Time&Eternity

200 chapter 4
looking and forward moving, and therefore also revolutionizing and transforming
the present. The eschatological is not one element of Christianity,
but it is the medium of Christian faith as such .l.l.” 81
Whether a cliché or not, the history of the degradation and elevation of
eschatology appears to be accurate at least in broad terms. 82 Eschatology
went from being an appendage of dogmatics to being a characteristic feature
of theology. This development also radiated into areas that, at first
glance, have nothing to do with eschatology. Thus, for example, Dalferth
remarks that the rejection of theism and its antithesis, atheism, as once conceived
by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, as well as the christological
orientation of current Trinitarian theology, are both by-products of the eschatological
reorientation of theology in the twentieth century. 83 Given all
the diversity of twentieth-century eschatological approaches, the least common
denominator in the concept may be that eschatology is not an appendix,
but a central topic, of Christian theology. This reevaluation, however,
has also increased the ambiguity of the term eschatology to the point of linguistic
confusion and a loss of distinct meaning. 84
If eschatology is here claimed to be the core of a theology of time, then
this is, to some extent, in harmony with a development that marked the
twentieth century. At this point, however, a further distinction must be
made. Precisely because the eschatological reorientation is in no way uniform,
the main directions of this development should be outlined briefly, so
that, against this background, the focus of this study can be shown more
clearly.
Eschatology can be understood as the doctrine of the eschata, the “Last
Things,” that is, as the doctrine of the events at the end of time. The “Last
Things” would then be primarily understood as the great finale, as the
chronological “Last Things.” However, another interpretation should also
not be rejected. The eschata are “Last Things” also in the sense of matters of
ultimate validity and decisive importance. At least on the individual level,
this results in an interaction between the eschata and the realia of the here
and now. On the one hand, according to traditional teaching, one’s actual
lifestyle has consequences for the expected end, for judgment, and for the
anticipated resurrection. On the other hand, the prospect of these “Last
Things” leads to normative consequences for present-day life. Thus, a conception
of time based on eschatology does indeed correspond to the findings
of our examination of biblical understandings of time (see pp. 64–81).
In both cases, the primary concern is not a quantitative conception of time,
whose task it is to specify tempos and dates; rather, we find a concept of
time that cannot be separated from the contents of time. The concern is not
with time as such but, rather, with time for something.