Eschatology and Ethics

Bibliographic Data

ID20024921
AuthorsKathryn Tanner (Episcopal Divinity School, corresponding author)
Year2007
Publication date2007-08-09
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueThe Oxford handbook of theological ethics (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199227228.003.0004
OpenAlexW2735866201
ISBN9780199227228
LanguageEN
Citations received2

Eschatology, or the theology of last things, is a Christian doctrine with a rather direct bearing on ethical questions via its influence on psychological dispositions to act. Perhaps for this reason, eschatology is a major topic in much of contemporary Christian thought concerned with promoting social and political activism. What one believes about the end of things affects how one feels about the world in which one lives and one's attitude towards efforts to make the world a better place. This article discusses how an eschatology for a world without a future manages to avoid hopelessness in the face of present trouble, complacent inactivity regarding suffering and injustice, and irresponsible self-concern. The article explains how eschatology does not bring with it the loss of eschatology as political theology, the loss of active, socially committed challenge to structures of oppression, injustice, and ecological devastation that is so much a part of many modern, future-oriented eschatologies. The explanations will not make much sense, however, without first developing in greater detail the character of this de-temporalized eschatology

Doctrine · Environmental ethics · Eschatology · Injustice · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

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