Eschatology

Eschatology has been defined as ~any configuration of religious myths and beliefs that recount or affirm any future happenings directly related to the ultimate destiny of man'. 1 It is the religious account of last, i.e. final, cosmichistorical events and of the final, absolute destiny of mare Before coming to the specific comparison of Christian and Buddhist eschatology two preliminary considerations are in order. First is the question as to whether all religions are per se eschatological, at least in some sense. And the answer must be in the affirmative; for the basic religious concern, whatever form it takes, is a concern with ul t imacy--ul t imacy of reality (the absolute reality), of value (absolute truth, goodness, beauty, worth, etc.), of experiential quality (the transcendent, the ineffable). And inevitably the quest for ultimacy and transcendence involves a concern for final endings and their final-ultimate successors in glorious historical consummation, in eternal beatitude, and the like. O f course, given the almost infinite multiplicity of religious tradition there is also an almost infinite variety of modes and degrees of ~eschatology.' In many pre-literate cultures 'eschatology' consists in the at tempt successfully and lastingly to deal with those forces, hostile or friendly, which most basically affect mankind for good or ill. But here there is no specific eschatological formulation. In many middle-range cultures, where religion has achieved some degree of literary, ritual and institutional structure, and there is some historical awareness, the eschatology of human death and societal endings comes into view and is more or less consciously dealt with in the various versions of life after death and Ggtterdiimmerungen, with possibly ensuing renewals or new pantheons. In the major religious traditions the cosmichistorical awareness there present has resulted in a proliferation of eschatological forms in the more usual sense, the presence of scenarios of dramatic world-endings and their ensuing results for man. Such scenarios are to be found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam in a marked degree. But here a careful distinction must be made. In the last four of the above 'Western' religious traditions the cosmic-historical form of the eschatological is the dominant, almost exclusive, type which has given

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• Conceptions of Supreme Deity

  Open Access•Graham Oppy•Sophia•2024

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