(34) If dignity means performances that challenge domination, and the end of domination can only be envisioned
eschatologically, dignity would have a significant theological resonance.
Understood this way, the theory of the "anonymous Christians" seems an extension and a pastoral-missionary implementation of Christology and pneumatology; it is, more precisely said, a Christo-pneumato-soteriological teaching; it is founded on God's universal will of salvation, God Who shared Himself (Selbstmitteilung)
eschatologically in Christ, and on the "supernatural existential" as a working grace in every human being.
As they and we hear again the apocalyptic and
eschatologically oriented texts that guide us toward the Reign of Christ Sunday, it is helpful to review what apocalyptic is, how it came to be, and how it functioned in the communities for whom it was composed.
First, the need to think and live
eschatologically: that is, in the light of the future God intends for his creation.
These distinctions between the Chriscological, sacramental, and eschatological essentially follow Luther's schema for the multiple exegesis of a text, namely, the three advents of Christ: in the flesh, in the soul of the faithful, and
eschatologically. As Luther explained, "just as the law was a figure and preparation of the people for receiving Christ, so our doing what is in us (factio quantum in nobis est) disposes us to grace.
Nevertheless, Bultmann explicitly draws key insights from Kierkegaard in Christology, eschatology, and ethics, and these insights become part of Bultmann's guiding convictions: 'namely, that the existential relevance, truth, and authority of the Christian gospel can and will never be done away with, thanks to the inexhaustible potential for providing for its recipient a new, both
eschatologically and ethically decisive model of self-understanding' (136).
One of our primary band-leaders, John Hick, called it--with an untypical lack of humility--a "Copemican Revolution." (2) We were all searching for a new paradigm, or theology, for understanding religious diversity--a paradigm according to which no religious community could, or would, proclaim itself superior, either actually or
eschatologically, over all the others.
(51) Winchester preached the good news of an
eschatologically conscious, revivalistic universalism from the time he began openly promoting universal restoration in 1781 until his death in 1797.
Rossing, For the Healing of the World: Reading Revelation Ecologically, in FROM EVERY PEOPLE AND NATION: THE BOOK OF Revelation in Intercultural Perspective 165 (David Rhoads ed., 2005) (providing an exegetical commentary on Revelation and other biblical texts from an ecological perspective); see also PAUL SANTMIRE, The TRAVAIL OF NATURE: THE Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology 200 (1985) (discussing the New Testament as being shaped by ecological motif, albeit
eschatologically construed).
It's unlikely that Douthat would ever commit a political and cultural analysis as
eschatologically freighted as Mailer's.
Eschatologically oriented psychology: A new paradigm for the integration of psychology and Christianity.
They were fighting for an
eschatologically redeemed world in which their stirred flame of faith fought for redemption at home and in their wounded hearts.
On the one hand we read, for example, "the affective theology of the baroque missed the biblical center and proceeded mystically instead of
eschatologically," (quoting the Pope) at the same time as Rowland provides here and there helpful, sometimes loaded, definitions of commonplace terms such as ultramontane: "unhealthily bloated accounts of the ambit of papal infallibility." Anyone who comprehends the first statement will not need the definition, and vice versa.
Vissers does, Einstein's idea that "time is relative, then when you die, the end of all things has come for you."
Eschatologically speaking, if we believe that Jesus Christ, Son of God, is our Saviour and beloved friend and brother, then we shall be resurrected as he promised and we shall be and live with God through eternity.
