This
month I finished classes for an M.Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary, and I
must say that I have had a very stimulating few years at Fuller. Faculty,
staff, and peers have made the whole experience immeasurably rewarding. I could
not have asked for a better seminary experience.
When
I was mapping out seminary classes, I had not intentionally planned to study
eschatology at the end of my time at Fuller – roughly speaking eschatology is a
fancy word for talk about stuff at the end or destiny. I suppose that it was a
bit fitting for me to study eschatology at the end of my seminary education,
and for my last assignment, I wrote a paper briefly outlining my reflections on
the consummation of creation. Last things last. However, in the past few months
and weeks, I have begun to wonder whether or not eschatology belongs at the end.
Maybe it belongs near the beginning.
Over
the past several years, I have studied various aspects of Jürgen Moltmann’s theology, a Reformed
post-Barthian theologian. A little more than a year ago, I studied a few
dimensions of Moltmann’s Christology in The
Way of Jesus Christ, and this week I have begun reading Moltmann’s Theology of Hope in which he puts
eschatology at the beginning of the theological task rather than at the end –
in contrast Barth places eschatology on the circumference of the theological
task and atonement at the center (Dogmatics, IV.1). Moltmann explains, “A proper theology
would…have to be constructed in the light of its future goal” (Fortress Press,
1993, Theology of Hope, 16). Thus,
Moltmann begins with eschatology.
Moltmann
explains that eschatology is not merely about stuff at the end but is about
hope, and he claims that eschatology is the torch that illumines the path into
the future; eschatology tells the future about the present. “Hope’s statements
of promise…must stand in contradiction to the reality which can at present be
experienced…they do not seek to bear the train of reality, but to carry the
torch before it” (18).
Moreover,
drawing Barth’s beginning and end together, Moltmann places revelation and
eschatology together indicating that God does not simply reveal God’s self but
reveals God’s self as the God of promise. God’s promises fuel hope for the
future, and God’s promises for the future are grounded in Jesus, particularly in
the resurrection of Jesus. Consequently, Moltmann places priority on hope for
precisely the same earth on which and for which Christ died and was raised.
Christian hope, Moltmann exclaims, “sees in the resurrection of Christ not the
eternity of heaven, but the future of the very earth on which his cross stands”
(21).
The
future of the earth is pledged and established on the resurrection of Jesus,
and this hope based on the resurrection of Jesus has implications for the
present. The fulfilled future invigorates action in the unfulfilled present.
Moltmann explains, “As long as hope does not embrace and transform the thought
and action of men, it remains topsy-turvy and ineffective. Hence Christian
eschatology must make the attempt to introduce hope into worldly thinking, and
thought into believing hope” (33). Hope for the future stimulates social action
and reform.
Rather
than supposing eschatology to be something that belongs exclusively to the
distant future attached to the rest of theology like an appendix, it may very
well be the case that eschatology is the opening to theology. Talk about
destiny belongs near the beginning. Telos shapes the present. Hope fuels faith and life, and more
particularly hope based on the resurrection of Jesus provides concrete
specificity to the sort of hope for which the church hopes. As the Nicene Creed
concludes, we look forward to the resurrection of the body and the world to
come. For Moltmann, however, this profession about the future belongs at the
beginning, and the world for which the church hopes is the earth on
which Jesus' cross stood. It may just be the case that theology is possible only
because there is hope.
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