Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures by paul griffiths baylor, 408 pages, $69.95 T here is much of surprising beauty in Paul Griffiths’s theological “speculations” about last things: death, final judgment, heaven, and hell. He affirms the authority of Catholic doctrine on these . . . . Continue Reading »
Everyone is talking about “apocalyptic” today. I join the chorus and reflect on CS Lewis’s The Great Divorceas an exercise in apocalyptic . . . . Continue Reading »
O’Regan (Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic, 113-4) deftly captures the limits and use of Derrida.Limits first, and there are severe: Derrida is not “adequate for Christian theology,” he argues, because “as theo-logy, there is presumtively a reality whose very nature it . . . . Continue Reading »
Christian reception of the work of Walter Benjamin is often set in the context of Christian reception of Jewish messianism or Jewish apocalyptic. In a brilliant summary of Benjamin, Cyril O’Regan (Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic, 61-8) contests this characterization.Despite . . . . Continue Reading »
Irene Backus began her study of Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenbergout of frustration that Protestant commentaries on Revelation were widely unavailable. Her book is a straightforward summation of the ways Calvinists and Lutherans read the book.Those in . . . . Continue Reading »
Advent anticipates the final judgment. It’s a season not only for celebrating Christ’s first Advent but for preparing for His final coming . . . . . Continue Reading »
Apocalyptic theology has had at least a century-long history, explains Joshua Davis in the introduction to Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology: With and Beyond J. Louis Martyn (Cascade, 2012). Since 1914, we have seen “young, brilliant, brash, and no doubt highly ambitious” . . . . Continue Reading »
Traditional debates about faith and works might be clarified and illuminated by highlighting eschatology. To wit: God intends to establish perfect justice and peace, reconciling all things by the Spirit in the Son. That is the future of the world. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the . . . . Continue Reading »
Bavinck ( Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation ) pre-channels NT Wright: “All that is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, and commendable in the whole of creation, in heaven and on earth, is gathered up in the future city of God—renewed, re-created, boosted to . . . . Continue Reading »
In her contribution to Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (The Middle Ages Series) , Anna Harrison concludes that “Bernard [of Clairvaux’s] conception of community among the saints in heaven is limited” (204). She elaborates: “Although he does talk . . . . Continue Reading »
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