The Last Enemy
Last week our group discussed Colin Gunton’s chapter on Eschatology: The Last Enemy. The chapter begins with an assumption that for most individuals (certainly those having lived through the turn of the Millennium), Eschatology immediately brings to mind images of ‘the end of the earth,’ judgement and death. Gunton’s thesis however, while not negating such notion, leans to something more positive:
There is to be sure a respect in which eschatology is other worldly, to do with the end of our time and space… biblically [the end] is understood in terms of perfecting, not abolition… There may indeed be a ‘new’ heaven and a new earth, but they remain heaven and earth, not some utterly spaceless realm, and they already bear graciously on this one. (158)
Gunton’s aim is to present an eschatological framework where the “perfecting ‘end’ is anticipated in the middle of time, especially when the suffering are to be set free from their affliction. (158) This framework is not new, but one recovered. Both the Old and New Testaments speak of the coming of ‘The day of the Lord’ both as a future and already reality where “the end is that which breaks into the present by anticipation.” The resurrection the foremost primary example of life triumphing over death in history — not just in some to-be-realized world.
So The question remains, why has there been such focus on an ‘other worldly’ character of Eschatology? Gunton makes the sobering point that such inclinations, “are not truly eschatological but merely projections from an unsatisfied and unsatisfying present.” (159) The impulse fueling these ‘other worldly’ eschatologies (and generally the ‘end of the world’ genres of media) is more so that of the escapist:
“Eschatology, is not about movement unchanged into another world; it is about transformation. Just as Jesus’ body is transformed miraculously not into another body but another kind of body so is the [eschatological] promise of the resurrection [to which] ‘we shall be changed…’” (165)
As a group our conversation consistently came back to the idea that if humanity is to experience any sort of real hope in the midst of pain and suffering in this life, we must hold to an eschatology that is not about escaping this world, but anticipating and pursuing the promise of resurrection in the face of death.
