Eco-Eschatology

Eschatology has to do with “end times.” And in many popular American versions of it, it has had to do with the great destruction of all things. The great apocalyptic passages in Revelation in which stars are falling from the heavens and fire is raining down seems to paint a pretty bleak picture for life here on earth. Yet, this notion of the annihilation of the Earth comes at odds with Eco-Theology’s deep seated value that care for the Earth matters on a theological level. So much must be re-thought.

Our group spent a great deal of time discussing “apocalypse.” What comes to our mind when we think about it, what pictures it conjures. They were mostly destructive and violent, like the barren landscape of rural country or the piled rubble of urban cities oft depicted in today’s post-apocalyptic art. Yet, when we considered the simple etymology of the word, we realized that it means simply “revelation.” How might this change our ideas about apocalypse?

Our article by Celia Dean-Drummond offers this insight about apocalyptic literature:

…apocalyptic literature always surfaced when the threat of annihilation loomed near. The challenge for the apocalyptic writers was to encourage responsible action now, rather than offer hope through utopias that could never find realisation in the present.

This shifts it from revelation as future-telling to revelation as hope-stirring. Apocalyptic literature is born from grief and hopelessness. The destructive images followed by beautiful utopias are not meant to give us terror and false-hope, but rather to stir our imagination in the present. If the future is filled with life rather than merely death, how might we live now?

At this point our conversation veered into a discussion of resurrection. We began wondering, If resurrection is bodily and on Earth, then how will the world possibly fit the billions of people on it? This was, indeed, a difficult question, but our article set us back on path again:

The shape of resurrection and how this will be expressed in detail is a matter for speculative theology, and the wisest course in this case may be silence, for there are some things that we cannot know, since they are hidden in the heart of God.

Rather than speculating what that resurrection may be like, we settled back into the place of how the story of resurrection stirs our hope and how this hope effects our present and not merely our future.

Caring for the Earth on a systemic level is indeed rooted in a certain eschatology that believes what we do now matters for the future. That, while there are many tragedies and traumas to grieve, somehow the work we are doing today will remain on earth as it is in heaven.