Renewal of New Testament Eschatology. The very
meaning of history appears to vanish when, on the one
hand, hope for the end of sacred history by the inter-
vention of an external source fades away, and at the
same time the optimistic secular eschatology of prog-
ress also dwindles; when, on the other hand, the whole
question of an eschatological goal for history is aban-
doned. To the extent that nihilism appears appropriate
we come closer to a return to the biblical view of
history in which Jesus Christ represents the turning
point of the aeon, so that the present at any given
period is denominated an eschatological time. This
eschatological interpretation of history has manifested
its vigor in the course of Church history particularly
among those theologians most indebted to biblical
thought. Thus for Augustine the battle in world history
between the civitas terrena and the civitas Dei is
fought out in the history of the individual in such a
manner that Christ is already here and now able to
live as a citizen of the Kingdom of God through his
“rebirth,” even though the palpable worldwide victory
of the city of God is still lacking.
Luther's conviction of standing at the end of time
is rooted in the existential experience of his own death
consummated in the death of Christ; that is, the death
of the “old Adam” enslaved in sin; or, as the case may
be, in assumption of the freedom guaranteed to the
child of God in the sense of the Pauline utterance:
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have [eschato-
logical!] peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ” (Romans 5:1). Luther is able to place in the
future the present eschatological gift of salvation by
forgiving grace because it is present in faith, that is,
it is simply an unmerited gift of God, and thus can
now be seized.
In the twentieth century, so-called dialectical theol-
ogy relying on Luther and Kierkegaard returned to the
dialectical interpretation of eschatology in the New
Testament, following on the rediscovery in New Testa-
ment scholarship, toward the end of the nineteenth
century, of the primarily apocalyptic character of the
biblical message concerning the Kingdom of God
(J. Weiss, A. Schweitzer). Karl Barth defines the ac-
knowledgment of Christian revelation as an insight into
the existential truth “that time becomes as eternity,
and eternity as this moment.” Time, for faith, is “the
eternal moment, the Now, in which past and future
come to rest.” The present at any given moment is
thus eschatological time, and in this sense Barth writes:
“Christianity that is not wholly, simply, and totally
eschatology has wholly, simply, and totally nothing to
do with Christ.”
Above all R. Bultmann, relying on aspects of
Heidegger's existential philosophy (itself in turn mark-
edly influenced by the New Testament, Luther, and
Kierkegaard), has fallen back on New Testament
eschatology. According to Bultmann substantial pas-
sages in the New Testament treat the events sur-
rounding Christ as God's ultimately valid act of
salvation. The annunciation of these events thus
denominates every present moment as eschatological
time. For it liberates man from himself, that is, from
the sinful compulsion to locate his life in the actuality
of his past and the possibilities of his future, by be-
stowing on him life out of god's charismatic future.
Such existence drawn out of God's future is eschato-
logical existence, for with its coming all temporal
history is at an end. Each moment is possessed of the
possibility of being an eschatological moment; the
faithful actualizes this possibility. The eschaton even-
tuates constantly in history from beyond history. To
the extent that apocalyptic eschatology is retained in
the New Testament this mythological conception has
the existential meaning of representing futurity, that
is, the charismatic, or the character of grace of God's
liberating word: new life fulfills itself solely in the
acceptance of the “freedom of the children of God.”
