9 - PCD 10 Resurrection Hope: Eschatology

Reading Quiz on Practicing Christian Doctrine

Eschatology is Christian teaching about

the last things: heaven, hell, death, judgement, the second coming of Christ, and the kingdom of God.

Living in the tension between the already and the not yet of the kingdom means that for now

Christians are committed to the mission of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ throughout the world.

Emmanuel Kantangole suggest that an African perspective on eschatology

overcomes individualistic accounts of eschatology with a recognition of the place of the Church among the living dead ancestors who have gone before in faith.

Roland Cha points out that, in contrast to Hindu or Buddhist Asian notions of world denial, Christian eschatology

is historically rooted in God’s salvation plan for his one creation.

An overly realized eschatology that neglects the future in favor of the already would open up the danger

of equating the church present with the future fulfillment of the kingdom, so falling into pride and works righteousness.

Jesus’ second coming is known in theology by the Greek word

parousia

According to Jones, our hope of the general resurrection is a meaty, embodied hope of a soma psychikon being transformed into a soma pneumatikon, meaning

a selfish body being transformed into a Holy Spirited body.

Eschatologically, new creation coming through cataclysm means

creation’s continuity by transformation

According to Jones, hell is

justice in the face of persistent refusal of God’s loving offer of salvation, acknowledging the depth and horror of evil.

Resurrection life of New Heavens and New Earth, according to N T Wright, will be

wisely ruling over God’s new world through enjoying glorified work.