Spaces of Apocalyptic

In his packed little book, Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic, Cyril O’Regan observes that “there seems to be a binary opposition in the modern world between apocalyptic and the discipline of theology” (15). Heterodox apocalyptic is everywhere, in Milton and Blake and Romanticism, among Hegelians, especially those on the left wing, in Russian thinkers like Berdyaev and Bulgakov. Theology seems to be mostly left out of the revival: “the history of theology seems largely to be the history of the marginalization of apocalyptic” (15). 

O’Regan encompasses the whole history of theology in that statement, and defines apocalyptic as, in part, the sense of an imminent end. Insofar as Augustine looms over Western theology, just so far Western theology . So it seems. But O’Regan does not think that characterization really does justice to Augustine. Aquinas and Bonaventure enlist Augustine against Joachimite enthusiasm, but in doing so they construct him, anachronistically, as “an ecclesiastical theologian.” Augustine does distance the end, O’Regan doubts that “expectation of imminent end trumps all the other features that are generally found in apocalyptic texts.” City of God was written by a “reader of the signs of the times, who is obedient to the words of scripture (apocalyptic in the hermeneutical mode), who not only speaks against persecution and expresses the hope for peace, but also speaks out against the parade of the similitudes of truth in history.” In Books 20-22, Augustine “attempts a hermeneutic of Revelation with a focus on the end” (20).

Rather than contrast the apocalyptic Irenaeus to the non-apocalyptic Augustine, O’Regan thinks that there are “two related but distinct apocalyptic strands” in theology, “the Irenaean and the Augustinian, neither of which eschew the Trinity as the ultimate horizon for the enactment of salvation, but which vary somewhat with regard to emphasis on the economy, on the dramatic quality of redemption figured in the sacrifice of Christ, on the level of distinction between the pre-eschatological and the eschatological state of human being in relation to God, and on the calibration of the ratios between justice and compassion in the sovereign God” (22). Despite reports and appearances to the contrary, apocalyptic remains alive and well in mainstream theology.

Turning to contemporary apocalyptic theology, O’Regan stresses that it is “not monolithic.” Rather than speaking of “types” of apocalyptic, he uses the term “space,” which connotes “a constellation of discourses that bear close family resemblances to each other” (26). He uncovers three such spaces.

First, the “maximalist” position: “A visionary form of apocalyptic theology which discloses a great deal about God’s intention for the world and what God has done, is doing, and is going to do for it, and unveils our place in the movement of history and its destination. In and through this vast conspectus God discloses his justice and mercy.” “Cross and resurrection” are interpretive keys for the whole of biblical history, and the “theocentric horizon is often . . . defined by reference to God not only as self-sacrificial but as triune” (27).

Second is a minimalist view that eschews knowledge of the content of God’s ways in favor of a more formalist emphasis on eruption: It “tends toward emphasizing a complete interruption or tear in standard modes of knowing, practice, and form of life, without fully specifying the alternatives.” In this space, the representatives of various discourses are “characterized by a conspicuous lack of content,” but all discourses are “marked by vehement critique of the discourses, traditions, and structures of religions as well as society at large, and sometimes take particular aim at both the reception of apocalyptic within the Christian tradition and its pivotal text . . . the book of Revelation” (27-8).

The third space “overlaps with what appear to be mutually repelling spaces of maximally and minimally eidetic apocalyptic forms.” It shares space with maximalism “to the extent to which the self-gift of the divine and the corresponding elevation of the human being is at its core.” It overlaps with minimalism “to the extent to which (a) it hesitates with respect to description of . . . a God who fundamentally transcends history, (b) in some measure it embraces the rhetoric of the radically new, and (c) it demonstrates neither disinterest in or hostility towards institutional Christianity and towards doctrine as the fruit of interpretation of Christian faith and witness” (28-9).

As for labels, he uses pleroma to designate the maximalist position, kenoma (empty) as a label for the minimalist, and metaxu (between) for the middling position. Moltmann, Balthasar, and Bulgakov belong in the first space; Benjamin and Derrida in the second; Catherine Keller and Altizer, along Johann Baptist Metz in the latter.

It’s the sort of classification that illuminates in fresh ways, by throwing light from the side.