Resources for eschatology Time Traveler! Explore the year a word first appeared. Dictionary Entries near eschatology eschatocol eschatological eschatologist eschatology escheat escheator Escher. Statistics for eschatology Look-up Popularity. Time Traveler for eschatology The first known use of eschatology was in See more words from the same year. More from Merriam-Webster on eschatology Rhyming Dictionary: Words that rhyme with eschatology Nglish: Translation of eschatology for Spanish Speakers Britannica. Comments on eschatology What made you want to look up eschatology?
Get Word of the Day daily email! Need even more definitions? Ask the Editors Word of the Year: Literally How to use a word that literally drives some people nuts. The doctrinal premises are 1 good will eventually prevail over evil; 2 creation was initially perfectly good, but was subsequently corrupted by evil; 3 the world will ultimately be restored to the perfection it had at the time of creation; 4 the "salvation for the individual depended on the sum of [that person's] thoughts, words and deeds, and there could be no intervention, whether compassionate or capricious, by any divine being to alter this.
Researchers in futures studies and transhumanists investigate how the accelerating rate of scientific progress may lead to a " technological singularity " in the future that would profoundly and unpredictably change the course of human history, and result in Homo sapiens no longer being the dominant life form on Earth. Occasionally the term "physical eschatology" is applied to the long-term predictions of astrophysics.
Life on Earth will become impossible due to a rise in temperature long before the planet is actually swallowed up by the Sun. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Theological views of the end of the world. Snow novel, see Strangers and Brothers. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. May Learn how and when to remove this template message. Olivet Discourse Sheep and Goats. Second Coming Islamic eschatology. Kalki Kali Yuga Shiva. Death Resurrection Last Judgement. Messianism Book of Daniel Kabbalah. Gog and Magog Messianic Age. Christian eschatology and Christian eschatological views. Future of Earth , Future of an expanding universe , and Ultimate fate of the universe.
Philosophy portal Religion portal. Philosophy and Science of Eschatology. Making Sense Out of Life and Religion.
7 Reasons Your Church Should Take Eschatology Seriously
An Introduction to the Baha'i Faith. Dorchestor House Publications, p. Thomas Nelson Pub, , p. Their Religious Beliefs and Practices , London: Future of the Earth Ultimate fate of the universe. Extinction risk from global warming Runaway climate change Global terrestrial stilling Ice age Ecocide Human impact on the environment Ozone depletion Cascade effect. Overexploitation Overpopulation Human overpopulation. Extinction event Human extinction Genetic erosion Genetic pollution. Dysgenics Pandemic Biological agent Transhumanism. Alien invasion Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction List of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction List of apocalyptic films Disaster films List of disaster films List of fictional doomsday devices Zombie apocalypse.
In themselves they are endured as vexatious, but even more so insofar as they are signs of the gradual dissolution of the body. Each one of us ought to affirm, as did Paul of old: We are led to attain to the glory of the Risen Christ through our association with his passion: Thus life on earth is ordered to communion with Christ after death, a communion which is already effective in the state of the separated soul, although ontologically imperfect and incomplete.
This justifies that mystic hope of death which, as we have said, is frequent among the saints. Through a holy life, to which God calls us by his grace and helps us by his aid, the original bond between sin and death is as it were broken, not because death is physically overcome, but inasmuch as it begins to lead to life eternal. Such a way of dying is a participation in the paschal mystery of Christ. The sacraments prepare us for such a death. The baptism in which we die mystically to sin consecrates us for participating in the resurrection of the Lord cf.
Death in the Lord implies the possibility of another way of dying, namely death outside the Lord, which leads to a second death cf. For in this death, the power of sin through which death entered cf.
Eschatology
Christian customs relative to the burial of the corpses of the faithful were quickly formed, and indeed were formed under the influence of faith in the resurrection of the dead. For a long time the cremation of corpses was forbidden, 76 because historically this was seen to be connected with a Neoplatonic mentality which intended the destruction of the body as a way of freeing the soul more promptly from prison 77 more recently, however, it implied a materialistic or agnostic attitude.
The ecclesiology of communion, which is strongly characteristic of the Second Vatican Council, believes that death does not undo the communion of saints, that is that union in the bond of love of all the brethren in Christ: The souls of the blessed take part in it. This is shown in the Roman anaphora, not alone in the Communicantes prayer at least in its present form , but in the transition from preface to canon and in the prayer within the canon, Supplices te rogamus , where the petition is made that the earthly offering be taken aloft to the altar in Heaven.
This heavenly liturgy however is not simply a matter of praise. The Lamb who was slain is at the centre cf. Since God is the source of all love cf.
Some Current Questions in Eschatology ()
This concept of invocation is completely different from the notion of evoking spirits. In the New Testament the Apostles sustain this prohibition and banish all magical practices Acts As often as not—as the response referred to makes clear—the intention is to use the evocation of spirits to obtain hidden information. Any further curiosity about postmortem affairs would be utterly foolish and should therefore be simply repressed.
There are sects today who reject the Catholic invocation of saints by claiming it falls under the biblical prohibition. In so doing they are failing to distinguish it from the evocation of spirits. On our side, as we urge the invocation of the saints to the faithful, we must teach them the nature of that invocation in such a way as to give the sects no handle for such misunderstanding.
When the magisterium of the Church asserts that the souls of the sanctified will enjoy the beatific vision of God and perfect union with Christ shortly after death, there is a presupposition: Who will find rest on your holy mountain? He who enters without a blemish.
These words express a consciousness of a reality which is so fundamental that, one way or another, a certain surmise of the necessity of postmortem purification exists in many of the great historical religions. The Church also holds that any stain is an impediment when it comes to our intimate meeting with God and Christ.
This principle is not concerned only with stains which break or destroy friendship with God and which, therefore, should they persist in death, make a meeting with God definitively impossible grave sins , but also with those which darken such a friendship and require a prior purification, so as to make possible such a meeting with God and Christ. For that reason, we are bidden to seek purification. Even those who are washed, must also free their feet of dust cf. The theology of that state began to develop in the third century in the case of those who had been restored to peace with the Church without having made the full penance before death.
The practice of praying for the dead must be fully retained. It contains a profession of faith in the existence of such a purificatory state. This too is the meaning of the burial liturgy, a meaning we may not forget: There is a beautiful portrait of the deceased in the Byzantine liturgy, as it cries out to the Lord: The Church believes that the definitive state of damnation awaits those who die burdened with grave sin.
The justified are alive in the love of Christ. Death strengthens the consciousness of such a love. When there is a delay in reaching the possession of the beloved, there is sorrow, a sorrow that purifies. The Irrepeatability and Singleness of Human Life: The Problem of Reincarnation. It has, that is, a new incarnation or enfleshment. This is a child of paganism in direct opposition to Scripture and Church tradition, and has been always rejected by Christian faith and theology.
It has great currency in the media, and, increasingly, the influence of Eastern religions and philosophies which have a reincarnational character is spreading. The reason for this is the growth of a syncretistic mentality. The reason for its acceptance by many people is possibly due to an instinctive and spontaneous reaction to the rampant materialism of the present day. The Catholic faith has a full response to this way of thinking. It is true that human life is too short to correct and surpass its failures and deficiencies. But the eschatological purification will be perfect.
It is granted that a single earthly life is too short to realise all human potential in time. But the final, glorious resurrection will lead people to a state surpassing all their desires. It is not possible to give in detail here all aspects of present reincarnational systems. The main thrust of reincarnationalism, however, in the West today may be summarised under four heads. There are many earthly existences. Our present existence is not our first bodily existence, nor our last.
We lived before, and again and again we shall inhabit new bodies. There is a law in nature which impels us to an enduring progress towards perfection. This same law leads souls to newer and newer lives. No regression is allowed, nor indeed any definitive standing still. A fortiori, any thought of a definitive state of eternal damnation is unthinkable. After many, or fewer, ages, they hold, a final perfection of pure spirit will be reached a denial of hell.
The ultimate destination is achieved by ones own merits. In each and every new existence, the soul progresses in virtue of its own strivings. Whatever evil was done is atoned for by personal expiations which each spirit meets and suffers in new and difficult incarnations a denial of redemption. This means that the soul has an innate tendency to definitive bodiless existence. Along this way, the soul will reach a definitive status, forever free of the body and independent of all matter a denial of resurrection.
These four elements which constitute reincarnational anthropology are an outright negation of the central affirmations of Christian revelation. There is no need to insist further on how different it is from the characteristically Christian anthropology. Christianity defends duality , reincarnation defends a dualism in which the body is simply an instrument of the soul and is laid aside, existence by successive existence, as an altogether different body is assumed each time.
As far as eschatology is concerned, the doctrine of reincarnation denies both the possibility of eternal damnation and the idea of the resurrection of the body. But the fundamental error is in the rejection of the Christian doctrine of salvation. For the reincarnationist the soul is its own saviour by its own efforts. Its soteriology is one of autoredemption, which is diametrically opposed to the heteroredemption of Christian soteriology. In fact, if such a heteroredemption is suppressed, any talk of Christ the Redeemer is null and void. The nub of New Testament soteriology is contained in the following words: In Christ our release is secured and our sins forgiven through the shedding of his blood.
The whole doctrine concerning Church, sacraments and grace stands or falls on this central point. As to the specific point asserted by reincarnationalists concerning the repeatability of human lives, the Epistle to the Hebrews is well known: The Second Vatican Council appealed to this text when teaching that we have only a single life on earth. In the phenomenon of reincarnation there may well be certain aspiration towards disavowing materialism. Since we have our human lives once only, it is clear how serious a matter our lives are. There is no second time around. Since our earthly life is the way to the reality of the last things, our behaviour in life has irrevocable consequences.
Our life in the body has an eternal destiny. The truth is that people begin to recognise the meaning of their final destiny only when they realise the divine origin of their own nature. What is implied here is that God has given people the capacity of knowing God and freely loving him, and of ruling over the other earthly creatures, of making them subject, and making use of them. Since each human soul is a direct creation by God in each person, each person is a product of a single concrete act of Gods creative love.
God did not only make people, but placed them in Paradise Gen 2: A promise of salvation follows the sin of the first person cf. The forgiveness of sin won by the death and resurrection of Christ cf. The meaning then of the promise of eternal life to us is that we share in the inheritance of Christ: In revealing the Fathers secrets to us, Jesus wants to make us his friends cf. But friendship cannot be forced on us.
Friendship with God like adoption is an offer, to be freely accepted or rejected. This consummated and freely accepted friendship implies a concrete possibility of rejection. What is freely accepted can be freely rejected.
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This doctrine of faith shows equally the importance of the human capacity of freely rejecting God, and the gravity of such a freely willed rejection. Only in the presence of Christ and by the light he conveys, can that mystery of iniquity which is resident in the sins we commit be understood. Since we have only one lifetime Heb 9: Decisions we now make have eternal consequences.
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Although he invites us to the way of life by prevenient and cooperative adiuvians grace, we can choose the other way When we choose, God genuinely respects our liberty, without failing to continue to offer his saving grace even to those who are turned away from him. It must be stated that in fact God genuinely respects whatever we on our part freely will to do, whether we accept or reject grace.
It follows that in a certain way salvation and damnation each begin on earth in that people by their moral actions open or close themselves to God.
On the other hand, the greatness and the ensuing responsibility of human liberty is clear. Every theologian is aware of the difficulties that people now, and in every former period, find in accepting the New Testament teaching on hell. For that reason there is much merit in keeping a mind open to the sober teaching of the gospel, whether in expounding it or in believing it.
Such sobriety should content us, and we should avoid attempts to grasp in concrete detail how to reconcile Gods infinite goodness and human liberty. The Church takes seriously both human liberty, and the divine Mercy which gives people the liberty which is a condition for obtaining salvation.
Since the Church prays for the salvation of all people living, by that fact it is praying for the conversion of all. The Church has always believed that such a universal salvific will on Gods part has an ample efficacy. The Church has never once declared the damnation of a single person as a concrete fact. But, since hell is a genuine possibility for every person, it is not right—although today this is something which is forgotten in the preaching at exequies—to treat salvation as a kind of quasi-automatic consequence.
For these reasons, we should, where this doctrine is concerned, make Pauls words our own. How inscrutable his judgements, how unsearchable his ways! Reincarnationalists believe our earthly life too brief to constitute our only life. This is why they insist on repeatability. The Christian ought to be aware of the brevity of life since he knows we have one life only. The Christian then as an alien and a pilgrim cf. Since a full investigation of the doctrine of the Last Things in the liturgy is not possible here, we shall attempt a synthesis of the main ideas which are found in the renewed liturgy which followed the Second Vatican Council.
The first thing to observe is that in the liturgy for the dead the resurrection of Christ is the ultimate reality which lights up all the other realities concerned with Last Things. As a result the resurrection of the body is our supreme hope. Since the resurrection of the body will take place at the end of time, there is in the interim an eschatology of souls.
There are other forms of prayer of the same tenor with regard to the soul. The Burial Service , for instance, has this prayer which is said as the body is placed on the bier: The formulas used in prayers of this kind include a petition which would be unintelligible if there were no postmortem purification. In one prayer the ordination of the eschatology of souls towards the resurrection is beautifully expressed: We wanted to conclude this exposition of ours on certain contemporary eschatological questions with the testimony of the liturgy.
That testimony has made it clear that the liturgy serves to strike a balance between the individual and collective elements in eschatology and to bring forth the christological meaning of the ultimate realities, without which eschatology would be reduced to mere human speculation. It is now in order, as we end this exposition, to introduce, by way of a final doctrinal synthesis, the paragraph with which the Introduction to the book of the Order of Burial begins, and in which moreover the spirit of the new Roman liturgy is crystal clear:.