Eschatalogical themes again dominate the readings in this, the celebration of Christ the King, which also marks the end of the liturgical year.
King Solomon summarizes the final
eschatalogical point I wish to make: For love is fierce as death, Passion as mighty as Sheol; It's darts are darts of fire, A blazing flame.
But Tasso's view is
eschatalogical, as he is thinking of the final defeat of Babylon foretold in Revelations 18." (23)
He refutes an over-realised
eschatalogical position, based by the idle converts upon a misinterpretation of current afflictions and persecutions (1 Thess.
While it may be perfectly reasonable to dismiss fundamentalist readings of history as transparent manipulations of events and data, as mere projections of religious fanaticism and millenarian enthusiasm, it is important to underscore the fundamentalists' devotion to the narratives they have constructed, and their attention to the details they have imbedded in the narrative to reinforce its
eschatalogical themes.
Jerome's reasons for joining a church are practical as well as
eschatalogical. She does not apologize for the pragmatic motives behind her actions.
And Jesus said to his apostles: "I am the
eschatalogical prophet, the proleptic fulfillment of human destiny, the preexistent Logos incarnate, the second person of the Holy Trinity, of the same substance (homoousion) as the Father." And the apostles, scratching their heads, replied, "Huh?"
Still, Soloviev retained faith that true religious and political morality would be regenerated in human community at the "end of history." The
eschatalogical dimension of Soloviev's thought did not become fully visible until 1900 and the last part of his final project, Three Conversations on War, Progress and the End of Universal History ..., which he provocatively entitled "A Brief Tale about the Antichrist."(59) This political-religious allegory is not only closely linked to his earlier darkly-foreboding poem "Panmongolism," the opening lines of which appear as an epigraph to the story, but also to several essays published two to three years earlier, and in which a number of the tale's contemporary inspirations and sources can be discerned.
We are obliged to be hopeful in the
eschatalogical sense regardless of how bleak things are around us, but I believe we can go further than that and be reasonably hopeful that things here below are going to get better.
Here--centrally, because of its
eschatalogical implications--the anxiety focused on what Christ meant when he instituted the Eucharist by saying, "Hoc est corpus meum." Catholic doctrine interpreted the statement literally, insisting that the body and blood of Christ were really present in the bread and wine of the Mass, while Protestants denied this and proposed various representational readings.
Like all visions of utopia, including the "kingdom of God" or the
eschatalogical banquet, it is useful mainly as a goad and a goal towards changing concrete situations in whatever ways possible.
"The fact that their commitment to the world is mediated through their
eschatalogical distance from the world makes Christians good citizens of any state that does not fancy itself God" (p.
