Time&Eternity

Aspects of a Theology of Time 207
hardly ferment. The last things of theology, by contrast, have an indisputable
ambiguity of temporal and meaning-related finality; thus, they are
more ferment than finale. The tension between the “already” and the “notyet”
that is constitutive for theological eschatology is lacking in scientific eschatology.
The difference in the respective subject matters of scientific eschatology
and biblical eschatology is also striking. While in the one field the chief
concern is with the human attempt—in the case of Tipler, with the help of
an evolving God—to live eternally, in the other, one speaks primarily of
God’s initiative. That which is theologically conceived as an act of God with
creation is, according to scientific understanding, a self-induced “hibernation.”
The former contains a cosmology, 129 and the latter aims to explore usable
opportunities, thus making eschatology a question of technology.
Furthermore, there is an obvious difference in the eschatological objective.
Biblical eschatology is concerned less with the end of the world than
with the end of evil. It climaxes in a new society, in the New Jerusalem that
comes down from heaven adorned as a bride (Rev. 21:2). Life as computer
emulation or in a cosmic dust cloud, on the contrary, basically seems to
have to manage without the perspective of the victory over evil and the realization
of new social complexity. Scientific concepts culminate instead in an
exhaustive accumulation of information. The goal of biblical eschatology is
a city; the goal of scientific eschatology is a computer.
In both cases, the question of what it means to be a person really becomes
a burning issue. Whereas biblical eschatology hardly problematizes
the identity and quality of personal existence within and beyond life, scientific
eschatology can assert that a living person and his or her computer simulation
are one and the same. 130 This also leads to different understandings
of resurrection. For Tipler, resurrection means the exact replica of ourselves,
whereas, viewed theologically, as Colin Gunton remarks, “[t]he resurrection
is not a doctrine of replication, but of transformation.” 131 The conception
of life that is still somehow “human,” but that, as a computer simulation or
a cosmic dust cloud no longer has anything to do with the human being as
a biological species, seems paradoxical. Anthropocentrism would finally
have been overcome—but what would then replace anthropology?
What remains unclear in both concepts is the relationship between universal
and local eschatology. The limitations of the biblical worldview result
in a competition between statements with universal claims and those that
relate only to this world. Furthermore, the uncertainty of cosmological theories
in relation to the end of this universe leaves open the question of
whether survival by means of information accumulation is a local or a universal
phenomenon. Just as uncertain is whether or not the different scenar-