substitutes for reality.34 Many of these are directly parasitic upon the fear of loss and meaninglessness which late capitalism has itself contributed to, offering 31

Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination (London 1994), 359. The phrase is David Harvey's. See The Condition ofPostmodernity, e.g., Ch. 16. 33 See Harvey, Condition of Postmodernity, 286. 34 See Kearney Wake of Imagination, 37 If. See also Harvey, Condition of Postmodernity, 289f 32

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either alterities to the actual designed to divert us from it, or artificial mooring points for those who feel otherwise adrift and at the mercy of whatever tides and currents may take them. The perception that there is no exit, no way forward, nothing that can be done, may in the short term provoke a frenzied hyper-activity in which we seek to stave off our fears of what may be (about which nothing can be done) by immersing ourselves wholly in the pleasures, benefits and distractions which the present has to offer. This may take the form of sheer narcotic hedonism (indulging in sensory excess 'like there's no tomorrow') or a wholesale investment of our concern in artificial, contrived and illusory goals and projects. What is effectively a process of denial cannot last, however, and eventually gives way to a deeper and more lasting inertia and a sense of futility. Thus, not wanting to be bothered with a despairing shared world, we postmodern individuals retreat instead into our private televisual and computerised virtual realities which, unlike the 'real world,' we can programme, control and edit to our own advantage and personal delight. Instead of sharing in community we now prefer to face not other people but the monitor, logging into a cyber-personal internet which grants us hitherto unimaginable access to a vast electronic cosmos, but which, ironically, simultaneously divorces us from flesh and blood reality itself. The alternative postmodern cosmos of cyberspace recreates momentarily the frisson of that power which the myth of progress institutionalised, fostering 'the delusion of the frontier mentality while implying that you can get what you want by simply pressing a button.'35 It is not lack of imagination that is the problem here, therefore: on the contrary, the postmodern ethos of play is all about the 'cathartic power to make what is impossible at the empirical level of existence possible at the symbolic level.'36 But such imagining has no aspiration to transcendence, no forward moving and potentially liberating direction. It is deployed only as a narcotic, to substitute various virtual alternatives for reality, fictional possibilities designed to satisfy our unnaturally circumscribed desire and so distract us (for the time being) from the actual impossibilities and futility of life. Meanwhile, as we are reminded each time we log out of cyberspace, the anxiety inducing contours of our shared history remain the same. Indeed, every retreat into individualistic fantasy threatens simply to reinforce them by diverting the vital resources of energy and effort that might otherwise make some small but intrinsically worthwhile difference. Postmodern imagination is, in this sense, distinctly unethical. It fosters a sense of alienation from a public world which is, after all, a social construct which I may 35 Ziauddin Sardar, Postmodernism and the Other: The New Imperialism of Western Culture (London 1998), 62. 36 Kearney, Wake of Imagination, 367-368.

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choose either to endorse and participate in or not. As Kearney observes, one of the most serious symptoms of the postmodern failure of imagination is the likely eventual loss of the other, the one who confronts us and who places us under some irreducible ethical obligation as fellow human beings.3 After all, if there is no ultimate meaning, no final truth, if nothingaa is really real, then it is possible to ignore with impunity the piercing eyes of the starving child or the bewildered refugee whose face is beamed across the globe into our private space by satellite TV, or to turn a blind eye to the mugging or the racist attack taking place on our own doorstep. Such things, we might come to suppose, are not our proper concern and should not be allowed to spoil our day. So we draw the curtains or reach for the remote channel changer We can't be bothered to act because such action would draw us out of our individual privacy into a complicating set of relationships which would be inconvenient and costly and which would in the end, we suppose, make very little difference to anything. When the need of the other ceases to meet with any deep response in us, when we are able to satisfy our innate craving for contact with the real through the simulacra of 'virtual reality,' when our ethical sensibility is massaged through vicarious identification with larger than life Hollywood heroes but we cannot actually face the comparatively small responsibilities which real life occasionally thrusts in our face, we can be sure that the question of the erosion of our humanity itself has become deadly serious. * What could I have done? What real difference would it have made?' These are the questions with which the apathy born of hopelessness justifies itself, before turning its back on the whole despairing scene and rejoining one or another virtual alternative which calls it to do precisely nothing except sit back and prepare to be entertained to death. We are living, one contemporary lyric complains, in a plastic world in which the fresh air of reality is barely perceptible through the thick perfume of illusion, illusion which we are not even free to choose or create for ourselves (although of course we live under the illusion that we are!) but which must be selected from a range of products carefully imposed by the totalitarianism of the 'free' market: The world is turning Disney and there's nothing you can do You're trying to walk like giants, but you're wearing Pluto's shoes. And the answers fall easier from the barrel of a gun Than it does from the lips of the beautiful and the dumb The world won't end in darkness, it'll end in family fun With Coca Cola clouds behind a Big Mac sun.38

r

Kearney, Wake oj Imagination, 36If. From One God1 on the 1997 album Blue is the Colour by The Beautiful South.aaa

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Meanwhile the forces of cynicism, paranoid self-interest and active nihilism (in both their individual and their corporate forms) stalk the world's stage with less and less to oppose their advance. The net result of hopelessness is thus precisely to change nothing except, perhaps, in so far as it allows things to get even worse. This, in turn, serves to reinforce the original sense of impossibility and locks the hopeless ever more securely into the vicious and downward spiral of denial and despair in which so much imaginative energy is expended in doing nothing and going nowhere. The following exchange between Samuel Beckett's two victims of late modern indeterminacy, Vladimir and Estragon, captures the mood: Vladimir: Estragon: Estragon: Vladimir: Estragon Vladimir:

(without anger). It's not certain. No, nothing is certain. It's not worth while now. Silence. No, it's not worth while now. Silence. Well, shall we go? Yes, let's go. They do not move. 39

As a self-proclaimed culture of hopelessness postmodernity is in danger of just such inertia. It is a condition without a sense of the future, and as such, no matter how much activity it may generate within the 'labyrinth of endless play'40 which is its own absolute present, it is going nowhere. Incapable of relevant acts of imaginative self-transcendence, having officially abandoned belief in the existence of a way out of the labyrinth or a golden thread to lead us there, it is threatened with the loss of its own humanity.

7. Hope and an Ontology of the Possible Not all hopelessness is bad for us or dehumanising. Hopelessness can sometimes be a perfectly 'healthy' condition at least in the sense that its estimate of the possibilities accords better with reality than alternative 'false' hopes. Lynch eschews the popular notion of hope as an heroic disposition, a determination to soldier on regardless of what faces us, doggedly refusing to accept defeat long after the battle has been lost. Such refusal to face reality, he suggests, is pathological and a recipe for final mental breakdown. Real hope is not like this because it is focused much less on its own capacities. It 39 40

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (London 21965), 53-54. Kearney, Wake of Imagination, 360.

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is essentially outward looking rather than curved in upon itself, rooted in the qualities and capacities of otherness, of that which lies beyond itself in other people, in the "real world/ It is, in Lynch's words, 'an interior sense that there is help on the outside of us.'41 Hope is a hunch about what is genuinely possible. It is rooted in an intuitive judgement about the help which lies to hand. In Steiners sense, then, it is a wager on transcendence, on something which lies beyond and is not part of us, something as yet unseen but, we believe, real enough. The difference between true and false hope may thus be deemed to be that the one gets this judgement right and the other gets it wrong. Ernst Bloch insists upon a distinction between the proper imaginative activity of hope on the one hand and what he calls 'mere fantasising' on the other. In the former, hope as a component of human consciousness (a hopeful disposition) is soundly rooted in real possibilities in the world, even when the means for or route to realising these may not yet be at all apparent. Hope intuits 'a Not-Yet-Being of an expectable kind.'42 It is not a matter of easy prediction, for hope is often a stretching of the imagination way beyond the limits of what is currently possible; but hope, as opposed to mere fantasising, attaches itself to a 'Real-Possible,' some set of circumstances the conditions for the possibility of which are genuinely present within the present. It is the conviction that this is so which drives hope forward towards its own eventual realisation, struggling to overcome what may seem to be insuperable obstacles in the process. We keep going, keep striving to find a wav forward precisely because we believe there is such a way even when we cannot yet see it clearly. Imagination fuels the engines of our movement into the future. Mere fantasising, on the other hand, is a matter only of projecting our desires onto the blank screen of what may lie beyond. Nothing is intuited; there is no serious wager on transcendence; we are simply entertaining ourselves in the meanwhile. Such fantasising has no liberating potential. It is, as we have already seen, a diversion from facing up to reality and can only last until its illusion fades and needs to be replaced by another. Finally it binds us ever more securely within the confines of a limited and despairing present. Real hope liberates and moves us forward. False hope entraps and leaves us, listless, essentially where we began. We have suggested that one of the things which postmodernity has usefully done is to expose the false hopes offered in the modernist myth of progress. The Utopian futures projected by this myth are not possible futures, not, at least, if we take actuality and the potential stored within it as our index of measurement. Rather than the allure of 'more and better' we have come to realize that, despite significant repackaging and relabelling, 41 42

Lynch, Images of Hope, 40. Bloch, The Principle of Hope, 144.

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'progress' is so often and in so many basic ways an unappetising diet of more of the same.' The problem with which postmodernity burdens us, though, is that of an almost all-embracing hopelessness. Not everything is possible for us in this world; but many things are, and these may legitimately furnish objects of hope to which we can look and move forward. Even if our goals and projects are of limited scope and relatively small scale (the grand Utopia of the myth having been unmasked as an illusion) they are nonetheless in themselves perfectly good and proper things towards which to work. Their value as objects of hope, that is to say, is not tied to a perception of them as successful steps towards Utopia. But postmodernity seems to have allowed (or to be threatening to allow) its cosmic hopelessness to trickle down through the entirety of human existence, robbing its adherents of the energy and will even to move towards small scale and short term goals. This suggests that the stability of hope within history may finally prove to be contingent upon the existence of some hope for history, that penultimateaaaa and small scale hopes are difficult if not impossible to sustain where no firm basis for an ultimate and cosmic hope exists. It is in this sense that the stark 'realism' of cosmic hopelessness in postmodernity threatens dehumanisation and erosion of the common good. Where, though, if anywhere, can an alternative basis for hope be discovered? If actuality (present and past) and future possibilities extrapolated from and measured by it offer nothing but the prospect of a final, allembracing nothingness, then despair and determination to 'get as much of what there is now while it's still available' are understandable if unattractive responses to our shared circumstance. After all, nothing comes of nothing: or does it? Here, surely, the Christian story has something distinctive and important to say to our contemporaries? Neither modernity nor postmodernity has proved capable of sustaining an 'ecology of hope.'43 Their failure to do so does not, of course, do anything to render the Christian hope inherently believable, let alone demonstrate its truth; but it does clear some space for it to be articulated and heard afresh. At the heart of that hope is the seemingly scandalous yet liberating claim that with the God made known in the resurrection of Jesus all things are possible, and out of nothingness new life has already been and will finally be called forth. In his essay 'The World as Possibility and Actuality: The Ontology of the Doctrine of Justification,'44 Eberhard Jiingel insists that Christian theology, in order to be true to its own inner logic, must refuse to endorse the general granting of ontological priority to actuality over possibility which 4

43

'There is such a thing as an ecology of hope. There are environments in which it flourishes and others in which it dies.' Jonathan Sacks, Faith in the Future (London 1995), 150. 44 See Eberhard Jungel, Theological Essays (Edinburgh 1989), 95-123.

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has prevailed in the West since Aristotle's Metaphysics. For Aristotle the real is identical with the actual, and the possible (which is defined and measured by reference to actuality) is the not-yet-real, the merely potential. The familiar distinction between the 'already' and the 'not yet' in Christian eschatology reflects the pervasive influence of Aristotelian assumptions in theology. Even a hopeful anticipation of the not-yet asserts the priority of the "coming actuality/ 'To say "not yet" is to think "but then ...,'"45 But, Jiingel argues, a properly Christian account, rooted in a pattern replicated in the doctrines of creatio ex nihilo, virginal conception, resurrection and justification by faith, can only challenge and seek to dismantle this unashamed privileging of the actual over the possible. The ontological implications of such doctrines must be allowed a critical function within the world and its self-understanding. Part of what this will involve will be a shift from identifying the 'reaF primarily with the actual. 'Theology must establish that the radical nothingness of Good Friday is the other dimension of the being of this world/46 Here, then, a Christian theological analysis will concur temporarily with its postmodern counterpart: considered in terms of its actuality, this world is doomed to eventual dissolution and nothingness. The theological response, though, will not be to deny the possibility of that 'life in all its fullness' which alone can undergird cosmic and personal hope and thereby hopeful living towards the future. For, what Christian belief in 'God1 entails is an acknowledgement that this appellation attaches to the one who determines that which is possible as possible and that which is impossible as impossible, and thereby distinguishes himself from the world.47 Recognition of the crisis of the natural and the historical, in other words, corresponds to a divine judgement upon it which is yet accompanied by a divine promise. The pattern of nothingness out of which creation is called into being, of a virgin who yet conceives and bears life into the world, of Jesus crucified and risen to life after two days is replicated here in the discontinuous relationship between our apparent hopelessness and the source of our hope. What this means is that human hope which is rooted in the God of the resurrection is not limited or constrained by the 'possibilities' inherent in the actual, or by the capacities of the actual to become other (and better) than it is. Indeed, 'From a theological point of view, "hope in" a particular future worldly actuality is the exact opposite of the kind of hope in God alone which hopes for a future for the world. The future actuality of the world is not a matter of hope\ it is made. It belongs to the context of worldly action/48 Hope, if it is true hope, is invested in the capacities of the God 45

Jungel, Theological Essays, 102. Jungel, Theological Essays. \ 10 47 See Jungel, Theological Essays, 112-113. 48 Jungel, Theological Essays, 114-115.

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with whom all things are possible. It is, to return to an earlier description, an intuition of genuine possibility which lies beyond the limits of our own actuality. It is a wager on transcendence.

8. Living History Differently Eschatology thus has finally to do not with the best that can be hoped for from and in this world, but with a new world which will be brought into being only when God wills and acts to do so. The conditions for this future will not be found in any human achievement or evolutionary transition, but will be created by God himself out of the abyss of non-being on the cusp of which our world and its inhabitants exist precariously from moment to moment, and into which they constantly threaten to topple apart from God's gracious and patient preservation. The world's possibility is not within but external to its actuality. And its being is external to its futurity.'49 Yet the possibility certainly does not remain abstract from the actual. As we have already seen, it is of the essence of true hope to draw us out of a selfindulgent inertia and to empower us for action in the world. Through the 'event of the word,' Jungel argues, (and, we might add, the Spirit!) the world's possibility already has a transfiguring impact upon the shape of our present: 'In this event, that which God's love makes possible from outside, and not from a future which arises out of the past, is the ultimate concern of the world's actuality.'50 What Jungel has in mind here appears to be a 'ministry of contradiction' in which the church as the community of hope asserts (Jungel finally prefers the non-coercive 'pleads') the possibilities of the living God in the teeth of the nothingness and impossibilities of history and nature. In this speech event, which is itself an event within actuality, space for freedom and response is opened up.51 Such an account might helpfully be supplemented by a more rounded (and perhaps more explicitly trinitarian) account of ways in which God is presently at work in the world and in the church to enable his creatures to transcend their actuality and catch the vision of his promised future, a vision with reflexive impact upon the shape of our being in the world's present. By enabling us to locate ourselves within a different teleology, and hence to configure the meaning of our present differently, this God empowers us to live history differently. This relocation and redirection of our existence occurs through the engagement and application of imagination. The world's future possibility cannot be 'known' or demonstrated. Precisely because it 49

Jungel, Theological Essays, 117. Jungel, Theological Essays, 117. 51 Jungel, Theological Essays, 119-120. 50

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lies beyond the range of our science it can only be depicted in a host of quite different but complementary imaginative visions. Through these, we might say, we are granted an imaginative transcendence of our particularity in which God draw s us, by faith, out of the patterns of sin and death which mark our past and present, and towards his own promised future of which the resurrection is both the sign and the pledge. The sort of looking and living towards the future which ensues transfigures our patterns of behaviour in the here and now. Having laid hold of us, God's Spirit sends us out to engage in what Amos Wilder calls a campaign of 'guerilla theatre/52 a campaign in which liturgy, ritual, and acted parables supplement the power of the proclaimed word in a bid to capture and reshape the imaginations (and thereby the hopes, desires and ways of being in the world) of those whom the despair of nothingness currently holds in its thrall. Far from being too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use, therefore, the focus of Christian hope upon a transcendent source of possibility is one which transforms the present in one way or another. It both requires and enables us to live history differently. The overarching ecology of hope fostered by the Christian story is one rich in resources for action and thus for fuelling more local and immediate hopes within history. The conditions for the possibility of progress in this world, we might say, are furnished by the reflexive impact of hope for God's transcendent future upon the present, an impact characterised not by fear and frenzied efforts to improve our chances, but by the liberation of discovering what it is that God wants to do for and with us. This discovery sets us free even now to be active in pursuit of correspondence to our eschatological destiny, confident in the knowledge that we shall not be forced to rely on our own resources in doing so, and set free from the otherwise crushing burden of responsibility for the ultimate outcomes, in our daily struggle with the patterns and forces of death, the Holy Spirit both sets us free from the bonds of the past and empowers us to move forward, breathing new life into our shrivelled capacities and opening them up to receive a flow of power from God's promised future. Instead of being constrained by the prolongation of what has been and what is, we act in ways which are genuinely open to surprise, taking seriously the possibility of the advent of new and unpredictable manifestations of what will finally be, in the midst of the here-and-now. We live, in other words, in a present that is shaped by the future rather than the past, in the power of what we might call the future-made-present.53 As Christians, then, we are not limited to a hope which simply imagines something which is, as yet, notable by its absence In and through our imagining of it, and in and through the presence and agency in our midst of the Spirit who raised Jesus from death, 52 M

Amos Wilder, Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagination (Philadelphia 1976). See Jiirgen Moltmann. The Coming of God (London 1996), 22.

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we actually experience that which we hope for, albeit only in part and under the form of the things of this world. But in this way we are empowered to live history differently. In our experiences of this same Spirit 'God himself is present in us,' and 'we are possessed by a hope which sees unlimited potentialities ahead, because it looks to God's future. The heart expands. The goals of hope in our own lives, and what we ourselves expect of life, fuse with God's promises for a new creation of all things.'54 What Jiingel urges us to do, in effect, is to retrieve the Christian story from its unfortunate entanglement with the dogma of progress, and thereby to facilitate a fresh critical engagement between its particular 'wager on transcendence' and the more immanent orientation of both modern and postmodern metanarratives. Earlier we posed a question: In the aftermath of the decline of progress, can there still be a Christian shape to time?55 The answer, we suggest, is yes, as long as Christian hope rediscovers its properly transcendent bearings and source. For it is with these that not only the ultimate future of the world but equally the prospects for such progress as is possible in the meanwhile finally rests.

54

Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life (London 1992), 155.aa See above, p. 44.

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4. Imagining the Future Garrett Green ... another world to live in whether we expect ever to pass wholly into it or no - is what we mean bv having a religion Santayana If for this life oriK we have hoped in ('hrist, we are of all men most to be pitied. 1 Corinthians 15:19

As I left my first SST conference last year in Manchester, I bought a newspaper to read on the train back to Cambridge. On the front page was the latest controversy about the Millennium Dome (a recurrent feature during my sabbatical year in the UK), and this time it involved Christians. 'Church given role in Dome/ announced the headline in the Telegraph, and the article went on to reassure readers that the Archbishop of Canterbury had intervened with Peter Mandelson 'to ensure that Christianity is at the heart of the Millennium Dome.' The dispute had to do with the design of the 'Spirit Level * one of the features of the Dome's prospective interior, described by the planners as w a haven of peace and tranquillity.' What seems to have disturbed the archbishop was not the projected tranquillity of the government-sponsored millennium, but rather reports that 'the original plans did not include the symbol of the cross,' The Telegraph even felt called upon to comment editorially, worrying that the archbishop ('a genuinely well-meaning and gentle soul') might be 'bought off by government reassurances of a prominent Christian presence in the Dome.1 During the past year I've continued to follow the Dome's progress off and on, though it's been more difficult from the United States (1 only recently discovered that one can watch the Dome's construction live on the Internet from anywhere in the world whenever one wants, thanks to a camera perched atop Canary Wharf!)2 My fascination with the Millennium Dome is theologically motivated, for 1 sensed early on that it was an 1 The Daily Telegraph, 2 April 1998 It was quite an eschatological day for the Telegraph, which also carried a story about the interior designer David Hicks, who had just died after having spent four years planning his own funeral (this one, too, prompted an editorial), as well as a small piece about the Taiwanese sect True Way, now located in Texas, whose leader had predicted that God would appear on Channel 18 on local television (and he hadn't). 2 http.//mi I Iennium.greenwu-h2000.com/

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important clue to the eschatology of our late modern culture - if only I could decipher the signs. I subsequently made the pilgrimage to Greenwich, where I obtained the official brochure of the Dome's sponsors - with the wonderful name New Millennium Experience Company - who describe it as 'an international icon and the largest building of its kind in the world.' So what does this millennial icon tell us about its creators - which is to say, about ourselves, assuming that we live at least part of our lives as citizens of the (post)modern world? My best guess is that the key to the Dome's meaning lies in the controversy about what to put in it. Nothing is more striking about this eschatological icon than the fact that it was conceived, designed, funded, and at least partially built all before anyone had a real notion what it was for or what it would contain. An American commentator has called it 'the world's most spectacular empty space.'3 Does this not suggest that Emptiness is precisely what the Dome expresses? Not the Buddhist kind but the modern secular sort, symbolizing the nihilism of an age that imagines itself to be the only age (that's what 'secular' means, after all) and can thus imagine the future either not at all, or merely as more of the same, only bigger. The Millennium Dome thus stands as an empty symbol - rather, as a symbol of emptiness. It makes visible the impoverished imagination of late modern society in the West. As such, it is a monument to the eschatology of nihilism, an icon of the empty future. Like the numerical symbol of the year 2000 it commemorates, the Dome is a nullity, much ado about nothing (or Nothing). It is as though we still bore the imprint, deep within our common psyche, of the great time-marking and time-creating festivals of our ancestors, for clearly we feel an urge to celebrate this once-in-a-thousand turning of the wheel of history. But, as it turns out, we haven't a clue about what or why we are celebrating. So instead of jockeying for exhibition space in the Spirit Level, it would behoove us as theologians to ask how we as Christians imagine the future, or whether our imaginations too have become desiccated and emptied of meaningful content. Having spent considerable effort trying to understand imagination and what it means for theology,41 find the problem of imagining the future an especially intriguing and promising one, for the future presents us with the purest laboratory for observing imagination in action. The reason is simple: 3

Paul Goldberger, 'The Big Top,' The New Yorker, April 17 and May 4 (1998), 159. Goldberger, however, far from decrying the Dome's emptiness, sees it - like the Crystal Palace and the Eiffel Tower - as a virtue, but one missed by the practical politicians who control it: 'monumental in the best sense of the word, yet at the same time its contents threaten to render it trite and insignificant.' More intriguingly, he imagines the Dome as 'the greatest revival tent in history' - without, however, telling us what it is that needs reviving or who the preacher should be. 4 Garrett Green, Imagining God: Theology and the Religious Imagination (rpt. Grand Rapids, MI 1998).

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when it comes to the future, we have few if any other resources at our disposal. How else could we conceivably have access to the future other than by imagining it4? 1 want therefore first to reflect briefly on the formal question of imagining the future as a way of highlighting this remarkable human ability, the act of imagining, before turning to the question of content. How do Christians imagine the future concretely? imagination always presupposes something not present, for its job is precisely to give us access to objects whose nonpresence would otherwise render them inaccessible, in Kant's deceptively simple definition, 'Imagination is the faculty of representing in intuition an object that is not itself present.^ He goes on to note that imagination therefore belongs wholly to the realm of sensibility, since all intuition comes to us via the body's senses. In other words, we can imagine what is not present only by analogy with things that are, or have been, present to us in the world apprehended by our senses. Strictly speaking, this principle holds true even in the everyday realm of other people's sense experiences, which they can communicate to us only by appealing to our imagination, that is, by analogy to our own similar experiences Implicit in this situation is an ambiguity that lies at the heart of imagination and makes of it a two-edged sword: we necessarily imagine reality that is not present, but we may quite as easily imagine unreality (which is also "not present,' though for a quite different reason). The prophet and the liar, God and the devil, both appeal to our imagination. Formally considered, imagination has the same structure in both cases. The systematic ambiguity of imagination with regard to truth is what makes the concept so useful, and at the same time so treacherous, for theology. It means that issues of trust are inextricably bound up with questions of truth: once we get over the illusion that we are in a position to test all candidates for truth by our own inner resources, we come face to face with the question, Whom shall 1 trust'? It is also a key factor in what may be called the postmodern pathos, the cultural crisis of trust in which the hermeneutics of suspicion has become a universal contagion. When we turn to questions of eschatology and ask how Christians are to imagine the future, we feel the force of that suspicion as in no other case. The intimate relationship between truth and trust is eloquently captured by the first article of the Theological Declaration of Barmen: 'Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.'6 The hint of eschatology in the final phrase is a reminder that the question of the future is the ultimate test of whom we will trust. 5

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York 1968), B 151 (Kant's emphasis). 6 Arthur C ( ochrane, The Church's Confession Under Hitler (Philadelphia 1962), 237242,

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1. 'Another World to Live in': Otherworldliness Revisited The anthropologist Clifford Geertz begins his classic article 'Religion as a Cultural System' with an epigraph from George Santayana. The power of 'every living and healthy religion,' the philosopher had written, 'consists in its special and surprising message and in the bias which that revelation gives to life. The vistas it opens and the mysteries it propounds are another world to live in; and another world to live in - whether we expect ever to pass wholly into it or no - is what we mean by having a religion.'7 One of the most common modern epithets for religion is 'otherworldly,' and it has seldom been meant as a compliment. The culture of the Enlightenment, having cast its lot with this world (which is to say, having opted for secularity), has been suspicious of religion for apparently luring people away from this world through dreams of another. Yet Santayana and Geertz are surely right that 'Otherworldliness' is, if not the essence, at least a prominent feature of all religion. Under the pressure of the Enlightenment critique of Otherworldliness, many modern theologians, not to mention ordinary Christians in the pews, have sought to play down or even to eliminate entirely the Otherworldliness of Christian faith and doctrine, which has meant the elimination or radical reinterpretation of eschatology. They have felt an apologetic pressure to declare their loyalty to this world while eschewing the claims that another world might make upon us, including the 'otherworldly' aspects of Christian tradition. The approaching turn of the millennium offers an opportunity for us to reconsider the modern suspicion of Otherworldliness - to ask what stake Christians have in another world, what kind of world it is, and how we apprehend it in this secular world. Let us begin with the last question. Christians, like other religious people, apprehend another world - they call it 'the world to come,' 'life everlasting,' or 'the Kingdom of God' - by imagining it. They do so by employing what I call paradigmatic imagination, the human ability to grasp the constitutive pattern enabling one to apprehend something as a whole-inparts, and to do so by analogy to something else, something immediately accessible or familiar. In formal terms, all religions are alike in this way and not only religions, for the paradigmatic imagination functions in other areas of human life as well, including the natural sciences and the arts. In material terms, the uniquely Christian content of imagination, the normative paradigm for imagining reality, is contained in its scriptures. (Whether other 7 Cited in Clifford Geertz, 'Religion as a Cultural System/ in: Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York 1973), 87. I have corrected a minor error in the citation; the original can be found in The Works of George Santayana, Triton Edition, Vol. 4 (New York 1936), 5. The context is Reason in Religion, in Santayana's series The Life of Reason; the passage cited by Geertz comes from a paragraph subtitled 'All Religion Is Positive and Particular.'

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religions employ their scriptures in a similar way cannot be known a priori but is rather a matter for empirical investigation.) Lest this way of putting things sound too parochially Protestant, it should be noted that the Christian paradigm is not simply identical with the Bible and can be found elsewhere as well, including the doctrines, traditions, and practices of the church throughout the ages. Indeed, one could say that by definition any phenomenon - whether individual or ecclesial; textual, visual, or behavioral - is Christian in so far as it is constituted by analogy with the Christian paradigm. The most precise designation of that normative paradigm is 'Jesus Christ.1 This name focuses the Christian imagination; it is the seed around which the myriad imagery of the Bible crystalizes into a dazzling and multifaceted whole. The authority of scripture derives from the authority of Christ; the Bible is the rule of faith because it uniquely renders Jesus Christ to the imagination. Scripture exercises its canonical role by providing, as it were, the interactive network of images that allows us to imagine God rightly; it is the template we in the Christian community use in thinking about ourselves, the world, and the relation of both to God. That imagery has its focus and unity in Jesus Christ, whose career, narratively apprehended, is exhibited in the shape and content of the Christian Bible, starting with the complementary covenants embodied in the twofold structure of Old and New Testaments, and extending into the texture of unsubstitutable particulars that make up the individual texts.8 At the mention of the term 'whole/ someone is sure to bring up that postmodern bugaboo, 'metanarratives,' against whose tyranny so much ink has been spilled of late. Is not the Bible, that Great Story the Christian world has been telling itself for centuries, just the sort of totalizing strait] acket that Lyotard had in mind when he defined the postmodern as 'incredulity toward metanarratives'?9 The challenge is a serious one, for it suggests that Christians might be imagining the world as a closed system that ultimately stifles freedom, spontaneity, and creativity by confining human beings to a rigid and predetermined schema. In fairness it must be admitted that some interpretations of Christianity lend credibility to this critique. An example is found in the theological interpretation of 'universal history' as propounded by the young Wolfhart Pannenberg and his colleagues in the volume Revelation as History.™ Claiming that 'in the fate of Jesus, the end of history is experienced in advance as an anticipation,' they reasoned that God is revealed 'indirectly out of a totality of all 8 This paragraph summarizes the argument presented more fully in Green, Imagining God, Ch. 6. 9 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis 1984), xxiv. l °Wolfhart Pannenberg, Rolf Rendtorff, Trutz Rendtorff & Ulrich Wilkens, Revelation as History (New York 1968). The volume was originally published in German in 1961.

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events.' The evidence is available to all observers, not just Jews and Christians, because of the public nature of the evidence. The resurrection of Jesus is the proleptic end of history, and thus the key that unlocks the meaning of history as a whole. As Jiirgen Moltmann observed in Theology of Hope, according to the Pannenberg thesis, '"History" ... becomes the new summary term for "reality in its totality.'"12 Such a totalizing concept only works on the assumption that 'universal history' describes a closed system whose pattern can be abstracted and made the object of deductive reasoning. Another recent case of Christianity interpreted as 'metanarrative' - in this case, one that makes unabashed use of the term itself- is found in the thought of John Milbank. Though one could hardly call his version of the Christian metanarrative a closed system (he is far too aware of postmodernism to fall into that trap), it is nevertheless totalistic in intent, aiming to replace secular social theory with Christian theology. Since modern sociology is shot through with (usually unacknowledged) 'theological' assumptions, Milbank concludes that the church must reject it in favor of her own brand of Christian social theory.13 This position 'totalizes' with a vengeance, insisting that 'the absolute Christian vision of ontological peace now provides the only alternative to a nihilistic outlook.'14 The soundest theological defense against the 'metanarrative' critique is based on the imaginative character of the Christian vision of another world. Rightly employed, the Bible offers us neither an advance report on how history will turn out, nor a 'supertheory' with which to counter the theories of the secularists, but rather an alternative vision of the world in which the world is not so much completed conceptually as transformed imaginatively. To hold, in hope and expectation, to an imaginative vision of the world to come is not the same as claiming a theoretical knowledge of the totality of history. The language of the Nicene Creed is significant: 'and we look for the resurrection of the dead; and the life of the world to come.'15 This is not the language of theory but of expectation, not of prognostication but of prophecy. The point is not that as Christians we have some special source of information unavailable to people generally, on the basis of which we claim "Pannenberg et al., Revelation as History, 134, 141. Jiirgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and Implications of a Christian Eschatology (New York 1967), 78. 13 The debate about Milbank's theology would take us too far afield from the present task, but the question may at least be raised whether the intolerance towards other positions, Christian as well as secular, exhibited by the proponents of 'radical orthodoxy' might not be a symptom of just the kind of totalizing thought towards which Lyotard and others are properly incredulous. See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford 1990), and the debate in New Blackfriars, June 1992, reprinted in part in: Robin Gill (ed.), Theology and Sociology: A Reader (new enlarged edn. London 1996), 429-470. 14 Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 434. 15 Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (61877; rpt. Grand Rapids, MI 1977), I: 28-29. 12

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to know beforehand (pro-gnosis) what is going to happen in the future. Rather, we confess our faithfulness to that vision of the world to come contained in, and implied by, the witness of the prophets and apostles in scripture. Our confidence is grounded, not in superior knowledge or insight, but in trust of those whose imaginations have illumined and captured our own. Imagining the future Christianly requires a double act of imaginative trust: we imagine the world to come by trusting the imagination of St John of Patmos (among others), who in turn trusted that the angelic Revelation (arroKaAu^MS ) really did bear witness to Jesus Christ (Rev. 1:1). So rather than claiming theoretical foreknowledge of the future, Christians, following the model laid down by Jesus, pray for the coming of the Kingdom.16 Christian otherworldliness is an otherworldliness of the imagination, which remains necessarily always in tension with our immediate experience of this world. Such anticipation cannot constitute a metanarrative because this narrative is not yet at an end (not even 'proleptically'). Strictly speaking, it is more nearly l fiction 1 than "fact/ because it describes events that are not yet real. And that is precisely why those events can be mediated to us only by way of our imagination, and the imaginations of the biblical witnesses. The paradigmatic imagination, by which religious people imagine another world, is analogical, for we are able to grasp that which is not present only by means of its likeness to something familiar, available, or at hand. For Christians, because their paradigm is Jesus Christ, the likenesses are necessarily historical. Christians envision the world to come by analogy with the past - a very specific past, contained in Holy Scripture. We imagine the future by imagining its likeness to this past: as new creation, heavenly Jerusalem, the return of Jesus Christ. Mircea Eliade argues that the sacred is always imagined in illo tempore, according to past time, the time of origin. When he applies this schema to Christianity, he gets it half right: The illud tempus evoked by the Gospels is a clearly defined historical time - the time in which Pontius Pilate was Governor of Judaea - but it was sanctified by the presence of Christ. When a Christian of our day participates in liturgical time, he recovers the illud tempus in which Christ lived, suffered, and rose again - but it is no longer a mythical time, it is the time when Pontius Pilate governed Judaea. For the Christian, too, the sacred calendar indefinitely rehearses the same events of the existence of Christ - but these events took place in history; they are no longer facts that happened at the origin of time, 'in the beginning.' ... This is as much as to say that history reveals itself to be a new 16 'In the second petition, which is, "Thy kingdom come," we pray that Satan's kingdom may be destroyed, and that the Kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it, and kept in it, and that the Kingdom of glory may be hastened' (Westminster Shorter Catechism, q 102).

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Eliade rightly sees that illud tempus has shifted from myth to history, that Christians employ a particular historical narrative 'mythically.' In the Christian mythos, the 'time of origins' is no longer identical with the 'origin of time' - though the fact that the Fourth Gospel opens with the words 'In the beginning ...' brings the two into intimate relation with one another. The time of origin, one could say, has reappeared in the midst of time. But putting Eliade's point in this way also exposes its one-sidedness, for the Christian story goes on to say that 'he will come again to judge the quick and the dead.' The past becomes a paradigm of the future; in remembering the past we anticipate the future. Eliade's claim that 'history reveals itself to be a new dimension of the presence of God in the world' is accurate only if we recognize that the mode of that presence is imaginative: history becomes a metaphor for God's eternal presence. It is not history generally, however, but the concrete history of Jesus Christ that is paradigmatic for the future. The relation of Christ to past and to future is figural or typological, in the sense that Hans Frei, following the lead of Erich Auerbach, showed to be the prevailing way of reading scripture before the advent of modern critical theories.18

2. The 'Delay of the Parousia' The analogical or typological nature of the relation of past to future is also the key to the problem of the so-called delay of the Parousia. Under the impact of the theory of 'thoroughgoing (or consistent) eschatology' (konsequente Eschatologie) advanced by New Testament scholars at the end of the nineteenth century, Albert Schweitzer propounded a thesis that has haunted twentieth-century theologians, starting with himself. 'The whole history of "Christianity" down to the present day,' he wrote in 1906, 'that is to say, the real inner history of it, is based on the delay of the Parousia, the nonoccurrence of the Parousia, the abandonment of eschatology, the progress and completion of the "de-eschatologising" of religion which has been connected therewith.'19 He was surely right about the effects on subsequent 17 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York 1959), 111-112. 18 Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven 1974), Ch. 2. 19 Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (New York 1968), 360. Jurgen Moltmann offers a concise summary

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theology - Bultmann's attempt to 'existentialize' eschatology is a prime example - but his analysis of the issue itself misrepresents, I believe, the place and role of eschatology in Christian faith and thought in both the early church and later generations. Schweitzer and the other proponents of konsequente Eschatologie were struck by the apparent failure of Jesus' own predictions of the end time, such as his charge to the disciples before sending them out to preach: 'tor truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes' (Mat. 10:23). (Schweitzer identifies the % non-fulfilment' of this verse as 'the first postponement of the Parousia/) 20 Yet one of the more remarkable phenomena of human religious behavior generally is the apparent alacrity with which religious movements shake off eschatological disappointment. Indeed some of the more vibrant religious movements - the Jehovah's Witnesses are a recent example have their roots in millennial predictions that wentaaaaaa unfulfilled So too the mainstream of Christian tradition: despiteaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Schweitzer's dire account of crisis, there is little evidence that the 'delay 1 was in fact experienced as a crisis by Christians. Or, to the extent that there was a crisis, the Christian community evidently had the spiritual means to overcome it. How can that be so? The fact that eschatological anticipation takes place in the mode of imagination has implications for the 'delay of the Parousia' that have usually been overlooked by theologians. First of all, the analogical nature of eschatological visions means that the imagery of temporal future functions metaphorically to represent eternity. At least since Augustine, it has generally been acknowledged by theologians that God does not create in time but rather creates time as an aspect of his creation of the world ex nihilo. But in that case, eschatological visions in terms of an End Time cannot be taken literally, as though these events were scheduled to take place at some future point in time (whether or not that time can be known or predicted is irrelevant; the point is that the End, whenever it comes, is conceived in terms commensurable with past and present time). If eschatology were composed of prognostications about the future, such a compatibility of time and eternity would be appropriate. But since time and eternity are incommensurable, their relationship must be analogical rather than literal; in other words, temporal imagery about 'future events' should be read as metaphorical language about a discontinuous and inconceivable eternity. We imagine eternity by imagining the future. The apocalyptic future is the Christian image (or one Christian image) of eternal life. Future time is a of Schweitzer's thesis and its impact on theology in The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis 19%). 7 1 0 20 Schweitzer. Quest. 360 21 1 predict a new crop of eschatoiogical 'survivor cults' in the wake of the 2000—2001 millennium

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metaphor for eternity. Moltmann confuses the two by his speculations (interesting though they are) about the points of transition from eternity to time and back to eternity again.22 Implicitly, he recognizes the imaginative character of biblical eschatology, appealing, for instance, to the indication in Revelation 5 that 'the unfurled times of history will be rolled up like a scroll.' But he never makes the imaginative character of eschatological vision an explicit theme, leaving the impression that scripture's 'preferred images (Bilder) for eternal life' are inadequate ways of describing 'what isaaaaa as yet hardly imaginable (noch kaum vorstellbar) in this impaired life.'23 In fact the language of metaphor and hyperbole, of Bild and Vorstaaaellung,aaaaaaa employed by the biblical witnesses is precisely the right way to speak about eternity, just because it is inconceivable from our temporal vantage point in history. This language is not an inadequate attempt to express what the theologian can articulate more clearly through the ordered use of conceptual discourse. Since time and eternity are incommensurable, we can pass from one to the other only by way of an imaginative gestalt switch. If we think of theology as the grammar of the Christian imagination, eschatology describes the grammar of imagining eternal life, the destiny of creation beyond time. Christians imagine eternal life as the future coming of God. The object of our contemplation is eternity; the medium is the eschatological vision of the world transformed in future time. A second implication of the fact that Christians apprehend another world by imagination involves us in a different trope, hyperbole. Stephen H. Webb has made a proposal about the hyperbolic imagination that deserves more attention from theologians than it has received. We have become accustomed to the idea that metaphor, far from being mere rhetorical ornament, enables us to say what cannot be expressed 'literally,' that is, in non-metaphoric language.24 Webb makes the corresponding claim for hyperbole.25 He sets out 'to confront the Enlightenment critique of exaggeration' by means of a 'rehabilitation of hyperbole' as a way of speaking about 'reality that could be expressed in no other way except through the excited and startling language of excess and extravagance.'26 Nowhere in Christian life and doctrine is the hyperbolic imagination more in evidence than in eschatology. Moltmann points out that Schweitzer 22 Moltmann, Coming of God, 279-295; cf. Luco van den Brom's contribution to the present volume. 23 Moltmann, Coming of God, 294-295; cf. Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes: Christliche Eschatologie (Gutersloh 1995), 324-325. 24 For a summary of recent discussion of metaphor theory, see Green, Imagining God, 127134. 25 Stephen H. Webb, Blessed Excess: Religion and the Hyperbolic Imagination (Albany 1993). See my review in Theology Today 51 (April 1994), 192. 26 Webb, Blessed Excess, 22-23. 'The Enlightenment,' he comments, 'has taught religious people to mumble, not exaggerate' (20).

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'abandoned his "historical Jesus," the Jesus who had come to grief over his eschatological enthusiasm (Schwarmerei).''21 Hyperbole, that 'elegant straining of the truth/ that "exaggeration on the side of truth,' appears to the sober rationalist as Sch\varmerei\ but as Webb reminds us, 'extravagant language does not necessarily lead to fanatical, or as the Enlightenment called it, "enthusiastic" behavior/28 Indeed, hyperbole finds its biblical justification, according to Webb, not in Jesus' miracles so much as his parables29 - and we could add that many of the parables are eschatological ('The Kingdom of God is like ...'). This insight helps to explain the remarkable immunity of millenarian predictions to failure: though the prophets of "apocalypse now1 have repeatedly been literally mistaken about the date of the End, may they not have been imaginatively right? Their followers understood that the prophecy, though temporally inaccurate, was hyperbolically true. The crisis that Schweitzer thinks likely did not derail the church's proclamation because the early Christians understood implicitly if not explicitly - that the expectation of the Lord's imminent return was the way in which faith imagined its consummation; it was the first-century manifestation of the faithful imagination of Christians though the ages. A similar logic helps to account for the 'nescience' (in Karl Rahner's term) of the man Jesus. No more than any other first-century Jew could he predict the future. 'But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only' (Mat. 24:36). As Christians and theologians, we are called upon to trust, not Jesus' knowledge of the future, but his imagination, even when it assumes the hyperbolic form of those 'predictions' that Schweitzer calls Schwdrmerei. And when the early church followed suit in the 'faithful hyperbole' of imminent expectation and apocalyptic vision, they were imagining - and inviting us to imagine - the incommensurable and inconceivable glory of eternity opened up by Christ's death and resurrection in the most suitable language they had at their disposal, by comparing and exaggerating their sensuous and temporal experience in this world. One further characteristic of eschatological imagination needs to be noted. In biblical accounts of the Last Things, the imagery is characteristically visual. Theological interpretations of imagination have sometimes gone astray by taking too literally the traditional 'image of the imagination' itself and thereby assuming that all imagination is visual imagination. Virtually all of the traditional terminology - imagination, fantasy, Einbildung, Vorstellung is based on the analogy of sight.30 But in the case of God'saaaaaaaa 27 Moltmann, Coming of God, 9 (I have corrected a typographical error); cf. Moltmann, Kommen Gottes, 26. 28 Webb, Blessed Excess, 9, 17, 18 20 Webb, Blessed Excess, 23 Kj See Green, Imagining God, 92 93

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future, seeing is in fact the appropriate mode. Just as faith is characterized by hearing, faith's destiny is conceived as sight (2 Cor. 5:7; cf. 1 Cor. 13:12). Thus Christian eschatology is dominated by visions of the future. The revelation ('apocalypse') with which the scriptural canon concludes is mainly composed of one great vision.31 John uses aural imagery to introduce his message: 'Blessed is he who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear ...' (Rev. 1:3). The content of the revelation itself, on the other hand, is visual through and through: 'After this I looked, and lo ...' (4:1); 'And I saw ...' (5:1); 'Now I saw ...' (6:1); 'After this I saw ...' (7:1) - and so on until the great climax of chapter 21: 'Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth ...' (21:1). The visual character of eschatological imagination makes visual art, especially painting and drawing, a favorite and especially appropriate medium for this theological locus. Expressions of the apocalyptic imagination of artists like Diirer and Van Eyck rank among the most powerful commentaries on the biblical accounts of the Last Things. And the hyperbolic tone of these visions make music and song a virtually irresistible response to them. John's apocalypse effectively blocks out the sound track: the four living creatures sing ceaselessly before the throne (Rev. 4:8), joined by the twenty-four elders (4:10-11) and accompanied on harps (5:8-10); the opening of each seal is heralded by an angelic trumpet fanfare (Ch. 8-9). The full chorus enters in chapter 14, when the hundred and forty-four thousand break into their 'new song.' Then the martyrs, also with harps, enter singing (15:2-4). (The music is also punctuated by an array of auditory special effects: e.g., '... flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail' [11:19].) Before such a vision, who can remain silent?

3. Imagination and Naivete Because imagining the future presents us with imagination at its purest and most intensive, it offers a unique opportunity to observe the imagination in action and to reflect on its theological significance generally. One of the more attractive notions to have been proposed for the modern interpretation of religion is captured in Paul Ricoeur's remarks about 'a second naivete.'32 The phrase has caught the attention of many a philosopher and theologian, including some who do not find Ricoeur's own attempts to reach that goal 31 Richard Bauckham notes the uniquely visual character of Revelation as compared to other apocalypses in The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge 1993), 9-10. 'John's vision creates a single symbolic universe in which its readers may live for the time it takes them to read (or hear) the book.' This combination of unity and visual imagery 'make[s] Revelation distinctive among the apocalypses.' 32 Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (New York 1967), 351.

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compelling. But it is the mere naming of the goal that appeals, combining as it does a nostalgia for the lost innocence of premodern childhood with the sophisticated maturity of what Bonhoeffer called the world come of age.33 The qualifier 'second* introduces a dialectical moment, seeming to hold out the possibility that we might recover the vitality and immediacy of the precritical 'first' naivete without abandoning our commitment to modern critical reason In conclusion, I want to indicate how understanding imagination theologically can help to reach that goal. Most simply put, my suggestion is that we take imagination as the mode of the second naivete. At first glance 'naive' does not strike one as a theological attribute, but my dictionary offers some synonyms that are at least suggestive: naive, simple, ingenuous, unsophisticated, natural, unaffected, guileless, artless. The list is followed by the comment that 'these adjectives mean free from guile, cunning, or sham.'34 When Jesus first sets eyes on Nathanael, he exclaims, 'Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!' (John 1 47); and the First Letter of Peter admonishes Christians to 'put away all malice and all guile1 (1 Pet. 2:1). Of still greater theological interest is a passage a few verses further on describing Jesus: 'He committed no sin; no guile was found on his lips' (2:22) - words cited from Isaiah 53:9, one of the Servant Songs so important for the Christology of the early church According to St Paul, his opponents in Corinth made this charge: 4 1 was crafty, you say, and got the better of you by guile ...' (2 Cor. 12:16). So if naivete means absence of guile (SoAos), it is a quality for which Christians ought to strive. One way to do so is to approach scripture 'naively,1 trusting its imagery and hyperbole to form one's own imagination. The problem with this advice is that it sounds very much like the 'first' naivete of those who eschew all use of critical reason. And the duality is right there in the definition, on the one hand, 'naive' means 'simple and credulous as a child; ingenuous ... suggesting] the simplicity of nature'; on the other hand, l it sometimes connotes a credulity that impedes effective functioning in a practical world.' The hermeneutical dilemma is brought out most clearly by the antonym: suspicious. As Ricoeur has taught us, the modern hermeneutics of suspicion calls into question all naive readings of scripture and other texts. Once having learned from the likes of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud to mistrust texts, how can we ever again hear them 'naively'? The first step is to acknowledge the 'otherworldly' character of faith, which means that believers will not be able to escape the tension between 33 For some historical reflections on adulthood (Mundigkeit) as the defining metaphor of modernity, see Garrett Green, 'Modern Culture Comes of Age: Hamann versus Kant on the Root Metaphor of Enlightenment/ in: James Schmidt (ed.), What Is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions (London 1996), 291-305. 14 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, third edn., s.v. 'naive.'

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'this world and the next' and should beware of those who claim to avoid or to overcome it. The hermeneutical symptom of that tension is the antagonism between suspicion and naivete, mistrust and trust. Like a wound that will not heal, it is the perennial thorn in theologians' flesh to keep them, like their father St Paul, 'from being too elated by the abundance of revelations.' The Lord's answer to Paul is also his answer to the theologians: 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness' (2 Cor. 12:9). Liberals are right that the language we use as Christians is not 'literally' true; rather, it is figurative, poetic, imaginative language. But the orthodox are right in a more important way: for the language of imagination - which is to say, biblical language - is the only language we have for thinking and speaking of God, and we receive it as the gift of the Holy Spirit. Theology deceives itself if it conceives of its task as translating the figurative language of scripture and piety into some more nearly literal discourse about God. The theologian's job is not to tell fellow believers what they really mean; rather, it is to help the church speak more faithfully the language of the Christian imagination. The theologian is not a translator but a grammarian. The secular world is obsessed with predictions, forecasts, and strategic plans, while the church seeks to live by faith, not knowing what the future will bring, but always expecting to receive it by grace out of the hand of the God who leads us forward by his Spirit. Our very identities are part of the mystery towards which we journey, for as the apostle has said (in words they can put on my tombstone), 'it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is'(1 John 3:2). The modern age, in whose twilight we anticipate the start of a new millennium, has understood itself as secular - in solidarity with this present age rather than the age to come. As a consequence, the modern imagination of the future has become desiccated, vulnerable to secular fads and fancies and lacking power to shape the lives and expectations of modern people. In its most extreme varieties (think of Heaven's Gate) modern imagination of the future becomes a pathetic parody of the religious imagination, a desperate expression of the gnostic hope that yet more scientific knowledge will usher in a this-worldly Utopia. In its more ordinary manifestations, however, the imagination of the age is symbolized in the emptiness of the Millennium Dome. Unlike the secular future, the future imagined by Christians is not empty but is filled to overflowing with images, metaphoric and hyperbolic, of heavenly glory. Imagining the future apocalyptically is incompatible with imagining it as the indefinite extension of the present into a continuous future. The modern theological flight from other-worldliness has blinded us to the inescapable duality of the Christian life. What we as

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Christians have to offer the world is precisely another reality, a vision not of "one damn thing after another' but of a new heaven and a new earth. The tension, the incompatibility, between these worlds is just the point: without it, we have no gospel to preach

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Ecology and Eschatology Peter Scott Many things would be easier if we could cat grass.

Ernst Bloch

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot. Joni Mitchell © 1970 Siquomb Publishing Corp/BMI The bourgeoisie has onK one solution to its pollution problems: it moves them around. David Harvey, after Engels

1. A Beginning/End The significance of ecology as a political theory and social movement for the understanding and criticism of contemporary society can hardly be overstated. A set of crises or breaks in human relations with otherkind and non-human nature has come to occupy a central, if rather ill-defined, place in the concerns of Western humanity. Although ecological initiatives are often blunted by * reformist' dilution - are we not all environmentalists now? political ecology is, at its most profound, the criticism of the structure and pattern of the needs generated by Western society. Eco-logic not only queries whether nature can survive the demands of accelerating capitalist accumulation but also, as Cornelius Castoriadis has suggested, calls into question 'the scheme and structure of needs, the way of 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Center of Theological Inquiry, October 1998. For their questions and comments on that occasion, I thank: Jesudas Athyal, Frank Clooney, Robert Jenson, George Newlands, Fleming Rutledge and, especially, R.R. Reno, David Tracy, Wentzel van Huyssteen and Miroslav Volf. I am indebted a second time to Rusty Reno for his suggestions on the structure of the argument. For further comments and discussion, 1 arn grateful to Niels Hennk Gregersen, Stanley Hauerwas, Ivica Novakovic, Wouter Slob and Avihu Zakai. 1 would also like to thank those at the SST conference - for which this paper was written - who raised questions and comments; some of these responses I have incorporated into the text in my own way.

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life, of [this] society.' Ecology opens up a new perspective that does not only - as the older labour and women's movements did - raise a question about the ordering of capitalist society but also questions that society itself, its worldview, its needs and the manner of the satisfying of those needs. Castoriadis again: 'What is at issue in the ecology movement is the entire conception, the entire position of the relations between humanity and the world...' 3 But what is ecology? Tim Hayward helpfully distinguishes between three senses of the term: the life science; the political movement and philosophy; and the relation of an organism to its environment.4 In what follows, attention is focused on the second and third definitions: how is theology the doctrines of creation and eschatology - to be brought into interaction with a significant attempt to understand humanity in its habitat? How should theology engage with, and offer a critical assessment of, an ecological discourse that demands at every point - methodological and substantive - that the practical force of the placing of humanity in a natural context be adequately theorised? Here ecology is always political: the attempt to respond to 'central questions asked by the social sciences about the relations between human society, viewed in its bio-cultural-political complexity, and a significantly humanised nature.'5 Furthermore, there is little agreement among the various competing positions on how the ecological relations between humanity and non-human nature should be theorised. Some contrasting examples will serve to illustrate this last point: Is ecological enquiry, as suggested by Tim Hayward, the attempt to recover the liberatory aspects of Enlightenment thought in ways that are ecologically sensitive: an ecological humanism? Alternatively, is the proper task of ecology better described, as in the early work of Arne Naess, by way of the criticism of the theme of 'humanity in its environment' and a constructive proposal for a 'relational, total-field image'? Or is the later Naess correct in moving away from this view to stress rather the value in their own right of life forms, in their diversity? Is such a view insufficiently political, as Murray Bookchin might argue: what requires attention instead is the ways in which social forms of inter-human domination are read into nature and then introjected into society as justification of the latter's hierarchy of command and obedience. On the other hand, should we agree with James O'Connor that economic processes of capitalist accumulation 2 Cornelius Castoriadis, 'From Ecology to Autonomy,' in: David Ames Curtis (ed.), The Castoriadis Reader (Oxford 1997), 246. 3 Castoriadis, 'From Ecology to Autonomy,' 246. 4 Tim Hayward, Ecological Thought: An Introduction (Cambridge 1995), 10. 5 A definition of political ecology offered by James Greenberg and Thomas Park, cited by James O'Connor, Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism (New York 1998), 67.

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are degrading the physical, personal and communal environments and thereby generate a second contradiction of capitalism? What is the force of the argument proposed by David Harvey that a dialectical approach, which seeks to incorporate the theme of space into a theory of social justice, is a truly radical ecological theory'? Or, finally, is Val Plumwood nearer the mark in her argument that the fcwoman-nature' connection has been deeply damaging to women's (and men's) flourishing? What is required instead is a 'critical ecological feminism' in which both the domineering mastery of nature and the domination of women are properly comprehended and overcome. In what follows, we shall pick our way through some of these discussions.6 What, finally, is the theological significance of ecology? The demand made by ecology has been posed by Castoriadis in the form of two questions: k What is human life? What are we living for?'7 It is easy to see how such questions relate to, but are not identical with, the nature and basis of Christian hope. Yet to establish a connection - for theology - is not at all straightforward. How is the perspective opened up on our society by political ecology to be brought into relation to the generosity of the gift of creation and the character of the triune God of abundance? The aim of this paper is to take some initial steps in the development of a theological conceptuality, which may both establish and clarify the relation. In making these steps, I lean heavily on a (revised) double maxim proposed by Karl Rahner for correct interpretation in eschatology: the future of creatureliness is properly mystery and yet relates to creaturely forms; eschatological fulfilment is the surpassment of life but not the denial of creatureliness.8

6 Hayward, Ecological Thought, Ame Naess, 'The Shallow and the Deep, Long Range Ecology Movements,1 in: G. Sessions (ed.), Deep Ecology for the 21st Century: Readings on the Philosophy of the New Environmentalism (Boston 1995), 151-155; Naess, 'The Deep Ecology "Eight Points" Revisited,' in: Sessions (ed.), Deep Ecology for the 21st Century, 213-221; Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (rev. edn. Montreal 1991);. James O'Connor, Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism; David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Oxford 1996); Valaaaaaa Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London 1993). 1 Castoriadis,' From Ecology to Autonomy,' 246. 8 Karl Rahner, 'The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions,' Theological Investigations 4 (London 1974), 323-346. At its 1969 conference 'The Christian hope' - the previous occasion on which the SST considered eschatology - although the theme of ecology is not in evidence, the paper on 'creation and eschatology' operates with a version of this maxim. See W.A. Whitehouse, 'New Heavens and a New Earth,' in: G.B. Caird (ed.), The Christian Hope (London 1970), 83-101. At its first conference in 1952, the Society also considered the theme of eschatology. the paper on contemporary eschatology, again by Whitehouse, discusses a variant of the axiom See W.A. Whitehouse, 'The Modem Discussion of Eschatology,' in: William Manson et al , Eschatology (Edinburgh 1953), 63-90.

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2. Expanding the Concept and Task of Eschatology9 The first step is to note the importance of the relation between the doctrines of creation and eschatology. Rendered more precisely: Creation presupposes eschatology. How so? If eschatology has as its theme the glorification of God, then such eschatology is the presupposition of creation. For creation is, in its independence from God, the glorification of its Creator.10 In that the glorification of the Creator is not yet completed, the future of creation lies in its contribution to that glorification. In its fulfilment, the creation glorifies the Creator: The goal of all creation, not just humanity, is to share in the life of God.'11 Creation presupposes eschatology. The obstacles in the way of the justification of the theological claim of the destiny of nature are legion and large. There is no agreement in contemporary theology on the significance of eschatology for nature. Moreover, a suspicion lingers - perhaps a faint trace of some of the commitments in the early writings of Karl Marx - that Christian eschatology is the denial of embodiment and the world. Feminist theologians have also been concerned, from the particular perspective of the connection made in some Christian construals between the rational and the spiritual on the one hand and the male on the other, that eschatology either presumes or proposes a disembodied redemption which leaves women, as the allegedly more embodied half of the human race, as second class citizens in salvation. I shall not engage in the head-on refutation of eschatology as world and body denying for I do not wish to privilege the presupposition behind the criticism: that Christianity is somehow 'in the dock' on this matter. In my view, the central issue is not eschatology as the denial of embodiment but rather non-theological accounts of nature and the problem of bringing the dogmatic commitments of creation and eschatology into theological relation to these. How might the content of such a relation be characterised? If theology is to make 'the turn towards materiality,' the relation of eschatology to creation cannot focus only on anthropology. If an 'eschatology of things'12 is to be developed, both the concept and task of eschatology must be expanded to encompass non-human nature. Why is this 9 I am borrowing the title from Gerhard Sauter, 'The Concept and Task of Eschatology: Theological and Philosophical Reflections,' Scottish Journal of Theology 41 (1988), 499-515. 10 It does not follow from this that the aim of creation is the glorification of God. The aim of the unity of God's creating and consummating actions is, rather, the independence and fulfilment of creatures which, in turn, glorifies God. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 2 (Edinburgh 1994), 56-57. 11 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 2, 136; cf. 57. 12 Here I am borrowing the terminology of Conrad Bonifazi, A Theology of Things: A Study of Man in his Physical Environment (Philadelphia 1967).

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so? Historically, eschatology has had as its central topic either two or three themes: personal, historical/social and cosmic eschatology.13 None of these relates well, as we shall see, to the constitutive and mutually shaping relations between humanity and non-human nature. Thus the concept of eschatology requires ecological extension.14 The task of eschatology also requires development: in an important essay, Karl Rahner has made the valuable double claim that the eschatological future is fundamentally mystery and thereby remains unknown to humanity and yet is related to humanity. In explication of the second point, Rahner writes. "... man [sic] has a physical, spatio-temporal, bodily existence, even in matters of salvation and that the nature of man and of his one and total fulfilment must also be envisaged in the light of these things/15 By these two 'limiting statements,' Rahner argues that eschatological fulfilment is both outside the control and knowledge of humanity and yet must relate to humanity in some way.16 David Kelsey makes the same point: whatever eschatological consummation means, it cannot mean the obliteration of creatureliness.17 Yet we can now see that Rahner's position requires development: for the totality must include the ecological relations between humanity and nature. The expansion in the concept of eschatology requires a commensurate expansion in the task of eschatology. The future of creation is the future of creatureliness; and constitutive of the creatureliness of the human is the creatureliness of ecological nature. So the task of eschatology must now include theological comment on the fulfilment of non-human nature.

13

See Daniel W. Hardy, God's Ways with the World (Edinburgh 1996), 'Creation and Eschatology,1 151-170; Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (London 1996); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 3 (Edinburgh 1998); Wolfhart Pannenberg, 'Constructive and Critical Functions of Christian Eschatology,' Harvard Theological Review 77:2 (1984), 119-139; Sauter, 'The Concept and Task of Eschatology.' 14 1 do not mean to suggest that it is ecological considerations only, which force the reconsideration of eschatology onto the theological agenda; the difference between ancient and modern cosmologies also ensures that eschatology requires reconstruction. 15 Rahner, 'The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions,' 331. 16 Perhaps the healing narratives recorded in the synoptic Gospels provide normative evidence of this claim: the sick recover from their illness but not merely in restorative fashion but by being placed anew within God's blessing of creatures. Hence the healed are admonished by Jesus to silence or instructed to give thanks in the temple. What is determinative is not the event of the recovery from illness but the renewal of the blessing of creatureliness to which the correct response is praise of God or silence (that is, not boasting - self-referentially - about recovery). See Matthew 1:44, Mark 5:42 and 7:36. Some support for this view may be found in Michael Welker, God the Spirit (Minneapolis 1994), 207; and Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit ofaaaaa Life: A Universal Affirmation (London 1992), 191. a1 David H. Kelsey, 'Two Theologies of Death: Anthropological Gleanings,' Mod Theology 13 (1997), 347-370 (348-349). The test case here is usually reckoned to be the issue of the continuities of personal identity in a 'resurrection body.'

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Therefore, the extension of the notion of consummation must encompass not only Christology and anthropology but also ecological nature. That is, the content of eschatological assertions requires revision to include the fulfilment of nature. From this it follows that the theme of anthropology perceived from the perspective of (the doctrine of) creation needs to be expanded to include non-human nature. The reconstruction of the task, and therefore the concept, of eschatology requires the reconstruction of the concept of creation. The task here is larger than it seems at first sight: for eschatology must now be shown not only to be 'natural' to anthropology but to non-human nature also. In theological perspective, we may speak of a common realm of God, nature and humanity in which the actuality and independence of ecological relations are constituted, as dependent and contingent, by the lively actions of the triune God. Only from such a perspective will eschatological hope receive proper articulation. Yet such articulation must show the consummation of creation relates to forms of creatureliness. Eschatology presupposes creation.

3. Creation and Ecology In this section and through sections 4 and 5, I present some aspects of a doctrine of creation adapted to the contemporary discussion of ecological nature. In putting the matter thus, I seek to avoid a disjunction between the doctrine of creation and theories of ecology. In refusing the disjunction between creation and ecology, I hope to avoid a route that leads to the division of theology into 'dogmatics' on the one hand and 'contextual theology' on the other.18 'Doctrine' versus 'relevance' is a false choice that must be rejected.19 Rather, the way forward proposed through these three sections is by intensive engagement with the theme of creation in its reference both to the relation of the world to God and the organisation of creatureliness.20 I begin with the matter of creaturely organisation: in some very recent discussion in the ecological literature, the theme of 'social nature' has

18 In making this distinction, I am drawing on Gerhard Sauter, Eschatological Rationality (Grand Rapids 1996), 171-200 (179-188). The distinction between contextual theology and dogmatics is, in Sauter's presentation, an example of the distinction between context(s) of discovery and context(s) of justification. I9 Christoph Schwobel makes a distinction along these lines, with a preference for 'doctrine': Schwo'bel, 'God, Creation and the Christian Community: The Dogmatic Basis of a Christian Ethic of Relatedness,' in: C.E. Gunton (ed.), The Doctrine of Creation (Edinburgh 1997), 149-176(149-150). 20 Cf. Schwo'bel, 'God, Creation and the Christian Community,' 161.

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emerged.2' This interpretation of social nature is not reductionist: we have here not a straight argument in the epistemology of social constructivism but rather the attempt to make the case that nature, although always constructed, is 'real' in and through such construction.22 It is, of course, possible to make mistakes in the interpretation of this set of active relations. For instance, this social relationship may be interpreted as one of mastery and subordination 3 As (then governor) Ronald Reagan once famously remarked, when you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all. Whether such an interpretation - that is, the social construction of nature as real - might be helpful theologically, I shall return to in section 4. For now I want to note that if eschatology is, as Rahner suggests, concerned with the fulfilment of the world of creatures, the theme of 'nature as social' might be one way of relating general human hopes for the environment to the coming of God. For the eschatological consummation and justification of the world must bear some relation to the forms of creatures. Moreover, it may be that these forms are best described in social terms. As a preliminary, 1 shall note only that perhaps the basic human hope in relation to nonhuman nature lies somewhere in the matter that nature does indeed exceed us (this is a condition of its productivity and the source of its capacity to renew humanity) and yet that nature is oriented on humanity in the mode of preservation.24 For example, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner2* may be viewed as presenting deep anxieties and hopes concerning the city as habitat and the identity of human beings. Can the city support life without ever increasing inputs of energy to which only the wealthy have proper access? Is it possible to create a cyborg whose mimicry of humanity is so perfect such that, in appearance, the cyborg is 'human'? We may ask: do such pathologies betray a pervasive hope for the reality, stability and creativity of non-human nature precisely, nature as other to humanity?26 Do we have here in filmic portrayal a narration of the concern whether or not nonhuman nature is oriented on humanity; is - precisely - pro nobisl 21 See the essays in Bruce Braun & Noel Castree (eds.), Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium (London 1998); Steven Vogel, Against Nature (New York 1996), 145f. In fact, this is the renewal of an old theme. 22 In a helpful essay, 'Science, Social Constructivism and Nature,' in: Braun & Castree (eds.), Remaking Reality, 173-193, David Demeritt identifies four types of social constructivism in current philosophy of science. 23 See Hayward, Ecological Thought, Ch. 1. 24 Of course, a central hope in relation to the 'nature' of human bodies is the matter of postmortem existence. That is not my topic here. 25 Blade Runner (Warner, 1982), dir. Ridley Scott. 26 According to Gordon Kaufman, 'The Concept of Nature: A Problem for Theology,' Harvard Theological Review 65 (1972), 337-366, the theme of non-human nature as partner has been a theme in philosophical idealism. 1 analyse - briefly - how this theme surfaces in philosophical materialism in my 'Imaging God: Creatureliness and Technology,' New Blackfriars 79 (1998). 260-2^4

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Yet theological interpretation offers more than agreement on a proposed 'social nature.' In my view, successfully theorising ecological nature as a habitat for humanity requires the presentation of a concrete material order informed by the reordering of relations towards new patterns of interaction, commonality and fellowship. In short, theological interpretation offers a trinitarian doctrine of creation to articulate such a dynamic, concrete order. Non-theological treatments cannot offer, or can offer only in part, an account of this concrete, dynamic order. I do not deny that every day the sciences bring us knowledge of the world. Yet, in theological perspective, such knowledge needs theological interpretation to be rendered concrete.27 Such a rendition is concrete in two senses. First - and here theology is in need of assistance - concretion involves the overcoming of the alienating abstraction that the capitalist mastery of nature requires. Writing of the tendency in physics to represent nature by way of mathematical notation and thereby claim a direct - unmediated - relationship with nature, Ernst Bloch comments: 'Complete unmediatedness with content thus appears here - an ideological analogue to the totally alienated, de-realized functional operation of late capitalist society, projected into nature.'28 The recovery of nature must thereby involve the reappropriation of a rich, sensuous nature, glimpsed through its contemporary commodification.29 Second, concretion involves an interpretation of creatureliness that discloses its dependence on God, its contingency and its orientation on God for its completion. What difficulties do non-theological accounts of ecological nature face in their attempts to be concrete? Due to their truncated concepts of transcendence, such accounts grasp the form of transcendence either as 'humanity over nature' or 'nature over humanity' (the resurrection or renewal of nature).30 These two tendencies may be characterised as modern and counter-modern. Broadly, the modern view sees humanity as preeminent over nature; the counter-modern view stresses the importance of nature as subject.31 Yet, in theological perspective, only if ecological humanity and non-human nature are both, as creaturely, oriented on God for their separate yet mutual fulfilment can we speak of a taxis that is both 27 For the matter of concretion in theological inquiry, see Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/l (Edinburgh 1958), 330-334; Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 2, 59, 83. I thank George Hunsinger for drawing the section by Barth to my attention. 28 Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope Vol. 2 (Cambridge, Ma 1995), 665. 29 For one account of the commodification of nature in the commercial presentation of 'nature' by the Nature Company, see Jennifer Price, 'Looking for Nature at the Mall: A Field Guide to the Nature Company,' in: William Cronon (ed.), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (London 1996), 186-202. 30 The theme of the mastery of humanity over nature occurs both within and without Christianity. Within Christianity, it is implicit in the concepts of dominion and stewardship. 31 I set out the detail of this in my A Political Theology of Ecology (in preparation), Ch. 2. See also Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London 1998), 41-68.

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concrete and dynamic, material and active. For concretion is denied in claims to human mastery in which, as the object of human attention, nature is rendered abstract. Dynamism is denied if nature is posited in the manner that 'Nature knows best' (an informal ecological law, according to Barry Commoner)32: a natural' identity or pattern to which humanity must conform.33 At issue here is an ecomaterialism: an account of humanity and ecological nature in which both are rendered mutually shaping and informing and yet both are also rendered concrete.34 With these remarks, we are brought to the matter of a trinitarian doctrine of creation. The central problematic here is, as we might expect, Christological. What is the relation between the attempt to discern and theorise a concrete, dynamic order and the self-witness of God in Jesus Christ? If the discernment of the identity of God precedes the explication of the presence of God, how is the universal relevance of the particular identity of Jesus Christ to be thought in relation to the modern 'universal' of nature? We have here a clash between two conceptions of 'whole.' For Christian theology, the concept of 'whole' is associated, fundamentally, with the incarnation of the Logos of God in Jesus Christ: 'whole' in relation to an 'individual appearance" (and thereby analysable by the human sciences). For ecological thinking, however, 'whole' has a different sense: it is associated with the law-like character of the orders of life and being that is nature. Here, the whole refers not to an 'individual appearance' but to a general structure. How does the 'whole' that is the 'individual appearance' of Jesus Christ relate to, indeed qualify and thereby judge, the 'whole' that is nature'} u In this paper, I shall keep to the structure already intimated: what needs attention in the light of the ecological extension of eschatology is the commensurate extension of the doctrine of creation. Yet, if the previous paragraph is correct, such an extension of the theme of creation cannot be successfully secured except by reference to incarnation. How might this be understood9

32

Barry Commoner, Making Peace with the Planet (New York 1992), 11. ' Rosemary Radford Ruether has a critique of such immanence in Sexism and God-Talk (London 1983). 70. 4 'Concretion' here must include ways of grasping the configurations of human living in a variety of dimensions: cultural, economic, political, social, geographical and, of course, the dimension of gender "Wolfhan Pannenberg, Metaphysics and the Idea of God (Edinburgh 1990), 130-152 (136--W1 v

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4. Creation and Incarnation If by reference to eschatology we refer to the consummation of that which is created, how is the creaturely to be understood theologically - that is, by reference to Jesus Christ - to include both ecological society and ecological nature? At issue here, I shall argue, is the matter of creaturely difference and the origin of that difference in the creative act of the triune God in incarnation. From the matter of creaturely difference, the issues of both the common origin and destiny of ecological society and ecological nature and the contingency of creation come into theological focus.

Incarnation The theme of incarnation suggests that distinction from God is both part of what it is to be a creature and that, as the perfect 'summary' of creatureliness, Jesus of Nazareth, in his perfect practice of obedient self-distinction, is the Word enfleshed of the Creator God.36 As the concrete embodiment of the Logos of God, Jesus thereby points to God's intention to author an independent creation (which God will bring to consummation) and, in trinitarian perspective, recommends the interpretation that the origin of creation, the source of the creative act, is the differentiation of the Logos from the creator God. Incarnation is not thereby some 'emergency measure' of the creator God (who suddenly appears 'down here' because things cannot be managed properly from 'up there'), nor an action externally related to creation, nor some general process whereby God is reconciled to God, but is rather the concrete and intensive re-enactment of God's extensive intentions in creation. Creation is thereby intended by God to be independent in and through its origin in the self-distinction of the second person of the Trinity from the first. Creation is then not merely 'other' than God; nor is creation the principle of difference by which the fullness of God is somehow secured. Rather, if incarnation is to be properly acknowledged, creation, of which incarnation is the summary, has its source and ground in the relation of the Logos to the Creator. Both Wolfhart Pannenberg and Karl Rahner have argued along these lines for a trinitarian account of creation that understands the Logos to be the mediator of creation and the ground of creaturely life. Rightly, in my view, Pannenberg sees the second person of the Trinity as the origin of the difference, the independence of creation. In turn, he traces the differences of creaturely totality to the presence of the Logos in creation. 'The logos of creation,' Pannenberg writes, '... gathers the creatures into the order that is

36

Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 2, 34.

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posited by their distinctions and relations and brings them together through himself (Eph. 1:10) for participation in his fellowship with the Father.'37 Although his argument is differently organised, in formal terms Rahner makes the same point: 'If God wills to become non-God, man comes to be, that and nothing else ,..' 3 8 Rahner relates the otherness of the creation to God by reference to a primal difference in God: 'The immanent selfutterance of God in his eternal fullness is the condition of the self-utterance of God outside himself, and the latter continues the former.'39 Although Rahner is here materially discussing the doctrine of the incarnation in relation to both the assumption of human nature and 'change' in God, the usefulness of his position for my argument is readily apparent: here the incarnation "qualifies' creation in the sense of being its inner rationale, origin and destiny. Creation is 'authored' in the distinction of Creator and Logos, made known in the incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth.40

Interpreting Creatureliness Theologically Yet we have hardly moved far in developing a vocabulary by which to consider the theme of ecology: the creaturely contours, movements and interactions of ecological society and ecological nature. Rahner's concern lies in the origins of creation in relation to incarnation rather than the creaturely outworkings of God's creative activity. When Rahner does engage in a discussion of anthropology, he reiterates his well-known view of the transcendental openness of the human creature to the mystery of God. Such a resolutely anthropological interpretation of transcendentality is ill suited to the determination of ecological relations. Difficulties with Pannenberg's position from the perspective of our theme also emerge: the conceptuality proposed is insufficiently detailed to offer an account of the relation between humanity and its habitat. The evidence for such a judgement emerges most forcefully on the occasion of Pannenberg's defence of dominion as a function of the imago dei. He is careful to make clear that dominion must be understood as restricted. Yet what dominion presupposes the transcendence of humanity over its natural conditions - is neither elucidated nor defended. Thus the radicality of Pannenberg's conceptuality is blunted 41 Noting the level of generality with which ;

Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 2, 32. Karl Rahner, 'On the Theology of the Incarnation,' in: Theological Investigations Vol. 4 (New York 1982), 105-120 (116). Cf. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity (New York 1978), 212- 228 (225). ^ Rahner, 'On the Theology of the Incarnation,' 115. 40 In stating the matter thus, 1 am seeking to do no more than represent the commitments of Jn 1.1-18. 41 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 2, 116, 131-32, 137. In contrast, Moltmann, rightly, notes the importance of the interaction between concepts of polls and eschaton: see The 38

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Pannenberg is content to operate in the domain of ecology is also to make a judgement on the politics of Pannenberg's theological position.42 A different way is required to set out the relations between humanity and nature in order to speak, for theology, of their common origin and destiny. One way of moving forward at this point is to articulate a set of transcendentals that carefully coheres with God's self-statement in the flesh of Jesus Christ. For the root, foundation and rationale of the characterisation of transcendentals is Christological: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Christ requires, in my judgement, the interpretation that in the return of Christ to the world by God the Creator, which is praise of Jesus by the Creator in the Spirit, we have a Godly judgement on sociality. That is, the breach in sociality - the solidarity of human beings to be for one another - does not, concretely in and for Jesus of Nazareth and in the form of testimony by Christians, end in death. I have drawn out the implications of this position for praxis elsewhere.43 Yet by this claim I do not mean only that, as David Nicholls has conclusively shown, there is a persistent relationship between images of God and the polity.44 I intend rather a theological point: God, nature and humanity are social concepts that are intelligible ftzlly only if their social intention is drawn out. 'For the concepts of person, community and God,' writes Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 'have an essential and indissoluble relation to each other.'45 As the ground of sociality is the triune God, the concepts of self and society are properly explicable only by reference to their social, yet always creaturely, dynamics. Here I wish to build on this argument by introducing an amendment: the resurrection of Jesus Christ is God's promise to the covenantal character of social humanity in nature; humanity and nature share the important feature of the transcendentality of sociality. Thus the promise of the continuation of solidarity even through death pertains also to nature. The promise of God Coming of God, 133. Furthermore, if the argument of Ch. 5 of my Theology, Ideology and Liberation (Cambridge 1994) is persuasive, it is likely that the theological roots of such a political position lie in Pannenberg's doctrine of God as Trinity, which is to be found in his Systematic Theology Vol. 1 (Edinburgh 1991), 256-336. 42 It is the merit of Jurgen Moltmann's position that he sees this issue clearly. Yet his attempts to engage the matter are, in my judgement, unsatisfactory. In The Coming of God, ecological issues are placed in the discussion of cosmic eschatology when, it could be argued, such issues are not best treated within the conventional divisions of eschatology into personal, historical and cosmic. For example, the explosion at the Union Carbide factory at Bhopal, India in 1984, which killed 2,600 people who lived around the plant, raises the following issues: the place of nature in a worldview, the relation of environment to development and the matter of justice. The conventional divisions of eschatology are hereby transgressed. 43 See Scott, Theology, Ideology and Liberation, Ch. 6. 44 David Nicholls, Deity and Domination (London 1989). 45 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Dogmatic Enquiry into the Sociology of the Church (London 1963), 22.

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the Creator in Jesus Christ grants a future to that which is social. For nature also is social. Nature participates in the resurrection of Jesus Christ because of the sociality that it shares with social humanity. Nature is redeemed in the vicarious action of Christ not on the grounds that it forms the natural conditions of human life but because it is social. Yet its social character is different from humanity; hence, it may be appropriate to maintain that nature is redeemed from its curse, not reconciled from its sin.46 In the raising of Jesus Christ as the proleptic anticipation of the resurrection of social humanity, the resurrection of nature is also anticipated: the social character of reality is both affirmed and reordered. What requires attention, in my view, is the relation between the resurrection of Jesus" embodiment and the social character of reality rather than the relation between Jesus' embodiment and non-human nature. Thus a fruitful theological way forward, 1 shall be arguing, is to affirm the sociality of all reality, human and natural.47 In other words, the natures of humanity and non-human nature are best grasped and interpreted in a social conceptuality. Such a conceptuality, elaborated in the next section, points to dynamic, inter-relational movements in the interaction of humanity and nature. Furthermore, we must note the central eschatological dimension of this position: the entirety of social creation participates, by incarnation, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:10). Contingency of Creation Finally, we must note that, if the foregoing discussion of the relation of incarnation to creation approximates to the truth, creation must be understood as having its contingent origin in the loving act of God. Creation emerges, so to speak, not out of an abstract determination to create, but out of the primacy of God's life as love. If the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the election of social nature, such election points forward to the completion of nature, human and non-human, in eschatological glory. As contingent, then, the created order lives out of the future of God. To speak of ecological nature as contingent is to say that the creation is not a necessary emanation of God but is rather rooted in God's primary determination to love. It is also, by holding to the unity of God's acts in creation and redemption, to maintain the openness of creation: its orientation to the future and its living "out of that future. 46

Gen 3:17-19; Rom. 8:19-21. Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lectures on Christology (London 1978), 64-65. 47 It is important to note here that 'nature' is always a political concept; thus to employ political and social categories is not alien to the interpretation of nature. Certainly, it would be unwise to conclude that the interpretation of nature in the natural sciences should always be granted priority as if scientific interpretation was somehow 'natural' to nature.

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5. An Eschatological Theology of Ecological Nature: Four Principles48 In the previous section, I set out some theological commitments in an attempt to establish and clarify the relation between creation and eschatology against the horizon of ecological thought. Through all this, I have sought to hold to Rahner's two strictures: the future of creation must truly be gift; the future of creation must relate to the forms of ecological humanity and ecological nature. Relations between ecological nature, anthropology and Christology are thereby to be understood such that the emphasis on the free action of God in consummation is preserved yet God's love for the shape of particular creatures in creation is maintained. I shall now explore this claim through the elaboration of four principles of an ecological doctrine of creation. These principles are, I hope to show, both generative and transformative: creation is dynamic and subject to alteration.

Commonalities and Differences between Humanity and Non-Human Nature The first principle is Christological: from the perspective of the transcendental of sociality, a principle of the commonalities and differences between humanity and non-human nature emerges. If this is right, nature here including humanity - is to be described as social. Moreover, if sociality is not imputed to creatureiiness but is itself creaturely,49 such differences and commonalities are not lost in the future of creation. To follow Rahner's strictures, the future of social creation must both be genuinely futural and yet related to the social form of creatures. Creation presupposes eschatology. So far, this discussion of the first principle has concentrated on the commonalities between humanity and non-human nature: both are governed by the transcendental of sociality. It should also be noted, however, that the incarnation of the Logos in human form privileges the human in a certain way: for the human person is the greatest concentration of the capacity to be social.50 Thus the claim of creaturely reality to be social also notes that the 48

Such principles are not to be described as transcendental and therefore do not have the same status as transcendentals. They are rather concepts, implied by the transcendental of sociality, which indicate the constitutive features of ecological relations that need, in turn, to be tested in interdisciplinary discussion. I thank Niels Henrik Gregersen for pressing me on this point. 49 See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall (London 1959), 33-38, esp. 36; Daniel W. Hardy, 'Created and Redeemed Sociality,' in: Colin E. Gunton & Daniel W. Hardy (eds.), On Being the Church (Edinburgh 1990), 21-47; Scott, Theology, Ideology and Liberation, Ch. 5. 50 Here I am formally repeating the point made by Pannenberg and Rahner regarding the rationale for the incarnation of the Logos in humanity. The justification for such incarnation

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human is different, in specific ways, from the social dynamics of nonhuman nature. What is proposed here is not a theological naturalism but rather a theological materialism. What is the difference between naturalism and materialism? The incarnation of the Logos, and the theme of the common realm of God, nature and humanity, require that humanity and nature cannot be separated yet neither can humanity be folded into nature. On the one hand, what matters are the ecological relations between humanity and nature. On the other, these relations are not to be secured by reference to a naturalism to which human beings must conform. For the claim that 'nature teaches,' is always selective and generally ideological. What nature imposes 'by necessity1 trades upon a non-dynamic reading of nature ('the balance of nature1) and is usually reductionist.51 If critiques of deep ecology find their mark, the dangers of naturalism are not always avoided in contemporary ecological theory.50 Such an ecological perspective, we might say, is insufficiently generative. The generative, Christological, principle proposed here requires a theory of a dynamic, concrete order that brings into focus the determinations the permanencies and alterations - of ecological relations. In a highly interesting passage, Ernst Bloch moves towards a materialism consonant with this view.*0 Building on the philosophical traditions of German idealism, yet crossed by the commitments of the early Marx to see the interchange between humanity and non-human nature through the metaphor of metabolic exchange, Bloch proposes an account of humanity as building its home on its "nature-subject,' arguing along the way that the steady failure of Western humanity to grasp the 'subject of nature' may be traced to our alienated conditions of living. Indeed, Bloch astutely notes that progress in human mastery over nature can readily co-exist with the greatest social retrogression. Bloch does not develop the implications of his view for an account of ecological relations or a political theory. Yet, he is working towards an account of properly proportioned human living in its natural must, in some way, relate to the human as universal For Pannenberg, only the human is both universal and concrete (Systematic Theology Vol. 2, 64) and thereby 'matches' the creating concrete principle of the Logos; for Rahner, the human universal resides in the claim that 'Man is ... mystery in his essence, his nature' ('On the Theology of the Incarnation,' 108). My position »s different: both concretion and universality reside in the human capacity to be social, that is, oriented on one another in a range of configurations. M See Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, 163; O'Connor, Natural Causes, 121, Reiner Grundmann, vThe Ecological Challenge to Marxism,' New Left Review 187(1991), 103-120(114-115). 52 See Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Difference, Ch. 7; Val Plumwood, 'Nature, Self and Gender Environmental Philosophy and the Critique of Rationalism,' in: R. Elliot (ed.), Environmental Ethics (Oxford 1995), 162-164; Michael Northcott, The Environment and Christian Ethics (Cambridge 1996), 116-118; Scott, A Political Theology of Ecology, Ch. 3. M Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope (Cambridge, Ma 1995), Vol. 2, 658-698.

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habitat or homeland in a way that takes seriously the openness of nature and history (including present social and economic conditions). Although such a fuller statement is more than can be attempted here, what is required is further articulation for theology of both the ecological and political aspects of Bloch's thinking.54

A Principle of Encounter From this first principle a second, which is also Christological, can be deduced: a principle of encounter. The dynamism of human-human, humannature and nature-nature relations may be referred to the active relations of encounter. For in the differences and commonalities of human and nonhuman nature, in their range of interactions, we have a series of encounters: of humanity by nature; of nature by humanity. With the third, this is perhaps the most difficult principle to grasp. Why so? Because it contradicts a dominant Western view that humanity is self-sustaining. On this dominant view, the Western attitude to nature concentrates on the ways that (non-) human nature is a problem for us: diseased bodies, animals in the 'wrong place,' 'inadequate' crop yields, etc. Nature is part threat, part challenge. By contrast, the principle of encounter in social interaction suggests a sense of the demands placed on humanity by a lively nature. Humanity is truly placed in nature: we must speak of the reality of humanity in nature. This is, to borrow some formulations from Jim Cheney, the core of the theological attempt to affirm the otherness, the difference of nature. Against strategies of containment which seek - either through negation or immersion - to organise nature, the emphasis here is on 'genuine recognition, acknowledgement, and embracing of the other.'55 Rosemary Radford Ruether captures one aspect of this in her affirmation of the kinship between human beings and nature: an encounter by a 'wild' animal, the pleasures of sunbathing.56 Yet such a dynamic of encounter is precisely the source of kinship; it is not, as Ruether suggests, an illusion of otherness that needs to be broken down. Indeed, the otherness of nature - precisely, its spatiality - indicates its capacities for renewal (including the renewal of the habitat for human living). For nature is also spatial. Spatiality is a crucial eschatological category. For the fulfilment of space, as the dimension of the separation of things, but not time, as the dimension of becoming, will be present in eschatological consummation.57 54

This fuller statement is the subject of my A Political Theology of Ecology. Jim Cheney, 'Nature, Theory, Difference,' in: Karen J. Warren (ed.), Ecological Feminism (London 1994), 158-178 (164). As a consequence, democratic 'negotiation' will emerge as a key theme in section 7. 56 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God (San Francisco 1992), 252. 57 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 2, 95. Although there may be difficulties in Pannenberg's attempt to understand the relation of time to eternity, such a reservation does not 55

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Here we meet with considerable difficulties. As Harvey suggests, forms of spatiality have been employed to interrupt some dominant discourses by the introduction of the synchronic into diachronic reflection.58 Yet, there is no agreement on the interpretation of spatiality and the manner of the interruption Moreover, the matter of nature as spatial is the truth in the explication of nature as natura naturans. Thus any failure by Christian theology to integrate the theme of spatiality - that is, to integrate a Christology into ecological doctrines of creation and eschatology leaves the field open for anti-theological developments, such as the construal of nature in terms of natura naturans. For the truth of natura naturans is the insistence on an extra-human telos for nature. A Principle of Fellowship The third, transformative, principle invokes the structure of the trinitarian doctrine of creation with which I am working. The otherness of nature suggests a principle of fellowship. As creatures practise their spatio-social creatureliness, the better this is done, the greater the fellowship. Such transformations may be traced to the actions of the Spirit who is the presence of the social God of fellowship and the mode of the creatures' participation in the fellowship of God. This is not pantheism. For the more truly the creatures practise fellowship, the greater their independence. (The theological rationale for creation discussed in section 4 - secures this point.) Thus the relation between the freedom of creatures and the presence of God is marked by a dynamic of inverse proportion. Of course, there are no workings of the Spirit without the workings of Christ. Nor should we say that the operations of Christ are preparatory for the fellowship of the Spirit. Instead, we may say that fellowship and the tendencies for the redoubling of fellowship (Spirit) are given in the temporal field of spatio-sociality (Logos). Creation is a co-operative work of Word and Spirit. Here we have an important glimpse of the eschatological orientation of creation. For the destiny of nature and humanity is for the fellowship of the common realm of God, nature and humanity. Such an orientation provides the conceptual space to delineate the tendencies in creation towards its eschatoloeical consummation that resist the end of fmitude.60 Rahner's two affect my point on the eschatologicai significance of spatiality. I thank Miroslav Volf for drawing this matter to my attention S8 Harvey, Justice, Nature and the (Geography of Difference, 111. "g This theme is central to Bloch's work: see The Principle of Hope Vol. 1, 287-316; Vol. 2, 625ff Freya Mathews, The Cosmological Self (London 1991) argues that the cosmos enjoys the relevant qualities of individuation, etc. and thereby qualifies as a conative self. 60 Cf. Daniel W Hardy, "Creation and Eschatology,' in: Colin E. Gunton (ed.), The Doctrine nt'( 'realign. 1 14- 11 5

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principles are again operative here: to be sure, consummation does not obliterate creatureliness but neither does consummation complete that which is merely 'given' (not even if that which is given is unfolding or evolving out of its origins). At this point there are, from a theological point of view, severe weaknesses in some discourses on ecological nature. For example, deep ecology tends to downplay nature's otherness. The tendency here is to posit forms of identity by which humanity is falsely inscribed. Furthermore, a certain stoicism emerges from this position that tends to undercut nature's abundance.61 Such an ungenerous account is based, in my view, on an unhappy account of totality that, in turn, refers us back to the importance of theorising spatiality. For the principles that inform deep ecology are neither transformative nor materialist but rather tend towards static forms of naturalism. The poverty of this position is clearly discerned when we note that deep ecology can fall into the trap of affirming neo-Malthusian arguments regarding population. In contrast to the commitments of deep ecology, the action of the Spirit refers us to movements towards fellowship that are not given. For there are no 'necessary' or 'given' structures; the social-spatial is not fixed. Thus part of the contingency of creation is its active tendency, to be ascribed to the actions of the Spirit, towards fellowship. In relation to ecology, we have to be prepared to think, however dirnly, of patterns of fellowship that may be secured by God that exceed the ends of nature given in creation. Or, at least, we have to be prepared to acknowledge our ignorance. Here the concept of Novum, although employed too easily by theology, is relevant. Noting once more that creation presupposes eschatology, the future of creation is thus to be understood in terms of its sharing in the life of fellowship with the triune God. The destiny of creation is the eschatological fellowship of the common realm of nature and humanity with God.

Abundance of Creation The fourth principle specifies the abundance of creation. To say that nature may serve as the source of the renewal of humanity is not to suggest that this nature is self-renewing or self-sustaining. In one sense, such an affirmation is no more than the representation of an aspect of the doctrine of creation presented earlier: creation, as inscribed by the Logos and transcribed by the Logos enfleshed, is contingent. We may also note that

61

See Jim Cheney, The Neo-Stoicism of Radical Environmentalism,' Environmental Ethics 11 (1989), 293-325. Cf. Moltmann, The Coming of God, 263.

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there is a double aspect to the position that creation is not self-sustaining: Nature is neither without origin nor without telos.62 Here is a critical function of an ecological eschatology: limitation of the ecological totality is given by the difference of Creator and creature in which the Creator, through the pursuit of the ends of creation not given with creation, grants a future to creatures. Self-limitation gives way to the limitation established by God in and for the consummation of creatures. We have here reference to the principle of abundance: 'The God of the Bible even holds fast to his creatures beyond the end that is posited with their fmitude, i.e., with a view to the eschatological consummation of his creation/63 Yet, of course, such an end must be related to the social and spatial forms of the world of creatures. An eschatological principle of abundance has important political outworkings. Some of the ecological literature argues, implicitly at least, that the creativity of nature is linked to a naturalistic reading of its integrity. The principal form of attack on this integrity is the increase in the human population. Thus neo-Malthusian commitments emerge which privilege the theme of the scarcity of nature. The eschatological perspective is the criticism of such views, the consummation of nature presupposes the future of nature that is the source of its creativity and thereby, in its capacity to sustain the human population, the source of human hope.

6. Common Realm: The Future of Creation Where have we got to? A trinitarian theology of creation has been presented, featuring the dynamics of the creaturely order, oriented on a trinitarian theology of the last, material, things. Four principles, as we have seen, comprise the theology of the common realm of God, nature and humanity. The first two principles are Christological mediations: ontological, towards the affirmation of the continuities and differences between humanity and non-human nature; practical, towards the acknowledgement of mutual encounter between humanity and non-human nature. The gift of creatureliness is thereby to be ascribed to the actions of Christ in creation: humanity is blessed by being placed in commonality with and distinction from nature and is invited to understand such placing as the blessing of God and in terms of reciprocal actions with nature. To note that humanity is placed in nature that is, in turn, oriented on humanity as both gift and demand is to acknowledge that the social is also spatial. The interactions of 62 In a lay/popular reading, Genesis 1 and Revelation 21 might be regarded as scriptural authority for this claim to a double limitation. M Pannenberg. Systematic Theolog\> Vol. 2, 20.

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social life are placed in a natural context in which they achieve determinate - better or worse - form. The otherness of nature receives appropriate acknowledgement in the source of the fellowship of creatures. In sum, the actualities of theological ecomaterialism - the sheer givenness of grace (Joseph Sittler) in its multiplicities - are the form of Christ in the world. However, Christ is not Christ without the Spirit. Such mediations must thereby also be reconstructed in relation to the actions of the Spirit towards fellowship. By the Spirit the creaturely partners of the common realm participate in God's life of fellowship and seek to enact that life. Nor are Christ and the Spirit active without the Creator who is the origin, source and end of abundance. Reiner Grundmann may be right when he contends that there is no nature 'for itself unless the religious viewpoint is adopted.64 However, the crucial question is: which religious viewpoint is operative? Is it the perspective of a vital force of an evolving process or, as proposed here, a nature whose completion is always in relation to, yet exceeds, its tendencies, capacities and potentialities? Put in this way, the issue is not, as Grundmann thinks, a religious viewpoint but whether the directionality of creatures is construed by the 'religious viewpoint' in liberatory or restrictive fashion. What of the future of creation? In this attempt to establish and clarify the relation between creation and eschatology incorporating the perspectives of political ecology, what are the central tendencies of the creating-completing realm of nature and humanity? A temporal sequence of spatio-social forms comes into view, which participates in the fellowship of God and is oriented on the eschatological good of fellowship. The true - eschatological totality is the common realm of God, nature and humanity. We now see that the ecological doctrine of creation adumbrated here incorporates an eschatological orientation. The four principles are to be understood as overcoming false forms of totality, whether that totality takes the form of, for example, totalising knowledge or the administration of nature towards its subordination. Above all, false forms of totality are those which claim that ecological systems are self-sustaining or, which is the converse, declarea that the actions of humanity are self-limiting.65 In thea affirmation of endsaaa not given with creation, an eschatological perspective denies the totality of ecological nature as self-sustaining and human practices as self-limiting. With the criticism of false forms of totality, a new concept of transcendence emerges. Against both modern and counter-modern accounts of transcendence, the mutual orientation of both humanity and nature on their fulfilment on God conditions all other versions of transcendence. That is, the primary account of transcendence is that of the shared realm of nature 64 65

Grundmann, 'The Ecological Challenge to Marxism,' 114. Here I am drawing on Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 2, 77.

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and humanity in its completing on God. Derivative forms of transcendence follow which permit only partial, variable, temporary and contingent concepts of transcendence to be employed both in the interpretation of the relations of humanity with non-human nature and non-human nature with humanity. Such an account of totality and transcendence is rooted in a Christological and Pneumatological account of creation as the temporal field of spatio-social relations founded in fellowship and oriented towards the eschatological common realm of God, nature and humanity. The completing of nature and humanity, presented in this way, has the form of the true practice of spatio-social creatureliness: in sum, true fellowship.66 What account of the future of creation as it might be practised by humanity and non-human nature emerges at this point? One possible response to this question - a pedagogy of the commons - is the subject of the next section.

7. A Pedagogy of the Commons In the matter of human-nature relations, what practical employment can be made of the claim that creation lives out of its future in God? How might the criticisms of false forms of totality and the affirmation of derivative forms of transcendence be incorporated within a pedagogy? If, in eschatological perspective, we are directed towards the telos of re-ordering (renewal of the common realm, by the judgement of Christ) and ecohabitation (fellowship, by the Spirit), how might such renewal and fellowship be practised ahead of the full establishment of the reign of God? An appropriate pedagogy is the vital matter here. For what needs to be learned by humanity are ways of participating in the common realm towards fellowship. Of especial importance is the matter of the practice of spatiality: humanity learning how to act in friendly ways in ecological space. What more can be said of this pedagogy? One way of approaching the common participation of humanity and nature in a spatio-social field, emphasising always that in speaking of humanity and nature we are referring to broken totalities with a range of modes of transcendence, is by democratising human relations with non-human nature. In short, the theological position sketched here points towards the extension of democratic, rather than moral, considerability to non-human nature.67 How so? Extending the franchise to nature is one way of acknowledging that nature-human relations are marked by the dynamics of encounter: a 66

I shall not here consider the matter of the eschatological 'outcome' for God. Cf. Kenneth E Goodpaster, lOn Being Morally Considerable,' Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978), 308-325 67

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democratic exchange encompasses a number of agents taking different initiatives. Furthermore, democracies function best when all parties are committed to democratic procedures and see themselves as oriented on one another. Democracy is also concerned with the negotiation of difference and the attempt to explore and negotiate differences in ways that are nonviolent. Thus democracy is also concerned with fellowship. Nor should the democratic process be regarded as self-sustaining: it requires the work of previous generations and seeks to pass on working models of democracy to subsequent generations. Finally, democracies flourish best when supported by a range of associations and communities: in short, a lively civil society. Analogous to programmes of economic democratisation,68 such a process of 'natural' democratisation would seek to make nature present in and to the political sphere. Such a recovery of the political dimensions of the common realm I shall call a 'common democracy.' Thus the recommendation of a 'common democracy' is rooted firmly in the preceding theology. What is the content of such a democracy? According to one commentator, a 'consolidated democracy' is 'a system in which the politically relevant forces subject their values and interests to the uncertain interplay of democratic institutions.'69 The significant challenge in the theorising of a 'common democracy' is how to speak of non-human nature as among the politically relevant forces. How might this be thought? It is important to note here that a theological claim is being made: nonhuman nature is rendered concrete within the common realm by democratic practices founded in, and proportioned by, mediations of the Logos in creation; democratic practices are founded in the life of the Spirit who is both the agent and harbinger of fellowship. Such practices may be said to be oriented on the eschatological rule of the triune God in that they relate to creatures, human and non-human, and yet leave the political realm open to new, surprising interactions between humanity and nature: interactions that are unlocked for and that cannot be anticipated.70

68

See Gary Dorrien, Reconstructing the Common Good (New York 1990). Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market, cited in: John Markoff, 'Really Existing Democracy: Learning from Latin America in the late 1990s,' New Left Review 223 (1997), 59. 70 As there are some who claim that only a 'civil' theology can make a constructive contribution in the public square, I wish to stress that my position is persuasive only by way of the explication of the identity of the Christian God. That is, the argument put forward here turns upon the persuasiveness of the visibility of Christ in the world. Civil theologies of ecology, such as proposed by Max Oelschlaeger, Caring for Creation: An Ecumenical Approach to the Environmental Crisis (New Haven 1994), recommend a different approach: if certain common ground may be detected across all Christian accounts of creation — for instance, a stress on its value - why should not all Christians come together to promote the cause of 'care of creation'? But such an approach detaches the truth of Christian theology from its relevance (and concretion), and subsumes the form of the presence of Christ in the world under axiology. 69

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Hence, the award of democratic status to nature is not thereby a convenient fiction, a conceit by which to bring nature into the human, political realm. It is rather an acknowledgement that humanity is always already placed in the common realm by God with nature. The present-ness of nature to humanity, the crucial condition of its democratic participation, is thereby to be sourced to the action of the Logos in creation. The attempt by humanity to acknowledge such present-ness is part of God's blessing. Here I am suggesting that the form of such acknowledgement should be the extension of processes of political negotiation to a 'common democracy.' Such a 'common democracy" is oriented on God's eschatological rule, and prefigures it, in that it acknowledges that through the interaction of political forces, alterations of relationships between humanity and nature will result. Such alterations are, after all, the point of democratic negotiation (although, of course, not the point of democracy itself). However, it remains true that the form of a common democracy will be settled by human beings. The scale of any such democracy is anthropological. It is therefore unlikely that a common democracy might be practised without the most radical 'anthropological' democracy being secured. If nature is one of God's ways to us - as the common realm invites us to think - such a democracy would emerge in many zones of human social life. To misappropriate Bruno Latour somewhat, we have here the dissolution of boundaries and the redistribution of agents.71 Human responsibility is thus properly to organise human affairs - here a 'common democracy' - founded in the actuality of the presence of nature to humanity in the common realm. Raymond Williams captures part of this in a discussion of the environment of coal mining in South Wales: It is no use simply saying to South Wales miners that all around them is an ecological disaster. They already know. They live in it. They have lived in it for generations. They carry it with them in their lungs. ... But you cannot just say to people who have committed their lives and their communities to certain kinds of production that this has all got to be changed. You can't just say. come out of the harmful industries, let us do something better. Everything will have to be done by negotiation, by equitable negotiation, and it will have to be taken steadily along the way.72 Commonality with nature cannot be secured without the achievement of commonality among those sharing a human nature. Such an extended 'Bruno Latour, 'To Modernise or Ecologise?' in: Braun & Castree (eds.), Reclaiming Reality, 221-242(229). 72 Raymond Williams, Resources of Hope (London 1989), 220.

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democracy will be the way in which human beings may learn to live with the political effects of the tension between ecologically harmful practices and the material well being of human beings.73 This we might call the negotiation of the intersection of political and ecological contingencies, in an anthropological scale but including the otherness of nature. Such a pedagogy of 'living out of the future/ in anticipation of the eschatological totality of the common realm of God, nature and humanity, will thereby involve all the present complexities of inter-human democratic negotiation together with its extension to the commons.

8. An End/Beginning Novum is here associated with democratic extension. Such extension is oriented on the fellowship of the rule of God by way of the judgement of Christ on the temporal field of spatio-sociality. Thereby it relates to creatures but also operates in expectation of the new. For negotiation is not possible without the flexibility that the orientation on surprising newness affirms. However, newness is not to be confused with novelty. The processes of capitalist accumulation, with the support of public policy, will, we can be sure, generate novelties. Such a view is nicely caught in a comment made by one of the characters in a novel by Raymond Williams: The whole of public policy ... is an attempt to reconstitute a culture, a social system, an economic order, that have in fact reached their end, reached their limits of viability. And then I sit here and look at this double inevitability: that this imperial, exporting and divided power is ending, and that all its residual social forces, all its political formations, will fight to the end to reconstruct it, to re-establish it, moving deeper all the time through crisis after crisis in an impossible attempt to regain a familiar world. So then a double inevitability: that they will fail, and that they will try nothing else.74 By contrast to the novelties of the 'try nothing else' state-sponsored market, in democratic negotiation there may be some intimation of genuine newness. Democratic negotiation ensures that the otherness of nature is acknowledged and its telos respected. Such democratic negotiation is one form of the acknowledgement of spatiality. Without the true, liberatory 73 See Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, 200. Of course, in this instance, the material well being of the many turns upon the potential ill-health of the few. 74 Raymond Williams, The Fight for Manod (London 1979), cited in: Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, 324.

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practice of space, humanity is unable to enter into the demand of creatureliness and thereby it is unable to praise truly. That is, the abuse of space is the abuse of creatureliness, which is the abuse of God.75 In democratic negotiation, nature is joined with humanity in non-totalising and non-totalitarian ways. Some of the contours of the common realm of (the triune) God, nature and humanity emerge in a theological account of difference. From this perspective, democratic negotiation can perhaps be seen as implicit and derivative "praise" of God. For praise is grounded in, and is the acknowledgement of, difference of creatures from God.76 The practice of creatureliness, and thereby the affirmation of the differences between creature and Creator is, we might say, a form of praise. But how does ecological nature praise?11 What does 'praise' mean here? We are referred to participation in the common realm. Non-human nature is also a temporal field of spatio-sociality oriented on fellowship; its practice of creatureliness is thereby analogous to the practice of human creatures. Of course, it is difficult to see what it means to say that non-human creatures might 'praise" God that is, practise their creatureliness - more truly and thereby participate more fully in the common realm. However, it can readily be grasped how human actions might be understood as the incursion into the well being of creatures and thereby the obstruction of their capacity to glorify God. Consonant with the four principles set out in section 5, human practices should be seen as indwelling the practices of non-human nature as co-participants in the common realm. On this view, we may enquire which human practices might, through the dis-practice of creatureliness, inhibit the 'praise' by non-human nature of its (their?) God. Therefore, we can discern how such non-human creatures might be inhibited from 'praising' God. Yet the question returns How does non-human nature glorify God? First, as we have seen, by being released from the curse of humanity that reshapes nature in 'non-social' and 'non-spatial' ways thereby disclosing that humanity does not understand either ecological society or space. In this matter, Bonhoeffer is clearly right: nature is directed towards the lifting of the curse bestowed on Adam and Eve, that is, emancipation from the actions

75

It follows that if it could be determined that non-human nature abuses its own creatureliness, then, on account of ecosocial relations between humanity and nature, humanity may also be abused and so also God. Is that what we should mean today by natural evil? 6 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. 2, 136. 77 Such an approach is clearly very different from calls in the ecological literature for the 're-enchantment' or re-sacralization' of nature. See Neil Smith, 'Nature at the Millennium: Production and Re-enchantment,' in: Braun & Castree (eds.), Remaking Reality, 271-285; Edward Grumbine, 'Wildness, Wise Use, and Sustainable Development,' in: George Sessions (ed.), Deep £colog\; for the 21st Centurv. 376-396.

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of sinful humanity.78 One way of exploring such a theme is the notion of democratic extension. Second, oriented on God, by judgement in Christ, nature may be understood as emancipated from its own tendencies towards the futility of the 'non-social' and 'non-spatial.' 'I want to defend the theological position,' writes Stephen Webb, 'that nature is fallen, and that nature's distortions transcend the many harms humans contribute to it, so that we should deplore the human abuse of nature but we should not think that humans cause all of nature's problems.'79 This is right: if the commitments of the common realm are correct, non-human nature abuses its creatureliness independently of humanity as well as having its creatureliness abused by human agents. Yet, as we have seen, nature has ends in God, which are not to be found in its beginnings. If the resurrection is true, God grants a future to spatio-social creatures. And included in the field of spatio-social creatures is non-human nature. What, then, is the future of creation? We keep returning to the same point: there is an indissoluble relation between the future of non-human nature, the future of humanity and the coming of God. The future of creation is the consummation by God of nature and humanity. For nature and humanity are bound together in the incarnation, which is the rationale, origin and destiny of creation. This binding is, I have argued, the presentness of the form of Christ. If this is true, what is Christian responsibility in an ecological age? I have given part of the answer in the discussion of democratic extension. More generally, Christian discipleship might be summarised as follows: 'Creatures of the world, unite! For your "completing" lies in the triune God.'80

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Bonhoeffer, Christology (London 1971), 64-65. Stephen H. Webb, 'Ecology vs. the Peaceable Kingdom: Toward a Better Theology of Nature,' Soundings 79 (1996), 239-252 (240). 80 Cf. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London 1998 [originally published in 1848]), 77: 'The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!' Of course, here it will be objected that nonhuman creatures, rather than uniting, eat one another. If, however, the suffering that animals impose on each other may be seen as part of the competition of evolution, there are other tendencies - toward diversity, co-operation - which might be more consonant with the Kingdom. The participation of animals in a peaceable Kingdom would then emerge as one part of eschatological hope. 79

6. Practice of Hope The Messianic Movement of the People who Practice Hope in Asia Kim Yong-Bock Minjung 1 theology begins its reflection with the people (Minjung) as the people of God. The Minjung should be understood in a global context in its various ways for it refers to the reality of life in all its dimensions - local, national and global Different dimensions are interconnected. The Minjung cannot be understood in a single and simple context; rather it should be understood inter-contextually and cross-contextually on all levels. This is one of the fundamental geo-political shifts2 of our thinking in the complex situation of globalization. For the peoples in Asia and in the world, the signs of the times have not been optimistic. The global marketization or globalization despite its unprecedented scientific, technological and economic progress has not resulted in human well-being. Hunger and poverty along with the consequent suffering of the peoples in Asia and in the world are intensifying, causing despair and hopelessness. The security of life, both human and social, and cultural identity have been radically eroded in recent decades despite enormous economic growth. This tendency will continue, unless there is a radical transformation in the world economic system of the global market. Of course, human suffering has lasted for many millennia. But the suffering of the peoples in the world today has a distinct character in a context of globalization.

1 A Korean theology which developed in the 1970s. See Byung-Mu Ahn, Minjung Sinhak Ijagi (Story of Minjung Theology) (Korea 1987); Yong-Bock Kim (ed.), Minjung Theology (Hong Kong 1981); Yong-Bock Kim, Messiah and Minjung (Hong Kong 1992) and David Kwang-sun Suh, The Korean Minjung in Christ (Hong Kong 1991). 2 In our times our geo-political paradigm of the past in time and space has radically shifted due to the development of science and technology. Terms like 'universal' and 'global' have a different meaning today The local cannot be separated from the global. All contexts are interconnected, and one cannot regard one context as relatively independent of all other contexts.

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The reality of hopelessness among the peoples in Asia is partly due to objective conditions of life in the context of globalization, and at the same time to the absence of a renewal of faith as the subjective. Hope opposes hopelessness, even when circumstances are unfavourable. These circumstances include objective and subjective conditions, personal and communal conditions, historical and social conditions. We need the 'praxis of hope' - which is a better term than 'practice of hope' - more urgently in difficult times than in good times. Our present time is that of the market optimism of global capitalism and of the failure of socialist political economies, as well as that of a new global situation in which many peoples suffer massively without hope. How is it possible for these suffering peoples to practice hope for their future?3 This question needs to be addressed against the background of the futurology of liberal social sciences and a philosophy of progress based upon modern technocracy.4

1. Hope, the Social Biography of the People and the Bible The praxis of hope should be understood in the context of the social biography of the Minjung, the suffering people. It is in the context of the social biographies of the Asian peoples, who are victims of the present globalization, that the Bible should be read. The proclamation of hope and its praxis by the Christian community takes place in that context. The biblical word comes alive in the lives of people who suffer in concrete situations. Our biblical and theological reflections should take place in this context. This is set against the optimistic modern philosophy of history, liberal and progressive. We do not have enough space to discuss the modern idea of progress as a philosophy of history, which rejects the eschatological understanding of the world.5 Social biography is a comprehensive and holistic story of the people in the cosmos in terms of their sufferings and aspirations. The people tell their own stories, without being represented by others. In this sense the people are subjects of their own stories, responding to their natural, historical and social environments as well as to their spiritual heritages. The biblical stories are in a way the social biography of the people of God, who dwells among them. In the biblical story of the people of God, references to hope in God, in Christ and in the Spirit are various, dynamic and inter-connected; but there is a consistent movement in relation to the acts of God, Christ and the Holy 3

Rubem Alves, Theology of Human Hope (New York 1971). In a technocracy the scientific and technological elite and power controls the social system. Western corporate institutions such as multinationals are key agents in the contemporary technocracy, and are closely related to governments and to military research. 5 Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip der Hoffnung (Frankfurt 1973). 4

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Spirit. The covenant between God and God's people is the framework in which hope in a comprehensive sense can be understood. The people of God have and practice hope for their future life, for God has given a promise to his people. The powers and principalities - political, economic, cultural and religious - which cause the suffering and death of the people of God are excluded from this covenantal promise. In Christ, the covenant becomes renewed as a new covenant, and in the Spirit the covenant becomes a reality in the community of the people of God. Thus, the word and act of God become a reality in the life of the people of God.

2. The Kairotic Reading of the Bible as a New Direction for Scriptural Interpretation The modern development of biblical scholarship has made enormous contributions and at the same time it has created several problems. Due to the limited space this issue cannot be fully discussed here. Nevertheless, it has seriously limited a kairotic reading of the biblical message. (1) Its historicism and scientific objectivity over-emphasized the 'then' and 'there.1 As a result, the active kairotic dimension of God's Word in the biblical text was under-emphasized. (2) It became difficult to connect the 'then' and 'there' with the 'now' and 'here.' The present reality is complex, and biblical studies and even biblical hermeneutics could not fully bring the 'living Word of God' to the present complex global reality. (3) Modern biblical scholarship has been very much bound to modern Western culture. Therefore, its findings are often not relevant to the present reality of Minjung who live in a complex religious and secular reality in Asia. (4) In the reading of the Bible in contemporary exegesis, Asian religious texts and wisdom are completely excluded; and thus the biblical message cannot be connected to the spiritual roots of the people in Asia. (5) Finally, contemporary exegesis also has difficulties in seeing a connection between the biblical message and the present secular reality of globalization, which is unfolding in a very complex manner. In a kairotic reading of the Bible the accent should be given to the present and the concrete future of the peoples. The message of hope should be liberated from fundamentalist, ideological and modernist approaches to the Bible. It should be liberated from religious and ecclesiastical confinement. It should be available to the suffering people (Minjung), whoever and wherever they are. Biblical hope is open to the life of the whole cosmos as a whole; it is open for all nations to the ends of the earth. No religious and ideological powers can have a monopoly on the biblical message. The kairotic reading of the Bible is liberational in this sense and

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no limits can be set in its connection to all the cosmic, religious, cultural, political and economic realities of human and natural life.

3. Reading of the Bible in Connection with the Life of the Asian Minjung in the Context of Globalization God and Hope: Hope in God who is for Justice for the Poor and the Oppressed Biblical hope is sufficiently clear. We only need to refer to some biblical texts. God is the giver of hope to the people of God. This means that God gives hope to the Minjung in Asia and in the world. The reality of hope among the people is set in God's covenant with them in a cosmic context.6 God as the founder and giver of hope cannot be limited to humanity, to Christian community, or to Christendom. Christ and Hope: Biblical Hope is the Messianic Hope of the People Revelation 21 and 22 show clearly the climax of messianic hope. Matthew 12:21, 'And in his (Christ's) name the Gentiles will hope'7 and Colossians 1:27, 4To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory' disclose messianic hope. Messianic hope is cosmic in its scope and its inner dynamics are determined by Christ's resurrection overcoming the power of death.8 Messianic hope invokes the messianic spirit among the people to overcome the power of evil and death in the world. All the nations

6 Genesis 9:8-17. Other biblical references are as follows: Psalm 9:18 'For the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor perish forever.' Psalm 62:5 'For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him.' Psalm 65:5 'By awesome deeds you answer us with deliverance, O God of our salvation; you are the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas.' Psalm 78:7 'so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments'; Jeremiah 14:22 'Can any idols of the nations bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Is it not you, O Lord our God? We set our hope on you, for it is you who do all this.' Acts 26:6 'And now I stand here on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors.' 7 Other biblical references: Romans 4:18 'Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become "the father of many nations," according to what was said, "So numerous shall your descendants be.'" Acts 23:6 'When Paul noticed that some were Sadducees and others were Pharisees, he called out in the council, "Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead.'" 1 Peter 1:3 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.' 8 Though we acknowledge that hope for the resurrection of the dead, based upon the Resurrection of Christ, belongs to the message of the Bible, we will not discuss it here.

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(oppressed) are invited to the messianic feast of life in the new oikos under the new heaven and the new earth.

Holy Spirit and Hope: The Holy Spirit is the Pervasive Tower' among all the Suffering People and in the Groaning Cosmos The Spirit of hope works through every reality, religious, spiritual, cultural, socio-economic and political in their cosmic dimensions. Hope through the Spirit permeates the whole creation from the inner reality of human beings to the outer reality of the whole creation. The following biblical references show that the Spirit of hope cannot be contained in any religious, ideological or cultural framework: Tor through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness' (Gal. 5:5). 'May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit' (Rom. 15:13). Tor the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glorv of the children of God1 (Rom. 8:19-21).

4. The Story of the People in Various Political and Economic Situations in the Bible The stories of the people of God in the Bible are set in various local, national and imperial settings. They are interconnected with past, present and future. They are never confined to any definite time. However, there are certain focal points. This can be illustrated briefly in the following:

The Hope of the Exodus Community The Exodus community of the people of God had the hope of justice and shalom of God in the covenant communities in Canaan. To some extent, this hope was realized when the imperial slavery of the Pharaoh was overcome. The Sabbath, as expressed in the Covenant Code, was the realization of such hope; it liberated those who had been slaves in the political economy of the Imperial power. Here the focus is on the local tribal community.

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The Stories of the People of God under the Kings' Reign The people of Israel cherished the hope of the just reign of the kings. The ideal king was the Davidic king, who practiced the justice and shalom of God among the peoples of God. This is expressed in the prophetic messages found in 2 Samuel and Ezekiel 34. Historically, King David was not an ideal king; but he is the ideal in the sense that kingship is completely under God's sovereign rule and promise for the people of God. God's covenant with David is manifested as the covenant of the king with the people of God. He would rule according to the laws of God and God would bless the people of God under the king's reign. Here the focus is on the national community of Israel.

The Stories of the People of God under the Imperial Reign The people of God used apocalyptic language as the language of hope in severely oppressive and otherwise hopeless situations. In Genesis 1 and 2, Isaiah 11, Revelation 21 and 22 we find hopeful visions as integral parts of the language of hope. These textual references are expressions of the hope that was practiced by the faithful among the people of God. We would regard them as manifestations of the messianic hope, or of eschatological or kairotic hope. Here the focal point is the communities of nations under the imperial rules of Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Rome.

5. The Messianic Movement of Jesus and the Early Christian Community The messianic Movement of Jesus and the early Christian community created a universal hope, connecting local, national, global and cosmic dimensions. First, the Reign of God to which Jesus bore witness is the foundation and ground of hope, as proclaimed in Luke 4. Jesus as the Christ (Messiah) of the people is the direct manifestation of God's Reign. Therefore, Jesus himself and his cross and resurrection are the foundations of hope for the people of God as well as his deeds, words and ministry. The community of the new covenant is that of Jesus the Messiah of the people. This is the community of hope. Secondly, the Spirit is the power and energy of hope that works dynamically in the life and koinonia of the early church. The early church suffered various persecutions, just as Jesus suffered. The community had hope in the resurrection of the Messiah, whose Spirit energized the community. The messianic praxis of Jesus was manifested in the spiritual movement of the early Christian community.

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The kairotic reading of the Bible is not limited to a given space and time in the historical past. On the contrary, the kairotic reading emphasizes the dynamic interaction between the Bible, the ways in which the Bible was read in the past and the present context of globalization. The praxis of hope by the people in Asia urges that the Bible should be read among Asian people today in a dynamic and ecumenical way.

6. Dimensions of the Praxis of Hope The historical contexts of the peoples of God shape all the different manifestations of hope in God, Christ, and the Spirit. These are dynamic, creative and concrete in the life of the community of faith. Hope in God, hope in Christ and hope in the Spirit provide the foundation for the praxis of hope among the peoples of God. Unbelief may mean the loss of hope. It could mean faint hope, which cannot be sustained. It could also mean false hope Therefore, belief in God is the foundation for the praxis of hope among the peoples The subject of hope is ultimately the people(s) and nations of God. There are two foci in the notion of the people - one is the community of the faithful and the other is the nations. Christendom has often confused the people of God with Christian religious people, who are culturally coterminous with the Christian West. The statement that the people are the subjects of hope is not an ideological statement, for the people are the partners of God In so far as the people are partners of God in covenant, they become truly subjects of hope and of the Messianic movement of hope. Hope is future-oriented. It involves the critical evaluation of the past and the present, and it is an act, which leaps into a new future, which is neither the continuation of the past and the present, nor the worsening of the present. From a kairotic perspective, time and space should not be confined to modern cosmology, Newtonian or Einsteinian. Hope is kairotic and has an eschatological dynamic; not merely romantic, fantastic, Utopian or wishful thinking. It is a praxis, which involves responsibility and concrete vision for the life and destiny of the people. Hope envisions a new and better future. Visions of the future are closely related to the praxis of hope. Hope begets a future vision and gives grounds for the envisioning of a new and better future. This vision is neither the extension of the present nor the replica of the past. It is neither the simple modification of the present and the past nor the inverted copy of the present. It is a radically new future vision, it is grounded only in hope in God and in the promise of God. This vision shines as light to expose the reality of the present and the past. There is a difference between the social analysis of the present and its

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disclosure in the light of a future vision. The social scientific structural analyses have been much used to expose the structures of injustice and unjust power relations in the past decades. However, there is a growing awareness of the limits of such analyses, for they tend to be reductionist; and their final outcome emphasizes the negative aspects of reality, which leads the people to pessimism and even to despair. Such structural analyses do not lead the people to hope. Even if such analyses provide some optimistic outcome, it is simply a possibility, which cannot provide any ground for hope. However, when analytical work presupposes the grounds of hope, it can overcome the negative analytical outcome, no matter how grim it is and even impossible. For hope is not grounded ultimately upon the analytical work and its conclusions about social and historical reality. In reality, hope should be a presupposition for such analyses, so that these analyses can lead the people not to despair and pessimism, but to courage and a passion to struggle against injustice. Hope and social scientific analyses should be closely inter-linked. This should be an integral part of the praxis of hope. Hope propels the imagination of the people of God into envisioning, planning and designing the concrete future community according to the will of God. This imagination in hope brings about the specific goals to be realized. This requires the mobilization of God's people with resources to realize such goals, inspired by hope. Ways and means for the praxis of hope are total resources of the people, fully under the framework of the messianic movement of the peoples of God. Churches, ethics, missions and liturgy are all instruments for the praxis of hope.

7. The Ecumenical Praxis of Hope among Asian Peoples The praxis of biblical and Christian hope can take place among Asian peoples in a global context. The Asian praxis cannot be separated from the Asian context. This is a crucial point for us. The Asian people already have wisdom and the language of hope in their stories. These Asian stories of hope may be regarded as God's gifts to the people as 'natural' graces, just as water, air and life are given to them. In Asian traditions, there are rich religious, cultural, and philosophical resources of hope for the people. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and many indigenous religious traditions have rich resources that give hope to the suffering people to sustain their lives. Of course, the quest for power shapes these religions to the advantage of the rich and powerful, and they often provide religious and ideological justification for the establishment of the power that causes human suffering. In this context, these religious traditions even justify the suffering of the people themselves.

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It is a major rnissiological and theological task of Asian Christian communities to further the praxis of hope. They should do so by linking their hope in Christ clearly and concretely with the hopes of the people in their stones and in their religious, cultural and philosophical traditions. Christian communities should not only share the sufferings of the Asian people, but should also share their hope in Christ with the peoples of Asia, and inject it into the life of the people and into their aspirations. Due to Western colonial influences in Asia, Western thinkers closely associated with the imperial and economic powers have played a negative part in the life oi Asian peoples Though Western thinkers generally have underestimated the religious and cultural traditions of Asian peoples, progressive thinkers among them have often strongly influenced the struggle of the peoples in Asia. We would like to recommend an inter-religious, inter-cultural ecumenical methodology, including a linkage between religious and secular, for the praxis of hope This methodology is not merely for Asian Christian communities, but for the global Christian community indeed. For the praxis of hope should be performed in the context of globalization.

8. Kairotic Reading of the Bible in the History of Inter-Religious Ecumenism in Korea and Asia Christianity and messianic Buddhism have interacted throughout the history of Asian Christianity. The first evidence is found in T'ang Nestorian Christianity (AD 635 1398).9 In this Nestorian Christian movement the Christian messianic language is closely connected with the Buddhist messianic language of Maitreya Buddha.10 Here, Christianity is presented in Chinese Buddhist terms. Moreover, the language of the Maitreya Buddha, which is a messianic Buddha, is extensively used.11 T'aiping Christianity is also closely related to another messianic form of Buddhism, the White Lotus Buddhist sect. The clearest example of Korean inter-religious ecumenism is the 1 March 1919 Independence Movement, in which the Korean Christian Movement joined forces with the Buddhist messianic movement in the struggle of the Korean people against Japanese colonialism.12 The Christian connection with Shilhak (Realist School of Confucianism) is another clear example of inter-religious ecumenism. Roman Catholicism

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11 Kiddokyo Peakwa Sajon (The Christian Encyclopedia Vol. 1).aaa

12 Yong-Bock Kim, Historical Transformation, People's Movement and Christian Koinonia (Unpublished Ph.O Dissertation. Princeton University, 1976).

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gave hope to the Korean people in seventeenth- and nineteenth-century Korea. The inter-religious synthesis of Roman Catholicism and the Realist School of Chosun Confucianism developed into the language and praxis movement for the social transformation in Chosun society. The T'aiping Christian Movement in China has also used Confucian language for the movement to transform the Chinese society in the middle of nineteenthcentury Chinese society. Confucianism is often regarded as a kind of Utopian romanticism of the past Yao Sun age, the primeval golden age. But Chung Yak Yong, a scholar of the Realist School of Korean Confucianism has used the language of the Golden Age as a messianic language of hope and social transformation.13 Just as the T'aiping Christian Movement has connected itself with Chinese religious traditions, Korean Christianity has practiced its inter-religious ecumenism by joining the Messianic religious tradition of Ch'ondokyo (the Heavenly Way) which is a synthesis of the Christian connection with Ch'ondokyo in the 1 March 1919 Independence Movement, which was a political manifestation of the messianic movement of hope among the Korean people.14 Ch'ondokyo is an indigenous Korean religion that contains the Shinson folk Utopian tradition, the folk apocalyptic tradition of Chungkaprok, and messianic Buddhism as well as Christian messianic language. We can find many connections between Christianity and religious traditions such as Islam, Hinduism, and other indigenous Asian religious traditions. These connections are not limited to a mere inter-religious dialogue, or to mere inter-religious cooperation. They touch the religious practices themselves. When we refer to inter-religious ecumenism, we mean the deepest connections among Asian religious traditions committed to the praxis of the messianic hope. Christian messianic hope can be expanded to include all the energies and resources of hope that arise in the history and life of the peoples in Asia. Thus the biblical praxis of hope will be strengthened, and it will catalyze the dynamics of hope among the Asian peoples. The alliance between Asian Christianity and progressive social thought in modern times cannot be treated lightly. Although Western secular thought has not yet freed itself entirely from its colonial and imperial background, it has related to the aspirations and struggles of the peoples in Asia, and given a dynamic energy of hope to Asian peoples. Asian national struggles have drawn their resources from Western progressive thought. In 13 Chung Yak Yong, Mokmin Shimseo (Teachings for Shepherding the People) (Korea 1819). 14 Yong-Bock Kim, 'Messianic Buddhism and Christianity in Korea,' in: Mark R. Mullins & Richard Fox Young (eds.), Perspectives on Christianity in Korea and Japan (New York 1995), 81-94.

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so far as they provide an energy of hope to Asian peoples, the Christian community needs to engage with the praxis of hope among the Asian peoples.

9. Jubilee Hope for the Asian Peoples in a Global Context Since the praxis of hope is a kairotic action, or a messianic movement of the people, we need to deal with the issue of globalization which has profoundly influenced the life of the nations. The oikos15 of the people of God is the hope of the peoples in Asia and the world for their life. Globalization cannot be fully analyzed here, but we can discern some of the signs of the times We have already noted global marketization and its impact upon the radical geo-political shift that is taking place. The globalization of capital causes drastic changes in the economic life of the people, victimizing most of peoples in the world in the midst of global economic growth National and local political institutions are seriously weakened, while people become more and more helpless and apathetic. Market-driven competition brings about a new social Darwinism, a correlate of neo-liberalism, intensifying social violence and undermining any social security net. Market-driven cultural life threatens the cultural identity and values of the individual and of the community, and even causes experiences of chaos in the aesthetic life of the people. Religious heritage and wisdom are eroded in the globalization process. The ecological crisis is not a question of nature only; it is also a question of the whole of life, human and natural. In their response to globalization, the peoples in Asia and in the world are not totally desperate. They aspire to a better world. They suffer, but at the same time they struggle. There are signs of hope in Asia and elsewhere. In this context, the Christian community is called to practice hope.

10. The Importance of Asian Traditions of Messianic Hope Christian communities in Asia as well as elsewhere in the world should be able to relate to Asian secular and religious traditions of messianic hope in order to bring their biblical hope kairotically to the life of the suffering people (Minjung) of Asia. We discuss one example of this praxis from the Confucian Tradition. 16 There, Chung Yak Yong's Praxis of Hope is an 13

We use this Greek word to denote the world in which the people of God live in hope. Consult for full explication Yong-Bock Kim, Historical Transformation, People's Movement and Christian Koinonia, Ch 5. available on the internet at www.peacenet.or.kr/ccas. 16

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illustration of how the primeval Yao Sun Utopia is used as a ground for social transformation and hope for people in nineteenth-century Korea.17 Similar examples can be found in China and Japan as well. An example from the Buddhist Tradition is that of the Maitreiya Buddha seen as the Messiah of the Suffering People. Korean Buddhist intellectual leaders used this Buddhist tradition for the national liberation struggle. In Korea, the Maitreya (Miruk) Buddha is a messianic Buddha of hope among the suffering and oppressed people, especially those from the Southwestern part of Korea.18 Another example is that of a new religion, the Tonghak Tradition. This is a Korean Tradition (Confucian-Buddhist-Sunist-Christian Inter-religious Ecumenical Synthesis of Hope). It played a great messianic role in transforming Korean society and supporting Korean national independence and liberation from Japanese colonialism. These traditions joined in the 1 March 1919 Independence Movement, which is regarded as the Korean Exodus Movement. It is fundamentally the messianic movement of the Korean people. In this Movement, Koreans participated fully with the biblical message of messianic hope. From this historic experience, we are drawing an ecumenical methodology for the praxis of hope in Asia in the context of globalization. Pro-Western intellectuals, approaching the Confucian Utopian traditions from their Western progressive framework, have too often regarded them as manifestations of outdated romanticism. They could not see how the Confucian reform movements, such as the famous T'aiping messianic movement in nineteenth-century China and the Shilhak realist School of Confucianism in nineteenth-century Korea, used these traditions as the wisdom of messianic hope. Today, when East Asian economies are growing larger and larger as a result of globalization, Confucianism, and especially the Confucian view of economics, again functions as a source of hope. For this reason, it is important that, when we seek new ways for the praxis of hope among Asian people, we connect the kairotic reading of the Bible with the Confucian Utopian reading of the Bible.19 In the context of globalization, the Buddhist view of political economy gains importance.20 Han Yong Un, a leading Korean Buddhist intellectual, took the Buddhist language as the messianic dynamic in the context of the national liberation struggle, joining Christians and Tonghaks, in 1919. Here we find a classical example of how the kairotic reading of the Bible is 17

Chung Yak Yong, Mokmin Shimseo (Teachings for Shepherding the People). This part of Korea has been politically suppressed and socially discriminated against for the last 1300 years. The Miruk Buddha gave hope to the people throughout their history. 19 See Huntington's 'Notion of the Civilizational Clash,' in: Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York 1996). 20 For a rich body of literature on this subject, see E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (London 1973). 18

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connected to the Tonghak, Confucian and Buddhist messianic languages, which are borne by the respective religious communities. These communities have joined in the Messianic movement, which is the praxis of hope by the oppressed people (Minjung) of Korea to overcome the colonial domination of the Korean people.

11. Conclusions In the Praxis of Hope by the People of God in Asia in Response to Globalization, we need to take account of the following issues: 1. We live in a rapidly developing global village.21 The places in which people live are interconnected globally in a very complex manner. In the global market, the transnational powers of corporate entities dominate, determining the lives of the people, causing suffering and death. 2. Modern science and technology are closely intertwined with the powers of transnational and corporate powers. The information and communication powers are emerging as dominant agencies, penetrating the inner chamber of human consciousness and the inner mystery of life. All forms of modern or new political messianism, be it of the market or of technocracy, should be challenged. 3. The biblical hope that has been given by the triune God to God's people, is to be practiced kairotically by the peoples of Asia as well as the rest of the world in the midst of their suffering and hopelessness. 4. The peoples of the world must practice their hope ecumenically and locally in response to the globalization process. 5. In so far as modern scientific thought has excluded the religious and cultural traditions of the people, and especially of the non-Western people, it should be exposed and reconstructed. It should be transformed so as to be connected to the messianic traditions and wisdom of the peoples. This includes liberal and progressive social traditions, which played major roles in the history of the last few centuries. Liberation theologies have made a great contributions in this regard, although ecumenism among liberation theologies need to be strengthened in a global manner. 6. Here we need to consider Christ the Servant (Doulos or Diakonos) as one who shares the suffering and hope of the peoples, connecting all of

21

Here, we do not consider the development of a virtual world of space and time, because that would require special treatment.

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them while transcending every geo-political limitation.22 Jesus, the Messiah of the people, was the decisive subversion of the power of domination (represented by Caesar), which caused despair and death. In the same way, today the kairotic presence of Christ the Doulos or Diakonos is the very origin of liberation and hope in the context of globalization. We are searching the light and truth of the biblical teachings on Christ to connect with all the resources of the Minjung people in the praxis of hope. We need to connect the biblical message of salvation and liberation through Christ with Buddhist teachings that reject greed and affirm compassion with the suffering people, with Confucian teachings that reject selfishness and affirm benevolence (Jen), with the TOnghak teaching of Innaech'on (Heaven is present in all humans)23 that rejects all forms of injustice and affirms life through the transformation of the world, and with similar teachings of Islam, Hinduism and other worldviews. 7. We also need to develop ecumenical contacts with non-religious worldviews that give hope to the people, and further their liberation from the powers that cause suffering, despair and death. 8. We especially need to engage with the liberation theologies and philosophies that have emerged among peoples who have been oppressed on account of race, national/ethnic origin, culture, and gender as well as among people who have been suffering on account of class, caste and all forms of weakness and powerlessness. Liberation movements have been too much fragmented. In the new context of globalization, this fragmentation has to be overcome in favour of interconnectedness and solidarity across all boundaries.

22 For the notion of doularchy see Yong-Bock Kim, 'Minjung and Power: A Biblical and Theological Perspective on Doularchy,' in: Nantawan Boonprasat Lewis (ed), Revolution of Spirit: Ecumenical Theology in Global Context: Essays in Honor of Richard Shaull (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1998). 23 Ton-Hwa Lee, Innaech 'on Uiui (The Meaning of Man=God) (Seoul, Korea 1970).

7. Is the World Coming to an End or Has Its Future already Begun? Christian Eschatology, Modern Utopianism and Exterminism Jiirgen Moltmann We don't know whether the world is coming to an end or not. And if it is coming to an end, we don^t know what end that might be. But what we do know in Christian faith is that the coming of God's kingdom and his new creation has already begun with the coming of Christ 'into this world' (as the Gospel of John says), and with the outpouring of the Spirit 'upon all flesh.1 Perhaps not all of us will die, pondered Paul, but we shall all - the living and the dead both be transformed in the coming glory of God (1 Cor. 15:51). We might say the same thing in a different way. It could perhaps be that all human beings will die, it could be that the human race will die out, but nevertheless all will be raised from death and will be transformed. Resurrection and transfiguration in the glory of God will happen to the whole of humanity, and to the earth as well, diachronically, from the last to the first, from the first to the last, "suddenly" in 'the eschatological moment' ( \ Cor 15:52): vita mutatur non tollitur.

1. At the End the New Beginning If we ask whether the world has an end, we are asking a typically apocalyptic question. Some people talk about 'the end of all things,' others about 'the end of the world,' or 'the end of history.' Why do we ask about the end at all? Can't we endure the state of things as they are any longer? Have we had enough of this world? Are we so tormented by the experiences of history that we say what the Germans said at the end of the war: better an end with terror than this terror without an end? Or do we fear for the continued existence of the things we love and cherish? Can't we get enough of this world, so that its possible end plunges us into fear and trembling? Are we so tormented by the economic and ecological crises of the present

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that we are afraid of global catastrophes to come? Every thought about 'the end' is ambivalent. It can fascinate us, but it can terrify us too. In Christian theology, questions about the end are treated in eschatology under the heading of 'the final questions.'1 Eschatology is the doctrine of 'the Last Things' (ta eschatd). Hans Urs von Balthasar called the last chapter of his Theo-Drama of world history 'The End-game,' undoubtedly echoing Samuel Beckett.2 The end will bring 'the final solution' of all unsolved problems in personal life, in human history, and in the cosmos. Apocalyptic fantasy has always painted with tremendous passion God's great final Judgment on the world's last day. Then the eternal God will speak the final word. The good will go to heaven, the wicked to hell, and the earth will be annihilated in a holocaust of fire. In the Last Judgment the files of world history will be closed. We know too the dream fantasies about the final struggle between Christ and Antichrist, God and the Devil, in the valley of Armageddon. The Middle Ages thought that struggle would be decided with fire from heaven, modern fundamentalists see an end with atomic and nitrogen bombs, before the devout are marvellously 'snatched up,' so that only the godless perish in the fire. Before Hiroshima in 1945 fire was the means of the apocalyptic final solution. Since Hiroshima it has been annihilation.3 All these ideas and fantasies are certainly soundly apocalyptic, but they are not Christian. The Christian expectation of the future has nothing at all to do with final solutions of this kind, for its focus is not the end of life, or history, or the world. It is rather the beginning: the beginning of eternal life, the beginning of the kingdom of God, and the beginning of 'the world to come,' as the Nicene Creed puts it. It is God's new beginning at the end of life in time, at the end of the form of this present world, and of this temporal creation. At the end the Christian hope expects the beginning. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken away to the place of execution in Flossenbiirg concentration camp on 9 April, i 945, he took leave of his fellow prisoners with the words: This is the end - for me the beginning of life.'4 Expectations of the end are only Christian if they conceive their future horizons out of the remembrance of Christ's death on the cross and the resurrection of the crucified Christ into the coming glory of God. For 1

Jiirgen Moltmann, The Coming of God (London 1996). H.U. von Balthasar, A Theological Aesthetics Vol. V (German: Theodramatik Vol. IV), (Edinburgh 1988). In the English translation, however, the title of this final section is 'The Last Act.' See also M. Kehl, Eschatologie and H. Vorgrimler, Hoffnung auf Vollendung (Freiburg 1980). 3 L. Reinisch (ed.), Das Spiel mit der Apokalypse: Uber die letzten Tage der Menschheit (Freiburg 1984). 4 E. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Contemporary (London 1970). See also T.S. Elliot, Four Quartets, 'East Coker,' I, 1, 14, V, 209: 'In my beginning is my end ... In my end is my beginning.' 2

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Christ's end too was, and is, after all, his true beginning. Christian expectation of the end does not prolong into the future the lines of the past and present of world history, so as then to postulate a good end - or, more generally, a bad one. Instead it perceives in the cross of Christ the anticipation of the end of this world-time of sin, death and the devil, because in Christ's resurrection it believes in the beginning of the new life and the new creation of all things - and in the Spirit already experiences that new beginning. A dictum of Theodor W. Adorno's has been much quoted: 'There is no true life in the life which is false.' But for the Christian hope, Christ is the promise, the overture and the real beginning of true life in the very midst of this false life, the new creation of all transitory things for eternal beauty, and the indwelling of God in the midst of the exiles of our wildernesses. That is why here our expectation is not just an expectation of the new beginning in the end. It is also an expectation of the end in the new beginning. If the risen Christ is the life-giving Spirit of God, then he overcomes death in the victory of life. It is only from him that we perceive 'the world under the cross/ with everything that is false in it, everything that destroys and annihilates everything that is to be brought to an end and disappears. It is not the end of the world that brings God's new beginning. The very opposite is true it is God's new beginning which brings this perverted world to its deserved and longed-for end. We first perceive the darkness of the night in the light of the new day, we recognize evil only in the light of the good, arid the deadliness of death only through our love for life. The annihilation of life, or of a world, has not in itself anything creative about it. We cannot extort the new creation through the destruction of our present world. The true end of this world is only the side we see of the beginning of God's new world - the side which is turned towards us. Just as we can understand the resurrection of the crucified and dead Christ as a divine process of transformation and transfiguration, so we can also imagine the passing away of the old and the coming of the new world. Nothing will be annihilated, but everything will be transformed.5 So the pains of this world's ends are something like the birth pangs or labour pains of God's new world, as Paul reflects in Romans 8:18f.6 The Christian expectation of the future therefore answers apocalyptic questions about the end of the world with the recollecting and makingpresent of the crucified and risen Christ. That is the only answer which we can give with the assurance of faith. It does not answer all the apocalyptic questions about God's justice and the future of the world. After all, Christ

6

Viva mutatur. non tnllitur, as the Preface to the Roman Catholic requiem Mass says. See E Kasemann, Commentate on Romans (London 1980).

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himself died with the question: 'My God, why have you forsaken me?' on his lips. But in the fellowship of the crucified Christ, and in the hope of the Christ who is risen, we can live with the unanswered 'final questions,' without preferring hasty answers, and without sinking answerless into brooding despondency. Ideas about the end of history can be distinguished according to whether they deal with the goal of history (telos) or history's end (finis). If world history has a goal, then that is its completion, and history moves forward stage by stage in the direction of this goal. According to the biblical traditions a goal of world history of this kind is the Thousand Years' Empire, in which Christ, with those who are his, will rule in peace over the nations (Rev. 20, following Dan. 7). The bestial empires of violence will be followed by the humane kingdom of the Son of man (Dan. 2 and 7). According to the notion held in the ancient world, the goal of history is the Golden Age (Virgil). According to modern hope it is the realm of freedom (Marx) or eternal peace (Kant). For Francis Fukuyama (at that time in the State Department in Washington) after socialism collapsed in 1989, capitalism and liberal democracy became the end of history. We call ideas of this kind about the end messianically chiliastic or millenarian. If, on the other hand, world history reaches its end in the end of the world, then it will be broken off through catastrophes. According to biblical traditions, this is 'the end of the world,' according to the notion held in antiquity 'the universal conflagration,' according to modern fears the nuclear annihilation of the world, or the world-wide ecological catastrophe. In modern parlance we call ideas of this kind apocalyptic. The end of the world they envisage does not structure the course of world history; it in fact withdraws meaning from every historical epoch. World history is a meaningless history of suffering. Its end is the best thing about it. Modern faith in progress is a secularized form of salvation-history millenarianism,7 while modern fears about the end of the world and dreams about its annihilation are secularizations of the apocalytic of old. History is always a struggle for power. The person who has power has an interest in the progress and prolongation of history. He understands future as the continuation and completion of his own present. The person who is powerless and oppressed has no interest in progress and prolongation, and the completion of his history of suffering. He is only interested in a speedy end and an alternative future.8 So we must also confront the different ideas about goal and end with the question: cui bonol

1 8

See Bauckham & Hart in this vol., 47, 72. See V. Laternari, The Religions of the Oppressed (New York 1963).

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2. The Goal of World History: The Thousand Years' Empire No hope has fascinated people as much as the idea of the Thousand Years' Empire, and none has caused so much havoc.9 Christians expect Christ's kingdom of peace, Romans awaited the Golden Age, modern men and women look for 'the end of history' in a condition without history and without conflict. The first fulfilment of this hope presented itself in the astonishing turn of events under Constantine, when persecuted Christianity became first a 'permitted religion' in the Roman empire and then, under the Emperors Theodosius and Justinian, Rome's all-dominating imperial religion. Those who have suffered with Christ will reign with him (1 Cor. 6:2; 2 Tim. 2:12). So the political turn of events was interpreted millenaristically as the turn from martyrdom to millennium. The Holy (Roman) Empire is already the Thousand Years' Empire of Christ (Rev. 20), in which Christ will reign with his own, and will judge the nations. The patron saint of the imperium sacrum was St George, who slays the dragon, the symbol of the enemies of God and empire. The empire's guardian angel was the Archangel Michael, who slays the dragon in heaven. The imperium sacrum also begins with a cross. But it is not the cross of Christ on Golgotha. It is the dream-cross of the Emperor Constantine, in whose sign he triumphed in 312. And so Christ's cross of martyrdom became the cross of victory of the Christian Empire. It is this cross which appears on the military orders and banners of the Christian nations (the George Cross, the Victoria Cross, the Iron Cross, and so forth). When the church of Christ became the imperial church of the Roman Empire, it surrendered the mission of the gospel and faith to the Christian rulers, who saw their religious mandate to be the conversion of the nations through their subjugation to Christ's End-time kingdom of peace. The decisive question was not belief or unbelief It was baptism or death. That is the way the Saxons and the Slavs were missionized in the early Middle Ages, and the peoples of Latin America at the beginning of modern times. The political theology of the universal Christian monarchy springs from a capricious interpretation of the so-called 'image of the monarchies' in the book of Daniel, chapters 2 and 7. Four bestial empires rise up out of the sea of chaos. But then the humane kingdom of the Son of man descends from heaven, to remain eternally in peace, righteousness and justice. It will crush the empires of the world through 'the stone of Daniel' (Dan. 2:45) and destroy them (2:44) though fire (7:10). The fourth empire is the empire of 9 N . Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London 1957; rev. edn. 1970); W. Nigg, Das ewige Reich Geschichte einer Hoffnung (Zurich 1944); M.D. Bryant & D.W. Dayton, The Coming Kingdom: Essays in American Millennialism and Eschatology (New York 1973); Moltmann, Coming of God, 146ff

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Rome, which follows the Babylonian, Persian and Greek empires. According to Daniel, it is the eternal kingdom of the Son of man which destroys the kingdoms of chaos; but according to this political theology it will be the universal Christian monarchy, which as 'the Fifth Monarchy,' is the heir of its forerunners (translatio imperil) and their consummation. This was the origin of the political messianism of the Christian imperium sacrum, which reaches to the end of time. After the fall of Byzantium in 1453, this political messianism passed to Spain and Portugal, and formed the 'Iberian quintomonarchism.'10 After the discovery of America, it served to justify the violent conquests and missionizings of the Indian territories. Right down to the present day, messianic quintomonarchism has remained the most influential ideology of world history in the Christian world. But it rests on a misinterpretation of the Daniel prophecy. The fulfilment of the same hope assumes another form in the epochal consciousness of modernity - 'new time' (Neuzeit), as German calls it.11 'Modern times' are the Third Age of humanity, the age which the twelfthcentury Italian visionary Joachim of Fiore prophesied would be the coming 'Third Age of the Spirit.' 'New time' is always the End-time too; for after new time nothing can come but the end of the world. The conquest of America after 1492 and the seizure of power over nature through science and technology were reason enough to see European domination of the world as a messianic fulfilment of world history, and to lend that domination the justification of an elevated End-time solemnity. The fact that the United States sees itself as the New World,12 and that its seal bears the words 'the new world order' (novus ordo saeculorum) corresponds to European ideas about 'the Christian age,' and modernity as 'the new time.' With the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution of 1789 the age of Utopias begins - Utopias of justice and of social equality. 'All human beings are born free and equal.' The spirit of the nineteenth century took its impress from two things: on the one hand from the declarations of human rights, which provided the justification for individual civil rights in the different countries; and on the other hand from the ideas about a classless society which motivated the socialist workers' movement. Yet the clash between the right to liberty and the claim to equality remained. In both movements, the democratic and the socialist alike, Europe attempted to justify its domination of the world on the grounds of a universal humanity, and a political order embracing humanity as a whole. 10 M. Delgado, 'Die Metamorphosen des Messianismus in den iberischen Kulturen,' Neue Zeitschrift fir Missionswissenschaft 34 (Immensee 1994).aaaaa 1 ' J. Taubes, Abendlandische Eschatologie (1947; Munich 1991). 12 E. Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: the Idea of America's Millennial Role (Chicago 1968).

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The particular values of the Western world were presented to all nations and peoples as the universal values of the modern world. The last prophet of the Western end of history for the time being has been Francis Fukuyama. 13 As a supporter of the undoubtedly strange and idiosyncratic interpretation of Hegel put forward in Paris by the Russian philosopher Alexandre Kojeve, Fukuyama saw 'the end of history' dawning with the collapse of 'socialism as it really exists' in the Soviet empire. It is the triumph of the West, he maintained, that since 1989 there has no longer been any real alternative to capitalism and liberal democracy. Everywhere similar democratic political forms will develop. 'The globalization of everything' will take over the joint satisfaction of material needs. We are standing at the end of tremendous conflicts between differing political and economic systems, and at the beginning of'a world without alternatives.' In pluralistic capitalist democracy, humanity has finally found what it was seeking in all its experiments. Fukuyama's end of history is not a Golden Age. It is a 'sad era' of ennui. What was once living history, full of conflicts, can now only be admired in the history museum.14 The theopolitical dream of the Thousand Years' Empire of peace, in which Christ and those who are his will rule and judge the nations, was an impossible dream The outward crises of 'the Holy Empire' and its internal crises even more, led to profound disappointments and apocalyptic anxieties. The dream of 'the new world' and 'the new age' in world politics, of human rights and human dignity for every man and women, succumbed to the two European world wars of the twentieth century. Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Chernobyl are the names for the end of this messianic dream of the modern world. But ultimately Fukuyama's 'end of history' too will prove to be a bad dream. The protests of people ground down and humiliated, and the protests of a violated earth, will not leave the world in the condition in which it is now. According to Hegel, the token of the end of history is not lack of alternative but freedom from contradiction. But Fukuyama's modern world itself produces the contradictions which will be its downfall, or out of which, if they can be resolved, another world will come into being. These contradictions are both social and ecological. The free market economy produces them, but is unable to end them. When the dreams about the end of history come to nothing - whether that dreamed-of end be Christ's Thousand Years' Empire or 'the global marketing of everything' - the lesson we learn is a simple one: it is impossible to complete history within history. 13

F, Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York 1989). S. Huntington has recently revived the old familiar apocalyptic dualism of American politics. See The Clash of Civilizations9, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Vol. 72, No. 3 (New York 1993). 14

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3. The End of the World: A Modern Apocalypse without Hope The fear of a catastrophic end of the world is merely the reverse side of the hope for its glorious fulfilment. When that hope collapses, generally all that is left is this fear. In the biblical traditions there were not only prophetic hopes; there were always apocalyptic prophecies too.15 We find ideas about a coming end of the world in Isaiah 24-27, Zechariah 12-14, Daniel 2 and 7, and Joel 3. In the New Testament, we have the 'little Synoptic Apocalypse' in Mark 13, and the Revelation to John. We talk about apocalypses when the prophetic prophecies reach out beyond Israel's history and take on a world-wide political scope, or cosmic dimensions. Then a 'new age' or a 'new creation' is promised, in which this 'old age' or this 'old world' will find its end. According to Daniel chapter 2, the great human empires will be destroyed, but then 'the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed.' According to Daniel 7, this is the humane empire of the divine 'Son of man.' According to the apocryphal Book of Enoch (1:7) 'this earth will be smashed to pieces and everything upon it will be destroyed, and a judgment will come upon all.' Afterwards 'the throne of God will be visible,' 'the Son of man will come,' and heaven and earth 'will be created anew' (54:4). The biblical apocalypses about the threatened end of the world go back to the saga about Noah's Flood (Gen. 6-9). According to this saga, because of the wickedness of the powerful, God purposes to destroy human beings together with the earth; but with the just man Noah, who is saved from the downfall, God makes his new covenant, in which no new end to the world is envisaged (Gen. 9:11). Behind the biblical idea about the end of the world is the still more pro founder about God, the fear that God could 'repent' be sorry - for having created human beings on this earth at all, and that he could withdraw his creative resolve altogether. A God who 'judges' the world's wickedness is interested in that world; but a God who turns away completely leaves the world to sink into chaos and nothingness. Judgment is a sign of hope. Only downfall and end is hopeless. In distinction from the Bible's apocalyptic traditions, the phrase 'apocalyptic now' is used to describe man-made catastrophes: the nuclear apocalypse, the ecological apocalypse, and so forth. These interpretations are wrong, because they divert to God that for which human beings are responsible. There is no 'nuclear Armageddon,' as President Ronald Reagan thought. Human beings have to take responsibility for humanity's nuclear I5 G.M. Martin, Weltuntergang: Gefahr und Sinn apokalyptischer Visionen (Stuttgart 1984); U.H.J. Kortner, Weltangst und Weltende: Eine theologische Interpretation der Apokalyptik (Gottingen 1988). For the new feminist theology cf. C. Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World (Boston 1996).

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exterminism, whereas in the apocalyptic Armageddon (Rev. 16:16) it is God who acts. That is why that vision is full of hope, whereas the other is totally hopeless. The self-annihilation of the human race, and the annihilation of the living room of this earth by human beings are the crimes of men and women, not the revelation of anything divine, like the apocalypses in the Bible. It is not surprising that today the apocalyptic interpretation of the crimes against humanity that threaten us are producing a new apocalyptic terrorism. It is a short step from passive expectation of the world's end to an active ending of it. That is the anarchism we know of old. In the nineteenth century, Michael Bakunin, the father of Russian anarchists, already proclaimed the slogan: The pleasure in destroying is also a creative pleasure,* and with this motto justified the murder of czars and the suicide of terrorists. 'Without destruction there can be no construction' was Mao Tsetung's command to the cultural revolution in China. It cost millions of people their lives and reduced China's finest cultural monuments to rubble. In Cambodia, the mass murderer Pol Pot took Mao's motto seriously. His Khmer Rouge murdered the older generations so as to build a 'new world' with the young. They left behind them two million dead in the killing fields, and a devastated country. Apocalyptic terrorism can lead to the mass suicide of sect adherents: in 19 7 X, in Jonestown, Guayana, it was 912 people belonging to a People's Temple sect; in 1993, in Waco, Texas, 78 adherents of Davidian sects, and 52 members of an end-of-the-world-sect in Vietnam; in 1995, 53 members of the Sun Temple sect in Canada and Switzerland; in 1997, 39 adherents of a UFO death cult in San Diego, California. Their motive was that they might be 'snatched up redemptively into another, better world, away from this world, which is approaching its end. But apocalyptic terrorism can also lead to the mass murder of other people for the sake of a better future. Genghis Khan felt called to mass murder as 'the retribution of God.' The Oklahoma bombers and the American militia men had a similar belief. The poison-gas sect of Shoko Asahara apparently knew itself to be called to 'the final apocalyptic struggle/ The biblical apocalypses are not pessimistic end-of-the-world scenarios, which spread anxiety and terror, and aim to paralyse men and women. They keep alive hope for God's faithfulness to his creation in the terrors of time. 'When these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near,' says Luke 21:28. Prophetic hope is hope in action. Apocalyptic hope is hope in danger, a hope that is capable of suffering, a patient and resolutely enduring hope. Whatever may come, at the end stands God. It is a doctrine of hope, and has nothing to do with the fantasies of world annihilation put forward by modern prophets and terrorists

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4. At the End - God's New Creation According to the biblical traditions, world history doesn't begin with the Fall, so it doesn't end with the downfall of the world either. It begins with the primordial blessing of temporal creation, and ends with the blessedness of the creation which will be eternal. God's last word is not a pronouncement of judgment. It is the word of creation: 'Behold, I make all things new' (Rev. 21:5). That is the 'new heaven and the new earth' for which 'the first heaven and the first earth' are to pass away (Rev. 21:1). Everything we may imagine as the Last Judgment or the end of the world is provisional in relation to the finality of the new creation. How ought we to think of this new creation? It is not a matter of another creation, which will take the place of the world we know. It is the creation we know which will be radically different. The book of Revelation does not say: behold, I create (Hebrew bard) something new, but 'behold I make (Hebrew asd) all things new.' That which has already been created will be 'made new.' What will be different? First of all the relationship to God will be different. The Creator will come to his dwelling place in his creation, and to his rest. His 'indwelling' (Shekinah) will enter heaven and earth and make them God's cosmic temple. God's glory will then dwell in all things and will illuminate and transfigure all created being.16 The idea of the cosmic indwelling of God leads on to the idea of the transformation of temporal and mortal creation into a creation that will be eternal and immortal. What participates in God's glory will be eternal and immortal like God himself. What will be annihilated is not creation itself, but only its sinful, temporal and mortal form. Created being itself will be transfigured or ~ as Orthodox theology says - 'deified,' for then finite being will participate in the infinite being of the indwelling God. The great Endtime transformation process is the transition from contradictions to correspondence, from mortality to the immortality of 'the life of the world to come.' Because God's righteousness and justice is the foundation for an eternal world that is in correspondence to him, it must first be made to prevail in all things, in the final Judgment. That is why in Christian expectation the new creation is preceded by the Last Judgment. But that divine righteousness and justice is not a retributive, punitive justice. It is the justice which for both the victims and the evil-doers of human history creates justice and justifies. God does not come to cut down. He comes to raise up, and to make thing right. It is in this sense that we say: at the end - God. Translated by Margaret Kohl

16 For more detail see Moltmann, Coming of God, III. 11 (235-255) and IV.5 (308-319). For the exegesis see R. Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge 1993); E. Schussler Fiorenza, Revelation: Vision of a Just World (Edinburgh 1994).

8. Dogmatic Theses on Eschatology Conference Response Colin Gunton

1. The Future The title of this volume, The Future as God's Gift, reminds us of the point made by a number of contributors that a distinction has to be made between eschatology and futurology. From this follows the fact that it is by no means obvious what the expression 'the future' means: the notion is less than transparent There even are cultures which do not have a future tense, and so see the world very differently from those of us who do.1 According, however, to what appears to be our common-sense tensed view of the matter, 'the future 1 means what will come after now, the present.2 Indeed, there is such a common-sense aspect to Christian eschatology: 4 he shall come in glory to judge both the quick and the dead.' Yet even that is complicated by that feature of Christian belief to which much recent theology, perhaps notably that of Pannenberg, has referred us, in noting that the resurrection is an eschatological event in the respect that it is a 'future' reality breaking into 'present' time. Similar things could be said about Old Testament eschatology, where the 'Day of the Lord' appears to be in various ways both future and present, to come and yet imminent in a way that bears directlv on the present, in ways that we shall revisit below.

2. Death 'The day of the Lord is coming. It is close at hand - a day of darkness and gloom' (Joel 2 : I f ) . The allusion to the day of the Lord's darker side reminds us of the spell which the relics of nineteenth-century optimism still 1 1

Cf the contribution to this volume by Bauckham & Hart, 60-61. Itself, as Augustine famously argued, a highly problematic notion.

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hold over us. Mark 13, the chapters of Revelation which precede the visions of the heavenly city that we prefer to read, and many other biblical eschatologies of catastrophe remind us that there can be no cheap hope any more than there can be cheap grace: no hope without repentance in face of divine imminence. ('The Kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe the gospel.') It may indeed be the case, as has frequently been asserted the past few days, that late modern culture is pervaded by hopelessness and despair, though we must not forget that there are many subcultures where that is undoubtedly not the case. Yet the point remains: cheap hope is hope which is offered undialectically. Let us pause to see what might be meant by the latter ambiguous expression. During the conference from which this volume issues, Christopher Jones made the point in respect to Peter Scott's paper that while he avoided fashionable apocalyptic in speaking of matters ecological, there were certain respects in which he was not apocalyptic enough. Similarly, a number of contributors have urged that we must distinguish between apocalyptic and eschatology. Indeed we must, but the two must also, like the human and divine in Christ, be distinguished but not separated. Biblical eschatology is inseparable from what we can call a negative apocalyptic, from the direst disasters and prophecies, for which the great flood in Genesis is the beginning and the continuing symbol, at least as important for New Testament eschatology as the Exodus, that over-used vehicle of cheap hope. It may indeed be the case that, as in Luke's parallel with Mark 13, 'When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near' (Luke 21:28), but 'these things' are a catena of historical and cosmic disasters. There is no resurrection without death, which is also of eschatological significance because it represents the end of life, of relation to God and the other, and therefore the extinction of hope. However we understand the bodies which have been the focus of much discussion, we must surely include the consideration that they come from and will return to the dust of the earth and can only be rescued thence by a wholly eschatological act. Death and resurrection, at least in respect of their contraposing of negation and affirmation, are dialectically related, even though, as we shall see, it is not an ultimate dialectic.

3. Eternity In order to be able to handle questions of eschatology we need a concept of eternity. We are today still living out the consequences of Augustine's conception, for example as it was recently reformulated by Paul Helm, that divine eternity is timelessness and that therefore from God's point of view,

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and even in a certain respect from ours, time is finally unreal. It is this tradition that founds the dualistic eschatology criticised so fully in Professor Moltmann's recent study of eschatology, particularly for its ecclesiological and political implications.4 Against this Augustinian tradition, we must here affirm that the economy of divine creation and salvation indicates a God whose eternity embraces the reality of time. Embarrassment with the days of Genesis I has led to the missing of the point that this is a God who, to use an anthropomorphic expression, 'takes his time' with his world. This point is reinforced by his patient calling and teaching of Israel and finally by the fact that when the time was right, he sent his Son, born of a woman, to renew and complete the work begun at creation.5 In this context, despite - or perhaps because of - the attacks it has received, Karl Earth's theology of God's eternity has much to teach us, directed as it is to this very problem. For him, God's eternity includes, while not being reducible to, his pre-temporality, supra-temporality and posttemporality.6 It refers to God's capacity for the creation of and involvement in a world which has its reality as genuinely other than God, indeed as being real precisely because it receives its distinctive being from him; in other words, it receives its otherness only in relation to God. As a consequence, to use the blessed word 'foundation,' the basis of eschatology, as of other forms of divine action, is the eternal being of God as structured, as a taxis, as the love which is the inner divine eternal perichoresis of Father, Son and Spirit. It is this which makes the creation and redemption of the world in Christ alike conceivable.

4. The Economy of Creation and Redemption Creation means the creation of beings whose space and time are finite; beings which, like the whole universe in which we live, will die, burn out or freeze: in the case of the human creation, beings who are mortal. That is the 3 Paul Helm, 'Eternal Creation: The Doctrine of the Two Standpoints,' in: Colin E. Gunton (ed.), The Doctrine of Creation: Essays in Dogmatics, History and Philosophy (Edinburgh 1997), 29-46. 4 Jiirgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, translated by Margaret Kohl (London 1996). 5 Incidentally, it was Origen's embarrassment with the earthiness of Gen. 1:28, 'be fruitful and multiply' that led to the concept of 'spiritual fecundity' which, whatever its value, has undoubtedly led to a Christian evasion of the place of the body in the Christian life. We shall not have an adequate theology of the body unless we pay far greater attention to the Old Testament, and, additionally, to the ascension and reign of the Israelite Jesus of Nazareth. See also Douglas B. Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia (Edinburgh 1999). 6 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, translation edited by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh 1957-1975), Vol. 11/1,615-618.

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origin of Garrett Green's observation about boundaries, limits. 'Everything is what it is and not another thing'; that is the secret of the creation's being. But it is also the point of eschatology, which is in large measure about how we are to deal with our particularity. This particular world and the particular beings which, as created, constitute it are each directed to (rather than from, as Pannenberg would have it) their particular future end, their God-given telos or goal. As things stand, that movement to a determinate future is imperilled by sin and evil, so that mortality, by which is meant end as limit is displaced by death, which refers to end as extinction, or, possibly, hell. Death and hell are the negative possibilities of eschatology's dialectic: what we might call creation's outcome as futility. In Christ there takes place the redemptive activity of God supervening upon the negative eschatology of death in order to restore creation's true direction. The gospel narratives are full of particular events which are in various ways the vehicles of this eschatological renewal. They often mark characteristic actions realised by God the Spirit through Jesus Christ: the incarnation of the Son in the womb of Mary, renewing the fallen flesh of earth; the proclamation of the Kingdom and the defeat of the demonic in the power of the Spirit; table fellowship with the poor (and sometimes with their oppressors, let us not forget); and, of course, the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb. But that resurrection is only reached through both mortality and death, in the full sense of the latter which we have sketched, the death that is relationlessness and futility. Before we reach the concluding thesis, it is worthwhile to pause here to consider something of the bearing this might have on our life on earth, on ethics in its broadest sense. It is sometimes observed, and particularly in relation to the death of political figures, that there is a respect in which every life is a failure. Certainly every life is highly particular, bearing its achievements and failures in its different ways. If eschatology is to do with how we shall engage our human particularity, its bearing is especially relevant at this place, where we face not only the question of the relative failure of those who die full of years and sometimes of honours, but also the lives of those who die apparently before their time, and especially children. In that sense, it is death - and not the so-called 'gender' that so dominates modern discussion of human reality - that defines the limits and so the eschatological reality of each human life. The resurrection, the eschatological fulfilment of the only relatively 'successful' ministry of Jesus, alone offers the promise and it is as such a promise: that the final judgement on a life may be the divine yes, according to which human successes and failures are permitted variously to contribute to the reconciliation of all things, things in heaven and things on earth.

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5. Judgement Because, as we have seen, there are, at least until the end, two competing eschatologies, what 1 have called negative and positive, God's action in Christ must represent separation, a judgement, a krisis. Without that, hope is inevitably cheapened. There are sheep and goats, those who love darkness rather than light, the church and those who persecute her according to the vision of the book of Revelation. That book is crucial for our understanding of what is going on. It is apokalypsis, apocalypse, revelation, and its literary form, of which Garrett Green rightly made so much, is such that it represents the 'end 1 at once impinging on and becoming real within the temporal creation: God bringing about the 'end' in both senses of the word, temporal and teleological In its closing visions, negative eschatology is, in its chief respect, overcome, through the incarnation, sacrifice and rule of the lamb. "And death shall be no more.' Yet even this is not treated undialectically, as a doctrine of cheap hope would make it. There still is krisis, separation. Near the very end of the book, those who persist in forms of behaviour that make for death remain excluded from the city: 'those who practise magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood' (Rev. 22:15). Here too there is a moral dimension that cannot be escaped. According to the New Testament, the one who was crucified and raised is the one who both is (see the Fourth Gospel, passim) and will be the agent of God's judgement. It follows that Christology provides the necessary control of eschatology. This is also the case because Christ is the one in whom the end and its anticipations, the embracing of time by God's eternity, become real and therefore conceivable. The affirmations, 'thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory' are true only eschatologically. That is not the evasion it may seem, because it is true now wherever his writ runs. That is the message of the Apocalypse, but also of 1 Corinthians 15. It is the ascended Jesus - the lamb still bearing in heaven the marks of slaughter - who exercises God's rule under the sign of the cross, and therefore under the conditions of negative eschatology, of the continuing but doomed reign of death. He is 'the first and the last' and as such the one who is coming soon. Without that necessary control our eschatology will find no way between the progressivism and despair which are both still marks of our time

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9. Living with Eschatological Hope Conference Response Harriet A. Harris What does l i v i n g with eschatological hope look like here and now? Liturgical worship can quite properly be seen as an expression of the fullness of time ' But apart from that, how do we connect our reflections on eschatology with our own situations? An important aspect of our situation at present is that we are at war with Serbia. We are represented by bombs being dropped, but no mention has been made of this in the foregoing papers. Why do we theologians, when we are considering eschatological hope, so often fail to relate that hope to this and other concrete realities? We are called upon to attempt to think with eschatological imagination about responses to Serbian atrocities and Kosovan suffering - responses of Christian courage which might better reflect the conviction, expressed in Richard Bauckham's and Trevor Hart's paper, that nothing (good) is lost in the fullness of time. This is a conviction which should inspire and embolden Christians to take risks of faith, perhaps of the kind contemplated by this Serbian pastor in a letter to an American friend: 2 I know that, as a Christian, if drafted into the army, I will - with God's help refuse to take arms and fight. I know that by some this will beaaaaaa understood as cowardice or a treason. Yet, as a follower of Christ, who is the Prince of Peace, I know that it is not my calling to take part in political and military strife. Please, pray for me and ... other Christian congregations in Serbia, that we may not be drafted into the army, forced to take arms and fight, or be put into prison. Please, pray for our witness My point here is not to urge support for a particular political course of action, but to highlight a disjunction between theoretical and applied !

Cf. the contribution of Garrett Green to the present volume, 79-80. SST member Tina Beattie found this letter on the Internet, and sent it to John Wilkins who used it for his leader. The Message We Need/ The Tablet 3/10 April 1999. 2

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theology. On the one hand we are reflecting theologically about living as people of hope and using our imagination to move closer to God's truth. On the other hand, in practice we appear to have a sense of hopelessness and a lack of imagination regarding the Kosovan suffering: we are unable to imagine how else, besides bombing or doing nothing, we could possibly respond. As a letter to the Church Times notes, 'what has been missing [in correspondence on the Kosovo crisis] is some reflection of what the church should do rather than the Government.' In Kosovo, 'as in Rwanda and the years of conflict in Northern Ireland, we need to ask ourselves whether we have done enough to confront those who call themselves Christians with the demands of the gospel.'3 Our hesitancy and reluctance to speak practically is partly to do with the limits of our eschatological imagination, where these limits are understood not to reflect particular failings on our part, but rather to reflect the situation of our world as being in the process but not the fullness of redemption. An important theme of this conference has been the tension between being called to eschatological hope and yet not knowing what the fulfilment of that hope will look like. We have to use our imagination because we cannot understand the fulfilment of God's promises simply by looking at what is the case in our world. Several speakers have emphasised that eschatology is not futurology: it is not simply the unfolding of the past and present into the future, but it is open to new possibilities which are God's possibilities, recognised as places where the Kingdom breaks into time. Eschatology is notfutururn but adventus. For this reason, we have not looked at 'immanent resources' or 'latent possibilities' (to use Bauckham's and Hart's terminology). However, our eschatological hope is both grounded in the promises of God and built on our experience of Christ now. Christ is experienced in ways which interrupt the 'normal' order of things. In plenary discussions of the foregoing papers, people have spoken of courageous acts which 'go against the grain,' or of transcendent moments when 'time seemed to stand still.' These would seem to be points where the Kingdom breaks into time, and they do invite us to recognise experienced realities as able to feed our eschatological imagination: manifestations of hopeful eschatological living which evince God's possibilities, such as prophetic acts or examples of godly endurance. By considering the features of hopeful practices (whilst matters of perception and interpretation must enter in, as to how we judge which instances are eschatological), we might better be able to work out what eschatologically-orientated living looks like. This seems important not least because the Society for the Study of Theology brings together

}

Letter from Chris Sennett, Church Times, 30 April 1999, 9.

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theologians and ministers, and is a forum for the interaction between the discipline of theology and the life of faith. Supposing that we do have examples of hopeful practice in this world, what does this suggest about the relationship of adventum to continuous creation? It has been emphasised, especially in Peter Scott's paper, that eschatology must not be considered as a final chapter in theology remote from a first chapter on creation. Moreover, Jurgen Moltmann's conviction that eschatology is the key to theology has undergirded all our reflections. But questions which emerged in several different forms in discussion of Moltmann's paper asked how God's eschatological activity differs from God's activity of continually creating. When Vincent Donovan took the Gospel to the Masai, he discovered that the Masai do not have a future tense. For them, the world is complete and not going anywhere in particular. Donovan expresses their lack of future hope in terms of their not having a doctrine of continuous creation.4 This invites the question: does future hope reside wholly in God's on-going creative activity, or is there another, eschatological, mode of divine work? Is eschatology distinct from creation in any way other than being a consummation of it? In particular, it the Cross signals discontinuity, what does this mean for the relation between eschatology and continuous creation? The Cross must show that eschatology is subversive: it is the redeeming of time, the passing away of evil or futile time which leads to death. On such an understanding, James Alison conveys eschatological imagination as the subversion from within of violent apocalyptic imagination. 5 He sees this as a deliberate move on Jesus' part: Jesus appropriated the violent apocalyptic language of his culture in order to up-end it, and as victim became the criterion for determining if one is a sheep or a goat. At the conference we have tended to equate apocalyptic with eschatology, and then not known what to do with the images of war, particularly in relation to our own current war. A crucial way in which eschatology has been linked to creation, in our discussions, has been through an emphasis on embodiment and on various things which follow from embodiment: imagination and the senses, space and time, sociality, and the future hope as performance. Does this allow us to say, as Peter Scott suggests, that theology is not 4 in the dock' over accusations that eschatology is world-denying and body-denying? In the foregoing papers, no attention has been paid to feminist suspicions of eschatology as flight from the body and suppression of the feminine (i.e., all those things which in the symbolic are associated with the feminine: being born of the flesh as opposed to spirit, earthiness, sex and death), except for a 4 Vincent J Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered: An Epistle from the Masai (Indiana 1978, Maryknoll 1982), 4"? 48. 5 James Alison, Living in the End Times: The Last Things Re-imagined (London 1997), esp. Chs 6 and 7

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few nods in that direction in Scott's paper. Does this matter? Have we considered embodiment so well, that we do not need to raise these concerns? Another way of putting this question is to ask whether we have successfully moved beyond all of the dichotomies that cluster around the often pervasive this-worldly/other-worldly dichotomy. This brings me to a rather theoretical point about theology for the year 2000. Attempts to move beyond dichotomies are a hallmark of current theology and philosophy (as of numerous other disciplines). Such attempts often rely on some unacknowledged dichotomy that has been smuggled in as a basis from which to reject other forms of categorisation. This is the case in Tony Thiselton's paper, which calls for hermeneutical rather than categorising approaches to our discipline. Thiselton asks that we not locate theologians on some artificially constructed map of the subject, but rather that we engage hermeneutically with them in terms of their and our contexts. However, he does himself categorise, and does so most strongly between American pragmatic and European sceptical forms of postmodernism (although he softened this dichotomy in the plenary discussion of his paper). It would seem to be worthwhile to try to theorise the movement beyond dichotomies: to raise as questions, 'how might we effectively make this move?' and also 'how might we avoid abandoning anything important on the way?' After all, we categorise partly because it is useful to do so, and not only because we have an unhealthy tendency to fix people and concepts too rigidly. The complexity of overcoming categorisation has not yet been made a theme for thought, and so remains unthought.6 I expect that here, as well as in our wider consideration of eschatological living, practice precedes understanding. Examples of eschatological hope help us to understand that hope; transformative and habit-forming practices help us to move beyond the this-worldly/other worldly (body-denying) bifurcations; contextual engagement with others deters us from ossifying their thought. Underlying our discussions has been the conviction that truth must be understood in terms of God's eschatological future, and therefore cannot be fully grasped now. God's truth is not synonymous with what currently is the case with the world. This is why theologians are again becoming bold to say that theology ought not to take its criteria of truth from non-theological, or purportedly pre-theological, disciplines. Without a conviction that truth resides in God, we really do not seem to have a way of grounding truth except pragmatically. We operate according to what works, such as the testimony of our senses and memory, and the basic ways in which we rely on others. Such fundamental operations we cannot ultimately ground in reason. We are anxious about this, but sometimes for the wrong reasons. ' For this insight I am grateful to David Moss.

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The problem with pragmatism is not that anything goes (only what goes, goes),7 but that pragmatic effects cannot guarantee truth. That our senses serve us well such that we can get on in the world does not guarantee that they tell us the truth about the way things are. The challenge to foundationalism in theology arises from a conviction that such guarantees are not available to us. In holding out for a theological account of truth, we need to reckon with Pilate's bewilderment. His question, 'What is Truth?' was directed at Christ and was left unanswered. We know to look Christwards, but we cannot claim to have fully arrived. Finally, Garrett Green's paper has drawn our attention to imagination and the visual. This might prompt us to pause and reflect upon the ways we design our churches and our aids to meditation. Much modern church architecture and religious art goes for abstract expression instead of concrete representation. Is this the best way of conveying abstract ideas, or is it less communicative and evocative than statues of angels and paintings of the last judgment? Once scenes of heaven and hell are put in stone or on wood or canvas, do they become static in contrast to the dynamic verbal expressions of God's future which are given us in scripture? Or, by appealing to the senses, are they helpful aids to a full-bodied understanding, which involves so much more than intellectual apprehension? Abstract art may not sufficiently exceed the powers of abstract conceptual thought, whereas images "speak to humans existentially and find an echo in the inarticulate depths of their psyches.' 8

1 This point is made by W.J. Lyons & J.M. Blackwell, 'Un/Limited Indeterminacy: Biblical Interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles,' unpublished paper, delivered to the British New Testament Conference 1998. 8 Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (expanded edn., New York 1974), 20-21.

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10. Eschatology as a Challenge for Theology Conference Response Daniel W. Hardy

1. Introduction Eschatology presents a remarkable challenge to Christian faith and theology. And so it should, for determining how things are finally to be for the world with God is as awesome as any task in theology. Eschatology should stretch theology, asking how God is the final truth, goodness and beauty of all else, and what therefore are the consequences for everything else. Not simply one doctrinal locus amongst others, eschatology requires the rethinking of all aspects of theology: what is Christian faith, and what is Christian responsibility, when reshaped by reference to the end of all things in God's purposes? Implicit in these theological tasks is an interdisciplinary responsibility. For eschatology is of comprehensive importance for all human understanding and practice, and challenges all else by the powerful truth, goodness and beauty of God which will be all in all. Its implications reach to the depths of the conditions of the world, of the dynamics of history and of human life. Given the urgency implicit in eschatology, without it theology is too docile - in its theory, its practical application and its interdisciplinary performance. It will tend, for example, to forget that it is in an 'alien land' (Moltmann), and assimilate the relatively laissez-faire habits of a world unchallenged by the finality of God's goodness, one seen as essentially unproblematic and in need only of Tine tuning' to achieve its fulfilment. It is salutary, therefore, to address eschatology as fully as possible. This has been done with some success in the papers collected in this volume, and the discussions that accompanied their original presentations. Here, we need to collect some of the insights arrived at, view them together and consider

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them further, testing them and identifying areas in which further progress needs to be made. We can do so by considering three interlocking issues that have appeared regularly: 1. How are the conditions of the world and eschatology mutually illuminating? 2. What is the content of the goodness of God that is the final truth of all? 3. What access can we have to it? Underlying all three, however, is one overarching issue. Eschatology does not occupy a privileged, or even an accepted, position in most current understanding; and this poses a fundamental task for those who consider it. As Anthony Thiselton remarked during this conference, 'the "turn" to socalled postmodernity demands a re-thinking of the possibility of theology'; and this is as much true of eschatology. Yet, as we shall see, how this re-thinking is attempted is an important matter. Making it into a methodological question above all - a preoccupation with how we can know - tends to turn it at once into a matter of human conceptions (how we grasp eschatology). That already prejudges the theological basis of eschatology - that re-thinking the possibility of theology rests on 'what God will do.' As Thiselton put it during this conference, 'a theology for the year 2000 will compare the logical grammar of "What God will do" as a basic noetic focus for "serious man" with "what we do" as a basic noetic focus for "rhetorical man. "' While this seems to me to be correct, it may be that 'what God will do' necessarily involves 'what we will do' more intimately than such a 'comparison' allows. We must not assume that 'rhetorical man' is always guilty in the ways Thiselton finds that Richard Rorty is; his concentration on Rorty leads him to legislate as if the 'hard case' was the usual amongst pragmatists, which it is not. If we are to take seriously 'what we do' and 'what God will do,' however, the issues run very deeply. They are both substantial - having to do with what are the conditions for life (including, but not limited to, what we do) and how God will act - and methodological, raising questions of noetic order (how our knowing is suited to the final goodness of God). These matters intersect in re-thinking the possibility of eschatology; hence they need to be considered together.

2. The Mutual Illumination of the Conditions of the World and Eschatology Christian eschatology suggests that we should engage with the world in the light of the prospect of the final shaping of all things according to God's

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truth, goodness and beauty. If it is correct, it should evoke in us a sense of awe, attraction, challenge and responsibility, both in itself and in its implications for our world and us. Frequently, however, eschatology fails to grip us. Perhaps this is attributable to the fact that it lacks credibility in general, even if in some respects it continues as the basis for human existence, understanding and behaviour On the one hand, the 'end of teleology' that resulted from nineteenth-century science, and later the demise of the notion of progress, have made it questionable to allude to movement to a culmination of history. Yet, on the other hand, all human life searches for a way forward, and thus seems wedded to the prospect of a good outcome from history. On what does our awareness of and struggle with - the problematic features of life rest if not on the future possibility of overcoming them? At this more concrete level, it seems that eschatology - even if only in very rudimentary sense is the inner premise of our search for better knowledge and practice. It is at this more 'pragmatic 1 level that eschatology operates - in contextspecific ways to identify issues considered pivotal for well-being: temporality, historicality, ecology, social order, economics, politics, human identity and gender, and of course in knowledge. There, eschatology is nascent in our striving for fuller possibilities of life, and in our critique of the evil and suffering attendant on the human misuse of features of life in the world. A full theological treatment of eschatology would require that all of these be thoroughly considered. If they are not, we risk leaving it, at least partly, in the realm of disconnected abstractions. It is quite understandable that we should find it difficult to articulate fully the eschatology that is the 'inner premise' of our search for better understanding and practice, and especially its roots in Christian eschatology. For each of the pivotal issues mentioned above has become so much more complex that it has outstripped attempts to state its theological basis. The result has been a tendency to concentrate so much on the task of developing more adequate descriptions of each - its elements, structures, emergent complexity, etc that the task of finding what is normative for each has been indefinitely postponed. In such a way, the extension of cosmology replaces the renewal of eschatology. This can be seen happening again and again in the issues mentioned, (1) Temporality the drive for fuller understanding of temporality - implicitly eschatological - has brought awareness of its necessary connection with being. Temporality is now 'concretised' by its association with spatiality and materiality Hence, temporality is seen through spatial/material instantiations, and becomes indefinitely complex. As a result, we as ourselves spatio-temporally located - can only describe others similarlv located. So the task of description displaces - or at least

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postpones - the consideration of what is normative. By contrast, eschatology - concerned with the primacy of the final goodness of God - is concerned with empirical and normative issues, the shaping of spatiotemporality according to the good purposes of God. It is this issue - the acknowledgement of the normative - that becomes especially important as we look at the other dimensions pivotal to wellbeing, history, ecology, social order, economics, politics, human identity and gender. Without recognition of the finality of the goodness of God and the thrust of creation toward it - it is impossible to identify, explain and resist evil in the course of things. If there is any major weakness in the papers collected here, it is this. Simply to assert that a situation is right or wrong, better or worse - either directly or by citing a paradigmatic case from Christian history - without showing the eschatological basis for doing so, leaves goodness and evil unexplained and weakens our responses to them. (2) History. The notion of temporality has also become integral to human being, in what Bauckham and Hart call the 'intrinsic narrativity' of human life.1 Even if it can be shown how this operates, and how it is sustained with the growing complexity of what occurs in life, the quality of what informs this 'narrativity' is not evident. Qualitatively speaking, are some events whether in the past or in the future - not more formative for life, even if less knowable? Furthermore, perhaps it is not so much the 'intrinsic narrativity' of human life as the dynamics of the goodness of God that constitutes the meaning of history. Perhaps both temporality and history need to be understood as the product of the intensity of the goodness of God that thrusts everything in the world into being and towards its fullness. This is as much as to say that the normative issues of current conceptions of history need to be considered more fully. (3) Ecology. This is the subject most easily omitted from eschatology. Yet any struggle for a better life, or any movement that results from the impact of the goodness of God in the world, implicates all the conditions of created life as such, including the ordering of the relations between non-human and human. Peter Scott is right, therefore, to attempt to theorise the fullness of the interactions of humanity and nature through a Trinitarian doctrine that will articulate the dynamics of the concrete order of life. Yet his explanation is more Christological, as he describes the differentiation of creation and its return in the Resurrection to God. These are God's judgement on what Scott calls (in what I think is a shorthand use of the term) the 'sociality' of God, nature and humanity. Whether this results in a fully eschatological view of

1

In this volume, 45.

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the dynamic interactions of the three is more questionable; his view is primarily concerned with conceptions of difference and encounter. As a result of the fact that three other issues - social order, politics and economics have received little attention, there is some danger that our discussions are more remote from ordinary life than they should be. These three are especially significant in our day because they become more powerful by their combination for such (rudimentary) forms of eschatology as we practice. If we acknowledge the finality of the goodness of God, we find ourselves questioning all differentiations that are alien to God's work, whether ecological, social, political or economic, even the distortions we have come to suppose as 'normal. 1 Likewise, we find ourselves challenging the manner in which human beings are related to themselves and each other, opposing distorted conceptions of themselves and each other and resisting systemic means by which human beings are oppressed. Recognising eschatological norms is important because it enables us to view together the conditions for flourishing and those that are degrading to life in the world. Following the pattern of Christ, if we acknowledge that these norms require raising others to their true quality in the sight of God, then we will see that power exercised ecologically, politically and/or economically, and promoted and legitimated scientifically and/or culturally - is to be used to this end. By contrast, we will see that power used to dominate others by ecological, socio-political and/or economic means, or by personality or gender, and legitimated scientifically or culturally, is - however widespread iniquitous. Both the thrust of eschatological goodness and that of evil happen by such combinations, ecological, social, political, personal, economic, scientific and cultural; and eschatological norms are needed to find and either perpetuate or resist them as the case may be. The issues are profoundly connected to the character of the dynamic of God's goodness Take one example. If adequate social order is necessary for human freedom, the appropriate symbiosis of the two - order and freedom is only fully seen in the final eschatological shaping of human life by the goodness of God. This shaping occurs in the action of the Trinitarian God that establishes order in Jesus Christ and freedom by the Holy Spirit, This standard of reference, in turn, enables us to identify lesser forms of freedom and order. It challenges the viability of societies constituted only to enhance the freedoms of some that live in them, at the expense of others. Such societies are politically ordered by the competition for power and rewards, and are today economically ordered as the pursuit of additional wealth by those who already have it, through the power of exchange. The result is what I call 'monetary eschatology.' Society conceived in such terms turns all within it - persons, communities, education, etc. into 'commodities' whose value is in what they produce or sell, or the power they can exert to achieve rewards. At the same time,

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personal value is re-construed in such terms, and the value of persons and communities as such disappears. Although such forms of 'order' and 'freedom' are usually unquestioned today, we need to ask - from the eschatological viewpoint - whether what results, accords with the goodness to which all are called.

3. What is the Content of the Goodness of God that is the Final Truth of All? We have already begun to address another issue. We have suggested that the normative character of eschatology has not been sufficiently evident in the foregoing papers, and this implies a tendency to overlook the systemic reality of evil. Perhaps this is an indication of our difficulties in conceiving how the goodness of God will be finally operative in our world. Typically, we extend our conceptions of God to find what will occur at the culmination of life in the world. In effect, therefore, our understanding of God is a priori relative to the finality of life. This conception of God's goodness usually employs one or the other of two alternative views found most commonly in Christian theology. On the one hand, goodness is often understood as the property of identity, in this case of the identity of God. Where this is so, eschatological goodness is seen as the recurrence of this property of the eternal God as surpassing the world. On the other hand, as is more usual today, goodness is understood as the property of relations, seen in the characteristic self-conferral of God on another for the other's good. Where this is so, eschatological goodness is seen as the constancy of the self-giving of God, continuing to the culmination of the world. Neither view, however, shows what is specific to eschatological goodness as the final goodness of God - where all that was original to God's goodness and has constantly been given by God achieves its fullness through the completion of God's goodness. What is the content of the goodness of God that stands as the end of all? That question has not been directly faced in the foregoing papers. We can read there that the goodness of God van be placed in various contexts. Some - like Bauckham, Hart and Green - stress that eschatology has to do 'with a new world which will be brought into being only when God wills and acts to do so.'2 For them, it seems to be understood as a timelessly eternal 'state,' a view not far from the notion of goodness as the property of the identity of God. Two other positions appear to understand goodness as the property of God's relatedness to human beings. First, there are those - like 2

See Bauckham's andd Hart's contribution to this volume, 70.

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Thiselton and Scott whose major concern is with the 'logic' of God's operation. For them, the goodness of God appears in the metanarrative of God's Trinitarian self-giving in creation, reconciliation and redemption as seen in the fundamental revelation of God in Scripture and doctrine. Second, there are those who use historical categories - like Moltmann - for whom the goodness of God is seen through contingent historical and bodily 'yearnings1 and anticipations as human beings are transformed through ascetical disciplines. Another possibility, however, is to seek the eschatological goodness of God a posteriori Although we find something of this final goodness in the history of God's self-giving, the full form of eschatological goodness - as well as the means by which it forms and energises us - is found in its completion. There, we find that it is the active, embracingly dynamic Trinitarian glory of God that justifies and brings full life to all those who strive and suffer in God through the course of history. This is to treat God's goodness primarily in a posteriori terms, as it is found in the completion of justice in the world. Whichever view is adopted, however, the question of the nature of the eschatological goodness of God is very important to what we do here. Nothing less than the final goodness of God is sufficient to bring to its fullness the complex, deviant world in which we are.

4. What Access Can We Have to the Eschatological Goodness of God9 This volume and the conference from which it originates are entitled 'the Future as God's Gift.' This suggests a more radical faith in God's gift of the future as such than we, with all our concern for the historic givenness of Christian faith and the world in which we exist, are accustomed to. Perhaps we are to look forward to the coming of the final goodness of God even where it requires the transformation of our present understanding of God, the world and ourselves! Our more usual habits, however, lead us to suppose that we can have clear modes of access to the content of the final goodness of God, either direct or indirect. These modes of access parallel the conceptions of the goodness of God we have just reviewed, where goodness is the property either of God's identity or God's relations. On the one hand, we may suppose, with Bauckham and Hart, that God is such a one as to engage and apply our imagination, and thereby to 'relocate and redirect' our existence. Or, following Garrett Green, we may suppose that time and eternity are so 'incommensurable [that] we can only pass from one to the other by way of

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an imaginative gestalt switch' to the imagination of a future of heavenly glory. In either case, our access to the eschatological goodness of God is direct, and brings transformation. On the other hand, we may take the view that our engagement with the goodness of God is indirect and historically mediated - in effect a theological-historical praxis by which we face what is alien and transform it. That is a note struck by Thiselton's attack on secular pragmatism and by Scott's corrective to the politics of nature. In different ways, both of them suggest that we have access to the eschatological goodness of God in history by anticipating it, noetically, structurally, and in gender relations respectively. Yet, it seems to me, the situation is more demanding than either of these modes of access allows. Why? The urgent intensity of the eschatological goodness of God should confer a cognitive and behavioural expectancy evoking in us awe, attraction, challenge and responsibility reaching beyond 'direct' and 'indirect' modes. And this should manifest itself not only in depth of understanding of the full range of issues related to the well-being of human beings and the world, but also in lively participation in the Spirit by which God moves all creation to final goodness.

5. Rethinking the Possibility of Christian Eschatology As we recognised at the outset, Christian eschatology has often lost its hearing, amongst Christians and beyond. For it to win wider and more intensive acceptance will depend on adequate answers to the issues we have attempted to review here. Will anyone else be convinced, and strongly affected, by what we have said and done here? Have we addressed the pivotal points in 'postmodern' life - temporal, historical, ecological, social, political, economic and those of human identity and relationships - and done so with full awareness of the implications of the eschatological goodness of God and how God acts to bring that about? And are we prepared for the transformation of the frameworks of our knowing that understanding of the final goodness of God entails. It is the hope and the expectation that the papers collected in this volume may be of some help in the reflection on these issues, that justifies their publication.

11. Eschatology and Time Reversal of the Time Direction? Luco J. Van den Brom

1. Introduction Traditionally the Christian faith expresses its expectations of God's Kingdom in the future tense. But what is the status of this type of language? Does it mean that this Kingdom will temporally come after human or cosmic history? Or has this language a symbolic meaning whereby 'future' stands for something else, e.g., for 'transcendent world' or 'other reality'? Pannenberg and Moltmann claim that the coming of God's Kingdom moves from the future into the present. Is this movement real? Do they imagine this 'future* as something spatial from which it is possible to move into another space? They envision an eschatological situation beyond history. Is that compatible with the concept 'future'?

2. The Eschatologies of Moltmann and Pannenberg According to Moltmann, we have to distinguish between futurum (simply all that comes after the present) and the more important adventus (the coming of God and his Kingdom). 1 Pannenberg's theology is also characterized by an orientation to the eschatological or final revelation of God. He describes a double movement in the human way of existence: an 1

This distinction has been made by Emil Brunner, Das Ewige als Zukunft und Gegenwart (1935; rpt. Munchen 1965), 26. He carries the German 'Zukunft' and its Romanic equivalents 'avenir, avvenire' back to Christian origins. 'Zu-kunft' means 'what comes up to you' as distinct from futurum which grows out of what is available. This 'Zu-kunft' is an eschatological term, that means the realization of the hope through an event which comes from beyond, from above ('von dort her,' k von oben her'), from the transcendent. These words already show a tendency of spatializing time and future, which became characteristic of Moltmann's eschatology; see J, Moltmann, Zukunft der Schopfung (Munchen 1977), 35fF.

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anthropological movement towards the future, and a divine movement from the future into the present.2 The latter movement suggests that God acts or comes from the future into the present, a movement opposite to the timearrow (past-present-future). Although Pannenberg and Moltmann differ in details, they share a concept of divine agency which assumes that God's future 'already' exists (in a tenseless sense), whereas from the point of view of believers God is their future.3 God's future is therefore not simply future history but the future of history. That is to say, God's Kingdom (being the future of perfection and consummation) is eternity entering into time. In this entering of eternity, the present reality of everything is shaped by and from God's future.4 Here a problem arises because God's acting and coming from this future into the present implies the co-existence or simultaneity of all the past and present with his future - this is what they call eternity.5 In my mind, their view - like Einstein's - renders (the direction of) time illusory. But then we get into difficulties with the concept of history, especially with intentional agency within history. The simultaneity of past, present and future is sometimes interpreted as an 'eternal present' (nunc aeternuni), in which there is no transience because all stages in the historical process exist synchronously. If that were the case, however, all history would be reduced to a singularity, a punctual moment without before and after that even excludes the possibility of transience. So these notions like coming and acting from the future presuppose that God's future exists simultaneously with the past and present of, e.g., creation, incarnation, Calvary, descent of the Holy Ghost etc. This means that all the theological aspects of divine agency which are related to salvation history only appear to be historical, but in fact are not, or at least 2 W. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie III (Gottingen 1993), 587 (ET Edinburgh 1998, 544f); abbr. ST. Similarly Moltmann declares that 'God's being is in his coming, not in his tecoming'; J. Moltmann, Gott in der Schopfung (Munchen 1985, 144, (ET London 1985, 133; idem, Das Kommen Gottes: Christliche Eschatologie (Gutersloh 1995), 40, (ET London 1996, 23). 3 Pannenberg, ST III, 573; 587 (ET 531; 544f.); idem, ST II (Gottingen 1991), 124 [ET (1994) 102]. 4 Pannenberg, ST III, 573, 651f. (ET 531, 605f); cf. ST I, 441-443 (ET 408^10). Cf. Moltmann's notion of the future as source of time, i.e. the transcendent future which transcends all historical time, Moltmann, Kommen Gottes, 316 (ET 287). To understand their peculiar conceptuality, it is relevant to know that Pannenberg and Moltmann assume a dialectics of potential and actual. That means that, for them, the future has ontological priority over past and present because of its unrealized potential. The actual is realized potential that cannot be undone. The latter is basic to the irreversibility of time. See Pannenberg, 5711, 119, 122f (ET 97f, lOOf); Moltmann, Kommen Gottes, 43, 311-313, 315f. (ET 26, 282f, 286f). However, what is the logical status of this 'cannot'? Is it a logical or a physical 'cannot'? If it is a logical 'cannot,' then in the word 'undone,' time within which the realization takes place is already presupposed, and which is, therefore, independent of this realized potential. Thus it cannot be in itself an argument for the irreversibility of time! 5 Moltmann calls it 'relative eternity' in his Kommen Gottes, 316 (ET 287).

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are not temporally ordered from God's point of view, which is external to our created universe. When the Kingdom of God is called both the 'future of perfection' and 'simultaneous' with all past, present and future, their basic image seems to be that of a transcending sphere which exists over against our historical reality.

3. A Timeless Block Universe Assuming that my interpretation of the logic of simultaneity of past, present and future is correct, we find ourselves in an odd situation. Seen from God's future, the history of created reality appears to be a timeless block universe within which all past, present and future events are simultaneously ordered.6 However, human creatures living within this block universe experience these events as temporally ordered according to past, present and future. In other words, from the internal perspective of creatures, time is subjectively experienced as the order of past, present and future, whereas from God's external perspective, such temporal order co-exists objectively next-to-eachother. This interpretation is consistent with Pannenberg's conception of the doctrine of creation: 'As one eternal act God's creative action embraces the whole cosmic process and permeates all phases of the divine action in its history/ 7 This unity of the divine agency is grounded in the unity of the divine eternal life which is constituted by the plurality of the three divine persons. Pannenberg takes up the Boethian-Plotinian concept of eternity which is defined as 'the simultaneous and perfect presence of unlimited life.' This is not understood as Augustinian eternal timelessnes but as the perfect possession of the fullness of life. According to Pannenberg, this means that both God's whole life and the created reality are present to him at one and the same time. Therefore, eternity is not opposed to time (i.e., it is not timelessness, according to Pannenberg) but embraces the totality of time, being constitutive of it. This idea is also compatible with the image of the created reality as a block universe of which past, present and future coexist next-to-each-other, whereas God has simultaneous full control of all

6 This universe can be seen as a kind of Minkowski diagram, a four-dimensional frame of reference of space-time which entails the interdependence of space and time. Although people think it is counter-intuitive, space-time makes it possible that facts or events which are described in terms dependent of the observer's spatial and temporal location, are describable in observer-independent terms in space-time. Within our discussion, it can be said that God observes the whole of his creation from his future all at once like one can observe a Minkowski diagram. Pannenberg, ST II, 57 (ET 41; NB: I translate the German 'ein' as 'one' and not as 'an' because the context stresses the unity of God's action).

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the temporal aspects of this universe.8 From God's point of view (i.e., his eternal all-encompassing perspective) the creation of the universe is neither an act in time nor the beginning of time but constitutes time itself and thereby the creaturely existence 'in all its range.'9 The final consequence of this conception of the temporal order of the universe is that all causes and effects, all series of physical causality and of intentional causality are 'already' given, although they cannot yet be perceived by human observers. When God's transcendent future exists as starting point from which he acts, and when the universe comprehends its past, present and future as next-to-each-other, the eschaton itself is already part of the picture, being given with creation. The eternal unity of the divine agency implies that 'God's creative action embraces the whole cosmic process.' In this vein, Pannenberg also argues that the goal of the created universe and its history is 'nearer to God than its commencement.' That means that 'in the coming of God into the world ... the goal of history, the kingdom of God, is already really present as the in-breaking of its consummation from the future.'10 In other words, the course of cosmic and human history, including salvation history, are given all at once with creation. And, because God's future as the reality from which he acts co-exists with the created universe, the consummation of his agency also co-exists with the created universe. Otherwise, we would have to accept a temporal order within God's agency itself, which order is claimed to be excluded from his relationship to the created world because of his eternity, i.e. his eternal simultaneity of divine life. Therefore, because this type of eschatology must stress the eternal simultaneity of creation and its 8 Idem, ST I, 437-443 (ET 404-410). Pannenberg's concept of divine eternal life has a trinitarian character: it is the full co-presence of the three divine persons on which the variety in the economy of salvation rests which in its turn is the basis of the plurality of things created. In his discussion with Nelson Pike on timeless eternity, Pannenberg fails to see that simultaneity of past, present and future is equivalent to timeless co-existence of all times. It is clear that in that case any temporal order is arbitrary and thus any distinction of the times becomes meaningless. 9 The logical problem of Pannenberg's concept of time is that his language assumes that the nature of time is such that it can be embraced by something else, i.e. by eternity. This presupposes a realist theory of time (and eternity) that gives a thinglike description of time as an objectively existent entity, independent of events. If time can be embraced by something else, it is assumed to be a thing. The notion of being embraced also suggests language that spatializes time. This realist nature of time is consistent with Pannenberg's somehow realist conception of space; see ST I, 446f. (ET 413); also ST II, 105-110 (ET 84-90). The idea of eternity being constitutive of time, however, is more compatible with a relational theory of time which is more consistent with the relational interpretation of the divine Triune Being. If this is the case, we get into difficulties with the coherence of Pannenberg's doctrine of God which he rightly spells out in relational terminology. If the relational (trinitarian) understanding of the divine Being is the organizing centre of systematic theology, then its relational character should be basic to all parts of theology as well, eschatology not excluded. 10 Idem, ST 1,422 (ET 390).

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!

consummation,' it has to stress a non-temporal distinction between creation and consummation as well.

4. Determinism without Decrees When creation means creation of a complete block universe, including its redemption and consummation, this implies that human freedom as liberum arbitrium (freedom from necessity) is essentially absent. This becomes clear when we imagine a block universe with all the events ordered next-to-eachother Such a universe also includes the series of choice, decision to act and action simultaneously. So agents may think that they have freedom of choice and freely perform their acts, whereas these are actually given in advance together with the creation of the universe. For in a block universe, all relations seem to be predetermined in that way. In that case, a block universe merely entails historical relationships that are already fixed because the complete network of relationships of history is created together with the creation of this universe. To illustrate this point, I might believe that I can freely choose between reading a novel, walking or writing a theological paper But the possibility of free choice only exists in my mind because the actual choice is already present in the relations of the block universe. From a perspective internal to the universe, I may think that my choice is up to me (that is how the universe is constructed), but from God's point of view I am created with my own history, including this particular choice. From God's point of view, this universe could be otherwise and is therefore contingent. However, once created as space-time, this universe is fixed for its human inhabitants For that reason we cannot say that they are free from compulsion, although they may think they experience such freedom. If the relation between God and the created universe can be understood as analogous to that of an external observer to a block universe, the traditional distinction between Eschaton and Proton collapses. For in Pannenberg's and Moltmann's conceptuality, God in his eternity is claimed to be immediately and simultaneously present to both the creation and the consummation of the history of the universe. By treating God's future like the place from which he acts, i.e. by spatializing his future and by claiming " Moltmann suggests that we should imagine eternal life as cyclical, which is a reflection of God's eternity; see Kommen Gottes, 324 (ET 295). But if eternal life and time were cyclical, there would be an endless repetition of identical events and moments, after a period. We can change the image of a cycle in that of a spiral movement but that does not change the notion of repetition of events which ends in taedium vitae. Dance and music, Moltmann's examples of such a cycle, are non-starters in this context: the whole idea of repetition neglects the infinite divine creativity and suggests that nothing new can happen.

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that his eternal present is tenseless or simultaneous, they use eschatological language in a future tense. But in fact they are treating God's future as akin to a place from which he eternally acts. Because of their concept of his eternal presence, it becomes difficult to distinguish between their notion of divine future agency as simultaneous to all history, and the classical Reformed notion of God's eternal counsel (consilium aeternum).12 Moltmann rejects this notion of the eternal counsel because it may lead to an absolute arbitrariness in God's Being, arguing that the divine Being determines the divine counsel or will.13 Whatever the merits of this argument, I fail to see the difference between the classical notion of the eternal counsel and this contemporary eschatological account, in spite of its use of future tense language. Both Moltmann and Pannenberg picture God's counsel as transcendent and eternal, and therefore absolutely free and logically antecedent to all things, because the eternal nature of God's future is simultaneously present to past, present and future aspects of history. In other words, they employ the classical idea of God's consilium aeternum as logically antecedent to history and then project it upon God's future as the place from which the triune God acts upon all times. There is, however, one peculiar difference with the Reformed tradition. The theologoumenon of the eternal counsel is a way of telling us how things that happen in time are related to the eternal decree of the triune God without being determined. Classical protestant theology expresses in this notion that the triune God wills all things including creation, reconciliation, redemption and consummation, i.e., they are ordered according to his eternal decree (decretum). It distinguishes the decree and the thing decreed (res decreta). That means that the execution of the decree to realize the decreed thing does not coincide with the decree itself. The execution of the eternal decree in temporal history respects contingency and possibility at the level of secondary causes, which are ordered or structured according to the boundaries set in the decree as first cause. That is to say, the consilium aeternum is meant to maintain the contingent character of creation both at the level of the prima causa and (especially) of the causae secundae.14 In 12

This notion of the consilium aeternum is present in Moltmann's Kommen Gottes, 310, 324 (ET 280, 294f). Pannenberg refers to Psalm 90 for an interpretation of 'heaven' as 'the place where ... resolve and execution being the same thing for God'; it 'expresses the thought that all times are present for the eternity of God'; see STI, 434f. (ET 402). 13 See Moltmann, Gott in der Schopfung, 92-96 (ET 79-83); he argues that the notion of a decision introduces 'a before-after structure' in God's essential nature; and this leads to the question 'whether the concept of freedom of choice can be really applied to God's eternal and essential liberty'; he denies that possibility (95; ET 82). Cf. Moltmann, Trinitat und Reich Gottes: Zur Gotteslehre, Munchen 1980, 69 (ET London 1981, 53f.). 14 Reformed theology gives priority to the divine will within the divine being because it emphasizes the personal character of the divine being. Therefore, the decrees depend on God's beneplacitum (good pleasure) alone. See Francesco Turrettini, Institutio theologiae elencticae

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the Pannenberg-Moltmann construction, however, divine agency (prima causa) is imagined to be forthcoming from God's transcendent future, which is his actual and consummate reality and the context of his final revelation. If this were the case, we could understand the eschatological situation as comprehending the created universe, juxtaposing its past, present and future next-to-each-other. As we saw already, on this view, the eschaton must itself already be part of the picture. In other words, divine agency is imagined to happen from a determined starting point which is the final eschatological context that already co-exists with the present moment of the created universe. This eschatological construction does not exclude contingency at the level of the prima causa because God is free to choose any eschatological context he wills from which to act. However, it excludes contingency at the level of the causae secundae, because it assumes an already realized transcendent Eschaton. To sum up my critique of the Pannenberg-Moltmann construction of the Eschaton: in spite of all the historical dynamics suggested by its use of future tensed conceptuality, it turns out to be more deterministic than any traditional doctrine of decrees has ever been. Its deterministic eschatology neglects the value of history that is supposed to be saved in the first place.

5. Is Reconstruction of Eschatology Helpful? Niels Henrik Gregersen argues that we may salvage Pannenberg's conception of the eternal unity of divine agency.15 Although the notion of the unity of divine agency suggests a conception of creation as a timeless block universe, seen from God's transcendent future, the trinitarian structure of Pannenberg's theology allows for an interrelation between the triune God and time. The immanent Trinity is the foundation of the economical Trinity which makes a divine 'in-temporality' possible because of the incarnation of the Son. If the incarnation of the second Person of the Trinity is real, the experiences of Jesus Christ need to be real experiences of the eternal Son That means the involvement of the second Person in the (1688), 1.4.q.4.6-10: 'certainty does not arise from the nature of second causes, which are free and contingent... although in relation to the first cause, all things are said to be necessary, yet taken according to themselves certain things can be free, contingent and fortuitous because each thing is and may be judged according to proximate and particular causes' ... Turrettini goes on to say that the necessity of the decree 'does not take away the liberty of spontaneity and indifference because the necessity is only hypothetical (ensuring the certainty of the event, but not taking away the nature and properties of second causes' (ET by G.M. Giger, Phillipsburg 1991). 15 See his generous interpretation of Pannenberg's theology in 'Einheit und Vielfalt der schSpferischen Werke Gottes; Wolfhart Pannenbergs Beitrag zu einer trinitarischen Schopfungslehre/ Kerugma und Dogma 45 (1999), 102-129.

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movement of temporal history is the involvement of Trinity and therefore his in-temporality. Gregersen also refers to Pannenberg's remark that 'there is room for becoming in God himself.'16 This allows for a trinitarian interpretation of the divine creative involvement in time. The Father in his creation makes divine involvement in temporal experiences possible, which involvement is realized in the incarnation of the Son, whereas the Spirit can be affected by the experiences of the creatures. Gregersen's interpretation is a re-interpretation of Pannenberg's construal in order to get rid of the eternity-time dichotomy. But this solution is a half-way measure because it leaves the timeless relationship of the divine Being and the block universe untouched. God's creation of the block universe implies the creation of salvation history as well because all history, the incarnation of the Son and the agency of the Spirit included, is part of this universe. Although in this interpretation, the eternal God is involved in his temporal creation, his involvement remains eternally created from God's transcendent future. Hence, from the point of view of the creatures these experiences of the Son and the Spirit are really changes, but from God's external perspective they are only Cambridge changes. It is difficult to see how this reconstruction can avoid a docetic Christology. When the divine transcendent future includes the consummation of this creation, this re-interpretation remains deterministic. Recently, Alan J. Torrance even argued in favour of a block universe. He criticizes Moltmann's conception of creatio ex nihilo as a kind of creatio originalis. Moltmann assumes in his doctrine of God's self-limitation a prior change in the divine Being when God makes room for the creature by withdrawing himself from himself. This withdrawal is the cause of the coming into being of the nihil which makes a creatio ex nihilo conceivable. Torrance claims that this prior change in God is temporally conceived by Moltmann, and that, therefore, he identifies creatio ex nihilo and creatio originalis followed by creatio continua as divine agency through time. According to Torrance, Moltmann's argument is fallacious: it assumes the 'myth of passage' of time. Ironically, Torrance proposes another concept of divine creation ex nihilo: God creates a four-dimensional spatio-temporal all-encompassing universe ex nihilo. Because time is included, creatio ex nihilo cannot be an event located within this space-time and, therefore, we should interpret divine creation in a non-temporal way (i.e., 'outside' or 'beyond' space-time). 'This opens the door for a more adequate perception of the immediacy' of the created universe to its Creator.17 Torrance's 16 Gregersen, 'Einheit und Vielfalt,' 126; see Pannenberg, STl, 473 (ET 438); cf. STII, 123 (ET 101). 17 Alan J. Torrance, 'Creatio ex Nihilo and the Spatio-Temporal Dimensions, with special reference to Jttrgen Moltmann and D.C. Williams,' in: Colin E. Gunton (ed.), The Doctrine of Creation (Edinburgh 1997), 83-103. In spite of the divine immediacy to the created universe this

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proposal of space-time, however, is precisely the block universe, assumed in the conception of divine agency from God's transcendent future. Although his argument starts with the notion of creation this spatiotemporal manifold cannot remedy the Pannenberg-Moltmann construction (this 'cannot' is a conceptual 'cannot').

6. Conclusion These difficulties might be avoided if one gave up the image of God acting from the future and the concept of divine eternity as simultaneity. That means giving up the idea that temporal ascriptions in the future tense are inappropriately ascribed to the divine Being: transience is not equivalent to perishability. If there is, however, development in the Kingdom of God, then it is a reflection of the eternally ongoing interaction of the persons of the Trinity which is the eternal life of the divine Being. This trinitarian interaction constitutes the divine time within which God makes time for us, that is he makes room for us in the act which we call 'creation.' Eternity, in my view, means that God has all the time he needs for the fullness of the trinitarian life. 18 Within this trinitarian time he makes time for us. Therefore we can imagine that God's relationship to human creatures moves towards an eschatological future that makes the concept of hope meaningful. The fact is that k hope' is in part a temporal concept.19 In this case, God cannot act from the future because the future is not a spatial next to the present but somehow a temporal after the present. And since God has all the time to act, theology should resist the temptation of spatializing time and eternity.

conception meets with the following conceptual difficulty. It assumes an external timelessness of God which cannot easily cope with the notion of the personal divine Agent in reciprocal interaction with temporally localized personal creatures. I cannot see how this construction can avoid a docetic tendency in interpreting the Christ-event and, above all, in pneumatological understanding of the relationships between the triune God and his creatures. 18 Cf. Robert W Jenson, 'Aspects of a Doctrine of Creation,' in: Gunton, Doctrine of Creation, 17-28, esp. 24-27. NB: In his Theologie und Reich Gottes (Guttersloh 1971), Pannenberg argues that time is characteristic of the divine Being (20). 19 Christian believers anticipate God's Kingdom despite all its scientific improbability, just because they are confident about the promise of the Kingdom. Promise is itself a relational nonscientific concept as well. Therefore, hope logically cannot collapse because of scientific counterarguments, but it strongly desires the future of the Kingdom which is beyond science.

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12. The Final Crucible Last Judgement and the Dead-End of Sin Niels Henrik Gregersen The big questions of Christian eschatology - resurrection, judgement, heaven and hell are treated, if at all, with extreme reticence in contemporary theology. There is nothing wholly new in this. Already Friedrich Schleiermacher was of the view that eschatological conceptions have no determinative part to play in an interpretation of the content of the Christian faith. For just as there are pious ways of renouncing the hope of individual immortality, so too there are impious ways of asserting it. Further, one can only speak figuratively, indeterminately and suggestively about eternal life Thus the stage was set for the solution characterized by Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang as 'the symbolist compromise.' By the year 1800 a gulf had opened up between, on the one hand, folk conceptions and traditional Christian belief in the hereafter and, on the other, an academic theology which observed a reticence in respect of all substantive conceptions of the world to come. Theologians adhered rather to Kant's insistence on the fcthaf of immortality than to the diffuse descriptions of the 'what and how' given in the Book of Revelation - provided, that is, that they did not follow Hegel in disavowing interest in personal immortality altogether. Vivid portrayals of eschatological hope were, unbegrudgingly, left to more rarefied spirits such as Emanuel Swedenborg."

1. The Homogenization of Eschatology in Dialectical Theology It is not difficult to spot a parallel with present-day systematic theology. However, from a historical point of view the emergence of dialectical theology represents a significant watershed. What was uniquely new about 1

Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith [21830] (Edinburgh 1989), § 158.1. Schleiermacher, § 159.2-3 ' Colleen McDannell & Bernard Lang, Heaven: A History (New Haven 1988), 322-332.

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dialectical theology was its combination of an eschatological restraint delivered by liberal theology, plus the unprecedented claim that every theological proposition is set in an eschatological key. In this respect dialectical theology stands indebted to the idea of 'consequent eschatology' of Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer. Here, every theological statement must pass through the awareness of contingency as if through a world conflagration. No God-talk can pass as unremarkable: talk of createdness is not natural; the content of revelation is paradoxical from beginning to end; and the coming of Christ into the world stands out as the most surprising event of all - a divine option which remains God's, never ours, never the church's. Since the era of dialectical theology, then, 'the last things' are only rarely - only when necessary - treated as a distinct theme. It would seem that those for whom all theology is eschatological have no need to reflect directly on such issues. Judgement ceases to be an event 'at the end of time' but is rather viewed as eternity intersecting time 'in the moment' - without ever merging with the continuity of temporal flux. Eschatology was thus elevated to the status of a principle underlying any talk about God.4 An oftquoted sentence in Karl Earth's lecture on the Letter to the Romans runs: 'A Christianity which is not wholly and utterly eschatological, has wholly and utterly nothing to do with Christ.'5 This new conception of eschatology made itself felt in the tone more than the content. Rapidly - too rapidly? - theologians grew accustomed to using the term 'eschatological' as though everyone knew what the word meant. The end of the world, death, judgement, resurrection, heaven and hell, consummation no longer enjoyed, as with Schleiermacher, the status of symbols rich with presentiment, gesturing towards a reality that eludes description. On the contrary, theology's utterances began to assume an assertive character. Already on the opening page of his great work Die letzten Dinge Paul Althaus writes: 'Qua theological statement, eschatology is categorical.'6 Eschatology is thus transformed from theme into principle. All theological statements oscillate between the remarkableness of the unforeseeable and the univocity of assertive utterance. Through a sustained valedictory stance towards the world 'the epiphany of the eternal present' is evoked.7 4 David Fergusson rightly refers to this as the 'eschatological turn in modern theology,' 'Eschatology,' in: Colin E. Gunton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine (Cambridge 1997), 226. Paradoxically, however, the turn towards eschatology as principle implied a turn away from the elaboration of a substantive eschatology. 5 Karl Barth, Der Romerbrief[\922, second rev. edn.j (Munchen 1926), 298. 6 Paul Althaus, Die letzten Dinge: Lehrbuch der Eschatologie [1922] (Gutersloh 101970), 1. 7 See the precise characterization by Jiirgen Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung: Untersuchungen zur Begrundung und zu den Konsequenzen einer christlichen Eschatologie [1964] (Munchen H1980), 74, cf. 31-60.

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The reign of God has already come - for faith, that is. Apart from faith things in the world remain the same. In retrospect it would almost seem as though dialectical theology virtually defined any theological issue as 'eschatological' in order to preclude an occupation with the last things in particular. The notion of Last Judgement is not discharged on epistemological grounds (as in Kant or Schleiermacher) but on strictly theological grounds. 'Parousia has already taken place!' said Bultmann triumphantly with reference to the revelation of Christ. 'Were the real advent of Christ yet to be, the actual coming of Christ would have been a misapprehension/ 8 According to Bultmann, divine judgement cannot be a distinct event separate from the revelation of the Word; for if it were, the revelation in Christ would not be final but merely provisional. In judgement there is nothing over and above the Word's luminous revelation of who we already are. In any case, judgement does not lay bare how God judges us but merely makes manifest how we determine ourselves in relation to the Word. 'It is not the Son Who judges, but the world which, as it were, judges itself.' Thus far Bultmann.'' The same strategy is followed, in principle, by Karl Rahner who argues transcendento-anthropologically rather than Christologically. He too removes all references to events yet to come. This leads him to assert that eschatology imports no new perspective into the interpretation of the Christian faith. Eschatology "is nothing but a reiteration of all that up to this point has been said about the human person: that the human person is a free, created spirit who has been blessed by God's self-communication. Eschatology does not represent a fresh accretion but serves to repeat the Christian understanding of the human person: 'the being who at any given present exists in an orientation towards its future.'10 These sentences are not merely purged of any hint of apocalyptic trumpet call; they are also purged of the possibility that judgement might figure as a symbol of the ultimate selfclarification of human persons and societies. Eschatology has been reduced to anthropology within the framework of a general conception of revelation.

8 Rudolf Bultmann, 'Die Eschatologie des Johannes-Evangeliums' [1928], in: Glauben und Verstehen Band \ (Tubingen 1933), 134-152, 144. Cf. Bultmann, Das Evangelium des Johannes [1941] (Gortmgen 1968), 113 (to John 3:19) and 193f (to John 5:24). 9 Bultmann, 'Die Eschatologie des Johannes-Evangeliums,' 139. 10 Karl Rahner, (irundkurs des Glaubens: Einfuhrung in den Begriff des Christentums (Freiburg 1976), 414

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1. The Semantic Surplus of the Notion of Last Judgement In this essay my concern is exactly the semantic distinctness attaching to the cluster of images surrounding the Last Judgement, a distinctness which resists reduction to anthropology (Rahner) or Christology (Bultmann). In my view, a leading motif in the conception of the Last Judgement is that there will at some point (not now!) be an unambiguous revelation of what already now is the case (but concealed!). The very idea of a 'Last' Judgement bespeaks a telling recognition of the limitations of Christian selfknowledge. What will be revealed includes what is concealed also to the believer! If this is so, the motif of judgement reveals itself as bursting the framework of ecclesiology. The futurity of judgement contains the archtheological concern: that judgement remains a divine prerogative. The 'Last Judgement' is God's and is therefore conceived as taking place on 'the Last Day.' The futurity of echatological imagery manifests that judgement is not of our determining. Equally, the spatial metaphors surrounding the idea of universal judgement underscores the public and impartial character of divine judgement. If judgement takes place in the presence of all creation, then it is no longer an individual matter between God and the individual; rather it incorporates a communal dimension. On the Last Day we are judged without discrimination. Various New Testament passages stress that God as Judge 'shows no partiality' nor any deference (Acts 10:34; Gal. 2:6; Eph. 6:9; Col. 3:25, cf. Mark 12:14). This feature demonstrates the organic connectedness of God's judgement and the divine insistence on justice in re-establishing the shalom of reconciliation between people. Without the reestablishment of reconciliation among different persons and communities the peace of consummation would merely perpetuate the injustice incurred within the disorder of creation. Divine judgement is passed on all - living as well as dead, victims as well as persecutors. In the following pages I interpret the divine judgement as the final crucible where the truths and illusions of our lives are laid bare. In this perspective, judgement is not the same as condemnation. The pivotal issue is learning, including learning to unlearn (§3). Furthermore, if Christ is the one and only Judge, the will to damnation cannot proceed from God. The possibility of perdition is given only with a creature's persistent refusal to recognize truth and justice, to accept the mercy of forgiveness, and to participate in the reconciled communion of God's reign (§4). Finally, I propose an annihilation theory, according to which perdition is interpreted as eternal nothingness rather than as eternal torment. Divine judgement is the dead-end of sin (§5).

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2. Divine Judgement as Purgative Crucible In the interpretation presented here the primary function of divine judgement is purgative, not one that leads to perdition. Lexically the term 'judgement' does not mean 'condemnation,' even though these concepts are often confused in ordinary language. However, to judge (krineiri) means at once to discriminate, to try and to deliver a decisive judgement. Condemnation is, at most, the extreme result of a situation where God's purgative judgement is so thorough that nothing remains. If judgement is primarily connected with purgation the motif of judgement is internally related to the phenomenon of trial which played such a pivotal role in shaping the theology of the Reformers. But whereas the concept of trial is related to the tests of life under the conditions of opaqueness in this aeon, the idea of Final Judgement implies that ambiguities are in the end removed and each of God's creatures shall find him- or herself confronted and embraced by the Truth and Light that God eternally is. Further, since the final test comes from God who is Love (1 John 4:8,16), the trial of judgement is either unbiased or, if biased, benevolently so. As such the idea of a final trial in the face of God differs markedly from the phenomenon of temptation which always has condemnation as its inner aim, and is thus only ascribed to the devil, not to God. Remember the principle of James: 4 No one, when tempted, should say, "I am being tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one' (James l:13).n Because divine judgement is related to the investigative scrutiny of ourselves and our deeds, the Day of Judgement too may be understood in terms of a crucible where the truths and lies, illusions and disillusions of our lives are laid bare as our faces are unveiled. As such the process of being judged by God cannot but involve hard learning processes. However, if we allow the symbol of God's judgement to be understood within the framework of Christian faith, the arduous acquisition of self-knowledge is always encompassed by an ever more increasing enjoyment of the fecundity of God's Justice and Light. In the New Testament, God's justice is not defined as a retributive justice but is to be understood in the light of God's generosity (Matt. 20:1-16; Rom. 3:21-26). Likewise, the surprising re-evaluation of shame and honour in God's calling of the low and weak would mean that God remains committed to shielding threatened identities from social scorn and transforming the human self into the image of Christ (1 Cor. 1:27-29; 1 ' The Greek term peirasmos - as well as the Hebrew term massah - does not differentiate between trial and temptation, as does Latin (probatio/tentatio). The Biblical interpretations of the Greek Fathers nonetheless were highly sensible to the difference between God's ordering of trials (1 Cor. 10:13) and the temptations coming from the devil (Matt. 4:1). On this issue, cf. my article, 'Trial and Temptation: An Essay in the Multiple Logics of Faith,' forthcoming in Theology Today.

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2 Cor. 3:18). Just as the recognition of sin is accompanied by the awed recognition of the generous nature of God's justice, equally the recognition of shame is encompassed by God's glory as disseminated to us.12 The notion of divine judgement thus embodies the insight that the reconstruction of the new self ('being transformed into the image of Christ') builds on the already created ('original') image of God and yet also demands a de-construction of the old self ('the Old Adam of sin). 'Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,' as Paul says (1 Cor. 15:50), and nor can envy, small-mindedness, self-glorification, self-abasement, self-hate etc. All this has to be consumed in the final judgement in order to allow a new self to emerge, attuned to the spirit of Christ, the true image of God.13 In other words, the pain associated with the difficult task of the re-orientation of self is embraced by God's will to continue and fulfil the transformation of self which had its beginnings, but was not accomplished in the life of this world. This is not least manifest in 1 Corinthians 3, the text which provides the background to the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. Having reminded his readers that Christ is the sole foundation on which hope can build, Paul writes: Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw - the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. And if what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burnt up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire (1 Cor. 3:12-15). The fire referred to in the text reacts differently in respect of the wooden (wood, hay, stubble) which is to be consumed than it does to the metallic (gold, silver, precious stones) which the fire will refine. Fire's duality as a symbol for annihilation and purgation is thus sustained. The intention of fire is not pain as retaliation, but a test of life as purgation (cf. Mai. 3:2-4). It is important that this text is not construed in terms of a purgatorial intermediate sphere between heaven and hell (as has been the case in classic Catholic tradition).14 Evidently, the text refers to the Last Judgement conceived as a 12 Cf. the rich portrayal of the 'hospitable face of Christ' in David Ford, Self and Salvation: Being Transformed (Cambridge 1999), 167-190. 13 Finely expressed by Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis 1996), 255: 'Judgment is the side of the eternal kingdom that is turned towards history.' 14 On the history of interpretation, see Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 3 (Gutersloh 1993), 663-^66.

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purgative judgement. On the Day of the Lord each of us will meet the reality we have suppressed along with the reality not yet annexed by our attempts at suppression: we have failed to take note of it because of the high degree of self-deception in our life. Then each person will be purged of the sense of his or her own importance which results from a wooden, selfcentered perspective on the world.

4. Christ the Judge: The Singular-Universal Criterion of Salvation There is possibly a point in the fact that no serviceable specification of the criterion of judgement is given in the New Testament. But throughout it is Christ who is Judge and no other: Therefore do not pronounce judgement before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each will receive commendation from God (1 Cor. 4:5). The tribunal is thus not one marked by a contest between voices for the prosecution and those for the defence, with the result being a vote that could go either way. Judgement is vested in the person of Christ. In that sense the criterion of judgement is not hidden, since it is the revealed and living Christ who will disclose what has hitherto been concealed, on the day when opportunities for evasion belong definitively to the past. To affirm this is to affirm the crucial fact that the Judge is also the Advocate who 'rescues us from the wrath that is coming' (1 Thess. 1:10, cf. Phil. 3:20). At this point it is all-important to revert to a pivotal theological principle formulated by Jurgen Moltmann as 'the method of providing christological answers for eschatological questions.'15 That Christ is Judge means that any initiative that points towards a possible condemnation could not proceed from the Judge but only, if at all, from a person's persistent volition to condemnation. According to the Apostolic Confession, the one who was later elevated as the Judge of all, went first to Land of the Dead to preach to the imprisoned spirits (1 Peter 3:19). This brief but important passage even suggests the possibility that God's persistence may overcome the persistence of a human stubbornness that would preclude a final transformation of selfhood. That Christ is our Advocate does not, however, strictly imply a soteriological universalism in the sense of the doctrine of apokatastasis. The Son, 15

Moltmann, Coming of God, 250, cf. 237.

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sent to the world by the Father, effects a demarcation in so far as not all are willing to receive the Light that has come into the world (and which has been in the world since the dawn of creation, John l:4b,9). There is, rather, a universal criterion for salvation which is uniquely defined in the incarnate Logos. If Jesus Christ was elevated to 'sit at the Father's right hand and judge the living and the dead,' we find in the singular history of Jesus Christ a disclosure of the universal pattern of divine judgement, which comes forth in the authority of Christ on the Last Day. Thus the ultimate criterion of justice and reinstatement is the same for all, Christians as well as non-Christians, those living before and those living after the coming of Christ, those living within the compass of the gospel's dissemination and those outside it.16 'God makes no distinctions' - and so will scarcely confer on Christians soteriological privileges that non-Christians do not enjoy. God 'desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth' (1 Tim. 2:4; cf. 4:10; Rom. 2:16). In the teaching of Jesus the same impartiality conies to expression in that he ascribes the faith required for salvation to those whose attitudes indicated that they sought God through him. He makes this ascription despite the fact that they didn't know the first thing about God's Son and despite their not being numbered among the people of the covenant (Mark 5:34; 10:52; cf. 7:27-30; Luke 7:50 with 17:19). But again, there is no direct route from the impartiality and universality of the criterion of judgement to a soteriological universalism. Such soteriological automatism is, as a rule, justified through appeals to what is claimed to be known about God from other contexts, in terms of a onesidedly goodness-focused image of God. The difficulty with the doctrine of apokatastasis resides not primarily in the tenuousness of its Scriptural underpinnings. After all, no systematic eschatology - neither universalism nor a separationist theory of double destiny - can be 'derived' from Scripture without further ado. At least equally important is the fact that the notion of divine judgement is detached both from the futurity of God's sovereign decision and from its connections with the anthropology of accountability. The doctrine of apokatastasis, qua doctrine, seems to preempt the outcome of God's judgement; in the light of the symbolic intent behind the Last Judgement such doctrinalization seems inadmissible. The belief in the restoration of all things has its proper locus in the Christian faith's profession of hope, whilst retaining the recognition that the future is of God's determining. In the same vein, a strong doctrine of universalism

16

Acutely seen by Paul Althaus, Die letzten Dinge, 187: 'Um die Kirche, nicht urn 'Gottlosen' oder die Unglaubigen im Sinne oberflachlichen pietistisch-kirchlichen Sprachgebrauchs handelt es sich, wenn wir von der Gefahr, ewig verlorenzugehen, sprechen.'

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seems to pre-empt the possibility of a creature's persistent refusal to be transformed by the glory of God, the God-given possibility of saying No.17 Now is there an alternative to the doctrines of separationism and universalism? Indeed I believe there is. The relatively unnoticed annihilation theory seems to incorporate important concerns of both doctrines. Furthermore, the idea of perdition as annihilation is congruent with the understanding of divine judgement as a crucible, a final test of life.

5. Receding Perdition: The Annihilation Theory Again, how are we to conceive of perdition? Indeed, here 'categoric utterances' of theology appear misplaced. The only alternative seems to be that of proposing various hypothetical constructions in order to consider what their respective consequences would be. Each of these theoretical constructions may thus be assessed indirectly on the basis of what are arguably its implications, and which consequently admit of comparison with those that would seem to follow from the others. I have already indicated some of the difficulties that a straightforward doctrine of apokatastasis faces, whatever sound motives might lie behind it. But, it might be argued, is there not an even greater price to pay in opting for the classical Western theory of a double destiny? How could symbols such as heaven and hell, eternal life and eternal perdition possibly be given a positive theological meaning? The question is whether anyone who on the Day of Judgement is confronted with a searching revelation of the selfdeception of his or her own life, would genuinely want to persist with such a project which now - on the Day of Enlightenment - unambiguously displays its complete unviability. Only those who not even in this situation would accept God's generosity are lost. Even the sovereign God is faced with the human possibility of not wanting to learn. God cannot save those who resist salvation and cleave instead to their anger, their sense of grievance, or their pride. To learn or not to learn, that's the question.

17 Against this position, Jiirgen Moltmann argues that the very idea of a double end is based on 'secular humanism': The logic of Hell seems to me not merely inhumane but also extremely atheistic: here the human being in his freedom of choice is his own lord and God,' The Logic of Hell/ in: Richard Bauckham (ed.), God mil Be All in All: The Eschatology of Jiirgen Moltmann (Edinburgh 1999), 43-47, 45. Even though Moltmann here expresses an important concern, 1 believe he commits an over-kill. First, his thesis would be difficult to substantiate from a histoncal perspective. Second, and more importantly, his view neglects the difference between a human will exercised under the historical conditions of self-delusion and a human will enlightened by God's glory on the Last Day. Human freedom in the eschatological presence of God's overwhelming truth is a real freedom - much more real and much more free than a neutral liberum arbitrium.

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But how then is perdition to be understood? In this too we are in symbolic mode, but then it becomes only the more imperative to decode the symbols. As far as I can see, there are ultimately two distinct constructions, each with its own inner logic, and each with its own anthropological implications. The first code is ethical in character and is construed under the lead difference between goodness versus evil. This ethical code is traditionally articulated in terms of a retributory logic: the good are to be vindicated whilst vengeance is to be rained down on the wicked. It is this code that leads to the dichotomy of heaven and hell. It constitutes without doubt the most popular representation and has been officially sanctioned by the church.18 The most extreme ramification that the notion of the eternal torments of the damned opens up to is to be encountered in the writings of Gregory the Great where it is claimed that the bliss and gratitude of the saved is further enhanced by the contemplation of the torture of the damned (Dialogues IV.46). This consideration is by any human standards quite shameless, which fact in itself constitutes a counter-argument. But the notion of eternal torment is itself theologically inconsistent. For if eternal life involves the apotheosis of malicious pleasure or Schadenfreude, it is committed to a conception of hell as an essential division of heaven. God, who perennially preserves the priority of generosity, would then become an agent with the role of one permanently aggrieved. It would surely be a horrific thought if such a God were to be all in all. The alternative code is ontological and is construed under the lead difference of life versus death, articulated in terms of the vindication of victims and the eternal demise of evil. This code finds embodiment in the distinction between eternal life and eternal death. In this context perdition is conceived as the return to nothingness of disbelief and lovelessness. The fires of hell are thought of not as the fire of torture but as the consuming fire that leaves no residuum to torment. Thus an annihilation theory stands opposed to a torment theory, with the question concerning which represents the closer approximation to reality lying beyond the bounds of verification. However, these two total conceptions do admit of comparison on the basis of their respective corollaries. What weighs heaviest in favour of the annihilation theory is not the catalogue of 'Scriptural evidences' where reference to annihilation

18 The Augsburg Confession (1530) of the Lutheran Churches unanimously says in article XVII: 'It is also taught among us that our Lord Jesus Christ will return on the last day for judgement and will raise up all the dead, to give eternal life and everlasting joy to believers and the elect but to condemn ungodly men and the devil to hell and eternal punishment. Rejected, therefore, are the Anabaptists who teach that the devil and condemned men will not suffer pain and torment.'

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19

occurs. What points towards it rather is its organic connectedness with the belief in creation and the creedal proclamation of Christ. In terms of the theology of creation both existence generally and human life in particular are and remain, as realities, contingent upon God's will to sustain creation, and never a matter of course. Both existence itself and the anything but trivial ways in which the world is ordered manifest the Divine goodness. By contrast sin does not have independent being and can thus not undergo torment in eternity. Sin is, on its classical Augustininian understanding, privatio bom, the absence of the good creation. But God cannot eliminate his own Creation without failing of consistency. What God can and must eliminate, however, is sin. Not divinely created being, then, but the negation of being is what must be consumed by fire on the Day of Judgement. Then it is that sin will be shown up in all its ontological contingency. The fire is that which destroys all existence that seeks to live for itself, but which is unable to live for itself. 20 The difference between an understanding of hell as eternal torment as against eternal death has an anthropological aspect to it too. Whereas the torment theory presupposes, once created, the soul's inherent immortality, the annihilation theory operates with a personal union of body and soul sustained only through God's continued creative and life-renewing activity. The annihilation theory thus presupposes a rejection of a mind-body dualism. For this reason, it can be more flexible in constituting the identity of a self than the classic theory of a disembodied soul which owns a fixed identity which is then either wholly saved or wholly condemned. Finally, the annihilation theory has strong resonances with the Johannine and the early church's Logos Christology. According to Athanasius the human person is, after sin, subject to death; only through the person's new fellowship with the life-giving Logos can he or she attain immortality. Perdition as the extreme outcome enters in only through individuals persisting in saying no to fellowship with God's Logos which in Christ has been revealed as the Lover of humanity (philanthropes).21

6. Conclusion In conclusion, we may say that perdition, thus conceived, is a result of forswearing connectedness with the life-giving God and with all that lives. 19

However, some evangelical theologians argue, even on fundamentalist premises, for the annihilation theory; see Edward William Fudge, The Fire That Consumes: The Biblical Case for Conditional Immortality (Carlisle 1994). 20 In modem theology, Paul Tillich has elaborated an eschatology which can be interpreted as an annihilation theory. Systematic Theology Vol. Ill (London 1963), 407-^09 and 397-401. ^ ! Athanasius, De incarnationc Vcrhi V . I and IV.2.

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As such, it is a simple consequence of the self-disintegration of a will bent on remaining outside the being of the power that bestows life. Perdition is an internal consequence of human obduracy, and not a punishment externally imposed by God as the torment theory would have it. Persistence in obduracy is an option which is inalienable from people whom God has created with self-determination. However, it is hard to imagine that anyone confronted with the Truth on the Day of Enlightenment should persist in a repudiation of the very life project initiated by God's creation. From the basic commitments of Christian faith, it seems that universal salvation is the only one outcome one could hope for. However, not everything is granted entry into the Reign of God. The final mortification of sin in the purgative crucible of judgement preserves the legitimate motif of separationism. On the annihilationist account, the double end may be a double destiny for each and anybody. The pivotal issue with divine judgement is learning, including learning to unlearn, and each creature will have to give up what cannot find entry into the Reign of God. In this sense, the Last Judgement has a severity of its own, but is finally joyous. With Moltmann, 'It is a source of endlessly consoling joy to know, not just that the murderers will finally fail to triumph over their victims, but that they cannot in eternity even remain the murderers of their victims.'22 In short, judgement will make manifest that we are essentially more than victims, but also more than culprits. Translated by Susan Dew

22

Moltmann, Coming of God, 255.

13. Eschatology with a Vengeance Hell as the Greatest Conceivable Evil Wilko van Holten

1. Introduction In the recently published Companion to the Philosophy of Religion, Michael Peterson closes his article on the problem of evil with the remark that 'new issues are already on the horizon, such as ... the relation of the doctrine of hell to the problem of evil/ 1 In this remark Peterson alludes to the fact that various philosophers of religion (e.g., Adams, Freddoso, Kvanvig, Walls) have recently drawn an analogy between the doctrine of hell on the one hand and the general problem of evil on the other. Marilyn McCord Adams, to quote only one of these philosophers, states this analogy in the following words: 'hell poses the principal problem of evil for Christians. Its challenge is so deep and decisive, that to spill bottles of ink defending the logical compossibility of (I) [God exists and is essentially omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good, WvH)] with this-worldly evils while holding a closeted belief that ... some created persons will be consigned to hell forever, is at best incongruous and at worst disingenuous.'2 What becomes clear from statements like these is that, according to these philosophers, hell poses a problem for Christian theism because it constitutes a great evil. As a matter of fact, within the Christian tradition hell is seen as more evil than anything else: 'according to standard traditions, being in hell is the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.'3 As with ordinary mundane evils, such as deprivation, torture, enslavement, 1 Michael L. Peterson, The Problem of Evil,' in: Philip L. Quinn & Charles Taliaferno (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford 1999), 401. 2 M.M. Adams, 'The Problem of Hell: A Problem of Evil for Christians,' in: E. Stump (ed.), Reasoned Faith: A Festschrift for Norman Kretzmann (Ithaca, NY 1993), 302. See also Jerry Walls, Hell: The Logic of Damnation (Notre Dame, Ind. 1992), 3; Jonathan Kvanvig, The Problem of'Hell (New York 1993), 12 3 Kvanvig. Problem of Hell, 3

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humiliation, etc., the question arises how the existence of this special kind of evil can be reconciled with the existence of an omnipotent and perfectly good God. Thus Alfred Freddoso claims that 'there is ample reason for thinking that ultimately the most troublesome form which the problem of evil can take for the orthodox Christian is just this: How is the existence of a benevolent and almighty God to be reconciled with even the possibility of someone's going to hell?'4 Rather than addressing this question in this paper,51 want to look more specifically at this alleged analogy between hell and ordinary, mundane evil. What does this analogy amount to? What does it mean to say that hell constitutes a great evil? And if hell is a version of the problem of evil, can it likewise be dealt with?

2. The Analogy between Hell and Evil Traditionally, hell is thought to constitute a twofold evil: First of all, the evil of being separated from God forever - and the concomitant loss of the beatific vision (yisio dei)\ and secondly, the evil of unending mental and/or physical suffering inflicted on those in hell. Medieval theologians designated both evils (interpreted as punishments) respectively as poena damni (pain of separation) and poena sensus (pain of affliction).6 In view of this twofold evil, we can come to understand why theologians maintain that being in hell is an excruciatingly bad thing indeed. However, it is not immediately clear where exactly the analogy between hell and ordinary, mundane evil(s) lies. A moment's reflection reveals that there is little connection between the separation from God and, say, being paralyzed due to a car accident. For there is nothing objectively bad (in the sense that most people would agree on it) in the loss of the beatific vision, whereas most people would agree that paralysis is a bad thing. The former (separation from God) is only a bad thing from the perspective of faith. For what objective evil, I would ask, would be involved if someone were to be separated (or separates herself) from God forever, if that individual never cared about the Christian God in the first place? Indeed, the conviction that the separation from God is something evil, is something only Christians will subscribe to. The notion of poena damni, in other words, makes sense only if one already presupposes a theistic faith; it can be meaningfully 4

Alfred J. Freddoso (ed.), The Existence and Nature of God (Notre Dame, Ind. 1983), 3. I try to answer this question in my paper on 'Hell and the goodness of God,' Religious Studies 35 (1999), 37-55. 6 On these terms see Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan 31989), 229; Roy J. Deferrari, A Latin-English Dictionary ofSt Thomas Aquinas (Boston 1960), 797. 5

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understood only in the context of the theistic view of life of which it is an indispensable part. As I said, within this context this separation is not merely seen as one evil among many it is viewed as worse than anything else. Why? Because within Christianity, the being in relationship with God is itself viewed as the highest good and as entailing ultimate happiness. As a counterpart of this conviction the loss of this unity is the worst thing that can ever happen to anyone. Because of the fact that this kind of evil is so wrapped up in metaphysical theistic convictions (like the existence of God, the reality of an afterlife, and many other religious truth claims), I dub it metaphysical evil. 7 Yet, it is clear that this evil is of a radically different nature than thisworldly evils that traditionally play a role in arguments against belief in God. Hence, it does not have much to do with the problem of evil as usually understood. So if there is an analogy between hell and mundane evil, it must lie in the second kind of evil that we distinguished above: the pain of affliction. And indeed, little imagination is required to see this connection. If the inhabitants of hell (assuming that there are any) are being mentally and/or physically tortured, the question is urgent as to how an omnipotent and perfectly good God can let such suffering occur. And this question, of course, echoes the one that is so often asked in relation to the evils in this world (whereas it cannot be meaningfully asked in relation to the metaphysical evil of hell). For this second kind of evil it is sometimes claimed that it. too, is worse than anything else - compared to any mundane evil. By this is usually meant the intensity of the suffering in hell (a suffering so severe that it is beyond description), and also the fact that this suffering is everlasting. While ordinary, mundane suffering is necessarily limited in time for death brings all earthly suffering to an end 8 - hell is traditionally taken to be eternal.9 To sum up, saying that hell constitutes a great evil is saying two things: first of all, it is saying that from the perspective of faith, being in hell amounts to living a life of utter meaninglessness for it is lived apart from God; and secondly, it is saying that being in hell amounts to being subjected It might also be properly labelled 'evil of meaninglessness' for according to Christian belief going to hell robs a person's life of positive meaning - even though this life was apparently meaningful during its earthly existence. Christians maintain that the everlasting separation from God is in itself an evil great enough to make even the most prosperous life on the whole bad 8 In this connection Richard Swinburne, 'The Free Will Defence,' Archivio di Filosofla 56 (1988), 591, speaks of death as 'God's safety barrier,' for death ensures that there is necessarily a limit to the amount of suffering significantly free beings can inflict on one another. 9 Throughout this paper I presuppose the traditional view of hell which I take to be eternal conscious punishment of the wicked See Kvanvig, Problem of Hell, 19, 25ff. for what is constitutive of this view

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to the worst agony conceivable. In short: the evil of hell has a metaphysical and a horrendous aspect to it. In view of this latter kind of evil, I propose as a working definition, the notion of hell as 'the greatest conceivable evil.' It is important to appreciate that only in virtue of its horrendous aspect, hell is analogous to this-worldly evil(s). Before I bring one of the strategies to cope with mundane evil to bear on the problem of hell, let us dwell on this definition of hell as 'the greatest conceivable evil' for a while. Is this actually a coherent concept? Do we know what is 'greatest conceivable' when it comes to evil? My definition seems to presuppose a criterion in the light of which we can decide what is worse than anything else in this respect. Yet, although I believe that we have moral intuitions that enable us to distinguish between greater and lesser evils, such a criterion is clearly not at our disposal. However, I do not think that such a criterion is required for the notion of 'greatest conceivable evil' to make good sense. We may find a clue to its meaning in the definition of 'horrendous evils,' proposed by Marilyn McCord Adams elsewhere. She defines horrendous evils as 'evils the participation in ... which gives one reason prima facie to doubt whether one's life could ... be a great good to one on the whole.'10 As instances of such evils she mentions psychological torture, the ultimate goal of which is the disintegration of personality, having to choose between the lives of one's children, parental incest, etc. Now what the notion of hell as 'the greatest conceivable evil' intends to convey is the idea that hell - whatever else it may be - is worse than any such evil. This definition suffices for my purpose of treating hell analogously to this-worldly evil(s). At this point one may perhaps wish to circumvent this analogy between hell and evil altogether by interpreting the pain of affliction in terms of the pain of loss; the separation from God, that is to say, by itself is the greatest conceivable evil for those not saved.11 This, of course, would amount to dropping the notion ofpoena sensus altogether by assimilating it to the pain of loss, and in that case the analogy with mundane evil would not even get off the ground for, as I argued above, this analogy cannot be intelligibly drawn. Although this would be an easy way to solve the problem of hell (there remains, apart from the metaphysical aspect, no evil to account for), there is one important reason to resist this suggestion. This has to do with the fact that the 'horrendous aspect of hell,' as I have called it, is constitutive for one of the functions which the doctrine of hell fulfils within the whole of the Christian faith, viz. that ultimately justice will triumph in God's universe; that wrongdoing will be rectified. This is implied, I believe, 10 M.M. Adams, 'Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God,' in: M.M. Adams & R.M. Adams (eds.), The Problem of Evil (Oxford 1990), 211. 1 ' This suggestion was made to me during the conference by Prof. Vincent Brummer.

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i2

by the goodness of God. But also apart from that, we should not simply drop a traditional doctrine without inquiring whether or not it can be sustained. Let us therefore continue to treat hell as an evil analogous to mundane evil and see how far we get. As to the problem of evil, it has mainly been given two quite different formulations: logical and evidential. Both versions subsequently question the possibility and the plausibility of Christian theism in the light of evil. Theists in turn have tried to provide answers to these criticisms. Now if these answers are satisfactory, they may shed some light on how to deal with hell as well Can the defences (or theodicees) of ordinary, mundane evil be applied to hell so as to account for this evil as well? Or does hell (being the greatest conceivable evil) pose a stronger problem for Christian theism than mundane evil? I will confine myself here to making some comments related to the logical problem of evil.

3. Hell and the Logical Problem of Evil The logical problem of evil basically comes down to the charge that (classical) theism cannot even be possibly true, because it incorporates an inconsistent set of propositions, Theists, it is argued, are committed to (1) (2)

A perfectly good, omniscient, and omnipotent God exists; and Fvil exists,

and since both propositions can be shown (implicitly at least) to contradict each other, or so the argument goes, theism is incoherent.13 It is acknowledged by many that Alvin Plantinga, among others, has provided a successful rebuttal of this charge of logical inconsistency. Plantinga has argued that, in order to show that (1) and (2) are consistent, one needs to find a third proposition that is consistent with (1), and in conjunction with (1) entails ( 2 ) . And he thinks that something like (3)

God creates significantly free beings, who in virtue of their being free sometimes perform morally wrong actions

logically does the trick. 14 But suppose now that we replace (2) with 12

See my 'Hell and the goodness of God/ 39, 54-55. See eg., J L Mackie, 'Evil and Omnipotence,' in: B. Mitchell (ed.), The Philosophy of Religion, (Oxford 1971), 92-104 for a classic statement of this objection. 14 Cf A Plantinga, The Free Will Defence,' in: Mitchell (ed.), Philosophy of Religion, 105 120 n

186 (4)

Wilko van Holten Some created persons will endure the misery of hell.

What if we construe hell as a version of the logical problem of evil? Given that hell is the greatest conceivable evil, does the above solution mutatis mutandis apply to it? Does the amount of evil, in other words, matter? For two reasons this does not seem to be the case. First, apart from some rather vague intuitions, we lack a criterion in the light of which we can measure or specify amounts of evil. And secondly, even if we did have such a criterion, the argument could be easily restated so as to incorporate such an amount of evil - as Plantinga himself envisages.15 For other reasons, however, the existence of hell does seem to render this solution problematic. According to classical doctrine the horrendous evil of hell is not something due to the choices of created free beings, but is inflicted - or at least deliberately wanted - by God himself. The question then becomes whether there could ever be a reason for a perfectly good God to inflict the greatest conceivable evil on anyone? The traditional answer to this question, of course, is that some people deserve hell as a punishment for their sins. Against the backdrop of this traditional claim, we might try to pursue the Plantingian strategy again. Thus we need to find a proposition that is consistent with (1), and in conjunction with (1) entails (4). Such a proposition might be something like (5)

Some created persons are sufficiently sinful to deserve hell as a punishment for it.

This proposition represents what may be called the 'deserved-punishment defence.' Since there is nothing logically wrong with God sending some people to hell as a punishment for their sins, I certainly believe that (5) can do the trick to rebut the charge of inconsistency between (1) and (4); for if (5) is consistent with (1) their conjunction entails (4). However, the consistency of (1) and (5), i.e., the view that the punishment of hell for human sin is compatible with God's perfect goodness has recently become subject to profound criticism.16 The critics have argued, rightly I believe, that an everlasting punishment for finite human sin is, from a moral point of 15

Plantinga, 'The Free Will Defence,' 117-118. Cf. Marilyn McCord Adams, 'Hell and the God of Justice,' Religious Studies 11 (1975), 433-447; Thomas Talbott, 'Punishment, Forgiveness, and Divine Justice,' Religious Studies 29 (1993), 151-168; Kvanvig, Problem of Hell, 27-55; John Hick, Evil and the Love of God (London 1966), 377-385; John Hick, Death and Eternal Life (London 1976), 198-201. Although he does not agree with it, a very clear and concise formulation of the moral objection to hell can be found in Charles Seymour, 'Hell, Justice and Freedom,' International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43 (1998), 69-70. 16

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view, a very problematic sanction. If this is so, God can never be justified in inflicting the greatest conceivable evil on anyone. Hence, the 'deservedpunishment defence' does not succeed in rebutting the charge of logical inconsistency between ( 1 ) and (5) unless it is shown that God's punishing someone with the greatest conceivable evil of hell is consistent with his perfect goodness As far as 1 am concerned, however, this has yet to be shown. An alternative defence along Plantingian lines, however, has recently been put forward by William Lane Craig. According to Craig, no opponent of the traditional Christian view has 'succeeded in demonstrating that there is no possible world in which God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent and yet in which some persons do not receive Christ and are damned.' 1 Instead, Craig argues, it is possibly true that those persons, who in this world freely reject Christ and are damned, would have done so in any world feasible for God to create. That is to say, due to his choice to create free persons, it might be impossible for God to create a world in which all are saved and none damned or even one in which there are more saved over damned than in our actual world. And since God is omnibenevolent, it must be true that our actual world is one in which the balance between the number of saved over damned is optimal. Analogously to Plantinga's notion of 'transworld depravity/ Craig invokes the notion of 'transworld damnation for those persons that would be damned in any world feasible for God in which they exist. In view of this, Craig formulates a proposition that is consistent with ( 1 ) and in conjunction with (1) entails (4): (6)

God has actualised a world containing an optimal balance between saved and unsaved, and those who are unsaved suffer from transworld damnation. ls

How are we to evaluate this argument? I think (6) yields a successful rebuttal of the logical problem of hell only if the premises on which it relies, (Molinism, the truth-value of certain counterfactuals of freedom, etc.) can be sustained. It is certainly not the place here to assess these premises in their own right. It should be noted, however, that Molinism is a very controversial issue and precisely for this reason Craig's paper has been extensively criticised.19 For my own part, I find it somewhat ironical, to say the least, that as fervent a 1 17 W.L. Craig, "'No Other Name' : A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Ex Salvation Through Christ/ Faith and Philosophy 6 (1989), 183. 18 Craig, "'No Other Name,'" 184 19 William Hasker. 'Middle Knowledge and the Damnation of the Heathen: A Response to William Craig/ Faith and Philosophy 8 (1991), 380-389; David Hunt, 'Middle Knowledge and the Sotenological Problem of H v i l , ' Religious Studies 27 (1991), 3-26; Adams, 'The Problem of Hell.' esp 306-319.

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defender of Molinism as Craig argues for the logical consistency between hell and a perfectly good, omniscient, and omnipotent God. For it seems to me that Molinism by itself could equally lead to universalism. Clearly then, it is not so much Craig's commitment to Molinism that leads him to his conclusions, but rather his antecedent commitment to the idea (taken as a revealed truth) that many created persons are in fact damned. As Craig puts it: 'If we take Scripture seriously, we must admit that the vast majority of persons in the world are condemned and will be forever lost.'20 Personally, I hold the view that, apart from a very literal interpretation of some passages of Scripture, there is nothing in Christian theism that compels us to believe that it is certain that some people are lost forever. On the contrary, belief in God's perfect goodness seems to point in a different direction. But if we are prepared to leave such considerations aside, and go along with Craig's assumptions, I think his argument does provide a successful solution to the problem of hell construed as a version of the logical problem of evil (or in Craig's terms: to the 'soteriological problem of evil'). Thus it can be shown that no logical problem arises for Christian theism if it were to affirm the existence of hell along with the existence of God. Whether the theist can maintain the postulation of hell, as I have defined it, on other than logical grounds, is a question that still needs to be answered.

20

Craig, '"No Other Name,"' 176.

14. John Zizioulas on the Eschatology of the Person Douglas Knight It is an open secret that John Zizioulas, representative of Greek Orthodoxy on the international ecumenical scene, is himself one of the theological giants. He has not published much more than Being in Communion, and what there is, is almost gnomic and appears to be largely about innerChurchly concerns. There is a growing number of people who have looked to him for a distinctive statement on personhood, but with it has grown the number who have read him in a hurry and missed the extent and distinctiveness of his thought. Zizioulas draws a distinction between the concept of the individual and the concept of the person. The individual is a demonic and tragic concept: as long as he is understood as individual, removed from the whole sum of the relationships he stands in, he is an aberration, a person only in an antitheological sense A person on the other hand is not an individual but a plural being, who sums up and makes present the whole relationship world. The Zizioulas use of 'person' is not, as in everyday usage, synonymous with 'individual/ The identity of a particular person is not to be found somewhere deep inside him or her: he has no self, centre, soul or other form of private existence before being exposed to the world of relationship. The identity of each person is spread across the whole extent of the nexus of human personhood. It is not hidden in a monadic internal place without extension; it is rather constituted and sustained everywhere, and by everyone. Zizioulas does not assert that one person is the function of many other persons, for then the question would indeed just be of which persons and which community? Rather, each person is the function of all persons. All the persons in the whole history of the world will be constitutive of the being of each and every person in the world. Certainly all the fallen creatures of the world together are not sufficient to sustain the being of a single creature, to bring even one of their number to perfection, so the logic of such a statement must be an eschatological logic. But this world has no other logic than as the creation of God, and its Creator is free to be present to his creatures in it, one economy with them. The trinitarian persons must therefore be included amongst the persons of the

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world, and as the trinitarian persons are constitutive of each other, so they are also constitutive of all other persons of creation. Beyond persons, there is no being. There is no substrate of any stuff to which we could give the name 'being,' that lies behind persons or which provides them with their basis. The trinitarian persons are persons to one another, and are fully able to correspond to each other: their being and doing does not require the supply of any being-stuff, nor leave any remainder of being-stuff behind it. The Trinitarian Persons are therefore the full and sufficient condition of 'human' persons. Because God empersons others, the conditions of personhood for all are met; no conditions remain unmet. This is the point most in need of reiteration, for it is different from the usual inquiry into conditions, which assumes that there are other conditions, and that they have not been met, or that they have been met locally in Christ, but their universal achievement remains in question. The whole nexus of humanity is what characterises the identity of each one of us. The sum of Adamic humanity is not of itself sufficient to do this, but the identity of Adamic humanity and with it the particularity of you and me is really given and secured by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is not available either to 'humanity' or to individuals to give away or to add to. God is already society, and 'human' society is not (yet) society. Our personhood is their work, and now in the Church the whole personhood of Adam's race becomes our eucharistic co-work. Questions that seek individualistic answers simply serve to restate the demonic loneliness of man the individual, who intends to arbitrate between God and himself. Zizioulas refuses to fall in with assumptions about an entity called 'the world' as long as this is by default a world that consists of individuals. The world has no dignity or unity - not yet. What we are pleased to call 'the world,' or 'Society,' are many by-ways and cul-de-sacs, all of which are known by the Church and in that sense not outside it, but which are for the world's sake rejected by it. So as long as we ask him how individuals may take their place in the Christian community or in the world, how they may establish their boundaries or how the Church may make itself relevant to the world, or how we may know any of this, we are asking questions that play on the dichotomy between individual and society. Zizioulas can only repeat that this distinction is spurious and must be replaced by the more fundamental distinction between individual and person, because this asserts the absolute primacy of relation, the co-priority of relation with being. Persons are already entirely plural; particularity and diversity are equally safeguarded by personhood and may not be played off against each other. The fundamental assumption of the incompatibility of one-and-many that is the basis of all sociological-political and ethical debate is wrong, and a concept of persons in constitutive relation contests the familiar individual-versus-community definitions of humanity and

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sociality, systematised in the social sciences and assumed by much theological anthropology and ethics. This is the Cappadocian revolution, a comprehensive Christian deconstructing of ontology as protology, and its replacement by eschatological ontology, a move not to be found in any other tradition, and which establishes man and God as free.

1. The Tragic-Biological Hypostasis God's intention is to come to man and be with him. This coming to man is an event not initiated by the fall, though the fall now dictates that salvation must be the idiom of this coming. The fall does not make sin constitutive or allow us to talk about it abstracted from its dissolution in salvation. Though only sin is possible for bodies determined by death, death also sets the limits to what sin can achieve. Sin cannot become terminal or speak a defining word: it is contained and sealed off in the damage-limitation exercise of the biological hypostasis, the world and those bodies, human and other, of which the world consists. Considered on its own terms this body is also tragic.1 To gain strength for your body you have to break open animal bodies and consume them, and take their death as your further lease on life. It is by sex that we come into being, and by it we are drawn together to another person and with them to reproduce ourselves, but succeed only in reproducing children who, though they are like us, are not us, and who in the course of their upbringing age us and take our place. By its bounds this body of ours is made for communion with others, driven by its desire to meet and be with others - and by its bounds that communion is denied it, it is divided from other bodies and left to its own dissolution. Sin takes the form of individualised being - being an individual. This is not a problem for which a new, extrinsic solution has to be sought, for it is already part of a solution. God has, from the first, kept man safe within the biological hypostasis of the world, held where he cannot do any serious damage to himself. God does not have to cross alien ground to reach man, nor to recover him from some state that he has achieved and sustains for himself from his own resources. Just as there is no such thing as human nature, neither have we accomplished for ourselves something called fallen nature. The tragic form taken by our biology is not merely a function of our fallenness, but of God's arrangement to nullify and redeem our fallenness, one that is completed when the resurrection turns the biological body into a meta-biological body, the eschatological ecclesial body.

'John D Zizioulas, Being in Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (London 1985), 51

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Man's fallenness is too often confused with his identity. Because his identity is not in his own possession, man's fallenness will not finally succeed in constituting his identity. Freedom should not be seen as the cause of a problem. God intends no less than absolute freedom for man, so it is because he was not able to exercise the priesthood for which he is made that man fell, not because he demanded the freedom proper to this priesthood. Without man to make it free, creation cannot achieve its telos, and apart from it, creation is so disordered that nothing acquires its proper form and everything can result only in sin. In one theological tradition it has been supposed that there was no death before the arrival of man in creation, death came to creation as a punishment for Adam's disobedience, and that God himself introduced this evil which he then tried through his Son to remove. Against this tradition we must say that things have their own proper demarcation and boundaries, and as they have beginnings, so they have ends, and as they have ends, mortality is intrinsic to the world. Boundaries - and with them mortality are necessary to allow the organism to move through stages on its way to freedom and duration. 'Nothing was created perfect from the beginning. Everything, including especially the human being, was meant to grow into perfection.'2 In isolation from the eschaton, the organism remains stalled in each early form of life, the whole adds up only to mortality, and mortality results in sin. But we may not talk about sin apart from eschatology, for there cannot be a concept of sin apart from the concept of freedom as the end towards which everything is orientated, for sin is not deviation from an original state but from what will be. The hope of the whole creation is dependent on man's hope of absolute freedom.3 If man is not free the creation cannot reach its own proper order and loses its hope for survival. It is better that Adam retained his claim to absolute freedom - and fell - than that he renounced this claim to freedom and so lost hope of it. And yet as it is viewed from what it will be, it is the actual condition of the world on its own terms - sin - that makes it impossible for the creation to raise itself from these boundaries and make itself free. So we have to think of history as a double movement, toward the end for which the world was created, and from that end. Though the world consists of all movement in all direction, the movement from the eschaton grasps this movement and makes it correspond to itself, to the end. It is the outward movement of the eschaton that makes all other movement, movement toward the eschaton. Movement that does not correspond is mere 2 John D. Zizioulas, 'Towards an Eschatological Ontology.' Paper delivered at King's College, London, 1998, unpublished, 6. 3 John D. Zizioulas, 'Preserving God's Creation: Three Lectures on Theology and Ecology,' King's Theological Review 12 (1989), 1-5, 41-^5; 13 (1990), 1-5. Third lecture, 3.

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deviation and is without telos or being. Evil is not, as the tradition stemming from Origen believed, a deviation from the beginning, but from the end, an irrational movement towards things other than the end.4 The creation is contaminated by evil, and those processes which should have been ongoing are instead brought to nothing by non-being. Since the end decides finally about the truth of history, only those events leading to the end will be shown to possess true being, being as such. The historical events of revelation, therefore, are true and real because they lead to the end from which they came into being. Not even the cross has a meaning of its own; it is the resurrection that makes the cross the event it is. Though everything may be said to end in death, only one death, that of Jesus Christ, was taken up by the movement of the end to correspond to itself, and by this correspondence has been made the saving death, the death that gathers death, and which as a result of the resurrection, brings all death to nothing. Without our final resurrection, Christ's resurrection would be without existence. It is the movement from the end that makes the movement to the end. c l t is the eschaton that gives being to history.'5

2. High Priesthood Creation, in a state of mortality, owing to its having had a beginning, awaits the arrival of the being determined not by a beginning but by the end - Man, the perfecter of creation *A personal approach to creation would thus elevate the material to the level of man's existence. The material creation would in this way be liberated from its own limitations and by being placed in the hands of man, it would itself acquire a personal dimension; it would be humanised.*1" Had Adam acted as the Priest of Creation, acted within the freedom of the end rather than the constraint of his origin, he would have overcome the mortality inherent in these beginnings and ends, and so freed all creation for the eschatological and free life of the creature of God. So Adam's fall represented his reluctance to overcome the mortality inherent in creation. Being dependent on a creature, who had not yet learned his freedom and grown into it, creation was not liberated from its mortality. But it is the end that is determinative, not the beginning. The end redetermines the beginning. The beginning is reckoned from him who is at the end and from whom all beginnings and ends come to take their orientation. By taking the world into his hands and creatively integrating it and referring it to God. the new Adam liberates creation from the failed priesthood of 4

Zizioulas. 'Towards an Eschatological Ontology,' 6. " Zizioulas. 'Towards an Eschatological Ontology,' 10. 6 Zi/ioulas 'Preserving God s CYeation,' third lecture, 4.

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Adam the individual, and allows the future to be determined by the Adam who is Man-with-God, the creature who is with his Creator. Jesus Christ is the vindication of Israel, the moment in which Israel is revealed to have been Adam-in-waiting, and the event of Israel is made perfect, and at last starts to function as the priest, chief creature, head of creation, the very point and telos of all biology. God is free, and free is what he makes his creation. As the Father and the Son are free for each other in the Spirit, so they are free to be for this creation and for us. It is not by the coming into being of creation that he is the Father, but because he is the Father of the Son who by the Spirit is able obediently to call him by this name. Since, in the Spirit, the Father is free to be Father to the Son, the creation is not a necessary function of their being, and since the creation does not have a two-way dependent relationship with its Lord, it is able to come into existence-and-freedom. Zizioulas has been challenged on the issue of the Father as aition, usually translated 'cause,' but his insistence on the monarchia of the Father is a part of his eschatological ontology.7 Aition is not however a synonym for arche\ it would be better translated 'agency' so we can confess the Father as agent, the starter because the finisher. The agency is not merely the Son's; Jesus Christ is not alone, working his own work, as individual. It is the Father's work he is about, and what he does he does with the Father, and because he is not alone, his agency is valid. To say the Father is the cause is not to say the Father's agency is necessary because it originates in the Father as individual', it is not to attempt to explain the Father's agency, to ask further about rationality or origins.8 It is to say that this agency is both plural, 'of the Son' because 'of the Father,' and that is the single agency of the One God, and thus is not divisible, and thus to rule against the further and inappropriate use of cause or agency language. That there is one God is our liberation and means that necessity is not intrinsic to our createdness: this 'monotheism' and 'monarchy' is our freedom from the other gods, principles, forces and other disguises of necessity.

3. The World Finally a little more must be said about the gap perceived between world and Church. As we have distinguished the person from the individual, we 7 Alan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion: Trinitarian Description and Human Participation (Edinburgh 1996), 288-291; Thomas G. Weinandy, The Father's Spirit of Sons hip: Reconceiving the Trinity (Edinburgh 1995), 61-63. 8 John D. Zizioulas, 'The Father as Cause: A Response to Alan J. Torrance.' Paper delivered at King's College, London, 1998. Unpublished.

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can distinguish between creation and world, and can say that the world has no intrinsic shape or unity of its own, but that only as creation will it really come to be the world. The world is neither a lump of recalcitrant material, of 'being-stuff with an agenda of its own and the means to make it come to pass, nor is it neutral space, left-over from other happenings. It is not the case that space can succeed in opening a gap between God and Man, or hinder their coming together. The world does not create and own itself, neither is it neutral and owned by nobody: it is creation, and as such it has a future. So that the world can know that it really is itself that is being addressed, and so that it is clear that the Church is not talking to itself in a corner, there is of course an obligation to give a reasoned public account of the Church to the world. This obligation is not served, however, by the adoption of a methodological agnosticism that examines doctrines singly and in isolation. The doctrine of the Church must be understood to be already a doctrine about the world No greater insight is gained by considering the world as something other than the creation of God. This is the direction taken by non-constitutive, non-ontological approaches to relationality, which operate on a dichotomy of self and other, and which treat world and creation, as individual and person, as sets of synonyms, with the result that world and individual are bound by necessity to each other. Is Zizioulas s theology the premature triumphalism of the Church or inner-Churchly game? Should we not say, against him, that there is real sociality apart from the Church? One expression of this sort of concern comes from Alan Torrance, who suggests that language is a prior form of unconditioned covenant and commitment to others, and that 'language' equals k world,' prior to the Church and its claims. He asks how the 'transsubjectivity of the Church is the foundation and cause of human relationships on what he calls a "wider scale.'9 Yet that the world is a larger circle and the Church a smaller circle set within it, is an assumption that could be made only on the basis of temporary agnosticism about other Christian doctrines. There is no reason why we should choose to make this assumption, that the world is a wider space and the Church a narrower. The Church is a eucharistic and thus eschatological being, not a special case of relationships the possibility of which is established elsewhere, within any 9 Torrance, Persons in Communion: 'What we are required to ask of Zizioulas here is whether his account fails to take seriously human continuity with society at large' (300); 'Grace ... goes far beyond the sphere of personal transformation and subjective sanctification which is the Church' (302); 'To what extent the further and wider form of "trans-subjectivity" which constitutes semantic sociality and which of course provides a foundation for human relationships on a wider scale may be deemed to constitute a further analogy would seem to depend on the extent to which we can interpret obedience to social rules, ... as a form of unconditional "covenant" commitment to others' (358).

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economy which considers itself master of its own limits and therefore pronounces itself to be 'world' and not the creation of God. The eucharist of the Church holds together what, on all other bases, floats apart. The Church sustains this 'wider' world, which is not wider at all and has no unity of its own, and is that future that will indeed make the world both wide and free. In raising Jesus Christ and calling out the Church, God has elected the whole human race, and elected the Church to be its future, the guarantee of its continuity and identity. As the Church is one, it works this priestly task of making the world one world, and no part of the world is able to secure itself in unfreedom, against this end. Much present discussion of relationality and persons has preferred to approach the issue through the concepts of Dialogue or Communication, and to use these as a basis on which to establish the relative claims of the Other and the Self. The Dialogue approach is premised on an assumption about the prior existence of a space in which two-parties are equallyweighted, in which they weigh each other to determine which of them is to go first and start, and, by this start, provide the ground for their speech and meeting. But the Creation is not the neutral ground on which the two giants, Man and God, meet, and no start is possible to us who are already the creatures of God's speech and interceding. There is no silence, and none that has on any new or extraneous basis to be broken, nor does speech have to be re-founded on some substrate or basis that must, necessarily, be nonspeech. We are not at a start, but in the middle; God speaks and God hears and answers. The world is the house and ground of God, and as such it is what has been heard just as it is what has been spoken. It is his time, his time first, and only thus is it also ours, ours because his. The 'Call to Personhood' theme founders on the issue of Who calls, God or man, or who calls first? And which of them may do this? And this becomes the issue of how may he, using what means, his or ours, and if ours, how his? ... and so on. This is to enquire about possibility in ignorance of the actuality, and where inquiry about possibility could only be about another and opposing actuality and thus an act of disobedience. Is this not to attempt to second-guess God, who has called and elected us, and so from an agnostic position on the doctrine of election? Discussion of Speech or Dialogue or Communication, considered in isolation from the doctrine of election, personifies Speech and Dialogue, makes little gods of them. We are not talking about Speech as such, but about one particular speech and its obedient hearing, namely that of the Father and the Son and one that is not extrinsic or alien or prior to them, but which is itself based in a person, or even more is a person, the Holy Spirit. John Zizioulas has shown that the doctrine of creation is an eschatological doctrine that sets out the future of man as the priest of creation, a future in which he is freely with God. 'Man and the world are no longer

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imprisoned in their past, in sin, decay and death. The past is affirmed in so far as it contributes to the end, to the coming of the kingdom.'10 When the persons of the Trinity are understood to be the sufficient condition of all persons - the Cappadocian revolution - being ceases to be the opponent of freedom; then we can understand, from Maximus, that our rationality may also be transformed from a basis in protology and fate to one based in freedom.

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15. Eucharist, Eschatology and Ethics Douglas Farrow When confronted as a preacher with eschatological texts, remarks Barth, the great Schleiermacher hardly knew what to do 4but give urgent warnings against enthusiasm.'1 As the year 2000 approaches we may be inclined to follow suit, though the real reason may be reticence in the face of a notoriously difficult subject rather than pastoral reluctance to encourage dangerous speculation on the fanatical fringe. Distracting apocalyptic speculation today is more likely to be found in the science or health section of the newspapers than in the religion section.2 At all events, eschatology cannot consistently be avoided by either the preacher or the theologian, for it is unthinkable to engage in either task in a sustained way without some interest in the so-called 'last things,' or without a philosophy of history that manages somehow to connect first and last things. And here already, if we intend that philosophy to be Christian, we are encroaching on eschatology. The welter of relevant texts and conflicting traditions which confront us as we pursue this subject, need not obscure from us that a solid and comforting starting point is available. Our destiny is bound up with that of Jesus, Whatever questions or difficulties this may raise,3 it is not itself a question or a difficulty, but a sure and certain promise. The scriptures and the fathers teach it. The creed confirms it, as a simple comparison of the latter half of the second and third articles will show. The communion liturgy dramatizes and effects it. It is embraced with sober joy in the acclamation: 'Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.'4 By starting here, of course, we are insisting that the church is not only a community that thinks about eschatology, but already itself an eschatological community. That is why it can think and act eschatologically, and 'Karl Barth, The Theology of Schleiermacher (Edinburgh 1982), 43. Genetics, epidemiology, and global warming lead the way; astronomy too has its place. 'Coherent catastrophism,' I learn from the National Post (12 November 1998), was once the province of 'religious fanatics and doomsday cults' but is now a respectable subject! 3 Friedrich Schleiermacher points to a few of them, with deceptive charm, in The Christian Faith (Edinburgh 1989), §157ff. 4 Or, as second-person address: 'Dying, you destroyed our death; rising, you restored our life; Lord Jesus, come, in glory!' If anything qualifies as articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae this threefold confession at the heart of the eucharistic prayer does. Without it even the doctrine of justification is meaninglessness. 2

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why it takes not just any starting point in this matter, but rather the starting point that is given it doxologically. This needs to be underscored in the face of some common misunderstandings. To think eschatologically means something more than to speculate about the outcome of human or cosmic affairs, and to align oneself accordingly. Eschatology, that is to say, is not simply futurology, whether of a personal or a political or a scientific or even a metaphysical variety.5 Again, to think eschatologically means something more than to intend the goal or goals of human existence, or to take account, perhaps as a critical criterion for evaluating the present, of some more or less inscrutable divine reAos for creation.6 Eschatology is not simply teleology, inasmuch as Jesus Christ is not simply reAos but also TTpcoros KCU Eoxaros.7 To think eschatologically is to reckon with this fact, which can be done only by thinking out of the resources by which the church is the church, his body. It is to engage in a highly specialized enterprise which cannot be subsumed under a general cosmology or metaphysic or ethic.8 We start, then, with the claim that our destiny is bound up with that of Jesus. And from this starting point we may explore, first of all, both the 5 That reified and deified Future which people today like to talk about is, I fear, the product of yet another theory of time run away with itself. In Teilhard, Rahner, Pannenberg, Jenson et aL, the future is revered as that aspect of time which opens up to divine intervention, or which indeed mediates to us the divine being. Thus Rahner, e.g., 'Christianity is a religion of the future. It can indeed be understood only in the light of the future which it conceives as an absolute future gradually approaching the individual and humanity as a whole. ... Absolute future is just another name for what is really meant by "God"' (Theological Investigations 6, 60ff.). Of this tendency Barth was rightly suspicious, even if he himself may be held partly responsible for it. (Cf. Church Dogmatics II/l 63Iff. and Jiirgen Moltmann, The Coming of God [London 1996], 13ff.; unfortunately the latter's own decision to develop eschatology 'philosophically, in an understanding of time which sees the future as the origin and source of time in general,' gives to a theory of time the status of revelation; cf. the criticisms of L.J. Van den Brom elsewhere in this volume.) 6 Cf. Wolfgang Huber, 'Towards an Ethic of Responsibility,' Journal of Religion 73 (1993), 573ff; also Scott Kline, 'The Necessity of a Telos,' ARC: The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University 1997, 85 ff. 7 Cf. Revelation 1:17, Mr) <j>opou - Eyco E I M I o irpcoTos KCU o EOXOTOS KOU o £cov; 2:8, o rrpoTos KCCI o EOXCXTOS, os EyEVETo VEKpos KOI E^rjOEv; and 22:13, Eyco TO AA<j>a KCU TO fl, o irpcoTOs Km TO EOXOTOs, f| apxn KOU TO TEXos. When the last of these passages is set alongside the divine claim in 21:6 - fEyovcxv. Eyco TO AX<|>a KCU TO fl, r] apXH KQI TO TEXos - it is obvious that Jesus' title (the First and the Last) has been inserted into the midst of the two divine titles, in a way typical of John's creative deployment of the middle terms of his triads, and semantically analogous to the picture conjured up by 5:6 (the lamb 'standing in the centre of the Throne'). We ought not therefore to blur the distinction between the noun TEXos and the adjective EOXCCTOS, as if they were in a strictly synonymous parallelism. To be the EOXCXTOS is to be the one in whom the old or fallen man meets his demise, as well as to be the new and definitive man, the man of the Spirit, beyond whom there is no other. To be the TEXos, on the other hand, belongs to being the one who he is as the first and the last man, i.e., God. (EoxccTos, in other words, has a soteriological aspect that TEXos does not.) 8 Or even under the Christian doctrine of creation, as Ted Peters and some of his eminent co-authors in Cosmos as Creation (Nashville 1989) appear to think.

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proper context tor eschatological debate and one of the central problems that is posed for it. Afterwards we will consider some different answers to that problem and their implications.

1. The Eucharistic Situation of Eschatological Thought The church is an eschatological community because it is bound to Jesus the eaxaioq by the Holy Spirit; which is to say, because it is the pentecostal community This we must say straight away. Yet it is not enough to say, because it is the pentecostal community. We must also say, because it is the eucharistic community, which makes the claim more specific and concrete - as it is, for example, in Rublev's famous icon. The eucharist provides a definite point of reference for the church's epicletic appeal, an interpretive context for discerning the work of the Spirit who constitutes it as an eschatological community through communion with Jesus. The eucharist lends to the church its eschatological dynamic, as a participation both in the brokenness of the crucified and in the victory of his resurrection and ascension to the Father. 9 Do we stili need to remind ourselves that the eucharist was eschatologically conceived from the outset?10 Consider how Justin Martyr, for example, concludes his description of the church's table worship: Sunday, indeed, is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, inasmuch as it is the first day on which God, transforming the darkness and matter, created the universe; and on the same day our Saviour Jesus Christ rose from the deadaa Sunday is the appropriate day because the eucharist, we may infer, is a participation in the power that transformed 4 the darkness and matter' a second time; in other words, because it is an eschatological act intimately related to the new creation. Behind Justin lies John, who makes the same point in more dramatic fashion, beginning with his visionary encounter with Jesus in the opening section of the Apocalypse: " I do not mean to overlook the scriptures. Word and sacrament are joint resources when it comes to interpreting the eschatological work of the Spirit, and jointly the means which the Spirit uses to unite us to Jesus and so to the Father. But the priority here belongs to sacrament. To this tact scholars Eastern and Western have for some time been directing our attention. 1 am thinking especially of G. Wainwright, Eucharist and Eschatology (London 1971), J. Zizioulas, tieing as Communion (London 1985), and A. Schmemann, The Eucharist (Crestwood, NY 1987), though of course Jeremias, Cullmann, and other biblical scholars deserve mention as well "First Apolog\ $6"? (Ante-Nicenc Fathers Vol. 1 [1885; rpt. Peabody, Mass. 1994]).

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On the Lord's day I was in the Spirit. ... When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. And he placed his right hand on me and said: 'Fear not! I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore!'12 As the heavenly dynamism of the eucharist, normally hidden to mortal eyes, is unfolded in what follows, John's shocking personal encounter progressively assumes its proper ecclesial and cosmic dimensions, leading ultimately to a vision of universal TraAiyyeveoia. 13 Unfortunately, as Geoffrey Wainwright has demonstrated in his Eucharist and Eschatology, this paradigm was gradually displaced by others and talk about the eucharist was no longer talk about eschatology, but was increasingly focused on the sacrament's sacrificial or ontological dimensions (even if awareness of the earlier paradigm never entirely fell away).14 Likewise, and this is less often noticed in spite of Wainwright's efforts, talk about eschatology was no longer talk about the eucharist. This latter development was equally injurious, since it quickly became possible to identify the eschatological work of the Spirit in terms not easily reconcilable with the eucharist - in terms of the kingdom of Constantine, for example, or of other rather more esoteric advents of a Montanist variety. On the other hand, it became difficult to complete the task of thinking through Christian eschatology as something essentially Jewish yet more than Jewish, covenantal but new covenantal. 'More than' tended to become 'other than,' that is, to justify a rearrangement of Christian eschatology, and eucharistic theology with it, on the template provided by Platonism.15 We live in an age (only accidentally related to the turn of a millennium?) in which it is necessary to rethink our eschatological inheritance. Jurgen Moltmann's The Coming of God represents one valiant attempt to do so, even if it does not quite escape the platonizing tendency to which I have just alluded.16 This excellent book is noteworthy as an attempt 'to spread hope in danger,' while preserving that hope from lapsing into a facile consolation or a false optimism instead of supporting (as it ought) a life of genuine 12 Revelation 1:10, 17f. Influence on Justin may be indirect, though Justin does appeal to the Apocalypse in his Dialogue with Trypho (§81) in support of millennial ideas. 13 This has also inspired Rublev, of course. It is worth noting with Paul Evdokimov that the chalice at the centre of the icon originally contained not a bunch of grapes but a lamb, the lamb of John's eucharistic visions. 14 See Wainwright, Eucharist, 4ff. (cf. A. Heron, Table and Tradition [Edinburgh 1983], 152ff.). J. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 20f. thinks the drift away from eschatology a later development; Rublev is one witness to the fact that the shore remained in view, so to speak. 15 This is especially noticeable in the iconclasm controversy; see my Ascension and Ecclesia (Edinburgh 1999), 147ff. l6 See 'In the End is the Beginning,' Modern Theology 14.3 (1998), 425ff.

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service.1 One thing I especially miss in it, however, is the direct connection between eucharistic theology and eschatology for which I am contending. Our destiny is bound up with that of Jesus. Where and how bound up? In the eucharist and eucharistically. Wainwright is right - this, if we believe it, ought to be made clear and brought directly into play theologically. It ought to provide the context for eschatological thought.18 Now I myself would go so far as to say that, at their core, eschatology and eucharistic theology face us with a common problem. That problem we may identify (though Wainwright does not) as the problem of the continuity and discontinuity beween Jesus' history and our own. For if our destiny really is bound up with his, as the Christian gospel declares, this is known to us and realized for us only in the paradox of the hoc est corpus meum, that is, in the eucharistic exchange And the eucharistic exchange, from our perspective, remains incomplete - signum hiding res, presence testifying to absence. Thus, at the very place where continuity is established, discontinuity also intrudes. ly Let me try in a second section to expand on this a little, by way of an appeal to the primary eucharistic type in the Old Testament, which is not (as in Rublev s icon) Abraham's banquet by the oaks of Mamre but a rather larger one: the feast of Moses and Aaron and the seventy elders on Sinai.

2. On the Mountain of God Whether we look at Paul or Hebrews or the Apocalypse or the Fourth Gospel, we find that the Sinaitic scene is constantly being recalled just where the church is asked to think about its existence qua church, gathered 87ii TO auio around the table of the Lord. 1 Corinthians 10-15 is the locus classicus of eucharistic thought in Paul. It begins with a reference to the 17

Cf JUrgen Moltmann, The Coming of God (London 1996), 206, 233ff. Moltmann does not seem to have noted Wainwright's criticism (p. 4f.) of his Theology of Hope (London 196") He rightly argues in The Coming of God that 'the eschatological category is conversion (22). Yet discussion of the eucharist, though present in the preceding volumes of that series, does not directly inform his deliberations, nor does the eucharistic understanding of history he calls for in The Church in the Power of the Spirit (London 1977) receive critical scrutiny or development: 'The Lord's supper is an eschatological sign of history. The Christian experience of time and the corresponding theological understanding of time will consequently take their bearings from the Lord's supper, and only cautiously look for other experiences of history. It is only in the light of the Lord's supper that the interpretation of "the signs of the time" is possible and has any point - the point being for the church and its individual members to perceive their tasks for the world amid the opportunities of history.' (243) 19 Pace Wainwnght this discontinuity cannot be adequately articulated in terms of a present-future tension any more than as a past-present tension. The tension is rather between two parallel but diverging times or histories - Jesus' and ours. l8

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exodus - 'They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink' which leads to a warning about idolatry and its consequences: 'As it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry.'"20 If in what follows there is no direct reference to Exodus 24, the pivotal passage in which the seventy are called up the mountain to confirm the covenant by eating and drinking in the presence of God though 1 Corinthians 13:12 may well be an indirect reference21 - we must nonetheless assume its centrality throughout in order to grasp the logic of Paul's analysis of the eucharistic assembly.22 The same may be said respecting Hebrews 12:18ff., which is the climax of an epistle which Aileen Guilding has suggested is actually a great Pentecost sermon, except that here there is in the final verse a direct quotation from Exodus 24: 'our God is "a consuming fire.'"23 In the Apocalypse allusions to this passage (beginning with the invitation in 4:1, 'Come up here')24 are many and various. The number of the elders has changed from seventy to twenty-four, of course, while the description of the divine throne is somewhat expanded; the entire setting, with its trumpets and earthquakes and peals of thunder and even the ark of the covenant, is clearly sinaitic. As for the Fourth Gospel, the 'bread of life' discourse in chapter 6 is likewise tied at several points, not only to the wilderness situation of Israel and to the hard choice of loyalties faced there, but to the descent and ascent theme (i.e., to Moses' mediation) which dominates this part of Exodus: 'Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before!'"25 All of this calls for lengthy exegetical discussions which I cannot attempt here, but if we are prepared to admit the typology at all we can move on to the particular point I wish to make, which concerns the ascent of Moses in chapter 24. The seventy are invited up the mountain, but only Moses is allowed actually to approach God at the summit, passing safely between the flaming swords of the cherubim. Just at this point the text alludes to the six days of creation and to the hallowed seventh day - on which Moses, having waited patiently, is finally invited into the dwelling of God (Ex. 24:15ff.). Beyond any doubt there is an eschatological perspective here, which is 20

1 Corinthians 10:2f., 7 (NIV); cf. Exodus 32:6. 'Cf. Exodus 24:9ff. Cf. e.g. Exodus 24:11 and 1 Corinthians 1 l:27ff. 23 Cf. Hebrews 12:29 and Exodus 24:17. (Re: Guilding's suggestion, see F.F. Bruce's Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews [London 1964], xlviii.) 24 If this is a standard device of apocalyptic writers it may nonetheless contain in the present context an allusion to Exodus 24:1. 25 John 6:6If. (NIV); cf. Exodus 24:2, 12ff. The connection Jesus makes between the mystery of his ascension and that of the eucharist is far from incidental in John; see below. 2

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deepened by a further allusion, to the flood. The ensuing absence of Moses for forty days and forty nights, lost to view in the shekinah which has come to renew the image of God in humanity, occasions the test of allegiance that results in the scandalous erection by Israel of the bull-image at the foot of the mountain, and with it the threat of God (eventually turned aside by Moses) to sweep away his new creation too. Now this typology, with its eschatological perspective, is carried over into apostolic reflection on the eucharist, which in the synoptics is inaugurated by Jesus in Mosaic language as 'the new covenant in my blood,'26 and in John 6 is linked by him to his own impending ascent. But if carried over, also modified and heightened of course. For it is not with the redemption of Israel from Egypt (already the start of a second transformation l of the darkness and matter') that eschatological thinking begins in earnest. It begins in earnest with the failure of the Sinaitic covenant actually to produce the new shekinah-bearing humanity, and takes its definitive form with the corresponding success of the messianic covenant. It begins, that is, not with the old exodus but with the new, for the new exodus - foreseen by the prophets and accomplished in the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus - does not merely mark out a people for God, to bear his image in a world under judgment, but does in fact establish a new world order under God.27 As it turns out, however, this new world order is not in the first instance altogether evident or accessible, though its traces can certainly be observed in the gifts of Pentecost, the table fellowship of the church, and the attraction of the goyim to the light of the gospel.28 'Where I am going you cannot come,' says the departing Jesus to his disciples, just as Moses had said it to the seventy elders.29 Here then is the eschatological problem which is also the eucharistic problem. It is the problem posed not only by the contrast between Egypt and Canaan - that is, between this age and the age to come - but also and more immediately by the gap which opens up between Jesus and the rest of us. It is the problem of two histories, which overlap but which also diverge. The eucharist places us precisely at the junction between these two histories, just 26

Luke 22:20; Mark 14:24, 'my blood of the covenant'. Cf. Exodus 24:8. What Moses received on his ascent, Torah, was limited in its power to effect this by the weakness of the flesh, says Paul; but what Jesus received on our behalf, viz., the gift of the Spirit, transforms the flesh and brings into being the new order (Rom. 8). Cf. John l:9ff, especially v. 17 - 'For the law through Moses was given; the grace and the truth came through Jesus Christ' - whence follows an allusion to Moses' ascent, and to the fact that he was not allowed to see God's face, whereas Jesus is o cov eio TOV KoXrrov TOU Trarpos. 28 The pentecostal community is an advance on the new order - 'Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus ... both Lord and Christ' (Acts 2:36, NIV) - but it is not yet the new order itself. 29 On the other hand, he adds, '1 go to prepare a place for you,' and 'I will come again to receive vou unto myself, 1 Cf. John 13:33, 14:2f. 27

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as the seventy who banqueted on Sinai sat down between Moses and Israel. It places us at the point where the tension between them cannot be safely ignored, and the question of allegiance to God, as to Jesus, must be faced directly.30 As Kierkegaard remarks, Christ is the only one who can make his life a test for all people. The examination period begins with his ascension; it has lasted for eighteen hundred years and may last eighteen thousand. But (and this belongs to the intervening period as an examination) he is coming again.31

3. Presence and Absence The view from the lower slopes of Sinai, or rather of Olives, has for a long time been clouded by widely divergent interpretations of Jesus' absence: hence also of the manner in which our unity of destiny is maintained, and of the relation we, his people, now have to the world in which we (but not he) still live. These are, respectively, the question of the real presence and the question of ecclesial ethics. In examining them we do not cease to do eschatology, even if on some accounts we might be forgiven for thinking we had. Rather we do just that kind of eschatology which helps to prepare us for a life of loyalty to God and love for our neighbour - whether or not that life is to be lived out under the apocalyptic circumstances predicted for us by some doctors and scientists, or only under the 'ordinary' trials of a world in which both natural and man-made disasters already abound. Let us take these two questions in turn, then, proceeding by way of appeal to three early theologians whose differences are to some extent paradigmatic. The first (to take them in logical rather than chronological order) is Origen, who was not especially interested in matters eucharistic. This intellectual giant in the camp of God was interested, however, in furthering Philo's project of marrying a mystical spirituality based on the hierarchical cosmos of the Platonists to a biblical interest in salvation history.32 He also wanted to accommodate a project of his own: a grand theodicy that would trump both gnostic pessimism, which denied the goodness of the creator, and Platonist optimism, which tended to skirt round the problem of evil. As readers of de Principiis will know, he achieved both these goals by speculatively extending salvation history in a rising arc on each end; that is, by postulating a long succession of descending and ascending aeons. The 30 As the four works mentioned above all labour to make clear, especially Hebrews, John and the Apocalypse. 31 S. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity (Princeton 1991), 202, expounding John 12:32. 32 Sinai provided the site for this wedding. (See De gigantibus 54; cf. B. McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism [London 1995], 35ff.)

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resulting curvature brought salvation history into conformity with his eschatological (theodical?) principle that 'the end is like the beginning,' while putting it to the good use of mediating between a heavenly mode of being that is atemporal and immaterial, and an earthly mode that (unhappily) is not, 33 Naturally the ascent of Jesus, rather than of Moses, offered the true model for the turning of the soul from the latter to the former, and as such marked also the turning of the ages. On Origen's scheme, the real presence of Jesus is a matter of perception, which for the Alexandrian is an ontological category. The discontinuity to which his ascension draws our attention is that between lower and higher stages of spiritual life; the upwards evolution of rational beings, following in his train, indicates a corresponding continuity.34 Jesus himself (joined as he is to the Logos) 'runs throughout all things'35 and is present or absent by degree, according to our advancement. We are not to watch for his parousia, then, but to concentrate on our own progress.36 And the eucharist (like other liturgical acts) is there to serve that progress, by placing us in proximity to the eschaton symbolically, the perceptible serving the intelligible by imitatio: Now it is worth remarking, parenthetically, that the church has never been content with sacramental nominalism, or with the eschatology that in the present case underlies it. But neither has it abandoned the graded spirituality of Origen. What it has done is identify (through talk of transubstantiation) a presence of the absent Christ that is independent of the spiritual condition of the worshipers and officiants. This may indeed be necessary, but when this real presence is said to exist in the eucharistic elements from the moment of consecration to the moment of consumption, in ordinary time and space,38 a whole new set of problems is created. Are we really thinking eschatologically when we are thinking in terms of presence or absence rather than presence and absence? We must leave that question hanging in order to turn to St Augustine, who provides a different analysis. If Origen translates the enigma of the presence and the absence into subjective terms, Augustine is more careful to maintain an objective component. In his humanity (and he still is human) Jesus is indeed absent, having departed to the Father to intercede for us. In his divinity, however, he is universally present, diffusing himself 'through *Princ. 1,6.2; ct 1.6.4, 3.5.4, 3.6.3ft, etc. 34 Gradual, but not necessarily steady - Origen knows a kind of spiritual equivalent to 'punctuated equilibrium' ^Princ. 2.11.6 36 Origen quietly passes over the parousia in his account of the rule of faith in De Principiis. 37 Note that the TEXeioi, who are more advanced in the intelligible world, are the true priests and deacons in the church, though the official clergy and their liturgical arrangements have a certain revelatory necessity for the simple. ^ 8 On some accounts, the space is somewhat less ordinary because it is dimensionless.

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all his members' in order to make of them one whole Christ (totus christus)?9 His divinity, of course, is what is really important about him; that we should believe in his divinity is the raison d 'etre of his humanity. Therefore for Augustine it is only what is relatively wmmportant about Jesus that is absent, and that absence is all to the good, since his continued human presence could only have proved a stumbling block. Before the ascension, opines the bishop, Jesus' disciples were concentrated on his human nature, and they were unable to consider him as God. In fact, they would then think of him as God when his human nature would be removed from their eyes, so that, with the intimacy which they had formed with his human nature thus severed, they might learn to consider his divinity in the absence of his humanity.40 This Nestorianising analysis of presence and absence supports a Nicene orthodoxy. But it witnesses to a subjective turn in Augustine's thought as well, which is exacerbated by his own neoplatonist leanings. Thus it is not too surprising to discover that his sacramental theory shows some affinity to that of Origen. The relation between signum and res is based on similitudo rather than commutatis or conversio, and is more paedagogical than eschatological.41 Augustine, however, combining an appeal to the hypostatic union with a form of voluntarism, does uphold the church's belief that the flesh and blood of Christ are really present in the eucharist. This realism sets him apart from the Alexandrian, as does his mature philosophy of history. More of that philosophy anon, but not before we have considered our third option, developed much earlier by St Irenaeus - whose eschatology was more deliberately eucharistic and whose eucharistic theology was more deliberately eschatological. Since the primary concern of the bishop of Lyons was to combat gnosticism, not skepticism, he was not so likely to focus on Christ's higher or divine nature, when what was really at issue was his human nature. Faced by a soteriological myth that sharply distinguished between Jesus of Nazareth and a putative heavenly Christ, he determined to work strictly with the history of the God-man as his theological point of departure. Unlike Origen, he laid great stress not only on the saviour's solidarity with Israel and with 39 ' He is there indeed, sitting at the right hand of the Father; and he is here also, never having withdrawn the presence of his glory. In other words, in respect of his divine presence we always have Christ; but in respect of his presence in the flesh it was rightly said to his disciples, "Me you will not have always.'" (loh. Ev. 50.13). 40 Ser. 264 (cf. Trin. 1.18, Doc. Chr. 1.38). Augustine embraced Origen's view that Christ's humanity exists 'only for our weakness'; it is his divine nature to which we must attain. 41 Hence the controversial claim, Crede et manducasti. (Cf. Heron, Table and Tradition, 69ff., and W. Crockett, Eucharist: Symbol of Transformation [New York 1989], 88fT.)

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fallen humanity generally, but also on his resurrection and ascension in the flesh, 'and his manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father to gather all things into one, and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race,'42 The word evoapKov which here qualifies Jesus' ascent makes it clear that his life at the right hand of the Father is a life still analogous to ours. But at the same time it implies a sharp discontinuity, a real absence, that cannot be minimized or overlooked.43 To maintain that the resurrection history of Jesus is a bodily and fully human one is, paradoxically, to deny the sort of agreement between his history and ours which Origen takes for granted. Here discontinuity is not a matter of degree but of divergence; conversely, continuity is not a matter of dawning recognition but of miraculous intervention or reconstruction. It is established only eucharistically, against the grain, so to speak. Against the grain? For Irenaeus it is really with the grain, if we have in mind not wood but wheat, the wheat that, 'falling into the earth and becoming decomposed, rises with manifold increase by the Spirit of Godaaaaaaa and having received the Word of God, becomes the eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ'. For it is in this manner, by sharing in the eucharist, that w our bodies, being nourished by it, and deposited in the earth, and suffering decomposition there, shall rise at their appointed time, the Word of God granting them resurrection to the glory of God, even the Father, who freely gives to this mortal immortality, and to this corruptible incorruption. . *44 We may pass over the bishop's rebuff to the gnostics, who (he says) should cease offering the eucharist since they do not believe that the stuff of this world has anything to do with God's kingdom.45 The point to be grasped is that our reality and Christ's are related only by recapitulation by a painful but triumphant conversio which does not admit of degrees. Now the question of the real presence can only be addressed in this context. The eucharist is indeed a sharing in his body and blood. But the dynamic of this sharing is an eschatological one, generated by the Spirit who causes us too to rise with Jesus at the appointed time, becoming his "manifold increase1. In the famous phrase, 'the wages of Christ are human beings/46 In other words, the gift of the presence of Christ is realised in and as the gift of the new creation. The transubstantiation (to use that later, controversial term) of the bread and the wine, which the Word and the Spirit together effect, is nothing less than the positing of a claim on our entire 42

AH 1.10.1 It may, however, be suppressed, as were the key final chapters of Adversus Haereses, 44 AH 5.23 45 AH 4.18.4. One is entitled to wonder what he would have said to Origen; cf. my 'The Doctrine of the Ascension in Irenaeus and Origen,' ARC 1998, 45f. 43

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existence, on our life and our death. Further, then, to the parenthesis above: In Irenaeus we are not dealing with an 'or' but with an 'and'; not with an absence that is transmuted into presence in ordinary space and time, but with a presence that transmutes the contents of ordinary - or rather, of fallen - space and time into material for a kingdom that is centred on the absent Christ. The differences between Irenaeus' eucharistic and Origen's non-eucharistic approach are by no means trivial. The Alexandrian, a universalist, is working with just one history, which traces on a vast cosmic scale the purgatorial cycle of the fall and rise of the soul. His eschatological tension is therefore inclined to break down into vertical and horizontal components, that is, into a teleology which sets up the Christ as a spiritual ideal (or is it the other way round?) and a futurology that attempts to sketch our collective progress towards that ideal.47 Irenaeus, on the other hand, is working with two histories, related in a cruciform construction that contrasts sharply with Origen's circular one. His eschatological tension does not break down; on the contrary, it points the church, as Origen's does not, to a joyful but potentially excruciating vocation. But we need now to turn to our second question, and to engage Augustine on this point as well.

4. Eucharistic Eschatology and Ecclesial Ethics How does our view of the presence and absence of Jesus affect our understanding of the church's relation to, and responsibility for, the world? That is a question seldom discussed, but one we must not try to evade. What was it the people said when asking Aaron to make new gods to go before them? 'As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him.'48 Any such evasion usually translates into an ill-considered and unqualified continuity with the world; and that, whatever good-hearted things may be said at the time, can only mean a complete abdication of Christian responsibility.49 Let us begin again with Origen. It is tempting to dwell here on two obvious obstacles to a satisfactory account of Christian responsibility: v/z., 47 Kant and Schleiermacher offer modern analogues, though on their view the ideal perpetually eludes our grasp. Teilhard, on the other hand, supposes with Origen that a meeting of the vertical and horizontal vectors is possible if sufficient time is allowed (cf. e.g., The Future of Man [New York 1964], 269). 48 Exodus 32:1 (NIV) 49 Perhaps the classic example of such abdication in our century is that of the German Christians, who - as Bonhoeffer and Barth were swift to point out - were busy controverting the first commandment, and with it their true duty to the German people, even as they called the church to take responsibility for the spiritual renewal of the nation.

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his utilitarian view of the present creation (which is not itself something to be saved, but only a stage in the history of the salvation of the soul) and the spiritualising, indeed privatising, tendency that is the result of binding our destiny to that of a post-incarnate Christ.50 The church's obligation is to direct humanity heavenward, away from earthly entanglements; which is also to say, inwards, towards the realm of the intellect not the body. On its vertical axis the eucharistic tension is thus made over into little more than the familiar pagan opposition between eternity and time, being and becoming, mind and body, rest and movement, ava(3aaic; and Kaia(3aaiq, etc., from which no special ecclesial ethic can be derived. But this points to a third obstacle, no less significant. On Origen's subjectivist view of presence and of absence, which have become a matter of degree, ecclesial identity and ecclesial responsibility can only be marked out in elitist terms. And that seems to me to entail an even more profound falsification of the church's eucharistic vocation. Elitism always appears in its twin aspects: as superiority, and as the direction or guidance that the superior can and should give to the inferior. Both are in evidence here. We need not concern ourselves with the fact that the church itself is made dependent upon its spiritual eyes - that is, on men like Origen, who are personally instructed by the Holy Spirit and by Jesus, 'the Angel of Great Counsel' as the opening of de Principiis implies.51 We are thinking instead about the church's relation to the world. According to Origen, the church is the KOGUOC; of the cosmos (the 'internal regulative principle' of the universe, as J. Lyons puts it). As the vanguard of humanity's return to God, it is also the mediator of the world's progress.52 Since Origen, as a universalist, has effectively transferred the conflict between the church and the world to the arena of the soul, these claims are not incoherent But what are their consequences? Surely we have here the M) As Eusebms of Caesarea suggests to Constantine's sister, Christians 'should contemplate God in the purity of their hearts and not in artificial images of a historical past that is now over' (J. Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought [Crestwood, NY 1975], 176f). 51 'But the following fact should be understood. The holy apostles, when preaching the faith of Christ, took certain doctrines, those namely which they believed to be necessary ones, and delivered them in the plainest terms to all believers, even to such as appeared to be somewhat dull in the investigation of divine knowledge. The grounds of their statements they left to be investigated by such as should merit the higher gifts of the Spirit and in particular by such as should afterwards receive through the Holy Spirit himself the graces of language, wisdom and knowledge . (Preface; cf J Trigg, 'The Angel of Great Counsel,' Journal of Theological Studies, NS,42.1 (1991), 35ff). 52 The Logos l ss the initiator of order in the world and the Church its mediator,' such that the latter 'affords the precondition for the final state of the cosmos' (James A. Lyons, The Cosmic Christ in Origen and Teilhard de Chardin (Oxford 1982), 142f.; see Joh. 6:30Iff, Gen. 1.5). Otherwise put, the church is 'an imitation of that future kingdom' in which 'the human race will one day be constituted in the world in unity' (Princ. 1.6.2); conversely, the world is simply the church in a more fragmented form.

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groundwork of a triumphalist ecclesiology, which would later be built upon by Constantinian and post-Constantinian theologians. Perhaps we have the beginnings of a modern and far more damaging hybris as well. For on the horizontal axis the tension between time and eternity reappears under the guise of a tension between past and future. There are more than a few Origenist seeds in modern idealist historicism! When we turn to Augustine, we fare somewhat better. The collapse of the Western Empire during his episcopacy helped to steer him away from a 'one history' point of view, which his doctrine of election in any case forbade. His quarrel with the Donatists, on the other hand, inclined him to the rejection of any sectarian alternative. What he offered instead (so Robert Markus has argued) was a more truly eschatological perspective.53 Augustine's notion of the homogeneity of the present age, as a perpetual struggle between two opposing 'cities,' certainly puts limits around both ecclesial and secular hybris. The saeculum cannot by any means resolve its own inherent tension; it neither promises nor prevents the coming of the kingdom of God, but only awaits it. Indeed, it does not even allow a clear identification of the two cities as such, an identification which belongs only to the final judgment.54 There are problems here too however. The first appears with Augustine's identification of the visible or institutional church as a sign (signum) of the invisible and eternal city of God planted in the midst of the city of man - a vestigium gloriae testifying to the former's ultimate victory over the latter.55 Precisely as a sign, the visible church belongs to the saeculum and shares its ambiguity, and this ambiguity allows the glory of the heavenly church (seated with Jesus at the right hand of God) to be expressed through the earthly church in some curiously unchristlike ways: for example, in the sanctioning of state persecution of dissenters. Hybris has not altogether disappeared. A second and related problem can be identified by noticing that on Augustine's scheme there appear to be not two histories but three. The history of the city of God (the totus Christus) and the history of reprobate humanity take place in and behind the history of the saeculum, which as host of the other two is, if not a neutral third,56 at all events a mediating context. This relaxes the eucharistic tension, which has already been alleviated by the naturalisation of the absence of the human Christ and of 53

Robert Markus, Saeculum (1970), 167. The saeculum is 'the sphere of temporal realities in which the two "cities" share an interest,' says Markus, Saeculum, (133); 'it is the sphere of human living, history, society and its institutions, characterised by the fact that in it the ultimate eschatological oppositions, though present, are not discernible.' 55 'As res the Church is lost [i.e., hidden] in the "world"; as signum it has distinct being as the world's pointer to the Kingdom' (Markus, Saeculum, 185). 56 Oliver O'Donovan (The Desire of the Nations [Cambridge 1996], 201 ff.) thinks not. 54

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the presence of the divine Christ. We may ask, in fact, whether the saeculum notion does not call into question Jesus' title, TTpcoros KCU eoxocTos. Augustine knows that after the coming and going of Jesus there can be no true progress in the world in any ultimate sense, but not perhaps (as he should be) that there can be no saeculum.51 We come back, then, to Irenaeus, whose two histories overlap, especially at the cross, but in the ascension also diverge. The two histories are that of Jesus and our own. Here also there is a third, of course, but that third belongs to the church, which has its history only by sharing in the other two, which is to say, eucharistically. Now the church is by no means neutral; its allegiance belongs wholly to Christ, even if it is often unfaithful to him. But just because the church belongs wholly to Christ, it is also wholly committed to the world - loving it better than it seems to love itself. Irenaeus develops this commitment in two ways. Positively, the church takes up the proper vocation of the new image-bearing humanity, which is to 'sanctify what has been created' by rendering thanks to the Creator, freely and sincerely. In this way it sets out around the world an indicium libertatis^ Yet this can and does put the church at odds with the world, as it once put Abel at odds with Cain. Negatively, then, along the way of its sanctifying acts, the church itself undergoes a painful fraction. Here we may indeed speak of degrees and increments: While the nations increase in lawlessness, the saints through suffering are prepared 'little by little' for the kingdom. Salvation comes to them only as they too are 'after a manner broken up, and ground to a fine powder, and sprinkled over by the patience of the Word of God, and set on fire, that they may be fitted for the royal banquet/50 For Irenaeus, in other words, the ecclesial ethic is an essentially priestly one. At bottom it is the ethic of martyrdom expounded in the Apocalypse. It is an unreserved commitment to the world in Christ's name for the sake of "l am tempted to add that, if modern liberal eschatology knows neither of these things, its conservative counterpart has also regressed from Augustine. While liberalism seems vainly to imagine a tension which gradually decreases with the spread of the gospel, conservativism seems ever capable of carving out a sphere of one sort or another to which the light and power of the gospel is somehow irrelevant. It is one of the many merits of O'Donovan's book that it makes neither of these mistakes. It is as sensitive to the insights of the bishop of Lyons as to those of the bishop of Hippo. >8 See AH 4,18. Fallen man lacks a share in the liberty and liberality of the Word, 'through whom the wood fructifies, and the fountains gush forth, and the earth gives first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.1 As such he can make at best only a 'servile' oblation. But a change of species is available for him through the implantation of the Word and the superna voluntaria pluvia ~ i.e., the gift of the Spirit (3.17.2; cf. 5.10.1), who turns the slave into a freeman and his corruptible offering into an incorruptible one. 59 AH 5.28 4 (cf. Ignatius, Rom 2.4). Nourished on the royal banquet, they shall always 'have something in which to advance,' for that banquet is an eternal feeding on the inexhaustible gifts of God (AH 2 28. .VI7. 4.11, 5.36).

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the world, the world's argument, approbation and wrath notwithstanding.60 If the church 'sends forward to the Father a multitude of martyrs,' it is only fulfilling its eucharistic mandate, which is not (pace Origen) to escape the world, but to be the world in tranformation.61 This, let it be admitted, is an ethic which depends for its justification on the resurrection from the dead. As such it rejects in principle (pace Augustine?) all secular calculation, all utilitarianism, all consequentialism.62

5. Conclusions I have not in this paper made any attempt to deal directly with the traditional subjects of eschatology, that is, with the 'last things' as such (death, resurrection, judgment, heaven and hell, etc.). What I have done is to point to the eucharistic tension at the heart of our subject, on the understanding that Christian eschatology arises from the actual situation of the church, as a people who stand at the intersection of two diverging histories. I have construed that situation, by analogy with the situation of the seventy at Sinai, as posing for theological and ethical reflection the problem of continuity and discontinuity with Jesus, since it is with Jesus that our destiny (and not ours only, but that of the creation) is in one way or another bound up. And with the help of Irenaeus in particular, I have tried to suggest that the eucharistic situation is one which engages the church in the process of the world's redemption in a way that demands complete loyalty to the absent Christ, in the form of an unreserved acceptance of the via crucis. First and last things are connected only by way of the first and last one, and that means by recapitulation. The eschatological or eucharistic ethic is an ethic of recapitulation.63 60

Cf. AH 4.31.3 and 4.33.9, where the church is compared to Lot's wife (sic). T. Sedgwick is on the right track with his attempt, in the light of the paschal mystery, to make gift 'the central moral image' (Sacramental Ethics [Philadelphia 1987], 20), but the cutting edge of the Irenaean analysis is lacking. 61 McGinn (Foundations, 127) makes clear Origen's tendency: 'While he still views martyrdom as an imitatio Christi in ways not unlike those found in earlier literature (e.g., Exhortation 12, 28, 36-37, 42), the martyr is now seen not so much oppositionally, as the one who confronts pagan demonism through his speaking out for Jesus, as "gradationally" (to use Alison Elliot's term), that is, as the one who brings to perfection the soul's desire to separate itself from the earthly body and material things (e.g., Exhortation 3, 12).' 62 Not merely because man is not God and is therefore unable to foresee the outcome of his actions, but because eucharistically the outcome of his actions is not what he can and should expect it to be, but rather just what God makes of it. (Augustine, it should be said, is not in general inclined to consequentialism; cf. J. Rist, Augustine [Cambridge 1994], 297). 63 The ethic of recapitulation is concisely indicated by Irenaeus when he speaks of the Word 'not despising or evading any condition of man' (AH 2.22.4). His earnestness here even pushes him towards the view that Jesus lived to be some fifty years of age - the 'old man for old men'

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Obviously, however, the whole problem of continuity and discontinuity, and the question of allegiance or praxis which goes with it, can be brought into proper focus only by a doctrine of the parousia. As surely as Moses descended from Sinai, Jesus too will 'come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God/64 What does this mean? How is the analogy to be modified and heightened here'.' That is what must be explored if the foregoing is to be given any further substance or coherence. Not because the year 2000 is upon us, but because there is a theological and ethical necessity, it is time for renewed attention to the doctrine of the second coming. But I do not intend at this point to embark on a direct treatment of the last things after all!*

that Padre Blazon longed for in Robertson Davies' novel, Fifth Business. (This ethic, by the way, requires a serious doctrine of the fall, a doctrine the bishop is often wrongly commended for not having; cf. my l St Irenaeus of Lyons,' Pro Ecclesia 4.3 (1995), 333ff.) 64 1 Thessalomans 4:16 (N1V). Was Irenaeus (AH 5.27f.) thinking of Moses' descent from Sinai when he said that k the advent of the Son comes indeed alike to all, but is for the purpose of judging, and separating the believing from the unbelieving'? * An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Christian Systematic Theology session of the American Academy of Religion in Orlando, Florida (November 1998). I am grateful to the organisers and to the respondent, Prof. Ellen Charry, for their encouragement.

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16. Last Things First? The Century of Eschatology in Retrospect Christoph Schwobel When one looks back on the history of theological thought in the twentieth century one cannot avoid the impression that it could correctly be called the century of eschatology. In surveys of eschatological thinking Ernst Troeltsch is frequently quoted for his remark (itself a quotation from a 'modern theologian') that 'nowadays the eschatological office is closed most of the time/ 1 But by 1957 Hans Urs von Balthasar could state that since the time of Troeltsch the eschatological office had been working overtime. Von Balthasar goes on to describe the different 'waves' of eschatological thinking that have shaped the discussion of his time.2 In his article on 'Eschatology 1 in the Theologische Realenzyklopddie Carl Heinz Ratschow remarks that the awareness of the eschatological character of Christian faith has almost 'flooded' twentieth-century theology.3 The overall picture of an eschatological flood forcing the 'eschatological office' to stay open all hours seems clear. However, the closer one looks the more one is struck by the different meanings with which the notion of eschatology is invested and the different views that are developed to substantiate claims concerning the ultimate significance of eschatology for the theological enterprise. Could it be that the bewildering pluriformity and ' E . Troeltsch, Glaubenslehre: Nach Heidelberger Vorlesungen aus den Jahren 1911 und 1912. Mit einem Vorwort von Marta Troeltsch (Munchen/Leipzig 1925), 36: 'Ein moderner Theologe sagt: das eschatologische Bureau sei heutzutage zumeist geschlossen.' Troeltsch gives the following reasons for this statement: 'Immer unertraglicher wird fur das sittliche Gefuhl der Lohn- und Strafgedanke. Das Jenseits kann nichts anderes sein als das allmahliche Hervortreten der Folgen, die das hohere Leben zeitigt, und ein immer tieferes Hineinwachsen ins gottliche Geisterreich.' In sum: the eschatological office is closed, 'weil die Gedanken, die es begrtindeten, die Wurzel verloren haben.' 2 Hans Urs von Balthasar, 'Eschatologie,' in: Johannes Feiner, Josef Triitsch & Franz Bockle (eds.), Fragen der Theologie heute (Einsiedeln 1957), 403-421: 'Wenn fur den Liberalismus des 19 Jahrhunderts das Wort von Troeltsch gelten konnte: "Das eschatologische Bureau ist meist geschlossen." so rnacht dieses im Gegenteil seit der Jahrhundertwende Uberstunden (403) • Cf. Carl Hem/ Ratschow, 'Eschatologie VIII: Systematisch-theologisch,' Theologische Realenzvklopadie X. 1982, 334-363

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stunning opacity of the understanding of eschatology is the price that has to be paid for the central role that is claimed for it in Christian theology? This question can only be answered if we try to untangle some of the strands of eschatological thought and try to assess the achievements and problems of the apparent concentration on eschatology - not least for the eschatological questions themselves.

1. The Heritage of the Nineteenth Century: The Open Future and the Logic of Development One of the points of the 'project of the Enlightenment' is that humanity becomes its own project. The liberation from the allegedly alienating bondage to authoritative traditions in the name of autonomy is a complete reversal of the human relation to time. Whereas in pre-modern cultures human beings define themselves from their origins and traditions, people in modern cultures see their self-definition in terms of the future actualisation of their possibilities.4 For the eighteenth century, human self-definition is largely a matter of education, for the individual and for the human race as Lessing's Education of the Human Race documents. The future becomes the space of open possibilities for human self-fulfilment. The idea of human perfectibility, so abundantly present in Enlightenment thought, presupposes that the future is an open future, offering an unrestricted scope for the development of the hitherto restricted human potentialities. The unknown continent of the future is conquered by the expansion of knowledge which allows humanity not only to transcend the bondage of alienating traditions but also to overcome the necessities of nature by understanding them and pressing them into the service of human fulfilment. Science becomes the paradigm of that kind of knowledge which paves the way for the open future. The more knowledge can be sure of directing its own expansion, the more optimistic the view towards the future becomes. The nineteenth century is largely characterised by the attempt to discover those processes which direct humanity's way towards the future. Hegel's reconstruction of history as the movement of the Spirit through the phases of its dialectical self-realisation, serves as the model for many of the nineteenth century's attempts to chart the road to a better future as a course that is inscribed into the very make-up of reality itself. Hegel's successors took up his notion of history as a universal process in which ultimate meaning is dialectically generated. With the denial of Hegel's conviction that this process had already come to an end, a conviction that characterises realised eschatology in its most extreme form, reflection can take an active part in 4

This 'turn to the future' is discussed in detail in Ratschow's TRE article, 334-337.

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accelerating the processes that lead to future fulfilment. Interpreting the world in this way means changing it - as Marx knew very well. Reality becomes a process in which ultimate meaning, the final perfection, is actualised; it is the process which immanently produces its own transcendence. The secularisation and temporalisation of Jewish and Christian images of the end can thus turn against the very beliefs which they took up to transform. The secular prophecy of the end, be it Marx's classless society or Nietzsche's superman, denounces religious eschatology as expecting from above what lies ahead as a goal of the process of history or of life itself.5 These secular eschatologies nevertheless maintain the pathos of the ultimate for their projections of the fulfilment that will invest the open future with content Over against the views focussing on history, Darwin's picture of the Origin of Species expanded and popularised the idea of evolution in such a way that it could also be seen by theologians as the 'category of our time.'6 For many evolutionary thinkers who took up Darwin's ideas on the evolution of life, the dynamic that triggers development from lower to higher forms of life is to be found in the process of nature itself. And if nature, propelling itself forward by means of natural selection securing the survival of the fittest, is understood as the basis for every form of culture, it seems only natural that the logic of natural development must be expanded to the social realm. The old ethic based on the liberation from nature appears as a strategy for inhibiting progress. It must be superseded by a new ethic which goes beyond good and evil and defines its ideals of strength and weakness in accordance with the process of nature. Nietzsche's vision of the death of God documents a human self-understanding where every 'beyond' can only be located in what lies ahead in the process of future self-actualisationa It is against this background that the ethical interpretation of the Kingdom of God in the theology of Albrecht Ritschl must be understood. Ritschl is undoubtedly the first modern theologian to give the Kingdom of God a constitutive place in the Christian scheme of reality by interpreting it as one of the two poles of the ellipsis that constitutes the Christian religion. The realisation of the Kingdom, however, is the joint product of God's action in bringing about his goal for humanity and of human action in the Christian church which is taken up into the process of the actualisation of God's will through the revelation in Jesus. For Ritschl, this christocentric 5

Cf. the contribution of Richard Bauckham & Trevor Hart to the present volume, and see also their Hope against Hope Christian Eschatology in Contemporary Context (London 1999). 6 J.R. Illmgworth, v Incarnation and Development', in: Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion oj the Incarnation (1889, i()1890); cf. Chr. Schwobel, 'Lux Mundi,' in: TRE XXI (1991), 621--626.

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understanding of history is not the key to a speculative view of history as a metaphysical process, but opens up the field of ethical activity in which the world as the sum total of what resists the actualisation of the Kingdom of God is overcome. If the Kingdom of God is interpreted in this way, it is no longer an eschatological event for which Christians can only hope, but the aim defined by God's action for humanity which must be worked for, enabled by the grace of God in Christ and directed by his Christ's dedication to the Kingdom. The constitutive role which the Kingdom of God receives in linking Christian faith and action, dogmatics and ethics, relativises its eschatological character, by relating it to the present task of the Christian church. Twentieth-century reflection on eschatology cannot be understood without the background of nineteenth-century views on the actualisation of the ultimate state of everything in an open future which is to be filled with content through the means of human self-actualisation. The turn towards the future is always presupposed as something in relation to which Christian eschatology must be defined - in critical contradiction as well as in constructive development.

2. The 'Rediscovery' of the Eschatological Character of Jesus' Message The rediscovery of the eschatological character of Jesus' message is usually connected with the names of Johannes WeiB7 and Albert Schweitzer8 at the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Yet, what precisely was the character of this 'rediscovery' if Ernst Troeltsch, usually an uncommonly acute observer of the religious situation of the times could speak of the eschatological office being largely closed? For WeiB and Schweitzer the eschatological character of Jesus' teaching is a historical rediscovery. It consists in the fact that, according to WeiB, Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom of God presents it as something which transcends the world absolutely and stands in exclusive contradiction to the world. Therefore any ethical application of the notion of the Kingdom of God, as it was demonstrated by his father-in-law Albrecht Ritschl, is illegitimate. Any attempt at formulating a modern Christian ethical orientation can neither appeal to the historical Jesus nor to his preaching of the Kingdom for validation. For Schweitzer the 'consistent eschatology' (konsequente Eschatologie) which he finds in Jesus' message and deeds prohibits the procedure by which we project modern ethical ideals back on to Jesus' 7 8

Johannes WeiB, Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God (1892; ET London 1971). Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the HistoricalJesus (London 3rd edn. 1954).

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message only to receive them back with the stamp of the authority of revelation. Jesus' message of the Kingdom stands in stark contrast to any view relating it to the moral development of humanity, it is consistently eschatologica! in the sense that it denies all immanent values of the world because it is presents the Kingdom as the end of the world. Jesus took it upon himself to suffer the tribulations of the messianic era in his own person and thus tried to bring the Kingdom into history. Jesus' way to Jerusalem is motivated by the expectation that God would finally execute his eschatological judgement. Jesus" death on the cross is the seal of futility for his mission. But not only Jesus' own expectation is disappointed. The disappointment also hits his disciples who expect the parousia of their Lord in their generation. For Schweitzer, the whole of Christian doctrine is generated in an attempt of theological crisis management to deal with the fact that the imminent parousia of the Lord did not occur. The Pauline transformation of Christian teaching consists precisely in replacing language about the coming of Christ with discourse about being in Christ, so that the process of the formation of dogma, focussed on the ontological presence of the eternal in history, could commence. For Schweitzer, Christianity can no longer recover the eschatological impetus of its beginning, it must interpret it as a mistaken perception of the will of God who can now onlv be obeyed on the path to the final moral perfection of the world. It is important to note that this 'rediscovery' is exclusively critical in character: it denies that contemporary theological thought can appeal to Jesus" authentic message for support, but it does not draw any constructive conclusions from this discovery. Rather, it served to interpret the eschatological character of Jesus" message as part of a range of eschatological notions that were part of the context of his time, but had been superseded by other interpretations in the history of Christianity. The historical rediscovery of eschatology has no constructive theological implications. In this sense, the rediscovery of the eschatological character of Jesus' teaching is one of the aspects of the situation before the First World War which support Troeltscrf s view of the eschatological office being closed. However, the term 'eschatology in the writings of WeiB and Schweitzer no longer refers to the traditional use of the term as a description of the section c de novissimis at the end of a traditional work of Christian doctrine, dealing with such things as death, judgement, heaven and hell. 'Eschatology' is used much more broadly to describe the general horizon within which the teaching and practice of Jesus must be understood.

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3. Eschatology and the Dialectic of Time and Eternity The interpretation of 'eschatology' changed dramatically when it was no longer understood as referring to a context-bound notion of the past which had to be critically reconstructed, but as expressing a reality experienced in the present. For much of German-speaking theology the experience of the First World War had an eschatological quality. God's judgement and the experience of hell were no longer understood as aspects of a world-view of the past that had become untenable in the modern era, but as aspects of reality which defined the present. What Weil3 and Schweitzer had investigated historically as a past feature of Christianity was interpreted by the generation of Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich theologically as the defining characteristic of Christianity in the present and in the past. Barth could thus write: 'Christianity which is not entirely and completely eschatology ... is entirely and completely contrary to Christ.'9 Eschatology could therefore no longer be relegated to a harmless little chapter at the end of dogmatics, as Barth characterised the place of the Mast things' in their ordinary dogmatic treatment, but had to be understood as the perspective which determines the theological enterprise from the start. For the dialectical theologians eschatology is concerned with the presence of the eternal confronting every moment in time. It is the crisis through which the eternal threatens every stability in time. The eternal is thus understood as the limit of time, not in the sense of quantitative limitation but as a critical qualification of everything temporal by the eternal. The presence of Christ is thus the qualitative limitation and sublation of all quantitative time. The problem of the delay of the parousia, for Schweitzer and his pupils the most important motivating factor for the development of Christian doctrine, no longer exists. This parousia which confronts every moment in time can neither be delayed nor can it occur in time. The eschatological conceptions of the dialectical theologians can be interpreted as variations on the theme of the dialectic of time and eternity. Tillich expresses it in the language of his early te'ras'-philosophy as the 'breakthrough' of the unconditioned into the realm of historical conditionality and consequently creates the neutral expression 'the eschaton' in order to describe the sphere of ultimate meaning breaking into history.10 In Bultmann's theology the dialectic is the same, but it is applied not to the sphere of historical experience and action as in Tillich's early work, but to

9

Karl Barth, Der Romerbrief (\922- Zurich 1971), 298, ET by E.C.Hoskyns, The Epistle to the Romans (Oxford 1933), 314. 10 Paul Tillich, 'Eschatologie und Geschichte,' Die christliche Welt 41 (1927) cols. 1034ff.

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'historicality' (Geschichtlichkeit) as a dimension of human existence. For Bultmann Christ is the 'end of history' in the sense that he is the end of human determination by the power of the past. The 'past' is in this sense the sum total of our being determined by our bondage to the world, by defining the meaning of our existence with reference to worldly entities. The existence of faith in which true historicality is actualised can therefore also be described as Entweltlichung, as liberation from the world as the ensemble of factors that determine our existence. The kerygma of Christ therefore confronts us with the call to decide here and now to understand our existence solely with reference to God. In an existential sense it can be described as that which conies towards us from outside ourselves and our entanglement m the world which is always sinful because it permits determinative influence to such factors which cannot be determinative if we define our existence from its relation to God. The kerygma of Christ shares with the future the character of coming towards us, but it is not to be understood within a temporal framework since it is the challenge of the eternal over against our bondage to the past. By the kerygma we are enabled to discover the meaning of history in our present responsibilities because we are enabled to let the moments of time be transformed into the moment of eternity What these conceptions have in common is that they understand the eschatological as the determinative framework of Christian faith and Christian theology by interpreting the eschaton in different ways as the dialectical challenge of time through the eternal. For Barth the eternal must be defined in christological terms, the resurrection becomes the model for the confrontation of time through the eternal. For Tillich it is the breakthrough of the unconditioned in the conditionalities of history, a kairos that relativises all other claims to ultimate meaning within history. For Bultmann it is the challenge, offered in the kerygma of Christ, to discover the authentic meaning of existence by being liberated from the world and its past and to find orientation in the present through the eschatological moment of decision. From the shared perspective of the dialectic of eternity and time they concentrate on different fields of eschatological explication. For Barth the infinite qualitative difference between time and eternity is the 'theme of the Bible and the sum of philosophy in one,' for Tillich it is the understanding of history as disclosed in the kairos, for Bultmann the historicality of existence. The standard themes of the eschata, death, judgement, heaven and hell, are to a large extent forms of expression of the overall eschatological character of Christian theology. Nearly all the formative ideas of Bultmann's view of eschatology are already contained in his article k Die Eschatologie des Johannes-Evangeliums' (1928), in: Glauben und Verstehen I (Tubingen 19^, 1U- 152

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4. Realised Eschatology and the History of Salvation The discussion of the character of the eschatological received a new impetus through the writings of the English New Testament scholar Charles Harold Dodd. In his classic The Parables of the Kingdom (1935) Dodd flatly denied that Jesus' message of the Kingdom is rooted in Jewish apocalypticism. Rather, its roots must be sought in rabbinic theology. Its decisive feature is neither to point to a transcendent, otherworldly realm, nor to an imminent catastrophe of history, but to an experience in the present. The Kingdom of God must already have come if Jesus calls his hearers to repentance and urges them accept the Kingdom like children (Mk 10:15). If the Kingdom of God is thus moved from the sphere of expectation to the realm of experience, it cannot have the same content as the apocalyptic writers thought. As a reality that can be experienced in the present, its present indications are the only pointers we have for its description, and not the speculations of apocalyptic fantasy. The Kingdom of God is for Dodd not a reality that is still outstanding, it is already present, but not yet fully revealed. We await not the coming, but the universal manifestation of the Kingdom of God. The present is at the same the 'already' of the presence of the lingdom and the 'not yet' of its universal manifestation. The question which is raised by Dodd's interpretation of Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom is the relationship between eschatology and experience. While the dialectical theologians emphasised that the eschaton is the crisis of all human experience, challenging and questioning the patterns of experience we take for granted, Dodd insists that the coming of the Kingdom is related by Jesus to the present experience of his hearers. In order that believers may come to the view that the full reality of the Kingdom has not yet been fully disclosed, they must already have tasted its reality in present experience. And it is this experience which offers the guidelines for the interpretation of the full disclosure of the Kingdom. However, this also raises the question whether in this way what comes to us from God is not subjected to the ways in which we experience it. Could it not be that our experience has a reductive effect on the understanding of the Kingdom so that its very novelty, its surprising otherness, is in this way levelled out? This is the point where the reflections of Oscar Cullmann start.12 In his view, the fact that the Kingdom of God is in a sense already here, and in another sense not yet here determines its theological sense. The defining factor of the eschaton is not time, so that the question would NOT be whether the Kingdom of God is a present or future event. Rather, time is 12 Cf. Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History (London 1962).

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eschatologically redefined by the coming of Christ. If the coming of Christ defines the coming of the Kingdom, Christ must be understood as the 'midst of time,1 the fullness of time. The turning of the times is from our perspective in the past, no longer in the future as for Jewish apocalypticism. This is the definitive qualification of time through God's action in Christ. From this event historical time is restructured as the history of salvation. In other words: God's action in the history of salvation discloses the real structure of historical time. The time of the promises of the Old Testament has come to an end in Christ, the time post Christum natum is the time of the church where the fulfilment of salvation in Christ is not yet folly disclosed, but where the Spirit is at work disclosing the reality of salvation. In the interim between the 'already' of the reality of salvation in Christ and the "not yet* of its full disclosure the church has its time. The decisive battle has been fought, now we await the proclamation and celebration of the ultimate victory in Christ which will be made manifest for all. With this conception Cullmann reopened the debate on the relationship of eschatology to the perceived linearity of historical time. While the dialectical theologians concentrated everything in the moment of the dialectical confrontation of time by eternity, Cullmann insists that once it is understood that the coming of Christ is the fullness of time, the time of history is restructured through the history of salvation. From the vantage point of the coming of Christ, which from our perspective lies in the past, God's story with Israel appears as a promise pointing to Christ, and we have our place in a new era which is defined by the fulfilment of God's promises in Christ and by the expectation of its ongoing and final disclosure through the Spirit. Does that mean that the novelty of the eschaton is sacrificed to the linearity of time9 Or would one have to say that in this conception eschatology is consistently historicised'7 Much of the criticism directed at Cullmann interpreted his view as a systematic development of the conception of history developed in Luke-Acts where Christ as the actuality of salvation is interpreted as the mid-point of the time of salvation which in this way can reinterpret the linear pattern of history. Nevertheless, it must be noted that for Cullmann the coming of Christ defines time so that the appearance of the eschaton constitutes the history of salvation which in turn restructures the perceived linearity of the historical process. However, the question remains: Are not all the conceptions we have so far discussed adaptations of the eschaton to the structure of human consciousness of time, although they emphasise different aspects of our experience of time? If so, there would be a persistent danger of confusing the point of eschatology with one of the aspects of the human experience of time.

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5. From the Eschaton to the Eschatos The impetus of eschatological thinking in the twentieth century owes much to the fact that the emphasis of eschatology shifted from discussion of the eschata, the last things, to reflection on the eschaton, as the ultimate in every sense which confronts the reality of history and time. However, the neutral use of the term eschaton also brings with it an indeterminacy which is not without problems. What is to be the frame of reference within which ultimacy is to be understood? Is it the ultimate of history which inevitably points beyond history, the 'transcendent meaning of historical events,' as Tillich thought, which is equally close to every moment in history and relates every event to its ultimate goal? Or is it the eternal confronting everything temporal as its ultimate crisis and as an indication that is redemption must come from a dimension which is wholly other than everything temporal? Or is it the ultimate of my existence as it confronts me in the call to decide for or against authentic existence? Or is it the end of the linear process of the history of salvation where it is finally revealed to all what has already ultimately occurred in the Christ event? Could it be that the eschaton in its neutral sense is more indicative of the context in which the question of the ultimate is raised than of its own content? In the English-speaking world John A.T. Robinson pointed out very clearly that in New Testament discourse the ultimate is by no means indeterminate - and by no means neutral. 'To eschaton (neuter) is not actually a New Testament phrase,' Robinson reminds us. The ultimate is always personal. 'Loyality to the Christocentric nature of all New Testament theology would require us to speak always of ho eschatos - not the Last Thing, but the Last Man, i.e. Jesus Christ.'13 In German-speaking theology it was Walter Kreck's book Die Zukunft des Gekommenen which emphasised from the perspective of Christian dogmatics the point Robinson made from the perspectives of biblical exegesis.14 For Kreck the connection between the 'already' and the 'not yet' of Christian eschatology cannot be grasped by any abstract conception of time, but only christologically.15 Language about the parousia therefore neither refers to an (absolute) end of time, nor to the end of a linear temporal history nor to the 'beyond' of all time, but to the unique future event of the revelation of Jesus Christ which bridges all past history and makes it present. God's revelation is the subject of the eschatological event and our history the predicate of this subject. 13 J.A.T. Robinson, In the End God: A Study of the Christian Doctrine of the Last Things (London 1968), 56. 14 Walter Kreck, Die Zukunft des Gekommenen: Grundprobleme der Eschatologie (Munchen 1961). 15 Kreck, Zukunft, 187f.

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The point put forward in very different ways by Robinson and Kreck is important, but to overstate the case of the christological content of eschatology seems self-defeating. To say that the Christian understanding of eschatology is chnstologically determined is an important correction of formal notions of the eschaton. However, what is the point of Christology for eschatology, if all points of eschatology have to be understood christologically 9 Christological over-determination of eschatology has much the same effect as its christological under-determination. Moreover, if eschatology is to be interpreted consistently in christological terms (a view that could be dubbed konsequente Christologie in der Eschatologie) is the 'not yet 1 not completely included in the 'already'? Does it not empty Jesus' proclamation of the coming of the Kingdom of God of its character as a promise which points to the future? 16

6. Return to the Future The ongoing debate on eschatology in twentieth-century theology experienced its hottest phases during the time immediately after the First World and again during the 1960s, when there was a new eruption of eschatological awareness These two periods are not unrelated since the resurgence of eschatological theology in the second phase was largely based on taking up the impetus of philosophical conceptions that made their first appearance immediately after the First World War. The discussion after 1960 is dominated by two types of eschatological theology, that of Wolfhart Pannenberg and that of Jurgen Moltmann. The respective development of their approaches has influenced the debate on eschatology since then. They both started from a rediscovery of the significance of the future as the category of eschatology. For Pannenberg the concentration on eschatology is nothing but an attempt at reclaiming the centre of the proclamation of Jesus for theology: the message of the Kingdom of God.17 In Jesus' words, deeds and fate everything is focussed on the coming of the Kingdom. There can be no 16 This was Jurgen Moltmann's criticism of Kreck's approach: 'The revelation of Christ cannot... merely consist in what has already happened in hidden ways being unveiled for us to see, but it must be expected in events which fulfil the promise that is given in the Christ event. This Christ event cannot then be understood as fulfilling all promises, so that after this event there remains only the sequel of its being unveiled for all to see... Therefore the Christian hope expects from the future of Christ not only unveiling, but also final fulfilment.' J. Moltmann, Theology of Hope On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology (1964; ET London 1967), 228 1 I follow the argument in Pannenberg's paper 'Eschatology, God and Creation,' in: W. Pannenberg, Theology and (he Kingdom of God, ed. R.J. Neuhaus (Philadelphia 1969), 51-71.

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doubt that the coming of the Kingdom is for Jesus not only a future event, it is also already present. However, the presence of the Kingdom must be understood as the effect of its coming in the future. For Pannenberg, it is absolutely crucial that theology can come to terms with this reversal of our understanding of the relationship of past, present and future. According to our ordinary understanding the future is the effect of the past and the present. For Jesus' message of the Kingdom its presence is the effect of its future coming. What is said of the Kingdom must be said because it applies to God. God's being cannot be thought of without his rule, and God's rule comes from the future into our present and past.18 In the history of Christian theology the image of God was for the longest time dominated by the Greek philosophical conception of God as the highest spiritual being. If Christian theology is to be practised in accordance with the message of Jesus, a fundamental reorientation of this image is required. The basis for such a reorientation is the understanding of God as the power of the future whose being is fully actualised in the coming of his rule. This requires a corresponding understanding of the world of history and nature as characterised by a fundamental contingency and indeterminacy, and of ourselves as achieving the unity of our personhood in the changing scenes of life only in relation to a personal power who structures the contingent circumstances of the events of our lives and of reality around us. In every given moment we are confronted with the infinite future which gives unity to the diversity of the experienced world. Without a common future the world of experience would break up into the plurality of its aspects. If God is interpreted with Pannenberg as the unifying power of the future, the unity of the world is not to be interpreted as an eternal pre-stabilised order; rather it is achieved through a process which reconciles the diversities and contradictions through its unifying power. For Pannenberg the power of the future must be thought of as applying to every event, including all events in the past. In this sense the future which I expect today was also the future of the first constellations of matter and energy in the universe and of historical beings in the long distant past. However, what something is, will only become clear through what it becomes. In a sense this general metaphysical principle applies also to God, in so far as only the future of God's rule will verify the statement 4God exists.' However, Pannenberg distinguishes his own conception from that of A.N. Whitehead, by claiming that there is no development in God. Precisely because God is the future of every event and in this sense was present to every past occurrence we do not have to assume that God develops in accordance with the developments in the world. If we follow this line of thought, we must assume that God is his own future. 18 On this aspect of Pannenberg's thought on eschatology, see also Luco van den Brom's contribution to the present volume.

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There is no future beyond God which God as the power of the future would have to face This is at once the definition of perfect freedom - to have future in oneself and from oneself - and of eternity. Both characterise the mode of the being of God in the coming of his rule. For Pannenberg, God as the power of the future must be understood as creative love. This becomes clear in Jesus' message of the Kingdom. By proclaiming the present coming of God's rule, Jesus enables those who believe his message to live now already in communion with God. This is most clearly manifested in the forgiveness of sin which Jesus grants: It liberates people from the burden of their past and opens up for them the horizon of the future. Understanding God, the power of the future, as creative love, points to the divine motive for creation and thus explains why there is anything at all. Furthermore, every event that has become real is related to all other events through the relationship to God's love as its originating and perfecting cause. God is the creator as far as he is also the one who perfects the world in communion with God. Pannenberg can thus combine the emphasis on the novelty of every event with the idea of a unification of everything in God's future. The relative stability of this cosmic process allows the formulation of universal laws while at the same time maintaining the radical contingency of every event in so far as it has its source in the creative love of God. By being able to distinguish the future from the present, human beings can relate freely to the power of the future which as divine love defines their ultimate destiny. This is for Pannenberg the lesson that can be learnt from the process of history, especially from the history of religions. The trinitarian language of Christian faith expresses for Pannenberg that God is in his own being the movement of his creative love. God is present for the world in Jesus, the witness of the coming reign of God, and in the Spirit, the giver of freedom and love, who creates the faith which Jesus proclaimed. The trinitarian distinctions are rooted in the difference between the future and the presence of God, but they are comprehended in the eternal presence of God when his power will be fully realised. Pannenberg's theology is perhaps the most radical attempt to understand the whole of Christian faith and theology as eschatology. The crucial reversal from the view of the process of the world that is characterised by a linear progression from the past to the present to the future, to a view where God is understood as the power of future who in his creative love lets a world be and become by drawing it into communion with himself makes eschatology the unifying perspective of the whole theological project. It is characteristic for Pannenberg's approach that this project does not only offer a key to the theological understanding of Christian faith in all its aspects, but also claims to offer a way of solving the central issues of classical metaphysics, like the relationship between unity and plurality. In

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the systematic development of his theology Pannenberg has integrated central dimensions of theological and philosophical reflection, Christology, anthropology and the problem of theological theory-formation in the context of the philosophy of science, into the comprehensive framework of his eschatological theology. This has culminated in his full-scale Systematic Theology, where the doctrine of the Trinity becomes the framework for the exposition of the whole divine economy as the manifestation of divine love. The second theological conception which has shaped reflection on eschatology from the 1960s onwards is that of Jiirgen Moltmann, programmatically presented in his Theology of Hope (1964). Moltmann shares with Pannenberg both the emphasis on the overall significance of eschatology for the whole of Christian faith and theology and the interpretation of the eschaton in terms of the future. Rephrasing Karl Earth's statement from 1922 he says: 'From first to last, and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving, and therefore also revolutionising and transforming the present ... There is therefore only one real problem in Christian theology, which its own object forces upon it and which it in turn forces on mankind and human thought: the problem of the future.'19 For Moltmann this implies that what was formerly treated in the last chapter of Christian dogmatics must now be its starting point. Last things first! 'A proper theology would therefore have to be constructed in the light of its future goal. Eschatology should not be its end, but its beginning.'20 Although in adopting this Moltmann draws much inspiration from the philosophy of Ernst Bloch, he nevertheless is careful to establish the ground of a Christian eschatology. It is not, as in Bloch's philosophy, the process of matter as such, the natura naturans, but the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. This also means that the hope for the future as it is rooted in the resurrection of Christ may not supersede the significance of the cross, as Moltmann remarks critically with regard to Pannenberg's programme of 'revelation as history.' The resurrection and the cross in their unbreakable unity form the ground of Christian hope. 'Hence all Christian resurrection eschatology bears the marks of an eschatologia crucis.'21 Because it is rooted in the resurrection and cross of Christ, eschatology 'must formulate its statements of hope in contradiction to our present experience of suffering, evil and death.'22 This turn from eschatological hope to transforming praxis in the present is typical of Motltmann's theology: Christian hope which has its ground in the resurrection of the crucified Christ possesses a form of knowledge of the coming transformation of all things which leads to liberating praxis. In this 19 20 21 22

Theology Theology Theology Theology

of Hope, of Hope, of Hope, of Hope,

16. \ 6. 83. 19.

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sense Moltmann is also critical of Pannenberg's eschatological metaphysics as merely another interpretation of the world. 'The theologian is not concerned merely to supply a different interpretation of the world, of history and of human nature, but to transform them in expectation of a divine transformation,'23 Moltmann can therefore combine the theology of hope grounded in the resurrection of Christ with a theology of mission which is grounded in the activity of the Spirit re-presenting the Christ event as the coming future of the world. 'One could say that Christian eschatology is the study of the tendency of the resurrection and future of Christ and therefore immediately leads to the practical knowledge of mission.'24 It seems that the discussion of eschatology has returned in crucial aspects full circle to where it started from, the ethical transformation of the world in the name of the Kingdom of God. However, this impression is misleading. The motivating power of this transforming praxis is not the ethical demand of the message of Jesus but the transforming power of his cross and resurrection. Moltmann insists time and again that it is precisely its christological basis which prevents Christian eschatology from being trapped in a view of history which postulates an abiding permanence over against the transience of the historical process. 'The process of Christian proclamation thus implies a Christology. It cannot be deduced from the general problem of history and continuance. The gospel would be put to the service of foreign gods and ideologies if in the sense of modern romanticism it were expected to provide anti-revolutionary, Western continuity and a rescue for decaying civilizations.'25 From its christological basis this view of eschatology can therefore be expanded into a programme of the transformation of society in history which is focussed on the 'exodus church' and its call to follow Christ's mission of service to the world. 'This mission is not carried out within the horizon of expectation provided by the social roles which society concedes to the Church, but it takes place within its own peculiar horizon of the eschatological expectation of the coming Kingdom of God, of the coming righteousness and the coming peace, of the coming freedom and dignity of man/ 26

7. Eschatology and Theologies of Liberation It is not surprising that the connection Moltmann establishes between eschatological hope and the transforming mission of the church finds many 23 24 25 26

Theology Theology Theology Theology

of Hope, 84 (Moltmann's italics). of Hope, 195. of Hope, 301. oj'Hope, 327.

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echoes in and perhaps also serves as an inspiration for the theologies of liberation that succeeded the eschatological theologies on the theological agenda. Once the coming Kingdom of God is understood as the coming of righteousness, peace, freedom and human dignity, it throws a glaring light on the situation of the present which seems to be characterised by the absence of what the Kingdom of God entails. If the coming of the Kingdom of God is not understood as a transcendent event, but as one which will embrace history, it can be understood as the historical liberation from those conditions which seem to contradict its coming. However, if the Kingdom of God is not only a future event, but also a present reality, it must then be understood as the motive and ground of such liberating praxis that overcomes the historical conditions that contradict the Kingdom. In the work of James H. Cone, perhaps the most significant representative of black theology, it is this transposition of eschatological hope into the situation of the oppressed which shapes the whole enterprise of Christian theology: 'Christian theology is a theology of liberation. It is a rational study of the being of God in the light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the gospel, which is Jesus Christ.'27 The Kingdom of God which will be brought about by God affects the present situation of black people in such a way that it enables them 'to see salvation in the light of their own earthly liberation.'28 The Kingdom is a historical reality, but at the same time the future of God that transcends what can be realised in history. Therefore, 'to hope for the future of God is to know that those who die for freedom have not died in vain; they will see the Kingdom of God. This is precisely the meaning of our Lord's resurrection and why we can fight against overwhelming odds.'29 The situation of the oppressed black community is one where they are enabled to rediscover the social dimension of the Kingdom of God and are empowered to strive for their liberation because they believe that the Kingdom that God brings becomes present in this way. For Gustavo Gutierrez, whose work A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation30 is one of the classics of Latin American liberation theology, 'eschatology is ... not just one more element of Christianity, but the very key to understanding the Christian faith.' It has as its core 'the driving force of salvific history radically oriented toward the future.'31 Guiterrez tries to do justice to the eschatological key to the understanding of Christian faith by interpreting the 'creation of a new man' as the final goal 27

James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Philadelphia 1970), 17. Cone, Black Theology, 225. 29 Black Theology, 249. 30 (New York 1973). 31 Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation, 162. 28

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32

of history This means that the promises that are made in salvific history are embraced and taken up into that promise which is partially disclosed in the preceding promises in their fulfilment. The promise, God's efficacious self-communication, is thus the unifying factor of salvific history which invites us to participate in a process that leads from alienation to liberation. Guitierrez takes up the emphasis of the many Old Testament traditions that the process of salvific history is not a road of spiritual perfection only, but embraces the historical and material dimensions of life and so includes our action in history Nevertheless, although Guitierrez insists on seeing the eschatological promise as the driving force of historical liberation, he is aware that it would lose its liberating and motivating power if it were just another programme of social action in history. The promise transcends every historical fulfilment with a promissory surplus and so points to the ultimate end of history as the point where it will become fully actual: 'The complete encounter with the Lord will mark the end of history, but it will take place in history.' 33 In Guiterrez' theology of liberation it is eschatology which provides the unifying bond between history, politics and salvation. It is the orientation towards the promise of salvific history which opens up a view of history where history is not determined by the powers of oppression, where politics is not the prerogative of the oppressors and where salvation is not spiritualised so as to provide a solace which is ahistorical and apolitical in character. The corporate aspect of eschatology determines the view of history as a social process, the understanding of politics as a communal enterprise and the reality of salvation as one which is not distorted bv individual interests.

8. Cosmic Eschatology: Teilhard de Chardin The common denominator of the eschatological views we discussed in the last three sections is their orientation towards the future. The future is the eschatological category and the paradigm of transcendence. A similar emphasis can be found in the writings of the French Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin which exercised a distinctive influence on theological thought, not only in Roman Catholic circles, in the second half of the twentieth century, although they were developed in the first half. As in Pannenberg, we find in Teilhard a strong emphasis on the future as the unifying perspective for all dimensions of reality. The emphasis on the unifying power of the future presupposes a view of reality in the present which is characterised by dualistic antagonisms pervading all spheres of 32 Theology of Liberation, 146. Theology of Liberation* 168

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reality, but experienced in its most drastic form in the antagonism between acting and suffering in human life. All the antagonistic structures of present reality are rooted in the fundamental antagonism between the reality of God and the reality of the world. Eschatology has as its theme the overcoming of these antagonisms in the reality of Christ as the end of the cosmic evolution in one universal cosmic process moving from alpha to omega (cf. Rev 1:8). The different spheres of reality, the cosmosphere of the inanimate world, the biosphere of the animate world, the noosphere of human consciousness and the christosphere of the dynamic realm of the evolutionary efficacy of Christ are the dimensions which are connected in the process of evolution urging towards christification. The processes of cosmogenesis and of noogenesis converge in christogenesis. The growing differentiation of being is thereby related to the 'milieu divin,' at once the innermost heart of the development and the ultimate goal in which everything is dynamically related to the becoming of the reality of Christ. The efficacious archetype of this cosmic reconciliation in christogenesis is the celebration of the mass with its transubstantiation of the elements into the body and blood of Christ. All stages of cosmic evolution have the typos of their beginning and end, of their arche and their telos in the eucharist. Hominisation and christogenesis come together in this event. It is this reference to the evolution of Christ which, before the eschaton, is pre-actualised in holy communion which prevents Teilhard's thought from becoming pantheistic. In the end the expansion of the divine in everything which is focussed in Christ will be fully actualised and revealed: 'Then the presence of Christ, which has been silently accruing in things will be revealed ... under the finally liberated action of the true affinities of being, the spiritual atoms of the world will be borne along by a force generated by the powers of cohesion proper to the universe itself and will occupy, whether within Christ or without Christ (but always under the influence of Christ) the place of happiness or pain designated for them by the living structure of the Pleroma/34 Teilhard's vision seems at first far removed from the views focussing on the relationship between eschatology and history. However, once we understand cosmic evolution as a historical process, the similarities begin to emerge in the concentration of everything in the future actualisation of Christ in all things which will bring a reconciled unity overcoming all divisions and tensions of present reality. The points of contact become even clearer when we note that Teilhard saw the visions of socialism which he interpreted as a humanist Weltanschauung as part of the process of evolution where humanity becomes a differentiated whole before the process of hominisation is completed in christification. The common factor 34 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu: An Essay on the Interior Life (New York 1960), 133f.

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consists not only in the fact that what classical eschatology expected from above now lies ahead in the process of the actualisation of eschatological hope. Teilhard's vision also shows how the evolution of Christ and the evolution of the cosmos interact on the way to the final goal, not dissimilar to the way the human action of liberating praxis and the divine fulfilment of the promise of the Kingdom interact in other future-oriented eschatologies.

9. Back to the Earth With the last quarter of the twentieth century the intellectual and theological climate changed again and new themes appeared on the theological agenda. The global ecological crisis shattered the future-oriented visions of eschatologies for which the future was the screen on which the fulfilment of all human hopes was projected. The pollution of the environment, the rapid consumption of the earth's natural resources, global warming, the risks of the use of nuclear energy threatening future generations and many other key-words and slogans indicated a new awareness of the threats to human life on earth. The mood in the West was shaped by the picture of a planet threatened precisely by the projects of its human inhabitants attempting to secure their future in such a way that the conditions for having a future at all were jeopardised. The public attention focussed on these issues indicated a loss of nerve on the part of Enlightenment man.35 It seemed that the fundamental premise of the k project of the Enlightenment' that humanity has become its own project was radically called into question. The underlying optimism of all forms of thought which saw the future as a vast continent of fulfilment and bliss waiting to be conquered seemed thoroughly disappointed by a radical change in a self-understanding which found expression in new forms of apocalypticism or even nihilism with regard to the future. Was the graffiti slogan 'no future' the writing on the wall for a culture defined by its unquestioning orientation towards the future of its own projects'? For a time it seemed that the theology of creation, rediscovered after a long period of neglect, had displaced the preoccupation with eschatology. But not only the ecological crisis provided a challenge for eschatology. The dramatic historical changes after the year 1989 not only represented the end of the post-war period and of a division of power which had for a long time shaped the global political and social situation, it also brought with it a radical questioning of the secular eschatologies of the nineteenth century. For an instructive feminist perspective on eschatology cf. Catherine Keller, 'Pneumatic Nudges The Theology of Moltmann, Feminism and the Future,' in: Miroslav Volf et al., The Future of Theolui?\" ^V.SYW in Honour ofJurgen Moltmann (Grand Rapids 1996), 142-153.

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Could it be that the only revolution that basically fitted the Marxist pattern of the underprivileged masses abolishing the privileges of a politically and socially privileged minority by pressure from below also abolished the Marxist vision of history on the way towards the classless society of the future? The question was raised in a most dramatic form by Francis Fukuyama's book The End of History and the Last Man.36 He raised the question whether Hegel's postulate at the beginning of the nineteenth century had not been fulfilled at the end of the twentieth, that history as a dialectical process urging the development of societies forward by the pressures of conflict had come to an end in the development and almost global establishment of liberal democracy. Fukuyama asked whether social theories were not misguided in expecting a further step in the development of society, whether the end of history had already been reached in principle and only had to be acknowledged in political practice. Has eschatology been realised and abolished by the process of history? However, Fukuyma's title with its allusion to Nietzsche's last man also raises another, more sceptical question. Could it be that the end of history has been reached, but that its outcome is far from desirable, that the project of human self-perfection that had been carried out, proved to be disaster? Even if one does not see the Zeitgeist expressed in the big slogans that seem to dominate the conversation of society, it seems that at the end of the twentieth century eschatology has lost much of the attention it could attract for a long time during the previous decades. The advent of post-modernity indicates for its defenders as well as for its critics the end of a unified framework of human expectation. If the eschatological 'master story' is lost, only short stories remain. The pluralism which both the protagonists and the critics of post-modernity see as one of the defining characteristics of the present situation makes it difficult to maintain unified visions of the future, let alone of the eschaton. If we are one, it is in the threats and dangers that confront us and not in our hopes. Even the new millennium does not seem to have kindled a new pervasive eschatological awareness. Where the millennium was used as a key-word for our situation it did not refer to the advent of a surprising new reality, but served as a decorative phrase for our more or less reasonable projects. Otherwise, in much of our culture great expectations appear to have given way to grave concerns and small pleasures. Is this the inevitable deflation of eschatological awareness following a period of eschatological hyper-inflation? Or is the end of the century of eschatology also the end of the line for eschatology?

s

(New York 1992).

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10. Lessons for Hope Our look back on the twentieth century has confirmed the initial impression that the twentieth century can indeed be called the century of eschatology in theology. While the theological views we have sketched (and they present only a small sample of a selection that could be extended without difficulty) offer a bewildering variety of proposals how eschatology should be conceived, they all agree in giving eschatology a place of priority on the theological agenda. In most examples we have referred to, eschatology is conceived as the perspective which determines the whole enterprise of Christian theology. In this sense they seem to agree that last things should come first. However, this is not without problems. In Christian theology eschatology does not seem to have many (if any) determinative factors of its own. It is, to say the least, difficult to define what we can hope for by what we can hope for. This seems to be one of the reasons why eschatology in the twentieth century has been strongly influenced by currents of thought and praxis outside Christian theology, from existentialism to philosophies inspired by Marxist views of history and other forms of philosophical orientation towards the future, like process philosophy. This also explains why eschatological theories in Christian theology have been more than usually dependent on the changes of intellectual climate and religious mood in the twentieth century, both with regard to high hopes and deep-seated anxieties. Reading through the eschatological writings of the twentieth century one may get a rather opaque vision of the last things, but one always gets a very clear picture of the cultural situation in which these views were first developed. What, then, are the lessons that can be learnt from our retrospective view of the century of eschatology for the constructive tasks of Christian eschatology? The first lesson seems to be that there are considerable risks in giving eschatology priority to the whole theological enterprise or in isolating it unduly from its connection with other articles of Christian faith and loci of Christian doctrine. One could call this the fallacy of eschatological isolation. The demands for giving priority to eschatology are right in pointing to the eschatic quality of God's revelation in Christ as it is authenticated by the Spirit. Christianity stands or falls with the conviction that God's self-disclosure in Christ is ultimate in the sense that its significance for the salvation of the world will not be superseded by any other events. This does not mean that there is nothing more to be hoped for after Christ, but that everything that can be hoped for will be grounded in Christ. In this sense Christian eschatology is christologically determined. The pattern of Christian hope will always be a pattern based on the matrix of the Christ event. This christological determination is not independent of its pneumatological efficacy. The uniqueness and ultimacy of the Christ

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event, its soteriological character as 'once and for all' is safeguarded by the fact that the Spirit does not bring a new form of salvation but the application of salvation grounded in Christ. Because the Christ event is neither in need of, nor capable of repetition, the Spirit's action is bound to the content of the gospel of Christ. On the other hand, the emphasis on the pneumatological aspect of eschatology prevents the christological determination of eschatology for being interpreted in a sense where everything has already happened. If we ask why the Christ event is ultimate in this sense, the answer must be that Christ is the disclosure and fulfilment of the will of God the creator from the beginning. Christ is not an absolutely new beginning in God's story with his creation, but the decisive step towards the fulfilment of God's primordial creative will to be in communion with his creation. The Christ event has eschatological significance because it has a protological basis. Christian eschatological hope is based on the faithfulness of God to his creation. In one sense there is nothing new in eschatology, since in Christian faith it must be understood as the fulfilment of God's original and primordial will to be in communion with his creation. In another sense everything is new in eschatology, since the fulfilment of God's will is not determined by the old order of the world as it is viewed apart from God and therefore it cannot be predicted on the basis of any given state of the world. Hence, the content of eschatology is not to be derived from what is still outstanding, but can only be expressed on the basis of what has already happened in Christ. If we disregard this connection, what is still outstanding can only present us with an empty space which will be filled with our hopes and fears, our dreams and aspirations - as the history of eschatology in the twentieth century shows. The Christ event is therefore the criterion of Christian eschatological hope. These brief remarks may indicate the risk involved in isolating eschatology from the network of Christian doctrines by giving it priority of place over other doctrines. This can only be avoided if eschatology is integrated into the doctrinal scheme of Christianity. Christian hope has as its content the perfection of God's creation with his reconciled creation. In Christian theology the integrative framework for the understanding of God's action in creation, reconciliation and perfection is the doctrine of the Trinity. By understanding every form of divine action as an act of the triune God, creation, reconciliation and perfection are internally related by ascribing them all to the agency of the triune God. If we want to avoid the dangers of an isolated treatment of eschatology, the task consists in developing a Christian eschatology as a trinitarian eschatology. The second lesson to be learnt from our review of eschatological teaching in the twentieth century seems to consist in the warning not to isolate one dimension of being as the exclusive field of application of eschatological thought. One could call this the fallacy of one-dimensional

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eschatologies. The different eschatological theories of the century give different dimensions of human life a privileged place in the development of eschatological doctrines, be it the existential dimension, the historical dimension, the political dimension or the cosmic dimension. The individual and corporate aspects of eschatology are often presented as alternative conceptions. If we understand human being consistently as relational being, privileging one dimension over against others seems plainly false. Our relationship to ourselves, to other people, to the world of nature and culture and to God cannot be isolated from one another without serious distortion. Together they make up the ensemble of relationships through which our personhood is formed. In these relationships the relationship to God in creation, reconciliation and the eschatological perfection of our destiny is understood by Christian faith as the one that shapes and constitutes all other relationships. The central images of hope stress in different ways that God's eschatological action relates to our whole relational being in all its dimensions and not only to one of them. The social metaphor of the Kingdom of God and the bodily metaphor of the resurrection of the dead make that abundantly clear. Therefore eschatological views focussing exclusively on one dimension or privileging one aspect of our relational being over against another are inherently deficient. They offer a reductive understanding of the holistic and relational character of the biblical images of hope. Here we can see how an integrated view of eschatology, developing the understanding of the eschaton in conjunction with creation and reconciliation and based on the Christ event as its criterion helps to avoid this one-sided focus. The task for a Christian eschatology seems to consist in developing a consistently relational eschatology. A third lesson to be learnt from the eschatological debates of this century seems to be an ongoing concern for the relationship between continuity and discontinuity in Christian hope. If what we should hope for is totally discontinuous with our present experience we would not even be able to talk about it. How should we then be ready to make our defence when anyone challenges us to justify the hope that is in us (cf. 1. Peter 3, 15)? However, if what we should hope for is totally continuous with our existence here and now it merely appears to be an extension of our present experience, an evolution from our present state, ultimately indistinguishable from the human project of perfection. One could call this the fallacy of misplaced continuities and discontinuities. Again, it seems that only the death and resurrection of Jesus can point to an appropriate pattern of discontinuity and continuity. The discontinuity is stressed by the emphasis on the real death of Jesus; he suffers death as the disruption of all active relations in which human life is lived. The continuity is located in the faithfulness of God who raises Jesus from the dead. God maintains his active creative relationship to Jesus through the disruption of death and recreates the relationships in

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which Jesus stands in the glory of eternal life. This pattern forms a central part of the content of the Gospel and is re-enacted in the sacraments of baptism and holy communion. Here the discontinuity is stressed in dying with Christ and in the forgiveness of sins, and only through this discontinuity is continuity granted by God's gracious action. In this context God's action takes the place of granting continuity which in other views is located in the immortal soul. The relationship between discontinuity and continuity forms a central aspect of the image of the last judgement because it involves the disclosure of and separation from what cannot become part of the perfected communion of God with his creation. The continuity of divine action and the discontinuity of created matter together provide the basis for a hope which trusts in a real transformation in the eschaton, because we can already hear it, feel it and taste it in the promise of the gospel and the celebration of the sacraments. The task for eschatology seems to be to relate the pattern of discontinuity and continuity expected in the eschaton, which is disclosed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, to the pattern of discontinuity and continuity as it is already experienced in the promise of the gospel and the celebration of the sacraments. The fourth lesson concerns the question of the relationship of eschatology and time. Most of the views we have mentioned focus on one aspect of the human consciousness of time to connect it with the actuality of the eschaton. In this way competing views of present and future eschatologies, of eschatologies of the moment of confrontation with the eternal and of the advent of the future in the present are developed. It is perhaps understandable that human beings as temporal beings can only conceive of eschatological ultimacy by locating it at some point in our consciousness of time. Nevertheless, this is theologically very questionable. One could call it the fallacy of premature temporalisation of the eschaton. If Augustine was right and the universe was not created in time but with time, then time, and with it the open future, is as problematical for expressing eschatological ultimacy as any dimension of created existence. If the eschaton is the perfection of the will of God the creator to be in communion with his reconciled creation, the starting point for grasping the significance of the eschaton cannot be time, but must be God. Just as God is the ground of all created being, so God is also the ground of the time of the world and of every creature, letting it be in its time, and receiving it into communion in God's own time. This is the time in which God lets the time of the universe be. From this perspective neither the present nor the future are immediate models for the eschaton, but only the way in which the time of creation is grounded in the time of the creator. If human consciousness fails to inquire into the theological ground of the possibilities of the temporality of the world in God's own time, its own understanding of time and its

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structure seems to offer a fragile basis for understanding the time of the creator, which holds the key to the understanding of the eschaton. The psalmist's words 'My times are in thy hands' (Ps. 31:15) refer both to our time and to its ground in the time of God.3' Finally, there is the lesson about the relationship of eschatology and ethics, so often at the centre of controversy in the eschatological debates of the twentieth century. Here the danger is one of the moralisation of eschatology which conflates what can only be done by God and what can and should be done by human beings. It is true that human action is only possible within a horizon of meaning that grants significance to our actions. However, according to the insights of Christian faith Christians are called to act in the horizon of a goal which will riot be brought about by human action the Kingdom of God, The ultimate orientation for human action, the highest good, is therefore not a human project, but, if the expression is allowed, God's project with his world. This provides the ultimate horizon for human action but also liberates it from having to bring it about by its own means. Christian ethics is therefore oriented towards the promise that the fulfilment of the ultimate goal is in the hands of the triune God. This is precisely what distinguishes the eschatological orientation of faith from the open future of humanity's own projects, and this is the reason why we can hope that it will not be frustrated when human projects founder. The lessons we have mentioned can only be examples of what can be learnt from the study of eschatology in the twentieth century. However, they suffice to remind us that it might be a good idea to allow some time for taking stock in eschatological matters, before we can discuss the opening hours of the eschatological office in the twenty-first century.

A most instructive exploration of the theological implications of a phenomonological analysis of time can he found in Eilert Herms, 'Meine Zeit in Gottes Handen,' in: Konrad Stock (ed.), />// und Schopfung (Gutersloh 1997), 67-90.

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Contributors Richard Bauckham is Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of St Andrews. He is one of the editors of God Will Be All in All: The Eschafology ofJurgen Moltmann (Edinburgh 1999). Douglas B. Farrow is Assistant Professor of Christian Theology in McGill University. Montreal His publications include Ascension and Ecclesia (Edinburgh IWh David Fergusson is Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Aberdeen. He w i l l take up the Chair of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh in 2000 He is the author of Community, Liberalism and Christian Ethics (Cambridge 1998). Niels Henrik Gregersen is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. He is the editor of The Human Person in Science and Theology (Edinburgh 2000). Garrett Green is Professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut College, New London C l He is the author of Theology, Hermeneutics and Imagination (Cambridge 2000). Colin E. Gunton is Professor of Christian Doctrine at King's College, University of London. His books include Theology through the Theologians (Edinburgh 1996). Daniel W. Hardy became a Senior Member of the Faculty of Divinity in Cambridge in 1996, after retiring as Director of the Center for Theological Inquiry, Princeton, He is the author of God's Ways with the World: Thinking and Practising Christian Faith (Edinburgh 1996). Harriet Harris is a Lecturer in Theology at the University of Exeter, and author of Fun damentalism and Evangelicals (Oxford 1998). Trevor Hart is Professor of Divinity at the University of St Andrews. He and Richard Bauckham are the authors of Hope against Hope: Christian Eschatologv in Contemporary Context (London 1999).

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Kim Yong-Bock is a Korean Minjung theologian, who is serving as the Chairperson of the Society of Minjung Theology, the Moderator of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) Theology Department, and Chair of the Theological Commission of the Korean National Council of Churches. He has been the President of Hanil University and Theological Seminary. He has written Messiah and Minjung (Hong Kong 1994). Douglas Knight is studying systematic theology at King's College, London. Jiirgen Moltmann is Emeritus Professor of Theology at Tubingen University. His numerous publications include The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (London 1996). Marcel Sarot is Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion in the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. His publications include Living a Good Life in Spite of Evil (Frankfurt am Main 1999). Christoph Schwobel has a chair in Systematic Theology (Dogmatics and Ecumenical Theology) at the University of Heidelberg and is Director of the Ecumenical Institute in the university. His publications include God: Action and Revelation (Kampen 1992). Peter Scott is Lecturer in Theology at Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher Education and Secretary of the Society for the Study of Theology. He is the author of Theology, Ideology and Liberation (Cambridge 1994). Anthony C. Thiselton is Professor of Christian Theology at Nottingham University, President of the Society for the Study of Theology and author of New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading (London 1992). Luco J. van den Brom is Professor of Christian Doctrine in Groningen University, The Netherlands. His books include Divine Presence in the World (Kampen 1993). Wilko van Holten is Research Associate in Philosophy of Religion in Utrecht University, The Netherlands. His published papers include 'Hell and the Goodness of God,' Religious Studies 35 (1999), 37-55.

Index of Names Editors of multi-author volumes are included only when the reference is to the whole volume, and not to a particular contribution. Aaron 203, 210 Abel 213 Abraham 203 Adam 190, 192-194 Adams, Marilyn McCord 181,184, 186-187 Adorno, Theodor W. 131 Ahn Byung-Mu 115 Alison, James 147 Alter, Robert 32 Althaus, Paul 170, 176 Alver, Rubem 116 Apel, Karl-Otto 22, 25 Aristotle 28, 69 Athanasius 33, 179 Athyal, Jesudas 89 Auerbach, Erich 80 Augustine of Hippo 5, 81, 139, 207-208, 210,212-214,240 Austin, John L. 32 Ayer, Alfred J. 15,21 Baelz, Peter 32 Bakunin, Michael 137 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 217 Barth, Karl 1, 30, 36-37, 75, 96, 141, 170, 199-200, 210, 222-223, 230 Barthes, Roland 14-16 Basil the Great 33 Bauckham, Richard 2-3, 13, 26-27, 84, 132, 138, 139, 145-146, 154, 156-157,219 Beattie, Tina 145 Beckett, Samuel 66,130 Bellah, Robert 19 Bercovitch, Sacvan 20 Bernstein, Richard J. 24 Bertens, H. 48 Bethge,E. 130 Blackwell, J.M. 149 Blazon, Padre 215

Bloch, Ernst 61-62, 67, 89, 96, 103-105, 116,230 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 38, 85, 100-102, 113-114,130,210 Bonifazi, Conrad 92 Bookchin, Murray 90-91 Bradley, F.H. 35 Braun, Bruce 95 Brown, Alexandra R. 29 Bruce, F.F. 204 Brueggemann, Walter 4 Brummer, Vincent 184 Brunner, Emil 159 Bryant, M.D. 133 Bultmann, Rudolf 81, 171-172, 222-223 Cain 213 Caird, G.B. 1 Calov, Abraham 1 Calvin, John 33 Caputo, John D. 15 Castellin, E.A. 16 Castoriadis, Cornelius 90-91 Castree, Noel 95 Charry,Ellen215 Cheney, Jim 104, 106 Chesneaux, J. 48 Childs, Brevard S. 25 Chow, J.K. 30 Chung Yak Yong 124-126 Cicero 28 Clarke, A.D. 28 Clayton, John P. 32 Clooney, Frank 89 Cochrane, Arthur C. 75 Cohn,N. 133 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 34 Commoner, Barry 97 Cone, James H. Constantine, Emperor 133, 202,211 Corrington, Robert S. 20-21

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Index of Names

Crafton, J.A. 30 Craig, William Lane 187-188 Crockett, W. 208 Culler, Jonathan 21 Cullmann, Oscar 37, 47, 201, 224-225 Cupitt, Don 56 Darwin, Charles 219 David, King 32, 120 Davies, Robertson 215 Dayton, D.W. 133 De Beus, J.G. 52 Deferrari, Roy J. 182 Delgado,M. 134 Demeritt, David 95 Derrida, Jacques 14-16, 30 Descartes, Rene 36 Dew, Susan 180 Dewey, John 15, 20, 23-24 Dickinson, Emily 19 Dodd, Charles Harold 224 Donovan, Vincent J. 147 Dorrien, Gary 110 Dulles, Avery 149 Dunant, S. 52 Eco, Umberto 30 Einstein, Albert 160 Eliade, Mircea 79-80 Elliot, T.S. 130 Elliott, Alison 214 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 20 Engels, Friedrich 89, 114 Eusebius of Caesarea 211 Evdokimov, Paul 202 Farrow, Douglas 5, 141, 202, 209 Fergusson, David 2, 170 Fish, Stanley 15, 17-18, 21-22, 24-25, 27-28,30-31 Fishbane, Michael 21 Ford, David F. 11-12, 34, 36, 41, 59, 174 Foucault, Michel 14-16 Fowl, Stephen E. 25 Franklin, Benjamin 20 Freddoso, Alfred J. 181-182 Frei, Hans W. 21,23,80 Freud, Sigmund 15,85 Fudge, Edward William 179 Fukuyama, Francis 132, 135, 236 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 24-26, 33-34 Geertz, Clifford 76 Genghis Kahn 137

George, St 133 Goldberger, Paul 74 Goodpaster, Kenneth E. 109 Gordon, Elizabeth A. 123 Graham, Gordon 2 Green, Garrett 5, 13, 74, 82-83, 142-143, 145, 149, 156-158 Greenberg, James 90 Greenberg, Moshe 21 Gregersen, Niels Henrik 6-7, 89, 102, 165-166, 173 Gregory the Great 178 Grenz, S.J. 26 Grumbine, Edward 113 Grundmann, Reiner 103, 108 Guilding, Aileen 204 Gunton, Colin 3-4 Guttierrez, Gustavo 232-233 Han YongUn 126 Hardy, Daniel W. 4, 11-12, 93, 102, 105 Harris, Harriet 4 Harrison, Frederic 50 Hart, Trevor 2-3, 13, 26-27, 132, 139, 145-146, 154, 156-157,219 Harvey, David 48, 63, 89, 91, 103, 105, 112 Hasker, William 187 Hauerwas, Stanley 21, 23, 25-26, 89 Hauser, Alan J. 27 Hay ward, Tim 90-91, 95 Heal, Jane 24 Hegel, G.W.F. 135, 169,218-219,236 Heidegger, Martin 15, 24 Helm, Paul 140-141 Herms, Eilert241 Heron, A. 202, 208 Hick, John 186 Hicks, David 73 Hinze, Christine Firer 15 Hoskyns, E.C 222 Huber, Wolfgang 200 Hunsinger, George 96 Hunt, David 187 Huntington, Samuel P. 126, 135 Husserl, Edmund 15 Ignatius 213 Illingworth, J.R. 219 Irenaeus of Lyons 5, 208-210, 213-215 Jauss, Hans Robert 33 James, William 15-17,20 Jeanrond, Werner 25

Index of Names Jenson, Robert W. 36, 89, 167, 200 Jeremias, Joachim 201 Jesus Christ 5-6,22, 32, 37-39,47, 62, 68-69, 71, 75, 77, 79-81, 83, 85, 97-101, 108, 110, 114, 120-121, 127-128, 130-133, 135, 140-143, 147,149,155, 170-172, 174-177, 179,190, 193-194, 199-201, 203-215,220-234,237-240 Joachim of Fiore 134 John, St85, 201-202 Jones, Christopher 140 Jungel, Eberhard 2-3, 14, 68-70, 72 Julius Caesar 29 Justin Martyr 201-202 Justinian, Emperor 133 Kiisemann,E. 131 Kant, Immanuel 1, 75, 132, 169, 171, 210 Kaufman, Gordon 95 Kearney, Richard 63,65-66 Kehl,M. 130 Keller, Catherine 136,235 Kelsey, David 93 Kerr, Fergus 4 Kierkegaard, S. 206 Kim Yong-Bock 3, 13-14, 26, 115, 123-125, 128 Kline, Scott 200 Knight, Douglas 5 Kortner, U.HJ. 136 Kohl, Margaret 138 Kojeve, Alexandre 135 Kort, W.A. 32 Kreck, Walter 226-227 Kunneth, W. 37 Kuhn, Thomas S. 18,24 Kvanvig, Jonathan 181, 183, 186 Kyle, Richard 2 Lang, Bernard 169 Lanham, Richard 27 Lash, Nicholas 26 Laternari, V. 132 Latour, Bruno 111 LeeTon-Hwa 128 Lessing, G.E. 218 Lindbeck, George 21,23,31 Litfm, D. 28 Lot 214 Lundin, Roger 18-20, 34-36 Luther, Martin 33,38 Lynch, William 60-61,67

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Lyons, James A. 211 Lyons, W.J. 149 Lyotard, Jean-Francois 77 Mackie,J.L. 185 Macquarrie, John 35 Mandelson, Peter 73 Manson, William 1 MaoTse-tung 137 Markus, Robert 212 Martin, G.M. 136 Martyn, J. Louis 37-38 Mary 142 Marx, Karl 61, 85, 92, 103, 114, 132, 219 Mathews, Freya 105 McDannell, Colleen 169 McGinn, B. 206, 214 McTaggart, J.M.E. 42 Meyendorff, J. 211 Michael, Archangel 133 Milbank, John 78 Mitchell, Joni 89 Moltmann, Jurgen 2,4, 6, 9-10, 12-13, 35-36,62,71,78,80-83,93, 99-100, 106, 130, 133, 138, 141, 147, 157, 159-160, 163-167, 170, 174175,177,180,200,202-203, 227, 230-232 Moore, S.D. 15 Moores, John D. 30-31 Moses 203-207, 210, 215 Moss, David 148 Muller, Richard A. 182 Naess, Ame91-92 Nathanael 85 Newlands, George 89 Nicholls, David 100 Nietzsche, Friedrich 6, 14-15, 85, 219, 236 Nigg,W. 133 Noah 136 Nordau, Max 50 Norris, Christopher 21 Northcott, Michael 103 Novakovic, Ivica 89 Ochs, Peter 21-23 O'Connor, James 90-91,103 O'Donovan, Oliver 212,213 Oelschlaeger, Max 110 Olbricht, Thomas H. 27 Origen 5, 141,193,206-211,214

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Index of Names

Pannenberg, Wolfhart4, 33-35, 38, 77-78,92-93,96-100, 102-104, 107-108,113,139, 142,159-167, 174,200,227-231,233 Park, Thomas 90 Paul of Tarsus 27-31, 33, 37-39, 85-86, 130-131, 174,203,205 Peirce, Charles S. 21-23,26 Peters, Ted 200 Petersen, Michael 181 Philo of Alexandria 206 Picket, Raymond 29 Pike, Nelson 162 Pilate, Pontius 79, 149 Plantinga, Alvin 185-187 Plumwood,Val91,96, 103 Pogoloff, Stephen 27-28 Pol Pot 137 Porter, R. 52 Porter, Stanley E. 27 Price, Jennifer 96 Prieto, Luis 30 Przeworski, Adam 110 Putnam, Hilary 15, 17 Quine, W.V.O. 15 Quintillian 28 Rahner, Karl 4, 9-10, 83, 91, 93, 95, 98-99, 102-103, 105-106, 171-172, 200 Ratschow, Karl Heinz 217-218 Reagan, Ronald 21, 95, 136 Reinisch, L. 130 Rendtorff, Rolf 77-78 Rendtorff, Trutz 77-78 Reno, R.R. 89 Ricoeur, Paul 84 Rist,J. 214 Ritschl, Albrecht 219-220 Roberts, Richard H. 12 Robinson, John A.T. 32, 226 Rorty, Richard 6, 13, 15-18, 20-26, 30, 31,33,35,38,152 Rosenau, Pauline M. 14 Rowland, Christopher 3 Rublev, Andrej 201-203 Ruether, Rosemary Radford 97, 104 Rutledge, Fleming 89 Sacks, Jonathan 68 Santayana, George 73, 76 Sauter, Gerhard 1, 92-94 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 1, 169-171,

199,210 Schmemann, A. 201 Schrage, Wolfgang 28-29 Schussler Fiorenza, E. 138 Schutz, J.H. 30 Schumacher, E.F. 126 Schwartz, H. 2, 50 Schweitzer, Albert 80-83, 170, 220-222 Schwobel, Christoph 6, 94, 219 Scott, Peter 3-4, 95-96, 100, 102-103, 140, 147-148, 154, 157-158 Scott, Ridley 95 Sedgwick, T. 214 Seneca (elder) 28 Sennett, Chris 146 Seymour, Charles 186 Sittler, Joseph 108 Slob, Wouter 89 Smith, John E. 21 Smith, Neil 113 Spivak, Gayatri 15 Steiner, George 49, 56-57, 60, 67 Suh, David Kwang-sun 115 Sutherland, Alexander 51 Swedenborg, Emanuel 169 Swinburne, Richard 183 Sykes, Stephen W. 32 Talbott, Thomas 186 Taubes, J. 134 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 200, 210, 233-235 Thatcher, Margaret 25 Theodosius, Emperor 133 Thiselton, Anthony C. 6, 12, 14, 19, 24, 35,148,152, 157-158 Thomas, R.S. 58 Tillich, Paul 9, 179, 222-223, 226 Tipler, Frank 2 Torrance, Alan J. 166-167, 194-195 Tracy, David 9-11, 89 Trigg,J.211 Troeltsch, Ernst 217, 220-221 Troeltsch, Marta217 Turettini, Francesco 164-165 Tuveson, E. Lee 134 Updike, John 53-56 Van den Brom, Luco J. 4, 82, 200, 228 Van Holten, Wilko 6, 182, 185 Vanhoozer, Kevin 33 Van Huyssteen, Wentzel 89 Virgil 132

Index of Names Vogel, Steven 95 Volf,Miroslavl2,89,105 von Balthasar, Hans Urs 130 Vorgrimler, Herbert 130 Wainwright, Geoffrey 201-203 Walhout, Clarence 19, 35 Wallace, Alfred Russell 51 Walls, Jerry 181 Warnke, Georgia 25 Watson, Duane F. 25, 27 Watts, G. 52 Webb, Stephen H. 82-83, 114 Weinandy, Thomas G. 194 Weiss, Johannes 170, 220-222 Welker, Michael 93 West, Cornel 23 Whitehead, Alfred North 228

Whitehouse,W.A.91 Wilder, Amos 71 Wiles, Maurice F. 32 Williams, Raymond 111-112 Wilkens, Ulrich 77-78 Wilkins, John 145 Winter, B.W. 28 Wire, Antoinette 30 Witherington, B. 28 Wittgenstein, Ludwig4, 15, 17, 19, 24-25, 30-32, 36 Wood, W. Jay 39 Woodhead, Linda 14 Zakai, Avihu 89 Zizioulas, John 5, 189-197,201

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Index of Subjects accountability 10-12 adventus9, 146, 159 annihilation 177-180 anthropology 92-94, 99-100 apocalypticism 2, 129-132, 136-137, 140, 147 Barmen Declaration 75 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry 1 Bible 77-79, 116-120 kairotic reading of 117-118 block universe 161-163, 165-167 Buddhism 123, 126, 128 capitalism 62-63, 89-91, 96, 112, 115-128, 135 categorising 148 changelessness 46 Christology 32, 97, 102-105, 143, 227, 231,237-238 Church 195-196, 212 community 19 concretion 96-97 consilium aeternum 164 Confucianism 123-127 constructivism, social 95 consumerism 12, 14-15, 17, 22, 25-26, 28, 34, 37 covenant 117-121 creation 4, 89-114, 147, 161-162, 166-167, 194, 196 contingency of 101 new 3, 138 creatureliness 91,93-94,96, 98-100, 102,105,107-108,113-114 cyberspace 64-65 death 3, 139-140, 192,239-240 decrees, divine 164-165 democracy 109-112 determinism 4, 163-165 dichotomy 148 ecology 89-114, 154-156, 235 ecumenism, inter-religious 123-125 embodiment 147-148 encounter 104-105 end 129-138 of history 129-138,223, 236 of the world 129-138

Enlightenment project 218, 235 eschatology passim consequent/consistent 80-81, 220 regulative function 1 secular 74 tentative 1 eternity 4, 140-141, 160-167,223 ethics 241 ethnocentrism 24 eucharist 201-203, 206-215 evil horrendous 184 metaphysical 183 problem of 181-188 experiential-expressivism 23 fellowship 105-106, 109-110 feminism, critical ecological 91 fin de siecle mood 50-51 free will 163, 185-186, 191,194 future 45, 60-61, 73-87, 107-109, 139, 146, 159-160, 167, 200, 227-229, 233-235 fear of 49, 52 openness of45, 218 tense 147 futurology 2, 10, 146,200 futurum9, 146, 159 globalisation 115-128 God agency of 70-71, 152,161-162, 167, 194 goodness 151-158, 184-185 Holy Spirit 119-120 transcendence of 47, 71 grace 35-36 healing 93 heaven 177-178 hedonism 49, 64 hell 6-7, 177-179, 181-188, 222 hermeneutics 116-120 history 154, 160-161 hope 2, 57, 59-62, 67-70, 72,91, 94, 115-128,130-132,136-137,167, 230-231,237-239 hopelessness 56,62-63, 65-66,68, 115-116,120,127,137

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Index of Subjects

imagination 5, 42, 44, 50, 53, 59, 61, 62, 64-67,70-71,73-87, 149 incarnation 98-99 individual 189-190 judgement 138, 142 last 169-180 justice 184 kerygma 223 Kingdom of God 219-221, 224-225, 227-229,231-232 knowledge 16, 18, 29, 33, 35, 37 Kosovo 145-146 Marxism 6 materialism 103 materiality 92-94 meaningfulness/meaninglessness 56-57, 62-63 metanarrative 77-78 millenarianism 132-135 Millennium Dome 52, 73-74, 86 Minkowski diagram 161 Molinism 187-188 naivete 85-86 naturalism 103 natura naturans 105 nature 89-114 Nestorianism 123 ontology 68-70 optimism 1-2, 50-52, 55 otherworldliness 76-80, 85 parousia, delay of 80-84, 221 personhood 189-197 pessimism 51-52 Platonism 3-4, 206 poena damni 182 poenasensus 182, 184 politics 89-91, 100, 103-104, 108, 110-112 positivism 21 postmodernism 6, 9-39,48-49, 52, 55, 57, 63-64, 66-69 power 11, 14, 16 pragmatism 6, 9-39 praise 113 progress, myth of 47, 49-52, 57, 63, 72, 132,235 purgation 174-175 quintomonarchism 134

reality 68-70 virtual 64-65 relativism 24 responsibility, moral 10-13 resurrection 3, 37-38, 118, 129-131, 140, 142, 193, 209, 230-231, 239-240 rhetorical man 17-18, 27-28, 152 science, social 122 self-fulfilment 218 self-transcendence 56, 58, 66 Serbia 145-146 serious man 17-18,27-28, 152 sin 179, 191-192 socialism 135 sociality 100-103 sociology 78 spatiality 104-106, 109, 112 successiveness 44 temporality see time theology black 232 civil 108 contextual 94 dialectical 1, 169-171,222-223,225 feminist 92, 147-148,235 Minjung 115-128 of the cross 6 time 4, 41-72, 153-154, 159-167,200, 203,240-241 A-series and B-series 42-44, 46 Christian 46-47 creation of 81 cyclical 45-46 experience of 44-45 images of 41-44 narrative 45, 49 Platonist 46 postmodern 48-49 progressivist 47-48, 50 qualitative 45 quantitative 45 timelessness 4, 161-163 transcendence 47, 56-62, 64, 67, 70, 108-109,233 transcendental 99-100, 102 transformation 129, 138 transience 44, 46, 48-49 Trinity 5, 98, 100, 105-106, 190, 194, 197,229-230,238 truth 9-39, 65, 148-149 universalism 176-177, 180 utilitarianism 214