Abstracts

Eschatology at the Beginning of the Third Millennium

• Peter John McGregor

  Metanarratives about Death and Life

  In 1979 the French philosopher Jean–François Lyotard coined the term “metanarrative” to identify a narrative that aims to provide a comprehensive account of history, experiences, and phenomena based on an appeal to universality. This paper begins by questioning the adequacy of the term, suggesting that “meta–analysis and solution” would be a more accurate one. It proposes that all meta–analyses and solutions are attempts to deal with the problem of evil. Then many examples are examined in terms of the symptoms, diagnoses, prognoses, and prescriptions that they offer to deal with this problem. From this comes the assertion that some meta–analyses and solutions are more “meta” than others since they deal with the problem of death. Also made is the assertion that all attempts to deal with the problem of evil are inadequate if they fail to deal also with the problem of goodness. Finally, the Christian meta–analysis and solution is examined. Drawing mainly on St. Paul’s experience in Athens and his first letter to the Corinthians, an argument is made for the Christian meta–analysis and solution as the true one since it is the only one with access to all the relevant data.

• Matthew John Paul Tan

  Loss in Light of the Latter Days

  This paper explores our experience of loss against the backdrop of a systematic theological analysis of eschatology. The paper will proceed from three reference points, the first being Critical Theory’s exploration of the messianic, the second being St Bonaventure’s take on the Divine Word as the coincidence of opposites, and the third being Romano Guardini’s notion of the last things as a culmination in the actuality of things. The paper’s argument is that the end of all things, rather than a decisive closure of things against their opposites, is in the Divine Word – who is the last thing – the culmination of a harmonious convergence between a thing and its opposite.

  Against this backdrop, the paper the experience of loss is no longer marked by the finality of absence over and against restoration. Rather, in Christ loss and restoration become correlates of one another, both in this life and in the world to come.

• Patrick Quirk

  Conscience Claims and Josef Pieper’s Philosophy of History

  This paper considers the apocalyptic refrain that has overshadowed the world for decades. It will argue there are many good reasons to better comprehend the apocalyptic, but will focus on the protection of conscience. An understanding of our own (western) concept of the Apocalypse will sharpen our ability to understand the motives of others who act for their apocalyptic reasons. This assessment will be done via an introduction to the work of a German philosopher, Josef Pieper, whose book on the philosophy of history has been widely acclaimed these past fifty years.

• Mario Baghos

  The End Times Throughout History and the Problem of the Year 1000: A Brief Overview

  The end of the present world order has been envisaged in many different ways by various cultures throughout history. The Christian expectation that the Lord Jesus will one day return to judge the living and the dead, renewing the world in light of God’s kingdom, has been anticipated by the Church since its very beginnings. This paper will chronologically address the Christian expectation of the end times in relation to relevant sources, including the New Testament scriptures, late antique and medieval chronographers, and patristic writings. It will define apocalypticism, eschatology, and millenarianism, all of which are related terms, in order to account for the various ways in which the ‘end times’ has been construed in the aforementioned sources, with the focal point comprising the expectation of Western medieval chronographers that the world would come to an end around the year 1000. This expectation, which equates to millenarianism proper, constitutes a deviation from the ecclesial and patristic expectation that God’s kingdom can be experienced in the here and now within the mass or liturgy. It is this ecclesial perspective that, this paper will argue, should be retrieved in scholarly discussions on the end times.

• Angus Brook

  The Temporality of Eschatology: A Philosophical Analysis

  In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger proposed that Dasein’s sense of being; our sense of being, is grounded on temporality; an experience of time that is rooted in our relation to our own being. Heidegger argues that we can experience time in two distinct ways: an inauthentic temporality wherein we ground our sense of time on the cosmos, or an authentic temporality wherein we ground our sense of time on the finitude of our own being. Thus, authentic temporality is constituted as a being resolute towards our own potentiality for death; for being or not being. This argument about time can be traced back to one of Heidegger’s earliest lectures on the phenomenology of religious life; a lecture series in which Heidegger takes his notion of time from the everyday eschatology expressed in St. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. Heidegger, in reading Thessalonians, takes St. Paul’s use of the terms cronoV and kairoV to signify the distinction between inauthentic and authentic temporality. Equally, however, Heidegger also flips the meaning of kairoV on its head such that kairoV no longer signifies the expectation of Jesus Christ’s return, but rather the expectation of our own end, viz., death. The disagreement between St. Paul and Heidegger over the nature of temporality, if we can call it such, is a disagreement about what it is to be human, what our natural end is, i.e., what our purpose is, and in this – what the proper temporality of the everyday human experience of eschatology ought to be. In this paper, I plan, with a bit of help from Thomas Aquinas, to develop an alternative philosophical analysis of the temporality of everyday eschatology found in the letter to the Thessalonians. In doing so, the paper will look to eschatology as it is found in liturgy, particularly the liturgy of hours, to illustrate its arguments.

• Kevin A. Wagner

  Synesius of Cyrene’s Hymn VIII—A Christian Neoplatonist’s Account of Holy Saturday

  Synesius of Cyrene was consecrated bishop of the Libyan Pentapolis sometime around 410/11. He has left us a corpus of texts, the bulk of which were written before he assumed the episcopacy. These texts betray his intellectual formation under the guidance of the pagan philosopher Hypatia. However, although his writings are replete with Neoplatonic language and motifs, there is sufficient evidence within them to suggest that Synesius was orthodox, at least according to the standards of his time.

  In this paper we will examine one of Synesius’ nine extant hymns, Hymn VIII, a work that offers a vivid account of the descent of Jesus to Hades, his resurrection, and his ascension to heaven. Our work will seek to identify the pagan and Christian sources of Synesius’ language and imagery in order to better appreciate the meaning of the text for its original audience. Furthermore, we will endeavour to show that there is enduring value in this poetic text that can assist us in better articulating a theology of Holy Saturday.

• Tracey Rowland

  Eschatology and Deification

  In his essay ‘Eschatology and Utopia’, Joseph Ratzinger rhetorically asked the question: ‘Can the eschatological message, which directs men primarily into the passivity of a receiver of gifts, become also a practical statement, one that is oriented to action’?  He concluded that in some sense the answer must be yes. Therefore, ‘from the beginning the search was on for a practical meaning of the eschatological proclamation’ and thus, ‘this means that eschatology of its very nature demanded to be coupled with something else’.   Given this foundational insight, this paper will consider two diverse choices for a theological partner for eschatology – the choice between eschatology and utopia and eschatology and deification.

• Andrew Errington

  Reading the Apocalypse in a Time of Ecological Catastrophe

  With its florid imagery of the forces of creation revolting against human life to enact the judgment of God, ’the time for destroying those who destroy the earth’ (11:18), the Book of Revelation attracts attention as a reference point for thinking about our current ecological predicament. However, exactly what to make of this text in our time is less straightforward. This paper draws on the work of Oliver O’Donovan and Richard Bauckham to indicate some under–explored directions in which a reading of this text in our day might move. It draws attention to the ways in which God’s judgments are enacted through creation’s powers, the roles played by ’the earth’ and the fundamental hopefulness about creation throughout the text, and suggest that these represent significant points of reference for Christian witness in our time.

• Matthew Ogilvie

  Biblical Fundamentalist Eschatology and Its Implications

  At the surface, Fundamentalist eschatology has reputation for loud preaching and an emphasis on hellfire and eternal torment. At a deeper level, Fundamentalist eschatology highlights important points about the nature of Fundamentalism and what distinguishes it from the Catholic tradition. It reflects an anthropology that views the human person as depraved, human nature as inimical to God, human knowing as unreliable, faith as opposed to human nature, and it shows an ecclesiology that focusses on the individual rather than the community.

• Kamila Soh

  The Eternal Significance of Relationships: A Comparison Between Guardini and Arendt

  Hannah Arendt, the political philosopher, is most known for her work on totalitarianism. What is perhaps less known is her foundation in theology, which began as a student of Romano Guardini at the University of Berlin from 1922–1923. This paper will demonstrate the affinities between the works of Guardini and Arendt, who both affirm that a person is a social being who discovers objective truth in their relationship with others. However, it will be argued that these thoughts diverge upon the eternal significance of a person’s actions. For Guardini, this is found in the resurrection; for Arendt, this is secured by leaving traces of remembrance in a world that will transcend a person’s finitude. By comparing Guardini’s The Last Things (1954) and Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958), this paper will argue that Guardini provides a more comprehensive vision of eternity that is lacking in Arendt’s thesis.

• Michael Burdett

  The Search for Meaning Amidst Cosmic Annihilation, Transhumanism, and the Christian Last Judgement

  Present far–future scientific speculations about the fate of the cosmos remain bleak. While the ‘Big Bounce’ and ‘Big Crunch’ seem worse news for humanity than the more acceptable ‘super–cooled universe’ none is particularly hospitable to present terrestrial life and future human development. How do Christian and transhumanist visions of the far future maintain hope in spite of cosmic annihilation? This presentation argues, first, that Christian hope must persist despite cosmic annihilation because every future is an interpersonal future. The last judgement is not only hopeful because it is the moment of divine redemption, but also because the one who faces us is both advocate and the entrance to glorious life with God. Second, despite the Christian and transhumanist future sharing a common desire for ultimate meaning in the image of ‘someone facing us’, these images ultimately diverge from one another.  I argue that the Christian image can safeguard the virtues that makeup the interpersonal—faith, trust, love etc— while the transhumanist vision alone cannot for it depends upon an inadequate anthropology and metaphysic.

• Thomas A. Piolata, OFM Cap.

  From This World to the Father: Bonaventure, Guardini, and A Eucharistic Theology of Hope

  In one of his essays, Romano Guardini chronicles his own conversion as a quest through a litany of questions. Who is God? This question led to Christ, “through whom living progression toward God must pass” (Guardini). But who is Christ? This question led to the Church, that “living continuity” that provides “contemporaneity” with Christ (Guardini). One might thereby say that the human longing for God (Psalm 63), the restless heart’s search for rest (Augustine), or what Bonaventure would describe as the imago Dei’s yearning for the intimacy of similitudo, is thus fundamentally ecclesial. If ecclesial, however, then it is ultimately Eucharistic. This paper, by engaging primarily with Guardini and Bonaventure, develops a Eucharistic theology of hope. Hope is Eucharistic, because the Body and Blood of Christ signifies and so draws us into the union of the Mystical Body of Christ. The Sacrament deepens our incorporation into that very unity for which Christ himself prayed (Jn 17): a unity that begins here in via, but that is consummated in aeterna gloria. This pilgrimage is our (eucharistic) passover “with Christ crucified from this world to the Father”: transitus “by the fire of the Holy Spirit” (Bonaventure). The search for ultimate meaning — the face of the living God — finds in the Eucharist hope because “through it, man is drawn into heaven” (Bonaventure).

• Bernard Doherty

  The Advent of Antichrist: Millennialism, Popular Culture, and the Dark Side of the Catholic Imagination

  Over the twentieth century the eschatological ferment which accompanied the approaching millennium manifested itself in an enthusiasm for millenarian themes in wider culture—with the figure of Antichrist looming large in the Western imagination. From the anxieties of the fin–de–siecle, through the trenches of the First World War to the fear of nuclear Armageddon during the Cold War the figure of Antichrist haunted the darker corners of the Catholic culture becoming at once a figure of fear and fascination. During this period—particularly from the 1960s through to the early 2000s—popular culture became a looking glass which mirrored wider apocalyptic anxieties, with films like Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, and End of Days drawing heavily on wider Catholic folklore and theological speculation about Antichrist. This paper will examine the image of Antichrist in these and other films and literature from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to explore what they can tell us about popular eschatology and millenarian anxieties among Catholics during this period and how these outré ideas have persisted on the fringes of Catholicism to the present day.

• Fr Joseph Azize

  “Purgatory”: The Continuing Relevance of Syriac Typology

  How do we think about life after death? In particular, how can we even consider the idea of Purgatory, and its nature? To speak anachronistically, the chief ancient Syriac mode of theology was typology. Ephrem (c.306–373), the greatest of the early Syriac writers, differentiated neither “theology” from any other aspect of intellectual or affective life, nor “typology” from any other mode of analysis or exposition. I explore Ephrem’s typological approach to Paradise, Gehenna, and Sheol, and how parallels can rightly be drawn with Latin concepts, including that of “Purgatory” (of which Ephrem has the content but not the term). The typological approach to theology is thus complementary to the analytic, each having certain advantages and limitations. I contend that the typological approach can legitimately broaden the way we approach theology, and make it more accessible to the faithful.

• Mark Makowiecki

  “The Last Day” in the Gospel of John 

  In John’s Gospel, Jesus makes repeated reference to “the last day.” This is often assumed to be a reference to the eschaton, and so an additional assumption is made that the prophecies Jesus makes concerning raising people up “at the last day” (e.g., in 6:40, 44, 54) are not fulfilled in John’s narrative. But is this correct? By demonstrating that Jesus recapitulates the seven days of creation during his earthly life and ushers in an eighth, eternal, day with his resurrection, I will show that ‘the eighth day’ in John’s Gospel—encompassing John 20–21—is primarily to be understood as ‘the last day’, and that within this section we find Jesus fulfilling his promise to raise people up into heaven.

• Antonia Pizzey

  Awakening a ‘Sleeping’ Symbol: The Communion of Saints and the Three States of the Church

  Eschatology is a vital, yet neglected, aspect of the nature and mystery of the church. The lack of attention placed on the eschatological dimension of the church is highlighted by the surprising neglect of the church as “the communion of saints,” as presented in the Apostles Creed. The meaning and origin of “communion of saints” is unclear. Elizabeth Johnson refers to the communion of saints as a “sleeping symbol”. Has the “communion of saints” received less attention than the four marks of the church because it is an inherently eschatological concept? The “communion of saints” is linked to the three states of the church: church militant/pilgrim, church suffering/penitent, and church triumphant. The three states of the church remind us that the church must always be understood in an eschatological light. In this paper, I will firstly consider why the communion of saints has been neglected over time; secondly, I will explore the Medieval understanding of the three states of the church; and finally, I will present an argument for the importance of thinking about the church as the communion of saints for today.

• David Schutz

  The Eschatological Anthropology of Karl Rahner’s 1951 Assumptio-Arbeit

  In his 1958 publication Zur Theologie des Todes, Karl Rahner addresses the difficulty that definition of death as “the separation of the body and the soul” causes for the magisterial affirmation of the Thomistic anthropology “anima forma corporis”. He famously suggests that at death the soul becomes “all-cosmic” rather than “a-cosmic”, thus entering into an even greater relationship with materiality. But Zur Theologie was first written in 1947 and at one point was intended to be published as an excursus to his 1951 book on the definition of the Assumption of Mary. In this work (which was banned from publication at the time and only finally published in 2004), Rahner applies the eschatological anthropology he developed in Zur Theologie to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. He proposes the Assumption as a concrete case of the eschatological fulfillment which is the hope of all in Christ. In particular, the way Rahner reads the Assumption through St Thomas’ hylomorphic anthropology and the matrix of German words for “the body” (Leib, Körper, and Leiche) preempts the later “resurrection-in-death” thesis.

• Shaun Blanchard

  “Jesus Christ Under Anathema”: Jansenist Figurism as Ecclesial Protest

  As fervent believers in the providence of God and diligent readers of the Bible, it is not surprising that Jansenists developed a distinctive mode of scriptural interpretation to fit their increasingly desperate situation: figurism. For figurists, people and events from the Old and New Testaments were symbolically interpreted as “figures” of present struggles. Popularised by a circle connected to the Oratorian seminary of Saint-Magloire in Paris, Jansenists used figurism to give meaning to their suffering at the hands of the French state, and cope with the even more painful reality that the “Truth” had been betrayed by the majority of French bishops and even the pope himself. The genius of figurism was its prophetic potential; not only was God going to make crooked lines straight, as the Almighty had done in scripture, but the persecution that Jansenists were suffering was actually confirmation that they were following God’s will. This paper analyses Jansenist eschatology through a close look at three fascinating figurist texts, spanning the aftermath of the bull Unigenitus (1713) to the chaotic decade of the French Revolution. This examination not only casts light on the divisions of early modern Catholicism, it helps us better understand contemporary Catholic polarisation in the pontificate of Pope Francis.

• Jeremy Bell

  Perfect Happiness Without God: Aquinas and the Question of Limbo

  The common teaching of medieval and early modern Catholic theologians concerning the eternal destiny of unbaptized persons who die before reaching the age at which moral choice becomes possible was that, at least normally, these persons are forever deprived of the Beatific Vision but suffer no temporal punishment. They live forever in “limbo.” In recent decades, this teaching has fallen into near-universal disrepute. When in 2007, the International Theological Commission released its extensive study, “The Hope of Eternal Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised,” some secular media outlets announced that the Church had definitively “buried” the old teaching. In fact, one of the study’s conclusions was that limbo “remains . . . a possible theological hypothesis.” My goal in this paper is to examine the merits of this hypothesis, as elaborated by Thomas Aquinas. While there are numerous considerations in its favour, it prompts difficult questions about God’s mercy and universal salvific will. Moreover, Aquinas’ discussion raises the question of how deprivation of the Beatific Vision can be the greatest of pains for those who die in mortal sin, yet no pain at all for those who die in original sin only.

• Rev Dr. Paschal M. Corby OFM Conv.

  The complete man is determined not at the beginning, but at the end. The significance of eschatology for anthropology within the thought of Romano Guardini.

  “The complete man is determined not at the beginning, but at the end. The shape of a man’s life is not a growth and unfolding from within, culminating in a return upon itself; its figure, its symbol, is not the self-enclosed circle, but an arch that reaches out toward something that in turn comes to meet it.”

  Guardini’s anthropology is situated within an eschatological framework. As echoed in the words of one of his most famous disciples, “we do not understand man when we ask only where he comes from. We understand him only when we also ask where he can go. Only from his height is his essence really illuminated.”  The purpose of the paper is to investigate this connection between anthropology and eschatology within the wisdom of Guardini. It seeks to understand man as an image of the Word, in His movement from (exitus) and return to (reditus) the bosom of the Father. This is the ‘arch’ along which every man is called to travel, towards the full realisation of himself before God. In following Guardini’s end­–centred anthropology, note will be made of Augustinian and Bonaventurian influences.

• Lawrence Qummou

  The Son as the sum of last things

  Of all theological sub disciplines, eschatology is perhaps the most disposed to being interpreted within the framework of systematics. The tendency to interrogate the nature of death, judgement, heaven, and hell as the ‘completion’ or ‘finality’ of the Christian story, although seemingly logical, results in an eschatological discourse that can at times dissect the four last things forensically, treating them as discrete subjects in search of scriptural or metaphysical justification. This paper will advocate for a less dialectical and more rhetorical, if somewhat romantic, framing of eschatology that sees its fundamental orientation in the person of Christ. This approach charts an eschatological sensibility understood not only as matters pertaining to an Age to come, but also present realities that only find coherence as a unified picture in the life, death and resurrection of the God-man. Central to this endeavour is the emphasis on reading scripture through the prism of Christ as truly the Alpha and Omega.

• Christian Stephens

  “The Great Divorce” and Punishment in the Eschaton

  The thesis of this paper is that C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce (1946) exemplifies in a narrative form the Augustinian-Thomist account of punishment. The Great Divorce is a narrative which creatively presents the protagonist’s experience of the eschaton. While pursuing (and undergoing) his own journey to the state of glory, he encounters other people with their own peculiar habits of thinking, desiring, and choosing. In some cases, these persons do not even begin their journey, while in others they begin it without completing it; in either case, it results in the person’s frustration and unfulfilled desire. Augustine and Aquinas’ theory of punishment is grounded in the claim that evil is itself a privation, and that it is found in two forms: the evil of culpae (“fault”/“sin”/ “guilt”) and the evil of poenae (“punishment”/“penalty”/“pain”). The two kinds are seen as being in an essentially proportionate relationship, meaning that while punishment is always something imposed in one sense, it is never arbitrary or accidental. At the beginning of the third millennium, when significant portions of Christian’s equate divine punishment with “torture”, and the wider society is in the grip of the therapeutic culture (cf. Reiff and Trueman), such a synthesis of narrative and theory is needed.

• Peter Pellicaan

  Eschatology and Evangelisation

  In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus takes a somewhat eschatological approach to ensuring his listeners understand the consequences of their actions. The parable of the ten virgins, the parable of the talents and the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25), all help the listener to place their lives in the context of eternity. Are we ready for the groom? Are we ready for the master, are we ready for the king and judge? In a world where the common mantra is “you’re ok, I’m ok,” an eschatological approach to evangelisation can serve to awaken the soul to the realities of a transcendent God who is revealed in God’s only Son, Jesus, and who will return to judge the living and the dead. This presentation will discuss Jesus’ eschatological parables in Matthew 25, examine some examples of eschatological approaches to evangelisation in the Church’s history, and finally consider how Jesus’ eschatological approach might inform a more urgent and fruitful evangelisation of the modern world.

• Mariusz Biliniewicz

  Eternal Fate of Unbaptised Children – Some Contemporary Reflections

  This paper will examine some theological issues related to the question of eternal fate of children who die before baptism. It will look at some most important milestones in the development of the Church’s teaching on this topic, as well as some contemporary attempts to address this question, including the 2007 document of International Theological Commission and recent papal interventions (the beatification of the Ulm family). The paper will examine some theological arguments used in the discussion on the limbus puerorum and offer some possible avenues for future developments.

• Adam Wesselinoff

  The Apocalypse of Gender in Maximus the Confessor’s Ambiguum 41

  The ubiquity of gender discourse has reinvigorated interest in a key text of the 7th century monk St Maximus the Confessor, his Ambiguum 41, sometimes described as the Maximian “theory of everything.” This text, in which Maximus clarifies a difficult passage in the theology of St Gregory of Nazianzus, unfolds his vision of a divided cosmos overcome in Christ, and directly situates gender as one such division. The division between male and female is destined, Maximus says, to be “completely shaken off” and “driven out” from nature—both in the person of Christ, who dispassionately surpassed this division in the flesh, and will do so utterly when the “natures are renewed” in Christ at the Eschaton. In this paper I will examine the major threads of recent scholarly interest in Maximus’ Amb 41, from Polycarp Sherwood to John Behr, and identify the ways in which his treatment of gender and eschatology departs from received gendered themes of eschatological fulfilment, such as the bridal chamber and wedding feast of the Lamb. In doing so, I will endeavour to show that Maximus offers us creative and thoroughly Christological possibilities for breaking free of contemporary deadlocks in the gender “debate.”

• Fr Benjamin Johnson OFMCap

  Loving as the Divine Persons Love: St Bonaventure’s The Threefold Way as guide to Heaven

  St Bonaventure, in The Threefold Way, outlines the soul’s perfection of love in Christ crucified. In this transformation we perceive that the moulding of the person on earth prepares them for the fulness of their heavenly reality. This paper will explore Christ’s role, as the principle of our purgation, illumination, and perfection respectively, in leading the Christian soul to its final state in heaven. In this threefold way, the person becomes a greater likeness of Christ through their capacity to know, love and act as a preparation for eternal love.

• Adam Cooper

  Eschatological Victory or Apokatastasis of the Universe? Versions of Salvation from the Apocalypse of Peter to Maximus the Confessor

  Early Christian versions of salvation emerged and developed through a dynamic and interactive process involving ritual experience, liturgical instruction, social conflict, intellectual reflection and polemical argument. Already from the first century three analogies of salvation had emerged as categorically dominant themes: physical healing, spiritual redemption, and eschatological victory. Each of these themes, in turn, found a common site of cultivation in the initiatory practices of baptism, by which Christians believed they were joined to the world-changing death of Jesus and raised to heavenly life in his Church, a kind of earthly anticipation of heavenly paradise. This presentation focuses on the vision of heavenly salvation through Christ as a victory over hostile cosmic powers. Apocalyptically styled proposals of Christ’s victorious reign were found widely in both staunchly orthodox and more marginal Christian texts. Starting from the Apocalypse of Peter and moving through the 7^th century theology of Maximus the Confessor, we discover how more spectacular descriptions of heaven and hell, including various millenarian and universalist versions, give way to more guarded affirmations of final stability in the merciful God and of the simultaneously abiding vulnerability of the Christian disciple.

• Peter Holmes

  Will There be Male and Female in Heaven?

  The Church teaches that a person’s body sums up, and brings to his or her highest perfection, the elements of the material world and in doing so enables us to praise our Creator (CCC, 364).  An individual’s bodily expression of sexuality could be said to sum up and perfect his or her communal nature and give praise to God. John Paul II calls this communal aspect of the person the ‘spousal’ nature, expressed in the person bodily, as that part of our sexual nature that cannot be described as purely animal, which yearns for communion with another, ultimately with God. Is there, then, a male soul and a female soul, or simply a spousal soul, which is incarnated in one or another ‘accidental’ masculinity or femininity? If the soul is immortal, and masculinity and femininity are part of or intimately connected with the soul, will there be male and female in heaven? Is bodily sexuality merely a temporary accident of our spousal nature, or will male human persons be male human persons and female human persons be female human persons in heavenly glory? If so, in what way will masculinity or femininity have any significance in the heavenly body? These questions seem to have implications for the Church’s engagement with modern attempts to distinguish sex from gender and, in some cases, imply that gender does not correspond with bodily sex.

• Joel Hodge

  Christ or Apocalypse: Theologically engaging René Girard’s “Apocalyptic Anthropology” as an “Anthropological Eschatology”

  A church and society without sacred violence or scapegoats—that is receptive to the Spirit who makes the coming of crucified–and–risen victim, Jesus, ever–present—is essential as eschatological vision informed by René Girard’s mimetic theory. In this paper, I outline Girard’s position as he provided an “apocalyptic anthropology” to ground Christian eschatology. In particular, I analyse Girard’s last major work, Battling to the End, in which he argued that, without sacred restraints, the rivalry and violence of modernity moves towards apocalyptic extremes. While some criticise his pessimistic view of modernity, Girard claimed that apocalypse is a human–made reality. Girard held humanity’s self–destruction as a possibility foreshadowed by the biblical revelation, while also hoping for the eschatological realisation of the Kingdom. On this basis, Girard outlined two ultimate possibilities for humanity: Christ or apocalypse; that is, a permanent, divinely–ordained peace without scapegoats, or a contradictory, self–destructing “order” unable to survive without scapegoating violence. In starkly laying out these options, he also argued for practices such as “withdrawal” from the world and attentiveness to God’s “innermost (or intimate) mediation.” This paper critically examines Girard’s views of apocalypse and eschatology to evaluate whether they are helpful for an anthropologically–informed Catholic eschatology.

• Rev Dr Gregory M W Morgan

  The Loss of the Eschatological Voice in an Age of Parody, Profanation, & Play: The “Truth” in Giorgio Agamben’s “Homily”

  This paper evaluates the insightfulness of Giorgio Agamben’s accusation that the Catholic Church has closed her “eschatological window” and, in consequence, has eclipsed her eschatological voice. Drawing heuristically upon the Pauline scriptures, Agamben describes the Church’s vocation to be “paroikein”—a sojourning Church—, that is to say, a Church that reflects its unworldly alterity by living in messianic time as opposed to simply surviving in chronological time.  However, having exchanged messianic time for secular time, the Church has become an institution that, qualitatively speaking, resembles any other worldly institution: bureaucratic, agencified, and, most tragically of all, at home. After disinterring the deeper “un–said(s)” that animate Agamben’s “post–modern” diagnosis (which I argue disclose his cannibalisation and profanation of theological language for the sake of “play”), the paper asserts that there is a movement towards truth in Agamben’s critique; but a movement that can only be properly understood and perfected in the light of Jesus Christ—the eternal–eschatological sign who “shines in the darkness” of our immanent confusion. The paper concludes by presenting a doxological vision for the Church’s (prophetic) engagement in public discourse.

• Sr Susanna Edmunds

  Eschatological Exegesis: Reclaiming the Anagogical Sense of Scripture

  Despite significant growth in the fields of canonical and theological exegesis, the anagogical sense of Scripture continues to be neglected. As a result, the Book of Revelation is studied primarily in the light of its own historical, literary, and canonical context, without consideration of the light it can shed on the rest of the canon. This paper will examine the metaphysical underpinnings of the traditional four–fold senses of Scripture in order to demonstrate the importance of the Book of Revelation as the teleological reference point for both the Old and New Testaments.

• Fr Robin Koning SJ

  The Applied Eschatology of Ignatian Spirituality

  Like any authentic Christian spirituality, Ignatian spirituality is an applied eschatology, guiding people in how to live their lives in light of eternity. At the very start of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius invites retreatants to reflect on the big picture of their lives—the purpose for which they were created and its implications for how they should live. At other points, we find explicit references to traditional eschatological themes, including a meditation on hell and the recommendation to consider important decisions in light of death and final judgement. This paper will outline these and other ways in which Ignatian spirituality, especially in the Exercises, draws upon eschatological themes.

• Rev Joshua Miechels STL

  Foucault and JPII on the Experience of Death

  If death is a good marker of how to fulfil one’s humanity, it is important to consider the meaning and consequences of death for the vocation of the human person, particularly as it relates to the human body. This is the path taken in Michel Foucault’s biopolitics on the one hand, and in his contemporary Saint John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Taking into account their analyses of the human body, we will consider the approach of each to what happens to the human person in death, especially as expressed by Foucault in his 1979 essay on suicide, “Un plaisir si simple,” and in chapter three of part one of John Paul’s catecheses on the Theology of the Body. While pope and philosopher have some points in common, in particular around the idea of the body communicating something of the reality of the human person, they also constitute radically different ways death can be experienced in the person, consenting to an auto–destruction chez Foucault, but an eternally blossoming life in John Paul—this raises questions about the capacity of Foucault’s approach to be one of a fulfilment of the human person.

• Paul Tyson

  Technology and Eschatology

  With modern science born in the eschatological fevers of the seventeenth century, the relationship between technology and the Last Day is intimate. With the post–Christian and immanentizing trends in Western secularism over the past half century, categories of a looming end of the age and of redemptive technological transformation have taken on new ersatz theological signatures. Some AI developers, perhaps echoing Heidegger, think we are creating a god; environmental apocalypticism hangs like the shadow of doom over our younger generation; the cloud now shapes every aspect of our lives and perhaps it is re–shaping our very humanity. In this brief paper I will explore the manner in which contemporary technological eschatology retains a deeply theological character, which has continuity with early scientific modernity, which was theologically problematic from the start. I will ask how a more theologically credible Christian understanding of eschatology might now view the secularized eschatologies of technology in our times.

• Danijel Uremović

  Cosmos and Contrapasso: Universal Order and the Nature of Sin in Dante’s Inferno

  It has become the unfortunate fate of Dante’s Commedia that its readership has regularly neglected the work beyond the first of its three cantiche, the Inferno. In doing so, it has neglected the very nature of the work as a “comedy,” and its ultimate theological significance. In an attempt to reconnect this picture of hell to Dante’s complete vision of earth, purgatory, and heaven as a single divine order, this paper will consider two key, though oft-neglected themes of the Inferno: hell as a work of divine love, and the unity of character and act implied by the poet’s use of contrapasso. From here we will consider what Dante’s theological vision might offer us in light of the prevailing models of hell under the aspects of “chaos,” “absence,” and extrinsically met “justice.”

• Sr Anastasia Reeves, OP

  False Eschatologies and a Dominican Middle Ground

  In the midst of the current crisis of Christian faith and hope across the English-speaking world, and beyond, is a specific crisis in accepting Christian belief about the last things: death, judgement, heaven and hell. In the vacuum of unbelief, this is often manifested in the adoption of what could be termed false eschatologies that obscure, and possibly jeopardise, our eternal destiny, the rise of which has been accompanied by a notable lack of fruitful Christian preaching and teaching of the last things.

  This paper will argue that we can learn from the early Dominicans one approach to preaching and teaching the last things effectively, because of the notable parallels between early thirteenth century southern France and twenty–first century Western culture. The Dominican Order was born in medieval France, in response to the pervasive dualist heresies of the Cathars and others, who held distorted ideas about the human person and his ultimate end. We will then consider how the Dominican charism—imbued from the beginning by the last things—could, therefore, inform the wider Church’s response to the myriad of alternative eschatologies of our contemporaries.

• Fr Joseph Vnuk, OP

  The Happiness of Hell

  Following John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas characterizes hell in terms of the absence of the vision of God, which enables him to maintain that the unbaptized who died as infants, being unaware of their loss, can be perfectly happy  - and in doing so stretches the notion of punishment.

  This characterization of hell as fundamentally a happy place, except insofar as it is marred by the "worm of conscience" and the "fire of the senses," can undermine a good deal of the criticism of the Christian teaching on hell, but it also stretches the notion of punishment even further.  The way Anselm defines punishment in Cur Deus Homo provides a helpful insight.

  The real problem is not this fairly authentic description of hell, but our complete inability to describe heaven.

• Rev Tegha Afuhwi Nji

  Imago Dei as an Eschatological Promise: Genesis 1:27 in Light of Ratzinger’s Augustinianism

  This paper envisions creation – “in the image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:26, 27) – as already a breaking-in of the eschatological Other into time and history, thereby permeating human life and history, from the very beginning, with an interior orientation to the eschaton. Thus, creation itself becomes an eschatological promise. In articulating this thesis, this paper begins with Augustine’s definition of Imago Dei in terms of three powers: memoria (to remember God); intelligentia (to understand and love God); and participatio (to partake of God). This Augustinian trope is taken up in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s description of the human person as “God’s partner in dialogue” from creation, by which fact humanity is always already called to participate in the eternal life of God, in and through the creative Logos, Christ, “who is the image of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Christ is that image according to which we are created, male and female. In Christ, therefore, human life unfolds as a dialogical relatedness – like an image to that which it images – always already shot through with the arrow of eschatological finality, since it is this very Christ who is likewise the image into which we are being transformed (2 Corinthians 3:18). This analysis stands a better chance to reassess Karl Rahner’s dilemma of whether “time” is grounded in God’s eternity, and to affirm the claim that eschatology is not an isolated reality simply frozen and shelved away until “the four last things.” Rather, it is a consummation of a (historical) process that is always already underway, yet whose perfection, paradoxically, lies outside itself.

• Alenka Arko

  The Faith in the Resurrection of the Flesh and the New Heavens and New Earth

  The paper focuses on the resurrection of the flesh and on a new heaven and a new earth as essentials elements of our faith contained in the Nicene-Constantinople Creed. These are not simply two realities which are of the utmost importance, especially today, when the world, and at least some individuals, are looking towards the future with anxiety, realism or even pessimism in the face of an ecological crisis which is becoming more and more palpable. The paper wants to stress, referring on biblical theology and patristic taught (Ireneus, Gregory of Nyssa), the importance of the fact that not everything is in our own hands. All that we are and all that we possess is a work of God's love, which is faithful to the end. God has not given up on His plan of salvation. He still wants to be "All in all" (1 Cor 15:28), even in material reality. Faith in the resurrection of the body, in the victory over corruption and death, and in the future of a transformed world that is the "property" of God (cf. Jn 1:11), is a great source of hope and also the firmest foundation of human activity in the world. If it is understood in right way it is not something contrary to God's will, but as the fulfilment of man's vocation, which reaches its completion in the eschatological order. Faith in the resurrection of the flesh and in the new heavens and the new earth is so important because it is, on the one hand, a "consequence" of the temporality and materiality of the world: if God wants to save creation, he must also save human corporeality and the materiality in which the incarnate spirit dwells, while at the same time, and this is the other side, it is involved in the eschatological dynamic of "already and not yet". “Already” today we are called to care for our own bodies, the bodies of our brothers and sisters and of creation, "preparing" them for eternal life. It is certain, however, that we are also confronted with the "mystery of the transfiguration" (cf. 1 Cor 15:51), an intervention of God that goes beyond our expectations and beyond the possibilities of our hope.