In order to embark on a series of posts about eschatology, it will be helpful for us to define the term. Short answer: Eschatology refers to biblical teaching about the future. It is concerned with two big questions - "What happens when a person dies?" and "Where is world history going?"
Of course, if that were all I had to say, there wouldn't be much point in putting together a whole blog post, now would there? So let's unpack that a bit. Eschatology comes from the Greek words eschatos (last things) and logos (word/study/doctrine). Thus, Bible-believing theologians use the term eschatology to refer to biblical teaching about last things. (Profound. This is why you pay me the big bucks, to tell you that 2+2=4.) Of course, we haven't really gotten anywhere yet - what are "last things"? We don't use that kind of language in everyday conversation. So, let's build a definition that makes sense.
Starting from the bottom up, we can say that "last things" equals the future. But it's not quite that simple, because "last things" includes elements that are present and even past. Why? Well, some of the things the biblical authors spoke about as future are now present or past for us, many centuries down the road, while others still have not yet come to pass. So, let's tweak our definition - "last things" equals things that were future to the biblical authors writing about them. One natural consequence of this is that Old Testament eschatology is different than New Testament eschatology. This is because certain things that were future for Old Testament authors came to be fulfilled in the life of Christ and the birth of the Church. So, another tweaking is in order - "last things" equals things that were future relative to the OT authors and things that were both present and future relative to the New Testament authors. If we put ourselves in the equation, we find that "last things" equals things that were future relative to the OT authors; that were both present and future relative to the NT authors; and that are past, present, and future relative to us today. I trust you can remember the second and third parts of that by hearing the first and thinking back to this conversation, so we will pare it down for brevity's sake: Eschatology refers to biblical teaching about things that were future relative to the OT authors.
Eschatology is commonly broken into two related fields of study - personal eschatology and general eschatology. These two correspond to the two big questions mentioned above - personal eschatology is related to what happens when a person dies, and general eschatology is related to the direction of world history. Personal eschatology is considered a subset of eschatology because, hey, anytime you're on this earth writing a book about death, it's a future subject for you.
In the next post, we will talk about the central thrust of New Testament eschatology, an idea that has the power to serve as a holistic framework for the way a Christian looks at life: already, but not yet.
3 comments:
You define eschatology as being limited to Biblical exegesis. Do you think eschatological issues can go be discussed outside of the Bible? I'm thinking particularly that of church history, historical theology, philosophy.
Looking forward to the "now but not yet", that's good stuff!
As with all theological issues, biblical exegesis is merely our primary source, and those other three elements always come into the picture (along with others); just trying to keep the conversation on an accessible level. If you're thinking of amillennialism (which I'm sure you are), I don't think you have to base your argument on church history to argue for it. Anthony Hoekema (The Bible and the Future) argues very persuasively for amillennialism w/o appealing to historical factors, and I'll bring up his views later in the series. (Actually, in my book, the church historical argument favors the historic premillennial position, particularly if one looks at the reasons why Augustine rejected chiliasm. At any rate, both sides can argue that church history is on their side - it just depends how you decide what's persuasive w/in historical conversations.) Anyhow, the already-but-not-yet stuff is a great doctrine of church history (albeit recent church history) that will last for a long time to come. I'm planning on making a somewhat bold statement about that in the next post - see what you think...
Cool, I'll have to look at that Hoekema book.
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