I am planning Zooms in the Autumn on eschatology. Such a maligned and twisted subject, but one could argue that it is the foundation of all theology rather than an after thought, a kind of appendix. Maybe we should say that the two elements of protology (first word(s)) and eschatology (last word(s)) are important and hold everything else in context. Eschatology will help us make sense of what goes before – how do we understand (for example) the creation stories, the call of Israel without eschatology, or the practical areas of economics or politics?
I will slowly post some of what I am writing – I will put it all together (eventually) in eBook / pdf format, expecting maybe to have something like 4 volumes of 10,000 words each. So here the first post.
If we have some understanding of the word ‘eschatology’ we will know it has something to do with the ‘end times’, the ‘end of the world’, or human destiny commonly expressed as ‘heaven and hell’. Given that the term is derived from ta eschata (‘end things’) we are probably headed in the right direction. It certainly includes human destiny (and perhaps some discussion about certain world events) but the big element that is missing in the above responses is the non-involvement of creation. Not only does eschatology have to consider human destiny, but also that of the destiny for the whole of creation; beyond human destiny we have to include the destiny of material creation. Indeed we would be better to replace the word ‘destiny’ in both uses with the word ‘hope’. Eschatology is to do with the hope for the whole of creation, including the hope for humanity.
Popular eschatology has infiltrated the thinking of most believers with terms such as ‘the rapture’ (or ‘the secret rapture’), the ‘millennium’ or the ‘tribulation’ being somewhere in the subconscious. Ideas such as we are in the end times because there are ‘wars and rumours of wars’ or that the signs of the times point in that direction likewise pervades much of our thoughts. Such thoughts do not encourage us to engage with a story that might put such aspects into context and if we are to find where such terms fit (or not) we will have to be patient. And a little pre-warning we will probably also need to be comfortable with not knowing what certain Scriptures mean or are referring to, and we will have to avoid making texts fit what we want them to mean.
Any study of the ‘end’ or simply of ‘the future’ is inevitably something that attracts a lot of interest as there is something innate within humanity that wants to know about what is to come. Such knowledge can give us security and might at best confirm to us that God is in control and has not abandoned us; or we can treat the knowledge of what is to come as giving us secret knowledge, inside information, which certainly is not what Scripture is there to provide. Eschatology is much more than a remedy for anxiety in providing us with an explanation for what is taking place that might be disturbing us.
This attraction to knowledge means the imagination is alive and the whole area is not without its more than fair share of conspiracy theories. Any source suggesting that it can help us understand the future can be attractive. And when that source is a piece of ancient literature we can quickly pull it from its context and assume it is making predictions that directly relate to our historical context. We have as our source a piece of ancient literature, the Bible, so we need to be aware that it does not come from our context nor culture.
The Bible was NOT written to us; it is written for us (and for people of every era) but there is a huge gap; we are separated from the biblical context by many centuries and our world-views are not the same. The gap of time and culture means we have to seek to do our best to understand something of that culture, era and context, or at least we must not force what we read to fit our context and era.
What we assume about a piece of literature and how we interpret it will determine to a large measure what the outcome is. What we read in can be what we read out! If we take language one way but it was intended another way we will miss what is being communicated. An example of misunderstanding a phrase from our time and culture might illustrate how easy it is to mistake how language is being used. If we were to take the words ‘You frightened the life out of me’ to be a literal statement we would then expect that the sentences following would describe the arrival of a doctor who would confirm that death had taken place. The language literally says that I died through fright, but we understand the language is not to be understood literally but as a metaphor to communicate the level of fear I had experienced. Language has intrinsic meaning but we also have to understand how it is being used. We will have to understand how prophetic language is used and beyond prophetic language we will also encounter a genre known as apocalyptic (for example in the book of Revelation). Apocalyptic language is certainly not to be interpreted as literal as such language acts almost in the same way as political cartoons do – communicating reality through the use of exaggerated imagery. Mistakes can certainly be made when we read certain texts and do not allow for the huge difference between our world and the world of the writers; likewise we can make mistakes when we do not understand what might be taking place with the choice of language and descriptions.
We will also read words and concepts that were rooted in the culture of the readers and so might not simply carry the same meaning that we might give to them. One of the most common words used for the ‘coming’ of Jesus (parousia) was a common word related to the presence of the emperor, as likewise was the Pauline phrase ‘to meet’ the Lord in the air. The usage of those words in the culture will give us some guidelines as to how we might understand them. Rome’s use is the pale copy of the real.
Finally, by way of introduction, and connecting to the opening comment that eschatology is connected to the restoration of creation we need some understanding that the big sweep of Scripture is from creation to new creation (‘in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ is the beginning and the end of that trajectory is, ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth’). Once we grasp that it is highly unlikely that as we have ‘in the beginning’ the story of creation, that the hope expressed (the conclusion to the story) would then be as simple as a ‘hope to personally go to heaven’ with this whole creation will be destroyed as the conclusion. Consistently when the hope of restoration is expressed for the people we also have hope for creation; we have phrase such as ‘and the trees of the fields will clap their hands’. Metaphorical language, but with deep significance that future restoration includes all of creation. Eschatology (last words) is most likely to connect to ‘protology’ (first words). The arc of the biblical story takes us in the direction of the ‘restoration of all things’ as well as specific biblical texts that explicitly take us there.
As we engage with this theme we will need to exercise patience and we have the task (and it is not a small task!) of engaging with an ancient piece of writing, its world views and beliefs. Patience, a willingness to be left with loose ends, but I am sure it will be rewarding. Theology always has a ‘in the light of this how do we live’ element, always a very practical outworking.