Eschatology as Imagining the End: Faith between Hope and Despair (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies) [1 ed.] 9781138481367, 9781351060554, 113848136X

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Eschatology as Imagining the End

As society becomes more concerned with the future of our planet, the study of apocalypse and eschatology becomes increasingly pertinent. Whether religious or not, people’s views on this topic can have a profound effect on their attitudes to issues such as climate change and social justice and so cannot be ignored. This book investigates how different approaches in historical and contemporary Christian theology make sense in reflecting about the final things, or the eschata, and why it is so important to consider their multifaceted impact on our lives. A team of Nordic scholars analyse historical and contemporary eschatological thinking in a broad range of sources from theology and other related disciplines, such as moral philosophy, art history and literature. Specific social and environmental challenges, such as the Norwegian Breivik massacre in 2011, climatic change narratives and the ambiguity of discourses about euthanasia are investigated in order to demonstrate the complexity and significance of modes of thinking about the end times. This book addresses the theology of the end of the world in a more serious academic tone than it is usually afforded. As such, it will be of great interest to academics working in eschatology, practical theology, religious studies and the philosophy of religion. Sigurd Bergmann is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. His interests include theology, studies of religion and the environment, and religion, arts and architecture, and he has published multiple books and articles including Religion, Space & the Environment (2014), Religion in the Anthropocene (2017), God in Context (2013) and In the Beginning Is the Icon (2009).

Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies

The Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies series brings high quality research monograph publishing back into focus for authors, international libraries, and student, academic and research readers. This open-ended monograph series presents cutting-edge research from both established and new authors in the field. With specialist focus yet clear contextual presentation of contemporary research, books in the series take research into important new directions and open the field to new critical debate within the discipline, in areas of related study and in key areas for contemporary society. Israel, the Church, and Millenarianism A Way Beyond Replacement Theology Steven D. Aguzzi The Liquidation of the Church Kees de Groot Myth and Solidarity in the Modern World Beyond Religious and Political Division Timothy Stacey Pacifism and Pentecostals in South Africa A New Hermeneutic for Nonviolence Marius Nel Faith and Freedom Contexts, Choices, and Crises in Religious Commitments Donald A. Crosby Eschatology as Imagining the End Faith between Hope and Despair Edited by Sigurd Bergmann For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/religion/ series/RCRITREL

Eschatology as Imagining the End

Faith between Hope and Despair Edited by Sigurd Bergmann

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Sigurd Bergmann; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Sigurd Bergmann to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bergmann, Sigurd, 1956– editor. Title: Eschatology as imagining the end : faith between hope and despair / edited by Sigurd Bergmann. Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Routledge new critical thinking in religion, theology, and biblical studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018012893 | ISBN 9781138481367 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781351060554 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Eschatology. | End of the world. | Apocalyptic literature. Classification: LCC BL500 .E83 2018 | DDC 202/.3–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012893 ISBN: 978-1-138-48136-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-06055-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Running Head Left-hand: ContentsRunning Head Right-hand: Contents

Notes on contributors Acknowledgements 1 What images of the last things do to us: introductory remarks on why eschatology matters

vi ix

1

SIGURD BERGMANN

2

Fear of the future and theology of hope

30

PAUL LEER-SALVESEN

3

The revelations of global climate change: a petro-eschatology

45

MARION GRAU

4

Euthanasia: does eschatology matter?

61

TAGE KURTÉN

5 Time turned into space – at home on earth: wanderings in eschatological spatiality

88

SIGURD BERGMANN

6

Looking for a miracle: on the point of eschatology

113

KJETIL HAFSTAD

7

Beyond the limit of time: a new quest for hope

132

CRISTINA GRENHOLM

8

Back to the future

146

CARL REINHOLD BRÅKENHIELM

9

Enlightened to eternity

168

THEODOR JØRGENSEN

Index

183

Notes on contributors

Notes on contributorsNotes on contributors

Sigurd Bergmann is Professor of Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, and lives in Lund, Sweden. His previous studies have investigated the relationship between the image of God and the view of nature in late antiquity, the methodology of contextual theology, and visual arts in the indigenous Arctic and Australia, as well as visual arts, architecture and religion, and religion in climate change. He is a founder of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment, and among his many publications are God in Context (2003), Creation Set Free (2005), In the Beginning Is the Icon (2009), Raum und Geist (2010), Religion, Space & the Environment (2014), Theology in Built Environments (2009), Religion in Global Environmental and Climate Change (2011), Religion in the Anthropocene (2017), and Arts, Religion and the Environment: Exploring Nature’s Texture (2018). Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm is Professor Emeritus in the study of worldviews at Uppsala University in Sweden. His research concerns worldviews and values in contemporary society and philosophical problems related to the relationship between science and religion. He was the project leader of Science and Religion – A Platform for Dialogue and Education in Sweden from 2015 to 2017 (supported by the John Templeton Foundation). Publications in English include Forgiveness (1993), “Theology and the Origins of Customized Science”, in Steve Fuller, Mikael Stenmark, and Ulf Zackariasson (eds.), The Customization of Science (2014), and “Ethics and the Management of Nuclear Waste”, Journal of Risk Research (2015). Upcoming in 2018 is The Study of Science and Religion: Sociological, Theological, and Philosophical Perspectives. Marion Grau is Professor of Systematic Theology and Missiology at MF Norwegian School of Theology in Oslo, Norway. Her teaching interests are in constructive theology and her current research projects include a monograph on the redevelopment of pilgrimage and the reshaping of identity in Norway, and another on Arctic Theology of Petroleum economies and climate change in the Northern hemisphere. She is the author of Rethinking Theological Hermeneutics: Hermes, Trickster, Fool (2014), Rethinking Mission in the Postcolony: Salvation, Society, and Subversion (2011), and Of Divine Economy: Refinancing Redemption (2004).

Notes on contributors  vii Cristina Grenholm is Secretary for the Church of Sweden at the Central Office in Uppsala, Sweden, and Professor of Studies in Faiths and Ideologies. Her studies concern contemporary theology, biblical hermeneutics and gender studies. In her current position she publishes books and articles applying theology to church life in Sweden. Her international monographs are Motherhood and Love: Beyond the Gendered Stereotypes of Theology (2011), The Old Testament, Christianity and Pluralism (2006) and Romans Interpreted (1990). Her most recent books in Swedish concern constructive theology (Levande teologi/ Theology in the Making [2010]) and a contemporary and contextual interpretation of the Apostles’ Creed (Vår tro som min/Our faith as mine [2015]). Kjetil Hafstad is Professor Emeritus in Systematic Theology at the University of Oslo, Norway. Here he has served as Dean for Research and leader of and contributor to projects such as “Children and Youth between Emancipation and Institution”, “Broken Bodies – Healing Communities”, and “Religion in a Globalised Age”. From 1971–2017 he was editor of the periodical Kirke og Kultur [Church and Culture] (established in 1894). At present he works on issues of “evil” in the international research team “Reassembling Democracy: Ritual as Cultural Resource”. His publications include Frihetens Festning – så fast en borg [The Fortress of Liberty] (2000), Frihetens Fiende: Essays om ondskap, frihet og menneskeverd [The Enemy of Liberty: Essays on Evil, Freedom, and Human Rights] (1993), Ouverture til kroppens flukt. Idealers makt og mulighet i utdanning [Overture to the Escaping Body: On Ideals’ Power and Potential in Education] (2007), and Wort und Geschichte. Das Geschichtsverständnis Karl Barths (1985). Theodor Jørgensen (†2017) was Professor Emeritus in Dogmatics at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. For many years he was considered an “institution in Danish theology and church life”, and he also served as an important link between Scandinavian and German theologians. His thinking was borne by an intense study of Luther, Schleiermacher and Grundtvig in an arc of suspence between theological essence and enlightened liberality. His publications include Das religionsphilosophische Offenbarungsverständnis des späteren Schleiermacher (1977), Korset i Altet [The Cross in All] (1995), Ökumenische Theologie und theologisches Erkennen (1998), Subjectivity and Truth: Proceedings from the Schleiermacher-Kierkegaard Congress in Copenhagen, October 2003 (2006), and Guds menneskelighed: prædikener over Luthers Den lille Katekismus [God’s Humanity: Sermons on Luther’s Small Catechism] (2006). Jørgensen co-edited the extensive volume N.F.S. Grundtvig: Schriften in Auswahl (2010), and was honoured with the Festschrift Kirche zwischen Heilsbotschaft und Lebenswirklichkeit edited by D. Lange and P. Widmann (1996). Tage Kurtén is Professor Emeritus in Theological Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland. His studies through the years have focused on philosophical conditions for contextual theology, empirical life-view studies, political theology and ethical and philosophical

viii  Notes on contributors questions concerning modernity, late modernity and post-secularity. He has been the leader of several interdisciplinary research projects, and taken part in a number of Nordic research networks. He has published nine books in Swedish, and co-edited, among others, Legitimacy: The Treasure of Politics (2011) and Crisis and Change: Religion, Ethics and Theology under Late Modern Conditions (2012). In two recent books, Towards a Postsecular Condition: Fifteen Years of Reflections (2014) and Moral Openness: Conditions for Ethics beyond the Religious and the Secular (2016), he has compiled articles written in both English and Swedish. Paul Leer-Salvesen is Professor in Theology and Ethics at the Department of Religion, Philosophy and History at Agder University in Kristiansand, ­Norway. Here he teaches religious studies, ethics and conflict resolution, while at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, he teaches conflict resolution. He has published many books and articles on theology, philosophy of law, criminology and ethics, as well as numerous titles in children’s literature and novels. LeerSalvesen holds a doctorate from the Faculty of Law (Oslo, 1991). Among his publications are Menneske og straff  – En refleksjon om skyld og straff som et bidrag til arbeidet med straffens etikk [Man and Punishment – Reflections on the Ethics of Punishment Based on Interviews with 13 Men Convicted of Homicide] (1991), Tilgivelse [Forgiveness] (1999), Min skyld [My Guilt] (2002), Forsoning etter krenkelser [Reconciliation after Violations] (2009), and Voldens ansikter [Faces of Violence] (2014, with Yngve Hammerlin).

Acknowledgements

Running Head Left-hand: AcknowledgementsRunning Head Right-hand: Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my co-authors for our long and deep fellowship, and especially those who hosted our many meetings in Italy, Denmark and Sweden. Such a valuable, intense, constructive and mutually-supportive solidarity of talking, thinking, writing, reading and re-writing has unfortunately become all too rare in an increasingly power-obsessed and frantic top-down governed academic life, with the result that its chapters in the fruit compote of this book might taste even sweeter. I would also like to thank Dr. Marilyn Burton in Edinburgh for her skilled and dedicated work of language editing of our not always clearly coherent frankenwords, and the indexing. We are all furthermore grateful to the Olaus Petri Foundation at Uppsala University, and its chair Prof. Dr. Mattias Martinsson, for a generous subsidy, and to Joshua Wells and Jack Boothroyd for their professional and smooth assistance with and production of the work.

1 What images of the last things do to us Sigurd BergmannWhat images of the last things do to us

Introductory remarks on why eschatology matters Sigurd Bergmann Why does it matter to talk about the future and the end of times? Can images and thoughts about the last things cast light on mastering the present, or will they rather confuse and distort it? How can Christian faith in the God of the Here and Now have meaning for living by reflecting on what comes? The authors of this book assume that reflecting on the final things, the eschata, makes sense. Eschatology matters. Why? In the following I will elaborate some good reasons for this assumption, without claiming to be comprehensive. In addition every author will offer further reasons in his/her chapter. After that I will sketch what I regard as three common but distorting dead-end-roads in the theological discourse about the eschata, in the hope of increasing the reader’s awareness of them and in order to avoid tumbling into the abysses of eschatology. After a short experiment where climate change serves as a test case for eschatology, the content of the chapters will be portrayed and some ideas behind the book’s title will be indicated.

Moving towards the unseen – hope, empathy and conversion A first answer to the question of why eschatology matters is simply about being human. Being alive as a human implies the capacity to imagine the future, in large-scale as well as in small-scale, with regard to an alleged universal globality as well as to situated localities. Eschatology contributes to explain how to understand the world and human life as God’s creation. Images of one’s individual and common future impact on one’s perception and understanding of the present; and as all imagination is nurtured by remembrance, the past is also present in our images of the future, which again impacts on the present and one’s imagination of the past. One might doubt if one is ever purely present at any one time or place, or if one should rather conceive of being alive as a human as being embedded in a dynamic and reciprocally circular flow of images of the past and future. Not only humans but a large number of animals have this capacity to imagine at their disposal. Moving outside the so-called Western cultural horizon and thinking outside its box, one can furthermore recall that places, ancestors and other life forms also have available similar capacities to navigate between, or better within,

2  Sigurd Bergmann the past and future in the present. Eschatology, elementarily understood as discussion of the eschata, the last things, matters because humans and others have the skill at their disposal to perceive, think and act in environments with the help of imagining diverse futures. Negotiating with each other these diverse images of the future, and how they are designed and allowed to impact on our understanding of and way of acting within the present, therefore also represents one of the most crucial social skills of human communities. What ultimately matters is dependent on the human imagination of the future and the remembrance of the past. Whatever we become aware of and do in our present seems to take place in a deep relation to our (imagined) future and our (remembered) past. Leonard Cohen has compressed this in a striking phrase about “having seen the future” in his celebrated music album The Future1 where he, after having envisioned in the same breath dying woods, the Berlin wall, Stalin and St. Paul, asserts to have “seen the future” which for him appears as “murder”. Is the future really “murder”, or is it rather love and life – or maybe a bit of both? To have seen the future of murder with Stalin convinces, but what about having seen the future with Paul, and his strong resistance to oppressive empire building? Maybe a hint of an answer dwells in Cohen’s second tune, where only waiting remains, “waiting for the miracle to come.”2 A second reason why eschatology matters concerns the function of faith.3 Images of the future belong to the essential elements of religions. In analogy to beliefs about the origin and the significance of the past, religious belief systems also include images of and narratives about the times ahead. Religions are in this sense beliefs waiting for the miracles to come, remembering those that have come and in certainty awaiting those that will come. Images of the future and expressions of the eschata represent crucial drivers of belief systems, not only in religious processes but even in secular and post-secular ones. In a way that has still not been satisfyingly explored, they also seem to play a central role for the emergence and function of values and moral systems. If the post-secular state of society offers new potential for religious beliefs to flourish, one can also wonder about the place that eschatology and thinking about the final has in such a situation. Eschatology, if regarded through the lens of its classical Christian formulation as a doctrine about the final things of history, represents in this regard a particular perspective that is located within the wider field of religious imagination of the future (emerging from the past). If regarded through a wider lens of different religions, it offers a range of particular images, stories and practices about the end times which are believed to throw light and meaning on the present. Eschatology, as experiencing, imagining and thinking about the last, therefore seems to be at work not only in religions but in most human ideologies and political practices. Religions, including Christian faith and theology, thereby appear as world champions to express and put them into practice. In Christian faith, hope is not just a simple waiting or biding, but “a creative expectation” of the things that God has promised with the resurrection of Christ.4 Nor is hope simply optimism.5 The so-called “realised eschatology” that holds that the New Testament’s eschatological texts do not refer to the future but to the present and the legacy of

What images of the last things do to us  3 Jesus might be relevant for biblical interpretation. As time went by and the Jesus movement turned into a social force, eschatology needed to be widened to include an ever expanding temporal horizon, a need that was to some degree met by the attempts at an inaugurated eschatology, where both the “already” and the “not yet” were amalgamated, and where wide-ranging theories about the coming times and the end were crafted. The creative and active “expectation” has in this way shaped different historical forms, which are not at the core of this book, but the specific challenge to Christian theology becomes obvious: to strive for a synthesis of images about the final and the future in an active and dynamic remembrance of the biblical events with and around God’s Son. Christian eschatology attempts in this sense constantly to visualise how God breaks into the present time from the future, a process that impacts on the path to the future in a radically new way. A third reason why eschatology matters mines more deeply the skill of imagining the eschaton, which we have so far sketched only generally. For me the skill of eschatology even seems to include some kind of life-enhancing capacity. Eschatology, here understood as the talk about past-nurtured expressions of human images of what might come, and the talk about what these images do and should do to us, matters because the alternative would be complete apathy with regard to my and all others’ lives. Eschatology can in this way also be pictured as a skill of empathy. Compassion for the other implies taking care of, and responsibility for, one’s own and each other’s common future. Notions such as hope, comfort, trust and confidence have in the Christian tradition, and of course not exclusively there, served as compressed images for describing the believer’s emotional and rational existence sub specie Dei, under the sight of God. Many stories can be told about how they serve not just in general but in particular ways in many different contexts. Words such as hope, comfort, trust and confidence, and also vision, liberation and paradise, function particularly significantly in language games. They express the state of quiet waiting for the miracle to come as well as the active experience of seeing what cannot be seen and acting according to it. Images of a specific future can even act as an extremely strong motivation for action, perhaps for radical social transformation or even revolution. Popular movements would not have been possible without them. Eschatology matters because it reflects how human beings employ the skill not just to see the future, but to anticipate it in a way that impacts on his/her ways of acting. Eschatology matters because we need to talk about how to move towards and within (the) future(s), and to communicate what it is that ultimately matters in the time that flows towards us. Especially in the Christian tradition eschatology matters because it contributes to this ongoing social communication of imagined futures with a specific capacity to act: repentance and conversion. Both seem, if one follows the biblical sources, to have their place at the beginning of a believer’s life in the eyes of God, and also need to be practiced continuously in daily life, as everyday conversion.6 Reading the gospel, the act of conversion is directly connected to the specific situation of the early Christian believers – that is, the kairos, a time of challenge and conversion, connected to the cruelties and life-threatening social processes

4  Sigurd Bergmann of the Empire. Matthew’s “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 3:2, NIV) is directly located in Mark’s identification of the present time as kairos, a specifically challenging time of crisis as well as of future-shaping decision: “The time (kairos) has come” (Mark 1:15, NIV). The call to repentance is anchored in the Jewish faith, where it was central in the Hebrew Bible and especially in the prophetic tradition. Repentance was here anything but an individual affair – it was a prophetic call for the whole people, and a clear resistance to the fabrication of life- and faith-threatening idols.7 Repentance and conversion served as attitudes and ritualised practices for expressing the love of God, the self and the neighbour in contexts of superiority and powerlessness at that time, and in many periods of the history of Christianity faced with overwhelming suffering. Hope, trust and envisioned liberation, nevertheless, have safely been grounded in experiences of the Creator and Liberator’s presence. In community and synergy with him/her, believers could convert. “Repent” meant to frankly and freely walk through the present straight into the other future. Hope was to believe in what could not (yet) be seen, and to move towards it. According to Paul the believers fix their eye on “what is unseen” (2 Corinthians 4:18, NIV). Eschatology, as a mode of thinking things through until the end, leads faith in the “God of hope” (Romans 15:13) from human life sub specie Dei to the encounter with the indwelling God, the God of the new creation: “Dann wird man nicht mehr vor Gott existieren, sondern in ihm leben”.8 A fourth reason to think about the final is, needless to say, the simple fact that the existence of all life forms is short-lived and transient. Totally independent of all human skills to neglect, suppress and forget about it, death remains the most ultimate final point in the future of all created living beings. While earlier times, especially in the medieval ages, cultivated the art of dying, ars moriendi, as a virtue and significant cultural skill, modernity is rather characterised by a gigantic collective suppression of all that even comes close to transience, death and open questions about the aftermath. The location of cemeteries in the outer margins of modern cities is just one of many signs of such a cultural pathology.9 Should one really regard the limitedness of life as a barrier to be removed, or do the limits of body, space, mind and time offer necessary natural conditions for a good life? Could the ancient, medieval wisdom and virtue of ars moriendi and its acceptance of nature as that which is born to live and fade away rather lead us to an increasing quality of life, as opposed to the constant fiddling about with ars technica and its attempt to bring the final to the present and to bring heaven to earth? Günter Altner has vehemently, and in my view rightly, advocated a Christian ars moriendi that will displace the kind of repression of death that in its own turn has brought about the environmental crisis.10 As one of the following chapters will dive deeper into questions like these, I will not further unfold the fate of death and a possible response in an eschatologically-designed ars moriendi here. Rather I will content myself with pointing to the overwhelming challenge that late modern hypertechnology has created as some kind of a self-driving system impacting on human self-understanding as well as on complex human practices towards other lived

What images of the last things do to us  5 environments. What might eschatology in the face of death contribute to understanding human life in “technofutures”?11

Turning around on dead-end-roads The wisdom of eschatological awareness, thinking and acting has in the long history of Christianity several times been spilled and violated, but nevertheless has also been recovered and deepened. This complex history cannot possibly be covered here,12 but some examples can illuminate the significance of the eschatological discourse and its wide-ranging nature. In the following I will sketch what I regard as three common but distorting dead-end-roads in the theological discourse about the eschata and show, in dialogue with selected classical and contemporary thinkers, how to turn around on them and find ways out and forward. My critical evaluation of eschatologies can thus assist in finding and formulating constructive approaches to the final. From apocalypse to political messianism While believers in the early years of the Jesus movement still awaited the return of Christ in the near future, messianic beliefs had to find new expressions as this did not happen. Moreover, the challenge to resist and delimit apocalyptic movements, which threatened to limit Christian communities, was obvious. Messianism in the letters of Paul meant that Christ was not the continuation but “the end of history”, and it was obvious that this could not be interpreted as “the rebirth of theocracy”.13 Following Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes one can learn how the experience of the Babylonian exile provoked a revolutionary new reading of the meaning of time and history, deeply intertwined with the history of Christianity and all apocalyptic thinking. Christians in the first three centuries stated that Christ would reign on Earth for a period of 1,000 years of a golden age or paradise, prior to the final judgement. If we follow Taubes’ line of reasoning, Augustine, and to some degree Origen, must be blamed for taking the eschatological sting out of Christian chiliasm. Even if Taubes to some degree has a point, he is not at all historically aware about the challenging balancing act that theologians of this time had to perform between the abyss of narrow stormy apocalypticism and an all too toothless eschatology. In Augustine’s City of God it is nevertheless the church, and not the creation, that becomes the space of God’s reign. Even if eschatology is at work in his theology, the dynamic expectation of the eschata and the hope for new heavens and a new earth appears as weak, and the healing and destiny of the Christian soul takes centre-stage instead.14 It was Joachim of Fiore who in the 12th century first elaborated the messianic chiliasm in his thinking about the three historical periods of the Father, Son and the Spirit – this, it should be noted, had been conceived of already in the 4th century by Gregory of Nazianz in his historical Trinitarianism, although Joachim was probably not aware of this at all.15 Together with Taubes, we can regard Joachim as the most influential apocalyptic thinker of the second millennium, a perspective

6  Sigurd Bergmann that made it possible to see God’s hand in the suffering of the plagues and wars in the Middle Ages.16 After the collapse of the medieval synthesis and the Ptolemaic world, there is still a place for eschatology and some kind of humanist chiliasm, as Kant emphasises in his essay on “Das Ende aller Dinge” from 1794 where he brings chiliasm within the bounds of reason.17 According to him enlightenment is driven by a kind of transcendental eschatology, where “the feeling of freedom in the choice of the final end is what makes the [Christian] legislation worthy of its love”.18 Can one follow Taubes in his reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans as a kind of negative political theology, where the critique of the law and the exaltation of love work as a revolutionary messianic principle that is both the meaning and the end of history? In my view, Taubes’ and others’ critical evaluations of the continuity and change of messianism through the ages clearly show why eschatology matters for the deeper understanding of the political history of the West, and even for identifying patterns of thinking in present times. Without regarding the normative power of the eschata it seems impossible to understand Western history in general and its political modes of empowering some and disempowering others in particular. Furthermore, without regarding eschatology at the core of political thinking it seems impossible to understand the significance of utopian thinking in Western history and the contemporary discussion between sharp critics of utopianism on the one side and proponents of messianism on the other. Moreover, the ongoing critical discussion in political philosophy operates strongly with modes of eschatological thinking and historical theology, sometimes on provocative atheist and sometimes on explicitly theological conditions. Strikingly Jayne Svenungsson characterises the history of reception of utopian, messianistic and historicaltheological thinking as double-edged:19 on the one side we find criticism of the negative impacts of political utopianism, of hybrid universalism and contempt of history, and on the other side the prophetic vision of justice that humans are called to realise. Might it be an idea to differentiate between political theology, which follows and supports political claims, and theopolitics, which is prophetically anchored in and depends on the vision of (environmental and social) justice that transcends existing political systems?20 In my view such a theopolitical approach might overcome the abyss that opens in some recent attempts to reconstruct a constructive Christian political theology in continuity with Carl Schmitt. One can without doubt learn much, as Michael Northcott suggests, from Schmitt’s henceforth classic critique of the, at his time, weak and powerless liberal parliamentarianism and apply this to the present. But one should not forget that Schmitt’s critique of both liberalism and Bakunin’s satanism led him to a legitimation of authoritarian power of the state by drawing on the biblical story of the fall and the dogmatics of original sin. For Schmitt the apocalyptic drama takes place as a struggle between autonomous freedom and divine obedience of faith, between freedom and authority, and with Moltmann one can rightly ask if it is not exactly such an approach that legitimises anarchistic atheism.21

What images of the last things do to us  7 At all events, one should avoid a simplifying one-sided perspective in the field of eschatology but should keep in mind its complexity and normative ambiguity. Applying images of the last can accelerate processes of liberation as well as of oppression. With Kant one needs to keep in mind that humans are free to choose the interpretation of the final. The well-known naturalistic fallacy in ethics can also serve as an analogy for the abyss of eschatology. If the future only serves as a screen for projection, eschatology is reduced to futurism where the image of the coming is designed to execute power over others in the present. Following the Christian tradition of eschatology, though, the future must always be perceived as open. God alone dwells in the future, as the world has been created with an open end.22 Ideological futurism not only violates the openness of creation in Christian faith but is also opposed to Christian adventism, where the encounter between God and the created takes place in a time-space, which the created human can only approach from the present and where God moves from the future into the present. From reductionist time to the eschaton as space While Taubes, in one of the eschatological dead-end roads of Christian history, has made us aware of the danger of reducing political messianism to soul therapy and exclusive communitarianism, another common dead-end road claims an opposition of the here and now on the one side and the still-not-yet on the other. Eschatology is supposed to take place in a floating state of being in between the yet and still not, between time and eternity. Vitor Westhelle has rightly criticised the underlying problematic ontology of such a commonplace in Christian theology and makes us aware of its fatal destructive consequences.23 Constructively, Westhelle has presented an extensive argument for reconstructing the lost dimension of space in eschatology. From the position of those who lack both power and place, spatiality appears as the most valuable tool for experiencing and interpreting the presence of ongoing liberation that is still unseen. According to Westhelle, spatial thinking needs to become the central dimension of eschatology, moving out from under the dominance of historical and historicist thinking. Reductionist time-centred eschatologies thus represent strategies to conquer, expand and administrate space. They are mastering and taming eschatology. Moreover, the much-celebrated formula of the tension between the already-and-not-yet belongs to such a problematic frame, as it applies a linear concept of time and continues one-sidedly the tradition from Augustine where eschatology is located in the pilgrimage of the church towards a goal beyond the present. In contrast, Westhelle suggests an understanding of eschatology that emphasises that specific places, which he circumscribes as “choratic realms”,24 make it possible for those who have not much room to negotiate space to experience the eschaton.25 Those who are suffering at (violated and heteronomically dominated) “non-places” and have no history can now encounter the eschata. The commonplace of an eschatology that simply commutes between the here-and-now and the not-yet violates the spatiality and plasticity of the eschaton in a fatal way.

8  Sigurd Bergmann Westhelle’s argument offers without doubt a provocative challenge, and one might object that it tends to reduce the dimension of time in eschatology in a reductionist way similar to the one he had rightly criticised with regard to the spatial. Here, however, I would like to defend him, as the danger of an all too narrow understanding of time concepts is obvious and has done much harm in shrinking and taming the creative power of eschatological thinking. Such a danger can, in my view, efficiently be removed by a spatial turn in eschatology. Another objection, by contrast, is raised with regard to Westhelle’s quite generalising description of time-centred eschatologies. As one can learn perhaps best from Jewish prophetic messianism and Walter Benjamin, the significance of the time dimension for the re-valuation of the history of the oppressed should not be underestimated but rather scaled up to its uppermost critical place. Learning from Johan Baptist Metz, the remembrance of suffering is vital to enacting true processes of liberation from the power of teleological and technological thinking.26 Metz succeeds in building a bridge between the realised eschatology of the biblical Jesus and a liberative eschatology for our time by emphasising the remembrance of the suffering – both Jesus’, our foregoing generations’ and our living neighbours’ suffering – and aims at the same state as Westhelle by walking along the path of history and time. From Walter Benjamin one can further learn not to throw the baby out with the bath water but to evaluate the dimension of history and time even more deeply. According to him one must take the “tradition of the oppressed” as one’s presupposition for a new understanding of history that runs counter to the notion of progress within history. History should not portray “the eternal image of the past”, but rather “a unique experience with the past”.27 Nevertheless, Westhelle’s provocative proposal, in spite of an all too one-sided discussion of the time dimension, is still fundamentally valuable as it challenges theology in general and eschatology in particular to mine much more deeply and integrate spatiality and timeliness, placiality and historicity for the sake of all created beings achieving a dignity at place and in history. The fullness of the significance of biblical notions further makes us aware of the originally spatial semantics of the eschaton that depicted limits and borders rather than circumscribed futurological goals. Avoiding the abyss of a narrow eschatology that is one-sidedly focused on time is a central task for a new eschatology. Such eschatology matters because it creates a space for those who have no places and no history to encounter the eschata. It matters because the future in the present and past is not confined to a narrow linear understanding of time, eternity and history, and it matters because it liberates eschatology from the bondage of reductionist concepts of time. From ignorance of the past to the future in the past A third dead-end road in eschatology appears through its one-sided focus on the future in combination with a neglect, or even ignorance, of the significance of the past. Encountering the eschata as the last things is necessarily also about the first

What images of the last things do to us  9 things, a wisdom that has been often marginalised or forgotten in modern theology, except for Metz’ profiled approach as we have seen above. The neglect of the past in eschatology represents a fatal confusion that seems to have emerged in theology’s embeddedness in the process of modernisation. A modernity that is enchanted by its own myths of progress, technical doability and digital synchronicity affects the human skill to remember. When everything can be stored and archived technically, why should one internalise and shape a personal and collective memory? When everything is available on the net – and what does not exist there does not exist at all – why should one spend energy on memorising and sharing stories and images of the past face-to-face? When everything can be affected by information (and disinformation), why spend energy on creating mandatory consensus on the significance of images of the past and future for the sake of the present? Obviously what one can call “technological modernity”28 and its acceleration of social processes impacts on the human skills of remembrance as well as on imagining the future.29 Since much research is being conducted in this field in recent days, one can here only encourage theologians to, critically and constructively, include the technological modern context in their eschatological thinking, a task that in this book appears in the ethical and existential dilemma of euthanasia. Technology, however, represents a strong physical and cultural force that not only impacts on the construction of human life but to an increasing degree also influences and changes human self-understanding, including the freedom to choose one’s image of the final and future. To avoid the third dead-end road, the oblivion of the past, or even the separation and fatal split between past and future, one can find valuable inspiration in the Christian tradition and its patristic past, for example in the Eastern Cappadocian Trinitarian theology of late antiquity. One of its outstanding thinkers, Gregory of Nazianz, clearly emphasised the need for what we can summarise in a compressed notion of proto-eschatology, a claim that without doubt has become even more challenging and relevant in technological modernity. For Gregory, it is the Holy Spirit who acts in between the past, present and future, and eschatology should therefore, in his, and my, view, definitively necessarily develop as pneumatology, in our contemporary frame as well. Such a perspective continues the essential insight that was originally summarised in the Ecumenical Council and the Nicene Creed of Constantinople (NC), where it is the Spirit who creates “the life of the world to come”.30 In continuity with the Ecumenical Council it makes sense today to drink from the rich wells of pneumatology and to reflect on the Spirit as the agent of the design of the future where God meets us. While many theologians have focused one-sidedly on the God who comes into the world from the future, the Trinity in the Spirit comes, according to Gregory, in the same way to us from the past. Eschatology usually develops with a fatal lack of reflecting the protological dimension of salvation, and it separates, especially in modernity, the past from the future. The Holy Spirit, however, not only creates the life of the world to come, but also nurtures the present living through remembrance. For John, the Spirit

10  Sigurd Bergmann was the subject of remembrance who “will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” (John 14:26, NIV). Paul clearly interpreted the Spirit as the subject of liberation: “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17, NIV). The clear task for a Trinitarian eschatology is therefore to integrate both modes of acting: in an eschatological pneumatology where the life-giving Spirit is encountered as a remembering liberator and a liberating remembrance. The Spirit acts in such a view both as the agent of tradition and the subject of its processes of remembering and handing over: the Spirit who acts (Spiritus agens) is the same Spirit who hands over the fruits of the past (Spiritus tradens). In analogy to our human biology of remembering, the sociocultural memory of history also needs to be revised as well as to be preserved, and sometimes tradition needs to be “transcontextualised” and changed in order to survive.31 In proto-eschatology, therefore, the reflection about the Holy Spirit keeps theological life-interpretations open to the future as well as keeping the process of remembrance, history-writing and historical imagination open to the past. While such an insight has been central in Asian and African religions, which award ancestors an essential significance for the ongoing present, the dignity of the power of the past has been expelled by the modern West and its powerful myth of progress and its shift to regard history as the product of humanity. Due to the Spirit at work in approaching reality from both the past and the future, both need to be treated as non-predictable and non-reducible but spiritually open to God’s work. The past, as well as the future, continuously offers thresholds for the Creator to pass over into creation. Pneumatology, therefore, interprets how both the advent experience (of creatively expecting the coming God) and the historical experience (of remembering the God who has come) together create an open attitude to life as a gift that flows from the past behind as well as from the future in front. The Spirit who goes between and moves through the borders of space and time is at the focus of proto-eschatological theology.32 Where does the Spirit’s life of the coming world emerge? How do we remember and transcontextualise the life-giving histories of the past? How does the Spirit move “zwischen den Zeiten”? How does the Spirit take place in changing times and places?

Climate change as eschatology’s test case Questions of eschatology including the apocalyptic seem to have become more and more relevant in times of increasing threats to survival, in science as well as in popular culture, in world politics as well as in religions. Albert Einstein’s fruitful ending of the Newtonian split of space and time in his integration of both in space-time theory, Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking movie Back to the Future (1985) and climate apocalypses in the fiction film The Day after Tomorrow (2004) are just a few of many indicators of an ongoing change in our imagination of time. Ever-stronger reasons seem to appear to accelerate visions about “our common future”, as the UN Brundlandt process so strikingly termed it in 1992; I would like to expand this time dimension with the spatial and reformulate the phrase as our

What images of the last things do to us  11 common earth and future. There is no doubt that faith communities of all religions in general and Christian contextual theology in particular are called to partake in, contribute to and fertilise this urgent need to imagine threats to our survival as well as paths towards our common earth and its future. What might the role of Christian eschatology be herein? Could a “process eschatology” approach (M. Grau) throw new light on the significance of Christian narratives? As a challenging test case for eschatology one can approach the environmental challenge, and especially the ongoing anthropogenic climate change. If one regards it through the lens of eschatology, the discourse about climate change seems to oscillate between two poles. On the one hand apocalypticism33 and the invocation of the end dominates much ideology and rhetoric in the environmental movement, while on the other lethargy, passivity, perplexity and helplessness – sometimes even fatal quietism – can be diagnosed in parts of the populace and also among decision makers in politics and economics. Climate science tries intensely to mediate, as for example in economist Nicholas Stern’s both accusing and encouraging, almost prophetically expressed “Why are we waiting?”34 The so-called “tipping points” – which have been identified by climatologists as particularly critical states at the threshold where natural systems cause a linear state in order to switch into a qualitatively different one – represent, according to Stefan Skrimshire, “the prediction of the unpredictable”, and they “also represent the prediction of the ethically unthinkable”.35 Ongoing dangerous environmental and climatic change increases sufferings, mostly among the poor, but steadily more among the rich as well. This takes place to a very worrying extent both in its temporal acceleration and its geographical distribution. In spite of the so-called sceptical and cynical voices which have only been determined by narrow selfinterest and at present are totally losing their plausibility, the consensus in science and the public sphere is solid and stable. Climatic change is anthropogenic. Its prehistory has been caused by human social overexploitation of natural resources and unsustainable energy use. It produces continuously increasing damage and suffering to both human and non-human life forms and ecosystems, which many economists simply describe as increasing costs. Climate change furthermore produces growing insecurity as many political conflicts are driven by conflicts over the use of water, energy and land, which all are affected by the ongoing uncontrolled change. Increasing waves of migration on regional as well as on global scales represent only the tip of an iceberg in what can be expected from “having seen the future”. With Cohen again, one definitively must – even in the aftermath of what has been declared as a success in the latest COP in Cairo 2015 – wonder about the fate of global politics: “repent repent, I wonder what they meant”. Not only climatic change but also the usage of the earth’s so-called “resources” reveals a fatal mismanagement. Natural processes that have taken an immensely long time to evolve – such as oil deposits in the ocean floor, rainforests or fertile soils – are transformed and used up in a very short time in vast quantities. Respect for time and value is absent in late modern economics’ processing of natural resources. Future costs, to be paid by coming generations, stand against short-term interests. Traditional, including Christian, modes of perceiving and

12  Sigurd Bergmann understanding time and value are neglected. “Ancestral time” is violated.36 Due to the violation of “our common future”, younger generations, especially young people born in rich countries in the 70s and later, are taking fright and developing what psychology diagnoses as “eco-anxiety”.37 The loss of future leads to a loss of trust and sustainability, and the need to emphasise hope becomes even more essential for life. Together with a loss of future for younger people in the poor and economically marginalised countries of the world, such an anxiety is fatal and extremely worrying. Although the hard experiences and subsequent interpretation of the ecological crisis have by no means stifled the metaphysical optimism of the technological and industrial age, they have called that optimism into question with increasing forcefulness. Metaphysically anchored faith in progress has recently been replaced by acute anxiety regarding the future and by an eschatological mood, an ecological “end-time” mood. Growing cultural pessimism and an ideologicallybased biologism have seriously called into question the optimism of technological reason and its application on behalf of profit making. It should not be at all difficult to see how the potentials for a new eschatology, to which this book also wants to contribute, emerge in the context of environmental and climatic change. Where are the sources of hope found in the fear and despair triggered by many regional disasters and an overwhelming global catastrophe, that moves ever closer even to the rich nations? Is God angry with us?38 How can one encounter these environmental eschata in a way that resists fatalistic pessimism and quietistic ignorance but offers comforting hope? How can such hope accelerate practical energy for mitigation and creative adaptation? How can such a hope increase human skills of empathy with energetic compassion with the other – both the human and the non-human other – nature? Several of the following chapters will touch on the environmental challenge as a crucial context for contemporary eschatology. Here I will merely content myself with referring again to Gregory of Nazianz and his eschatological metaphor of the cosmic Spring, which it should be noted was later in medieval history further developed by Hildegard von Bingen in her metaphor of the greening of the Spirit (viriditas).39 Gregory’s eschatological metaphor of cosmic spring shows the extent to which he understands this human commission as a function within creation at large rather than as dominion over creatures. The spring of the resurrection of the new creation is something both visible and invisible for the soul and body, human beings and nature, something Gregory calls “a spring of the world, a spring of the spirit” (Oratio 44.12). For Gregory, being human means being the image of God in and for the world. As such, the life of human beings constantly moves within history toward the goal of having the world itself be with God. In trying to describe this eschatological condition of being, Gregory employs the metaphors of the cosmic spring of all life and that of the song of rejoicing that the cosmos itself sings during the eternal Christmas. The eschatological significance of this cosmic community is further underlined by him in the metaphor of the cosmic Christmas; he maintains that “this Festival be common to the powers in heaven and to the powers

What images of the last things do to us  13 upon earth” (Oratio 38.17). The idea that the totality of creation – ­corporeal and spiritual – will be set free is grounded largely in Gregory’s Trinitarian Christology. From him one still can learn not to develop eschatology in an isolated sense but to integrate it at the depth of the whole of Christian faith. Eschatology, then, is reflecting on the eschata within rethinking the history of salvation and liberation, and the image of the Triune. Eschatology in such a view appears as an exemplified Trinitarian theology, soteriology and even political ethic. Especially in the ongoing discussion about the so-called Anthropocene such an old and reconstructed wisdom about the whole of creation being set free needs to be reflected on and reformulated anew. Is the scientific consensus in geology about the overarching impact of the human being on the fate of the history and nature of the earth simply a confirmation of the global dimension of the human-made ecological change? Or does it in itself offer evidence for human hubris where beliefs such as creation, cosmic spring and faith and hope fully lose their meaning in favour of the all-encompassing power of Homo Faber, the geoengineering man?40 How do we care for “the intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet”, aptly emphasised by Pope Francis in his challenging green encyclical from 2016?41 What has Christian eschatology to contribute? Questions like these and others will be explored and deepened in the following chapters, not only on the global planetary scale but also on smaller scales, in individual, national or sociological contexts. As formulated above, the book does not aim at any comprehensive mapping of eschatology today, but offers contributions to a contextual and socially relevant eschatology. To make use of Leonard Cohen one last time, “popular problems”42 that matter are traced in different attempted rapprochements to an eschatology that matters.43 Hopefully these will encourage others to use the “freedom in the choice of the final” and to continue, complete and reformulate the agenda for an eschatology of this time – from sub specie Dei, in the sight of God, to a life with the indwelling God – here and now, and there and then. I should include at least some words on method. In spite of their diversity in approaching the task to elaborate such eschatology, the authors coincide on three normative methodological criteria. First, eschatology should be developed contextually,44 that is in close dialogue and reciprocal interaction with the sociocultural, environmental and historical context of our time. As all the authors dwell in the countries of the European North, a regional Nordic influence, flair and lens will become more or less apparent in all of the chapters, in their theological as well as in their political and cultural anchoring. Second, eschatology should, in continuity with our biblical, patristic and classical ancestors, always be elaborated as proto-eschatology, that is in a contexttranscending remembrance of the past. Imagining the future and the choice of the final necessarily takes place in indissoluble connection to remembering the past. Otherwise it runs the fatal danger of being reduced to simply either futurism or natural theology, where postulates about God in the future are (mis)used for a narrow interpretation of God’s work here and now.

14  Sigurd Bergmann Third, eschatology should navigate beyond the reductionist linear concept of time, as clearly analysed by Westhelle above, in order to avoid the abyss of reducing God’s life-giving and liberating work simply to a scale of the timely and eternal and distortedly viewing Christian life as a simple pilgrimage from a now to a then, and from a here to a there. Eschatology is about creating places to allow encountering the eschata in the light of the first things, especially for those who have neither room nor future on Earth our home. To say it briefly: eschatology matters as a reflection about our common future on Earth, our common home, in the light of our common history and past. It matters by unfolding itself as a theopolitics of the earth.45 Needless to say, such an approach resists a fundamentalist understanding of eschatology as well as objecting to a reduced eschatology that concludes everything from postulates about history’s last day. A one-sided view where past and future are separated and solely opposed to each other is rejected, as are reductionist concepts of time and history. Eschatology should in no case be misused as a tool for manipulation and sorting, of which the history of Christianity has unfortunately also offered irresponsible examples, such as selling indulgences or preaching eternal punishment. Rather it should be developed as a wonderfully constructive tool for creatively rethinking relations between Creator and creation, space and time, past and future, suffering and salvation. Images of the end (and also their absence) obviously impact on all these interrelations, but in what way? As mentioned above, the authors of this book are not striving to elaborate a comprehensive and all-encompassing map of historical and contemporary eschatology. Conscious of the risks and abysses in constructing a system of sections and subsections, and in negotiating central and marginal themes therein, they have instead chosen a multifaceted approach to rethinking our presence in light of the end. While handbooks and encyclopaedia articles necessarily must place the task of mapping theological eschatology over other intentions, this book offers a polyphonic reflection, or “choir” if you wish. Every chapter offers a specific point of departure, thematic focus and selection of interlocutors for approaching the common theme, and every chapter interconnects with the others. Both different and interrelated voices, sources, and perspectives conjoin in this way. Diverse perceptions and interpretations of what images of the end do to us can merge, and the reader will find rich inspiration where his or her imagination and reflection about the end will be exposed to a continuously growing number of perspectives and the demanding complexity of contextual eschatology today. It is to be hoped that, through this method, synergies with the reader’s own experiences and contexts between hope and despair will also appear. While Ernst Troeltsch in his famous sketch in 191046 regarded the absolute values of eschatology as threatened by the relativistic forces of science and capitalist economy, and argued for a strictly personalistic understanding of the ultimate things, contextual eschatology today and in this book does not need to defend a metaphysical universalistic doctrine of history, but takes seriously the signs of the times in the light of diverse images of the end. Even if Troeltsch’s analysis still might be true, that modernity has made “ideas of reward and punishment

What images of the last things do to us  15 unbearable”, there are, as this book shows, many good reasons to re-open the “eschatological bureau”, despite the fact that in Troeltsch’s view their justifying ideas lost their roots in the early 20th century.47 Rather, the authors assume that these roots can produce significant vital force in late modernity too. A consequence of the selected perspectives of this book is of course that not all themes of classical eschatology will be dealt with. On the one hand, therefore, subjects, obviously likewise relevant, such as the final judgement, millennialism, the empire-critical Book of Revelation, theodicy or eschatology in other religions will fall outside this book’s frame. On the other hand the chapters’ selected focal themes can in this self-limitation be explored more extensively, and offered as a distinct contribution to the obviously increasing dynamic discourse about “our common earth and future”, a discourse that takes place in different public arenas as well as explicitly in systematic theology. While contributed books often run the risk of presenting more or less integrated conglomerations on a loosely formulated common theme, the purpose of this book is to offer a synthetic and multifaceted, rich and confluent depiction. The polyphony of its chapters is aiming at a symphony that does justice both to the rich historical diversity of Christian eschatology and to the challenging task of exploring its potential in a changing world and time. The authors – distinguished and experienced systematic theologians in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland who know each other well after 25 years of close cooperation in the Nordic Forum for Contextual Theology – met five times for workshops in Lund, Sonnino, Stockholm and Copenhagen between 2011 and 2017. Their texts have in this way been able to grow slowly in a close and critical process. Grapes of thoughts and drafts have ripened into a wine with a full bouquet that hopefully enables the reader to encounter the future with sharpened reason and deepened faith and trust. With regard to the geographical location of the authors I would like to underline that this book does not aim at an explicit exploration of the presumed “Nordic”.48 Rather, the chapters offer perspectives and reflections that intend to contribute to the increasing international eschatological discourse from a Nordic horizon. Unfortunately we were not able to include indigenous voices from the Sami or Greenlandic Inuit, nor from Iceland, a fact that painfully still mirrors the marginality of the minorities in our sphere.49 While some authors dive explicitly into events and traditions that are deeply rooted in the Nordic context, such as the current welfare state’s challenge to come to terms with a changing understanding of suicide and euthanasia or the violent attack against the Norwegian Social Democratic Party and the vision of a pluralist society in Oslo 2011, other authors depart from other, more transnational challenges such as geopolitical injustice, a challenging neo-naturalist worldview, or the lack of spatiality in eschatology. While some reflections are rooted directly in the life of a Nordic faith congregation such as the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden or the thinking of historically highly influential Danish theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig, others are in dialogue with thinkers and artists in a broad international spectrum. Nevertheless all seem, as above mentioned, to be shaped by a common context, where the Nordic countries on their way to modernity in the 20th century have managed to achieve social

16  Sigurd Bergmann peace, social systems of welfare and comfort for all citizens, a high degree of equity and justice, and a participatory political culture based on involving popular movements. All these achievements of course undoubtedly also include inner tensions and problems, and they are exposed to threats from contemporary political and economic developments. To what degree the history of Christian theology and especially the Reformation, which turned both the faith communities and the monarchies and national states into some kind of monistic unified bodies, has contributed to the Nordic unicity is not easy to grasp. It should by no means surprise the reader to identify the Nordic lens of this book’s authors in the search for a theological eschatology that can embrace all – believers and others, man/ woman and nature, foregoing and coming generations – in one peaceful, egalitarian and just social communion. To trace the fertilisers for such a vision by exploring images of the end lies at the heart of all the chapters.

The chapters The following chapter takes the reader directly into a situation and a place that deeply challenges eschatology: the aftermath of the violent terror attack in Oslo in 2011. Paul Leer-Salvesen departs from the context of an increasing fear and anxiety about the future and explores how Christian faith can counteract hopelessness with a theology of hope. In 2011 peaceful Norway experienced the worst violent attack since 1945 and one of the most horrible mass murders ever: a young, white Norwegian killed 77 people, injured 40 and destroyed the Government Building in Oslo. He explained the terror as a necessary attack on the Social Democracy and the multi-ethnic and pluralistic society in Norway. He defended the acts as necessary means to achieve his goal: to save the future of his country. He viewed himself as a violent warrior and saviour. The acceleration of urgency and the need for energetic acting in a state of emergency, which is highly characteristic for apocalypticism, seems to have been a primary driving force here. The identification of one’s time as apocalyptic, a time where violent struggle ends the ambiguity and confusion and establishes clarity about the good and bad, can also be observed in the conflicts in the Middle East, where for example journalists in 2014 were killed when they reported on a group of violent warriors in Iraq and Syria, who presented themselves as authorised to use all necessary means to achieve their holy goal: the caliphate of what they call the Islamic State. It is scarcely hard to understand why people, even in a peaceful welfare state like Norway, are scared. Many fear the future, the future of their society and culture, and the future of their personal lives. All fear for the future of the planet. The many wars and violent conflicts and humanitarian tragedies at the beginning of this millennium contribute to a collective fear. In this climate one can see a growing interest in apocalyptic-inspired films and rhetoric, and possibly also a growing interest in their counterparts in philosophies and theologies of hope. In his chapter Leer-Salvesen develops the argument that contextual theology today should share in the rich treasures in Christian tradition and reconstruct and

What images of the last things do to us  17 contribute these in contemporary discourses about fear and future. Contextual theology in general and its eschatology in particular needs to be developed in close correlation with the existential, ethical and political challenges of our age. Christian theology is a theology of hope and contradicts anthropologies and eschatologies of hopelessness. In the aftermath of the tragedy in Oslo in 2011, the churches in Norway opened their doors, and people came and found places for contemplation, perhaps also places for comfort. In these places, narrations and images emerged that allowed people to interpret what had happened; seeds for lived hope were growing. LeerSalvesen’s chapter makes clear not only how eschatology matters in general but also how it nurtures lived hope in fear and despair. Following the author’s differentiated analysis and discussion of the Norwegian situation – which is locally unique on the one hand but representative for many other countries in the West on the other – the chapter shows how Christian eschatology can provide conceptual and mental rooms for such a lived hope, and can offer built environments and social spaces for it to flourish. Marion Grau also departs in the third chapter from the context of increasing fear and anxiety about the future, where humans seem to face “one apocalypse after the other”. Her chapter presents an approach to a process eschatology, responding to the global event of climate change. Bringing Irenaeus’ notion of recapitulatio into play with the Stoic concept of ekpyrosis (the periodic destruction of the universe by fire), it uses both as conceptual tools to grasp the petroleum age that is bringing the planet to this particular conflagration. Based on Jürgen Moltmann’s theology, the author proposes a helical approach to eschatology, involving creation and destruction cycles. A critical local contextual reading will contrast two case studies of water and petroleum dynamics, bringing these two elements in particular into a battle of life and death. The showdown between water protectors and Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) infrastructure enforcement in the autumn and winter of 2016–2017 is set in contrast with the water and oil economies of Norway and their schizophrenic politics in both pushing for green economies and continuing to develop unnecessary and unprofitable petroleum infrastructure in the Barents Sea and along the Norwegian coastline. The chapter outlines a process eschatology that overcomes the anthropocentric focus of many eschatological narratives. With Hölderlin the author suggests that where the destructive forces increase, those that heal and save are always also increasing. While Grau and Leer-Salvesen explored eschatology on a macro-scale, the fourth chapter takes the reader directly into the micro-scale of a couple’s struggle with inevitable death. Within this painfully demanding situation Tage Kurtén analyses the concepts of hope and eschatology in relation to questions of euthanasia. He takes his point of departure from the novel Grace by Linn Ullmann. This is a story of a couple confronting the male character’s inevitable death from cancer. He asks his wife, who is a physician, to help him die when there is nothing but suffering to expect. Kurtén locates this story in a current cultural context, where secular modernity meets a late-modern, post-secular mentality, and he asks in what way these different cultural frameworks influence our ability to deal with

18  Sigurd Bergmann questions of life and death, and how eschatology will find different interpretations (expressions) within those different cultural frames. Kurtén starts by pointing to the rapid change of attitudes in the current Nordic societies with regard to both suicide and euthanasia. His chapter describes critically the way a secularised modernity has offered and still offers a taken-for-granted framework that fundamentally colours the way in which matters concerning life and death are grasped. This includes modern medicine and the way modern hospitals work, at least in Nordic countries. The author argues that a theological understanding of hope and of eschatology in modernity is also marked by conceptual distinctions that receive their meaning from this modern, ideological framework. This affects the way euthanasia is understood and discussed. The author then presents a post-secular critique of the ideological character of modern secularism. In doing so he questions a modern understanding of life and death and the way eschatology and euthanasia are interpreted by the modern secular mind. Such a questioning opens the way for a cultural and societal situation where no one has the key to a general, objective understanding of human life and of the current societal reality. This post-secular view implies the idea of an open culture. An open culture presupposes a human reality where many different views of life, religious as well as non-religious, have to live side by side. If we leave behind the modern idea of an assumed secular worldview, neutral and objectively given to all humans, viewpoints stemming from a Christian tradition can no longer be seen as an extra, added to a reality common to all reasonable people. Christian eschatology and Christian hope for and trust in a reality determined by God is the narrative that accompanies Christian practices. A secular life is accompanied by other narratives and other practices. According to Kurtén, the question of euthanasia must remain quite open in a multicultural context. There are no once-and-for-all answers to these kinds of questions. Pointing to our ambivalent cultural situation between a secular modern frame and a post-secular, late modern one, the author shows that eschatology matters – and why. It matters within both frames. However, the author insists that eschatology comes closer to concrete human life when understood within a late modern setting. In the following chapter the above-discussed one-sided focus on narrowly understood time in modern eschatology is overcome in a turn of time into space. Sigurd Bergmann departs from a short tune and theme in Wagner’s opera Parsifal and explores in depth the question of how Christian eschatology can deepen its richness by turning time into space. Can eschatology itself not only contribute to faith but also change it qualitatively? How can one give shape to an eschatological spatiality? The chapter first offers an introductory argument for why images of salvation and liberation are necessary, in spite of the widespread discussion that often glamorises the end of history and end of ideology. For the author it is obvious that eschatology cannot unfold its power outside the framework of a well thought through understanding of salvation and liberation. To get to the heart of the matter, eschatology takes place within soteriology. In a second step the chapter clarifies

What images of the last things do to us  19 the challenge to overcome the well-known utopianisation of images of the Sacred and to replace this with a new locative approach to faith. A third step finally develops such a locative approach and explores constructively, in dialogue with arts, and biblical and classical traditions, the path of what the author describes as eschatological spatiality. Rich inspiration for a plastic and wide-open understanding of eschatology is here offered by Giovanni Bellini’s painting “Sacred Allegory”. Together with inspiration from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, the chapter finally elaborates how the vision of Heimat (home) and the movement towards making-oneself-at-home both on Earth and in Heaven can serve as a central theme for eschatology. This becomes true especially in a context where humans as God’s image in the Anthropocene are increasingly threatening God’s and their own habitat through accelerating dangerous environmental and climatic change. The global environmental challenge, which was at the core in Grau’s chapter about the edges of climate change, serves in this connection as a catalysing driving force for revising eschatology in the face of the Earth and the world to come. For Kjetil Hafstad also, artists and artworks serve as central interlocutor for eschatology. The sixth chapter, intriguingly entitled “Looking for a miracle”, questions traditional eschatology. For too long, this discipline has reduced its perspective to a laborious work of compiling elements for a universal timetable for a showdown of the known earth, often inspired by a morality of pilgrimage: rejecting life on Earth for the sake of eternity and Paradise. In contrast, the author discusses contributions from art and history to illuminate the possible richness of eschatology. Working with the concept of eschatology brings us to the limits of our understanding. The chapter emphasises how reflections within art and history are offering new perspectives, here and now as well as in the horizon of the end of time/space and eternity. Prospecting the future, and also the space beyond our actual places, offers valuable perspectives for our present life, an insight that Hafstad explores in selected works of the German artist Käthe Kollwitz. Kollwitz herself experienced the end of her world several times. In her breakthrough in May 1898, she was offered the chance to exhibit six graphic works, “The Weber-Cycle”, where she presented the misery of the German weavers’ rebellion in a transformative way. It was said of Kollwitz that she “was one of the few who succeeded in transforming compassion for the plagued creature into true art”. According to the author, Kollwitz creates ultimate moments, to be carried into an uncertain future, by depicting despair and mourning. In addition to offering significant perspectives on the end of time, she also provoked the state leaders. The screaming and the suffering, and the intense mourning that Kollwitz calls to life, are awakening, in our present as well as in a not too distant future. The chapter further discusses how tragedies and events that are experienced as the “end of time” make us stop, and lead us to do things that we normally do not. They call for untold improvisations, and ways to cope with what is inconceivable; often they can bring forth resources that we never thought ourselves to be in possession of. Hafstad contests that there is facticity in eschatology. Like all texts,

20  Sigurd Bergmann eschatological texts have their context and function. Seen in such a perspective, eschatology inspires resisting evil and opening the way to a hopeful future. In the seventh chapter Cristina Grenholm draws on several recent processes of reflection in the Church of Sweden and investigates how the understanding of reconciliation impacts on images of hope and a future beyond time. In church life there is a constant reminder of things to come, for example in the creed and in the affirmation in the Eucharist of us keeping celebrating it “until the day he returns in glory”. However, in Scandinavian theology the immanent interpretation of eschatology has been more common than the understanding that there is a limit of time that one day will be overcome. This chapter explores how a contemporary understanding of eschatology can include a hope that surpasses immanent categories without lapsing into the view that this life does not really matter. In a time of conflict and polarisation where religion often plays a role, it is necessary to return to the belief in reconciliation as something that both has taken place and will one day come to fulfilment, thus urging us to seek righteousness and peace here and now. The situation in Syria and other parts of the world forces us to explore how belief in the fulfilment of time can provide hope rather than hopelessness, facing the fact that for so many life has been irreversibly changed and that their losses are beyond the scope of compensation in this life. What does a reliable and trustworthy hope in the future mean in this situation? The author argues that there are three prerequisites for finding an eschatology that expresses hope beyond the limit of time in a way that motivates us to hope for a better future in this world and to engage in the struggle for justice, peace and reconciliation. Such an eschatology needs (1) to relate to tradition, which was given to us by earlier generations as a source of experience of belief in the future in this world connected to the hope of a world to come, (2) to contain a worldview that keeps together life in this world with the belief in a world to come instead of imagining them as separate and (3) to provide an image of God that can deal with darkness and despair in a way that does not let an understanding of God’s anger and love leave God capricious, frightening or powerless. Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm takes the reader in the following chapter “back to the future”. His chapter departs from a future-including Christian theology. According to the author, a theistic worldview that is interpreted as a non-scientific understanding of the universe as a whole is not only related to the past, but also to the future. Bråkenhielm departs from the traditional idea of God’s continuing creation (creatio continua) and links this up with Thomas Nagel and his thought on evolution and its driving forces. Nagel has suggested that the universe is moving towards an extended expansion of organisation and consciousness. Nagel’s “neo-naturalistic worldview” and his ideas about human consciousness and evolution are explored with regard to Christian eschatology, where Nagel’s demand for a natural teleology in particular offers new potential for a reconstruction of the doctrines of Divine providence and the continuing creation. But where is the relevance of Nagel’s thoughts for eschatology? Should this be kept apart from providence? Bråkenhielm suggests that Nagel’s metaphysical thinking certainly can assist in clarifying eschatology’s “already now”, but nonetheless fails to offer

What images of the last things do to us  21 any idea about eschatology’s “not yet”, a conclusion that takes theology back to the future. Theodor Jørgensen takes the reader in the final chapter back in time to influential Danish theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig (b. 1783). He explores how Grundtvig’s emphasis on the growth of faith is central for his understanding of Christianity in theology and poetry, and how this might connect to contemporary striving for spiritual self-realisation and development, and for the vision of a fulfilled afterlife. Is it “only in resurrection” that we can fully turn “into what we already are”? For me as an author and editor, the long process of writing this book together was an overwhelming and somehow also confusing experience, as we discovered the diversity and complexity of what “images of the end” can do to us. Suspended between hope and despair, in subjective as well as in social, cultural and geopolitical contexts, such an experience might be of valuable and exceptional relevance for navigating in a dynamic world. Experiencing a Creator who acts within and beyond the limits of time relativises human imaginations of time and space. Experiencing a Liberator who moves into the present both from behind (the past) and in front (the future) offers a specific third dimension of perception and selfawareness. The end is not simply something that takes place far away in the future, but the end through the lens of faith is present here and now. Such a sentence sounds simplistic and naive but it might contain a much deeper wisdom than expected and offer a relevant treasure that religions are guarding. Being suspended between hope and despair appears in such a sense not as an eternal cycle, but reflecting about the images of the end might open a path from despair to hope – in Havel’s words, to hope as “the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out”.50 Finally, a strong and painful reminder of what not only “images of the end” but also our bodily end can do to us was sent to our solidarity of authors in the message about Theodor Jørgensen’s death two days before Epiphany 2018. Being suspended between hope and despair appears in the light of his chapter as a true life through, with and in Christ, and eschatology unfolds as a concretising hope of eternity in all contexts, as a manifestation of realised resurrection. This book is – bowing deeply to our own mortality and at the same time “enlightened to eternity” – dedicated to the remembrance of Theodor Jørgensen and his unique synthesis of life and faith, committed keenness and human kindness, and hope and trust in God, for whom all is possible.

Notes 1 Leonard Cohen, “The Future”, in The Future (music album) (Columbia, 1992). 2 Leonard Cohen, “Waiting for the Miracle”, in the same music album, The Future. 3 “Faith” is here understood along the classical interpretation of the central biblical πιστις (pistis) as confidence and trust, within a Christian belief system. According to the historical view, faith always includes seeking understanding, “fides quarens intellectum”. Cf. Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 2. “Religion” is here approached neither in an essentialist way – that is, as a belief in supernatural powers – nor in a purely functionalist way, as some specific cultural

22  Sigurd Bergmann practice. Rather, it is seen in a synthetic way that does justice to both the subjective and contextual dimensions. Cf. Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System”, in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 90f., and Sigurd Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the Environment (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction, 2014; 2nd edition, 2016), 3. “Beliefs” can either be understood as epistemological beliefs in something or someone or as religious beliefs that relate to the existence of a divine reality. 4 Jürgen Moltmann, Der lebendige Gott und die Fülle des Lebens (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2014), 118; English edition: The Living God and the Fullness of Life (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015). For a rich and detailed exploration of the significance of faith in the resurrection and Christology for eschatology see Jürgen Moltmann’s, Der Weg Jesu Christi: Christologie in Messianischen Dimensionen (Munich: Kaiser, 1989), especially Part IV and § 6 in Part VII. 5 Cf. Vaclav Havel: “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out”. Vaclav Havel, Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvížďala (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 181. 6 Calling upon Cohen’s album about the future again, repentance appears as an open path (in the first tune “The Future”), even if the poet certainly gets the call to “repent” but wonders what “they meant”, leaving us in limbo. 7 Cf. Blazenka Scheuer, The Return of YHWH: The Tension Between Deliverance and Repentance in Isaiah 40–55 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008). 8 Moltmann, Der lebendige Gott und die Fülle des Lebens, 182. 9 Cf. Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the Environment, 92. 10 Günter Altner, Tod, Ewigkeit und Überleben (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1981). Cf. also G. Altner, Naturvergessenheit: Grundlagen einer umfassenden Bioethik (Darmstadt: WBG, 1991). 11 Cf. C. Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Bronistaw Szerszynski (eds.), Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred: Transdisciplinary Perspectives (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). 12 For a historical and systematic survey of Christian eschatology through the ages see Jerry L. Walls (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 13 Michael S. Northcott, A Political Theology of Climate Change (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 285. 14 Cf. Northcott, A Political Theology of Climate Change, 277. 15 Cf. Sigurd Bergmann, Creation Set Free: The Spirit as Liberator of Nature (Sacra Doctrina: Christian Theology for a Postmodern Age 4; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). 16 Jacob Taubes, Occidential Eschatology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 82 (published in German as Abendländische Eschatologie (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 1947)). 17 English translation taken from Immanuel Kant, “The End of All Things”, in Immanuel Kant – Religion and Rational Theology, tr. and eds. Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 221–231, http://cas.uchicago. edu/workshops/germanphilosophy/files/2013/02/Kant-The-end-of-all-things.pdf. 18 Kant, “The End of All Things”, 8:338. Cf. also the philosopher’s emphasis on Christianity’s wisdom that God alone is the subject of knowledge about the final: “Wisdom, that is, practical reason using means commensurate to the final end of all things – the highest good – in full accord with the corresponding rules of measure, dwells in God alone; and the only thing which could perhaps be called human wisdom is acting in a way which is not visibly contrary to the idea of that [divine] wisdom”. Kant, “The End of All Things”, 8:336. 19 Jayne Svenungsson, Den gudomliga historien: Profetism, messianism & andens utveckling (Göteborg: Glänta, 2014), XIII. English edition: Divining History: Prophetism, Messianism, and the Development of the Spirit (London and New York: Berghan, 2016).

What images of the last things do to us  23 20 Cf. Svenungsson, Den gudomliga historien, 249. 21 Moltmann, Der lebendige Gott und die Fülle des Lebens, 107f. I can follow Northcott in his application of Schmitt’s critique of liberalism on the failed geopolitics of climate change (Northcott, A Political Theology of Climate Change, 229–232), but I cannot share his neglect of the overarching ideological and theocratic intentions that drive Schmitt’s critique. Certainly we both share the fundamentally necessary eschatological insight that we must envision the end of the Empire and drink from the wells of political messianism in order to overcome it. But Schmitt’s idea – that only the sovereign state and its uncontrolled power to execute the states of emergency is a guarantee for this, and that political theology, built on divine obedience, has to support this – reveals in my view a dangerous risk rather than a prophetic vision. It is not a strong state that we need, but an active hope and the lived desire for a peaceful world, where power is not executed as power-over, as in Schmitt’s and others’ totalitarian ideology, but as a true power-with and power-for the other. In addition Schmitt identified himself continuously as a notorious anti-Semite in his own “Glossarium” (Carl Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1947 bis 1958, eds. Gerd Giesler and Martin Tielke [2nd edition; Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 2015]). 22 Most brilliantly Jürgen Moltmann has elaborated why the openness of the creation belongs to the essentials of Christian faith. He interconnects the scientific theory of open systems to the doctrine of creation (103), and reminds us often about the world’s God-openness (die Gottoffenheit der Welt). Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (Gifford Lectures, 1984–1985) (London: SCM Press, 1985) (published in German as Gott in der Schöpfung: Ökologische Schöpfungslehre (Munich: Kaiser, 1985)). 23 Vitor Westhelle, Eschatology and Space: The Lost Dimension in Theology Past and Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Cf. my discussion: Sigurd Bergmann, “Places of Encounter with the Eschata: Accelerating the Spatial Turn in Eschatology”, in Embracing the Ivory Tower and Stained Glass Windows: A Festschrift in Honor of Archbishop Antje Jackelén, ed. Jennifer Baldwin (Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 1; Heidelberg: Springer, 2015), 71–79. 24 Westhelle, Eschatology and Space, 71ff. 25 Westhelle, Eschatology and Space, 121. 26 Johann Baptist Metz, “Erinnerung des Leidens als Kritik eines teleologisch technologischen Zukunftsbegriffs”, Evangelische Theologie 32 (1972): 338–352. 27 Walter Benjamin, “Über den Begriff der Geschichte”, in Gesammelte Schriften: Abhandlungen, Band I.2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), 691–704; published in English as “Thesis on the Philosophy of History”, in Illuminations, tr. Harry Zohn and ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968). 28 Cf. Deane-Drummond, Bergmann and Szerszynski, Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred. 29 What constitutes our (collective) memory of the past, and how skills of remembrance impact on our imagination of the end, certainly offers a rich discourse of great relevance to the book’s theme. As we will not mine this discourse more deeply here, one could, besides Metz, also recommend the following for further reading: Jan Assmann, Religion und kulturelles Gedächtnis: Zehn Studien (Munich: Beck, 2000/2006); Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire”, Representations 26 (Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory) (Spring 1989): 7–24; Jonna Bornemark, Mattias Martinson and Jayne Svenungsson (eds.), Monument and Memory (Nordic Studies in Theology/Nordische Studien zur Theologie 1; Berlin: LIT, 2015). 30 ζωην του μελλοντος αιωνος. 31 On transcontextualisation see S. Bergmann, God in Context: A Survey of Contextual Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 49.

24  Sigurd Bergmann 32 Such a pneumatologically-grounded eschatology in my view radically surpasses the atpresent loudly proclaimed philosophical incantation of a (Hegelian) spirit as the agent of a critical overcoming of late capitalism, as it is formulated by Slavoj Žižek. Žižek also radically criticises, as Schmitt does, the abyss of liberalism and parliamentarian democracy, but he does not in my view really have an alternative to offer. Declaring himself an atheist, he uses Christian narratives and tropes, and even images of the suffering God and the liberating Spirit, in a rhetorically impressive and highly thoughtprovoking way. But as Žižek does not aim at either restoring the power of the sovereign state, which Schmitt had envisioned, or the open hope-driven synergy of the Creator and the created in the time and space of the coming, which Christian theologians envision, it seems only the radical revolutionary event in itself that allows Žižek to throw some light into the otherwise permanent dark. The spirit of his historical development, which, it should be noted, emanates from the death of Christ and God rather than from Trinitarian thinking, is a purely human one – in Žižek’s own words, “a virtual entity” – while Christian eschatology operates in the image of a constant synergy between the human and the Holy Spirit, a synergy that gives life even to the yet unseen in space, place and time. For a more detailed discussion of Žižek, cf. Svenungsson, Den gudomliga historien, 228–238, who criticises Žižek’s emphasis on the categorical exclusivity of emancipatory Christian pneumatology and his disinterest in Christian practices. On the spirit cf. Slavoj Žižek, Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 57. 33 From my elaboration above on the difference between apocalyptic and messianic thinking it should be obvious that Christian eschatology in my view necessarily resists a purely apocalyptic thinking about the end, as this would endanger and reduce the potential of presentist imagination. With regard to climate change, biblical scholar Barbara Rossing has clearly analysed how a reductionist apocalypticism applied to the reading of the Book of Revelation produces fatal misunderstandings in the current fundamentalist movement. Rather, one should read the Book of Revelation as a book of hope! Cf. Barbara R. Rossing, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation (New York: Basic Books, 2005). 34 Nicholas Stern, Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2015). 35 Stefan Skrimshire, “Seeing Beyond the Tipping Point: Climate Risks, Faith and Political Action”, in Eco-Awareness: Exploring Religion, Ethics and Aesthetics, eds. Sigurd Bergmann and Heather Eaton (Studies in Religion and the Environment 3; Berlin: LIT, 2009), 97. On apocalyptic rhetoric with regard to climate change cf. also Stefan Skrimshire, “What Are We Waiting For? Climate Change and the Narrative of Apocalypse”, in Religion and Environmental Change: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Climate and Sustainability, eds. Sigurd Bergmann and Dieter Gerten (Studies in Religion and the Environment 2; Berlin: LIT, 2009), 205–226. 36 Conflicts like this are dealt with in the research project “Caring for the future through ancestral time: faith-based activism and climate change” at the University of Edinburgh, www.ed.ac.uk/divinity/research/projects/cftf. 37 Cf. Panu Pihkala, “ ‘Eco-Anxiety’ and Faith Communities”, Presentation at the conference “Faith Communities and Environmental Activism” in Edinburgh 18–20 May 2017. 38 Rolita Machila, Why Are Earth and God Angry? (Thinking It Over, Issue 20; Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, August 2008), www.lutheranworld.org/sites/default/files/ DTS-Thinking-20.pdf. 39 Hildegard von Bingen deepens the image of the greening Spring in her mystical theology about the Cross and the Spirit, where she depicts the power of the Son and the Spirit as “viriditas”. Hildegard von Bingen, Scivias III, Visio 13, 7, 182–185. Hildegard von Bingen, Scivias, Pars III, eds. Adelgundis Führkötter and Angela Carlevaris (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaeualis XLIII A; Turnhout: Brepols, 1978).

What images of the last things do to us  25 40 Cf. Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Markus Vogt (eds.), Religion in the Anthropocene (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock/Cascade, 2017); Sigurd Bergmann and Dieter Gerten (eds.), Religion in Dangerous Environmental and Climate Change: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on the Ethics of Climate and Sustainability (Studies in Religion and the Environment 2; Berlin, Münster, Zürich, Wien and London: LIT, 2010); Dieter Gerten and Sigurd Bergmann (eds.), Religion in Environmental and Climate Change: Suffering, Values, Lifestyles (New York and London: Continuum, 2012); and Robin Globus Veldman, Andrew Szasz and Randolph Haluza-DeLay (eds.), How the World’s Religions Are Responding to Climate Change: Social Scientific Investigations (London and New York: Routledge, 2013). Cf. also Sigurd Bergmann, Celia Deane-Drummond, Willis Jenkins and Forrest Clingermann, Consortium for the Study of Religion, Ethics, and Society: Forum Spring 2016, a forum made up of four voices; see especially S. Bergmann, “Is There a Future in the Age of Humans? A Critical Eye on the Narrative of the Anthropocene”, www.indiana.edu/~csres/pages/forum-folder/ index.php#Bergmann. 41 Pope Francis, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home”, 24 May 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_ 20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. 42 Leonard Cohen launched the album “Popular Problems” on his 70th birthday (Columbia, 2014), where one might say that the artist, especially in the last tune “You got me singing”, revisits his life in a timely (eschatological?) key with endurance at its core: You got me wishing Our little love would last You got me thinking Like those people of the past. 43 Eschatology in this sense is located in a wider understanding of theology as “selfconscious Christian reflection about important matters”, to use a phrase coined by John B. Cobb Jr., “The Role of Theology of Nature in the Church”, in Liberating Life: Contemporary Approaches to Ecological Theology, eds. Charles Birch, William Eakin and Jay B. McDaniel (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), 262 (reprinted Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007). 44 For a differentiated presentation of the history and present state of contextual theology see Angie Pears, Doing Contextual Theology (London and New York: Routledge, 2009). For the process of exploring contextual theology in the Nordic countries from 1992 onwards see the five volumes (see below) that emerged out of close cooperation from 1992 until today between well established and younger scholars in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, who have regularly met for conferences and publication projects. All authors in this book have for a long time spent their energies in deepening and developing this fruitful cooperation. For a short insight into its history see Bergmann, God in Context, xvf. Sigurd Bergmann and Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm (eds.), Kontextuell livstolkning: Teologi i ett pluralistiskt Norden (Religio 43; Lund: Teologiska institutionen, 1994); Sigurd Bergmann and Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm (eds.), Vardagskulturens teologi i nordisk belysning (Stockholm: Nya Doxa, 1998); Sigurd Bergmann (ed.), “Man får inte tvinga någon” – autonomi och relationalitet i nordisk teologisk tolkning (Nora: Nya Doxa, 2001); Sigurd Bergmann and Cristina Grenholm (eds.), MAKT – i nordisk teologisk tolkning (Relieff 44; Trondheim: Tapir Akademisk Forlag, 2004); Kirsten Busch Nielsen and Cristina Grenholm (eds.), Det virker alt den Ånd: Nordiske teologiske tolkninger (Copenhagen: Anis, 2004). 45 Cf. Johnson-Debaufre, Keller and Ortega-Aponte, who formulate a strong plea for “a cosmopolitics with cosmos . . . readable as a political theology of the earth”, a plea that in my view lies at the heart of all Christian eschatology. Melanie Johnson-Debaufre, Catherine Keller and Elias Ortega-Aponte (eds.), Common Goods: Economy, Ecology, and Political Theology (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 11.

26  Sigurd Bergmann 46 Ernst Troeltsch, “Eschatologie IV. Dogmatisch”, in Die Religion in Geschichte Gegenwart vol. 1 (1st edition; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1910), 622–632. 47 Ernst Troeltsch, Glaubenslehre: Nach Heidelberger Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 1911 und 1912 (Munich and Leipzig: Dunker & Humblot, 1925), 36. 48 The term “Nordic” (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Greenland, Åland and the Faeroes) should not be confused with “Scandinavian” (which as a geographical term only includes the areas of Finland, Sweden and Norway, and commonly Denmark as well). What characterises the Nordic is a process of constant negotiation. On the one side one can point to the homogeneity of the history, and on the other to the language groups that are very close to each other, with the exceptions of Finnish, Sami and Inuit languages. Indigenous minorities are present in the Sami and Inuit areas. Climate and geography also offer a common denominator. The so-called Nordic model combines a market economy with a welfare state financed by heavy taxation, and the Nordic Passport Union allows all citizens to move freely. The Catholic Church was in the Reformation turned into national Lutheran state churches, which just recently have separated from the state. Culturally one might characterise the Nordic countries as a most progressive emancipatory social culture, whose gender equality and educational egalitarianism for example are very attractive to other developing countries. The Nordic Council offers some general information for a survey, www.norden.org/ en/fakta-om-norden-1. 49 The vital dynamics of an emerging Sami theology are obvious. See Jorun Jernsletten, “Resources for Indigenous Theology from a Sami Perspective”, Ecumenical Review 62.4 (2010): 379–389, and Tore Johnsen, Jordens barn, solens barn, vindens barn: Kristen tro i et samisk landskap [Children of the Earth, Children of the Sun, Children of the Wind: Christian Faith in a Sami Context] (Oslo: Verbum, 2007). 50 Cf. note 4 above.

Bibliography Altner, Günter. Tod, Ewigkeit und Überleben. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1981. ———. Naturvergessenheit: Grundlagen einer umfassenden Bioethik. Darmstadt: WBG, 1991. Assmann, Jan. Religion und kulturelles Gedächtnis: Zehn Studien. Munich: Beck, 2000/2006. Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History”. In Illuminations, translated by Harry Zohn and edited by Walter Benjamin, with introduction, by Hannah Arendt, 253– 264. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. ———. “Über den Begriff der Geschichte”. In Gesammelte Schriften: Abhandlungen, edited by Walter Benjamin, Band I.2, 691–704. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991. Bergmann, Sigurd, ed. “Man får inte tvinga någon” – autonomi och relationalitet i nordisk teologisk tolkning. Nora: Nya Doxa, 2001. ———. Creation Set Free: The Spirit as Liberator of Nature. Sacra Doctrina: Christian Theology for a Postmodern Age 4. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. ———. God in Context: A Survey of Contextual Theology. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. ———. “Places of Encounter with the Eschata: Accelerating the Spatial Turn in Eschatology”. In Embracing the Ivory Tower and Stained Glass Windows: A Festschrift in Honor of Archbishop Antje Jackelén, edited by Jennifer Baldwin, 71–79. Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 1. Heidelberg: Springer, 2015. ———. Religion, Space, and the Environment. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction, 2014; 2nd ed. 2016.

What images of the last things do to us  27 ———. “Is there a Future in the Age of Humans? A Critical Eye on the Narrative of the Anthropocene”. In Consortium for the Study of Religion, Ethics, and Society: Forum Spring 2016, edited by Sigurd Bergmann, Celia Deane-Drummond, Willis Jenkins, and Forrest Clingermann. www.indiana.edu/~csres/pages/forum-folder/index.php#Bergmann. Bergmann, Sigurd, and Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm, eds. Kontextuell livstolkning: Teologi i ett pluralistiskt Norden. Religio 43. Lund: Teologiska institutionen, 1994. ———. Vardagskulturens teologi i nordisk belysning. Stockholm: Nya Doxa, 1998. Bergmann, Sigurd, and Dieter Gerten, eds. Religion in Dangerous Environmental and Climate Change: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on the Ethics of Climate and Sustainability. Studies in Religion and the Environment 2. Berlin: LIT, 2010. Bergmann, Sigurd, and Cristina Grenholm, eds. MAKT – i nordisk teologisk tolkning. Relieff 44. Trondheim: Tapir Akademisk Forlag, 2004. Bingen, Hildegard von. Scivias, Pars III, edited by Adelgundis Führkötter, with Angela Carlevaris. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaeualis XLIII A. Turnhout: Brepols, 1978. Bornemark, Jonna, Mattias Martinson, and Jayne Svenungsson, eds. Monument and Memory. Nordic Studies in Theology/Nordische Studien zur Theologie 1. Berlin: LIT, 2015. Busch Nielsen, Kirsten, and Cristina Grenholm, eds. Det virker alt den Ånd: Nordiske teologiske tolkninger. Copenhagen: Anis, 2004. Cobb Jr., John B. “The Role of Theology of Nature in the Church”. In Liberating Life: Contemporary Approaches to Ecological Theology, edited by Charles Birch, William Eakin, and Jay B. McDaniel, 261–272. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990. Reprinted Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007. Cohen, Leonard. “The Future”. In The Future (music album). Columbia, 1992. ———. Popular Problems. Columbia 8875014291, 2014. CD. Deane-Drummond, Celia, Sigurd Bergmann, and Bronistaw Szerszynski, eds. Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred: Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Deane-Drummond, Celia, Sigurd Bergmann, and Markus Vogt, eds. Religion in the Anthropocene. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock/Cascade, 2017. Geertz, Clifford. “Religion as a Cultural System”. In The Interpretation of Cultures, edited by Clifford Geertz, 87–125. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Gerten, Dieter, and Sigurd Bergmann, eds. Religion in Environmental and Climate Change: Suffering, Values, Lifestyles. New York and London: Continuum, 2012. Havel, Vaclav. Disturbing the Peace: A  Conversation with Karel Hvížďala. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Jernsletten, Jorun. “Resources for Indigenous Theology from a Sami Perspective”. Ecumenical Review 62.4 (2010): 379–389. Johnsen, Tore. Jordens barn, solens barn, vindens barn: Kristen tro i et samisk landskap [Children of the Earth, Children of the Sun, Children of the Wind: Christian Faith in a Sami Context]. Oslo: Verbum, 2007. Johnson-Debaufre, Melanie, Catherine Keller, and Elias Ortega-Aponte, eds. Common Goods: Economy, Ecology, and Political Theology. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. Kant, Immanuel. “The End of All Things”. In Immanuel Kant – Religion and Rational Theology, translated and edited by Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni, 221–231. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Machila, Rolita. Why Are Earth and God Angry? Thinking It Over, Issue 20. Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, August  2008. www.lutheranworld.org/sites/default/files/ DTS-Thinking-20.pdf.

28  Sigurd Bergmann Metz, Johann Baptist. “Erinnerung des Leidens als Kritik eines teleologisch technologischen Zukunftsbegriffs”. Evangelische Theologie 32 (1972): 338–352. Migliore, Daniel L. Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Moltmann, Jürgen. God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (Gifford Lectures, 1984–1985). London: SCM Press, 1985. ———. Gott in der Schöpfung: Ökologische Schöpfungslehre. Munich: Kaiser, 1985. ———. Der Weg Jesu Christi: Christologie in messianischen Dimensionen. Munich: Kaiser, 1989. ———. Der lebendige Gott und die Fülle des Lebens. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2014. ———. The Living God and the Fullness of Life. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire”. Representations 26 (Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory) (Spring 1989): 7–24. Northcott, Michael S. A Political Theology of Climate Change. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013. Pears, Angie. Doing Contextual Theology. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Pihkala, Panu. “ ‘Eco-Anxiety’ and Faith Communities”. Presentation at the conference ‘Faith Communities and Environmental Activism’. Edinburgh, 18–20 May 2017. Pope Francis, “Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home”. 24 May 2015. http://w2.vatican. va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclicalaudato-si.html. Rossing, Barbara R. The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation. New York: Basic Books, 2005. Scheuer, Blazenka. The Return of YHWH: The Tension Between Deliverance and Repentance in Isaiah 40–55. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008. Schmitt, Carl. Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1947 bis 1958, edited by Gerd Giesler and Martin Tielke. 2nd edition. Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 2015. Skrimshire, Stefan. “Seeing Beyond the Tipping Point: Climate Risks, Faith and Political Action”. In Eco-Awareness: Exploring Religion, Ethics and Aesthetics, edited by Sigurd Bergmann and Heather Eaton, 97–111. Studies in Religion and the Environment 3. Berlin: LIT, 2009. ———. “What Are We Waiting For? Climate Change and the Narrative of Apocalypse”. In Religion and Environmental Change: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Climate and Sustainability, edited by Sigurd Bergmann and Dieter Gerten, 205–226. Studies in Religion and the Environment 2. Berlin: LIT, 2009. Stern, Nicholas. Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2015. Svenungsson, Jayne. Den gudomliga historien: Profetism, messianism & andens utveckling. Göteborg: Glänta, 2014. ———. Divining History: Prophetism, Messianism, and the Development of the Spirit. London and New York: Berghan, 2016. Taubes, Jacob. Abendländische Eschatologie. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 1947. ———. Occidential Eschatology. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. Troeltsch, Ernst. “Eschatologie IV. Dogmatisch”. In Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart vol. 1, 622–632. 1st edition. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1910. ———. Glaubenslehre. Nach Heidelberger Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 1911 und 1912. Munich and Leipzig: Dunker & Humblot, 1925.

What images of the last things do to us  29 Veldman, Robin Globus, Andrew Szasz, and Randolph Haluza-DeLay, eds. How the World’s Religions Are Responding to Climate Change: Social Scientific Investigations. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Walls, Jerry L., ed. The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Westhelle, Vitor. Eschatology and Space: The Lost Dimension in Theology Past and Present. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Žižek, Slavoj. Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.

2 Fear of the future and theology of hope Paul Leer-SalvesenFear of the future and theology of hope

Paul Leer-Salvesen

In the summer of 20111 Norway experienced a tragedy of mass murders and terror. This was the worst violent attack since 1945 in Norway: a young, white Norwegian man killed 77 people, seriously injured 40 and destroyed the Government building in Oslo. He explained the terror as an attack on the social democracy and the multi-ethnic and pluralistic society in Norway. He defended his acts ethically and politically, as necessary means to achieve his goal: a pure and less multicultural society. Hence, he had to attack the famous summer youth camp of the Labour party on Utøya, an idyllic island in a lake some 60 kilometres from Oslo. The offender viewed himself as a patriotic warrior and saviour of his country. In the years after 2011 thousands of other violent warriors have killed civilians in different countries, defending their acts by painting pictures of a new and better future. Ideologically inspired fighters present themselves as authorised to use all necessary means to achieve their goals. They spread fear in various African, American, Asian and European countries: several of the modern terrorists have similarities to millenarians from previous times, presenting alternative pictures of the future and defending extreme means and methods to achieve their goals. Is it possible to meet the terror and threats with alternative eschatologies, philosophies of peace and hope? In this chapter I will argue that contextual theology today should draw from Christian traditions and take part in contemporary discourses about fear of the future and the complex existential, ethical and political issues emerging from terror attacks and wars. Churches and theologians have always contributed to contemporary ethical and political discourses. But maybe it is more necessary than ever to participate in the discourses as Christians, not only as fellow citizens in a secular language. Christian theology should be a theology of hope and may be used to contradict the many flourishing anthropologies and eschatologies of hopelessness. In the aftermath of the tragedy in 2011, the churches of Norway literally opened their doors and people came in and found places for contemplation, places for comfort. Some found narrations and images to interpret what had happened, maybe even resources for new hope. Christian theology today should endeavour to provide conceptual and mental rooms for hope as well as physical rooms and spaces for peace building.

Fear of the future and theology of hope  31

Fear, pictures of the future and films “Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil”, said Aristotle famously – or in a more complete form in his Rhetoric (II.5) where he gives a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of fear: “Fear may be defined as a pain or disturbance due to a mental picture of some destructive or painful evil in the future”. Fear is pain coming from pictures we draw of the future. Aristotle’s description still makes sense after 2,300 years. One obvious difference is that we have more pictures than he had, and a lot of new opportunities to produce pictures. Disaster films, zombie films and some science fiction films can be seen as various modern collections of what Aristotle called “mental pictures of some destructive or painful evil in the future”. “Zombies are hot”, especially in America, I learn from Dr Kipp Davis, a Canadian Qumran researcher who has written an article with the title: “Zombies in America and in Qumran”.2 Films such as Zombieland (2009), World War Z (2013) and Warm Bodies (2013) are popular and have in recent years entered the main cultural scenes in the USA. AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010) has had its fourth season (2014) and achieved the highest ratings every Saturday night – even outmatching live National Football League broadcasts. Kipp Davis writes: Our escalating fascination with [zombies] over the course of the past decade probably says something of sociological significance, and perhaps indicates a growing uneasiness about our self-security as a species, our survival, and ultimately about our perception of the future and our place on the planet. The twenty-first century American obsession with the living dead in many ways appears to reflect an apocalyptic worldview.3 Kipp Davis is a skilled Qumran researcher, and this background has led him to an interesting comparison. It has inspired him to consider how apocalyptism is portrayed in films from popular culture and to compare them with the apocalyptic expectations of the Qumran Essenes, who wrote and collected the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are a lot of other films dealing with the future and contemporary fear of what is coming. Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) is certainly different from the zombie films, telling the story of a little group of people who have no other choice than waiting for the ultimate disaster when a planet crashes into Mother Earth and destroys it completely. Melancholia is so beautiful – the music, the pictures – but like many other narratives of coming disasters, it is a film without hope, a story of absolute hopelessness. Whatever the little group of people do, they simply cannot change their destiny or the destiny of the planet. They must resign themselves, and accept what is coming without resentment and anger. The ultimate crash is unavoidable. The future is nothingness. What comes, comes, is the melancholic message from Lars von Trier. Here are no choices, no freedom, no space for action. If I  should find a little spark of hope in this narrative, it

32  Paul Leer-Salvesen would be the famous Stoic one, in my paraphrase: Don’t worry! When the future comes, you will not be around anymore, and if you are still here, the future has not yet come!

Ethics of hope One of the important themes in Christian eschatology is the relationship between realism and hope: yes, there are many signs in our world and society pointing to coming disasters, especially in the depressing ways we treat the nature we share with other species on Earth. But disaster paintings without hope, without any possibilities for change, are foreign forms of eschatology in a Christian context. It should also be said that contemporary theology should be critical of some of the eschatological concepts which are presented as Christian. Examples are to be found in several sects and closed Christian milieus, or for example in so-called post-millennialism, or in the Seven Mountains Domination in the USA. In this movement, there is a renaissance of theocratic thinking, and an expectation of special roles for Christian as rulers in the world in the last days. Erling Rimehaug, in the newspaper Vårt Land in Norway, claims that the family of the former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz belongs to this movement, and this information becomes interesting when we hear that Cruz wants to re-establish the USA as a Christian nation.4 How is it possible to read the alarming signs of coming disasters in nature and society today without becoming speculative or fatalistic? How can the dimensions of hope in the Christian faith and other religious and humanistic worldviews become energy for change for the better in our contemporary world? “Realism teaches us a sense for reality – for what is. Hope awakens our sense for potentiality – for what could be. In concrete action, we always relate the potentiality to what exists, the present to the future. If our actions were directed only to the future, we should fall victim to utopias; if they were related only to the present, we should miss our chances”.5 In these words, we recognise the master’s voice: Jürgen Moltmann. Forty-seven years after his famous book Theology of Hope, he published Ethics of Hope. In this book, he argues that it is not only possible, but also necessary, to bring the Christian hope and Christian eschatologies into contact with political and ethical challenges in our time.6 I read Jürgen Moltmann in the aftermath of the tragedy in Norway in 2011. This event was also in an international perspective a huge mass murder with a high number of victims and only one perpetrator. But of course, it is a “small” incident compared with the horror in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and various other countries ridden by wars, terror and violent conflicts. This case could still teach us Nordic people something important about terror and how unexpected terror can influence our attitudes towards the future. Norway has been, and still is, one of the most peaceful and nonviolent societies in the world: 25–35 homicides every year for the last 20 years in a population of 5.5 million is very few (El Salvador has 15 homicides every day within a similar population). Seventy-seven victims in one day was a terrifying event in Norwegian society. Some say that

Fear of the future and theology of hope  33 Norway lost its innocence in those late summer days of 2011. The vulnerability of our open Nordic society was demonstrated, and so was the lack of preparation for worst-case scenarios on so many levels in the Norwegian state and society. In a tough way, Norwegians were taught “realism” and had their sense for reality sharpened, to use the words of Moltmann. But we have also learned that we need our hopes, our sense for potentiality – for what could be. But let us start with the case from 2011 and a short report for potential readers outside the Nordic countries.

Terror and violence July 22, 2011 has become a special date in the history of Norway, a day on which many Norwegians became acquainted with the phenomenon of fear in a new way. On this day Anders Behring Breivik made a bomb explode by the Government building in the city centre of Oslo. Eight people were killed, several were injured and the building was destroyed. When police and fire workers rushed to the scene, Breivik drove his car to a peaceful lake 60 kilometres north of Oslo. Here 500 young people were gathered for the traditional summer camp on the island of Utøya, arranged by the Social Democratic Party of Norway. Former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland was keynote speaker that day, but she left the island a short time before Breivik arrived. She was his main target. Breivik was armed as an elite soldier, clothed in a fake police uniform. He killed 69 of the children and young adults and leaders on the island, one by one, face to face. The shooting lasted nearly two hours. Many of the young delegates managed to hide or swim away from the island in the cold water. Several risked their own lives to rescue others. Sixty-nine died and more than 40 received severe injuries before the police managed to discover what happened and came to the island. The offender surrendered immediately when confronted with armed police from the Norwegian Delta Force. But the police came far too late to rescue the young victims from the deadly weapons of the killer. Seventy-seven people were killed on that day. The government centre of Oslo lies in ruins. One single white 32-year-old Norwegian man was the offender. He was no foreigner, no Islamic terrorist, not a known criminal. He was the young man next door in a white middle-class neighbourhood. This is the greatest violent disaster in Norway since the Second World War, and one of the most terrible mass murders performed in peace time by one single offender ever. What makes such an amount of violence and evil possible, and how shall we deal with it? This has been the main question among ordinary people, but also among scholars from different disciplines in the aftermath of July 22, 2011: psychiatrics, psychologists, criminologists, philosophers and historians have discussed the issues. So have some theologians. In this article, I will look into some of the ethical and theological questions which arise from this tragedy. What sort of fears did the Norwegians experience during the summer of 2011? The first and very concrete one was the fear of terror, a fear millions of people are familiar with in a far too high number of countries and cities all over the

34  Paul Leer-Salvesen world: New York, Madrid, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Beirut, Bagdad, Kabul and numerous other cities and townships. Many felt that the picture of the harmonious and nonviolent Norwegian society had been destroyed for ever, and to use the language of Aristotle, we have some new mental pictures of a more destructive and painful future, brought to life by all the terrible reports and pictures from Utøya and Oslo Centre. How can such tragedies happen? What language shall we use to describe and explain it – the language of “madness”, of “evil”, of “totalitarianism”? The first court appointed a psychiatric team (two psychiatrists) who observed Breivik and found him insane and not accountable. They concluded that he had “paranoid schizophrenia” and that he was psychotic at the time of the crime. Following Norwegian law (Paragraph 44 in Norwegian Penal Law) and a 150-year long tradition in our country, he then could not be punished. As psychotic, the offender is by definition not accountable and not guilty, but it is possible to be sentenced to a psychiatric ward. The conclusion from the first psychiatric team was met with protests and debate in Norway, and the court appointed a new psychiatric team to observe him. The second team concluded that he was not insane and not psychotic, but that he suffered from serious personality disorders. They found him accountable. The second team was also interested in his political ideology; the first team had not paid much attention to such issues. The court listened mainly to the second team and several expert witnesses on right radical ideology and terrorism. The court found Breivik guilty and sentenced him to the most serious punishment possible according to Norwegian Penal Law: 21 years of detention in prison, with the option to prolong the detention if he is still found dangerous to society at the end of the 21 years in prison. What is theologically relevant in this tragic story? Several themes, I think. Here we have some of the old themes from the history of theology (and philosophy) on the agenda in a very brutal way: questions of the free will of man, guilt and responsibility, the ethics of punishment, and maybe the most difficult of all questions: the problem of evil, in theology and in anthropology.7 How can one man commit such horrible acts against his neighbours? This is the dark part of the story of the Norwegian terror attack. It is possible to see another and brighter one: in the first days and weeks after the tragedy, the Norwegians did not answer with cries for revenge or lynching. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Oslo and in other cities with red roses in their hands. All over the country, people came to the churches to find suitable places for their sorrow and despair. One million people visited the cathedral of Oslo (the city has 600,000 inhabitants). Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said in his first speech to the people that Norway will respond to the terror with more openness, more freedom and more democracy. The Norwegian government and the people understood the act of terrorism as a violent attack on democratic society and democratic values. And the first and unified answer was that Norway would not sacrifice these values to stop future terror. This is the bright and shining part of the story, but it has indeed its terrible dark sides as well.

Fear of the future and theology of hope  35

Breivik – a millenarian? What about the offender: was he mad or bad, ill or evil? Could he really be held accountable and responsible for what he did? He had planned the attack for years. He gathered weapons and explosives, trained himself physically and psychologically and played violent war games on the Internet. He published a “manifesto” on the Internet a few hours before the act of terror, and here he presents himself as a right-wing radical fundamentalist. He defended himself with the same ideology in court, and tried to justify his acts as necessary means in a war against a political system, which sacrifices true and patriotic Norwegian values. His main enemy is the Norwegian social democracy which has allowed a multicultural and multiethnic society to emerge from the former white and Protestant Christian Nordic community. Breivik’s task is to “clean” society and he understands his acts as part of a patriotic defensive action to save his country. In his manifesto, he has gathered all sorts of right-wing propaganda and added some from himself. In detail, he sets out what he has done and what he plans to do. In court, he repeated his ideology and defended his actions. He sees himself as a modern Temple Knight in a war against the social democracy. He calls himself a Christian, defending the traditional Western and Nordic Christian culture against Islam and other threats from “foreign” cultures. In 60 years, he proclaims, people will understand why the killings and destruction were necessary sacrifices, and then he will become a hero. In some ways, he has similarities to other violent millenarians or totalitarianists, who are willing to sacrifice the lives of others and their own lives to save the future and bring “the kingdom” to come. Among psychiatrists the discussion about Breivik’s diagnosis is not closed. But the sentence from the court was probably in harmony with mainstream thinking in Norway at the time, among the public as well as among many experts from different disciplines. Ironically enough, the offender was also pleased to be found accountable: his wish was to be taken seriously, as a warrior and fighter with ideas and values. His fear was of being treated as a madman and a psychiatric patient: it is difficult to be a hero and a diagnosed patient at the same time. Is this the bad side of treating Breivik as a responsible and guilty person? Perhaps. We have to go deeper into these questions, because they are challenging, for both a theologian and an ethicist. And among forensic psychiatrists and psychologists, the Breivik sentence is still disputed. Many skilled persons hold that he suffered from “paranoid schizophrenia” and that the “rationality” in his horrible worldview and his interpretation of the present time and the future are rooted and grounded in this disease. But fear also played a role when the justice system dealt with Breivik, fear of what could happen if he was treated as an insane person: in Norway, he would then have been handed over to a hospital, and the hospital could only keep him by force until he had recovered from his psychosis. No longer! We have no “criminal hospitals” in Norway, only some closed yards with higher security in normal hospitals. What could have happened if Breivik had become a free man after a few months or at most a few years in a psychiatric

36  Paul Leer-Salvesen ward? What could have happened to him and to potential victims (if he had not changed his “mind” and “ideology” and “eschatology”)? In the aftermath of the Breivik trial, the Norwegian government appointed a committee of jurists, psychiatrists, psychologists, a philosopher and a theologian to consider the difficult questions about guilt, accountability, diagnoses and the relation between forensic psychiatry and the court. I was a member of this committee. It is unusual that the government appoint philosophers and theologians to this sort of work. Maybe it is a sign of humility, a recognition of the need to work interdisciplinarily with the difficult questions of guilt and atonement, free will and evil acts. The committee delivered a 450-page report to the government in October 2014.8 It is now up to the parliament to make possible changes in different laws: penal law, health laws and laws regulating the court institutions.9 One of the tasks for the philosopher and the theologian in the committee was to remind the group about history: men have discussed accountability, responsibility and the problem of evil for 3,000 years.

Conflicts, free will and evil The questions about consciousness, will, guilt and accountability are classic themes in philosophy of law, and deeply reflected in Christian traditions and theological thinking about persons and acts, sinners and sin. Aristotle is one of the pioneers concerning thinking about accountability. In his Nicomachean Ethics he states that it is meaningless and cruel to punish people who do not know what they have done, namely children and insane people. This stand became a legal one in Roman law, and was also an important issue for Immanuel Kant at the beginning of modernity. Kant took it even further when he in Metaphysik der Sitten claims that it is not the evil act that ought to be punished, but the will to commit the evil act. Kant’s stand is the strongest possible proclamation of the role of the will in evaluating and judging human acts. It is a longstanding tradition in various legal cultures to differentiate between acts done on purpose and unwilled accidents. It is also an important human practice to show mercy to children and various groups of adults who for various reasons do not really “know” what they do. The problem for the court is that the line from will to act can be far more complicated: children can harm other people and so can psychiatric patients. We should not punish them and send them to prison, but is it right to say that they are not guilty? St. Paul wrote about the connection between will and acts in a more ambiguous and complicated way than most paragraphs about guilt and accountability in modern penal codes: “For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Rom 7.19 KJV). After World War II and the Holocaust, several philosophers and theologians contributed to the discussions about individual and guilt and punishment: Karl Jaspers, Martin Buber, Karl Barth and many others delivered important reflections. I have been reading Hannah Arendt in recent years, and I find several of her texts inspiring in our contemporary political and ethical climate. In one of her late books, On Violence,10 she reflects on the relationship between individual and

Fear of the future and theology of hope  37 group in violent situations and terror attacks, and I think we have a lot to learn from her in a situation where we shall form ethics and politics to confront threats from IS and similar groups now and in the future. She states that the first value to disappear in a violent situation is “individualism”. “In its stead, we find a kind of group coherence which is more intensely felt and proves to be a much stronger, though less lasting, bond than all the varieties of friendship, civil or private”.11 In other books (The Human Condition, 1958; The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951; Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1963) Arendt wrote about responsibility, judgement and guilt after the Holocaust. In 1969 she once again rejects the conception of collective guilt, with the conflicts between blacks and whites in American society as thema. Hannah Arendt writes: “Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing”.12 Her friend, the philosopher Karl Jaspers, made the same statement in his book Die Schuldfrage.13 Both Arendt and Jaspers warn against a thinking and a practice which remove responsibility and guilt from individuals. If we are to be able to fight violence or at least diminish wars, terror and violent conflicts, the individual offenders must be made responsible and brought to trial. This is also one of the important themes in Eichmann in Jerusalem.14

Conflicts Conflict language has a hegemonic status in several disciplines dealing with violence and offences today, on the macro-level as well as the micro-level: in family therapy and counselling, in mediating in neighbourhoods, schools and work places, and on the macro-level with ethnic groups and even countries. In many situations, conflict language is a precise and meaningful language, especially where the parties are equal, or not too asymmetric in terms of power and social and cultural position. It makes sense to talk about a conflict between China and Japan about the disputed islands in the Indian Ocean. It is also to the point to talk about a conflict between my two friends, a well-educated, middle-class man and woman in a bumpy marriage where she is the victim one day, and he the next. Conflict language is also an optimistic language, bearing hope for a possible solution for both parties, maybe even hope for reconciliation. But not all evils are conflicts. Is it right to talk about a conflict between a 16-year-old girl and a 40-year-old foreign man who raped her in a park? They had never seen each other before. Is it right to describe such a situation as a conflict which should be solved? In such a case – and in many similar cases where a much stronger offender victimises innocent people, I  find conflict language almost insulting. A father who abuses his minor daughter – is it right to talk about a conflict between the two? In my opinion it is more adequate to talk about an evil act committed by an offender towards a victim. The offender becomes guilty in relation to the victim. It is sin. The old language about sin and atonement, guilt and (maybe) forgiveness is more suitable to describe what is going on. Conflict

38  Paul Leer-Salvesen language is in some situations too neutral, too distanced, too little normative and ethical. There is no room for the phenomena of Good and Evil in conflict language. This language is much more pragmatic and utilitarian. Could we talk about a conflict between the terrorists and the killed and wounded citizens in Nice, Paris, Copenhagen, Madrid or Istanbul? No. We are dealing with something other than “conflicts” which need to be “mediated” and “solved”. We need another language, another grammar. The victimised families and the survivors are grieving people who are struggling to survive after a terrible loss. That is a different situation from being in a conflict. The offenders should also be treated as grieving persons, possibly on their way to remorse, repentance and atonement. In many cases they are or become “grievers”. Many offenders grieve and feel remorse for their evil acts. When we try to find a language to describe the situation for victims and offenders after horrible tragedies, it is often more suitable to go to languages used in chapels and funerals than the languages in institutions for conflict resolution. When I lose my beloved wife, no one will describe me as a person in a “conflict”. I  am mourning and grieving, struggling for months and maybe years to come back to life again. The situation for many victims and offenders is similar: they are human beings in grief, on the difficult and demanding journey from death to life. Please do not misunderstand me: I have deep respect for good conflict resolution, both on macro- and micro-levels. My point is that the good and skilled people who deal with mediation and conflict resolution should include the languages of grief and mourning, guilt, atonement and forgiveness in their vocabularies. So should therapists in many cases. Therapists and mediators have something to learn from priests, ministers and deacons who have experiences from funerals and grieving relatives, and certainly the other way around as well: the pastoral care field has a lot to learn from mediators and therapists.

Guilt and forgiveness Derek R. Nelson15 makes similar reflections about languages in his book Sin: A Guide for the Perplexed. He tries to show that the old Christian (and Jewish) concept of sin is a treasure we should use more willingly and seriously in our late modern situation. He writes: “To use the language of sin to account for moral fault has the benefit of invoking the violation not just of transcendent norms, but of transcendence itself. And when transcendence itself is understood to be ingredient in the experience of moral failure and ethical rupture, then the healing and reconciliatory aid of transcendence itself becomes suddenly available. The good news about sin is – must it be said? – forgiveness”.16 In the Christian church, I have learned about the connection between guilt and forgiveness: all that is said about guilt in the Christian tradition is said from a very special point of view: the possibility of and hope for forgiveness. As Christians, we believe in a forgiving God, and this belief gives meaning to the language of guilt and sin. To make the point clear: in the Christian church it is not meaningful to talk about sin and guilt separately and in themselves. The language of guilt and

Fear of the future and theology of hope  39 sin gets its meaning from the hope of forgiveness. Without this hope we could shut up and cancel every further talk about sin and guilt. It would be better to be silent and hide away these dark sides of life and talk about something pleasant instead (which happens in some parts of Christian preaching today). But with the hope of forgiveness as background it is meaningful to talk about sin and guilt. Derek Nelson uses the formulation “good news about sin”, because he understands and interprets the phenomenon of sin with the hope of forgiveness in view. But is it possible to “cross the line” between church and society with these insights? Is the insight about the relation between guilt and forgiveness relevant in ethics and philosophy of law, and psychology as well? If I read Derek Nelson right, he makes the following point: insights and reflections from Christian theology and Christian traditions can contribute meaningfully in the secular arena. Christian understandings of guilt and sin are relevant for general ethics – maybe even for therapy and politics. This is my point as well. Let me make one further point before I continue: sin and guilt are connected in Christian thinking. Our hope for forgiveness from God concerns both our guilt and our sin. What is the difference between sin and guilt? This is not the place for a broad reflection on Christian “hamartiology” (teaching on sin), just a few points: sin is in the tradition described as something more than concrete acts. It is a theme in Christian ontology rather than in ethics. Sin is with a famous formulation described as a position where the human being is incurvatus in se (curved in on himself) (Augustine and Luther),17 losing sight of God and his neighbour, worshipping Ego instead of the Other. Sin is an important paragraph in the ontological grammar for both Christians and Jews, but it is also an issue in Christian ethics, because sin leads to immoral acts or immoral passivity. Sin leads to evil acts against others, and to guilt in relation to others. When I now reflect further, I will mainly talk about “guilt”, which communicates better in the secular and pluralistic society than “sin”: everyone has a relationship to the phenomenon of guilt, and guilt is a key word in many disciplines: in law, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, and ethics and in everyday language. Sin is a key word only in theology. But remember my point: theological reflection about sin and guilt has something important to contribute in general ethical discussions. Moltmann pointed to the connection between realism and hope: “Realism teaches us a sense for reality – for what is. Hope awakens our sense for potentiality – for what could be”.18 I see a parallel connection with the phenomena of sin and hope in the Christian tradition: the talk about sin is and should be realistic on the micro-level as well as the macro-level, dealing with my personal sin which I confess and ask my neighbour and God to forgive, and the collective sin which I share with my fellow citizens when we use and abuse the environment we live in. Like Arendt and Jaspers I  find it difficult to talk about collective guilt, and easier to talk about collective sin. And from Moltmann I have learned that the Christian hope can give energy to endure the painful realism and work for change in both personal and social life. In the Christian tradition, this hope is described as an Easter hope, a hope of life after death, Easter day after Good Friday, not only in heaven, but also on earth.

40  Paul Leer-Salvesen

The problem of evil In the aftermath of terror and violent disasters, people may struggle with different forms of the problem of evil, and this struggle can steal away the future from them. This problem can be formulated in different ways, and several of them deal with the image of God: where was God when his children experienced such a horror? I agree with Derek Nelson when he warns against attempts to meet the problem of evil with different efforts to harmonise suffering and evil acts with conceptions of God’s will. He writes: “People who live through terrible tragedy, or a life of misery and suffering, should not have to hear that God has used their suffering for some other end, no matter how good that end is. God does not merely instrumentalize sin and evil; a basic premise of Christianity has been that God defeats it”.19 Moltmann has made an important contribution to a theology of the Suffering and Fighting God in The Crucified God. Here he combines two essential themes from this thinking, the theology of God suffering together with his people and the theology of hope. He writes: “Our history of suffering is taken up into his history of suffering. In that way, his future becomes our future, and the happiness of his love is the resurrection of our life”.20 In the months after July 22, 2011 some people in Norway struggled with different efforts to formulate theodicies – apologies for God. One or two Christian preachers formulated publicly the old phrase about “God has a plan, and a meaning in this suffering”. But this is not widespread theology in my country. Not today. Not after the Holocaust. Not after Rwanda and Cambodia. Not after the tsunami and several horrible terror attacks. Not after Syria and the refugee crisis. Christian theologies of a God instrumentalising suffering for a higher, historical end are unusual in the 21st century. Thank God! God does not deserve to be constructed as the Biggest Terrorist of all. But some questions still remain, and one of the most difficult is formulated by Moltmann (among many others, including K. E. Løgstrup in Denmark): is it possible to combine the theology of a God who suffers together with the victims (and the offenders) with the theology of hope? For me (and many researchers of violence) the problem of evil is an anthropological question as well as a theological one. Why are human beings capable of doing such horrible harm to their neighbours? I have no comprehensive answer. But I know that we should cooperate with lay people, artists, authors and scholars of multiple disciplines to try to find some answers. Theology can contribute in different ways, and theology can contribute with hope – not only theology of hope – which is important enough – but also with an anthropology of hope, a perspective which claims that no human is hopeless, no human is without potential for change, growth, satisfaction and atonement. In our societies today, the identification of person and acts is closer than ever: acts identify the person. Ruling anthropologies in different fields proclaim that the acts tell the truth about a person: successes and defeats, good deeds and bad deeds, beauty and ugliness, wealth and poverty. The CV is more important than ever, and there is one big problem with CVs nowadays: they are so complete, and

Fear of the future and theology of hope  41 they are often published in a lot of digital ways so that your past is with you for ever and ever! I am sure that a lot of young people today, struggling to get into employment, formulate a new prayer to God: please, free me from my CV and give me a future! In older societies, it was a shared insight that all human beings have something in common independent of status, intelligence, success or failure: the soul. The judge had a soul, and so did the convicted person. Rich and poor, famous and unknown. The soul was a notion leading to worth and dignity, independent of acts and achievements. The belief in a human soul is no longer a common belief in our society. My point is not to argue for a new teaching about the soul, but to claim that the “death” of the soul leaves behind a vacuum in anthropological thinking: we need a language which can formulate what all people have in common, independent of the length of their CVs or criminal records. Christian anthropology contains resources to contradict views on human life which say that the acts tell the whole and only truth about a person. Christian anthropology contains important alternatives to deterministic and hopeless views of human life. Including for murderers and terrorists? Yes. Including for the offenders who have committed awful acts. Therefore, there are many (including myself) who find it extremely difficult to combine Christian anthropological thinking with a defence of the death penalty. For that is the alternative: an anthropology which does not include the dimension of hope, the belief in possible growth, change and atonement, leads to a defence of the death penalty for the worst and the most serious violent crimes. The death penalty rests on an anthropology of hopelessness, at least for some people.

Theology of hope and anthropology of hope In theology of hope we learn that it is possible to draw energy and resources for our political and ethical work and struggle from the belief in God as Creator and Saviour. We can also learn to avoid the category “hopelessness” both in our worldviews and in our anthropologies. Will it always be hope, for terrorists and mass murderers as well? Yes, it will always be hope. It is no solution to drown oneself in cynical realism, claiming that some sorts of people are hopeless, evil and unchangeable. Realism is necessary, but never sufficient. We can learn from the old Master of Hope, Jürgen Moltmann, that in the Christian tradition it is possible to combine realism with hope – to see at the same time what is and what could be, in the persons we meet and in society and nature. At the end of the book Man, Jürgen Moltmann reflects on the phenomenon of reconciliation, and his concept of the Christian hope as anticipation of the future.21 The anticipation is not indeed the kingdom itself, but is its beginning and foundation. Reconciliation, as theological language expresses it, is the beginning of redemption in an unredeemed world, and redemption is the future of reconciliation which may be hoped for. And he says: One who has experienced reconciliation can no longer be content with the present state of the world. The joy which he experiences makes the misery of

42  Paul Leer-Salvesen the created world a pain to him. Reconciliation without alteration of life and of its circumstances is a poor consolation. Alteration without reconciliation, however, remains tensed up, and easily leads to terrorism.22 There are still good reasons for fear of the future, for fear of terrorism and ecological collapse and wars and refugee crises. It is understandable that millions gather in front of different screens to see zombie films and disaster films on Saturday nights. Maybe this phenomenon is not as new as it seems; maybe it has some similarities to other constructions of apocalypses and eschatologies in history. We learn from Jürgen Moltmann and other theologians of hope that we shall always be critical of those who claim that they know something about the future which is hidden for others. Prophesies and future talk should always be examined and tested by their fruits: is this a future talk which liberates people for work in the present world? Is it realistic comfort or only new events in the long list of horror shows and freak shows outside and inside Judaism and Christendom? Rightly read and interpreted, however, the Christian tradition presents resources which may empower humanity to deal with present challenges and fight depression and indifference. Reconciliation is now, and also not yet, and therefore there are good reasons for hope. I write this text after a period with new fears in the Norwegian population: the government and the police chose to inform the public about a serious terror threat against civilians. Armed police officers showed up in huge numbers in public spaces, airports, railway stations and harbours. It was unusual. Normally the Norwegian police are unarmed. The threat supposedly had links to the group Islamic State, IS. Several Norwegian citizens have joined the group and the fights in Syria and Iraq, together with young men and women from several other Western countries. They are now trained warriors, and trained to accept brutal means to achieve the goals of the group and to fulfil a new future. Who are they, and how could they join this group? Do they really represent a serious threat for the future of our still to some extent open European communities? Do they deserve the status of “monster” that some tend to give them now? Are they insane? Are they accountable? Do they resemble Anders Behring Breivik? It is a challenge for theology of hope and ethics of hope to include realism in reflections about the future. It is, however, an important task for Christians to formulate a protest against anthropologies and images of the human which identify Evil with evil persons. It is not as simple as that what threatens us and our future comes from identifiable evil persons. It is not as easy as that we can identify the monsters, “take them out” and secure our future. Christian theology can formulate an alternative way of thinking of the connection between person and act, and this thinking includes the dimension of hope, even for people who have committed horrible acts. In the introduction to this volume, Sigurd Bergmann writes: “In Christian Faith hope is not just a simple waiting or biding but ‘a creative expectation’ of the things that God has promised with the resurrection of Christ”. Eschatology matters and

Fear of the future and theology of hope  43 can liberate and make us creative; it can also make us depressive or even cruel by justifying terrible acts and behaviour. Let us use the Christian eschatologies to bring hope to the world.

Notes 1 I have given a more comprehensive analysis of the case from 2011 in the article “Theology After the Massacre in Norway”, Dialog 52 (2013): 110–120. I have also analysed the trial from 2012 in Paul Leer-Salvesen, “Rettssaken som overgangsrite – dommeren som seremonimester for mennesker i sorg”, in Rettsfølelsen i strafferettssystemet: perspektiver fra teori og praksis, eds. Anne Marie Frøseth, Linda Gröning and Rasmus H. Wandall (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2016), 209–230. 2 Kipp Davis, “Zombies in America and in Qumran”, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 27.2 (2015): 148–163. 3 Davis, “Zombies”, 148. 4 Erling Rimehaug, “Innta landet”, Vårt land, 12 March 2016, www.vl.no/meninger/ kommentar/innta-landet-1.700530. 5 Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 3. 6 Moltmann published another book two years later: Der lebendige Gott und die Fülle des Lebens (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2014), in English The Living God and the Fullness of Life (London: John Knox Press, 2016), in itself a sign of hope to write such a text at nearly 90 years of age! 7 I use “anthropology” in its original sense: reflection on what it is to be human. 8 NOU 2014: 10: “Skyldevne, sakkyndighet og samfunnsvern”. 9 The parliament has not yet (as of January 2018) finished the work. 10 H. Arendt, On Violence (London: Harvest, 1969). 11 Arendt, On Violence, 67. 12 Arendt, On Violence, 65. Karl Jaspers, Die Schuldfrage (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1946). H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963). 13 Jaspers, Die Schuldfrage. 14 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. 15 Derek R. Nelson, Sin: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 2. 16 I have written about Nelson’s book in Leer-Salvesen, “Theology After the Massacre in Norway”. 17 Matt Jenson, The Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther and Barth on “homo incurvatus in se” (London: Bloomsbury, 2007). 18 Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, 3. 19 Nelson, Sin, 2. 20 Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1973), 28. 21 Jürgen Moltmann, Man (London: SPCK, 1974), 116. 22 Moltmann, Man, 116.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963. New York: Penguin, 1964. ———. On Violence. London: Harvest, 1969. Davis, Kipp. “Zombies in America and in Qumran”. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 27.2 (2015): 148–163.

44  Paul Leer-Salvesen Jaspers, Karl. Die Schuldfrage. Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1946. Jenson, Matt. The Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther and Barth on “homo incurvatus in se”. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. Leer-Salvesen, Paul. “Theology After the Massacre in Norway”. Dialog 52 (2013): 110–120. ———. “Rettssaken som overgangsrite – dommeren som seremonimester for mennesker i sorg”. In Rettsfølelsen i strafferettssystemet: perspektiver fra teori og praksis, edited by Anne Marie Frøseth, Linda Gröning, and Rasmus H. Wandall, 209–230. Oslo: Gyldendal, 2016. Moltmann, Jürgen. The Crucified God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1973. ———. Man. London: SPCK, 1974. ———. Ethics of Hope. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012. ———. Der lebendige Gott und die Fülle des Lebens. Güthersloh: Güthersloher Verlagshaus, 2014. ———. The Living God and the Fullness of Life. London: John Knox Press, 2015. Nelson, Derek R. Sin: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: T&T Clark, 2011. Rimehaug, Erling. “Innta landet”. Vårt land, 12 March 2016. www.vl.no/meninger/ kommentar/innta-landet-1.700530.

3 The revelations of global climate change Marion GrauThe revelations of global climate change

A petro-eschatology Marion Grau

Nah ist Und schwer zu fassen der Gott. Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst/Das Rettende auch.1 Near and Hard to believe is the god. Yet where danger is, Grows that which redeems. (Author’s translation)

Introduction Theology has long spoken of a hope that is not visible or graspable, of promises that draw towards a divine future,2 of both hope and hopeless scenarios as having the potential of self-fulfilling prophecies. Jürgen Moltmann’s suggestion that “a proper theology would have to be constructed in the light of its future goal”, and that “[e]schatology should not be its end, but its beginning”,3 hints at narratives inducing self-fulfilled prophecies. Christian eschatologies have imagined many worlds, some imperial, others counter-imperial, some imagining a kind of progress, others a kind of return.4 Human-induced climate change confronts the inhabitants of this planet with unprecedented challenges. Theologians working with Christian traditions are challenged to consider what kind of eschaton and what kinds of revelations this period many call the Anthropocene presents us with, and what kinds of resources, theological language and action are appropriate. What kinds of ends and what kinds of beginnings are enmeshed and anticipated in the eschatological discourse of climate change? What goals and what hopes are the beginning of eschatologies in the Anthropocene? I, too, am marked and anointed into petroleum economies and the revelations these relations are bringing about. During my lifetime, various apocalyptic scenarios have played out around the addiction and consumption of oil – its infrastructure, its procurement, access to and the price of it. I hail from a region in Germany where Gottlieb Benz constructed the first functioning combustion engine and a region made rich and transformed by the automobile industry. I moved to the US,

46  Marion Grau a country whose politics are tightly linked to interests and beliefs about petroleum and climate change, and now live in Norway, a country whose wealth and economy are dangerously dependent on fossil fuels. In this article, I would like to consider the revelations that excessive carbon extraction and petroleum consumption have wrought in several ways: (1) by considering how climate change challenges our perception, language and theology, (2) by gathering tools that aid in the diagnosis of the common predicaments that prevent adequate recognition of these signs of the times and 3) by telling stories of the redemptive courage needed to manifest sanctuaries and communities of hope. First, I will consider how religious and theological imagination might shift in response to disruptive changes in our climate. The very substance of theology may be challenged in ways not yet fully realised. If “religions, as human belief systems, are just as vulnerable to global change as ecosystems and populations”,5 what does it mean to narrate divine agency in the Anthropocene, an age whose profound changes are triggered by disruptive human interaction with the networks of creation? How might theologians name the instances of redemption manifest in this context of ecocide, in a time of denial, inaction, accelerated and unabated consumption? What movements, technologies and structures of energy and societal transition might emerge, and what new covenants with the Divine are to be written? How should we speak and act when our actions seem to amount to little, and our hopes increasingly seem dimmed? In the face of increasingly unavoidable catastrophic change, of water shortages and sea levels rising perhaps for the next hundred years, how do we conceive of and narrate the Divine for those who come after us to allow for greater potential of stabilisation and regeneration?

Telling the time and place of dangers ahead and hopes to build upon Apocalyptic talk is both ancient and perennial. Ends of worlds have been announced for millennia, and across many cultures. Humanity seems to always be facing one apocalypse or another, revelations, endings of one cultural narrative or community or another. In the context of Christian narrative, it refers to a history of telling of time and place, that is, it refers to a hermeneutical act. The hermeneutics of why and how what end is coming, and what this might mean, are legion. Some eschatological discourse combines the announcement of an end of an established order with the possibility of a new world, period or geopolitical order. Catherine Keller has argued that a look at the etymology clarifies the concepts of apocalypse and eschatology. Thus, apokaluptein has to do with unveiling and disclosure, while eschaton refers to a spatial or temporal end or edge.6 Beginning with eschatology, as Moltmann suggests, rather than ending with it, makes a certain kind of strange sense when the future seems to be such a radical departure from the past. Poised, with Keller, between eschatology as a revelatory discourse that at its best resists the twin dangers of fatalism and romanticism, I propose a petro-eschatology, mapping the end and ends of fossil dependency and possible ways through it.

The revelations of global climate change  47 Eschatological narratives of the end, or of transformation, are often set in a landscape, affecting not only time, but also space. The end-talk of climate change interweaves local and global scenarios. The “end of oil”7 continues to announce itself and yet seemingly is endlessly delayed. This delay of the parousia of the manifestation of new presences and new systems is matched by the desperate clinging to the energy ways of the past while “ending” the possibility of averting the most dramatic long-term unhinging. For there is already the parousia of climate change: we know it is here, and are in full-on denial. This denial takes multiple forms, from the very denial it is happening to the denial of the urgency of immediate and significant responses. This fossil parousia is manifested through geological and archaeological evidence, plastic in oceans and waters, and largescale pollution. In the midst of our lives anointed by oil, greased by its wheels and transported by its combustion, Christians continue to await that other parousia, of the manifestation of the anointed Divine, the full presence of God. Yet, as we wait for a fuller manifestation of the Divine, that other sacramentality, that ongoing emulsion of petrocultures, blends the waters of life with microplastics that infest bodies of water, water dwellers and humans – 8not to mention warming the planet and melting the ice. Many struggle to find language to speak of the massive scale of changes and losses that seem impossible to express and liable to drive people even further into forms of denial.9 Robert MacFarlane describes the thickening of language that occurs in the Anthropocene, on the difficulty of verbalising the changes that are affecting everything in the known world, from climate and lifeways to language.10 There is a kind of apophasis – or as MacFarlane says “an ox on the tongue” – an inability to express that has characterised theology and now also seems to have become more prominent in literary studies and scientific writing. The creation of new words is a symptom. In his lecture MacFarlane showed that literary and academic studies of climate change manifest these changes not only through data but through the language used to speak about them. New forms of language manifest to express the horror and the distortion these changes are bringing. Bill McKibben has argued that we should now call the planet we live on Eaarth to signal its radical transformation.11 In this present age of climate change and deaths and extinctions that are following along with it, whether we call it Anthropocene, Chtulucene12 or something else, how can we name the powers that be? I contend that the limitations of language also affect theology, which already operates under the conditions of the apophatic. And yet, theology needs new ways of telling stories – stories of the powers which humanity exerts over the earth and how that will change ideas of God and divine agency. For the purposes of this essay, what does the thickening of eschatological narrativity look like? If we think of fire as an element crucial in the formation of the planet, but also an early human technology that began to change the earth, we can see the power of telling this story – for it is a story of the quest for combustive energy.13 After Prometheus’ theft of fire, a symbol of human civilisation and its impact on the earth, Zeus creates Pandora (which literally means “all gifted”), and her sealed box or vase contained Zeus’ gifts, a horde of miseries. What often gets forgotten is

48  Marion Grau that there is something that remained in the box: hope. Though hope is not without its own dangers and traps, and can have its own tie to despair, there are practices of hope that behove us.14 Thus, long before the age of petroleum, a narrative connection exists linking fire to technology and to misery, as well as to hope. Hope, according to Moltmann, finds in Christ “not only a consolation in suffering, but also the protest of the divine promise against suffering”.15 Despair tempts many, but is a luxury that people with immediate needs cannot afford. Despair paralyses and often leads to desperate, short-sighted acts. Hope against what seems possible cannot allow itself the luxury of day-dreaming, magical thinking or fatalism, but must engage all senses at maximum capacity for reimagining our connections to the Sacred. Theology then, following Moltmann, must continue to protest the suffering that climate change brings, and name the structures and regimes that contribute to it by whatever means possible. It must enable the “exodus community”16 to address the emotional and psychological fleshpots of denial and articulate new narratives of community, work and life. The wisdoms of the past continue to be relevant, giving rise to new articulations. They are revealed anew by the sharpness of the drama before our eyes. In his reflection on the classic question of theodicy, Where is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope, Jon Sobrino resists asking questions about divine agency after the occurrence of a disaster but rather suggests that we take disastrous events as a kind of “x-ray”. Rather than trying to discern causality in divinity, he proposes seeing disasters as a diagnostic lens that, rather than showing us how God may or may not have caused or punished, instead directs the gaze towards the inequalities and structures that expose some more than others to great risks.17 This theology resists reading disasters, among them climate change, as some form of divine punishment where some areas are devastated and others benefit. A number of governments and regimes resist vehemently the implementation of significant transition out of the carbon age. The antidemocratic potential of “Big Oil” on governments has been a constant in petroleum-based societies.18 Current geopolitical dynamics have as one of their side effects resistance to UN sustainability processes, either explicitly, as in the Trump regime, or more implicitly, through greenwashing, inaction, or other strategies of inertia. Close ties between petroleum-invested businesses and governments facilitate efforts to squeeze the last drops of oil from soils and waters. The more the tipping point towards renewable energy is reached, the more desperate these forces seem to maintain oil and military regimes. These inequalities are one of the main factors that make it so difficult to adequately respond to climate change. Who carries the greatest responsibility, who has to change and in what way, and who has to pay for it? Melting ice and higher temperatures heighten the power of hurricanes and other turbulent weather. The more people ignore these revelations, the more intense these revelations of extreme weather and catastrophic events seem to become.19 Indigenous people and their allies become louder as voices that speak for their communities and as the guardians of the elements, urban dwellers gather around summits and in

The revelations of global climate change  49 demonstrations. Meanwhile, many democracies and governments are undermined by the influence of corporations that resist climate action.20 The pervasiveness of a diplomacy of appeasement towards regimes and economic systems that disrespect their citizens and fuel terrorism makes visible the conditional commitment of Western nations to human rights and justice, as well as to true transformation of energy politics and energy independence.21 “Disaster capitalists”, so the Canadian writer Naomi Klein argues, seek to continue to find ways to profit from the devastation of communities in the aftermath of climate disasters.22 Not only is the trauma of devastated communities left unaddressed, but their subsequent relocation and weakening becomes the “opportunity” upon which the next exploitation is built. The further destabilisation of climate patterns means that the indigenous peoples of the North who depend on the cycles of circumpolar life not only lose culture and livelihood but are also increasingly under pressure to move from the areas of which they understand themselves to be guardians.23 These apocalyptic scenarios are connected to our common burning of fossil fuels and impacting the integrity of the landscapes that are affected in different ways. The scenarios for geopolitical “ends” of world orders and the possible emerging ones are multiple.

Religious communities and climate change In his study of religion’s spatiality Sigurd Bergmann emphasises the central role of believers in processes of social change: The task of faith communities and scholars of theology and religious studies is, thus, to ensure that communities and believers are regarded as sources and carriers of social transformation, rather than simply as chess pieces to be steered and managed.24 If religion is an essentially spatial phenomenon, as suggested above, one can also regard the central function of religion as providing the skill of making oneself at home within the cosmos.25 Climate change is teaching many to relearn from modern science what our ancestors knew deeply: that we cannot exist in denial of the systemic, economic, religious and personal interconnections without seeing life itself endangered. Our complicity is both material and spiritual, including systemic disengagement, paralysis and deep feelings of hopelessness. Theologians have been concerned about the dangers of capitalistic growth scenarios for decades. In her compendium of ecological-economic ethics and action Resisting Structural Evil, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda has argued that those who would attempt to curb the destructive tendencies of market logic address the overvaluing of “the market” fetish through multi-pronged strategies that are locally and culturally adjusted to the societies and contexts we live in. While personal conduct and agency are important to sustain us in this work, structural change is critical to addressing the structural violence inherent in the environmental destruction. Religious communities must help unveil “evil masquerading as light”,26 and develop a structural moral vision that addresses structural violence and evil.27 A constructive

50  Marion Grau theology has, then, a political and economic function in unveiling and resisting the forces of destruction. As these forces manifest in manifold ways, just as the forces of redemption do, Moe-Lobeda recommends Johan Galtung’s important distinction between “direct violence [as] an event; [and] structural violence [as] a process”28 as an important revelatory tool to help us see the insipid and often invisible forms of devastation. Climate change is so hard to grasp as an ethical issue because it is a form of structural violence, rather than of direct violence, which is easier to trace and detect. Theologies that aim to describe and envision a different future, and a different divinity, can contribute to the necessary reimagination of our being – in place: much of human identity can be conceived as embodied within something called geopsyche, a term shaped by the German psychiatrist Willy Hellpach,29 describing the fact that the expression of our identity, personal and communal, is related to our environment, and that our psychology is social, spatial and climatic – that is, deeply contextual. Our geopsychic conditions shift with large shifts of geological resources and climatic proportions, and have been affected by our deep immersion in technology. What kind of geopsyche might we imagine from these pieces? What sensibilities and what language do we articulate from this? In a panentheistic view of God, God’s transcendence exceeds the world, while God’s presence is profoundly in the world. If the world, in some sense, as Sallie McFague states, is God’s body,30 what is happening with God’s body in climate change? With humans as the main actor, does God become a suffering servant? How might we articulate divine power as we experience these global events caused by human actions? Process theology describes a sense of the divine as lure and as pull, but also of God’s power as a force that can be resisted, diverted and abused. Redemption is not guaranteed, but has much to do with the creative transformation of the various dynamic actors. This essay attempts to construct aspects of a process eschatology, where divine power is imagined as persuasive, rather than coercive, and endings are left relatively open. It envisions processual scenarios of redemption that reimagine Irenaeus’ recapitulation. While the return to paradise on this planet might seem a ridiculous image in an age of ekpyrosis, of global conflagration, of a world on fire, it is a narrative resistant to giving up on this planet but rather insisting on seeing it as blessed. As Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker have suggested in their book Saving Paradise, “paradise is already present”, and we have “neither to retrieve it nor construct it”, then we must “learn to perceive it and to relate to it with ethical grace”.31 The geopsyche of paradise, then, is not an escape from reality, but an experience of divine grace and community in the circumstances in which we live. It is, then, a gathering in the face of disaster, a sacred sanctuary; thus we might, using Rebecca Solnit’s phrase, conjure a “paradise built in hell”.32 In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein has carefully traced the forces that swoop in in the aftermath of disasters and counter efforts to transition into new, sustainable economies. The shock doctrine manifests as a form of corporate takeover of an area or an infrastructure.33 In A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit has chronicled the other side of these events, telling stories of how communities pull together in the aftermath of disasters to counter the stories of disaster

The revelations of global climate change  51 capitalism. In her investigation of the emergence of the communities of support that emerge in the aftermath of disaster, Rebecca Solnit admits that while disasters can be “opportunities for conquest”, they can just as much be seen as “a contest of power whose outcome is sometimes populist or even revolutionary”.35 Solnit finds Klein’s overall narrative astute, but also ultimately disempowering to those who want to transform society towards greater justice and equity. Instead, she draws upon the research of the disaster sociologist Charles Fritz, who suggests that “everyday life is already a disaster of sorts, one from which actual disaster liberates us”.36 And while in seemingly normal times we suffer privately, a disaster that affects larger groups simultaneously creates a common experience and thus also the potential for transformative community. Klein, too, appreciates the transformative potential of shock when she names one of the Christian prophets of our time, the Rev. William Barber, as one of the providers of the healing shocks needed where people of faith and hope can serve as “moral defibrillators of our time and shock the heart of this nation and build a movement of resistance and hope and justice and love”.37 It seems to me that both writers discuss the “malleable moments”38 of post-disaster time and space aptly and lucidly: the potential for both responses, and indeed for messy mixtures of both, becomes manifest. The strategies to be employed in these moments have to mesh the local with the global in such a way that each has the highest degree of sustainability possible. Religious communities can participate in developing what Mark Wallace calls “Christian animism” and work together with indigenous peoples who have never abandoned this mode of thinking. Together, they might make moves towards the re-enchantment of the world, even, and perhaps especially in its changed and changing state.39 This revolutionary re-enchantment must go beyond informing, haranguing and transformation to making such action joyful, to make it desirable to reconnect to our neighbours and neighbourhoods, and to inhabit space differently. The religious landscape is undergoing a kind of “climate change” as well. Religious institutions and churches have experienced declining membership for the last few decades and hence do not have the same societal influence as they once did. In a time where religious communities are important defenders of creation and people, many have abandoned religious institutions that have come out weakened in terms of numbers and influence in the last few decades. Nonetheless, the need for communal religious action is crucial, especially in this moment in time. Increasingly marginal religious communities are challenged to renew their sense of mission and find new networks of ecumenical and interreligious cooperation. There are many forces that try to subvert the struggle against climate change by diversion, slow-down and disinformation. While it is certainly necessary to mobilise religious people across cultures and landscapes to participate in the efforts, we need to seek coalitions with the broadest coalition possible, religious or not. Religious commitment is hardly necessary to care for the environment or to fight global warming. We need broad coalitions and transdisciplinary solution building that build “visions of the human that neither rights talk nor the critique of the subject ever contemplated”,40 as suggested by the authors of the classic 34

52  Marion Grau handbook on ecological economics, characterised by an approach to issues with soft, permeable and porous spaces among disciplines.41 Community leaders can discern equitable visions of community and commonwealth together with their communities of accountability. They can give a faithful account of where they are in history and where their vision and hope is: to re-examine our geological place in the world by rereading biblical narrative and rethinking how we engage in sacramental acts (Baptism, Eucharist and anointing), while engaging in community-building solutions. They can resist the technological reductionisms that claim that we “will invent ourselves out of it”, and the abandonment of the poorest who will suffer first and last, worst and longest. Leaders can strategically engage multiple actors in different contexts in developing contextually adjusted approaches for theologising, living and acting in the face of the reality of climate change and its economic and ecological consequences.

Theological virtues on the edge In order to facilitate these moments, articulating theological virtues is as basic as it is crucial. Faith, hope and love are not only classical theological virtues, but also central values in engaging all inhabitants of the earth. In addition, certain other virtues can help sharpen our understanding of these virtues. One key virtue is truth-telling, coming clean about the past so that the present can be understood and the future envisioned. Past abuse has to be given space to be voiced so there can be a way forward together. Listening and the sharing of experiences are important practices that have to be open to hearing the anger, pain and frustration in a space of respect. Being actively engaged in facilitating trauma recovery work is becoming increasingly important. The mental health challenges associated with the stresses of climate change as well as of the injustices involved in its dynamics are not going to go away anytime soon. Addressing intergenerational trauma, especially on land and with indigenous peoples, is a precondition of reconciliation work. Respect for persons and all living beings is an increasingly crucial virtue, as public discourses often show a severe lack of basic respect. Respecting the hospitality of the land, the people of the land and the elements is a crucial virtue for each inhabitant of the planet. Religious communities must find new ways of teaching this kind of respect. One of the ways of respecting others becomes concrete in the respect for treaties and UN declarations. Trustworthiness in all dealings between coalition partners is crucial, so hope can survive the ups and downs of limitations and failures. Such love is also a way of seeing, recognising and respecting the connections of all forms of life to one other. Adapting theological visions to these challenges begins by reading Bible and history in the context of what is happening and telling new stories.

Responding to the revelations of climate change: narratives of transformation According to Roy Scranton “We need a new vision of who ‘we’ are”.42 We need to continue the reimagination of the “commonwealth”43 as a way to restructure

The revelations of global climate change  53 economies beyond the “market”. The continued fetishisation of those markets and related claims for unquestioned allegiance to unfettered corporate power continue to put global economic systems at serious risk. Many countries are recovering from economic woes.44 We need to continue to name and implement alternative ways of living, and embrace the relational responsibility these bonds can inspire. We can be inspired by the re-emerging knowledge and awareness indigenous peoples may have about the way the cosmos in their ecosystem allocated resources and how they could sustainably work and live within the limits of those resources. Indigenous people shaped and reshaped the environments they lived in, but they often found permanently stable and sustainable ways to do that. When they fell out of balance, it threatened their survival.45

A new covenant? Reimagining the deluge in the Anthropocene The biblical narrative of the deluge involves the end of one creation covenant and the beginning of a new one. It thus has eschatological, prophetic and apocalyptic layers. Flood stories are found in many cultures, potentially due to a common historical experience. Creation myths involving catastrophic floods exist across the globe and on all continents. They witness to a deep memory about the fragility of life and the way it is threatened by the element of water and its ability to flood and drown earth’s inhabitants.46 These narratives witness to the precariousness of life and the theological, religio-cultural questions that appear in the aftermath of such devastation: What is the meaning of this devastation, how did it come about, how ought we to live now and how is God present in this different spacetime, geopsyche and covenant? In the context of the Hebrew Bible, two of the classical four elements are central to this narrative: earth and water, adamah and mayim.47 Human beings as earth beings are seen in deep relationship with the earth, so much so that destructive human action and the curse that follows it also affects the element of earth.48 In the narratives of the biblical Pentateuch, this includes new divine dispensations, covenants and economies. The covenant with Noah is one of a line of various biblically narrated covenants between humans and the biblical God. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the reason for the flood is capricious gods who deny humans the right to live forever. The story of Noah includes a moral dimension, a way in which humans have rendered the current covenant between God and humans, the current economy of relationships, untenable. The post-flood economy includes meat-eating, ending a vegetarian covenant, signalling a covenant that includes a different way of living on the land.49 While the garden in which Adam and Eve are put is safe and nonviolent, they do not or cannot stay there, and while they lose safety, the space of their world is also expanded.50 Climate change, like the deluge, can be understood as a covenantal shift – a flood caused by human petroleum activity, threatening to curse the earth permanently. There are many possible ways of narrating this deluge, many possible images of Noah’s ark and the building of arks. Van Jones calls for employing the story of Noah’s family and the flood as a “new guiding narrative, a new myth, for

54  Marion Grau the challenges that face us”.51 This new myth is guided by what he calls the “Noah principles”, whose guideposts push for fewer “issues”, more solutions, fewer “demands”, more goals, fewer “targets”, more partners, less “accusation”, more confession, less “cheap patriotism”, more deep patriotism. Overall, the Noah principles would “focus on creating something new rather than something old”.52 One of these new narratives will likely emerge in the Far North.

Arctic revelations: indigenous devastation and resistance At the conference on Arctic Future, Ingrid Inga, Member of the Sami Parliament in Sweden, emphasised the threats to indigenous traditions: We are grateful that we are here to talk about an Arctic Future. Because our traditional ways of life are threatened and I see fear of future in the eyes of elders and children. The prerequisites for traditional life are eroding under our feet.53 The Arctic manifests some of the most drastic changes first, and often at twice the rate. Arctic peoples and species are the barometer of climate change around the world. It is a site of profound change, profound loss and death. What is ending, and what future possibilities of life in the North are emerging? What we know is that traditional life cycles, migration patterns and wisdoms are being profoundly affected. Indigenous peoples in particular, their livelihoods still densely interwoven with the elements and species of Arctic regions, are suffering a combination of cultural and ecological genocide. The devastation began with the cultural imperialisms of modernity, driven by doctrines of discovery that often saw divine providence in the movements of colonial settlement and rule. Only in the last few years have there been tentative and symbolic efforts at repudiating the doctrine of discovery and reviewing theologies of exodus and settlement as manifestations of divine will. It is late, but perhaps not too late, for some forms of reconciliation to take place. Ecological, postcolonial and decolonial theologies have been emerging, taking the colonial theological logic to task and aiming to reimagine human community in new ways. Life – whatever that looks like – is changing in unknowable ways, though not necessarily ending. That is the good news. The bad news is, we humans have trouble with how life is changing, with reacting fast enough and finding ways to transition that are sustainable, ecologically, economically and emotionally. Indigenous peoples, the beleaguered guardians of millennia of wisdom, are threatened with cultural genocide. Yet the best of the pre-capitalist wisdom they guard must be part of finding the solutions to our common predicament. Recent revelations have also included a renewed uprising and awareness of indigenous communities, and new ways of designing different kinds of homes and communities in this changing place. The #NODAPL gathering and the camps at Standing Rock during the summer and autumn of 2016 were the most widely heard call to mobilise around such

The revelations of global climate change  55 wisdom, far more widely echoed and received than the last large indigenous resistance in the US, the Alcatraz Occupation from 1969 to 1971.

“This is not a camp, it is a Ceremony”: rituals and community at Standing Rock On the edge of chaos, global counter movements, against denial, against apathy, against business as usual, are still continuing to form. Where danger grows and breaks through the layers of complacency and denial, awakenings continue to happen. A resplendent possibility emerged in 2016, building momentum far from the halls of governments and in critical conflict with them. From around May to December 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, a place long the scene of struggles over narratives of land, time and place, became a major battleground in the struggle between colonial exploitation and envisioning alternative futures. Gathering in a renewal of ancestral wisdom, the camps in North Dakota engaged thousands of people all across the world in a struggle against plans to build a petroleum pipeline on contested indigenous land in North Dakota. The hosts in the Standing Rock camps insisted that those present engage in prayer. That means they were asked to enter a particular state of being and spirit. What form this prayer took was up to each person, but it was oft-repeated in the camp that this was not entertainment, Burning Man or some other kind of counterculture camp, but that it was a form of spiritual engagement, even spiritual warfare – a struggle against the Black Snake, an ancient prophecy, now interpreted to be a metaphor for the petroleum delivery system. In particular, the pipelines, infrastructure and monetary system that support the petroleum industry became the target for the movement. From protests against the pipeline to lawsuits and divestment campaigns, the movement continues to take new forms. Indigenous peoples are in a new phase of mobilisation and are gathering more powerfully through various coalitions, standing up as people who are feeling it first and worst. After the camps disbanded, the movement went viral and local, engaging in divestment from petroleum infrastructure and economies, lawsuits and other actions. At COP Bonn in 2017, a new coalition, It Takes Roots, a multiracial coalition represented the issues of various communities directly from the frontlines of petrocultures and divestment from oil dependency.54 Religious communities are natural allies to people who insist that this is also a spiritual struggle and that those fighting it should employ the spiritual practice of prayer, both to sustain and curb their own struggles, and to be in a good place with the forces of the universe. Liturgical and ritual resources are an important part of coalition building in these developing ecumenical and interfaith networks and alliances. These networks have, among other things, facilitated lament for what is being lost and reconciliation around colonial issues. The Standing Rock camps witnessed two major instances of such reconciliation that can serve as examples. Campers and hosts devised rituals which they termed Steps toward the Healing of Intergenerational Trauma. First, on behalf of tribal leaders, John Floberg, an Episcopal priest serving on the Standing Rock reservation, sent out an invitation to religious

56  Marion Grau leaders to participate in a ceremony on the Renunciation of the Doctrine of Discovery. The hope was that one hundred people would come; over five hundred showed up, making the ceremony a profound experience and allowing a particular ritual transition, a small piece in a healing journey. Second, just a few weeks later, in a ritual reconstructing the relationship between “Cowboys and Indians”, a large group of veterans came to Standing Rock to support the tribes and honour Native American soldiers. Their presence included a ceremony during which the veterans asked for forgiveness for the part the US Army had played in the subjection of Native American tribes during the colonial expansion. Both of these events reimagined the past by honouring, remembering and transforming it. Events like these create possibilities for changed relations in a time when elsewhere racial relations were becoming further enflamed and religious communities were pitted against each other. These defenders are some of the martyrs of these times – the numbers of environmental activists killed and murdered is high.55 New alliances have emerged in the aftermath, divestment campaigns have sprung up in many countries and Norway’s climate action lawsuit is part of an increase of the use of the courts for holding governments and banks accountable for resisting acting to implement the promises made in signing the Paris climate accord. Many activists, religious and otherwise, continue to be encouraged and sustained by these examples of reimagining of what hopeful, respectful action as prayer looks like. We must join them also in the North, cultivating stories and virtues for reimagining hope in a melting and changing Arctic.

Notes 1 Moltmann links this line from a poem by Hölderlin to the Pietist Johann Albrecht Bengel, who makes a similar observation: The more desperate a situation appears to be, the more significant is the aid provided by wisdom and prophecy: “Je gefährlicher eine Zeit ist, je grosser ist die Hilfe, die dagegen in der Weissagung dargereicht wird.” Jürgen Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes: Christliche Eschatologie (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1995), 180, fn. 60. 2 Moltmann speaks of promises of God, but also of the danger of turning history “deistically into a substitute for God”. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Grounds and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1967), 71. 3 Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 16. 4 Catherine Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World (Boston: Beacon, 1996). 5 Sigurd Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the Environment (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2014), 282. 6 Keller, Apocalypse, xii–xiii. 7 Paul Roberts, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004). 8 See Damian Carrington, “Plastic Fibres Found in Tap Water Around the World, Study Reveals”, The Guardian, 6 September 2017, www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/ sep/06/plastic-fibres-found-tap-water-around-world-study-reveals. 9 See for example Kari Norgaard, Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011) and George Marshall, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

The revelations of global climate change  57 10 Robert MacFarlane, “An Ox on the Tongue: Thick Speech and Deep Time in the Anthropocene”, unpublished lecture, Oslo Litteraturhuset, 6 April 2017, https://cas. oslo.no/read/articulating-the-anthropocene-article2495-1167.html. 11 Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011). 12 Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). With regard to the ambiguous Anthropocene narrative and its challenge to religion, cf. Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Markus Vogt (eds.), Religion in the Anthropocene (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017). 13 David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature (Vancouver, Canada: Greystone Books, 1997), 163. 14 Hope appears not only in theological discourse, but also as a powerful category in the writing of social activists and literary figures, such as the Californian writer Rebecca Solnit. Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (New York: Nation Books, 2004). 15 Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 21. 16 Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 304. 17 Jon Sobrino, Where Is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004). 18 Antonia Juhasz, The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry – and What We Must Do to Stop It (New York: William Morrow, 2008). 19 These struggles manifest in a particular way around the COP meetings, at the time of writing a meeting in Bonn, Germany. See Damian Carrington, “The COP23 Climate Change Summit in Bonn and Why It Matters”, The Guardian, 5 November 2017, www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/05/the-cop23-climate-changesummit-in-bonn-and-why-it-matters. 20 Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Against Climate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014). 21 Leif Wenar, Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and The Rules That Run the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 46. 22 See Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007) and Naomi Klein, No Is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics (London: Penguin, 2017). 23 This was highlighted in a conference on “Just Peace with Earth” organised by the World Council of Churches in Kopavogur, Iceland in 2017. See especially the section on Lessons from Indigenous Spirituality, www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/ documents/wcc-programmes/final-message-of-the-wcc-conference-on-justpeace-with-earth-iceland-october-2017. 24 Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the Environment, 284. 25 Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the Environment, 283. 26 Quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 2013), 49. 27 Moe-Lobeda, Resisting, 77. 28 Moe-Lobeda, Resisting, 73. 29 Willy Hellpach, Die Geopsychischen Erscheinungen: Die Menschenseele unter dem Einfluß von Wetter und Klima, Boden und Landschaft (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1911). 30 Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993). 31 Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (Boston: Beacon, 2001), 418. 32 Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (New York: Penguin, 2009). 33 Klein, This Changes Everything. 34 Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell. 35 Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell, 107.

58  Marion Grau Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell, 107. William Barber, as quoted in Klein, No Is Not Enough, 266. Solnit quoting Klein in Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell, 107. Mark I. Wallace, Green Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013). See also Sigurd Bergmann, “Making Oneself at Home in Climate Change: Religion as a Skill of Creative Adaptation”, in The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices and Politics, ed. S. Brunn (Heidelberg and New York: Springer, 2015), 187–201. 40 Roy Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization (San Francisco: City Lights, 2015), 20. 41 Robert Costanza et al., An Introduction to Ecological Economics (Boca Raton, FL: St. Lucie Press, 1997), 78. 42 Scranton, Learning to Die, 19. 43 Hardt and Negri have committed one of their volumes on political economy and postnation state analysis to this topic. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (New York: Belknap, 2011). 44 See also Sigurd Bergmann, “Fetishism Revisited: In the Animistic Lens of Ecopneumatology”, Journal of Reformed Theology 6 (2012): 195–215. 45 See Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe: Clear Light, 2000) and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 1999). See also Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York: Vintage, 2006) for some research on the complex ways some indigenous peoples were managing their ecosystems integratively and sustainably. 46 Jürgen Ebach, Noah: Die Geschichte eines Überlebenden (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2001), 92. 47 Ebach, Noah, 114–115. 48 Ebach, Noah, 114. 49 Daniel Hillel, The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 51ff. 50 Ebach, Noah, 111. 51 Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 104. 52 Jones, Green Collar, 105. 53 Ingrid Inga, “Sami Parliament of Sweden, conference entitled Future of the Arctic: The Impact of Climate Change”, Storforsen, Sweden, October 2015, www.anglicanjournal. com/articles/arctic-indigenous-conference-spurs-hope-fear/. 54 #ItTakesRoots to #GrowtheResistance by the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), and Right to the City Alliance (RTC) alongside Center for Story-based Strategy and The Ruckus Society, http://ittakesroots.org/. Accessed 10 December 2017. 55 In collaboration with Global Witness, The Guardian attempted in a series “to record all of the deaths of people who are killed while defending their land, forests, rivers or wildlife – most often against the harmful impacts of industry.” See www.theguardian. com/environment/series/the-defenders. Accessed 10 December 2017.

36 37 38 39

Bibliography Bergmann, Sigurd. “Fetishism Revisited: In the Animistic Lens of Eco-Pneumatology”. Journal of Reformed Theology 6 (2012): 195–215. ———. Religion, Space, and the Environment. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2014. ———. “Making Oneself at Home in Climate Change: Religion as a Skill of Creative Adaptation”. In The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices and Politics, edited by S. Brunn, 187–201. Heidelberg and New York: Springer, 2015.

The revelations of global climate change  59 Brock, Rita Nakashima, and Rebecca Ann Parker. Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire. Boston: Beacon, 2001. Cajete, Gregory. Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence. Santa Fe: Clear Light, 2000. Carrington, Damian. “The COP23 Climate Change Summit in Bonn and Why It Matters”. The Guardian, 5 November 2017. www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/05/ the-cop23-climate-change-summit-in-bonn-and-why-it-matters. ———. “Plastic Fibres Found in Tap Water Around the World, Study Reveals”. The Guardian, 6 September 2017. www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plasticfibres-found-tap-water-around-world-study-reveals. Costanza, Robert, et al. An Introduction to Ecological Economics. Boca Raton, FL: St. Lucie Press, 1997. Ebach, Jürgen. Noah: Die Geschichte Eines Überlebenden. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2001. Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Commonwealth. New York: Belknap, 2011. Hellpach, Willy. Die Geopsychischen Erscheinungen: Die Menschenseele unter dem Einfluß von Wetter und Klima, Boden und Landschaft. Leipzig: Engelmann, 1911. Hillel, Daniel. The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Jones, Van. The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. New York: HarperOne, 2008. Juhasz, Antonia. The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry – And What We Must Do to Stop It. New York: William Morrow, 2008. Keller, Catherine. Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World. Boston: Beacon, 1996. Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007. ———. This Changes Everything: Capitalism Against Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. ———. No Is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics. London: Penguin, 2017. MacFarlane, Robert. “An Ox on the Tongue: Thick Speech and Deep Time in the Anthropocene”. Unpublished lecture, Oslo Litteraturhuset, 6 April 2017. https://cas.oslo.no/ read/articulating-the-anthropocene-article2495-1167.html. Mann, Charles. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Vintage, 2006. Marshall, George. Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. McFague, Sallie. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993. McKibben, Bill. Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011. Moe-Lobeda, Cynthia. Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2013. Moltmann, Jürgen. Das Kommen Gottes: Christliche Eschatologie. Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/ Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1995. ———. Theology of Hope: On the Grounds and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1967. Norgaard, Kari. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011.

60  Marion Grau Roberts, Paul. The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Scranton, Roy. Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization. San Francisco: City Lights, 2015. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books, 1999. Sobrino, Jon. Where Is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004. Solnit, Rebecca. Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. New York: Nation Books, 2004. ———. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. New York: Penguin, 2009. Suzuki, David. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. Vancouver, Canada: Greystone Books, 1997. Wallace, Mark I. Green Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013. Wenar, Leif. Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules That Run the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

4 Euthanasia

Tage KurténEuthanasia

Does eschatology matter? Tage Kurtén

The life and death of Johan Sletten Johan Sletten is a retired former journalist. He is 69 years old when he is told by his doctor that he suffers from an incurable form of cancer. The doctor gives him at most six months to live. He wants his wife Mai, who is a physician, to promise to stay by his side till the end. And he wants her to promise to put an end to his life when there is nothing left but physical pain and loss of bodily dignity. Johan Sletten is not a famous person. He has led a quite ordinary human life. He is not especially brave. And he has made some blunders in his life. Once he plagiarised an entire book review from a German newspaper, hoping that no reader would know the original version. However, he was unlucky. One reader reacted and he found himself retired sooner than he had planned to be. His reaction to the information about his illness and his impending death was also quite ordinary. He wanted to fight as long as possible, and he wanted assistance to die when confronted with the terminal phase.1 The whole story of Johan Slotten may be found in Linn Ullmann’s novel Grace (2002).2 The couple has discussed the idea of euthanasia once previously. That time Mai hit Johan in the face and began to cry: “Not that!” she whispered. “Not that. Don’t ask that of me. I couldn’t bring myself to do that for you”.3 The story reaches an anti-climax when Mai, later on, promises to put an end to Johan’s death-struggle if it turns out to be unbearable, although she finds that such an action is in conflict both with the law of Norway and with medical ethics. In that moment Johan is not so sure after all. When Mai has reached her decision she still wants to make sure that Johan is certain of what he wants. And Johan assures her. He finds that he has no faith, has no hope, but he has love. An ultimate expression of love can be seen in Mai’s preparedness to end his life. However, suddenly his feelings are not so certain anymore.4 Later Johan struggles with the insight that he has made Mai promise to end his life while he now wants to cling to life, although he knows that it will very soon be over.5 Eventually the deed is completed.6 Mai contacts the doctor in charge of Johan and tells her what she has done. According to the story, the physician accepts what has happened and will not take any measures.7

62  Tage Kurtén The author of this narrative has in a very subtle way left the final interpretation of the story open. She shows the ambivalence of all the actors. There is a reciprocal uncertainty towards the act of euthanasia shown by both central characters. There is a tension between staying in control and losing control that neither of them overcomes. The author herself ends the story by emphasising not hope, not faith, but love: Mai shuts the door behind her, not turning to look back. – It grows dark. A deep darkness falls on Johan Sletten’s face. – He would have said, “And your hair, Mai, is more beautiful this morning than on any other”.8 In a nutshell Linn Ullmann has captured much of the most notorious questions related to Euthanacy. Although Ullmann presents us with a fictional novel, much of the same challenges can confront us Western people in real life. Theology has to ask in what way, if any, Christian tradition and its talk of Eschatology could take part in elaborating these challenges. In the following I try to give an answer to this question.

Modern society and euthanasia During the last decades the attitude towards euthanasia has radically changed in the Western world. Half a century ago both suicide and deliberate killing of another person were legally forbidden and morally condemned in most Western countries. But the change has been rapid.9 I will take an example from Finland. Between 1981 and 2009 the number of those who could never accept euthanasia decreased from 42% 1981 to 9% in 2009.10 Suicide was totally rejected by 69% in 1981, but only by 36% in 2005.11 These attitudes are also quite interesting when one considers the possible influence of religion. In 2005, 39% of those who found religion to be very important in their lives were against euthanasia, and 53% against suicide. Among people for whom religion utterly lacked importance, only 4% were against euthanasia, and 24% rejected suicide.12 In these questions religion in some sense seems to matter. The ongoing discussion concerning euthanasia is mirrored in more detail in a pro memoria (PM) from 2012 by The National Advisory Board on Social Welfare and Health Care Ethics in Finland (ETENE). The statement made by ETENE was called “Human Dignity, Hospice Care and Euthanasia”. The text mirrors very well the most important aspects concerning modern humans in the face of inevitable death and suffering. At the same time what is not said in the document is also important when it comes to our present society and its way of viewing life and death. The document defines “euthanasia” as “an intentional, active measure to end the patient’s life when he/she requests it repeatedly and deliberately because of an incurable disease and unbearable suffering”.13 The PM gives a brief overview of the situation in countries other than Finland. In 2012 the legislation concerning euthanasia and assisted suicide differed between different countries in the Western world. The most permissive legislation

Euthanasia  63 was found in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, where euthanasia was permitted under certain well-defined conditions. In Finland, differing from the other Nordic countries, assisted suicide was allowed. By assistance is meant “placing the dose of [fatal] medicine within the patient’s reach at the patient’s request when he/she has decided to end his/her life”.14 The document presents the most central ethical arguments concerning euthanasia. In one concluding paragraph some reflections related to the concept of Human Rights are added in the following way: Asking for assistance in dying is often considered a human right. In considerations regarding euthanasia, a person’s ability to express himself/herself and to form a view of his/her own are primary. The situation where a person is suffering but is unable to ask for assistance in dying must be considered. What is the right way to help in such situations?15 The statement gives no answer. However, the question as such reveals a growing attitude of acceptance within Finnish society. In short, the PM by the Finnish ethical board emphasises the importance of hospice and palliative care in order to show respect for human dignity until death. However, there are cases when this does not seem to be enough, according to the board. When it comes to “patients who are suffering unbearably, for whom adequate relief cannot be found by using present methods, and who wish to die”, society ought to consider the use of euthanasia, according to the position taken. ETENE finds that this solution still requires that matters concerning the concept of suffering, and the question of who can make a decision and who is to take responsibility for that decision, have to be discussed and clearly answered before any steps out of the present situation are taken.16 It is not by chance that most of the considerations by ETENE are focused on the individual patient. In a sense this is only natural and understandable within a modern framework. However, many important aspects are thus excluded, not least the relational character of all human life.17 As we saw in the narrative we started with, there is much more at stake than the individual patient and his/her suffering. All close relatives and friends are important. And equally important are all the people involved in the patient’s care. Central values that keep a society together are shown by the way most societies hesitate to make euthanasia legally possible. The hesitation by different parliaments to legislate in favour of euthanasia has not only to do with the idea that “You shall not kill”. It is also a question of opening Pandora’s box. This is often referred to as “the slippery slope” argument in ethical discourse on the matter.18

Modern medicine taken for granted The change towards a more permissive atmosphere, mentioned above, invites some reflections. In the following I want to show that a modern outlook on life, in the form of a secular ideology which is taken for granted, does play a decisive role

64  Tage Kurtén in a modern understanding of death and life. I want to show that some competing worldviews, including Christian views, seriously challenge presuppositions of this modern secularism. One main point in this essay is a critical assessment of certain traits in modern medicine and modern health care. The literature concerning medical care abounds. However, I will build my presentation upon a most intriguing book by Jeffrey P. Bishop. In the book The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power and the Care of Dying, first published in 2011, he makes a critical analysis of the thought pattern in which medical students are instructed in medical schools. His point is that this mindset to a large degree influences the way a modern secular19 society as a whole begins to understand questions of life and death. This in turn is shaped by a special philosophical view of life which he also calls “the metaphysics of medicine”.20 Bishop’s critical assessment of modern medicine (he is himself both a physician and professor in Health Care Ethics) contains the idea that modern medicine is bound to centre around the individual body and its continuous existence. Medicine’s first aim is to conquer death. And death is something we ascribe to a body that has ceased to live. Paradoxically, the way medicine, according to Bishop, treats death is a consequence of the dead body as a static norm for medical science. The old practice of teaching medical students by dissecting corpses is seen as one main factor shaping the idea of the body as “death matter in motion”, an idea that he takes from Michel Foucault.21 The development during the last centuries within modern Western medicine has, according to Bishop, resulted in a clinical practice where “efficient causation allows mastery over the living body as machine, as dead matter in motion”.22 Bishop is at the same time eager to underscore that medicine is not an evil per se, but a good. However, it is a good whose practice must be critically examined.23 I have claimed that medicine’s epistemology of death and its metaphysics of efficient causation result in an ideology of life as a series of causes and effects, without purpose or final cause, that plays itself out in death.24 This ideology creates, according to him, the understanding of physical functioning and the technology that leads to “intensive care units” in modern hospitals.25 The development so described took a new turn through a growing emphasis on the autonomy of the individual subject. This development has more or less inevitably led to the modern way of approaching and discussing euthanasia. Bishop gives a thorough presentation of the way the focus is changed from the physician to the subject suffering from some incurable disease or from life-threatening physical injuries. Faced with a terminal phase in the life of an individual, the development has gone from an “efficient death” to an “efficient social apparatus”, and this has in turn led to a situation where the patient herself has (the right) to decide over her own life and death.26 One important aspect of what is, in Bishop’s eyes, a problematic development within modern medicine is thus the question of euthanasia, and the way this

Euthanasia  65 question is conceptualised. Euthanasia, in a sense, mirrors in a nutshell the basic problem of modern medicine. The important question following from Bishop’s discussions is whether the problems he points to can be overcome within a strictly modern culture. One can interpret his book as a convincing argument that the cultural frame brought about by, and bringing about, modern medical thinking, and thereafter shaping modern medical training, inevitably leads to a medical practice, and a legislation of medical practice, that in the end will allow the intentional killing of other people. The question arises: is there a way of talking of life and death that overcomes the problems that Bishop finds urgent, and if so, is such a discourse possible within the modern, secular culture?28 This picture of how concepts like life and death get their meaning from the framework of modern medicine, and its clinical practice, bears upon an understanding of Johan and his dilemma in the story we began with. Much of what we meet in the story of Johan and Mai is only understandable within this modern framework. And within this framework the dilemma becomes almost inevitable. Medical knowledge concerning how an aggressive cancer develops in the terminal stage, and knowledge of the possibility of putting an end to it all, to suffering and to life in itself, both contribute to the dilemma. And if we follow Bishop, the conceptual framework that governs these events does not give much room for aspects other than rather limited technical solutions on medical grounds. The technical means are in the hands of modern medicine. But the final decision is, in accordance with modernity’s emphasis on an individual’s right to autonomy, given to the individual suffering person. In that light there is a heavy burden put upon modern humans.29 27

Eschatological hope and the present In this book we try to show how life in its different dimensions can be grasped in an attitude of hope. This is a well-known element in Christian theology. The eschatological tension between “already now” and “not yet” has been a central theme in theology for over one hundred years.30 This eschatological tension is, however, understood in many different ways. It can be seen in very divergent ways of living “eschatologically” that we meet among Christian denominations. In this essay I will study central conditions for eschatological living in the shadow of death and suffering today. In a textbook on Christian Dogmatics from 2007 Katarina Westerlund makes a clear distinction between two ways of dealing with eschatology. The more classical one talks of the last times, expecting them to occur soon or in the distant future. The other one stresses that eschatological time is realised where people are liberated from socially and individually oppressing forces. She takes liberation theology as an important example of the latter view.31 She criticises classical interpretations of eschatology for focusing too much on an individualistic and abstract understanding of what eschatological life could contain. The thought of a

66  Tage Kurtén “here-after”, placed after the death of an individual, has been emphasised in such a way that the meaning of the ordinary life has been lost. Through “already now” combined with “not yet” Westerlund wants to bridge over the gap between what she calls transcendence (“not yet”) and immanence (“already now”). Westerlund refers to Jürgen Moltmann, who starts from our ordinary lives and moves forward by focusing on elements in life that are considered evil. Suffering and conflicts give us a longing for another world without these negative phenomena. An open future opens our mind to the possibility of such a better world. The Christian hope, in this view inspired by Moltmann, is focused upon a total transformation of the whole of existence. According to Westerlund, this picture of a future better world becomes an important resource for a loving and reshaping creativity.32 Time has traditionally been central to the Christian understanding of eschatology. For a long time eschatology was understood to concern the last time and the last things. It was about life after death, and about the end of history. According to a linear notion of time eschaton belonged to the future. And eschatology offered a view of things to come.33 Put in this framework a crucial question is how we can talk of the future in a meaningful way, including some kind of certainty. In modernity the paradigm case for talking about reality is taken from a popular understanding of science and a scientific discourse. Accordingly you can currently find something that I like to call a spectator’s view on life and reality in both secular and Christian views. Such a view is coloured by modern, scientific rationality.34 In many ways a scientific rationality presents us with a rather safe way to relate both to the present time and to the future. Based on the predictability of scientific knowledge and technical applications, people can feel confident and safe in a great deal in their day to day life – in the use of all kinds of constructed artefacts (bridges, cars, aeroplanes, water-closets, etc.) and other forms of technology (IThardware, mobile phones, ballpoint pens, watches, etc.), as well as in visiting dentists or doctors. If you start questioning the predicted view, you usually have ways to convince yourself that you are right in counting on what could possibly happen in the future. Rational arguments can convince you that a future reality will turn out in a way that you have reason to expect. However, this kind of expectation concerning the future must be built upon valid considerations. “Do not hope for anything if you don’t have good reason for that hope!” one could parody the Swedish atheistic philosopher Ingemar Hedenius.35 In the light of climate changes and other environmental problems this attitude results in an intellectual pessimism, as seen in the work of another philosopher, Georg Henrik von Wright.36 The way you meet the future within this frame is basically always, and in every aspect, the same: our view of the future depends upon a reasonable assessment of future possibilities. The wish to be in control is another driving force in modernity.37 It can for example be seen in much of the future-oriented striving for continuous development. The wish to be in control is one important factor behind all scientific research. Humankind’s ability to predict future events must develop continuously.

Euthanasia  67 In such a future-oriented society, time past and present lose much of their meaning. They become important to the extent that they can serve as means for predicting the future. A life-view built upon this gets its meaning from the future. If that future fades away, the meaning of a life so founded is also threatened.38 In a culture where the future is approached in this way, Christian eschatology tends to be interpreted as giving information about future events.39 Swedish theologian Henry Cöster has called this attitude by theologians “futurism”.40 The theologically interesting events, and the coming reality thus viewed, are indeed different in kind from the ones usually studied within science. However, the cognitive attitude towards future events connects this kind of eschatology with a kind of (quasi)scientific rationality in current Western culture. According to Cöster hope as an attitude in this framework equals hope built upon some kind of cognitive certainty concerning things to come.41 Christian hope in this connection is in turn usually built upon revelatory insights of some kind (God-given promises in Scripture and so on). This presented view could be seen as belonging to modernity’s way of dealing with life and reality. I will later return to an understanding of modernity and late modernity in more detail. We meet quite another way of coping with things to come in a theological emphasis not primarily on future events but on the “here and now”. Such a “realised eschatology” turns the perspective upside down. Eschatological talk is not primarily a cognitive talk about the future in terms of a “here and now”. Eschatological talk is talking about the “here and now” in terms of the future. Present life is in focus. From a philosophical point of view, Walesian philosopher of religion Dewi Z. Phillips describes this in the following way: “Eternity is not more life, but life seen under certain moral and religious modes of thought. This is precisely what seeing this life sub speciae aeternitatis would amount to”.42 According to my interpretation, Henry Cöster in quite a similar way sees eschatology as a perspective with focus on the now-moment in his understanding of a narrative theology. According to him, this is a way of getting beyond the linear view of time, and its future-oriented consequences.43 This emphasis on the now-moment does not mean that we ought to abandon all talk of time, of past, present and future. The point lies in the place such talk has in our concrete lives. I wrote above about a “spectator’s view”. We find quite another attitude to life in what could be called an “actor’s view”. In a spectator’s life-view it is often important to strive for a neutral, objective perspective. Through objective knowledge you learn to control reality and life. Reality is “out there” and we have to learn how to master and manipulate it. An “actor” is to a much higher degree convinced that we cannot separate reality as it is from the way we live in and talk about reality.44 We can call this view a late modern one. The actor also approaches the future in a different way from the spectator. Although all of us, as rational human beings, in many ways try to plan our future, it is not obvious what role such planning plays in our lives.45 Although we cannot ignore the future, it does not have to be central to our way of living. The difference between the two perspectives becomes more obvious if we think of the concept of

68  Tage Kurtén hope. In the spectator’s view, hope must rest on valid grounds; otherwise it seems in vain or totally irrational and without meaning. Our hope should come close to a well-founded certainty or some kind of knowledge concerning what will happen. In an actor’s life, hope is something that is revealed in one’s way of acting and of being in the now-moment. It is an attitude that makes us ready to plant an apple tree today although someone has rationally convinced us that the world will cease to exist tomorrow. Our hope is this act of planting. It is the primary expression of what it means to hope. The Swedish word “förväntan” (Eng. “expectation” or “awaiting” do not have exactly the same connotation) is perhaps a better word for this attitude towards the future. One important feature in this attitude is an open mind, one that lacks the will to manipulate and has no firm belief that one can control the future. Hope is seen as a way of being which is shown in our commitments here and now. It is a commitment which is not primarily rooted in certainty concerning the future. It comes closer to a trust in future life whatever happens. Or as the Finnish philosopher Lars Hertzberg has written: “The world does not owe us any hope; we are the ones who owe the world all the hope we are able to offer”.46 Does this actor’s view lead to an irresponsible way of life? The answer is no. The point is not to make a distinction between a view where you try to plan for the future and another one where you remain quite indifferent towards what will happen. The difference is in the way the future is allowed to enter one’s life here and now. At the end of the day the difference lies in seeing life here and now as a value in itself, or seeing it only as a means to a future better life.47

Overcoming the modern framework It is easy to see that the concepts of hope and of despair gain a different meaning in the view of the spectator from that maintained by the involved actor. It is also easy to see that a theological understanding of eschatology will differ depending upon the kind of perspective that guides the theologian. The more hope is concerned with cognitive aspects, and the more it is presupposed to build on good reasons, the closer it comes to a modern view mirrored in a spectator’s attitude to life. The linear understanding of time becomes important. Much of life here and now gets its meaning from its connections to an, on reasonable grounds, expected future. In this understanding of eschatology it becomes important to know as much as possible concerning the future in God’s perspective. From this modern point of view also the Christian hope ought to be built upon good reasons. One important task for theology is then to find out as much as possible of what tradition can reveal about God’s plans for the future. God’s plan will present us with theological reasons for a Christian hope, the argument goes. In a late modern perspective, represented by an actor’s view, another perspective will become alive. In an actor’s view the Christian hope is a decisive part of the view right from the start. In such a view, which Jackelén calls “a fermenteschatology”, this Christian hope colours the whole way of living. However, such a way of living loses much of its point if it is seen as built upon anything preceding this hope in a logical sense. Christian hope, understood according to

Euthanasia  69 an actor’s view, is not built upon any assessment of reasons for and against. As Bishop Gustav Björkstrand put it in his letter (herdabrev) to the members of the Borgå diocese in Finland some years ago: “With joy and in trust we can face the days to come in our church and our diocese. The future is in the hand of almighty God and in his love he will fulfil his creation”.48 It is important to notice that in the late modern perspective of an actor the time span loses much of its weight. Instead of talking about eschaton with the category of time in focus, you can find its primary meaning close to the category of space. The scope includes eternity as something close to life here and now – in this concrete place and time.49 Thereby the linear historical categories of before-now-hereafter, and of different time-based historical places, fade away. An idea of the instant moment (ögonblicket – fig. “blink of an eye”) – always bound to a concrete context, a “here and now” – as an eschatological connection between God and the world becomes alive.50 A life in Christ where you need reasons for your hope and for your faith is dependent upon convincing arguments for becoming a Christian or going on being a Christian. These arguments can be of many different kinds: arguments from Scripture or from Church tradition, evidence from personal experiences, through rational deliberation, etc. What connects all Christians who understand faith and hope in that way is a kind of cognitive attitude that seems to demand that you are rationally convinced before you start to hope and build a life on and in faith. Compared to this rationally grounded approach, a person with an actor’s attitude to life seems to be purely equipped. The life of the actor expresses a fundamental trust without further foundation.51 Faith is not primarily understood as a deliberate choice. It is seen as something you either have or have not. There are few possibilities to explain how Christian faith or Christian hope comes to be in the first place. As far as I can see, a Christian life-view must, in this perspective, rest in a social context of some kind. However, the character of that context cannot be rationally described and controlled once and for all – either by theology or by a church hierarchy. The main characteristic seems to be a living biblical tradition of some kind. Living in such a tradition makes it possible for any one of us to find ourselves in a state of hope instead of despair – at least in principle. Eternity touches the earth. How it happens is not explicable. But when it happens it seems to fill a concrete life with meaning, hope and trust that are neither rationally grounded nor controllable.

A position beyond time and space A late modern view is further developed by Phillips (who died in 2006) in his last book. Phillips discusses death, suffering and the afterlife in The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God (2004). The book is a thorough critical discussion of what he calls “our problematic philosophical inheritance”, by which he is referring mainly to mainstream analytical philosophy (of religion).52 In relation to eschatology he sees two presuppositions taken for granted to which he finds reasons to object: (1) the idea of eternal life as something possible to place in time and space

70  Tage Kurtén (heaven as a place, and eternal life as something taking place in a future time); (2) an instrumental way of understanding belief in God.53 In Phillips we find a radical struggle with the question of what possible meaning the eschatological tradition could have. He rightly, to my mind, sees the difficulties in mainstream philosophical and theological understandings of eschatology and of eternal life and the Last Judgement. He sees the danger of an instrumental understanding of our concrete lives in relation to an idea of eternal life. Instead of placing eternal life in a future time, and within a cosmological framework, we have to deal with eschatology related to our lives here and now, he suggests. Eternal life must, according to Phillips’ philosophical interpretation, primarily be seen as life in God here and now. It should not be seen as a future state, dependent upon how we live here and now. Our current life is in focus in his understanding of the Last Judgement. The Last Judgement is not to be focused on individual actions as contributing to possible rewards or punishments in the future.54 In a way resembling Stanley Hauerwas’ talk of character,55 Phillips uses the concept of the soul. Talking about the soul is a way of talking about what in the final perspective constitutes the person as an individual human being. How a person understands his life narrative is crucial for an understanding of who that person is. In studying personal life views it is important to stress that actions seen in a third person perspective are not always the key to a “person’s soul”. The way the person relates to her/his action (in a first-person perspective) is the central point – involving elements of repentance, change and acceptance. These elements could be seen as expressions of eternity taking shape in human life, instead of being seen as means for reaching eternal life in some distant future.56

Relief from suffering and death here and now? Is there, then, a universal solution to the problem of suffering and to euthanasia related to that? Can the Christian eschatology, talking of resurrection of the dead and of an eternal life, help a (Christian) person confronting unbearable suffering in herself or in her neighbour? The answer is partly dependent upon how “eschatology” is understood. I will now return to the urgent cry by Johan in our story for further scrutiny. However, we will start by taking it up in another setting than Johan’s own modern framework. One crucial point in Phillips’ essay is his understanding of what we, with Katarina Westerlund, could call “realised eschatology”. The only way to escape an instrumental understanding of our lives in relation to God and eternity seems to be a realism stressing “here and now”. Hell cannot, for example, meaningfully be seen as a future consequence of saying no to God here and now. Hell is this God-denying, according to Phillips. Neither can suffering be seen as a means to deserving a comfortable future (eternal) life. And it should not be seen as a punishment for former deeds. Suffering must, according to Phillips, be confronted in all its ugliness without promises of any easy way out. I find it important to follow Phillips on this point. What suffering in God could mean in a concrete case is not for anyone to judge. Either you live with great pain, accepting this as part of God’s

Euthanasia  71 world (although you have possible difficulties in understanding it), or you deny a God with any part in a world of great pain.57 If we return to Johan Sletten, one possible way to interpret the story is that his life is marked by what here has been labelled a spectator’s view on life and reality. He is a quite typical modern man, who wants to be in control. And in relation to the three Christian virtues, he mentions that he has no faith and no hope, but he feels that he has love. The ambivalence he feels in the last section of the story puts a question mark even over this trust in love. He begins to doubt even that. Can he trust that Mai will act out of love? The reader gets the impression that he, after all, cannot have confidence in her. He seems unable to be sure of her love for him. Thus he does not want his life to be ended by an act on her part. He has lost the ability to see that very act by her as an ultimate expression of love. He has lost faith as trust in a love relation. I will return to this later. However, I want to ask here whether Johan’s attitude could be seen as meaningful only from one certain perspective. His remark “I have no faith, I have no hope” fits well in a modern Nordic cultural setting. It is uttered in a context superficially marked by a Christian tradition and its talk of life after death. In modernity such talk only makes sense when seen as referring to a divine object of faith and a future event (i.e. life after death). Given his modern framework Johan is convinced that such an object does not exist, and that such a future event will not occur. We here meet a fundamental problem in most of our modern cultural sentiment. This problem makes it almost impossible for Johan to find any comfort in what could be called faith or eschatological hope. The same rational sentiment is also seen in the last straw that he grasps at in his way of relating to Mai. Suspicion comes in, and destroys his last comforting resort. Phillips has helped us see that there is something wrong in the way modern people seem to approach Christian eschatology in relation to death and the hereafter. Instead of thinking of a two-step (cognitive) process, one should, in line with the perspective expressed by Phillips, understand faith, hope and love as characteristics of immediate expressions where a previous rational reflection or earlier sensible experience have no place. An attitude of trust in the face of death is the shape hope takes. A trust in reality as ultimately good is the shape faith takes. Johan’s trust in Mai’s love is (could be) the shape love takes. Taken in that way, faith, hope and love could become an option even for Johan. However, this probably presupposes that he has lost some of his faith in the modern mentality colouring most of his societal (modern) context.

Secular, religious and beyond The two ways of understanding life and reality presented above, named the spectator’s and the actor’s view, can, as I have already hinted, be seen as expressions of larger cultural frameworks that have played an important part in Western societies on different levels since the 1980s. From this time onwards there has been a growing tension in, among others, the Nordic societies between modernity and

72  Tage Kurtén late (or post-) modernity. One way to get a grip on what is going on is to see these overall views as more or less competing ideologies determining the way people understand life. Modernity has to a large degree become a framework taken for granted by most people in the Western world. Late or postmodernity can be seen as a critical dissociation from many of the traits in modernity which have not been under discussion within that modern framework. Let me take some examples. One feature in a modern society that has had an enormous impact on people’s way of life is the functional differentiation of society. The process leading to the modern differentiated societies in the industrial world is well known and I will not go deeper into that.58 The process started in the Christian monolithic societies in Europe at some point in the 17th century. Through a functional differentiation more and more of life in traditional, mostly rural societies was liberated from their close ties to religion and church. This is what we usually call a process of secularisation. As a consequence the church became more and more marginalised. It lost its influence on science, upbringing, the school system, the economy, politics, cultural life, etc. Church began to live a life outside the public, secular sphere. (The picture is somewhat caricatured.) The development concerned both institutional life and the life of the individual. Religion became a private matter without importance for public life. It is rather easy to show how a secular point of view slowly came to be the view taken for granted, not as an option beside other options, but as the only possible way of understanding things.59 The peak here is the way secular views during the 20th century began to define what religion can and cannot be. We see this most clearly in those parts of academic discourse that deal with “religion”: theology and religious studies. Modern rationality has influenced the way Biblical texts are handled, the way religious language is understood and so forth. The secular ideology has subdued what we call religion.60 Another example would be the way school instruction in a secular view of life in the Nordic countries is mostly seen as a more objective and neutral teaching than an instruction in religion on a confessional basis. It does not occur to most people that the secular approach should be taken as partial in much the same way as a religious, confessional one.61 A more focused discussion of the secular worldview in modern societies has only taken place during the last 30–40 years. But not until the last two decades have these critical voices received full attention in academic discourse. When it comes to the role of religion, one important factor has been the return of religion to the public domain. This is something that sociologists of religions have noticed mainly since the beginning of this century.62 In social philosophy one watershed was 9/11 and the growing presence of Islam in Western societies. This has led to talk both in sociology and in philosophy of a post-secular situation.63 We return to the functionally differentiated society. It seems quite clear that life and actions outside religion in a narrow sense are built upon secular premises in modernity. However, our understanding of the concept of the “secular”, which is one factor defining the modern world, is coupled to our understanding of the

Euthanasia  73 concept of “religion” as its counterpart. One important aspect of the secularisation process marking modernity was the critical striving for freedom from every authority, not least from the religious hierarchy. As a result our current concept of “religion” has become defined by a profoundly secular view. This modern understanding of “religion”, in turn, sees religion as something quite marginalised, without real connections to the “really real”, secular parts of society.64 Two important interlocutors in the ongoing discussion, José Casanova and Talal Asad, look differently upon the consequences of the late modern return of religion to the public sphere. According to Casanova modern differentiation (including the secularisation of most parts of society) is inevitable, while privatisation of religion is not. If he is right, religion can return to public life without this having any deeper consequences for the secular and differentiated society. For example, the return of religion would have no impact upon medical care.65 Asad does not agree. According to him the de-privatisation of religion completely changes the way democratic societies work. The modern liberal idea of the law and the state as “neutral” does not hold anymore.66 My own interpretation of the ongoing development is close to Asad’s. However, our current culture involves ways of understanding that maintain both interpretations, side by side.67 There are many important features in the ongoing changes in sentiment in current Nordic societies. For our purpose I will primarily focus on how changes from a secular to a post-secular situation could influence our understanding of hope and of Christian eschatology. Through this I hope to be able to offer some important comments upon our ways of understanding euthanasia. If we return to our opening story we must ask in what way the change from a modern secular society to a post-secular multicultural society could influence views concerning death. We found earlier that Johan’s way of dealing with death was marked by a modern, quite secular outlook on life. His way of denying faith and hope was interpreted as an expression of modern rationality in relation to the object of faith and hope. It is worth noticing that such an attitude of rationality is shared by some of those with a deliberately religious attitude, although the stand ultimately taken on similar rational grounds is quite the opposite. The spectator’s view that keeps them together follows one and the same logical structure. Talk about heaven and about life after death gets its meaning through a previously accepted argument of some sort for or against the possibility that such things exist. Johan Sletten seems to have found that the arguments point in favour of a non-religious view. For him it seems obvious that “eschatology does not matter!” A devoted modern Christian finds the arguments speaking in favour of a religious view. For that Christian, “eschatology does matter!” What post-secular thinking takes to the fore is the vanity of approaching eschatological questions in that way. Post-secular thinkers show that a secular framework in modernity is at work in both non-religious and religious views on life and death. And they find that both paths lead to a dead end. As a consequence a Christian eschatological understanding must be seen in a different light in a postsecular setting. We will continue by discussing what this could embrace.

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Empowerment in the face of death and suffering Discussion of euthanasia involves our understanding of both death and suffering. In our understanding of these concepts religious practice and religious verbal expressions can have a role to play. This leads us to the current situation with its blend of secular, religious and something else. We saw earlier how Bishop tries to show that language is not an instrument that can be added to things. Language contributes to the way things, reality, are understood. Language is in turn learned through our taking part in social practices.68 A fundamental problem in doctoral training is, according to him, that students learn a vocabulary of medicine partly by dissecting corpses. Thereby dead bodies become the norm of much of their talk and thinking. One main problem that Bishop points to in his book is the way normal human life and natural social settings are left outside such a discourse. And this is mirrored in the way terms like “death” and “life” are understood. I have underscored that our talk of death can be marked by the same danger. The death of a human being should not be reduced to an event involving mainly one individual and that person’s eternal well-being. The role eschatological expressions could play should, according to the late modern perspective that has been presented in this essay, be embedded in larger social networks and in larger functioning contexts. A post-secular discourse opens the way for an understanding of human life where “religious” and “secular”, as these concepts are understood in modernity, fade away. In a modern framework, euthanasia can be reduced to a question of the most effective means of preventing further suffering. Taking another person’s life becomes one of several optional means. This argument is closely related to the idea of autonomy. However, this is an expressly modern way of dealing with the whole question. What seems to get lost in this modern framework is the weight of every person taking part in the process. What role these different persons involved can come to play is of course dependent upon the kind of persons they are. We have seen that modern medicine has instructed new doctors in a way that makes it hard for them to play any role other than the one given by their educational framework. And this framework is, if our argument is right, marked by a modern secular mentality. We have seen that eschatology taken up in such a framework in the face of death is in danger of having its focus on something external in relation to concrete life here and now. Phillips has taught us that we must deal with both questions of life and death and of eschatology in an internal perspective. The possible meaning that the talk of an afterlife, or of eternal life, can have is not in being about an external object (a time and a place called eternity or the like). The thought that our couple, Mai and Johan, could be comforted by a story of a distant time and place that can reconcile them with their present sufferings is problematic. It presupposes a twostep strategy: first belief in a given story, and then, through that story, comfort in a situation found to be hard. The point is instead, I have argued, to be seen as

Euthanasia  75 internal. Living eschatologically is living in the light of eternity. To live a life in God’s world is to live a life where every act is seen as an expression of that. This is eschatological life in a late modern setting. Could this give our couple any comfort? Only, I have argued, if they can leave behind the framework of modern mentality that they have taken for granted and lived by. Bishop makes a similar point related to the way we understand talk of death and life. He starts the final chapter of his book with the following summary: My point up to now is that the social apparatus of medicine molds and shapes, indeed, subjects students to the normative stance of a biopolitical regime, in which the health of the body politic becomes the object of medicine’s inquiry and its domain of management. Death’s dominion becomes medicine’s dominion.69 Bishop thereafter ends his book with a sketched presentation of another perspective. To my mind his sketch aims at a deep-going change of the whole frame of discourse. I see it as an argument meaningful within a late modern frame. As I understand it a late modern frame goes hand in hand with a post-secular critical assessment of modern secularism. This is also in line with the internal understanding of eschatology that I have tried to present (called “ferment-eschatology” by Jackelén). Bishop builds upon Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology in his attempt to express a more holistic approach to our taking care of people suffering from diseases or injuries.70 He further builds on Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical understanding of the other. His most important point, in my view, is his relational way of understanding the responsibility of all different actors taking part in the life of a person suffering from diseases or injuries, and the part played by these different actors in decisions made concerning life and death.71 In the process the concepts “death” and “life” change. Earlier in his book he makes a most important observation. It is in a section discussing different situations where physicians, according to the modern debate around euthanasia, have to make expert decisions contributing to the process of dying. He lifts up a (to my mind rhetorical) question posed by the jurist Martha Minow: “Does the act of taking a life change the person who does it?”72 This question compels us to consider the whole range of people involved in every decision taken concerning life and death. It is never a matter only of the “patient” as an atomic body or only of one human being.73 Every time we take another person into consideration, we have to deal with the uncontrollable entirety of the experiences, social relations, narratives, emotions, etc. that constitute that person’s form of life. To what extent such all-embracing life stories must influence the way we assess questions of life and death is a most pressing challenge to theology and to ethics in our current Nordic societies. When our societal context becomes more and more multicultural and multi-religious, and when the modern, all-embracing secular ideology is not taken for granted anymore, our way of understanding life and death has to change. That means, among other things, that we must be open to several concepts concerning what

76  Tage Kurtén we are accustomed to name “life and death”. Death means one thing to a modern secular physician, another thing to a traditional Hindu, and another to a Christian no longer living within a modern framework that is taken for granted. Returning to our story, these last points enlarge the context within which the life of Johan and Mai could be understood. They point to social settings existing outside the small world of our couple. The question is, of course, to what extent can these settings offer real comfort to the leading characters in our story? Johan is dependent upon the love he meets in Mai. In a sense this love can be seen as an eschatological element in a pressing time in Johan’s life. Eternity touches the earth. In the story he seems, ultimately, to be unable to grasp it. Our present considerations point at the same time to eschatology in a wider sense: Christian eschatology has its most visible expressions in the life and practice of the members of Christian churches. Can these kinds of eschatological expressions really matter?

Does eschatology matter? In this essay I have argued that a religious way of dealing with death in modernity to a large degree has been separated from the secular medical way of approaching the process of dying. And I have tried to convince my reader that this separation is embedded in an ideological framework, which makes the separation more or less inevitable. I have pointed out that a post-secular, late modern framework opens up another way of understanding a “religious” outlook in relation to, among other phenomena, medicine, health care, and an understanding of life, death and euthanasia.74 In an attempt to answer the question “Does eschatology matter?” I shall now present an interesting article by a Norwegian professor at the Faculty of Theology in Oslo, Knut W. Ruyter, entitled “Space for Religion in Public Hospitals: Constructive Coexistence Can Be Negotiated”. The article was published in 2014. It deals with the space given to religious presence in public hospitals in Norway. However, I presume that the picture so painted mirrors the situation in all Lutheran Nordic countries quite well. Ruyter notes that public health care in Norway has its roots in the Christian church in early medieval times. In Northern Europe, hospitals were managed by the church authorities in the monolithic Lutheran societies until the beginning of the 20th century. Due to this historical background, Lutheran chaplains have ever since had, as a matter of course, a place in public medical institutions. Hospital chapels have also been common. A religious presence in Nordic hospitals has thereby been unbroken. However, the development has been from a situation where the Christian element was tightly integrated in the health care of the hospital, to the current one with a much looser integration.75 In his description of today’s situation, Ruyter chooses not to emphasise the clear separation between secular health care and religious elements. However, he mentions that some 10–20 years ago religious elements were seriously questioned. Health personnel were not even supposed to say a prayer with a patient.

Euthanasia  77 Health personnel were trained in a totally secular mentality. In my view, this fact clearly mirrors the peak of a modern secularistic development (something Ruyter does not mention explicitly). Religious tradition had (and very often still has) no meaningful place in hospital care based upon medical science. What Ruyter’s text does reveal is the current ongoing change. Religion is returning to the public. And this return also takes place in public hospitals and health care. In some hospitals in Norway not only the Lutheran Church is given space today. Other religious traditions and secular outlooks on life are also offered a special room for meditation and worship (in addition to traditional Lutheran chapels). A great deal of effort is made to offer patients care that takes their personal convictions into consideration.77 The situation so described by Ruyter reveals that hospital authorities today can open up a multicultural and multi-religious societal situation. The frames of hospital care are in transition. A multitude of religions and other outlooks on life can be integrated as elements that are taken for granted at least in the institutions Ruyter has analysed. However, Ruyter also notices that this change does not seem to have reached medical training. “Some studies show that the subject of religion is virtually non-existent on the curricula of all the professional health care programmes”.78 The problematic medical training with its secularistic framework described by Bishop has thus not been changed. This observation is important for our theme in this essay. The issue of a secularistic framework being taken for granted can thus hardly be overcome within health care in the near future, assuming that Ruyter’s picture is correct. And this in turn means that although different religious views are accepted in the public sphere, these religions are accepted within a secular frame. Their place and significance can still be expected to be defined by secular modernity. That implies that faced with matters of life and death secular thinking and sentiment can be supposed to influence the way even many religious people understand both their religion and life as a whole. And this leads us to our main question: does eschatology matter? Given the twofold cultural context described above (secular and post-secular sentiments side by side) the question must be given two different answers. From a secular perspective, eschatology is primarily understood in cognitive terms, or as something belonging to an individual’s private sphere. Eschatology as an individual belief in a metaphysical reality with no connections to reality as medicine knows it can still be meaningful – for the traditionally religious person. And such a cognitive conviction can offer some comfort. However, this conviction has no bearing on the deliberate acts taken by the health care personnel. Within this modern framework religious hope concerns by definition something other than the reality taken into account by hospital personnel (besides persons representing a religious sphere, like the chaplains mentioned by Ruyter). We have seen that Johan Sletten was unable to resort to eschatology in that sense, given the modern secular framework of his life. On my reading it was impossible for him to find comfort in a cognitive eschatological picture. 76

78  Tage Kurtén What about the question of euthanasia? As far as I can see, eschatology within a modern context cannot contribute to the discussion of euthanasia, as long as the concepts in the euthanasia discourse are defined by modern secular medicine, as understood by Bishop. That would mean that eschatology understood within a modern framework could not as such give any straightforward answer to the challenges of euthanasia. Anyone, Christian or non-Christian, has to take a stand on strictly ethical arguments. The outcome of such deliberations could perhaps result in a firm no to euthanasia. In a sense eschatology can matter to a Christian by shaping her/his ethical arguments – for example by making her/his eternal wellbeing dependent upon the way he/she deals with euthanasia. Ruyter has shown us that a change on the organisational level is taking place in public health care. This opens up another way of approaching hospital care and the process of dying. Such an approach makes sense within a late modern and post-secular framework. And within that framework Christian hope and trust in the face of death simply is the way eschatology works. Then indeed eschatology matters. Eschatology matters in the way individual Christians and different social contexts in their way of being bear witness to something that we cannot grasp and control within the secular framework of modernity. Eschatology taking shape in that way will put a question mark over the whole distinction between secular and religious as defined in modernity. And it will contribute to a radical change in the way people now living in Nordic countries conceptualise life and death. Eschatology is discernible in the way a person deals with another person’s suffering and death process. In our story eschatology could be understood to take shape in the love of Mai. However, in that story it did not seem to last to the ultimate end. The inevitable ambivalence in the act of euthanasia is thus in a convincing way expressed by Linn Ullmann and her story. The final act that in one moment seemed the only decent thing to do turns out to involve an ambivalence that Mai will perhaps never in her life be able to get rid of. This is but one indication of the very complicated idea of euthanasia as something we could allow ourselves to perform. This idea is an idea of us being able to control aspects of life that are not controllable. In a post-secular world eschatology definitely can matter. What expression it will take in the case of unbearable sufferings is, however, impossible to answer once and for all. What we have seen so far makes me inclined to raise some points: in the face of unbearable suffering the options are not either to let the person live with her/ his sufferings or to be ready to end the life of that person. The deliberate killing of another human being can never be demanded by another human, I would state. However, if we are not prepared to kill, the alternative ought not to be to leave a person in her/his sufferings. The only decent solution then seems to be to put resources into the palliative care of every dying and suffering patient. However, with Hartling I want to add that what love demands of us in different new situations should just the same not be made into absolute rules.79 Eschatological living could be understood to live in such openness with trust.

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Summary In my essay I have tried critically to describe the way a secularised modernity has offered and still offers an assumed framework that fundamentally colours the way matters of life and death are grasped by modern Westerners. This includes modern medicine and the way modern hospitals work, at least in Nordic countries. Earlier in my text I asked whether the problems with modern medical training that Bishop presented could be overcome within a strictly modern framework. In the light of my discussion I am inclined to answer this question in the negative. Given the above mentioned modern framework, a theological understanding of Christian tradition in general and especially of Christian eschatological thinking are marked by conceptual distinctions that get their meaning from this given framework. This also applied to the way the Christian hope is understood. And it labels the way euthanasia is understood and discussed. In that light euthanasia is understood in terms of the way modern medicine defines matters of life and death. And eschatological hope in the Christian tradition is concerned with something that is situated in terms of time after the moment of death, according to this modern definition given by medicine, and spatially in a reality outside the world as we, through modern science, know it. The modern framework thereby preserves a view of a Christian (and of most other religious persons, for that matter) as living in two worlds. These two realities consist on the one side of our day-to-day world defined by a modern secular outlook, and on the other side of another, religiously defined world functioning parallel to the secular one. Analysis within a post-secular discourse critically points out that a secular point of view in modernity has the position of an ideology that is taken for granted. That means that this secular frame is seldom if ever critically scrutinised and questioned within that framework. Within that ideological frame the current discussion of death and of euthanasia goes on. A religious point of view that will have anything to offer to that discussion has to accept that given frame.80 In such a discussion a religious point of view only makes sense as something adding to a human reality already given and defined by a secular modernity. In my essay I have questioned such a view. Such a questioning leads to a cultural and societal situation where no one has the key to a general, objective understanding of human life and of the current societal reality. This post-secular view implies the idea of an open culture. I have tried to indicate that a radical change in the presuppositions of our understanding of life and death follows from this. An open culture presupposes a human reality where many different views of life, religious as well as non-religious, have to live side by side. It implies a society where no one part has the right to define how every member of that society has to understand life, or how we all ought to act. An open culture in that sense presupposes a democratic framework that makes room for many different minority and majority views within one and the same society. In such an open culture a life like Johan’s and Mai’s ought to be accepted. And Mai’s decision can be fully understandable,

80  Tage Kurtén given her and Johan’s joint view of life. Within their worldview Christian eschatology has no clear room. That, however, does not rule out that eschatology, taking shape in actions of love, hope and trust, could not be an element in the last weeks or months of the life the two have together – through themselves, or through other persons bearing witness in deeds to their eschatological faith. To the extent that modern eschatology and modern talk of a Christian hope has been formulated within an ideological secular framework, theology in a postsecular setting has to rethink its understanding of, among many other things, the central Christian ideas of death and of hope in the face of biological death. When we leave behind the idea of a given secular worldview, neutral and objectively given to all humans, viewpoints stemming from a Christian tradition can no longer be seen as an extra, added to a reality common to all reasonable people. Christian eschatology and Christian hope for and trust in a reality determined by God is the narrative that accompanies the Christian life. It is expressed in many ways, most explicitly in rituals before and after the physical death of an individual. A secular life is accompanied by other narratives and other practices. The ways different narratives meet and can coexist in everyday life is something that we know very little about. A reason for this is that we Westerners in the Nordic countries during the last century have lived in a more or less uniform secularistic culture. Practice within modern medicine and modern legislation concerning the process of dying is marked by concepts defined within a secular frame. Modern Christian tradition is often well defined in relation to that. It is, however, not equally obvious how theology concerning Christian eschatology should approach the question of life and death, and questions concerning euthanasia in a post-secular culture. In a multicultural situation, as sketched above, the question of euthanasia becomes very urgent. With the example of Johan Sletten I have tried to show how a concrete action out of love could be interpreted as the way God works. This, however, presupposes at least a narrative framework81 where God and God’s action can be seen as taking place “here and now”, for example in the glimpse of unselfish love revealed in the act of Mai. The whole novel could be understood as a commentary on St Paul’s message to the Corinthians: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love”. Christian hope and Christian trust in God is in the love revealed through concrete actions in the face of death and suffering. I leave open whether Mai and Johan possess a view of life that makes them able to experience this. In view of my argument the whole question of euthanasia remains in a sense open. I have no intention of presenting a ready-made solution either morally or dogmatically. I have tried to point out that there are no once and for all answers to these kinds of questions. However, I have at the same time pointed to some features where the danger of oversimplifying the whole question should be taken into account. Pointing to our ambivalent cultural situation between a secular modern frame and a post-secular, late modern one, I have tried to show that eschatology matters – and why. It matters within both frames, but I am convinced that eschatology comes closer to concrete human life when understood within a late modern setting.

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Notes 1 Linn Ullmann, Grace: A Novel (New York: Anchor Books, 2005), 72–73. 2 Dealing with real life questions through fiction is quite common in philosophy. I presuppose in my text that good literature mirrors important existential questions and ways of dealing with them, without discussing the methodological challenges involved in this kind of approach. 3 Ullmann, Grace, 44. 4 Ullmann, Grace, 86. 5 Ullmann, Grace, 111–115; 125–127. 6 Ullmann, Grace, 128. 7 Ullmann, Grace, 129–130. 8 Ullmann, Grace, 130. 9 See N. Biggar, Aiming to Kill: The Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004), 1–17. 10 Utmanad kyrka, Utmanad kyrka: Evangelisk-lutherska kyrkan i Finland åren 2008– 2011 (Tammerfors: Kyrkans forskningscentrals publikationer, 2013), 26. 11 S. Borg et al., Uskonto, arvot ja instituutiot: Suomalaiset World Values-tutkimuksissa 1981–2005 (Tampere: Tampereen Yliopisto: Yhteiskuntatieteellinen tietoarkiston julkaisuja 4, 2007), figure 5.2a. 12 Borg et al., Uskonto, arvot ja instituutiot, figure 5.2b. 13 ETENE (National Advisory Board on Social Welfare and Health Care Ethics), Human Dignity, Hospice Care and Euthanasia (Helsinki: Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, 2012), 3. This definition is commonly accepted; see for example U. Schmidt, “Euthanasia, Autonomy and Beneficence”, Studia Theologica 56 (2002): 132–133. The Norwegian ethicist Ulla Schmidt, however, adds two more criteria: the person dies as a direct result of an action in response to the request, and the action is done out of mercy. 14 ETENE, Human Dignity, 2. 15 ETENE, Human Dignity, 8. 16 ETENE, Human Dignity, 8. In 2017 when this text is being published, there is a bill in Parliament suggesting that Finland, as the only Nordic country, would legislate on euthanasia in much the same way as in the Netherlands. See Expatica, “Finnish Parliament Debates Legalising Euthanasia”, 2 March 2017, www.expatica.com/nl/news/ country-news/Finland-politics-euthanasia-parliament-Netherlands_982343.html. Accessed 10 October 2017. 17 I will return to this later in the text when a post-secular critique of modern secularism is presented. 18 Biggar, Aiming to Kill, 115–157. See also Schmidt’s critical analysis of the arguments in favour of euthanasia, in Schmidt, “Euthanasia”. Among other aspects she analyses the slippery slope argument in an important way; see Schmidt, “Euthanasia”, 145–146. The Danish physician and former chairman of an Ethical Board in Denmark Ole Johannes Hartling has recently published a book where he thoroughly discusses different aspects of euthanasia. He stresses a clear boundary between what he calls “euthanasia” and “palliation”, where what is sometimes called passive euthanasia is included in palliative care. His main point is that legalising (active) euthanasia, like in the Netherlands, would mean a huge change in moral outlook in a country like Denmark. He finds the “slippery slope” argument quite important. He is at the same time hesitant about overly rigorous rules concerning palliative care. See O.J. Hartling, Aktiv dødshjælp. Kan vi mere end vi kan megte? (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2015), 32, 45, 148–149. 19 Bishop does not himself use the word “secular”, but this is how I interpret the picture he draws. 20 J.P. Bishop, The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 8, 21–23.

82  Tage Kurtén 21 Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse, 60. In one of his earlier writings Stanley Hauerwas discusses the relation between medicine, medical ethics and religion in line with Bishop, and in a way that I find philosophically and theologically worth considering. See S. Hauerwas, Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped, and the Church (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003 [1986]), 63–83. 22 Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse, 60. 23 Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse, 95. 24 Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse, 97. 25 Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse, 96–118. 26 Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse, 130–140. 27 Although Bishop sees the advantages in developing palliative care, he warns of the same danger in that context also, of the physician having the “wrong gaze”. However, I will not go deeper into that aspect in what follows. Mainly he sees the development of palliative care and of the hospice movement as practices trying to break the dominion of modern medicine and especially of its disadvantages. Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse, 275–278. For a similar and perhaps even more positive view of palliative care, see Hartling, Aktiv dødshjælp, 150–157. 28 Another important analysis of euthanasia may be found in Nigel Biggar’s book Aiming to Kill. Biggar develops a theological argument in his book. His picture of the present Western societies is quite pessimistic when he writes – apropos the slippery slope argument – “I certainly doubt that such a slide can be avoided under current cultural conditions. And I can see no grounds for confidence that those conditions will ever be sufficiently different” (Biggar, Aiming to Kill, 164). It seems like Biggar does not take notice of the ongoing cultural changes where Western society is becoming more post-secular. At the same time, however, his argument is a heavy critique of modern culture. Hartling in Denmark expresses much the same concern as Biggar. He stresses the importance of language, and points at euphemisms in modern culture when talking about ending human life (Hartling, Aktiv dødshjælp, 138–147). 29 The problems and ethical dilemmas caused by the modern idea of the patient’s autonomy are presented well by Hartling (Aktiv dødshjælp, 73–93). 30 See Antje Jackelén, Tidsinställningar: Tiden i naturvetenskap och teologi (Lund: Arcus, 2000), 82, 172; Antje Jackelén, Time and Eternity: The Question of Time in Church, Science and Theology (London: Templeton Foundation Press, 2005), 93, 198– 200. In her dissertation published in 2002, Antje Jackelén (since 2014 Archbishop of the Church of Sweden) studies eschatology and the concept of time both in theology and in post-Newtonian physics. 31 K. Westerlund, “Antropologi och eskatologi”, in Systematisk teologi: en introduktion, eds. M. Martinson, O. Sigurdson and J. Svenungsson (Stockholm: Verbum, 2007), 159. 32 Westerlund, “Antropologi och eskatologi”, 159. Jackelén develops eschatology a little bit further while contrasting three different eschatological views: (1) an ontological one, stressing eternity as life after death – this focuses upon the destiny of the individual in a life hereafter (the danger is then quietism); (2) a now-centred one, stressing this-worldly life now and in the future, leading to active life aiming at a better society, based upon a Christian hope for a better future, the Kingdom of God (the danger lies in trivialising eternity and making it into a political tool); (3) a view stressing a continuous relation between time and eternity. Jackelén calls this a “ferment-eschatology”. It leads to a life with engagement for a better life within this-worldly time, but a life marked by a permanent awareness of this life judged by eternity as “the other”. Jackelén, Tidsinställningar, 172–176; Jackelén, Time and Eternity, 198–203. Jackelén’s third position resembles Paul Tillich’s idea of “the Protestant principle”; see P. Tillich, Systematic Theology I: Reason and Revelation. Being and God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 227; P. Tillich, Systematic Theology III. Life and the

Euthanasia  83 Spirit: History and the Kingdom of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 208–210. 33 The presentation on the following pages is built upon a previous text of mine. See T. Kurtén, På väg mot det postsekulära: Tankar under femton år (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2014), 144–149. Jackelén studies the concept of time in theology in relation to time understood in modern post-Newtonian physics. This is also an aspect discussed by Bråkenhielm in this book. For our perspective in this article I build upon the classical understanding of time, known through Newtonian mechanics. For our ordinary talk of time I find this conception appropriate. 34 The importance of a modern scientific worldview for much of our current understanding of eschatology is studied from another angle in this book by Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm. As one can see from my text, I build upon a popular view of science and scientific rationality, where the current view of time and reality within theoretical physics is not taken into account. Although our Western culture is very much influenced by science, and a scientific way of understanding reality, the findings of current theoretical physics seem not to have reached ordinary people and their life views. Perhaps you could say that the ordinary modern person often represents “a quasi-scientific rationality”. The important thing for our argument here is, however, that this view is clearly different from both a pre-modern and a late modern, post-secular view. 35 I. Hedenius, Att välja livsåskådnig (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1951), 74. 36 G.H. von Wright, Myten om framsteget: Tankar 1987–1992 med en intellektuell själv biografi (Helsingfors: Söderström, 1993), 146–151. 37 Zygmunt Bauman stresses this feature, and points to the sense in which such a wish colours the understanding of death by modern minds. Z. Bauman, Döden och odödligheten i det moderna samhället (Göteborg: Daidalos, 1994), 165–169, 201–203. 38 Bauman sees the modern mentality as instrumental in relation to the now-moment. The “here and now” thus gets its meaning from some future goal. He finds this reflected in modern society where human strivings are understood in terms of the concept of “project”. All life is marked by shorter projects with defined ends. And these future ends give meaning to the present. This is the modern way of dealing with the loss of an all-encompassing common goal (an earthly or heavenly kingdom); see Bauman, Döden och odödligheten, 165–169, 201–203. 39 Jackelén talks of an end-focused, ontological eschatological view. Jackelén, Tidsinställningar, 75–77, 173–175, Jackelén, Time and Eternity, 89–92, 172–176. 40 H. Cöster, Berättelsen befriar: Teologisk hermeneutik (Karlstad: Högskolan i Karlstad, 1981), 124–126. 41 One striking theological example of such a cognitive attitude – although not focusing on the concept of hope – is found by German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg. See for example W. Pannenberg, Theologie und Reich Gottes (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1971), 21. We find another example in the way the British philosopher John Hick talks about “eschatological verification”. See J. Hick, Religionsfilosofi (Löberöd: Plus Ultra, 1990), 103–105. 42 D.Z. Phillips, Death and Immortality (London and Basingstoke: Palgarve Macmillan, 1970), 49. See also my discussion of this sentence by Phillips in T. Kurtén, Grunder för en kontextuell teologi (Åbo: Åbo Akademi Förlag, 1987), 57–60, where I try to widen the scope beyond that of Phillips. 43 Cöster, Berättelsen befriar, 124–126. See also Kurtén, På väg mot det postsekulära, 152–153. 44 This does not mean that reality becomes a human construction. The point only stresses that it is a mistake to think that reality can be found and controlled from a neutral position outside the reality one tries to grasp. That means that experiences and rational deliberations are not seen as neutral tools by which we gain control of reality. Language has a central role in such a life-orientation. And thereby human traditions that

84  Tage Kurtén are expressed in everyday human language become central. Kurtén, På väg mot det postsekulära, 147–148. 45 Knud E. Løgstrup describes how we all try to manage the annihilation of our being through having concrete aims in life. K.E. Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse: Religionsfiulosofiske betragtninger (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1995), 44–45. 46 L. Hertzberg, “Hopp för mänskligheten”, Ad Lucem 4 (1996): 13 – my translation. 47 Kurtén, På väg mot det postsekulära, 147–149. See also Bauman, Döden och odödligheten, 203–205. In the 1990s Bauman found that a total focus on “here and now” is an attitude of postmodernity. He thinks such a postmodernity is in danger of transforming everything into an over-emphasised now empty of any lasting meaning. Bauman, Döden och odödligheten, 210–221, 228–230. The talk of postmodernity at the end of the last century opened up a new way of responding to the idea of time in modernity. Through the present essay I hope I am able to show yet another perspective based upon the concept of late modernity and a post-secular discourse. My impression is that Bauman also points in that same direction in the last chapter of his book, where he discusses death and morality. See Bauman, Döden och odödligheten, 247–259. 48 G. Björkstrand, Framtidens folkkyrka: herdabrev till Borgå stift (Helsingfors: Fontana Media, 2008), 171 – my translation. 49 Sigurd Bergmann elaborates the concept of space related to hope and eschatology in more detail in this book. 50 Cf. for example L. Koskinen, Tid och evighet hos Kirerkegaard (Lund: Doxa, 1980), 52–55; S. Kierkegaard, Øyeblikket (Kjøbenhavn: Reitzel, 1895). 51 I have developed a view of Christian faith as trust in more detail in Kurtén, På väg mot det postsekulära, 71–88 and 169–186, where texts in both Swedish and English can be found. 52 D.Z. Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God (London: SCM Press, 2004), 255, 273–274. 53 Phillips, The Problem of Evil, 255, 273–274. 54 Phillips, The Problem of Evil, 254–256. Jackelén argues for a similar viewpoint; see Jackelén, Tidsinställningar, 183–188. 55 The importance of character is stressed by Stanley Hauerwas; see for example the title of his book A Community of Character (S. Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001 [1981])). 56 Phillips, The Problem of Evil, 262–263. 57 Phillips, The Problem of Evil, 265–274. 58 See for example J. Casanova, Public Religion in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Talal Asad has critically discussed the way Casanova sees religion in relation to the secular spheres within (late) modern society. See T. Asad, Foundations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 186. 59 This is one of Taylor’s main points, presented from the beginning in Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3. 60 I discuss this in more detail for example in my article T. Kurtén, “Political Theology in a Nordic Post-Secular Setting”, Studia Theologica 67.2 (2013): 90–109. The article is rewritten in T. Kurtén, Moralisk öppenhet: Förutsättningar för etik bortom religiöst och sekulärt (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2016), 165–187. 61 This is analysed more in detail in T. Kurtén, “Att förstå religion och moral idag”, Sphinx. Årsbok för Societas Scientiarum Fennica (2010–2011): 87–95. 62 See for example R.K. Fenn (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2003). 63 Important contributions, both in a Nordic and in a broader Western context are Taylor, A Secular Age; Breemer et al., Secular and Sacred?; J. Butler et al., The Power

Euthanasia  85 of Religion in the Public Sphere (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); and O. Sigurdson, Det postsekulära tillståndet: Religion, modernitet, politik (Göteborg: Glänta produktion, 2009). A Swedish book was very early in using the concept of postsecularity – as early as 1990. See O. Franck, P. Thalén and B. Sahlin (eds.), Postsekulariserat interregnum? från tro och vetande till vetrenskap och mystik (Delsbo: Åsak, 1990). 64 I have recently taken part in this ongoing discussion in two books, not least in the two introductory essays (see Kurtén, På väg mot det postsekulära, and Moralisk öppenhet. Historically we can see a change taking place within Nordic societies from a pre-modern monolithic Lutheran society (until the time between the World Wars), to a modern monolithic secular society (from the Second World War till the end of the century), and from there to the current more and more multicultural post-secular society. For more details, see Kurtén, “Political Theology”, 90–98. One description of the Nordic situation that is in many respects similar to my own may be found in Breemer et al., Secular and Sacred? See for example 312–318. The authors of that book, however, do not find the break between the secular and the post-secular as radical as I do. 65 “Unlike secular differentiation, which remains a structural trend that serves to define the very structure of modernity, the privatization of religion is a historical option, a ‘preferred option’ to be sure, but an option nonetheless” (Casanova, Public Religion, 39). 66 Asad, Foundations of the Secular, 186. It is worth noting that Casanova wrote before, and Asad after, “9–11”. 67 Cf. Trygve Wyller’s ambivalent talk of an intertwinement of secular and religious in current Nordic societies, and especially in Norway. Breemer et al., Secular and Sacred? 221–235. 68 We have also seen that Hartling makes a similar point. See Hartling, Aktiv dødshjælp, 138–147. 69 Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse, 285. 70 Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse, 287–295. 71 Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse, 301–313. 72 Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse, 136. 73 This is also an important point made by Hartling. He adds that the relation between the patient and the doctor is also seriously changed; see Hartling, Aktiv dødshjælp, 99–101, 107–116. For a profound analysis of the importance of the social network and its significance for our coming to grips with both suicide and the taking of another person’s life, see also S. Hauerwas, with Richard Bondi and David B. Burrell, Truthfulness and Tragedy: Further Investigations into Christian Ethics (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985 [1977]), 101–115. 74 Trygve Wyller could perhaps be seen as opposing such an interpretation in his talk of intertwinement between the secular and religious aspects in a modern society. A way of understanding his description is to see it as an attempt to get beyond modern secularism, without accepting a radical wall of separation between the secular and something religious. 75 K.W. Ruyter, “Space for Religion in Public Hospitals: Constructive Coexistence Can Be Negotiated”, in Secular and Sacred? The Scandinavian Case of Religion in Human Rights, Law and Public Space, eds. R. van den Breemer, J. Casanova and T. Wyller (Göttingen and Bristol: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 201–204. 76 Ruyter, “Space for Religion”, 214. 77 Ruyter, “Space for Religion”, 211–214. 78 Ruyter, “Space for Religion”, 215. 79 This is clearly the position of Hartling. See Hartling, Aktiv dødshjælp, 148–157. 80 In political theology this situation has been discussed in more detail. See for example the discussion between Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor where Habermas seems still to defend a modern secular framework by demanding that religious members in a

86  Tage Kurtén political discussion have to translate their statements into secular political vocabulary. See Taylor’s comments on that in Butler et al., The Power of Religion, 60–69. 81 A narrative can sometimes suffice, although an anchoring of such a narrative in some social, liturgical, practice seems inevitable in the long run.

Bibliography Asad, T. Foundations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Bauman, Z. Döden och odödligheten i det moderna samhället. Göteborg: Daidalos, 1994. Biggar, N. Aiming to Kill: The Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004. Bishop, J.P. The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Björkstrand, G. Framtidens folkkyrka: herdabrev till Borgå stift. Helsingfors: Fontana Media, 2008. Borg, S., K. Ketola, K. Käriäinen, K. Niemelä, and P. Suhonen. Uskonto, arvot ja instituutiot. Suomalaiset World Values-tutkimuksissa 1981–2005. Tampere: Tampereen Yliopisto: Yhteiskuntatieteellinen tietoarkiston julkaisuja 4, 2007. Breemer, R. van den, J. Casanova, and T. Wyller, eds. Secular and Sacred? The Scandinavian Case of Religion in Human Rights, Law and Public Space. Göttingen and Bristol: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. Butler, J., J. Habermas, C. Taylor, and C. West, eds. The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Casanova, J. Public Religion in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Cöster, H. Berättelsen befriar: Teologisk hermeneutik. Karlstad: Högskolan i Karlstad, 1981. ETENE (National Advisory Board on Social Welfare and Health Care Ethics). Human Dignity, Hospice Care and Euthanasia. Helsinki: Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, 2012. http://etene.fi/en/statements-and-opinions-2012. Expatica. “Finnish Parliament Debates Legalising Euthanasia”. 2 March 2017. www. expatica.com/nl/news/country-news/Finland-politics-euthanasia-parliament-Nether lands_982343.html. Accessed 10 October 2017. Fenn, R.K., ed. The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2003. Franck, O., P. Thalén, and B. Sahlin, eds. Postsekulariserat interregnum? från tro och vetande till vetrenskap och mystik. Delsbo: Åsak, 1990. Hartling, O.J. Aktiv dødshjælp: Kan vi mere end vi kan megte? Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2015. Hauerwas, S. A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. ———. Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped, and the Church. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003 [1986]. Hauerwas, S., Richard Bondi, and David B. Burrell. Truthfulness and Tragedy: Further Investigations into Christian Ethics. Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985. Hedenius, I. Att välja livsåskådnig. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1951. Hertzberg, L. “Hopp för mänskligheten”. Ad Lucem 4 (1996).

Euthanasia  87 Hick, J. Religionsfilosofi. Löberöd: Plus Ultra, 1990. Jackelén, Antje. Tidsinställningar: Tiden i naturvetenskap och teologi. Lund: Arcus, 2000. ———. Time and Eternity: The Question of Time in Church, Science and Theology. London: Templeton Foundation Press, 2005. Kierkegaard, S. Øyeblikket. Kjøbenhavn: Reitzel, 1895. Koskinen, L. Tid och evighet hos Kirerkegaard. Lund: Doxa, 1980. Kurtén, T. Grunder för en kontextuell teologi. Åbo: Åbo Akademi Förlag, 1987. ———. “Att förstå religion och moral idag”. Sphinx: Årsbok för Societas Scientiarum Fennica (2010–2011): 87–96. ———. “Political Theology in a Nordic Post-Secular Setting”. Studia Theologica 67.2 (2013): 90–109. ———. På väg mot det postsekulära: Tankar under femton år. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2014. ———. Moralisk öppenhet: Förutsättningar för etik bortom religiöst och sekulärt. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2016. Løgstrup, K.E. Skabelse og tilintetgørelse: Religionsfiulosofiske betragtninger. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1995. Pannenberg, W. Theologie und Reich Gottes. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1971. Phillips, D.Z. Death and Immortality. London and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1970. ———. The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God. London: SCM Press, 2004. Ruyter, K.W. “Space for Religion in Public Hospitals: Constructive Coexistence Can Be Negotiated”. In Secular and Sacred? The Scandinavian Case of Religion in Human Rights, Law and Public Space, edited by R. van den Breemer, J. Casanova, and T. Wyller, 197–220. Göttingen and Bristol: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. Sigurdson, O. Det postsekulära tillståndet: Religion, modernitet, politik. Göteborg: Glänta produktion, 2009. Schmidt, U. “Euthanasia, Autonomy and Beneficence”. Studia Theologica 56 (2002): 132–151. Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Tillich, P. Systematic Theology I: Reason and Revelation. Being and God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951. ———. Systematic Theology III. Life and the Spirit: History and the Kingdom of God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Ullmann, Linn. Grace: A Novel. New York: Anchor Books, 2005. Utmanad kyrka. Utmanad kyrka: Evangelisk-lutherska kyrkan i Finland åren 2008–2011. Tammerfors: Kyrkans forskningscentrals publikationer, 2013. Westerlund, K. “Antropologi och eskatologi”. In Systematisk teologi: en introduktion, edited by M. Martinson, O. Sigurdson, and J. Svenungsson, 145–164. Stockholm: Verbum, 2007. Wright, G.H. von. Myten om framsteget: Tankar 1987–1992 med en intellektuell själv biografi. Helsingfors: Söderström, 1993.

5 Time turned into space – at home on earth Sigurd BergmannTime turned into space – at home on earth

Wanderings in eschatological spatiality Sigurd Bergmann One of the central parts in the first act of Richard Wagner’s opera Parsifal from 1882 introduces us to a deep insight into the nature of eschatology. While Parsifal on his wandering with Gurnemanz asks “Who is the Grail?” and at the same time approaches – without being aware – the hall of the Grail, he remarks it by feeling: Ich schreite kaum, – doch wähn ich mich schon weit. (I am hardly striding, – yet already seem to have gone far.) and Gurnemanz, the Grail knight guiding Parsifal, responds, explaining: Du siehst, mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit. (You see, my son, here time turns into space.)1 If one approaches eschatology only in terms of time, and especially within a modernistic reductionist understanding of time, it will lose its rich complexity and plasticity. Imagining eschatology simply as a dialectic of time and eternity, and conceiving of the process of approaching the future as along one straight line of marks progressing only forward, threatens to narrow our understanding of eschatology in a fatal way. In this chapter, therefore, I will follow Parsifal’s experience in seeing the ceremony of the Holy Grail, where Eschenbach’s early medieval poem locates the encounter of the human and the divine. His feeling that time turns into space will guide us into an exploration of eschatology through the lens of spatiality. In this way we can begin to overcome Western modernity’s eschatological discourse, which “has been sequestered by the dominance of historical thinking”.2 It is interesting that not only did Wagner musically express the transformation of time into space in his opera, but that it was the music itself that he transformed (in the composition directly after the dialogue). While Parsifal feels a change in his mode of walking, moving slowly in space and gliding through the room, simultaneously the music fundamentally changes.3 Wagner’s composition offers

Time turned into space – at home on earth  89 “a self-descriptive change into music” ([eine] sich selbst beschreibende Verwandlung in Musik),4 which he also elaborated in other works and which was probably in his view valid for all arts. How can Christian eschatology deepen its richness by turning time into space?5 Can eschatology itself not only contribute to faith but change it qualitatively? Before we trace this question deeper I will in the following offer an introductory argument for why images of salvation and liberation are necessary, in spite of the widespread discussion that often glamorises the “end of history” and “end of ideology”. It should be obvious that eschatology cannot unfold its power outside the framework of a functioning soteriology. A second step will take us to the challenge of overcoming the well-known utopianisation of images of the Sacred and replacing this with a new locative approach to faith. After these critical remarks, the third step in our chapter will be, in dialogue with the arts and biblical and classical traditions, constructively to explore further the path of eschatological spatiality. Here, rich inspiration for a plastic and wide-open understanding of eschatology is offered by Giovanni Bellini’s painting entitled “Sacred Allegory”. Together with inspiration from a poem by Rilke, the chapter will finally elaborate how the vision of home (Heimat) and the movement towards making-oneself-athome both on Earth and in Heaven can serve as a central theme for eschatology. This becomes true especially in a context where humans as God’s image in the Anthropocene are increasingly threatening God’s and their own habitat through accelerating dangerous environmental and climatic change. The global environmental challenge serves in this connection as a catalysing driving force to revise eschatology in light of the Earth and world to come.

Why liberation matters Eschatology is usually explained as a reflection about the ultimate, last and final (eschaton), about human destiny and the end of time. In its original biblical meaning, however, it mainly refers to a place or to a geographical boundary, to the spatial limits of a location. According to Vitor Westhelle, drawing explicitly on the Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes, eschatology’s fatal reductionism appears in two different modes, either the teleological or the axiological. It either casts the doctrine as a temporal event, yet to be fully realised, or as the axios, an experience relative to neither space nor time, but as the suspension of time in an eternal now (nunc eternum).6 Both ideal types of eschatology weaken and make invisible the implicit dimension of spatiality in eschatology. Both Taubes and the famous Nazi lawyer Carl Schmitt departed from an insight into the foundation of the political in the theological and traced deeply the significance of apocalyptic thinking in European history. While Schmitt’s solution advocated theocracy, and the revival of the nation state along the lines of the Roman Empire’s “katechon”, Taubes followed Paul, reading his letter to the Romans as a strong rejection of the Empire. For him Christ was the end of history, not the rebirth of theocracy. Taubes’ messianic theology also inherently included the suffering of creatures.7 Nevertheless, Westhelle, in spite of his clear critical analysis of the abyss of teleological and

90  Sigurd Bergmann axiological eschatology, is right to complain about the lack of a spatial understanding.8 From another point of departure Kathryn Tanner has suggested a “detemporalized” eschatology, but as she only refers to a “more spatialized than temporalized eschatology”,9 the challenge to develop such an approach appears still wide open. Eschatology instead is about a future that has not taken place though it can already be sensed, about a land that is not seen but can be intuited. It deals with what is possible but still unseen within the present, rather than offering abstract speculation on the distant future. To use the concise term of the ecumenical creed, eschatology deals with “the world to come”. In distinction from apocalyptic fiction, which departs from a split of the now and then, the present and the future, in order to develop images of the end of a period in history (or the end in general), eschatology intends to integrate the present and the future (and as we will see, the past as well) in order to visualise the path from the now to the then. Spatially it visualises the there in the here. The world to come appears in a state of becoming. While futurology makes statements about what is not yet but then, eschatology emphasises the then in the now, the there in the here. In cultivating this tension, in both time and space, eschatology reveals an essential similarity to soteriology, the reflection on liberation and salvation. Both depart from a need to move on – in soteriology, from one state of being in need of liberation to another that is closer to its realisation, and in eschatology to break out of the limits of the present by moving closer to the world to come. Eschatology should therefore be regarded in an intimate relation to soteriology although its focus on the new, unknown and final legitimises its own unique place in the system of theological loci. As Christian eschatology necessarily implies a soteriological dimension, believing that the world to come represents the new creation in a state of liberation, and as soteriology in late modern debates has been exposed to a radical criticism, where all imagining of a liberated future has been deconstructed as seductive illusion rather than emancipatory force, it might make sense to start our wandering in an argument for the central legitimacy of continuing to produce and reflect on visions of the ultimate and liberated. My hypothesis in brief is that eschatology matters because liberation matters. Why? Ever since Daniel Bell in 1960 declared “the end of ideology” (in his view the end of the great liberative concepts of liberalism and socialism), and Francis Fukoyama in 1992 expanded this to “the end of history” (which in his view began in 1989), triumphantly declaring the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”, discourses about liberation have been regarded with a suspicious eye. Jacques Derrida’s strategy of de-construction has furthermore inspired dominant thinkers in late (alleged post-) modernity to treat concepts of liberation as simple modes of conquering and practising power over others. Christian soteriology and eschatology appear in such a climate as an old-fashioned, either leftist or conservative inappropriate project. Nevertheless, discourses about gender inequality, neo-colonialism, globalised economic injustice and anthropogenic dangerous environmental change are all driven by normative images of

Time turned into space – at home on earth  91 liberation and visions of an alternative future. The present state of being needs to be changed. As reflections about liberation are always embedded in contexts of suffering, and as suffering, among both humans and other creatures, seems rather to increase than to decrease, the cynical postmodern who regards and dismantles every postulate about another state of being as an ideological attempt to rule over others also seems to lose his plausibility. Images of another world to come are on such a view simply alluring drugs. Of course one can, and should, also learn from late modern cultural analysis, and dismantle those ideologies which simply use desires for another liberated state of being as elements of power over others, instead of power with others.10 But one should at the same time also dismantle postmodern criticisms of concepts of liberation and the ultimate per se, as these usually open up free space for the strong, who now no longer need to legitimise their Wille zur Macht in a common frame of negotiated principles where power asymmetries are balanced in a common public moral and legal frame. A strong nihilistic postmodern critique of power is often as ideologically rationalist and fanatical as the counterpart that it claims to object to. My strongest objection, however, is that it marginalises and conceals the suffering of the victims, and that it does not attack the self-driving dynamic of the systems (Selbstlauf der Systeme). Postmodern radical criticism of visions of a better and just future and of images of moving towards the world to come often themselves serve as tools for diabolical Abblendung of (turning a blind eye to) human and other life forms’ suffering.11 In spite of its alleged critical attitude it rather consolidates than questions and transforms present power structures. In a Lutheran lens such a view appears as incurvatus (perverted and distorted). One might say it is thanks to God, and to committed and hard-headed scientists, that climate change phenomena have nevertheless entered the global media scene. Even if these are immediately countered by energetic denial and affected scepticism (without any scientific evidence, and in some cases heavily sponsored by energy intensive corporations), these make it almost impossible to suppress and deny again what the ecological movement – locally as well as globally organised since the 70s – has proclaimed clearly for decades: the anthropogenic impact on nature threatens the survival not of the planet as a whole but of its human species in its present social organisation and of much biodiversity in ecosystems and landscapes; it is changing “our common future” rapidly and violently. The need to deepen the discourse about which world is to come and how we can move towards it gains in such a context a radically demanding quality for the sake of our survival. In this way eschatology can develop a strongly constructive function, as it can help us to visualise the wide-open future in contrast to contemporary narrowly limited understandings of the so-called realistic. Hope can counter hopelessness, and forced powerlessness can be resisted by images of alternative constellations of power. Beliefs in the world to come reveal a God to come who can and will transcend places, spaces and times. As environmental praxis is driven by hope, meanwhile the large scales of ecological destruction and poverty are causing despair and powerlessness. The central task of eschatology therefore is to seek answers to the question, strikingly formulated by Ernst Conradie: “Where can a

92  Sigurd Bergmann clear vision of hope for the earth be found amidst such a sense of environmental despair?”12 The question of how hopes and fears, together with lifestyles and worldviews, impact on global change and especially climate change also lies at the heart of the new research field of religion in climatic change.13 The existence of (neo)colonial ethnic, gender, postmetropolitan and ecologic injustices and their increase is already in itself an argument strong enough to deepen the discourse about hope and liberation, about what and who might take us beyond ecological sin and suffering, and how to find the paths out of this world into another one. To say it briefly, liberation and images of the ultimate matter because there are those who are in need of them.14 Of course, concepts of liberation and religious salvation also need to be continuously evaluated with regard to their ability to seduce and manipulate others with desires for another world. This is, however, not a reason to deconstruct them totally but rather a reason to develop them even more strongly in a radical and context-sensitive mode. Concepts of liberation need to be developed as empowering tools for power with, not for power over others. Foucault’s understanding of power as a relational nexus offers a much more constructive tool than Weber’s understanding of power as asserting one’s will with or against the other.15 A striking criticism – especially interesting in our investigation of the spatial in eschatology – of the one-sidedness of Latin American liberation theology with regard to time has been formulated from the perspective of native, American Indian, theology. This seems also highly relevant for the mainstream of eschatology, which in my view has all too long been one-sidedly dependent on Newtonian concepts of time. Lutheran Cherokee theologian George Tinker once defied the whole paradigm of liberation theology in a small essay, in which he demanded the embedding of reflection and praxis in the metaphor of the circular line representing our common life space, the spatial location of the liberation experience, rather than interpreting liberation through a vision of a rupture in time from one period to another.16 Tinker emphasises not only the form of the line in our images of place, motion and time but also the postcolonial quest for a reconstruction of indigenous spiritualities and human ecological practices in natural and late-modern built environments. Continuing my earlier work on the spatiality of religion17 I would like to supplement Tinker’s suggestion with the dimension of motion and movement in our understanding of the liberating work of the Spirit. The spatiality of the Spirit as all-embracing space would also then appear more clearly as the liberating movement in, for and within creation. The history of salvation as one common world history of all in need of liberation would then take place as interconnected and spatially mobile events of the life-giving Holy Spirit at work in the circular line that runs through many diverse places in creation. Earth and its many places would then – in accordance with biblical and traditional sources18 – itself appear as an active partner in God’s redemptive work. Applying this view to eschatology, theologians would need to put much more careful emphasis on the spatial dimension of Christian belief in the world to come. The rupture of the now and the then would need to turn into an entanglement of the past and the present

Time turned into space – at home on earth  93 for the sake of the future. The new creation dwells in the original and continuing one. Time would need to turn into space. In an apt criticism of Paul Tillich’s rejection of the spatial as a central eschatological dimension,20 Vitor Westhelle has presented an extensive argument for reconstructing the lost dimension of space in eschatology. From the position of those who lack both power and place spatiality appears as the most valuable tool to experience and interpret the presence of ongoing liberation that is still unseen. In his detailed critical examination of modern concepts of eschatology Westhelle develops spatial thinking as the central dimension of eschatology beyond its dominance of historical and historicistic thinking. Among many inspirations he uses Michel de Certeau’s distinction between “strategy” and “tactics” where the former describes the “maneuvering technique to conquer the place of the other”, while the latter, tactic, works in the space of the other, taking place as the art of the weak. In the former we possess space; in the latter we are determined by the spaces that inhabit us as dispossessed.21 Reductionist time-centred eschatologies are hereby representing strategies to conquer, expand and administrate space. They are mastering and taming eschatology. The much-celebrated formula of the tension between the already-and-not-yet also belongs to such a problematic frame as it applies a linear concept of time and continues one-sidedly the tradition from Augustine where eschatology is located in the pilgrimage of the church towards a goal beyond the present.22 In contrast, Westhelle suggests “latitudinal” thinking23 and a “choratic” eschatology where the understanding of “choratic realms” makes it possible for those who have not much room to negotiate space to experience the eschaton.24 Those who are suffering at non-places and have no history can now encounter the eschata. Reconstructing the fullness of the significance of biblical notions, Westhelle further makes us aware of the originally spatial semantics of the eschaton that depicted limits and borders rather than circumscribed futurological goals. Even if Westhelle does not explicitly share his own experiences with the landless peasants to whom he refers in his introduction, his spatial approach to eschatology represents a significant and highly relevant contribution not only to contemporary liberation and contextual theology but to the deepening of the eschatological agenda for theology in general. Unfortunately his book is difficult and expensive to order although its content is highly original, creative and constructive for the eschatological discourse to come. 19

Overcoming the utopianisation of space A problem with seeking a spatially conscious eschatology lies in the burden of a historical entanglement of Christianity and modernity with regard to the dominance of concepts of time over space. The long history of this dominance – questioned and counteracted by ongoing “spatial turns” – had its beginnings as far back as antiquity; it is well-known and need not be repeated here.25 What this, however, has meant for religion is still mostly unexplored.26

94  Sigurd Bergmann Historian of religion Jonathan Z. Smith has differentiated between a “locative . . . and a utopian vision of the world”.27 In continuity with him it makes sense to talk about “utopianisation”, a process of shifting space to time in religion and culture.28 According to Smith, in pre-modern times religions distinguished themselves by a so-called locative conception, that is, a structuring according to a spiritual map of countries with, for example, a temple in the centre of a network of sacred sites. A locative religion can undergo a utopianisation, that is, a movement away from belief in the physical presence of gods in specific places to belief in freedom and a lack of definite contact points, where the one God meets the faithful from a place beyond the absolute and at a predetermined time.29 Modern primitivism relates this place in the future to the postulate of a paradisiacal state of origin. One can rightly wonder if Christian eschatology has also been affected fatally by this shift from locative to utopian future-based images of God in the process of modernisation. Although I am not able to follow this trail in the context of this limited chapter, one can wonder whether the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and its consequences in the history of Jewish and Christian religion lies at the heart of a catalysed longstanding ambiguity in the dialectics between the local and the universal, which has then been turned into the dialectics of the present and the eternal. Also the fatal ambivalence in the monastic movement might be re-evaluated in this connection, where lack of possessions on the one hand has represented a central monastic value while the appropriation and administration of land and property on the other hand has served the accumulation of mundane power. While physical and spiritual stabilitas has been regarded as a central value for monks and nuns, its practice necessitated a stable, persistent and protected place. In addition, a similar ambiguity is also revealed among modern settlers who escaped poverty in Europe for a better life in promised lands in North America and Australia, guided by implicit narratives of exile and a “heavenly” place for their future and survival on Earth. Down to this day the theological question of if, why and how a Christian faith community should own land and property seems to be mostly unresolved. One central driving force in utopianisation seems to have been the accelerating development of science and technology, which has made it possible to transform what were earlier perceived as given natural spatial patterns into technically constructed life worlds. Whilst traditional communities were organised in clearly laid out, physically visible and small-scale spatial patterns, the development of modern society involved the construction of technically created space. Space is now no longer God-given; rather, it is a human construction – it is rational, and not only local, but also national and, more recently, even global.30 The ongoing transformation of built environments into one common postmetropolis31 continues, on such a view, consequentially and radically the process of turning given space into constructed and designed space, turning the natural into the built and the given into the made. The imperative from the Genesis story “fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28) seems to have started an apparently never-ending progress of human development and cultivation which slowly but surely in our own time is coming to its end, that is, the natural limits of the planet. The process

Time turned into space – at home on earth  95 of postmetropolisation of course also has strong effects on religion’s mapping of territories. Beside “utopianisation”, the notions of “de- and respatialisation”, coined in the discourse about globalisation, are also of relevance for our exploration of eschatology. Anthony Giddens has characterised the process of modernisation as an increasing “dis-embeddedness”, and Arjun Appadurai has described this process as “despatialization”.32 The capacity of the global process to change and dissolve local, geographical and physical connections can be summarised with Jürgen Habermas’ famous phrase, as the “colonisation of the life world through the system”.33 I do not dare to speculate about how the process of utopianisation, that is, the despatialisation and delocalisation of the divine and its move to the far utopian future in the world to come, has either contributed to and accelerated the processes of utopianisation in globalisation or rather been heavily impacted by it. Maybe both can be true. Nevertheless, it should be clear that cultural despatialisation as it has been analysed in globalisation theory can also be identified within Christian eschatology, and its reduction to futurology, and that the challenge to overcome utopianisation is in line with classical theology as well as with ethical demands for one common just and sustainable world, like the world at the heart of a Christian understanding of God’s creation. The loss of connection to natural and local surroundings has created a special kind of alienation, and the much-discussed “end of geography” expresses that this alienation is continually reinforced by current global economic trends. The electronic communication media restrict in a spatial sense people’s experience of complexity and destroy the permanence of things. The principle of contemporaneity destroys even more the uniqueness of place as well as the uniqueness of contemporary time.34 The utopianisation of global space has many expressions, and a mapping of this area would require a larger research project. However, common to them all is the dimension of civilisation critique in their criticism of the large-scale exploitation of the planet’s life systems on both a small and a large scale. The interpretation of the Earth as one interconnected whole has an important function for this type of utopianisation. One important driving force of modernisation is technology. While religious faith communities have lost their normativity and significance, by which they once produced and affected our images of the future, and while national states have handed over much of their economic and political power to corporations which are operating on a global market, technology has taken over the role of utopian design and of designing our world to come. Rightly has one author said “Gott ist ein Computer” (God is a computer).35 Critically we can ask why we hand over increasing power to machines and technical artefacts which are controlling the flow and exchange of money, information and commodities, as well as our bodily movement through systems aided by technology. Leaders of high tech corporations, such as Apple and Microsoft, act as saviours and preach promises of a better world. Dogmas of so called “forced upgrade” are postulated over and over again and if applied to politics they reinforce the resigned attitude that nothing more can be done and that progress is in itself necessary and

96  Sigurd Bergmann unavoidable, strangling every alternative voice and vision. Increasing mobility, the contemporaneity of events, the steadily increasing acceleration of lifestyles, and exchanges of goods and ideas are heading towards a “racing stillstand”.36 Decontextualisation and sociocultural acceleration are producing despatialised and powerless citizens. Without doubt the experience of humanity’s loss of a spatial connection with the life world, and longing for a relocation triggered by the global decontextualisation dynamics, are among the most powerful driving forces in different forms of civilisation critique, to which indigenous mobilisation, ecological spirituality and feminist movements also belong. The environmental movement’s vision of an alternative society and, most importantly, of an alternative Earth space, which is no longer ruled by large-scale forces which, in the service of financial accumulation, destroy relationships between organisms and their surroundings, stands out as a critique of civilisation of unexpectedly large proportions. Here also, time turns into space and this turn catalyses flourishing visions of one alternative Earth space common for the best of all. Topophilia, as worked out by geographer Yi-Fu Tuan,37 appears as a central ethical and spiritual demand, and also as a natural application of the Jewish-Christian command to love. Love of the place, topophilia, and love of God as of one’s neighbour and of oneself (and at its highest, love of the poor), appears in such a context not at all romanticised but rather as a strong political demand in a despatialised world where the mammonistic worldview and the normativity of financial accumulation colonises natural and social life worlds, and where beliefs are either brought into ridicule and emptied of meaning or turned into a faraway future. In any case, visions of another future seem to grow anew in the most unexpected places, and the world to come refuses to stay away. God remains a creator of surprises, and exploring earthiness38 in the midst of this world appears as a central challenge for an eschatological turning time into space. Our next step will seek inspiration for this exploration in the arts. There are many good reasons for including visual arts and images as “locus theologicus”, as a place where God acts and where the human experience with God becomes manifest in an autonomous medium that is not logocentrically limited to language, word and scripture. Visual arts express perspectives on the context of culture, environment and society in a way that makes visible and transcends prevailing patterns of perception. Art elucidates and illuminates problems and processes reflectively. The expressions of art, and especially the expressions of pictorial art, help us to visualise life- and worldviews. They shape the system of norms and signs, often with a surprisingly sophisticated level of religious wisdom, knowledge and consciousness.39

Life-giving space In the mid-1480s, the famous Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini produced the painting “Sacred Allegory”, which today can be experienced in the Uffizi in Florence. The work offers in my view one of the finest expressions of the

Time turned into space – at home on earth  97 Christian understanding of the history of salvation in one common plastic space (Figure 5.1). In the foreground our eye enters a floor of inlaid red, black and white marble in a complex pattern surrounded by a balustrade. Four infants are playing at the centre of the square where a tree planted in an urn offers golden apples, which are shaken down and collected by the three nude children. The fourth infant, Christ, is clothed and contemplates his fruit. To the right stands Saint Sebastian with the arrows of his martyrdom still piercing his skin. Job, at his left side, contemplates the tree and places his hands together reverently. To the left, the Virgin is seated on a throne. To her left is a young woman clothed in a blue mantle and red tunic crowned with a diadem, and to her right another standing woman with her mouth open in the act of speaking. The women might perhaps be Catherine of Alexandria and Margaret of Antioch.40 All hold their hands in prayerful reverence. Just behind the tree the gates stand wide open towards the surrounding space, initially a kind of beach boulevard. Outside, Saint Peter leans on the balustrade while Saint Paul raises a sword which points to the golden chalice of Mary’s sheltering canopy. His other hand rests on the balustrade holding a scroll. The ground offers dead grass and leafless saplings. On the left a man in a white turban moves out of the scenery, probably driven away by Paul’s sword and words. This part clearly alludes to the violence and conflicts between Christians and Muslims at the time. The landscape beyond the square is soaked in a warm, yellow saturated light. The quiet surface of the water mirrors the sky and the clouds in it. Natural rocks

Figure 5.1 Giovanni Bellini, Sacred Allegory, c. 1485, 73 x 119 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

98  Sigurd Bergmann jut out into the lake and in the background one can see another beach and the contours of a village. Natural and built environments are interwoven. Along the near edge sheep and goats are grazing and wandering about while their shepherd sits in a dark cave and rests his head on one hand. Above him we can follow a road ending at a wooden cross. To the right one can identify Saint Anthony. On the edge of the lake the centaur of false passion awaits the saint who slowly descends the stairs. On the other side of the lake two men are walking in the warm sunlight, one driving a mule. Two other men are conversing with one another in the square. Behind the village a castle rises on a rock against the blue cloudy sky. The meaning of Bellini’s painting has been debated by art historians for a long time and there is no consensus among them about the underlying intention of the artist. Might it be an illustration of a medieval French poem about a pilgrimage through hell, purgatory and paradise? Does the leaning figure represent Joseph rather than Peter, which would make the central group the Holy Family? Does the tree in the midst of the foreground represent the charity tree or rather the tree of life? Might the theme of the image therefore be the attainment of paradise through the vita contemplativa?41 An appropriate criticism, in my view, of interpretations like these is offered by Norman Land, who suggests that we not exclusively focus on textual sources or only investigate the iconography of the painting, but instead depart from the meaning of the form and beauty of the work.42 I follow his suggestion and interpretation here and complete it with a reflection on the spatiality of the eschaton. The biblical reference in the painting is obvious as the tree in the middle makes us recall the tree of life, and its golden fruit reminds us of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.43 In the geometry of the built room the old Eden is transformed into a new paradise. The tree of life gives meaning to the sufferings of Job and the martyr Sebastian. Now they can with their own eyes see the tree of life for which they suffered. The Virgin and the child remind us of the mystery of Incarnation, and the wood of the tree of life – following a well-known patristic topos – offers us the wood of the cross on which Christ was crucified. Through this wood, the old and the new Adam (Christ) are deeply interconnected, and the original creation continues into the new creation. References to the crucifixion can furthermore be found in the painting through Job and Sebastian and through the chalice and the grapes under Mary’s canopy, which refer to the slaughter of the innocenti (by Herod, cf. Matthew 2:16). Strikingly, Land also mentions Jesus’ selfidentification on his way to Golgotha as “the green tree” (Luke 23:31).44 One of the most striking and inspiring visualisations in Bellini’s painting is the entanglement of nature and creation in the illustration of central themes in the history of salvation. The mysteries of birth, suffering, death and eternal life are deeply and intimately interwoven with the landscape and its all-embracing warm and life-giving atmosphere. Form and content are in deep harmony in this image, and the landscape – ground, earth, lake, water, rocks and the sky – takes an active part in the mystery. The space itself is vivified by the incarnation and the encounter of the human and the divine. Through his intense and skilful elaboration of geometric forms and curved lines, Bellini achieves a high spatial complexity

Time turned into space – at home on earth  99 which alters and mirrors the biblical stories and their hidden and revealed contents. Built perfection and natural beauty are embracing each other in a way that transcends and transfigures the collision of culture and nature. The temperature and density of the air is entangled with the humidity of the lake’s water in the air, and the forms of the rocks clothe the landscape in a similar way to how the textiles clothe the originally naked human bodies. Light and weather elevate the scene and the new creation appears for us against the background of the past of birth, suffering and death. The tree of life continues to flourish in the centre of the world. New heavens and a new earth are appearing to our eye and body. The world to come becomes visible in its becoming. Bellini’s “religious emotion, the truths of nature and poetic fantasy”45 allow us to become aware of the mystery of the salvation and liberation of creation in one common space. The world to come is one world and one space, and its becoming is a plastic process where time and eternity are turned into space. The landscape in this painting does not simply offer a scene but plays a dynamic and active role in the drama of salvation. Earth and heaven appear in synergy with the green tree of life.

Making oneself at home in the world to come In illuminating the one common space for all created beings in the history of salvation, Bellini’s painting is able to visualise the integration of heaven and earth in creation, and to enlighten us about the becoming of the new creation, in the original and ongoing one. We might regard this as a magnificent realisation of a human home on earth, and interpret our being alive as a resting in God’s being alive on earth through the green tree of life and the life-giving work of the Spirit who inhabits the creation. In this final section I would like to focus on the metaphor of home (German Heimat) in the context of eschatology. Might home, coming home and making oneself at home serve us as central metaphors for the entanglement of this world and the world to come? How is such an understanding of human existence threatened in a context where humans as God’s image in the Anthropocene are increasingly destroying God’s and their own habitat through accelerating dangerous environmental and climatic change? According to Paul, Christian believers have their home in heaven (Phil. 3:20). “Home” (πολίτευμα) here can mean citizenship, right to live in a place or state (as a commonwealth of citizens). While not all citizens of the city of Philippi had full rights under Roman law, and the Jews in the city represented a specific “citizenship”, Paul tried to establish a home for all Christians where similar rules to those in the Roman state were working in the heavenly world. In the heavenly book of life the names of all believers are inscribed (cf. Phil. 4:3). It was also common in Greek culture to project a polis to the end of the world and to the underworld where the dead are living.46 For Paul it was Christ who would, at his return, take the believers to the heavenly kingdom. Paul draws on the image of a heavenly city where Christ is ready to welcome and care for the believers who already have a politeuma in it, a home and a right to live in communion with God and each other.

100  Sigurd Bergmann Liberation theologians have rightly criticised the vision of a heavenly home in contrast to making oneself at home on this earth, but such a criticism should not be levelled at Paul and his images in the letter to the Philippians, as these are contrasting the Empire on the one side and Christians’ belonging to Christ on the other. The image of a home in heaven has in his context a strong political meaning intended to encourage and protect the believers amidst the politics of the Roman Empire and to strengthen them in their conflicts with seductive teachers. Revivalist movements in early modern Christianity also cultivated such a political meaning; by imaging and praising “the heavenly city” they created a supposedly safe place above and beyond this world in order to resist the oppressive powers of both the national state and the dominant state churches connected to it.47 Nevertheless, the criticism of a split between this and the other world should make us aware of the dualistic gap within the image of Heimat and the risk of tearing heaven and earth apart from each other in a fatal way – such a split breaks the essential code of the world to come as a good creation on earth, not beyond it.48 When Paul talks about the world he is usually speaking of the Roman Empire and is contrasting it with the good creation which is coming into existence in the alternative “contrast society” of the Christian communion. The task for a spatial eschatology lies in preserving the comforting political potential in distancing oneself from this oppressive world. Images of the heavenly city can serve as a source for mobilising spiritual energy for the rebuilding of this world, and the earthly city can turn into as a habitable place for the images of God and other creatures to live in. Here eschatology follows a classic biblical path, where apocalyptic imagery in the New Testament, as well as in exile narratives, should not be interpreted, as Barbara Rossing strikingly made evident, as encouragement to escapism but as a constructive tool for mobilising countervailing power in the imperial context.49 Another mode of approaching the challenge to make oneself at home is found in a wonderful poem by Rilke which summarises a deep existential mode of homelessness as well as the need to seek a dwelling in turmoil: And this is longing, to live in turmoil, to have no home in time. And these are wishes gentle dialogues of day’s hours with eternity. And this is life, until from a day long past the most lonely hour rises, and smiling differently than the other sisters, silently greets eternity.50 While Paul’s believers in Philippi had their home in heaven (in order to be able to dwell and fight for their homes) Rilke experiences not having a home in time and

Time turned into space – at home on earth  101 nevertheless desiring to dwell in turmoil. Such an experience seems to be highly relevant and representative for modern people in a world where homelessness and uprootedness are accelerated by the processes of despatialisation and disembedding that we learned about above. Accelerating climate change intensifies this existential demand even more as it is clear that damage caused by environmental change are to the largest degree anthropogenic. In what we now call the Anthropocene,51 that is, the whole bioscene and universe impacted and transformed by human social activity, the human being him/herself is held responsible for producing a style of life, work, production and consumption which is unsustainable and is destroying the conditions of life for his/her own species as well as for many others. For continuing to believe in the Triune as the good Creator of everything in heaven and earth and as the Life giver and Liberator of all life,52 such a discovery is radically painful and must necessarily lead to a spiritual crisis that affects religious belief at the deepest level. How can the world be regarded as a good creation if God’s own images, human beings, are destroying this world? How can God continue to be a good Creator? And how should belief in the world as creation appear in such a situation? Is climatic change with all its apocalyptic processes – which have already started to take place, mostly around the equator – a God-given future which we should simply accept and interpret as a sign from heaven that we are approaching the end times, where hope can only aim at an existence beyond the disaster? Or is the promise sealed with the rainbow still valid – namely that this creation never again will be drowned and destroyed but renewed and successively turned into a liberated space, into new heavens and a new earth? Questions like these are at present explored increasingly intensively among theologians, although only a few have yet recognised the depth of the ethical and theological challenge and the spiritual threat to all kinds of religious belief. For religious belief is always rooted in some belief of created, animated and sustained life, whether by a God or by other spiritual forces. Climate change appears in such a view as a second Copernican revolution, and climate science demands a new political theology critical to “a hybrid of a human-centered cosmology and a Baconian, and post-Copernican, aspiration to technological control over the earth”.53 Reflection on what anthropogenic climate change does to our self-understanding as God’s image in a good creation increases the already well known existential alienation people experience in modern life, a widespread alienation and detachment which requires the acknowledgement “of our existential need for a spiritual homecoming”.54 “Spiritual” should here not be understood as the opposite of physical, but as the internal driving force for a good spatial design in all its facets. Existential homelessness represents a crucial challenge for building environments that assist one’s homecoming. This challenge is valid for the rich in the North, as well as for the many refugees and migrants in need of shelter and protected spaces to survive and rebuild in the South. Late modern homelessness has many faces, voices and places, and if the world is in a process of becoming, as eschatology claims, living in this world must also include the building and design of sheltered

102  Sigurd Bergmann spaces to dwell in for all, such that citizens have a home in heaven and on earth. Or better: having a home in heaven then means being able to make oneself at home in God’s flourishing creation which grows anew. The tricky and radically new ethical question here is: how do we adapt to our changing surroundings – changes that our own species has produced, unconscious of our actions’ consequences? How do we make ourselves at home on “Earth, our home”,55 while we ourselves are spoiling it? How can we feel at home in the future?56 While existentialistic worldviews reflected on the general lack of home in human existence, and while these after the Second World War especially focussed on lack of being, and resistance to it in the form of the courage to be, to allude to Paul Tillich’s famous book title,57 late modern culture instead demands today that we resist nationalist and racist misuses of terms like Heimat and being at home. Xenophobic misuse of related concepts is nowadays common in European countries, with the emergence of far right-wing movements. But is it really as simple as these postulate, that you are where you come from, that you belong to where you are born, and that “good life” can only take place at home? Should home be our castle, and where then should we draw the borders between nations and regions? Who is in, who is tolerated, and who should get out? According to this perspective, the production of home and locality is a deeply personal process, and it occurs in direct opposition to the nationalist code. Another of Rilke’s poems, “In Dubiis”, echoes this: the one who swears an oath to a national flag appears in contrast to the one who breaks away from the particular and now belongs to the whole world. I hold a person in esteem, who will not swear to flags unfurled, remaining free from every scheme, belonging to the whole world. And be the globe a home for all, one misses still the shelter of the home, the fatherland, is then his intimate house in the native place.58 Here, homecoming means to find one’s home in the world, a territory fraught with international conflict, instead of in narrow national particularities. Homeland thus becomes a house in one’s “Heimatort”. To come home and to be at home then mean to find one’s home in the world, to identify oneself with neither a limited piece nor its entirety, but to create a homeland amidst the wide-open and colourful world. What a challenging prospect! In this light, homelessness is not just an existential state of being, but demands a new existence through walking and the designing and building of places for homecoming. It stands in contrast to narrow local and territorialising identities by nurturing what I have called the processes of making-oneself-at-home: Beheimatung. Thus, home in the sense of place becomes not a single place, but a “composite of all the places that have been significant to a person, or a people, over time”.59 Rilke’s, Pallasmaa’s and my concern about home (Heimat), and about belonging as a continuous coming home, emphasises not a narrow and static, but an open and dynamic process that, nevertheless, preserves the uniqueness of places. Reformulated in Rilke’s imagery, it is a question of how

Time turned into space – at home on earth  103 to build one’s house within the world, our home, while moving towards the world to come.60 Rilke’s poem about dwelling in turmoil situates Heimat and belonging in the sphere of longing and desire. It offers a genuinely eschatological example of the here within the there and the now within the then. To live in turmoil not only describes the modern condition of metropolitan life, as characterised by turbulences, attractions and distractions, but it is also embedded in a specific longing for home and permanence – indeed, eternity. However, one should bear in mind that Rilke does not set home and turmoil, time and eternity in opposition to each other. Instead he makes us aware of the longing to let them encounter each other, touch each other, talk to each other and be silent together. To long is to live in turmoil. Dwelling in modern, urban turmoil means longing. Belonging and longing are interwoven. Eschatology can in such a context be understood as a continuous skill of making oneself at home anew, in creation and in all between heaven and earth. Beheimatung, as we learned from Rilke’s poems, is catalysed, fertilised and accelerated by turmoil. “Dis-belonging” provokes new forms of belonging, and displacement further strengthens the longing for and practical design of belonging. Giddens’ observation of decontextualisation as a main characteristic of modernity provokes new modes of recontextualisation, and Appadurai’s despatialisation accelerates the longing for and making of new forms of respatialisation. Living in turmoil is to enter space anew. Theologically, it calls for the revisiting of the notion that God is a God who inhabits Creation in turmoil. “Der Herr ist der Wohnraum seiner Welt” (The Lord is the living space of his world).61 To where does the Son walk? Where in time does He long for a home? Where does the life-giving Spirit take place in turmoil? The central challenge for eschatology then is this: how can time turn into space in the world to come, in a world where the Liberator Spirit sets creation free?

Notes 1 Richard Wagner, Parsifal: Ein Bühnenweihfestspiel in drei Aufzügen, 1882, second half of the first act, (author’s translation). Libretto by Richard Wagner, first performance 26 July 1882 in Bayreuth. (New edition: Richard Wagner, Parsifal: Einführung und Kommentar. WWV 111. Textbuch/Libretto, ed. by Kurt Pahlen, Mainz: Schott, 2008). 2 Vitor Westhelle, Eschatology and Space: The Lost Dimension in Theology Past and Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), xii. 3 A brief interpretation is available as “Wer ist der Gral? – zum Raum wird hier die Zeit – PARSIFAL (Wagner)”, YouTube video, 2:46, posted by “Richard Wagner”, 25 January 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRKfGkMtLE0. Accessed 23 April 2013. 4 Hans Zimmermann, “Richard Wagner: Parsifal: Ein Bühnenweihfestspiel in drei Aufzügen”, http://12koerbe.de/lapsitexillis/parsgral.htm. Accessed 16 April 2013. 5 It would be tempting to ask how an eschatology that has turned time into space anew could approach time under these new and different conditions. For the author, though, it is enough here if the reader attends his considerations about how to deepen the spatial in the eschatological. Even if this essay cannot address the complex challenge to revise the understanding of time from such a spatial eschatology, one might preliminarily

104  Sigurd Bergmann follow my most inspiring mentor Günter Altner († 2011) and his understanding  – within the theory of self-organisation, the theory of unity of time and Picht’s topology in opposition to a quantitative time-space continuum – of species as evolutionarily complex “Zeitgestalten” (time beings) which emerge, fade away and are replaced by others in the history of nature. The biosphere, which I here regard as one common all-embracing lived space, would then allow the emergence/birth, life and disappearance of qualitatively different time beings, which cannot and should not necessarily be forced into one universal system, as modern science, technology and global capitalism violently intend to do along a technocratic mechanistic path. Places and lived spaces on Earth would then give birth to different forms of time-bound being. Such a concept would be able to break away from the conventional reduction of space to something simply conforming to time (an approach strongly and strikingly criticised by Georg Picht); and this concept might give priority to space as a condition for the evolution of time-bound beings. Being in time as a time-bound being would then imply being nurtured, carried and taken care of by places in the all-embracing space of creation. Being in time would then mean living in unique and localised “Zeiträume” (time spaces), analogous to what Aleida Assmann calls “Erinnerungsräume”. While Altner, following Sophokles, states, “Alles lässt die Zeit wachsen” (208) (time lets everything grow), and excludes the specific reality of a separate space, I would depart from a view that states that time grows out of space, but due to his death we cannot further develop the discussion which we started in Ratzeburg in 2008. Günter Altner, “Alles hat seine Zeit – unsere Verantwortung für die Zeitgestalten der Schöpfung”, in Brot und Fisch: Ein Leben für die Ostsee, ed. Arnd Heling (Hamburg: EB-Verlag, 2009), 208–215; cf. Sigurd Bergmann, “Im Geist (v)er-messen wir den Raum – Walkabouts durch die Ästh/ Ethik der Landschaft”, in Brot und Fisch, 232–245; and Georg Picht, “Ist Humanöko­ logie möglich?” in Humanökologie und Frieden (Forschungen und Berichte der FEST 34), ed. Constanze Eisenbart (Stuttgart: Klett Cotta, 1979), 14–123. Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999). 6 Westhelle, Eschatology and Space, 58f. Cf. Jacob Taubes’ famous work Occidental Eschatology, originally from 1947, where the distinction first was established (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). 7 For a detailed discussion of Schmitt’s and Taubes’ approaches and their relevance for political theology in the Anthropocene see Michael S. Northcott, A Political Theology of Climate Change (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 278–287. 8 Westhelle, Eschatology and Space, 68. 9 Kathryn Tanner, “Eschatology and Ethics”, in The Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics, eds. Gilbert Meilaender and William Werpehowski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 45. 10 On the distinction between “power over” and “power with” others see Karen J. Warren, “A Feminist Philosophical Perspective on Ecofeminist Spiritualities”, in Ecofeminism and the Sacred, ed. Carol J. Adams (New York: Continuum, 1993), 122f. 11 The German term Abblendung was central in the post-war German critical thinkers’ struggle with our common past (of which the German-born author is also a part). Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben (Berlin and Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1950). The term became even more important in Adorno’s aesthetic theory. 12 Ernst M. Conradie, “What Is the Place of the Earth in God’s Economy? Doing Justice to Creation, Salvation, and Consummation”, in Christian Faith and the Earth: Current Paths and Emerging Horizons in Ecotheology, ed. Ernst M. Conradie, Sigurd Bergmann, Celia Deane-Drummond and Denis Edwards (London and New York: Bloomsbury and T&T Clark, 2014), 75. For an elaboration of a revisited eschatology in ecotheology see Conradie, 73–75.

Time turned into space – at home on earth  105 13 Cf. Dieter Gerten and Sigurd Bergmann, “Facing the Human Faces of Climate Change”, in Religion in Environmental and Climate Change: Suffering, Values, Lifestyles, eds. D. Gerten and S. Bergmann (London and New York: Continuum, 2012), 3–15. 14 For a broader elaboration of this line of thinking see Sigurd Bergmann, “Trinitarian Cosmology in God’s Liberating Movement: Exploring some Signature Tunes in the Opera of Ecologic Salvation”, Worldviews 14 (2010): 185–205. 15 For Foucault power is a manifold of power relations which populate and organise an area, while Weber defines power as “jede Chance, innerhalb einer sozialen Beziehung den eigenen Willen auch gegen Widerstreben durchzuführen, gleichviel worauf diese Chance beruht” (Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, 5th edition (Tübingen: Mohr, 1972 [1921]), 28). Cf. S. Bergmann, “Makt att se, synliggöra och bli sedd: Den visuella kulturens utmaning till teologin” [Power to See, to Make Visible and to Be Seen: Visual Culture’s Challenge to Theology], in MAKT – i nordisk teologisk tolkning [POWER – in Nordic Theological Interpretation], (Relieff no 44), eds. Sigurd Bergmann and Cristina Grenholm (Trondheim: Tapir Akademisk Forlag, 2004), 99–130. 16 George E. Tinker, “The Full Circle of Liberation: An American Indian Theology of Place”, in Ecotheology: Voices from South and North, ed. David G. Hallman (Geneva: WCC and Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994), 218–224. 17 Cf. S. Bergmann, Religion, Space and the Environment (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction, 2014). 18 Cf. Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, “Rückkehr zur Erde”, Evangelische Theologie 53.5 (1993): 406–420. 19 Cf. Moltmann’s reflections on the integrated (verschränkte) times of history, where past, present and future lie in each other. Jürgen Moltmann, Gott in der Schöpfung: Ökologische Schöpfungslehre (Munich: Kaiser, 1985), 135ff., published in English as God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (London: SCM Press, 1985). Metz makes another important point in his wide-ranging essay on the significance of remembering the sufferings in the past for the sake of the liberation to come. Johann Baptist Metz, “Erinnerung des Leidens als Kritik eines teleologisch-technologischen Zukunftsbegriffs”, Evangelische Theologie 32 (1972): 338–352. 20 In his calamitous book Die verlorene Dimension (Hamburg: Furche, 1962) Paul Tillich contrasted space and time in a fatal way, where space belongs to pagan thinking while time is at the centre of Christian theology. One might excuse his aversion to space on the grounds that they were formed in reaction to Nazist Blut-und-Boden ideologies which brutally violated ideas about place and home. 21 Westhelle, Eschatology and Space, 120. For a discussion of eschatology’s relation to otherness in religious traditions and a comparison of Christian, Jewish and Muslim eschatologies see Jakob Wirén, Hope and Otherness: Christian Eschatology in an Interreligious Context (Lund: Lund University Press, 2013), 76ff. Cf. also my discussion in Sigurd Bergmann, “Places of Encounter with the Eschata: Accelerating the Spatial Turn in Eschatology”, in Embracing the Ivory Tower and Stained Glass Windows: A Festschrift in Honor of Archbishop Antje Jackelén, ed. Jennifer Baldwin (Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 1; Heidelberg: Springer, 2015), 71–79. 22 It is not clear to me to what degree Jürgen Moltmann’s “eschatological Christology” also follows such a scheme. On the one hand he clearly depicts the coming of Christ as the beginning of the coming perfection of salvation. Christology is for him the beginning of eschatology (Jürgen Moltmann, Ethik der Hoffnung (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2010), 56). On the other hand Moltmann stays within the ordinary understanding of time in his “forward-Christology” approach, although he strongly rejects Karl Barth’s time-eternity eschatology and thereby is able to break out of the Augustinian concept. What does he mean by postulating that the present becomes “the

106  Sigurd Bergmann present future” (57)? Why is this present not spelled out as a complex spatial reality, where the unseen might already dwell in the seen? 23 Westhelle, Eschatology and Space, 71ff. 24 Westhelle, Eschatology and Space, 121. 25 See Barney Warf and Santa Arias (eds.), The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2008) and S. Bergmann, “Theology in Its Spatial Turn: Space, Place and Built Environments Challenging and Changing the Images of God”, Religion Compass 1.3 (2007): 353–379. 26 A rich survey of approaches to the geography of religion and the ongoing change of the religious world map is found in Stanley D. Brunn (ed.), The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices and Politics, 5 vols. (New York: Springer, 2015). On the significance of climate change see S. Bergmann, “Making Oneself at Home in Climate Change: Religion as a Skill of Creative Adaptation”, in The Changing World Religion Map, ed. Brunn, chapter 9. 27 Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 101. 28 Cf. also Hans G. Kippenberg and Kocku von Stuckrad, Einführung in die Religionswisenschaft (Munich: Beck, 2003), 114f. 29 This analysis has been developed by Smith, Map Is Not Territory. 30 Cf. Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 16f. 31 On the process of global urbanisation see Edward W. Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000). 32 Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 3rd edition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992); Arjun Appadurai, “Globale ethnische Räume”, in Perspektiven der Weltgesellschaft, ed. Ulrich Beck (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998), 11–40. Cf. Andrew Kirby, “Wider die Ortlosigkeit”, in Perspektiven der Weltgesellschaft, ed. Beck, 168–175. 33 Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Zweiter Band, 4th edition (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988), 488. 34 Paul Virilio, Fluchtgeschwindigkeit: Essay (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1999 [1995]), 19. 35 Marcus Rohwetter, “Gott ist ein Computer”, DIE ZEIT, no. 14, 27 March 2013, 21f, www.zeit.de/2013/14/utopien-technologie-weltverbesserer. 36 Cf. S. Bergmann, “The Beauty of Speed or the Discovery of Slowness: Why Do We Need to Rethink Mobility?” in The Ethics of Mobilities: Rethinking Place, Exclusion, Freedom and Environment, eds. Sigurd Bergmann and Tore Sager (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 13–24. Cf. Paul Virilio, Rasender Stillstand (Munich: Hanser, 1992), published in English as Polar Inertia (London: Sage, 1999). 37 Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990 [1974]). 38 Cf. Anne Primavesi, Exploring Earthiness: The Reality and Perception of Being Human Today (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2013). 39 For a deeper elaboration of the significance of visual arts for theology see Sigurd Bergmann, In the Beginning Is the Icon: A Liberative Theology of Images, Visual Arts and Culture (London: Equinox, 2009). 40 Meinolf Dalhoff, “Trouble at the Hermitage: A Note on Giovanni Bellini’s ‘Sacred Allegory’ ”, The Burlington Magazine 144.1186 (January 2002): 22. 41 For a detailed discussion of the interpretation of the painting see Norman E. Land, “On the Poetry of Giovanni Bellini’s ‘Sacred Allegory’ ”, Artibus et Historiae 5.10 (1984): 61–66. 42 Land, “On the Poetry”, 62. 43 Delaney suggests, however, regarding the tree as a charity tree because the same motif, boys gathering the tree’s fruits, appears again in Hans Holbein’s printer mark from

Time turned into space – at home on earth  107 1543 where it is surrounded by a quote from Paul on the famous definition of charity (1 Cor. 13:4–7). For Delaney, “The Charity Tree, giving up its fruit, symbolizes the central sacrament of Communion”. Susan J. Delaney, “The Iconography of Giovanni Bellini’s Sacred Allegory”, The Art Bulletin 59.3 (1977): 335. It seems, though, more convincing to follow Land and others in interpreting the tree as the tree of life, referring both to the tree of Adam and to the wooden cross. 44 Land, “On the Poetry”, 63. 45 Land, “On the Poetry”, 65. 46 Imre Peres, Griechische Grabinschriften und neutestamentliche Eschatologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 139. 47 For a more extensive discussion of how the experiences of exile and homelessness on earth and in the body were supposed to be overcome by a spiritual journey to heavenly Jerusalem, where pilgrimage served to utopianise heavenly space at the same time as it enhanced the universalisation of salvation, see Bergmann, Religion, Space and the Environment, 131f. 48 Cf. Vicenzotti’s constructive and relevant distinction of conservative versus utopian understandings of Heimat. Late modernity seems to provoke extreme conservative visions of an ethnically pure and culturally homogenous home, which in fact has never existed, but which is nevertheless exploited by neofascist and popular political movements, which are also increasing in economically safe surroundings in the Nordic countries. A terribly well-articulated argument for the defence of such an ideology has been presented by the famous British conservative philosopher Roger Scruton; unfortunately Angelika Krebs also followed Scruton in her Heimat aesthetics where the demand for a beautiful and “erhabene” (“elevated”, in Kant’s sense) nature is, ambigiously and obscurely in my eyes, treated as a right in environmental ethics. On Scruton’s political position see his speech, quoted in full in Paul Belien, “Roger Scruton on Immigration, Multiculturalism and the Need to Defend the Nation State”, The Brussels Journal, 24 June 2006, www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1126/print, and for his environmental understanding his Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet (London: Atlantic Books, 2012). Angelika Krebs, “ ‘Und was da war, es nahm uns an’: Heimat, Landschaft und Stimmung”, in Wo steht die Umweltethik? Argumentationsmuster im Wandel, ed. Markus Vogt, Jochen Ostheimer and Frank Uekötter (Beiträge zur sozialwissenschaftlichen Nachhaltigkeitsforschung 5; Weimar bei Marburg: Metropolis, 2013), 215–226. Cf. in the same volume S. Bergmann, “Raum, Gerechtigkeit und das Heilige: Skizzen zur Umweltästh/ethik”, 227–234. Vera Vicenzotti, “Belonging in the Peri-Urban Landscape: Do New Landscapes Require New Conceptions of ‘Home’?” in At Home in the Future: Place & Belonging in a Changing Europe, ed. John Rodwell and Peter Manley Scott (Studies in Religion and the Environment 11; Berlin: LIT, 2016), 141–154. 49 Barbara Rossing, “God’s Lament for the Earth: Climate Change, Apocalypse and the Urgent Kairos Movement”, in God, Creation and Climate Change: Spiritual and Ethical Perspectives, ed. Karen L. Bloomquist (Geneva: The Lutheran World Federation, 2009), 129–143. 50 Rainer Maria Rilke, “Das ist die Sehnsucht”, in Rainer Maria Rilke, Sämtliche Werke, vol 1: Gedichte, Erster Teil (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1955), 145 (English translation by Michael Northcott, Edinburgh, together with the author): Das ist die Sehnsucht: Wohnen im Gewoge und keine Heimat haben in der Zeit. Und das sind Wünsche: Leise Dialoge täglicher Stunden mit der Ewigkeit. Und das ist Leben. Bis aus einem Gestern die Einsamste von allen Stunden steigt,

108  Sigurd Bergmann die, anders lächelnd als die andern Schwestern, dem Ewigen entgegenschweigt. 51 On the Anthropocene see Will Steffen, Jacques Grinevald, Paul Crutzen and John McNeill, “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369.1938 (2011): 842–867. 52 Cf. S. Bergmann, Creation Set Free: The Spirit as Liberator of Nature (Sacra Doctrina 5; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), and “The Legacy of Trinitarian Cosmology in the Anthropocene: Transcontextualising Late Antiquity Theology for Late Modernity”, Studia Theologica 69.1 (2015): 32–44. 53 Northcott, A Political Theology of Climate Change, 23. Another interesting consequence of climate change is that it leads to a new challenge to ethically rewrite our history in the awareness of the end. This idea is reflected in Mark Levene, “Climate Blues: Or How Awareness of the Human End Might Re-Instil Ethical Purpose to the Writing of History”, Environmental Humanities 2 (2013): 147–167. 54 Juhani Pallasmaa, “Existential Homelessness – Placelessness and Nostalgia in the Age of Mobility”, in Ethics of Mobilities, eds. Bergmann and Sager, 156. 55 The phrase is coined in the Preamble of the Earth Charter, that is an ethical framework for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century. launched in 1994. See http://earthcharter.org/discover/the-earth-charter, 24 April 2013. 56 Peter Manley Scott aptly states that there is no way to the future without place (“Places as Ungiven, Memories as Competitive? Ambiguities of Belonging in Theological Perspective”, in At Home in the Future, ed. Rodwell and Scott, 127f), while Philip Sheldrake draws on Walter Brueggeman and his understanding of place as a promise (“The Eucharist: Landscape of Memory, Narrative and Reconciliation”, in At Home in the Future, ed. Rodwell and Scott, 74), and suggests regarding the Eucharist as a “future space” (81f). 57 Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, 2nd edition (New Haven and London: Yale Nota Bene, 2000), originally published as Der Mut zum Sein (Stuttgart: Steingrübenverlag, 1953). 58 Rainer Maria Rilke, “In Dubiis”, in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 1, 42f. The poem (in author’s translation) deals with the martyrdom of Czech Reformation theologian Jan Hus. Der erscheint mir als der Größte, der zu keiner Fahne schwört, und, weil er vom Teil sich löste, nun der ganzen Welt gehört. Ist sein Heim die Welt, es misst ihm doch nicht klein der Heimat Hort denn das Vaterland, es ist ihm dann sein Haus im Heimatsort. 59 Lawrence Buell, Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2001), 69. 60 An opposite mode of developing eschatology is presented by the Jewish thinker Jacob Taubes, who depicts an alternative: “die erfolgreiche Suche nach einem anderen Globus – das ist die apokalyptische Entgrenzung des Raums” (the successful search for another globe – that is the apocalyptic dissolution of space) (quoted in Richard Faber, Eveline Goodman-Thau and Thomas H. Macho, Abendländische Eschatologie: Ad Jacob Taubes (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001), 79). Taubes departs from the Exodus story and Paul’s talk about “politeuma” in heaven, as well as from Jesus’ preaching of the already now but not yet of God’s reign, and emphasises the strangeness of life in this world where the Heimat of the Jewish people is not his land but the Promised Land which one approaches and will approach in the future. Following Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (in Dialektik der Aufklärung (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1986), 86), for him “Heimat ist das Entronnensein” (Home is the state of having escaped). According to my view such a dialectic of opposites of the

Time turned into space – at home on earth  109 here and there, the now and then is not consistent with a biblical belief in God’s good creation, which both as creatio originalis and creatio continua has been shaped for the human to serve as home and which will turn time into space, creatio continua into creatio nova, the new creation. 61 Jürgen Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes: Christliche Eschatologie (Munich: Kaiser, 1995), 336.

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6 Looking for a miracle

Kjetil HafstadLooking for a miracle

On the point of eschatology Kjetil Hafstad

In a famous tune, “Question” (1970), Justin Hayward and the “Moody Blues” approach our theme, in the context of millions of questions about hate, death and war, by intensely longing for someone to change one’s life and for a mircale to appear in one’s life. In earlier generations, eschatology mostly applied to temporal aspects of life, and then the far end of time, often combined with reflections on time and eternity. In the last couple of hundred years things have changed, as the universe grew into a form of ever changing eternity itself. Time and space are interlinked in ways hard to conceive in the three-dimensional perspective we take for granted every day. It may be helpful to state that eschatology also links our imagination to the limits of our existence, allowing us to transcend and move beyond the space we normally experience. Working with the concept of eschatology brings us to the limits of our understanding, only to open our minds to such reflections, and give new perspectives on our choices and priorities here and now – seen in the imagined perspective of the end of time/space or of eternity. On the other hand, such exercises do not necessarily give us any overview or special insights into the future or into the unknown spaces beyond our immediate sight. They are, however, important elements in our limitless imagination, which enriches life. It is also comforting to note that mankind has sent a scout into space, the tiny “Voyager” which incredibly travelled for decades past the back of Mars, and is now moving into interstellar space – still sending us information and pictures of our solar system and the blue dot earth, so that we will never forget how tiny our presence in the universe is1 – a sobering observation in all our efforts to understand eschatology from the perspective of our blue dot.

Apocalyptic visions, eschatology and use of history I will discuss the construction of eschatology. Thinking about the future, or about the spaces beyond the spaces we now can observe, may give us input useful for our present life. But before going into this, I will through examples focus on the grammar of eschatology, linked to history. Concepts of what history may be

114  Kjetil Hafstad enlighten our hopes and our understanding of the future. Humans can be inspired both by visions of the future and also by visions of history. They are probably closely interlinked and can enlighten the present moment. Friedrich Nietzsche presented in 1874 ideas on how uses of history may be useful or damaging for our present life, and divided the attitudes toward history in relation to our present life into three types. History can be viewed as model and inspiration (monumental), or more as outdated ideals (archives); thirdly, our understanding of history can be critical: erasing those parts of history which determine habits and conventions that can limit or close our view to what is to be done, here and now.2 A critical view of history can be used to change present conditions by arguing against outdated traditions. Use of history often cements present conventions and aspirations. Through recorded history, there are for instance few emperors who have not linked their own empires to former known empires, in order to make their own aspirations legitimate, from the Roman emperors, always renewing the old Roman aspiration, to their descendants – or “wannabies” – later on, such as Emperor Karl V at the time of the Reformation, and Napoleon. In Christianity, the same forces have been used, legitimating present ideas or aspirations by antedating them to old texts, and benefiting from the authority of Church Fathers or well-known noble persons for today’s gain. Consider for example the psedepigraphical testament “Donatio Constantini” of Emperor Constantine to the Church (made up probably in the 8th century, centuries after the Emperor’s death), handing over universal hegemony from the Roman Emperor to the Pope.

Creative use of art in construction of unity in society – the theft and return of classical Italian art A more innocent and less observed part of the use of history can be found in the evolvement of museums and art collections. They can, however, illuminate how use of history can be a changing force in contemporary society. We can observe how establishing museums and art collections has served the building of nations and education. Their “soft” influence will perhaps hardly fall under Nietzsche’s condemnations of history as undermining the present life. They rather illustrate the value of art for the present life. Out of the rich variety of possible examples, I will concentrate on some peculiar aspects of the history of art at the beginning and the end of the 19th century. The first example illustrates that art which has been partly ignored may gain new meaning and importance for people, and may give new hope for the future. The second example shows that art – presenting unforgettable misery – can inspire change and a better future. As Napoleon conquered Italy and suppressed the religious orders, his assistants could pick and choose whatever they wanted from the treasures of monasteries, churches and art collections. Napoleon wanted to celebrate his victories and the new Centre of Europe, Paris, with a Universal Museum of art (Musée Central des Arts), which bore his name (Musée Napoléon) from 1802 to 1816, when Louis

Looking for a miracle  115 XVIII renamed it Le musée royal du Louvre, now the Musée du Louvre. The freedom of geniuses creating art was regarded as a heritage of freedom after the French Revolution and in the Napoleonic period. Not by chance, works by Renaissance artists were placed in the centre of the collections, along with pieces of Classical art.4 Among the Renaissance painters, Raphael was regarded as the peak.5 I will also mention another ever engaging background for this initiative. At the beginning of the 19th century a focus of interest became the idea of development as the moving force of history, thanks partly to the new philosophical focus on the natural sciences’ interest in the development of species of different kinds. Hegel prominently made a grand philosophical attempt to put together available knowledge to create an overview of the dynamics, and especially the development, of history as a whole in his Phänomenologie des Geistes. (Coincidentally, Hegel was not unimpressed by Napoleon himself – he saw him in the streets of Jena in 1806, just before the battle where Napoleon’s troops conquered the city – and called him no less than “the world-spirit”!)6 This concept of development has basically formed the Western worldview until recently. This fostered new interest in history, as the background of what is now happening and a guide to what is to come. Mental pictures such as trees, or roots, or growth, were used to understand history and the future. Following this line of thought, cultural heritage was rediscovered, and could seem helpful in meeting an uncertain future. This is the background for Napoleon’s great theft of Renaissance art from Italy.7 Those in charge of transferring objets d’art from Italy to the new, universal museum of freedom in Paris sought not only works of Raphael – and his ancient Roman predecessors – but also of those artists who were Raphael’s closest predecessors, including different masters from the 16th and 17th centuries. Art was seen and used as examples of human genius and freedom, through iconographic programs dealing with central events in biblical times as well with ancient mythologies. One can smile at the vanity of the triumphant row of more than 30 carriages and hundreds of horses, bringing the art treasures to Paris in 1797. The vanity of Napoleon’s enterprise was further illustrated by the trail, likewise in triumph, of the convoy of carriages returning to Rome on January 4, 1816, under the guidance of the famous neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova.8 So short-lived was Napoleon’s dream of a universal museum mirroring his universal empire. But the triumphant return was an even more important event, not only a triumph for Canova, but for Italians. This return of the collection of key antiquities and Renaissance art changed the attitude towards art in Italy. The drama of the imperial theft of artworks, and the trail of carriages bringing (most of) them back again, had far wider consequences than filling up and changing museum collections. 3

Art treasures as providing national identity and hope for a common future By reinstating in this way the collection of key works of art in Italy after the age of Napoleon, the Italian people realised the importance of these artworks for their

116  Kjetil Hafstad country. This was their own heritage, from antiquity and the Renaissance. They found new unity, and the events also fostered liberal ideas. What started as an academic interest in Raphael and his predecessors on the part of the curators of the Parisian Universal Museum inspired in its turn nothing less than a freedom movement in Italy.9 The theft had positive consequences: people in Italy changed from taking all the old stuff from across the country for granted, to seeing these treasures as giving identity and understanding of genius and common culture, a change in mindset which opened the way for democratic ideas. After the Napoleonic wars, and in a period of deep and dramatic changes, people felt deep insecurity concerning the future, and this fostered strong interest in and active use of history and cultural heritage as resources for the community.10 It was like a wake up, an eschatological moment. Common cultural and artistic sources from history gave hope. The heritage sparked dreams and hope, invited the exercise of freedom. The beautiful artefacts from the past became inspiring impulses far beyond artists and art historians, for the people as a community, giving people hope for the future in a time of difficult change. Art coloured visions of the future, and acquired eschatological dimensions.

Art as a source of resistance at the end of time Later in the 19th century, art played another distinct, but stirring role, rendering hope in misery, combatting poverty. As an eminent example, I choose the works and destiny of Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945). Kollwitz herself experienced the end of the world several times. She awoke to social engagement by living in a poor working-class neighbourhood – Prenzlauer Berg – in Berlin. Her husband served the poor as a doctor. She lost her two sons in the Great War and the Second World War. She described in her drawings, her graphic works and her sculptures the miseries and poverty in the big cities of Germany. Over and over again, she created artworks protesting against violence towards women and children, pointing to mothers’ and children’s mourning in deadly sickness and premature death, to the horrors of war and revolution, and to the sad results of drunkenness. After years of studies and different attempts to present her works publicly – which was almost impossible for a woman – she made a breakthrough in May 1898, as she was allowed to present six graphic works, “The Weber-Cycle” (Weberzyklus), at the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung (Great Berlin Art Exhibition). This series was immediately bought for the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden, and this represented her first public achievement as an artist. The background for her theme was an uprising in Schlesien in 1844 (Figure 6.1). Desperate cotton weavers revolted against low pay and miserable living conditions. This revolt was brutally knocked down by the police, and quite unnecessarily 11 people lost their lives in the fighting between the weavers and the police. The incident became the theme for a rebellious social play by the later Nobel Prize winner Gerhard Hauptmann, “Die Weber”. The police suppressed the play

Looking for a miracle  117

Figure 6.1 Käthe Kollwitz, Sturm (Storm), fifth plate in the series Ein Weberaufstand (A Weavers’ Revolt), 1897, paper, ink, etching, 23,4 × 29,1 cm, Käthe-KollwitzMuseum Berlin © photo: Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum Berlin

in 1892. Two years later the restrictions were dismissed, at which point Käthe Kollwitz saw the play and became socially engaged.11 She subsequently made a series of graphic works with stations such as “Misery”, “Death” (where she described poor families’ hunger and desperation), “Conversation” (where dark, heavy workers talk solemnly in a pub), “Weaver Demonstration” (where worn-out workers walk in protest) and “Storm” (where they try to force open the gate of the factory; the gate remains closed, and we see the workers pick up cobble stones to force their way in, in vain). The last picture of her series is “The End”, where dead bodies are lying on the floor (Figure 6.2).12 A mourning figure is hiding her face, sitting by the dead bodies, while two ragged men are carrying another dead body, and a woman looks on speechless. The desperation, the poverty and the hopelessness of this enterprise colour the series and ignite indignation among viewers. In Kollwitz’ contemporary society, without modern media such as radio, TV, film or internet, drama and graphics had powerful impact. Kollwitz’ passionate interpretation of misery and poverty was unwelcome among the better in society, as in their view it misrepresented society.

118  Kjetil Hafstad

Figure 6.2 Käthe Kollwitz, Ende (The End), sixth plate in the series Ein Weberaufstand (A Weavers’ Revolt), 1892–1898, etching, Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum Berlin © photo: Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum Berlin

Now, Kollwitz should not be seen as a social activist, like the naturalists. She was first and foremost an artist. But she chose themes that allowed room for compassion and engagement. She created art, with fear and love. An art historian of her time, Ludwig Kaemmerer, wrote: “Käthe Kollwitz paints the flames of the uprising and the terror-regime of the masses on the wall, shows the woman who under the French Revolution has become a hyena, and cries with the mothers”.13 Her colleague Sabine Lepsius – herself a critic of the naturalists – regarded Kollwitz as in another league: “Käthe Kollwitz was one of the few who succeeded in transforming compassion for the plagued creature into true art”.14 Kollwitz creates ultimate moments, to be carried into an uncertain future, by depicting despair and mourning – the effect produced is similar to that provoked by “ecce homo”. In addition to giving such perspectives to end-of-time moments, she also provoked the state leaders, with strange consequences. Emperor Wilhelm II was himself engaged in art, and regarded himself as a connoisseur. He also had purpose in his love for art, very different from Kollwitz’. He wanted to praise German heroes through the ages. Indeed, he bestowed a series of no less than 32 gigantic marble statues of German heroes upon the citizens of Berlin and

Looking for a miracle  119 had them installed in the Tiergarten. When he opened this alley of sculptures in 1901, he gave his infamous “gutterspeech”, where he proclaimed, “If art does not accomplish anything other than to describe misery as more repugnant than it is already, it sins against the German people”.15 Wilhelm II also opposed Hauptmann’s “Die Weber”. When this play came on stage in Berlin in 1894 in the Deutsches Theater, he renounced the new loggia that had been specially built for him.16 Moreover, he protested and gave his veto when the doge of German artists, Max Liebermann, suggested giving Kollwitz the reward of the exhibition’s “small gold medal”. From that time on, the Emperor and his Queen were outspoken enemies of Kollwitz. This had the opposite effect to the one intended: it made Kollwitz famous.17 Seeing Käthe Kollwitz’ pictures and sculptures, we may say that misery, death and poverty cry out to us. One cannot ignore them, or stay untouched. They provoke. Deep differences in society and religion can be explosive. It was when people realised these deep differences between people with the same fundamental rights that the social institutions we now mostly take for granted, for welfare, social security and health, emerged. Care, a clean environment and fresh water should be regarded as human rights. In the Western world, people realised that the “other” had just the same rights to have rights, to seek fulfilment for their lives, as “we”. Modern democracy awoke. There is a deep sorrow and indignation in Kollwitz’ oeuvre. I know of only one portrait of her smiling, from 1888/1889, as a young student. Other portraits of her show a solemn, reflective face – with good reason. She lived through a grave, tragic period, and at the centre of events: poverty in Berlin, war, political crisis and galloping inflation, new poverty in Germany and in Russia, then the Nazi revolution, banning her, and new war, until she died, narrowly escaping the annihilation of Berlin – and her own house there, with many of her works – in 1945. She dedicated her life to protesting against poverty, against war. She mourned her son for the rest of her life. He was killed during the first days of World War I, among so many young volunteers, who went to war without any experience or training, as helpless fodder for machine guns. She wanted to make a memorial for him and the other mothers’ fallen sons. It took her almost two decades to find the right form, in the sculpture “Mourning Parents” from 1932, where the missing son . . . is missing. And then she made the perhaps more remarkable “Mother with Dead Son” in 1937/1938, also called “Pieta”. Here she combined the mother and the dead son in one massive block of bronze (Figure 6.3). The form is round; the mother surrounds the beloved, holds his hand in hers and wipes her tears with her other hand. There is a strange calmness within this intimate moment of mourning. The massiveness, the complete embracing, also evokes comfort. The son is received graciously. The irreversible passivity of death is submerged in her life.18 When Kollwitz writes about this work, she mentions that it will evoke “Nachsinnen”, quiet afterthoughts. The statue touches upon the holiness of life, quiet, not easily observed, described well by the words of John Ruskin, the “quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, and the calm, and the perpetual”.19

Figure 6.3 Käthe Kollwitz, Mutter mit totem Sohn (Mother with dead son), 1937/1938, bronze, Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum Berlin © photo: Kjetil Hafstad 2017

Looking for a miracle  121 She constantly worked with these round, highly expressive forms in her later life, obviously in line with her friend and companion Ernst Barlach, who also interpreted crisis and death with remarkable, unsettling round forms like the “Hovering” (Der Schwebende 1927) in the Cathedral of Güstrow, where one can see a long heavy body, passively hanging high in the air, with a robe, flying, resisting the laws of gravity, and a solemn face with closed eyes. The angel has the face of Käthe Kollwitz. This was also a monument to those who died in World War I. It was removed by the Nazis in 1937 – the same year Kollwitz completed her “Pieta”. In later works by Kollwitz we find similar forms such as “Tower of Mothers” (Turm von Mütter 1938), where a group of women, protesting, protectively shield their children by encapsulating them with their own bodies. Combined in one heavy block, they express unity in their complaint and upheaval within the streamlined society of the “new” Germany, without freedom of speech, where the Jews and the free artist were banned, brought to silence. It is worth noting that these protective massive, round sculptures also draw from a medieval source. I will return to this shortly (Figure 6.4). Seen in the historical perspective given by the art of Käthe Kollwitz, who experienced the end of time, the end of her own life and her own people, and described the consequences of terror, war, humiliations and diseases, we detect that democracy is struggle. Democracy cannot be an end in itself, a goal to reach. Democracy has to be a constant way of working now, of struggling, of refining, by convincing coming generations to join in and recreate proper conditions for human flourishing, public and private. The screaming and the suffering, and the intense mourning Kollwitz calls to life, awake us for today, not a faraway future.

Revelatory experiences and stories In a busy street in Spain, a small girl gives a coin to a street musician, playing contra violin. He plays for her. Then another musician joins him, coming out of the gathering crowd, and then another. Moments later a full symphony orchestra from Valle and a big choir are standing in the street with hundreds of passers-by. With their heavenly music, they move everyone present and watching. They transport all those present into a state of bliss. And the video calls everyone to remember what precious moments we can encounter in life by sharing music.20 This is a change of expectations, certainly, but not beyond imagination. Could events like this give a pointer to eschatology? Traditionally eschatology has been a term for the end of history, meaning the last things. This concept, which has received numerous contributions from theologians, poets and utopians during the last couple of thousand years, is also connected to space – not only to the end of time, but also to another space. The ability to look at your own “now” and “where” from another time and a different space is a wonderful gift given to the human imagination. To change one’s point of view – to see what happens in light of what one knows from experience or from travels, from what one has read and studied,

122  Kjetil Hafstad

Figure 6.4 Käthe Kollwitz, Turm der Mütter (Tower of Mothers), 1938, bronze, KätheKollwitz-Museum Berlin © photo: Kjetil Hafstad 2017

or in light of fantasies of other spaces or imagined futures – can be of comfort or inspiration, but can also ignite fear, causing change. Art can wake up; pointing to dramatic instances can open our eyes to what really matters, while also revealing the bliss of shared music. To be able to think about eschatology is surely a gift. It can also mislead.

Imagined future, imagined space In Christianity, we have great imagined apocalyptic stories, like the Book of Revelation of John and St. Augustine’s visions of the great clash of civilisations,

Looking for a miracle  123 told in the stories of the City of God meeting the City of Man. These stories were surely written to comfort believers in times of terror. Most likely, the Book of Revelation was written in the times of Emperor Domitian, who in ad 81 ignited a cruel persecution of Jews and Christians, killing almost all of the descendants of David at hand. No Christian could evade punishment without renouncing their faith. So the Book of Revelation was written literally at the graves of martyrs. The book casts quite a different perspective on history. Not the Emperor, but God, is the ruler of history, and those temporary mighty assassins will meet their fate, and the people of God will find rest in the Heavenly Jerusalem, in peace and harmony – this is the comforting message. St. Augustine likewise experienced the collapse of his world. He studied in the orderly Roman Empire, indulging in Greek philosophy and listening to the renowned preacher Ambrose, and experienced a total conversion, reading some random verses from Romans, as he recounts in Confessions.21 He then took up the calling to the monastery, and was later elected bishop in Hippo in North Africa. He saw the world as he knew it break: the Visigoths conquered Rome, and the old world was destroyed. St. Augustine comforted his flock with the story of the City of God which would prevail, in spite of the terrors they saw.22 The end of time has happened on numerous occasions in terrible ways: the Holocaust, the Black Death in the 1350s, the battle of Leipzig in 1813 – brutality, cold winters, constant terror and no prospect of escape for most. These examples are only a few of the ends of time experienced, adding to the Great War, and the “cleansing” of Russia under Stalin. Millions of people have lost their lives and safety, and have seen their hopes vanish. The end of time comes to everyone, “for whom the Bell tolls”, as Steinbeck wrote. We often need stories of hope and comfort, like Revelation and the City of God. September 11, 2001 was for many in the US and in the Western world an experience of the “end of time”. For many, it changed their view of reality. For a short moment, time stood still. The unthinkable had happened in the midst of our modern world’s capital, the new Rome, New York. The American activist and cultural historian Rebecca Solnit recounts moving side effects of this tragedy: The first impulse everywhere on September 11 was to give blood, a kind of secular communion in which people offered up the life of their bodies for strangers. The media dropped its advertisements, leers, and gossip and told us about tragedy and heroism. Giving blood and volunteering were the first expression of a sense of connection; the flag became an ambiguous symbol of that connection, since it meant everything from empathy to belligerence. In Brooklyn that week, a friend reported, ‘Nobody went to work and everybody talked with strangers.’ What makes people heroic and what makes them feel members of a community? I hoped that one thing to come out of the end of American invulnerability would be a stronger sense of what disasters abroad – massacres, occupations, wars, famines, dictatorships – mean and feel like, a sense of citizenship of the world.23

124  Kjetil Hafstad Tragedies and events that are experienced as the “end of time” make us stop, and often do things that we normally do not. They call for untold improvisations, ways of coping with what is inconceivable – and often bring forth resources we never thought we were in possession of. And here we come close to what gave rise to stories of apocalyptic visions. They foster experiences outside the everyday that can give hope and strength for days to come.

Paradise – not a place in which to arrive I think this is the proper use of eschatology. Solnit states: “Paradise is not the place in which you arrive but the journey toward it”.24 She is not speaking for religion, but as an activist for a better society, and proposes the use of concepts like paradise as means by which to navigate, not as final goals – reaching such goals often leads to catastrophes. “When activists mistake heaven for some goal at which they must arrive, rather than an idea to navigate by, they burn themselves out, or they set up a totalitarian utopia in which others are burned in flames”.25 On the other hand one should note that eschatological stories like these are not referential; they have their setting, and should not be transformed into a kind of prophecy, able to predict when the “end of time” will come for the whole world, by observing the signs of the last days, as described in Revelation. There is no facticity in eschatology. Like all texts, they have their context and function.

Taxonomic interests Therefore I think it is due time to reconsider classical eschatology. For too long, this discipline in theology has been a laborious work of compiling elements of a timetable for the showdown of the known earth, often inspired by a morality of pilgrimage: despising this life for the sake of eternity and Paradise. For too long eschatology has been emptied of its function by diligent taxonomic work trying to map out the future, through study of the scriptures and looking for “signs” in history and the everyday world. Why not use the impact of stories as they were written: to inspire benevolent and just actions, to resist tyranny and brutality, and to foster hope against evil, looking at the forces of life that start afresh all the time, building on the firm Christian belief in creation? There have been many attempts to streamline the “right” Christian life, and even organise whole societies to fit into such a Christian lifestyle. Many have tried to make a paradise out of this world. Prominent examples within Christianity are Savonarola and Oliver Cromwell – whose attempts in effect led to tyranny and hell on earth. Likewise emperors and religious leaders have tried to streamline their societies, from Nero to Stalin and Hitler. History is paved with misdirected attempts to make the world into a paradise, mostly through a few, simple governing ideas or ideologies. Why this eagerness to streamline and make a perfect taxonomy? And why have generations of theologians defended such attempts as orthodoxy? There is a deep

Looking for a miracle  125 longing for order in many people; they do not feel safe without such order. On the other hand, is there any firm ground behind the thought that there is such order to be found? In the 17th century, scientists like Carl von Linné and Christian Wolff believed that they had detected such order in nature itself. The quest for order and system is, however, not the same as proof of order. On the contrary, the elements of law in nature opened up the way for discoveries of endless varieties.

La lotta continua – the struggle never ends, anywhere In my view, studies of time and space are better when directed backwards than when aimed at predicting the future. Even if it is true that every generation makes new histories and reads space differently, there is still much to learn from mistakes and successes of the past. Such insights are, however, best used to understand contemporary events and spaces, and to inspire forms of constructive actions, rather than to try to predict the future. Rather we should prepare ourselves to create the form of future we would like to live in – knowing that we humans will never agree on what this is. So we have to accept that our visions are diverse and often in contradiction, different as we are. Sisyphus is the eternal image of tragedy, having to struggle to roll the stone uphill, and experiencing that it subsequently rolls down again. But then the contrasting idea popped up: we must regard Sisyphus as happy! The story can also be read as a story of the struggles of life, which in the long run makes it all worthwhile, as Albert Camus proposed in his essay from 1942 about the Sisyphus-myth. Sisyphus is a hero who takes his fate into his own hands, and may have viewed the hillside with delight. So getting out of paradise can be a good idea. Solnit suggests this: “Some imaginative Christian heretics worshipped Eve for having liberated us from paradise – the myth of the fortunate fall. The heretics recognized that before the fall we were not yet fully human – Adam and Eve need not wrestle with morality, with creation, with society, with mortality in paradise; they only realize their own potential and their own humanity in the struggle an imperfect world invites”.26

Universal, different hopes In my mind, it is an outspoken lack of belief to try to predict and so govern the future by means of my own or my congregation’s limited fantasy. Rather it is a task for believers and open-minded people to look for sources of hope in the diversity here and now. Every day you wake up, there is hope – life itself carries hope, as K.E. Løgstrup famously underlined in his observation of the singular utterances of life (suveræne livsytringer), like confidence, openness of speech and compassion, but also the universal hope that every living creature seems to participate in. “Only a villain takes hope away from a child”, he rightly states.27 Hope comes to us from the resources of our body, our surroundings – and can foster a “pedagogy of hope”, as Paulo Freire underlined.28 “History” does not develop to a singular end, where everything will be combined into one entity. Hegel’s grand vision of the unity of history, which for a short

126  Kjetil Hafstad time he saw fulfilled in the person of Napoleon, walking around in the streets of Jena, was wrong. The subsequent victory of Napoleon in Jena and Auerbach was short-lived. Hegel was, however, filled with horror for other reasons: he had just before the battle sent his magnum opus by post, and feared that the great battle might have resulted in the only copy of Phänomenologie des Geistes being lost on its way to print. Hegel was happily wrong here as well – the manuscript was delivered successfully. But his vision of this grand unity is futile, as history quickly proved. Napoleon lost, and his glory waned. History did not come to an end and to a standstill then, nor (until further notice) has it now. History is pluriform, full of accidents, surprises, luck and misery. Perhaps we should value more highly those who do not strive for a single vision, a communal end. We should also continue to be sceptical towards everyone who in the interest of his or her own ends or own religious ideology wants to recruit every activist to their single-minded ends. Solnit quotes Naomi Klein’s observation on global justice activists: When critics say the protesters lack vision, what they are really saying is that they lack an overarching revolutionary philosophy – like Marxism, democratic socialism, deep ecology or social anarchy – on which they all agree. This is absolutely true, and for this we should be extraordinary thankful. At the moment, the anti-corporate street activists are ringed by would-be leaders, anxious to enlist them as foot soldiers for their particular cause. It is to this young movement’s credit that it has as yet fended off all of these agendas and rejected everyone’s generously donated manifesto.29 Streamlining history or trying to streamline the future by imposing a normative eschatology is in vain. The opposite, embracing the pluriformity of dreams and hopes, so often interpreted by art, is more inspiring and fruitful and renders a view of the future with curiosity and hopeful trust. This has been done in other forms before. The late medieval artist and eminent woodcarver Master Erhart presented a motif very much appreciated by his contemporaries in his altarpiece for the Liebfrauenkirche in Ravensburg c. 1480. We see the “Schutzmadonna”, the protecting Madonna. One can see the inhabitants of the city within the cloak of Madonna. There are married women, old and young, perhaps ordained and lay – simply the community. This community looks into the future together with the calm and pious Madonna (Figure 6.5). She will move forward with them. The sculpture is masterfully carved, and very expressively conveys naivety, and faith in what comes. Society in 1480 was insecure. Famine, illness or war could strike without warning. People had little chance to avoid what was coming. But they could do their best. Kollwitz revolves around this theme. Protection is available. Mothers, carers, doctors, rebellious workers – they all have a right to be heard, and they want to survive in peace. War is monstrous. Sickness is terrible, if the sick are left alone. Hunger is outrageous. She was witness to all this happening. She took comfort in forms which gave some consolation: mothers protecting, mothers caring,

Figure 6.5 Michael Erhart, Virgin of Mercy, reportedly from the high altar altarpiece of the Church of our Lady in Ravensburg, Upper Swabia, c. 1480, limewood, original colours with some overpainting. Skulpturensammlung (Inv. 421, purchased in 1850) Bode-Museum, Berlin Photo: Andreas Praefcke, 2007. Public domain: < https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ravensbur ger_Schutzmantelmadonna.jpg > Accessed 3 November 2017.

128  Kjetil Hafstad crying. “Schutzmadonna” is not that close to people – she is more exalted. But the concept of being protected provides hope in insecure times, because the human resources are here. Therefore, eschatology can inspire us to meet the future with the consolation available, if not from Madonna, perhaps from the Gospel – or from the community of humans of good will. It is not vain to look for someone to change my life, as the young musicians in the Moody Blues called for: the miracle can be close at hand.

Notes 1 “A spacecraft from Earth has left its cosmic backyard and taken its first steps in interstellar space. After streaking through space for nearly 35 years, NASA’s robotic Voyager 1 probe finally left the solar system in August 2012, a study published today (Sept. 12) in the journal Science reports. ‘Voyager has boldly gone where no probe has gone before, marking one of the most significant technological achievements in the annals of the history of science, and as it enters interstellar space, it adds a new chapter in human scientific dreams and endeavors’, NASA science chief John Grunsfeld said in a statement. ‘Perhaps some future deep-space explorers will catch up with Voyager, our first interstellar envoy, and reflect on how this intrepid spacecraft helped enable their future’ ”. Mike Waller, “It’s Official! Voyager 1 Spacecraft Has Left Solar System”, Space.com, 12 September 2013, www.space.com/22729-voyager-1-spacecraftinterstellar-space.html. 2 See Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life”, in Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale and tr. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 72f. 3 Valter Curzi, Carolona Brook and Claudio Parisi Presicce (eds.), Il Museo Universale: Dal sogno di Napoleone a Canova (Milan: Skira, 2016), 35. 4 This event was celebrated in an exposition in the Scuderie del Quirinale between 16.12.16 and 12.03.17, and documented in the catalogue Curzi et al., Il Museo, 17. 5 The first and foremost trophy of Raphael’s taken from Italy was his Trasfigurazione, which was removed along with the classical statues of Laocoon and Apollo. The robberies were defended as actions of rescue from “vandals” who kept the artworks in sorry conditions (Il Museo, 26f). 6 “ ‘I saw the Emperor – this world-spirit – go out from the city to survey his realm’, Hegel wrote on 13 October 1806. ‘It is a truly wonderful experience to see such an individual, on horseback, concentrating on one point, stretching over the world and dominating it’. For Hegel, Napoleon embodied the world-historical hero of the age, driving forward the self-realisation of God in history”. Paul Harrison, “Hegel: Philosophy and History as Theology”, Pantheism.net, www.pantheism.net/paul/history/hegel. htm. Accessed 16 March 2017. 7 The robbery caused widespread indignation in Europe, even among students in a German Gymnasium, as reported in Mario Alexander Zadow, Karl Friedrich Schinkel – Ein Sohn der Spätaufklärung: Die Grundlagen seiner Erziehung und Bildung (Stuttgart and London: Edition Axel Menges, 2001), 85. 8 Il Museo, 40f. Canova was from 1802 “ispettore generale delle Antiquità e Belle Arti dello Stato della Chiesa” under Pope Pio VII (Il Museo, 36). 9 Cf. Mario di Simoni: “The exhibition ‘The Universal Museum’ celebrates the 200th anniversary (1816–2016) of the return to Italy of the major part of the masterpieces of ancient and modern Italian art taken by the French to construct Napoleon’s Great Louvre, an adventurous return, I would say epic, led with great intelligence by Antonio Canova, for whom the exhibition recognises a founding role for understanding

Looking for a miracle  129 the vivid Italian artistic heritage as a code of identity for the nation: an instrument by which the education of citizens might be disseminated and promoted, a keystone for a common language in Europe, a vehicle of democracy” [La mostra ‘Il Museo Universale’ celebra infatti I duecento anni (1816–2016) dal rientro in Italia di gran parte dei capolavori di arte italiani antica e moderna requisiti dai francesi per la costruzione del grande Louvre di Napoleone, un rientro avventuroso, direi epico, guidato con assuluta intelligenza da Antonio Canova al quale la mostra ricognosce un ruolo fondante nella concezione del patrimonio artistico inteso come codice identitario della nazione: strumento di edicazione del cittadino da diffondere e da valorizzare, chiave di volta di una lingua commune dell’Europa, veicolo di democrazia.] (Il Museo, 11). 10 Valter Curzi presents this perspective: “Faced with the uncertainty of the future, in the fulminant climate of those years, this fostered the rediscovery of how useful history is. Along this trajectory it is possible to trace a cultural patrimony felt as a common good and a resource for the community. Artistic inheritance from the past came to be valued and the recovery of the community’s memory ignited the will to rescue civil consciousness. Although aware of the difficulty of tracing a common path, given the historical and cultural fragmentation of Italy, the essay aims to verify the increasing importance of art between the Napoleonic Age and the Restoration, of the idea of how useful cultural gods are for the public and of the subsequent commitment to take responsibility for safeguarding works of art and monuments”. [Die fronte all’incertezza del futuro, nel clima arroventato di quelgli anni, si assiste alla riscoperta dell’ utilità della storia, nella traiettoria della quale è possibile rintracciare una patrimonialità culturale sentita come bene commune e risorsa per la collettività. L’eredità artística entra a pieno titolo nella valorizzazione dell’esempio del passato en el recupero della memoria comunitaria con la volontà di resvelgiare la coscienza civici. Pur nella consapevolezza della difficoltà di tracciare un percorso commune, data la frammentazione storica e culturale dell’Italia, il saggio intende verificare la progressiva messa a fuoco, tra età napoleónica e Restaurazione, dell’idea dell’utilità pubblicca dei bene culturali e dell’impegno conseguente ad assumersi la responsabilità della salvaguarda di opere d’arte e monumento.] (Il Museo, 15f). 11 Yury Winterberg and Sonya Winterberg, Kollwitz, Die Biographie (Munich: C. Bertelsmann, 2015), 127. 12 See Martin Fritsch (ed.), Käthe Kollwitz, Zeichnung. Grafik. Plastik: Bestandkatalog des Käthe Kollwitz-Museums Berlin (Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1999), 80. 13 Winterberg, Kollwitz, Die Biographie, 156. 14 Winterberg, Kollwitz, Die Biographie, 162. 15 Winterberg, Kollwitz, Die Biographie, 152. 16 Winterberg, Kollwitz, Die Biographie, 147. 17 Winterberg, Kollwitz, Die Biographie, 145. 18 This sculpture was famously installed in Karl Friedrich Schindler’s “Neue Wache” in the main street of Berlin, Unter den Linden, after “Die Wende”, on the initiative of Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1993, who argued: “The New Guard in Berlin will now be a place for remembering and contemplation of the victims of war and violent regimes. As Central State Memorial in the German Federal Republic it is an important symbol for the reunited Germany, and its democratic constitutional foundation, respecting the dignity, the value, and the human rights of its citizens. The Government of the German Federation has chosen for this State Memorial Käthe Kollwitz’ sculpture ‘Mother with Dead Son’ because the works and the engagement of this great artist are inseparably connected to this foundation”. [Die Neue Wache in Berlin ist künftig der Ort der Erinnerung und des Gedenkens an die Opfer von Krieg und Gewaltherrschaft. Als Zentrale Gedenkstätte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ist sie wichtiges Symbol des wiedervereinigten Deutschland und seiner von Würde, Wert und Recht des Menschen bestimmten freiheitlichen demokratischen Grundordnung im Sinne des Grundgesetzes. Die Bundesregierung hat

130  Kjetil Hafstad für diese staatliche Gedenkstätte die Skulptur “Mutter mit totem Sohn” von Käthe Kollwitz auch deshalb ausgewählt, weil Werk und Schaffen dieser großen Künstlerin untrennbar mit einem Staatswesen verbunden sind, das sich diesen Grundlagen ver­ pflichtet weiß.] Cited in Bundesministerium des Innern, “Volkstrauertag”, Protokoll-Inland.de, 1 March 2009, www.protokoll-inland.de/PI/DE/NatGedenkFeiertage/Volkstrauertag/ volkstrauertag_node.html. Accessed 12 January 2017. 19 John Ruskin, Modern Painters I, sect. III, ch. 1, para. 3, here cited from Hein-Th. Schulze Altcappenberg, Rolf H. Johannsen and Christine Lange (eds.), Karl-Friedrich Schinkel: Geschichte und Poesie, Katalog (Berlin: Kupferstich Kabinett Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2012), 25. 20 “A little girl gives coins to a street musician and gets the best surprise in return”, Evadeazǎ, www.evadeaza.ro/video-blog/a-little-girl-gives-coins-to-a-street-musicianand-gets-the-best. Accessed 10 March 2017. 21 Augustine, Confessions VIII, chapter XII. 22 Augustine, The City of God, Vol. I, ed. Marcus Dods (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1971). 23 Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (New York: Nation Books, 2006), 50f. 24 Solnit, Hope, 85. 25 Solnit, Hope, 84. 26 Solnit, Hope, 86. 27 K.E. Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse: Metafysik IV. Religionsfilosofiske betraktninger (Århus: Forlaget Klim, 2015), 324–328. 28 The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire published his seminal book Pedagogia do Oprimido in 1968; an English translation by Myra Ramos was published in 1970 as The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Along with the Liberation Theologians, who started to publish in the early 1970s, he opened the view from below, from the learners. In 1992, he published an updated version of this book, with a focus on hope: Pedagogía da esperança: Um Reencontro Com A Pedagogia Do Oprimido. This was translated into English in 1994 by Robert Barr. See Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). 29 Solnit, Hope, 104f.

Bibliography Augustine. Confessions, translated and edited by Albert C. Outler. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955. ———. The City Of God, Volume I, edited by the Rev. Marcus Dods, M.A. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1971. Bundesministerium des Innern. “Volkstrauertag”. Protokoll-Inland.de, 1 March 2009. www.protokoll-inland.de/PI/DE/NatGedenkFeiertage/Volkstrauertag/volkstrauertag_ node.html. Accessed 12 January 2017. Curzi, Valter, Carolona Brook, and Claudio Parisi Presicce, eds. Il Museo Universale: Dal sogno di Napoleone a Canova. Milan: Skira, 2016. Fritsch, Martin, ed. Käthe Kollwitz, Zeichnung: Grafik. Plastik. Bestandkatalog des Käthe Kollwitz-Museums Berlin. Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1999. Harrison, Paul. “Hegel: Philosophy and History as Theology”. World Pantheism. www. pantheism.net/paul/history/hegel.htm. Accessed 16 March 2017. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life”. In Untimely Meditations, edited by Daniel Breazeale, translated by R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Looking for a miracle  131 Schulze Altcappenberg, Hein-Th., Rolf H. Johannsen, and Christine Lange, eds. KarlFriedrich Schinkel: Geschichte und Poesie, Katalog. Berlin: Kupferstich Kabinett Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2012. Waller, Mike. “It’s Official! Voyager 1 Spacecraft Has Left Solar System”. Space.com, 12 September 2013. www.space.com/22729-voyager-1-spacecraft-interstellar-space.html. Winterberg, Yury, and Sonya Winterberg. Kollwitz, Die Biographie. Munich: C. Bertelsmann, 2015. Zadow, Mario Alexander. Karl Friedrich Schinkel – Ein Sohn der Spätaufklärung: Die Grundlagen seiner Erziehung und Bildung. Stuttgart and London: Edition Axel Menges, 2001.

7 Beyond the limit of time

Cristina GrenholmBeyond the limit of time

A new quest for hope Cristina Grenholm

There was something unusual about the report on the TV screen. I was travelling and did not understand the language. People were sitting on the floor of a train station in large numbers. They were obviously refugees, but the station looked familiar and I gradually realised that they were not in a place far away from me, but less than two hours away – if they had been able to continue their journey, that is. Some weeks later, my train was approaching Stockholm. Brahms’ A German Requiem accompanied me on my trip. I listened to the beautiful and comforting fifth movement with lyrics from John, Sirach and Isaiah: You now have sorrow; but I shall see you again and your heart shall rejoice and your joy no one shall take from you. Behold me: I have had for a little time toil and torment, and now have found great consolation. I will console you, as one is consoled by his mother.1 Another train stopped at the next platform. Policemen and people from the Red Cross waited for the travellers. I got off my train and went down the stairs where I met with people coming from the other train. A young man with a nice haircut pushed a stroller with a two-year-old girl who stretched her hands towards the teddy bear someone was giving her. Her mother was not carrying much luggage. This was in September 2015. That moment became a turning point for my theological reflection, which also meant that I reviewed contemporary theology from a new perspective. The fifth movement of the Requiem, which had given me both comfort and hope so many times over more than 30 years, could not connect to what I experienced when confronted with human suffering on this scale. I could not make the magnitude of the individual and collective crisis connect to the hope of future comfort.

Beyond the limit of time  133 A sentence from my early theological study has stayed with me through the years: neither the darkest depths, nor the brightest heights of life, lie beyond the scope of religion. For a long time, I have known that this is not always the case and that the scope of church life easily lapses into something much narrower. The theme of this book, eschatology, has not been on the given agenda of contemporary Scandinavian theology. Some Evangelicals or Pentecostals have taken an interest in it, but in the church to which I belong, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Sweden (or more correctly: the Church of Sweden), eschatology is more frequently mentioned than dealt with. I asked the former president of the Lutheran World Federation, Bishop Munib Younan from the Lutheran Church of Lebanon and the Holy Land, how long it will take for things to go back to “normal” in Syria. He said that if the war stops tomorrow – and he emphasised this prerequisite of his estimation – it will take 50 years. We both knew it would not stop the next day. The conversation took place in May 2017. If Bishop Younan’s estimation is correct, I will not experience this in my lifetime. In my view, this is one of the reasons why we need to deal with eschatology as the belief in what happens beyond the scope of time that we can foresee. I see the point of dealing with eschatology in a spatial sense, as Sigurd Bergmann does in close connection to Vitor Westhelle in his article. The possibilities that the imaginary space offers are indeed filled with hope. They can motivate struggles to change a difficult situation for the better. Nevertheless, we also need to develop further a temporal understanding of eschatology. To me, the experience of the irreversibility of time is a painful fact. Instead of replacing a dystopian vision of the future exclusively with an alternative in space, we also need the hopeful imagery of the fulfilment of time. When I think about the family I saw at Central Station in Stockholm that night, and of what Bishop Younan said almost two years later, I cannot give up theologically reflecting about time, which will obviously not – as the saying goes – heal all our wounds. Will God do that? Although eschatology may not be at the forefront of theological reflection, there is a constant reminder of things to come in Christian worship. The belief in the resurrection and eternal life is proclaimed in the Creed and in the affirmation in the Eucharist that we keep celebrating it “until the day he returns in glory”. Although personal suffering or the horrible conflicts of the world may give us reason to despair, faith urges us to hope for a good future, if not here then beyond time. In this chapter, I want to explore how a contemporary understanding of eschatology can include a hope that surpasses immanent categories without lapsing into the view that this life does not really matter. Creation consists of both good and evil. The eschatological future contains only good. Belief in eternal life beyond time requires a radical change. According to Christian theology, that radical change was brought about in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ by which an unfathomable reconciliation took place that also affects us. In a time of conflict and polarisation where religion often plays a role, it is necessary to return to the belief in reconciliation as something that both has taken

134  Cristina Grenholm place and will one day come to fulfilment, thus urging us to seek righteousness and peace here and now. This means that although it may not seem reasonable or rational, we need to believe in the good. There is no other way to deal with suffering. In my view, the situation in Syria and other parts of the world forces us to explore how belief in the fulfilment of time can provide hope rather than hopelessness, facing the fact that, for so many, life has been irreversibly changed. Their losses are beyond the scope of restoration in this life. This is indeed not a loss only for the tens of millions of people all over the world who have been forced to leave their homes; it is a loss to humanity. It is challenging our values of humanity and human rights. How can we preach a reliable and trustworthy hope in the future in this situation? I will argue that there are three prerequisites for finding an eschatology that expresses hope beyond the limit of time in a way that motivates us also to hope for a better future in this world and to engage in the struggle for justice, peace and reconciliation. Such an eschatology needs to (1) relate to tradition, which was handed over to us by earlier generations as a source of experience of belief in the hope of a world to come, (2) contain a worldview that keeps together life in this world with the belief in a world to come instead of imagining them as separate and (3) provide an image of God that can deal with darkness and despair in a way that does not let an understanding of God’s anger and love leave God capricious, frightening or powerless.

A contemporary theology of reconciliation In this chapter, I will enter issues of eschatology through the lens of reconciliation. I will therefore refer to the work of the Committee for Theology, appointed by the governing board and the bishops’ conference of the Church of Sweden. In 2015 and 2016 it published two books on reconciliation. The first consists of articles on theological reflection on reconciliation, the second on the practical implication of this central Christian belief.2 I will pay special attention to two of the articles related to the liberal arts. The eschatological themes are clearly brought up by Dr Tomas Axelson, working in Film Studies, and Dr Helene Blomqvist, a specialist in Swedish Literature. I will also refer to an article by former chief ecumenical officer Dr Christopher Meakin.

Of Gods and Men Tomas Axelson analyses the French movie “Of Gods and Men” by Xavier Beauvois from 2010.3 The film depicts how a group of Trappist monks, stationed with an impoverished Algerian community under the threat of fundamentalist terrorists, must decide whether to leave or stay. Religion is indeed often associated with conflict. The film is based on a true story and starts by depicting the peaceful relationship between the monks and their Muslim neighbours. In 1996 the situation becomes tense, since Islamic groups are ravaging the country. The monks made

Beyond the limit of time  135 an active choice to stay in the village despite the violence surrounding them. The movie ends with the monks being taken away by the Islamic rebels. The film became a box office hit and has received many awards. One statement reads: “The deep humanity of the monks, their respect for Islam, and their generosity toward their neighbours in the village make the reason for our choice” to grant an award.4 The question posed by Tomas Axelson is how such humanity can be nurtured and developed in such a situation. Xavier Beauvoie’s film from 2010 concerns a major contemporary context of difficult complications, the issue of coexistence and religious diversity in a globalised world and how we deal with fundamentalism and religiouslyfounded extremism. . . . How do we preserve our faith in humanity? How do we avoid increasing gaps between ethnic and religious group identities? What are the forces for edification and hope in the future?5 If our faith in humanity is at stake, the vision of something that cannot be seen but is nonetheless truly experienced can be of great importance. It is necessary to counteract approaches to life characterised by pessimism and fatalism in a way that does not detract from suffering or the power of cruelty. There is a need for a stable foundation for hope and confidence in the future, even when it seems gloomy. At the same time, there is a risk that such hope – to use another biblical image – is based on a belief in the division between sheep and goats, between faithful and unfaithful. The relation to reconciliation is therefore crucial.

The effects of belief in reconciliation Churches have a special opportunity to provide a stable foundation for hope because they are challenged by their own message. This applies to polarisations between both churches and religions. Views of the world may become totalitarian and sharp in their borders against “the others”. At times, this is also the case with the Christian worldview. However, the ecumenical movement, with the interaction of Christian communities of different traditions, has for more than 100 years been a dynamic force that has counteracted polarisation. There is an inherent contradiction between, on the one hand, safeguarding the true faith and, on the other hand, sharing a belief that is based on the conviction of reconciliation. In the ecumenical movement, the churches have felt called to deal with this challenge together. The movement started in the mission fields as early as the late 1700s, where competition between communities significantly undermined the credibility of the message. The relationship between the different identities of the churches and their inevitable similarity is not a problem that has a solution, but a dilemma to live with. However, it is not a dilemma one can ignore. In the contexts of the churches, the differences and the similarities become clear simultaneously. The document published by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman-Catholic Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, From Conflict to Communion, is an

136  Cristina Grenholm example of this.6 Together with the joint Catholic-Lutheran commemoration of the Reformation in Lund, on October 31, 2016, it forms part of a common story that neither overlooks nor stops engaging with differences. The larger, inclusive community takes shape and counteracts closure and polarisation. As a concrete expression of this, an agreement was also signed by the two aid organisations Caritas Internationalis and the Lutheran World Federation Department World Service, directed towards work among refugees. Ecumenism has had its natural continuation in interreligious dialogue. The world-wide church community opens up towards encountering and dialoguing with other religions. In this case as well, experience from the mission fields has been crucial, where respect for other religious beliefs has developed. We can also note that history actually holds more peaceful coexistence than violence and conflict. But it is still inevitable that religions played significant roles in a wide range of conflicts. Although peace researchers agree that religious antagonism is not the root cause of conflicts, they also agree that conflicts worsen and become more difficult to solve when religion becomes a part of them. Interreligious cooperation is therefore of great importance for the possibility of peaceful coexistence. Christian and interreligious cross-border community is therefore of importance to all. Successful agreement has good consequences, but it does not happen automatically. A positive development is driven by the tension I pointed to between different identities and perceived similarities. Religion certainly contributes to polarisation in many contexts, but religious beliefs are also characterised by a transcendent dimension, a divine ecumenical and interreligious call to not give in to delimitations and differences.

The eschatological dimension of reconciliation In the Christian faith, there is an inherent connection between reconciliation and eschatology. There is a link between the conviction of a peace beyond constraints and the unexpected reconciliation that took place through Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, the hidden solidarity of the whole creation is revealed. Hope rests on the reconciliation that has already taken place and turns those who believe in it towards a future beyond the boundary of time. The theme of reconciliation is not a theme among many; it lies at the core of the Christian faith. In Colossians we find a dense and poetic description: May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible,

Beyond the limit of time  137 whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (Col 1:11–20, NRSV) The suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus has changed everything at its foundation. Christ not only sums up everything but also keeps it together. There is nothing that is not included, and therefore everything can be reconciled through him and the people saved from darkness and sin. Everything is enclosed in a cosmic peace. There is reason for hope and promise of a future beyond death. There are different ways to approach the question of how hope for the future can have a foundation that neither is entirely dependent on how a particular situation is perceived, nor becomes unrealistic wishful thinking. The quoted biblical text is not in itself my starting point, but the approach to life it expresses summarises an eschatological belief and its close relationship with the atonement of Christ as the basis for hope.

Three connection points for an eschatological hope In my view, there are at least three connection points between a realistic understanding of the world and the belief in a good future beyond the limits of time. The first is that eschatology forms part of a tradition. Most people know stories about people who have overcome difficulties by relying on their faith in life after death, a belief that may have been at odds with their concrete situation. This is an aspect of the comfort of belonging to a religious tradition. The point is not that tradition is old, but that it has carried people through difficulties over generations. A personal thought or consolation experience is also valuable, but a conviction shared by many over time has a different stability and credibility. It does not rest only on the imagination of the individual and thus it becomes something more than a dream. This is how the lyrics of the fifth movement of Brahms’ Requiem can console. It has helped others over the years and therefore it can bring consolation in new situations. The second possible link between our experience in this world and an eschatology depicting a future beyond the limits of time is a coherent worldview that does not deal separately with violence and conflicts, on the one hand, and peace and harmony, on the other. If Christian eschatology is to provide a solid foundation for hoping for peaceful solutions and repeatedly restored coexistence, both aspects must be accommodated in the same image. However, there are objections to both of these connection points. Religious traditions have also oppressed people over generations and enabled them to accept unacceptable circumstances that could have been changed. And there are images

138  Cristina Grenholm of the world showing the necessity of entering the struggle to destroy the enemy before the great harmony can occur. The interpretation of Christian faith is a serious matter since it risks leading to terrible consequences. However, this is not unique to Christianity or to the religions. This applies to all worldviews, including the secular. There is always a relationship between our knowledge of the world on the one hand, and our beliefs about it on the other. Everybody has a responsibility to process that particular relationship. With regard to religious worldviews, the interpretation of the image of God can be seen as a key in processing the content of the tradition and creating the overall worldview. Therefore, I regard the image of God as the third connection point for a stable Christian foundation for hope. The answers to the question of God give believers a compass in relation to tradition, by means of which we can orient ourselves in an overall picture of life that holds, on the one hand, our worst experiences and fears, and, on the other, what we believe can remedy this so that our good visions are realised. There is a need for theology that both rejects parts of the tradition and includes other parts. Interpretations of Christian faith capable of keeping eschatology and the conviction that God acts in this world together are necessary. It is only when the connection is clear between Christian interpretation of life as we know it, on the one hand, and beliefs about what exists beyond what we can comprehend and beyond the boundary of time, on the other, that Christian faith can be trustworthy and take on the role of the resource for hope for humanity that Tomas Axelson calls for. In its turn, this requires that the image of God can deal with darkness and despair in a way that does not let an understanding of God’s anger and love leave God capricious, frightening or powerless. A God who shows wrath and demands responsibility cannot easily be presented as gracious and loving. A God who empties himself of everything risks disappearing into the abyss with those who trusted in him.

Two tendencies in the contemporary Church of Sweden How are these prerequisites met in contemporary Church of Sweden? We can find two tendencies which are equally bothersome. The first is that the doctrine of atonement and reconciliation is challenged as being obsolete. As Archbishop Antje Jackelén puts it: Some of the traditional ways of expressing the belief in reconciliation are more perplexing than inviting in our time. A Lamb of God who is slaughtered for my sins and blood that cleanses – it is a language that quite brutally clashes with everyday experience in our context.7 This is one of the reasons why the Committee for Theology took on the task of exploring the field of atonement and reconciliation. Tradition needs to be revisited.

Beyond the limit of time  139 If some pastors hesitate to use Christian tradition, others move in the opposite direction. An analysis of sermons preached by pastors in the Church of Sweden published by Dr Anne-Louise Eriksson shows that the pastors adhere to tradition in such a way that they risk making it difficult to relate it to contemporary experience. Anne-Louise Eriksson summarises her study of sermons on the resurrection of Christ as follows: The belief that is proclaimed is often expressed by using traditional language that is probably too difficult to understand for many people today. Nor do the sermons give any real guidance on how to understand the words of the resurrection. Instead, various statements about God and humans, life and death are presented, but the “reconciled reality”, as stated in the sermons, does not explain or cast any light on the Easter narratives of the Gospels. . . . Thus, the tradition of the Church of Sweden appears as a static space that you are offered to enter, provided that you accept the terms of the room.8 According to these examples, little help is given to the interpretation of Jesus’ suffering and death or of his resurrection. In one case, the relationship to tradition is weakened because it is not perceived as meaningful; in the other the relationship to the present is weakened by the tradition becoming self-supporting. Thus, there are no prerequisites for creating a coherent image of the dark and bright sides of life, nor does a connecting point to eschatology exist.

Openings But which openings can be found in the theological reflection provided in the two volumes on reconciliation? Those who deal with eschatological issues in these books are not many. As already pointed out, two articles bring it up in relation to film and literature. But of course it is also brought up concerning the biblical material. Biblical exegete Hanna Stenström shows the vast diversity of interpretations of salvation and reconciliation in the New Testament texts. She underlines the fact that they do not fit nicely into a coherent whole. Rather, the biblical motifs related to reconciliation contain a multitude of concepts, images and narratives. This is often a relief for Christian believers. The Bible gives us more freedom than strict dogma. However, in my view, there is something more important implied than affirming pluralism, namely that some of our questions will remain unanswered. The biblical authors struggle to come to grips with the meaning of the gruesome death of Jesus and this can never be fully understood.9 In the end, through all of Christian history, a question mark always remains and this can be understood as the point where the contents of faith (Lat. fides quae creditur) have to yield to the act of believing (Lat. fides qua creditur). According to systematic theologian Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm, this is what makes eschatological perspectives and the belief in life after death necessary. No

140  Cristina Grenholm Christian teaching about human salvation and reconciliation between God and human beings would be complete unless the future were included. This is also evident in the narrative of the Last Supper. Bråkenhielm connects this to our common existential dilemma, pointed to by Karl Jaspers as borders we confront but cannot pass. We have to acknowledge that there are insoluble situations and incomprehensible contexts.10 Reflecting on the literary interpretations of life in view of its turmoil and difficulties, Helene Blomqvist makes use of the term aporia. Life is an unresolved mystery when we consider situations of strong vulnerability that can neither be eliminated nor understood.11 Still, Blomqvist hears an answer to aporia in an image of God, interpreting the wrath and endless love of God as two sides of the same coin. Only if we at the same time let ourselves be framed by God’s incredible anger – or sorrow – at sin and its consequences for other people, for ourselves, for the earth and all creation, are we also able to fully surrender to God’s all-forgiving love.12 But is this not dissolving the aporia and erasing the question mark that stems both from biblical and literary narratives and from their counterparts of the unsurpassable borders in life? What is inexplicable can never be explained. That goes without saying, but it is hard for a theologian not to fill in the gaps. The examples that Helene Blomqvist takes from the writers she analyses leave space for aporia that theological statements of the simultaneous wrath and love of God do not. While such a theological interpretation erases the question mark, poetry and fiction do not close the case in the same way. Sven Delblanc lets one of his characters, Cecilia in Samuel’s Daughters, say that love is a feather of God that outweighs the lead of all life.13 Helene Blomqvist understands this as an acknowledgement of unconditional love. I would instead like to interpret it as an expression of the hope that God may provide such unfathomable love. There is a risk that I have misunderstood Helene Blomqvist. Does she really claim to have given an answer to the aporia, which she simultaneously acknowledges as an unresolved mystery? However, this is not uncommon in theology. At times it gives answers to questions which cannot be answered unless religious resources are being used. Theology has a tendency to fill the gaps reason needs to leave open. However, there are also other possibilities within theology. In the same book, Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm emphasises the importance of “reducing dissonances”. This is indeed something other than giving a theological answer to an existential dilemma. The dissonances are reduced, but not erased. Furthermore, he holds that the belief in the redeeming presence of God is revealed rather than incarnated. The aporia remains, but the belief that God cares for us and strives for our ultimate well-being forms a basis for the hope of a good eschatological future, life beyond the limit of time.14 This is what I meant earlier when referring to the point where the contents of faith (fides quae creditur) have to yield to the act of

Beyond the limit of time  141 believing (fides qua creditur). The unanswered questions remain, but the belief in a good God gives us reason to direct our hope towards a future beyond what we can imagine.

To include the incomprehensible Belief in an eschatological future beyond the limits of time affects how people act in this world. Following the kind of reasoning we saw in Helene Blomqvist’s theological conclusion brings an awareness of the need to act in the light of God’s wrath and love. What effect is offered by an image of God that does not presuppose such a difficult interweaving of wrath and love? To live means to deal with many questions that do not have a clear answer. What guides us are basic convictions. For example, we may tend to trust or mistrust people. We can never know enough about a person standing in front of us to be sure of whether she or he deserves our trust or mistrust. This is analogous to thinking that, although we did not answer the aporia of life, our trust in a loving God may lead us to believe in a good future beyond time. Although such a belief may be combined with a lack of interest in justice and peace in this world, the opposite is in my view more likely. The conviction that good will always surpass evil makes it worthwhile not to give up, but to engage in struggles, living the vision of the kingdom of God. The image of the wrath of God is not necessary – we can just leave it to God to deal with cruelty, injustice and pain. This is indeed crucial for eschatology to become productive rather than destructive. Without covering theology in fog, belief in God also needs to include the incomprehensible. In my view, the concept of God often lacks a heteronomous dimension. What do I refer to by the term “heteronomy”?15 To be autonomous is to be independent and able to make one’s own decisions – in short, to be in control of one’s own life. The opposite of autonomy is not dependency on outer circumstances or other people in general. Autonomy is always relative and limited; it does not presuppose complete control. Autonomy is consistent with admitting that we are affected not just by our own decisions but also by those of other people. The opposite of autonomy is something more radical than that, namely, lack of control over one’s own situation. “Auto” is Greek for self and “hetero” for someone else. Heteronomy means that someone else is in control. Vulnerability is about lack of control; that is, it is the exact opposite of autonomy. What is often overlooked, however, is that vulnerability is not the same thing as exposure. What links these two concepts is the lack of control, which I call heteronomy. Heteronomy is not only the basis of oppression, but also of the possibility of love. There are both positive and negative experiences of heteronomy. It is a life condition common to us all. Certain aspects of life put us as human beings into heteronomous positions. If somebody takes advantage of someone else who lacks control, it is exposure. However, if the person lacking control is cared for we find ourselves in the sphere of love. This applies to interpersonal relationships, but it also applies to the relationship between God and

142  Cristina Grenholm human beings. Furthermore, the experience of vulnerability being met with love and care is empowering. Sarah Coakley also makes use of the concept of heteronomy. She concludes that it does not, strictly speaking, conflict with autonomy. Like me, she argues that they are each other’s conceptual opposites but that, in reality, we can unite and strike a balance between them. The example with which she illustrates this idea is the contemplative, sparsely worded prayer. She describes it as “waiting on God”, a way to make space for God by emptying oneself, thereby allowing oneself to be transformed and empowered.16 I believe that we need to formulate that an image of God that leaves room for the aporia and the deep challenges of life. If we do that, we will not have clear answers to how to bear with all human suffering, but we will still have reasons to trust a loving God who will eventually dry all tears beyond the limit of time. Such a trust brings the courage needed to cope with injustice and conflict by clinging to the good in the hope that what will remain intolerable in this world can be transformed by the power that we know as the reconciliation of Christ.

Coping with suffering and hope In this chapter I have been able to give just an outline of the kind of contemporary interpretation of eschatology needed when confronting the unfathomable suffering of millions of refugees in our time. I have emphasised the need to relate the theology of reconciliation to the biblical witness of the unanswerable questions of life, the aporia. By leaving room for the question mark, yet filling the space of the unanswered questions with a trust in God’s love where humans lack control, I do not presuppose an absolute division between this world and the world to come. They are interconnected and thus belief in God may empower people in their struggles for humanity by providing a vision of the transformative power of the good. Finally, I have briefly described an image of God that can deal with darkness and despair in a way that does not let an understanding of God’s anger and love leave God capricious, frightening or powerless. Has this helped me cope with the magnitude of human suffering I concretely experienced when walking alongside the refugees disembarking from the train? It was a concentrated situation of the aporia of life where questions have no answers. I was pushed towards new dimensions of the powerlessness of heteronomy – my own, and that of our society, our church and world politics. Instead of filling the gap with the resources of doctrine, I yielded to a more profound act of trust in God who in Christ reconciled the world by radically transforming it and thus provided a basis for hoping in a good future beyond the limit of time. Eschatology matters if we leave room for the question mark without erasing the question. Eschatology can empower us when confronted with suffering and pain. It is indeed meaningful to engage in struggles for human dignity, justice, peace and reconciliation without losing hope.

Beyond the limit of time  143

Notes 1 Johannes Brahms, “A German Requiem”, tr. Ahmed E. Ismael, 2010, www.lieder. net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=60223. With kind permission from The LiederNet Archive. Accessed 21 February 2018. 2 Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm and Göran Möller (eds.), Tala om försoning: Reflektioner över ett centralt tema i kristen teologi/ (Stockholm: Verbum 2015) and Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm and Göran Möller, Liv i försoning: Om upprättelse i kyrka och samhälle (Stockholm: Verbum 2016). 3 Tomas Axelson, “Försoning i nutida film – exemplet Gudar och människor”, in Liv i försoning, eds. Bråkenhielm and Möller, 259–280. 4 This was the motivation for an ecumenical award given by the International Interchurch Film Organisation Interfilm. See www.inter-film.org/. Accessed 6 December 2017. 5 Axelson, “Reconciliation in Contemporary Film”, 274: “Xavier Beauvoies film från 2010 berör [således] en större samtidskontext med svårlösta komplikationer, frågan om samexistens och religiös mångfald i en globaliserad värld och hur vi hanterar fundamentalism och religiöst legitimerad extremism . . . Hur bevarar vi vår tro på humanitet och medmänsklighet? Hur undviker vi ökande klyftor mellan olika etniska och religiösa gruppidentiteter? Vilka krafter står för uppbyggelse och framtidshopp?” 6 The Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, “From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017”, Report of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission of Unity (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2013), www.lutheranworld.org/sites/ default/files/From%20Conflict%20to%20Communion.pdf. 7 Antje Jackelén, “Inledning”, in Tala om försoning, eds. Bråkenhielm and Möller, 10. 8 Anne-Louise Eriksson, Att predika en tradition: Om tro och teologisk literacy. Forskning för kyrkan 18 (Lund: Arcus, 2012), 56: “Den tro som förkunnas uttrycks många gånger med hjälp av ett traditionellt språk som sannolikt är allt för svårt att förstå för många människor idag. Inte heller ger predikningarna någon egentlig vägledning om hur man ska förstå orden om uppståndelsen. Istället presenteras olika påståenden om Gud och människor, liv och död, men den ’försonade verklighet’ som på detta sätt berättas fram i predikningarna varken förklarar eller kastar något ljus över evangeliernas påskberättelser . . . Svenska kyrkans trostradition framstår därmed som ett statiskt rum som man erbjuds att gå in i, förutsatt att man accepterar rummets villkor.” Cf. Niclas Blåder and Erika Willander, “Svenska kyrkan och dess prästers tro”, in Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift 92 (2016): 50–63. They analyse extensive empirical material and categorise the clergy’s relation to the teaching of faith in three different ways: formal, functional and free. The result was that the pastors largely aligned themselves with the “formal” orientation and equally clearly departed from the “free” direction. 9 Hanna Stenström, “Försoning, synd, skuld och förlåtelse: ett bibelteologiskt underlag för teologisk reflektion i Svenska kyrkan idag”, in Tala om försoning, eds. Bråkenhielm and Möller, 93–137, esp. 126. 10 Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm, “Nåd för allt som blir och är”, in Tala om försoning, eds. Bråkenhielm and Möller, 171–214. 11 Helene Blomqvist, “Försoning i skönlitterär gestaltning/Reconciliation in Fictional Form”, in Life in Reconciliation, eds. Bråkenhielm and Möller, 225–258. She refers to Paul Ricoeur’s Le Mal. Un défi à la philosophie et à la théologie as well as to the thinking of Karl Jaspers, but her examples come from, for example, the Swedish novelists Birgitta Trotzig and Sven Delblanc and poet Tomas Tranströmer. 12 Blomqvist, “Reconciliation”, 250. 13 Sven Delblanc, Samuels döttrar, new edition (Stockholm: Bonniers, 2012). 14 Bråkenhielm, “Grace for All That Becomes”, 202; see also 193 and 209f.

144  Cristina Grenholm 15 For a deeper analysis of heteronomy, see Cristina Grenholm, Motherhood and Love: Beyond the Gendered Stereotypes of Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), esp. the introduction and chapter 6. 16 Sarah Coakley, “Kenosis and Subversion: On the Repression of ‘Vulnerability’ in Christian Feminist Writing”, in Swallowing a Fishbone? Feminist Theologians Debate Christianity, ed. Daphne Hampson (London: SPCK, 1996), 82–111.

Bibliography Axelson, Tomas. “Försoning i nutida film – exemplet Gudar och människor” [Reconciliation in Contemporary Film – The Example Of Gods and Men]. In Liv i försoning: Om upprättelse i kyrka och samhälle [Life in Reconciliation: On Rehabilitation in Church and Society], edited by Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm and Göran Möller, 259–280. Stockholm: Verbum, 2016. Blåder, Niclas, and Erika Willander. “Svenska kyrkan och dess prästers tro” [The Church of Sweden and Its Clergy’s Faith]. Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift 92 (2016): 50–64. Blomqvist, Helene. “Försoning i skönlitterär gestaltning” [Reconciliation in Fictional Form]. In Liv i försoning: Om upprättelse i kyrka och samhälle hälle [Life in Reconciliation: On Rehabilitation in Church and Society], edited by Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm and Göran Möller, 225–258. Stockholm: Verbum, 2016. Bråkenhielm, Carl Reinhold. “Nåd för allt som blir och är” [Grace for All That Becomes and Is]. In Tala om försoning: Reflektioner över ett centralt tema i kristen teologi [Speaking of Reconciliation: Reflections on a Central Theme in Christian Theology], edited by Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm and Göran Möller, 171–214. Stockholm: Verbum, 2015. Bråkenhielm, Carl Reinhold, and Göran Möller, eds. Tala om försoning: Reflektioner över ett centralt tema i kristen teologi [Speaking of Reconciliation: Reflections on a Central Theme in Christian Theology]. Stockholm: Verbum, 2015. ———, eds. Liv i försoning: Om upprättelse i kyrka och samhälle [Life in Reconciliation: On Rehabilitation in Church and Society]. Stockholm: Verbum, 2016. Coakley, Sarah. “Kenosis and Subversion: On the Repression of ‘Vulnerability’ in Christian Feminist Writing”. In Swallowing a Fishbone? Feminist Theologians Debate Christianity, edited by Daphne Hampson, 82–111. London: SPCK, 1996. Delblanc, Sven. Samuels döttrar [Samuel’s Daughters]. 1983. New edition. Stockholm: Bonniers, 2012. Eriksson, Anne-Louise. Att predika en tradition: Om tro och teologisk literacy [Preaching a Tradition: On Faith and Theological Literacy]. Lund: Arcus, 2012. Grenholm, Cristina. Motherhood and Love: Beyond the Gendered Stereotypes of Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. Jackelén, Antje. “Inledning” [Introduction]. In Tala om försoning: Reflektioner över ett centralt tema i kristen teologi [Speaking of Reconciliation: Reflections on a Central Theme in Christian Theology], edited by Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm and Göran Möller, 9–18. Stockholm: Verbum, 2015. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission of Unity. “From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017”. Report of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission of Unity. The Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2013. www.lutheranworld.org/sites/default/files/From%20Conflict%20to%20 Communion.pdf.

Beyond the limit of time  145 Stenström, Hanna. “Försoning, synd, skuld och förlåtelse: ett bibelteologiskt underlag för teologisk reflektion i Svenska kyrkan idag” [Reconciliation, Sin, Guilt and Forgiveness: A Biblical Theological Basis for Theological Reflection in Contemporary Church of Sweden]. In Tala om försoning: Reflektioner över ett centralt tema i kristen teologi [Speaking of Reconciliation: Reflections on a Central Theme in Christian Theology], edited by Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm and Göran Möller, 93–137. Stockholm: Verbum, 2015.

8 Back to the future1

Carl Reinhold BråkenhielmBack to the future

Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm

In his famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King talked about his vision of peace and equality between coloured and white in the United States.2 The speech was a powerful source of inspiration for the entire American civil rights movement and helped the breakthrough of the movement’s demands for changes in legislation, which in 1965 were carried out with the help of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The purpose of this article is not to explore Martin Luther King’s theology. Nevertheless, his famous speech can still be a starting point for the question of how contemporary Christian theology should make, remake or unmake the traditional doctrine of eschatology. There is an incalculable amount of such teachings, both inside and outside the world of religion. Crudely put, one can say that they are different from each other depending on whether the emphasis is on (1) the present or the future, (2) the individual or the human race or (3) the worldly or other-worldly (i.e. in a more or less completely different form of existence than the earthly). In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the emphasis has been on futureoriented, universal and other-worldly eschatologies. The Nicene Creed speaks of “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”. Martin Luther King’s speech deviates from the classical eschatology of the Nicene Creed in being more clearly immanent. But the future-inclusive character is preserved and even accentuated. Other theologians have questioned this future inclusiveness. Rudolf Bultmann is one example. In his famous Gifford lectures in 1955 he made an important attempt to construct a non-future inclusive eschatology. The lectures are based on the fundamental ideas of his program of demythologisation and assume that the entire New Testament is saturated with mythological beliefs, which cannot be interpreted ontologically but anthropologically and existentially. This includes the interpretation of eschatological beliefs; none of them are actually about God’s future judgement and the final consummation of creation. They are “really” about the situation of facing an existential choice and the challenge to which he or she daily and hourly exposed. Bultmann concludes his lecture with the following words: Do not look around yourself into universal history, you must look into your own personal history. Always in your present lies the meaning in history, and

Back to the future  147 you cannot see it as a spectator, but only in your responsable decisions. In every moment slumbers the possibility of being the eschatological moment. You must awaken it.3 The British scientist and theologian Arthur Peacocke was inspired by Bultmann’s interpretation of eschatology. Eschatology is about our movement towards God in the present moment.4 Future-oriented eschatology is a dead end. Theology should not return to the future, but to the human present. Nevertheless – and in contrast to Bultmann – he interprets the stories as something other than purely subjective experiences of the apostles. But they are not about any kind of anticipation of a resurrection of the dead at the end of history.

The case for a future-inclusive eschatology In his book Creation and Law, the well-known Swedish theologian Gustaf Wingren makes a comparison between Rudolf Bultmann and another German theologian, Oscar Cullmann.5 Wingren speaks about Cullmann’s “long” line of “Heilsgeschichte” between creation and judgement in contrast to Bultmann’s existential interpretation and his concentrated attention on individual existence. Wingren aligns himself with Cullmann and writes: The Creation of the world and the Judgement of the world have reference to more than my personal existence. Cullmann’s line with its events which are external to ourselves cannot be “demythologized” and then incorporated by the individual into himself.6 Wingren writes that Cullmann’s “long line” cannot be “demythologized”. A more appropriate translation from the Swedish original is “should not”. But why not? One strong argument in favour of Bultmann’s demythologising program is that it brings about a more acceptable reinterpretation of problematic Christian beliefs about the beginning and the end of the universe. Several other problematic beliefs remain, such as sentences about God’s action in the world, and it is a matter of discussion whether Bultmann stopped short of realising his program of demythologisation.7 But he clearly insisted on relocalisation of Christian cosmological beliefs about the emergence of the universe and its ultimate destiny to the here and now of our individual existence. Bultmann’s program of demythologisation is most reasonably interpreted as a constructive proposal. The assets of this proposal are clear, but there is nevertheless one serious shortcoming. It is a proposal too far removed from the ordinary understanding of Jewish, Christian and Muslim belief. Wingren has a related concern: It cannot be denied that these events on Cullmann’s long time line are distinct events of importance in their own right. If we deny this, faith loses the possibility of being faith. . . . To deny that god has dealings with the world

148  Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm (i.e. with more than me personally) is to deny the very ground of faith, and ultimately to render impossible the “pro me” to which the Creed points.8 I think that there is also a third argument against Bultmann’s proposal, which is that it is intolerably anthropocentric. Past, future, universe and nature fall outside the scope of religious belief. In the present context, I will limit myself to some reflections on how a Christian view of the future beyond my personal existence here and now can be developed. This view is based on three basic convictions. First, such a view encompasses not only reference to “ultimate things”, but also to future things. Second, it refers to elements beyond my individual existence, i.e. to humanity and even the cosmos as a whole. Third, such a view rests on the presupposition of a kenotic understanding of God: “God hides almighty power, God limits absolute omnipotence, God orders divine power to act in conformity with the functional integrity of the creation . . . according to the physical laws of the universe”.9 My reflections on the Christian view of the future concern the more general question of the Christian doctrine of creation. This doctrine has traditionally been divided into three parts, i.e. creatio originalis, creatio continua and creatio nova.10 Creatio originalis concerns the very beginning of the universe, usually in the form of creatio ex nihilo, i.e. creation out of nothing, and is about the model of connection between science and religion. Creatio continua refers to God’s constant conservation of the universe as well as God’s ongoing creation of new possibilities for the world. Creatio nova has to do with the future fulfilment of creation, God’s realisation of a new heaven and a new earth. These different parts of the Christian doctrine of creation are interpreted in different ways and at times reinterpreted in a way which simply dissolves the distinction altogether. In the present context, I will leave creatio originalis out of the picture and concentrate on creatio continua and creatio nova. In contrast to many other Christian theologians, I will take my point of departure from a perspective outside theology, namely from the American philosopher Thomas Nagel and his thought on evolution and its driving forces.

Tomas Nagel’s neo-naturalistic worldview and a Christian view of the future A theistic worldview interpreted as a non-scientific understanding of the universe as a whole is not only related to the past, but also to the future. Future may here be understood as the events beyond the present, but also as the last things in the eschatological sense. In this context, I will be concerned with events beyond the present, but will conclude with some reflections on the doctrine of the last things. It should be underlined that Thomas Nagel is not a theist. Nevertheless, he has suggested some ideas that are related to the Christian idea of creatio continua. Nagel has suggested that the universe is moving towards an extended expansion of organisation and consciousness. He claims that besides pure chance, creationism

Back to the future  149 and directionless physical law, there is a fourth alternative, namely a “conception of some increase in value through the expanded possibilities provided by the higher forms of organization toward which nature tends”.11 Let me call this a neo-naturalistic worldview.12 In the title essay of his Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament, Nagel writes that the yearning for “cosmic reconciliation . . . has been part of the philosophical impulse from the beginning”.13 The paradigmatic example of this religious temperament is Plato, who sought a view of the world which connected human beings to the whole of reality. “How can one bring into one’s individual life a recognition of one’s relation to the universe as a whole – whatever that relation is?”14 Not believing a religious answer to this question is available, Nagel turns to secular responses. He distinguishes between those who simply dismiss the yearning for cosmic reconciliation and those who accept it but find it impossible to fulfil it. The dismissive response is founded on the conviction that the universe revealed by chemistry and physics is incapable of meaning. But for Nagel the cosmic question does not go away when science replaces the religious worldview. He discerns three less dismissive alternatives to the default position of affectless atheism. The first is the response of humanism in a Kantian or existentialist form. This means working “from the inside out” with our own feeble resources. “It is we who give sense to the universe, so there is no need for a higher principle to give sense to us”.15 But whether we like it or not, we are embedded not only in a human order, but also in a natural order. The second less dismissive alternative is that evolutionary naturalism is working from “the outside in” of the natural order. Nagel’s primary example is Nietzsche. His philosophy is a secular response to the cosmic question, which is more than merely a biological form of understanding. It tells us how to live our lives as an expression of the fundamental forces of nature. But Nagel finds it hard to see ourselves as expressions of the will to power and suggests – very tentatively – a third alternative, “evolutionary Platonism”: Each of us . . . is part of a lengthy process of a universe gradually waking up. It was originally a biological evolutionary process, and in our species, it has become a collective cultural process as well. It will continue, and seen from a larger perspective, one’s own life is a small piece of this very extended expansion of organization and consciousness.16 Nagel describes an alternative to theism. Nevertheless, his theory does not contradict theism. Theism could be described as an extension of Nagel’s worldview. This is also acknowledged by Nagel himself in the conclusion of his summary in the New York Times. I would add that even some theists might find this acceptable; since they could maintain that God is ultimately responsible for such an expanded natural order, as they believe he is for the laws of physics.17

150  Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm I am such a theist and would like to highlight Nagel’s suggestion of a theistic expansion of his neo-naturalistic worldview. To get a firmer grip on Nagel’s basic proposal, we need to distinguish between three different elements. (1) The first element of Nagel’s neo-naturalistic worldview is linked to the result of his efforts to solve the mind-body problem, which he explored in earlier books and articles.18 It is his conviction that reductionist physicalism is false. Mental phenomena cannot be reduced to physical phenomena because of “the subjective character of experience”. Because of this “it is useless to base the defense of materialism on any analysis of mental phenomena that fails to deal explicitly with their subjective character”. The reason why it is impossible to make such a reduction is “that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view”.19 Nagel’s famous example is the experiences of bats. “The essence of the belief that bats have experience is that there is something that it is like to be a bat”.20 Nagel’s argument spurred a flurry of comments, which has continued into the present. The discussion has for the most part centred around the concept of qualia, which has been explained by Amy Kind in the following way: Qualia are the subjective or qualitative properties of experiences. What it feels like, experientially, to see a red rose is different from what it feels like to see a yellow rose. Likewise, for hearing a musical note played by a piano and hearing the same musical note played by a tuba. The qualia of these experiences are what give each of them its characteristic “feel” and also what distinguish them from one another.21 In 2013 Nagel summarised his argument in the New York Times and argued that the essence of the mental is subjective feeling, which is an irreducible aspect of reality and requires a new form of scientific explanation.22 This is denied (1) by those who identified the mental with some aspect of the physical, be it patterns of behaviour or patterns of neural activity, as well as (2) by those who reject it – being a kind of illusion – as a part of reality at all. It is also denied (3) by those who regard it as an unexplained extra property of certain physical organisms or (4) by those who considered that it had a non-scientific explanation based on the idea of divine intervention. Nagel’s own position is that science may be expanded to include the mental in the form of a non-materialist theory of the immanent order of nature. He concludes: Mind, I suspect, is not an inexplicable accident or a divine and anomalous gift but a basic aspect of nature that we will not understand until we transcend the built-in limits of contemporary scientific orthodoxy.23 (2) The second element of Nagel’s neo-naturalism is concerned with that which Nagel calls the constitutive account of “how certain complex physical systems are also mental” (in contrast to the historical account of “how such systems arose in

Back to the future  151 the universe from its beginnings”). The essence of Nagel’s constitutive account is that the human mind is a clue to the basic nature of reality. As clarified above, a reductive account of the mental is foreign to Nagel. Such an account cannot do justice to the subjective character of experience. But an emergent account is equally foreign to him. Emergence is a trivial phenomenon and is often exemplified by liquidity, which is an emergent property of water basically composed of water molecules. But subjective experiences in the form of mental states cannot emerge from physical phenomena in this way, because consciousness is something completely new. Rather, he is leaning towards a special form of neutral monism or panpsychism. Nagel writes: Consciousness is . . . not, as in the emergent account, an effect of the brain processes that are its physical conditions; rather, those brain processes are in themselves more than physical, and the incompleteness of the physical description of the world is exemplified by the incompleteness of their purely physical description.24 This may be understood as a form of reductive account of the mental, but different from the one found in ordinary physicalism, which understands matter as that which is described in physics and nothing more. Nagel’s analysis, by contrast, proceeds on the assumption that “everything, living or not, is constituted from elements having a nature that is both physical and non-physical”.25 This amounts to a form of panpsychism: all the elements of the physical world are also mental. In an earlier work Nagel defines panpsychism in the following way: By panpsychism I mean the view that the basic constituents of the universe have mental properties, whether or not they are parts of living organisms.26 In Mind and Cosmos Nagel refers to various philosophers, among others Galen Strawson, but also process philosophers such as Charles Hartshorne and Alfred Whitehead. Nagel also uses another concept to describe his position, namely neutral monism. To be sure, Nagel’s kind of neutral monism is of a different character than the one classically advocated by Bertrand Russell in his The Analysis of Mind (1921). Russell found the neutral “stuff” in the content of our experiences, while Nagel argues that reality (including human consciousness) is built up out of “protomental elements that are somehow unified simultaneously into an organism and a self”. (3) The third element consists of Nagel’s historical account of how complex physical-cum-mental systems arose in the universe from its beginnings. He discerns three different possibilities: (1) a casual historical account, (2) a teleological account and (3) an intentional (theological) account. Nagel opts for the teleological account. He is convinced that such an account – in the form of a theory of teleological laws – is coherent. The existence of such laws implies that things happen “because they are on the path that leads to certain outcomes – notably, the

152  Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm existence of living, and ultimately of conscious, organisms”.27 Admittedly, the idea of teleological explanations presents some serious problems, but so do the other alternatives. Nagel suggests a form of natural teleology (i.e. a teleology without an intending agent) where a certain value occurs in the explanans. This implies (1) that ordinary causal laws are not fully deterministic and (2) that certain states in nature have “a significantly higher probability than is entailed by the laws of physics alone”.28 Essentially, they would be laws of the self-organisation of matter. Nagel concludes: A naturalistic teleology would mean that organizational and developmental principles of this kind are an irreducible part of the natural order, and not the result of intentional or purposive influence by anyone.29 At another point in his argument he summarises his worldview together with an important qualification. The story includes huge quantities of pain as well as pleasure, so it does not lend itself to an optimistic teleological interpretation. Nevertheless, the development of value and moral understanding, like the development of knowledge and reason and the development of consciousness that underlies both of those higher-order functions, forms part of what a general conception of the cosmos must explain. As I have said, the process seems to be one of the universe gradually waking up.30 Equally significant is that a theistic fundamental pattern might be formed on the assumption that the teleological principles assumed by Nagel are real. They may be conceived as “seeds” implanted by God in God’s creation. This comes close to an idea in the thought of St. Augustine. Referring to the first chapter of Genesis, St. Augustine gives the following example in his work on the Trinity: But, in truth, some hidden seeds of all things that are born corporeally and visibly are concealed in the corporeal elements of this world. For those seeds that are visible now to our eyes from fruits and living things, are quite distinct from the hidden seeds of those former seeds; from which, at the bidding of the Creator, the water produced the first swimming creatures and fowl, and the earth the first buds after their kind, and the first living creatures after their kind.31 Theists who assume Nagel’s teleological principles believe “that God is ultimately responsible for such an expanded natural order, as they believe he is for the laws of physics”. Furthermore, such a form of theism would be future-including, suggested by some version of the doctrine of creatio continua. I write “suggested” and not “implied” because theism as a transcending fundamental pattern is open to different doctrinal interpretations. One example of how differently a theistic fundamental pattern is doctrinally interpreted can be given by Swedish 20th-century

Back to the future  153 theology and a central disagreement between two Swedish theologians: Hjalmar Lindroth and Gustaf Wingren. It is worthwhile to reconnect to this disagreement in the present context. The Church was at the centre of Hjalmar Lindroth’s later theology.32 The Church is the proclamation of the word of God, the sacraments and the ministry by which the sacraments are administered. Furthermore, in this day and age the Church is the place where the spiritual life of the age to come can be realised. Gustaf Wingren did not agree. He focused upon God’s activity in society and nature. In the proclamation of the word of God and the sacraments the Church makes the sustaining, emancipating and universal power of God visible. But how does this power come to expression? It is not primarily in inalterable laws and rules. God’s will is not expressed in certain immutable orders common to every age and every culture. “God’s law is God’s through being variable”. God engages constantly in new actions; destruction appears constantly in new forms. God creates now. Therefore, God’s will is discernible not primarily in fixed and immutable institutions or in hierarchical structures of dominion and submission, but in processes where life is renewed and flourishing.33 James Gustafson argues basically the same point in his The Contribution of Theology to Medical Ethics (1975) – with one crucial difference. Gustafson’s main opponent is not classical order theology but the American theologian Paul Ramsey. Ramsey argued – incidentally as did Emil Brunner – that love is “in-principled”. Love follows certain rules and lives in accordance with certain orders. In the technical jargon of academic ethics, Ramsey’s and Brunner’s ethics are a kind of deontological ethics, i.e. an ethics of obligation and duty governed by principles and rules, rather than an ethics of value and ends.34 Gustafson is not opposed to this version of Christian ethics, but he is in clear disagreement with Ramsey on another point: The crucial theological difference between Ramsey and me is in the emphasis that I give to God as the power that creates new possibilities for well-being in the events of nature and history, including the possibilities that emerge in the course of evolutionary development and the development of biological knowledge. This emphasis opens ethically the possibilities for an alteration of some traditional principles, and an alteration of the ordering of certain traditional values in particular circumstances.35 To put it in one sentence: God not only acts to sustain and preserve life; God also creates new possibilities for well-being to occur. What is right and good cannot only be identified in permanent and unchangeable rules; it must also be discerned in new rules and laws. Why is it necessary to have this openness to new rules and laws? One reason is – of course – that destruction always appears in new forms. But there is also another reason. New possibilities for good are constantly emerging. Recent developments in psychology might serve as a trivial, but nevertheless illuminating example. Psychological knowledge about mental illnesses provides new opportunities to limit human suffering. Futhermore, such knowledge can help

154  Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm human persons without such impediments to enrich their lives and realise a higher quality of life.36 The theological idea is that God not only acts to sustain and preserve life; God also creates new possibilities for well-being to occur. This need not be understood in a way that requires specific divine interventions. The new possibilities that emerge might be part of a natural order created by God. Once again there is reason to make reference to St. Augustine’s theory of “semen rationales” being present from the outset of creation, but emerging only when the right conditions occur. St. Augustine seems to be in line with Thomas Nagel and his remark that “to make the possibility of conscious life a consequence of the natural order created by God while ascribing its actuality to subsequent divine intervention would then seem an arbitrary complication”.37 Nagel’s theory of teleological laws involves “some conception of an increase in value through the expanded possibilities provided by higher forms of organization toward which nature tends”.38 It is not in the rituals and proclamation of the Church that these expanded possibilities are realised. It is nature that is – in short – “biased toward the marvelous”. Ecclesiologically speaking, the Church is reflecting and celebrating these possibilities of the future.

Evil and hope At this point there is room for a short suggestion as to how Nagel’s neo-naturalism could be supplemented with a theory of evil. Nagel underlines that the emergence of value is the emergence of both good and evil. There is not “a purely benign teleological explanation: a tendency to the good”.39 This seems to imply that there are malicious teleological explanations. The assumption of such tendencies toward evil stays clear of mythological language, but at the same time develops an understanding of the “excess” of evil, i.e. evil serving no higher end. Nagel suggests naturalistic teleology, i.e. organisational and developmental principles as an irreducible part of the natural order, but not the result of intentional or purposive influence by anyone. These teleological principles could possibly be divided into tendencies towards good and tendencies towards evil, and could be linked together in such a way that (1) tendencies toward good are ontologically prior to tendencies to evil, and (2) tendencies toward good make tendencies toward evil inevitable. Augustine might have had something like this in mind when he wrote: Unless . . . something is good, it cannot be corrupted, because corruption is nothing more than the deprivation of the good. Evils, therefore, have their source in the good, and unless they are parasitic on something good, they are not anything at all. There is no other source whence an evil thing can come to be.40 Notwithstanding the speculative nature of this amendment to Nagel’s neonaturalism, it amounts to a theory of natural evil which could be described as a demythologisation of the Biblical language, but which at the same time provides

Back to the future  155 us with a description of the excess not covered by the “only way argument” as it is usually construed. This theory of good and evil also provides an inroad to a Christian view of history. The work of Christ has been understood by many theologians as a struggle between good and evil. This is central to the view of history in early Christianity and a significant theme in the work of the Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulén. He argues that the entire work of God in God’s creation must be seen as a dramatic struggle against evil.41 This dramatic understanding of history is accompanied by a basic mood of hope. The contemporary threat of climate change makes such a hope existentially relevant. Two-thirds of the Swedish adult population are in agreement with the claim that humanity is facing a self-inflicted environmental disaster. The universal and apocalyptic proportions of this disaster have been described in a well-known article by David Wallace-Wells.42 In the next century – if not sooner – climate change might bring drought, famine, global plagues, unbreathable air, perpetual war, poisoned oceans and permanent economic collapse. In the face of such global afflictions, it is tempting to shut your ears and close your eyes. Ancient wisdom has it that when Pandora opened her famous box, a nameless number of evils flew out. But she was quick enough to close the box and preserve Elpis, the Greek deity of hope. What does such a hope amount to in the presence of contemporary climate change? The English theologian John Macquarrie has provided some important reflections on hope that I have found helpful in response to this question. Hope is found on many levels, from the hope implicit in everyday life to the hope of world leaders and prophets. One of the most striking features is that hope on the whole predominates over fear. Ultimately, hope is total hope for nothing less than the human race, a hope for the world itself. Is such a hope just a grandiose delusion? It is not, argues Macquarrie: it is only by the introduction of the religious dimension that one could rescue the total hope of an ideal human society from the dreamland of utopia . . . The symbol “kingdom of God” does not stand for a perfected human society but for a transformed reality that is indeed a work of God, though a work that God will do only with human consent and cooperation.43 This puts hope into the context of creatio continua. Maybe that is the proper place of Christian hope today. Wallace-Wells concludes his article with some interviews of senior climatologists. He summarises their worldview in the following way: when we do truly see the world we’ve made, they say, we will also find a way to make it livable. For them, the alternative is simply unimaginable.44 This is consonant with the perspective of total hope. It is linked not only to the doctrine of creatio continua but also to the ultimate hope of Christian eschatology. According to Willem Drees, eschatology has at least three functions: (1) judgement

156  Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm on the present: it is not as it ought to be; (2) appeal to action as response to that judgement; and (3) consolation in contexts of injustice, failure and suffering.45 All these points apply to the quest for hope in the face of the looming climate change. But is there also a fourth function, having to do not only with present transcendence, but also with future transcendence, i.e. the renewal of creation in a more radical sense? This is an important question in the next section.

Creatio nova, science and religion I have argued that Thomas Nagel’s metaphysical thought is of relevance for the contemporary interpretation of the doctrine of God’s continuing creation. But what is the relevance of Nagel’s thought for the doctrine of creatio nova, i.e. Christian eschatology? As I see it, there are at least two possible answers to this question. The first answer would be that the doctrine of eschatology is most properly interpreted as an expression of divine providence. What is the new heaven and the new earth but an ultimate act of God that creates eternal well-being for God’s creatures and God’s creation? In that case, Nagel’s idea of “an increase in value through the expanded possibilities provided by higher forms of organisation toward which nature tends” points beyond itself towards an ultimate fulfilment of value and community. It has been called “physical eschatology”, i.e. an immanent perfection of creation.46 A second alternative would be that providence and eschatology should be kept apart, and that God’s ultimate act of judgement and fulfilment is not just an actualisation of possibilities arising out of the created order. The ultimate eschatological visions of the Christian faith are transcendent in a radical sense and not the result of human achievements. They are – as John Wisdom dryly remarked – “logically unique expectations”.47 Antje Jackelén is critical of the physical eschatologies of Tippler and Dyson. She finds them too speculative and cites John Polkinghorne’s harsh verdict when he describes this kind of physical eschatology as “a cosmic Tower of Babel” and “the most extreme reductio in absurdum of an exclusively evolutionary optimism”.48 This is not the place for a longer discussion. I must simply admit that I find the central claims of physical eschatology, such as that “Christianity is not a mere religion but an explanatory testable science” and that “the laws of physics require life to survive”,49 beyond comprehension. Moreover, they suffer from the weakness that evil is an integral part of our world; physical eschatologies preclude a state of perfection in the sense of classical eschatologies. I must leave the matter at that and explore Jackelén’s alternative, which focuses on eschatology as a recreation of existence in continuity and discontinuity with the past. She writes: The dynamic nature of the “already” and the “not-yet” also holds together ethics and expectation, struggle and hope. This dynamic relation is the quintessence of Christian eschatology. It can be reconciled with findings from the field of natural science, but it cannot be derived from them.50

Back to the future  157 This quote from Antje Jackelén’s dissertation highlights a basic puzzle for the Christian theologian who wants to proceed with the idea of creatio nova. The “already” of Christian eschatology could, possibly, be clarified with reference to creatio continua (possibly updated with the assistance of Nagel’s metaphysical thought). But how do we understand the “not yet”? One interpretation is that this phrase has reference to the future in the radical sense of the ultimate future. But when it comes to understanding the ultimate future, there is an even greater problem. Robert John Russell explains why: When we expand the domain of eschatology from the anthropological and even eco-terrestrial context of “world history” to the cosmos itself, we encounter science’s grim prediction that all life must inevitably be extinguished as stars go supernova and following this that the far future of the universe is either endless cold or unimaginable heat.51 After reviewing some less helpful alternatives, Russell argues that “we may yet discover some vital clues from scientific cosmology for our constructive attempt to relate it to Christian eschatology”.52 Russell has elaborated his idea of creatio nova in a more extensive work.53 In short, his proposal involves two assumptions, one philosophical and one theological: The first assumption is philosophical: namely that the events science predicts must come to pass. Instead we can suppose that the laws of nature are descriptive, not prescriptive. In this case predicted events do not necessarily occur. The next step is theological: namely that the efficacy described by the laws of nature does not reside in the processes of nature which science describes, but instead it is the result of God’s ongoing and faithful action as Creator. Finally, we can believe theologically that God is free to act in radically new ways, not only in human history but also in the ongoing history of the universe. Because of this, we can claim that the scientific predictions are right but inapplicable since God did act in a radically new way at Easter and will continue to act to bring about the new creation. In doing so, we are not in conflict with science but with a philosophical interpretation brought to science. In short, the future of the universe would have been what science predicts (that is, “freeze” or “fry”) had God not acted at Easter and did God not continue to act in the future.54 Russell’s proposal involves several philosophical and theological issues and I will highlight some of these issues in turn. (1)  Philosophical issues Basic to Russell’s research program is the claim that the universe is “transformable by God’s action”.55 Such transformability is suggested by belief in the resurrection

158  Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm of Jesus Christ. Russell argues that the transformability of the universe by God’s action would require a revising not of the scientific method itself, but of the philosophy of space, time, matter and causality underlying contemporary physics.56 He boldly presupposes that such a revision is possible and that “[b]ecause of Easter and God’s promise for its eschatological completion . . . the freeze or fry predictions will not come to pass”.57 In addition to divine acts to which the acronym NIODA refers (i.e. noninterventionist objective special divine action in the subatomic, indeterministic world), Russell defends miracles “in the Humean sense of miracle as a violation of the laws of nature”.58 The resurrection of Jesus and creatio nova are such miracles. Russell argues that these miracles are not in conflict with science; they are only in conflict with the philosophical assumption that the events predicted by science are bound to happen. Refuting this assumption seems to be one of the most challenging parts of his project. But Russell suggests a simple solution: “we can suppose that the laws of nature are descriptive and not prescriptive . . . predicted events do not necessarily occur”.59 The idea that laws of nature are descriptive suffers from one major weakness. Interpreting natural laws as descriptive implies that it is impossible to distinguish them from accidental generalisations.60 Russell may hope for a solution to this basic philosophical problem, but there are others. What are the grounds for supposing that creatio nova will occur in the first place? Scientific predictions about the end of the universe are neither necessary (the creatio nova might occur long before the predicted end) nor sufficient (the “freeze” or “fry” is followed by no divine recreation). So what is the basis for Christian hope in the sense of creatio nova? Hjalmar Lindroth – a relentless defender of the eschatological motif – has an answer. God wants life for this world and every human being and has therefore set a goal, which ultimately consists of God’s recreation of the universe. This gives an otherwise meaningless life a meaning.61 John Macquarrie has a similar response. Human life is ingrained with a “total hope”. And such a total hope can be fulfilled only in a recreation of the world in which all humans participate.62 I will return to these ideas, but first consider Russell’s response. His ground has to do with the theological part of his proposal, centring on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (2)  Theological issues According to Russell, Christian eschatology is based on the knowledge of what God did at Easter. Russell distinguished between two different interpretations of resurrection of Jesus: the subjective and the objective. According to the subjective interpretation, the Biblical language describing the appearances of Jesus and the empty tomb should be interpreted as a pictorial expression of the strengthened faith of the disciples and their conviction that the activity of Jesus goes on. Jesus died and his body decomposed as any other dead human body. The objective interpretation means that “God raised Jesus from the dead”. He describes this

Back to the future  159 event as the “bodily resurrection of Jesus” interpretation of the New Testament texts on the resurrection. “[S]omething happened to Jesus of Nazareth which cannot be reduced entirely to the experiences of the disciples”.63 Russell dismisses the subjective interpretation and opts for the objective. Furthermore, he regards the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ as the central event in the history of salvation culminating in the divine recreation of a “new heaven and new earth”. This understanding of Christian faith has been supported by many, for example, the BioLogos foundation.64 Criticism has also been voiced by Klaus Nürnberger, a South-African Biblical scholar. Nürnberger is echoing the central claims of Rudolf Bultmann summarised in the beginning of the present chapter. In an article in Zygon 2012, Nürnberger suggests that classical Christian eschatology arose from a specific historical situation, namely apocalyptic visions occasioned by heavy suffering in postexilic times. Moreover, these visions have proved to be unreliable. The expectation (rather than the vision) of a new creation without evil, suffering, and death is not constitutive for the substantive content of the biblical message as such. Biblical future expectations must be reconceptualized in terms of best contemporary insight and in line with a dynamic reading of the biblical witness as God’s vision of comprehensive optimal well-being that operates like a shifting horizon and opens up ever new vistas, challenges, and opportunities.65 When it comes to the interpretation of the resurrection of Jesus, Occam’s famous razor must be applied. The easiest explanation is that the different stories of the resurrection emerged on “the level of structured individual and collective consciousness, rather than at the physical and biological levels”.66 Arguably the story of the empty tomb belongs on this level. At least, following Occam’s razor, it is by far the easiest explanation. Nürnberger comes close to the subjective interpretation. The resurrection of Jesus must be separated from the notion of the general resurrection, ultimate judgement and the imminent apocalyptic transformation of the world. The ultimate validity lies in the affirmation of Jesus as the redeeming love of God opening up fellowship with God to universal participation. Biological life ends in death. Eternal life means an authentic human life participating in God’s creative and redemptive project. Nürnberger suggests an understanding of Christian faith based upon a thorough application of a historical critical method and a more sustained effort to formulate a hermeneutical interpretation of the Christian tradition, i.e. to reinterpret the Christian message against the background of our contemporary worldview. In a short response, Russell agrees that large parts of the biblical worldview must be rejected. But in contrast to Nürnberger, Russell wants to preserve the idea of an objective divine action in nature including the bodily resurrection of Jesus as a prolepsis to a radical recreation of an entirely new universe. This includes “a full and transformed psychosomatic destiny for humanity and for all life in the universe”.67

160  Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm Needless to say, Russell’s and Nürnberger’s are not the only alternatives when it comes to the understanding of the resurrection of Jesus and the creatio nova. There are other “objective interpretations” besides the “bodily resurrection of Jesus” interpretation. Such an alternative interpretation has been articulated by the Swedish exegetical scholar Erik Aurelius. The following is a summary of a shorter article.68 Aurelius departs from the oldest text in the New Testament, i.e. 1 Cor. 15. The foundation for the continued existence of Jesus Christ is that he appeared to his disciples.69 There is no mention of an empty tomb in any of the Pauline letters. On the contrary, towards the end of the cited chapter St. Paul emphasises that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable”.70 The death of Jesus Christ is an example of ours. It is not the physical body of Jesus which is brought back to life, but his spiritual body that appeared and lives in eternity. And so will we. In later texts, St. Paul does not uphold the distinction between physical and spiritual bodies. Moreover, the Gospels tell us that the physical body of Jesus did not remain in the tomb. Thereby the identity between the crucified Jesus and the resurrected Jesus is emphasised. But this identity can be acknowledged without supporting stories about the empty tomb and without abandoning the basic principle that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. There seem to be many different interpretations in the New Testament – and different such interpretations could similarly be equally possible in the Christian church. I have related Aurelius’ argument for one particular purpose. If the resurrection of Jesus is understood as Aurelius understands it, the argument that “[b]ecause of Easter and God’s promise for its eschatological completion . . . the freeze or fry predictions will not come to pass” is weakened. The linkage between the resurrection of Christ and the eschatological transformation at the end of the universe is dissolved.71 It is not difficult to imagine the response of Russell to this alternative. He might suggest two different objections. First, such a take on the Christian hope would include only a shadow of “our full humanity, our psychosomatic unity of persons in the world”.72 And, second, without a bodily resurrection, the continuity between the person in this world and the person in the world to come would be lost. These arguments can claim an impressive theological provenience, but are nevertheless not convincing. The English theologian Maurice Wiles reminds us that “God is bodiless and inconceivable; but this is not (in Christian eyes at least) ground for denying his existence or regretting its form”. Second, “it is eternal life, life in relation to that God, of which the Christian is trying to speak in all his talk about life after death”. And it is not clear “that to speak of life after death in terms of a body makes such speech either more intelligible or more attractive”.73 A relation to God seems sufficient for fullness of existence after death. In what way is a bodily existence required? Furthermore, Wiles has serious misgivings about Russell’s second objection that a bodily resurrection is necessary for continuity. For however that continuity is conveyed, it is precisely not conveyed through the body.74 For similar reasons,

Back to the future  161 Wiles has an argument against the view that the resurrection of the body is necessary to express a positive attitude to the physical aspects of our present life. This is hardly the case if the resurrection body is neither part of nor derived from our present material existence. Maurice Wiles has many other significant things to say, but he is silent on the relationship between eternal life and creatio nova. This may be due to his theology being explicitly guided by two general objectives: coherence and economy. Coherence has to do with consistency between different doctrines, and economy “the pruning of some luxuriant growths that have come to be highly valued”.75 The doctrine of creatio nova might be considered to be such a luxuriant growth. Nevertheless, respect for economy may not dismiss one question concerning Christian doctrine and the ultimate future. What can the theist expect from scientific cosmology? Many theologians have responded that the answer is depressing. The “freeze or fry” scenarios would falsify the existence of God. Russell refers to Ted Peters: Should the final future as forecasted by the combination of big bang cosmology and the second law of thermodynamics come to pass . . . we would have proof that our faith has been in vain. It would turn out to be that there is no God, at least not the God in whom followers of Jesus have put their faith.76 This answer is uncompromisingly honest, but is nevertheless somewhat off the mark. One is reminded of Sir Arthur Eddington’s rhetorical question: “Since when has the teaching that ‘heaven and earth shall pass away’ become ecclesiastically un-orthodox?”77 To be sure, the end of the all-enveloping death of the universe is clearly consistent with ontological naturalism as is individual human death. In contrast, Christian theology has always suggested that the end of the universe, as well as the end of human life, is not the end of everything. When St. Paul and Aurelius speak about the appearances of the resurrected Christ as an encounter with a spiritual body, they face an obvious challenge: what kind of experience are they talking about? To be sure, they suggest an experience of something real. But what is the nature of this reality? Some theologians would argue that it is the same kind of experience of the presence of Christ that Christian believers have experienced through the ages. This suggests that we are speaking of a certain kind experience of God. And this in turn could be linked to the kind of process metaphysics advanced by Marjorie Suchocki. This is not the place to enter into the details of her proposal. I will limit myself to one short and speculative suggestion. One of Suchocki’s central ideas in The End of Evil (1988) is her affirmation of subjective immortality. Not only are the facts of our lives preserved in the memory of God,78 but our subjective awareness is preserved in God. Death is the transition from our earthly, finite forms “outside” of God to an existence “inside” of God. Experiencing the presence of Christ is experiencing Christ’s presence in God, according to classical Christian theology the second person of the Trinity.

162  Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm

Conclusion My main conclusion can be described as an affirmation of God’s providence, not in the sense of God’s direct intervention on our behalf, but rather as seeds, “semen rationales”, present from the outset of creation, but emerging only when the right conditions occur. Furthermore, ultimate hope implies that community with God is realised despite individual death and is not thwarted by the eventual demise (or the eternal existence) of the cosmos itself. Other intelligent or non-human forms of life may also be preserved in God’s infinite memory. This hope cannot be fathomed by human understanding, but it can be sustained in Christian imagination ultimately anchored in the image of God’s Kingdom. Belief in the immortality of the soul and in the resurrection of the body are two different but not necessarily irreconcilable ways of elaborating this central image. Further interpretation of this image of God’s Kingdom should in the present context be understood against the background of the earlier-mentioned central presuppositions. I will abstain from arguing for this, but will remind the reader of these three background assumptions, namely (1) God’s Kingdom encompassing not only reference to “ultimate things”, but also to non-ultimate future things, (2) referring to elements beyond my individual existence, i.e. to humanity and even the cosmos as a whole, and (3) resting on the presupposition of a kenotic understanding of God, i.e. God hiding God’s almighty power, God limiting God’s absolute omnipotence, God ordering divine power to act in conformity with the functional integrity of the creation, respecting the physical laws of the universe, which have God as their ultimate ground of Being.

Notes 1 Some of the thoughts in this chapter were formulated previously in the last chapter of my monograph The Study of Science and Religion: Sociological, Theological and Philosophical Perspectives (Eugene, OR: Pickwick/Wipf and Stock, 2018). 2 For the whole speech, see www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf. 3 Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity, Gifford Lectures 1955 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1957). 4 Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming  – Natural, Divine, and Human (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 344ff. 5 Gustaf Wingren, Creation and Law, tr. Ross MacKenzie (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003), Chapter 3. 6 Wingren, Creation and Law, 83–84. 7 See Rudolf Bultmann, “Zum Problem der Entmythologisierung”, in Kerygma und Mythos: Ein theologisches Gespräch, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch (Hamburg: Herbert Reich Evangelischer Verlag, 1952), 196. 8 Wingren, Creation and Law, 87–88. 9 See Hinlicky, “Review of George L. Murphy, The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross. (Harrisburg, London & New York: Trinity Press International, 2003)”, Seminary Ridge Review 8.1 (2005): 55–56. See also Heinrich Ott, Die Antwort des Glaubens Systematische Theologie in 50 Artikeln, ed. Klaus Otte (Stuttgart. Verlag Kohlhammer, 1999), 480–489. 10 See further Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 207–211.

Back to the future  163 11 Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 91–92. 12 In Thomas Nagel, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002– 2008 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Nagel describes his view as a form of “evolutionary Platonism”. I will refrain from this expression because of what I consider to be misleading connotations. 13 Nagel, Secular Philosophy, 3. 14 Nagel, Secular Philosophy, 3–5. 15 Nagel, Secular Philosophy, 11. 16 Nagel, Secular Philosophy, 17. 17 Thomas Nagel, “The Core of ‘Mind and Cosmos’ ”, The New York Times, 18 August 2013. See also Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 95. 18 For example, in his well-known article, Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83 (1974): 435–450. 19 Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” 437. 20 Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” 438. 21 Amy Kind, “Qualia”, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.iep.utm.edu/. 22 Nagel, “The Core of ‘Mind and Cosmos’ ”. 23 Nagel, “The Core of ‘Mind and Cosmos’ ”. 24 Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 57. 25 Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 57. 26 Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), Chapter 13. 27 Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 67. 28 Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 93. 29 Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 57. 30 Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 57, 117. 31 Augustine, On the Trinity, Book III, Chapter 8, 13. 32 Hjalmar Lindroth, Kyrklig dogmatik: Den kristna trosåskådningen med särskild hänsyn till det eskatologiska motivet och den frälsningshistoriska grundsynen. Band II (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1975). 33 See Wingren, Öppenhet och egenart, 111–113. 34 See James Gustafson, The Contributions of Theology to Medical Ethics (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press), 40–41. 35 Gustafson, Contributions of Theology to Medical Ethics, 44–46 (my italics). 36 See, for example, A.T. Beck, Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders (Madison, CT: International Universities Press, Inc., 1975). 37 Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 95. 38 Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 57, 91–92. 39 Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 57, 122. 40 Augustine, Enchiridion IV, 14. 41 Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor: A Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement, tr. A.G. Herbert (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003). See further Anders Jeffner, Theology and Integration: Four Essays in Philosophical Theology (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis, 1987), 62–63. 42 David Wallace-Wells, “The Uninhabitable Earth”, New York Magazine, 10 July 2017, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-forhumans.html. The article has drawn wide attention and acclaim, but has also been described as a hyperbole and a gross exaggeration, fostering gloom and hopelessness. Experts have criticised Wallace-Wells for factual errors. Professor David Archer (University of Chicago) concludes that, factual errors notwithstanding, “I feel that the overall thrust of the article is not wrong, wildly misleading, or out of bounds of the discussion we should be having about climate change” (see Emmanuel M. Vincent (ed.),

164  Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm “Scientists Explain What New York Magazine Article on ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ Gets Wrong”, Climate Feedback, 12 July 2017). 43 John Macquarrie, In Search of Humanity: A Theological & Philosophical Approach (London: SCM Press, 1984), 247. 44 Wallace-Wells, “The Uninhabitable Earth”. 45 Willem B. Drees, Beyond the Big Bang: Quantum Cosmologies and God (La Salle: Open Court, 1990), 93 (with reference to Carl Braaten). 46 The most prominent proponents are the American physicists Freeman Dyson and Frank Tippler. See further Hans Halvorson and Helge Kragh, “Cosmology and Theology”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/cosmology-theology, and Drees, Beyond the Big Bang, Chapter 5. 47 John Wisdom, “Gods”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. New Series 45 (1944– 1945): 186. 48 Antje Jackelén, Time and Eternity: The Question of Time in Church, Science, and Society, tr. B. Harshaw (Philadelphia and London: Templeton Foundation Press, 2005), 208 (quoting John Polkinghorne, The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 165). 49 Frank Tipler, The Physics of Christianity (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 3 and 62. 50 Jackelén, Time and Eternity, 221. 51 Robert John Russell, “Eschatology in Science and Theology”, in The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, eds. J.B. Stump and Alan G. Padgett (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2012), 544. 52 Russell, “Eschatology”, 547. 53 Robert John Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). 54 Russell, Time in Eternity, 549 (my italics). It should be noted that Russell explicitly advocates that his research progamme should presume methodological naturalism for past and present events (Robert John Russell, Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), Chapter 10, Guideline 2). Divine and natural causalities should be regarded as distinct. But what about future events? 55 Russell, “Eschatology”, 550; Russell, Cosmology, Chapter 10. 56 Russell, Cosmology, Chapter 10. 57 Russell, Cosmology, loc. 5324. 58 Russell, Cosmology, loc. 2313. 59 Russell, “Eschatology in Science”, 549. 60 “Suppose that everyone here is seated. Then, trivially, that everyone here is seated is true. Though true, this generalization does not seem to be a law. It is just too accidental. Einstein’s principle that no signals travel faster than light is also a true generalization, but, in contrast, it is thought to be a law; it is not nearly so accidental. What makes the difference?” (John W. Carroll, “Laws of Nature”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2016/entries/laws-of-nature/). 61 Hjalmar Lindroth, Filosofiska och teologiska essayer (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell/ Gebers, 1965), 228–229. 62 Macquarrie, In Search of Humanity, 246. 63 Russell, Cosmology, Chapter 10. 64 In 2007 Francis Collins established the BioLogos Foundation, which intends to invite “the church and the world to see the harmony between science and biblical faith as we present an evolutionary understanding of God’s creation.” See http://biologos.org. 65 Klaus Nürnberger, “Eschatology and Entropy: An Alternative to Robert John Russell’s Proposal”, Zygon 46 (2012): 970. 66 Nürnberger, “Eschatology”, 986.

Back to the future  165 67 Russell, “Eschatology and Scientific Cosmology”, 1010. 68 Erik Aurelius, “Olikheter ryms i Nya testamentet”, Kyrkans Tidning, 2 January 2014. 69 1 Cor. 15: 3–5, 8. 70 1 Cor. 15:50. 71 This does not mean that Christian eschatology in terms of God’s recreation of the universe has to be abandoned. It may be claimed that it has an alternative anchorage in the parables of Jesus and his proclamation of the Kingdom of God. See John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol 5 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 312 (footnote 8). 72 Russell, “Eschatology and Scientific Cosmology”, 1011. 73 Maurice Wiles, The Remaking of Christian Doctrine (London: SCM Press, 1974), 140. 74 Wiles, Remaking, 141. 75 Wiles, Remaking, 18. 76 Ted Peters, God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in the Divine Life (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 175–176, quoted in Russell, “Eschatology in Science”, 546. 77 Eddington, New Pathways, 59, quoted in Halvorson and Kragh, “Cosmology”. 78 Marjorie Suchocki, The End of Evil: Process Eschatology in Historical Context (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1988), Chapter V.

Bibliography Augustine. Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love, translated by Albert C. Outler. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955. www.tertullian.org/fathers/augustine_enchiridion_02_ trans.htm. ———. On the Trinity, translated by Arthur West Hadden. www.logoslibrary.org/augustine/ trinity/index.html. Aulén, Gustaf. Christus Victor: A Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement, translated by A.G. Herbert. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003. Aurelius, Erik. “Olikheter ryms i Nya testamentet”. Kyrkans Tidning, 2 January 2014. Beck, A.T. Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. Madison, CT: International Universities Press, Inc., 1975. Bultmann, Rudolf. “Zum Problem der Entmythologisierung”. In Kerygma und Mythos: Ein theologisches Gespräch, edited by Hans Werner Bartsch, 179–208. Hamburg: Herbert Reich Evangelischer Verlag, 1952. ———. History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity, Gifford Lectures 1955, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1957. Carroll, John W. “Laws of Nature”. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/ laws-of-nature/. Drees, Willem B. Beyond the Big Bang: Quantum Cosmologies and God. La Salle: Open Court, 1990. Gustafson, James. The Contributions of Theology to Medical Ethics. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1974. Halvorson, Hans, and Helge Kragh. “Cosmology and Theology”. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato. stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/cosmology-theology. Hinlicky, Paul. “Review of George L. Murphy, The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross (Harrisburg, London & New York: Trinity Press International, 2003)”. Seminary Ridge Review 8.1 (2005): 55–58.

166  Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm Jackelén, Antje. Time and Eternity: The Question of Time in Church, Science, and Society, translated by B. Harshaw. Philadelphia and London: Templeton Foundation Press, 2005. Jeffner, Anders. Theology and Integration: Four Essays in Philosophical Theology. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis, 1987. Kind, Amy. “Qualia”. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. www.iep.utm.edu/. Accessed 15 December 2017. King, Martin Luther. “I Have a Dream”. 28 August 1963. www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/ dream-speech.pdf. Lindroth, Hjalmar. Filosofiska och teologiska essayer. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell/ Gebers, 1965. ———. Kyrklig dogmatik: Den kristna trosåskådningen med särskild hänsyn till det eskatologiska motivet och den frälsningshistoriska grundsynen. Band II. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1975. Macquarrie, John. In Search of Humanity: A Theological and Philosophical Approach. London: SCM Press, 1984. Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. 5 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Moltmann, Jürgen. God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993. Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83 (1974): 435–450. ———. Mortal Questions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. ———. Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002–2008. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. ———. Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. ———. “The Core of ‘Mind and Cosmos’ ”. The New York Times, 18 August 2013. http:// opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-cosmos/?_r=0#more148050. Nürnberger, Klaus. “Eschatology and Entropy: An Alternative to Robert John Russell’s Proposal”. Zygon 46 (2012): 970–996. Ott, Heinrich. Die Antwort des Glaubens: Systematische Theologie in 50 Artikeln, edited by Klaus Otte. Stuttgart: Verlag Kohlhammer, 1999. Peacocke, Arthur. Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming – Natural, Divine, and Human. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993. Peters, Ted. God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in the Divine Life. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993. Polkinghorne, John. The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.Russell, Robert John. Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008. ———. “Eschatology in Science and Theology”. In The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, edited by J.B. Stump and Alan G. Padgett, 543–545. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. ———. Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Suchocki, Marjorie. The End of Evil: Process Eschatology in Historical Context. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1988. Tipler, Frank. The Physics of Christianity. New York: Doubleday, 2007.

Back to the future  167 Vincent, Emmanuel M., ed. “Scientists Explain What New York Magazine Article on ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ Gets Wrong”. Climate Feedback, 12 July 2017. https://climate feedback.org/evaluation/scientists-explain-what-new-york-magazine-article-on-theuninhabitable-earth-gets-wrong-david-wallace-wells/. Wallace-Wells, David. “The Uninhabitable Earth”. New York Magazine, 10 July 2017. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-forhumans.html. Wiles, Maurice. The Remaking of Christian Doctrine. The Hulsean Lecture. London: SCM Press, 1974. Wingren, Gustaf. Öppenhet och egenart. Evangeliet i världen. Lund: LiberLäromedel, 1979. ———. Creation and Law, translated by Ross MacKenzie. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003. Wisdom, John. “Gods”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. New Series 45 (1944–1945): 185–206.

9 Enlightened to eternity

Theodor JørgensenEnlightened to eternity

Theodor Jørgensen

(Translated by Edward Broadbridge)

From the very first there has been agreement in Christendom that becoming a Christian brings about a decisive change in one’s life. Baptism is a rebirth and Christ is the new lord and master. Paul makes this clear in his letter to the Church in Galatia: “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:19–20). It is for salvation’s sake that we must change, so we can speak of being “enlightened to eternity” and of Christianity as being a “religion of enlightenment”. Yet surely every religion entails a change in human beings; religions differ only in the way that salvation comes about and in the aim of the enlightenment that follows. Is the salvation primarily related to the community of which the person is a member, or is it related more to the individual and only thence to the community? A further difference is whether the enlightenment is related to a concept of God, which is not the case with Buddhism, for example. Finally, what yardstick do we use to measure the extent of this enlightenment? A Christian view of humankind sees us as created in God’s image but destroyed or weakened by the Fall. This image must be recreated or renewed for us to be saved and become truly human again, as God wishes. Whether this is successful or not is decided on Judgement Day. In this perspective individual human lives are seen as a process of enlightenment towards eternity. The yardstick, and in a certain sense the content of this process, is Jesus, the Son of God, who is truly human yet through whose death and resurrection our salvation is procured. Programmatically, this is expressed first in the words of John the Baptist, “He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30), then in Paul’s letter to the Galatians mentioned above, and finally in 1 John 3:3f: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure”. Purification is thus equated with the process of enlightenment. There is a widespread view that Christianity has exerted a powerful influence on the development of our present-day concepts of individuality and subjectivity.

Enlightened to eternity  169 Augustine’s Confessions are regarded as the first autobiography in literary history, while the Bildungsroman as a genre is seen as a fruit of Christianity’s legacy. The aim of Christian enlightenment is to find a clarification of one’s relation to God, in other words, God’s purpose for one’s life, and to live accordingly – the yardstick is Christ. Two main types of Christ-likeness have been distinguished: Imitatio Christi and Conformitas Christi. In the first case, the aim is to copy Christ’s life as best one can. In the second, the aim is to let Christ set his stamp on one’s life, so that it is formed by him. A modern example of the former is to be found in the archetypal Christology of the German philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1767–1834). Jesus’ total self-awareness, implying his total consciousness of God, constitutes a creative power in the self-awareness of every Christian person.1 Enlightenment has a soteriological aim, whether this is achieved partly by one’s own efforts or effected solely by God’s grace. The aim is ultimately fulfilled in eternity, where there is neither evil nor death. The individual’s enlightenment in a Christian context can never be entirely self-centred, for it is an enlightenment about Christ and an enlightenment in Christ. Enlightenment always reaches out to the world around and in particular to those who are suffering; in them we meet both Christ and our neighbour as a person in Christ.2 With the advancing secularisation of our Western world our understanding of enlightenment has changed. It is no longer an enlightenment to eternity but an enlightenment towards the human self. This does not necessarily mean it must be self-centred. In the Romantics’ concept of education, enlightenment was turned towards contributing to the whole of humankind, with a corresponding humaneness being formed in the individual. Each person’s specific character is transcendentally rooted in a relation to both God and humankind, while the immortality of the soul is maintained. The First World War produced a fundamental transformation. The “death of God” that Nietzsche had prophesied half a century before was now a common human experience at grass-roots level. When God is assumed to be dead, all talk of eternal life becomes meaningless; moreover, life after death dies with it. Humankind is left to itself in this life, and enlightenment becomes a project of self-realisation and self-development in this life only. However, in relinquishing a transcendent rootedness of the self, we have relativised subjectivity; individuality has consequently become a fluid concept which finds expression in our various so-called “role-plays”. With this in mind we cannot be surprised that belief in reincarnation has become more widespread. This is not in the strict Hindu or Buddhist sense, where each rebirth is a consequence of the karma of the previous life for better for worse; one risks being relegated to a lower being in the next life. In contrast, in the Western version reincarnation is seen for the most part as a chance to optimise the self that is being reincarnated. Ideally, self-realisation should take place in this life, but otherwise the next one will undoubtedly improve one’s chances.

170  Theodor Jørgensen There is no denying that this development is a challenge to the Christian faith and to “the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting” – and thus to the understanding of enlightenment as being for eternity. Yet the Christian tenet cannot simply be relinquished, for it asserts in particular the eternal value of each and every human being. In the following I shall present a new attempt to define the Christian concept of enlightenment by drawing on the idea of growth as outlined by the Danish theologian and poet N.F.S. Grundtvig.3 With Grundtvig, growth corresponds to this idea of enlightenment. We shall see how a Christian concept of subjectivity in its future-oriented openness can actually surpass a modernist one.

“Not until the resurrection do we fully become what we already are” In 1840–1842 Grundtvig published a number of articles under the title Church Enlightenment especially for Lutheran Christians in P.C. Kierkegaard’s Nordic Journal of Christian Theology.4 Chapter 3 carries the title “Christian Life as a Christ-Life”. Grundtvig understood the Danish word kristelighed as synonymous with “Christ-likeness” or “likeness to Christ”. Such an endeavour requires a whole lifetime. However, in Baptism we are reborn into this new life, which finds its growth in the Church and opens itself out from there to the world: “If we therefore believe that what is given and found in the fellowship of the Christian Church is a new life, genuinely both human and divine, like the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, then there is no question that it is in the Gospel and the Sacraments that this life is imparted to the faithful and nourished among them”. What immediately catches the eye here is Grundtvig’s claim that as a new life in Christ, Christian life is not only a truly human life but also a truly divine one. Confessing Jesus Christ to be true God and true human being is a belief common to all Christians. In short, human life as a Christ-life is a partial “deification” of human beings through their Christian faith. This is a powerful claim, which can only hold true if the lifelong process gains nourishment from without, namely through the Gospel, through Baptism and through Holy Communion as the divine means of grace. Herein lies the difference between the divinity of Jesus, who according to the Creed was born God, and us human beings, who receive our divinity through God’s grace. Grundtvig’s inspiration comes partly from the Church Fathers, Irenaeus and Athanasius, with their understanding of theosis expressed in the latter’s words: “God became human so that humans could become God”.5 This deification is not at the cost of being human; it is a transformation in accordance with God’s plan for all humans since creation, as revealed in Christ.

Grundtvig’s logos-Christology The claim to deification only makes sense in Grundtvig’s distinctive logosChristology. The Prologue to John’s Gospel is a source of inspiration: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . .

Enlightened to eternity  171 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all humankind” (1:1ff, my italics). This has consequences for Grundtvig’s understanding of the divine image in the human being: Humans are all in God’s image made, with living words making for union.6 The divine image consists in us having power over the living word, which Grundtvig understood to be the echo of the creating Word of Christ. His belief that “the word creates what it names”7 is also true of our mastery of language, but only by virtue of our human participation in the creating Word. Grundtvig is fond of calling Jesus the “living light” (lyslevende). In the final analysis, all true human enlightenment is due to Jesus Christ as the creating Word in whom there is life – and that life is the light of humankind. Since our divine image is directly related to Christ as the creating Word, by whom and for whom all things are made, and since Christ is repeatedly depicted in the New Testament as the image of God (e.g. Col 1:15; Heb 1:3), our divine image must carry Christ-like traits or, as it were, bear his signature. Grundtvig does not actually use these expressions but they are nonetheless applicable to his understanding of the divine image. Even the Fall could not entirely remove this signature, as Grundtvig relentlessly emphasised in opposition to the orthodox Lutherans. Unless this belief is valid, there is no point in speaking of a rebirth of the divine image in Baptism, which Grundtvig sees as a rebirth of Christ in us. Growth in the Christian life is more than the growth of one’s faith; growth is rooted in the Trinity, says Grundtvig. Faith corresponds to the Holy Spirit, hope corresponds to the Son (“Christ in you, the hope of glory”, Col 1:28), and love corresponds to the Father. This last quotation is a favourite scripture of Grundtvig’s, one that he uses repeatedly in his hymn-writing as a designation for Jesus without actually naming him as “the hope of glory”.

“Our Saviour we take and embrace” How then does Grundtvig understand Christian life as a Christ-life, one that participates both in Jesus’ true humanity and in his true divinity? We are on the wrong track if we regard the two as a symbiosis or a fusion. For Christian life and for Christ himself, the two must be neither separated nor confused. Thus Grundtvig maintains Luther’s extra nos, pro nobis (outside us, for us). Christians are in a personal relation with the Word (= Christ) in us. He makes this clear in several of his hymns where faith, hope and love (equated with Father, Son and Holy Spirit) live their independent lives and are defined as stations in a journey of formation, a “life-path” (livets vej) to the “land of life with its wellsprings of joy” (livets land med glædens kilder).8 This path is of course Jesus himself (cf. John 14:6) or, as

172  Theodor Jørgensen Grundtvig puts it, “Jesus’ Word, a sun-ray hid by shadow”.9 The relationship is best seen in the hymn, “Though grieved by your longing say not in your heart”:10 We are – and we shall be – we’re touched, and are set free by Christ the Word, who to earth came. So speak it with feeling, your love thus revealing, since in you He lives in this name! Your heart He addresses, your heart He refreshes, you name Him and He takes His place; if your heart is ready and holds that name steady, our Saviour we take and embrace. Vi ere, vi bleve, vi røres, vi leve i Kristus, Guds levende Ord. Tag ordet i munden, og elsk det fra grunden! Da hos dig i navnet han bor! Han hjertet tiltaler, han hjertet husvaler, han svarer som Gud til sit navn; når hjertet med varme om Navnet slår arme, vor frelser vi tager i favn. Grundtvig wants the Word to be spoken by the tongue: “you name Him and He takes His place”. The name “Jesus” means “God helps”. The second name that Jesus was given is “Immanuel”, which means “God with us” (Mt 1:23). The difference between Christ and ourselves is preserved as a deep relation that comprises our life in Christ. This is underlined by the bodily metaphor that Grundtvig uses throughout, but the relation is close and intense and can be described as an “embrace” through which the divine image in us is constantly renewed. The signature of Christ is clarified and Christ grows in us to “perfection”. The “embrace” motif is also found in the final verse of “Dear child, sleep sweetly”: Dear child, sleep sweetly, and rest now completely, and murmur that name whose grace you can claim, salvation to earth guaranteeing. Sing, “Jesus is mine,

Enlightened to eternity  173 so fair and so fine, the light and the life of my being!”11 Sov sødt, barnlille! Lig rolig og stille, og nyn på det navn med nåden i favn, al jorden til salighed givet! Nyn: Jesus er min, så favr og så fin, min Jesus er lyset og livet! The reference to the Johannine prologue is clear: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all humankind”. By virtue of our divine image, we bear within ourselves the creating Word, with all the consequences that this has for our human lives when we become aware that this is so.

The life of the Congregation and the ego-trip Another Grundtvig hymn that deserves mention in this context is one that clarifies how the Christ-life in us is dependent on the means of grace which are granted us from without – and must be taken to heart within: You are the Word upon my breath! my refuge both in life and death.12 This is a hymn for the edge of the grave, so to speak. In the first verse Grundtvig expresses his longing for his “Father’s house” (Faders hus mig huer bedst), but fears “the journey to God’s Paradise” (trang for mig på mangen vis/ er rejsen til Guds Paradis) because of its challenges. This fear is amplified in verse 2. The soul is weary, the heart heavy, and the blood “ices in my breast,/whenever I survey my passage hence” (mit blod/ . . . isner i mit bryst/så snart. . ./ jeg tænker på min hedenfart). The third verse reads as follows: O Lord, alone those whom you feed die not upon the desert way; alone with Your light and Your staff can mortals leap across the grave; the heart, which one day death must meet, can with Your blood now calmly beat. Kun hvem du mætter, Herre, ej forsmægter på den øde vej; kun ved dit lys og med din stav vi overspringe kan vor grav, og hjertet, som mod død skal stå, kun med dit blod kan roligt slå.

174  Theodor Jørgensen Here we are close to a symbiosis, yet the means of grace are still given from without – even though they are infused within us. If the heart is to pass beyond death, it can only be through the blood of Jesus, granted through the wine at Holy Communion and infused in the heart through faith. A corollary of Grundtvig’s emphasis on the means of grace for growth in Christ is his belief that growth can only take place within the Christian Congregation.13 It is significant that in the earlier quotation from Church Enlightenment Grundtvig underlines how “the Word from the beginning”, mediated by the Holy Spirit, gives “both life and light” to the whole Congregation of Christians. Growth in Christ can never be an ego-trip. Does this then mean that in Grundtvig’s view there is no salvation outside the Church or the Congregation (extra ecclesiam non salus est)? Without delving too deeply into this complex question, I refer instead to one of the central chapters in Basic Christian Teachings (1855–1861), “Inborn and Reborn Human Life”, and to the didactic poem, “Human comes first, and Christian next”,14 where the last verse reads: They who would truly human be while on this earth still living, lending an ear to Truth’s own word, to God the glory giving, if Christian faith is the true way, though “Christian” they be not today they will be so tomorrow! Stræbe da hver på denne jord Sandt menneske at være, Aabne sit Øre for Sandheds Ord, Og unde Gud sin Ære; Er Christendom da Sandheds Sag, Om Christen ej han er i Dag, Han bliver det i Morgen! Grundtvig sees a “propensity” in all people to becoming Christian. This comes from his understanding of the divine image, constituted by the creating Word, Christ, in whom there was life “and that life was the light of all humankind”. Where the word of Truth sounds, Christ is present, and when we hear that Word, we are already on the path to becoming Christian, to being included in the community of Christ which the Congregation constitutes. Grundtvig’s concept of the Church is inclusive, not exclusive.

Transformation in death How does all this relate to death itself? Is death not unequivocally the end of all growth and thus of all enlightenment? Not so, says Grundtvig – not when one is accompanied by the crucified and resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ. This is made clear in the final verse of “My light in darkness, Jesus sweet”:15

Enlightened to eternity  175 To mansions far above the stars Your Word will open me a door! And when Your voice from rosy clouds awakens dust to life once more, in coronation gown clothe me as You have promised this would be! Luk med dit ord mig døren op til salen over stjernetop! Og når din røst fra rosensky opvækker støv til liv på ny, ifør mig da, som du har sagt, en klædning lig din kroningsdragt! It is the creating Word as it was in the beginning that creates our new beginning in the resurrection, and completes Christ’s growth in us, clothing us in garment that resembles Jesus’ coronation robe. We are led again to think of 1 John 3:2f: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”. In death a transformation takes place. In his magnificent Easter hymn “Easter flower, why are you here?”16 Grundtvig puts words to this transformation which require an interpretation. The fourth verse reads: If the dead can not arise, meaningless are hopes of pardon. Fading, each of us must die, never gracing any garden. Then forgotten under earth we shall never know new birth, nor like molten wax be taken as God’s candle to awaken. Kan de døde ej opstå, intet har vi at betyde, visne må vi brat i vrå, ingen have skal vi pryde; glemmes skal vi under muld, vil ej vokset underfuld smelte, støbes i det dunkle og som lys på graven funkle. Is this a veiled reference to the Icarus-myth? In a sermon on Mt 6:24–34 for the 15th Sunday after Trinity from 1832 Grundtvig does use the Icarus-myth as an image of the Fall: “Indeed, even the old heathens could speak of the great Fall in the form of a daredevil who made himself wings of wax to fly above the birds; but he came too close to the sun, his wings melted, and he sank to the bottom of the sea”.17 Our human pride brings us down, for “pride comes before a fall”; the theosis-process was interrupted.

176  Theodor Jørgensen However, there is no sense of punishment for pride here, and it is doubtful whether Grundtvig is referring to the Icarus-myth – it is only the wax metaphor that links the two. In Grundtvig’s hymn the wax can be “formed” as God formed human life at Creation (Gen 2:7). Here in death the forming continues; there is a new creation; the wax is melted again into “God’s candle”. This is a purification, so that the divine image, the signature of Christ, can shine brightly after death. Grundtvig is perhaps thinking not so much of an actual candle as of the light it gives off, as in the Johannine prologue: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all humankind”. We are to burn, candle-like, as lights for Christ. In the resurrection the growth of Christ within us is completed and we become definitively what we have always been for God – created through Christ and created for Christ.

Imago Dei in Luther and Grundtvig This imago dei harks back to Martin Luther, and in particular his theses 35–38 in Disputatio de homine. Here he argues that the human life which we live here is the pure material for the form or figure that God will give humankind in the life to come (pura materia Dei ad futurae suae vitam). The same is true of the whole of creation, which is utterly subject to mortality; it is all material for the form of glory that is God’s plan for his creation. Just as heaven and earth in the beginning constitute the material that God gave his creation after six days, so does humankind in this life constitute its future form until the divine image is restored and completed.18 In this series of theses Luther discusses the difference between the philosophical and the theological destiny of humankind. He fully acknowledges Aristotle’s definition that we are rational beings, animal rationale, and he shares his admiration for what we can bring about as a result of our power of reason. But philosophy cannot think beyond death, nor can it relate to the ambiguity and limitation that are part and parcel of human reasoning. In the final analysis philosophy does not recognise that humankind, and therefore human reason, is subject to the dominion of sin, death and the Devil. But theology knows about these things. The theological destiny of humankind is for it to be justified solely by faith in Christ. This is the human expression of our divine image, in that it simultaneously expresses God’s acknowledgement of our divinely-created dignity. At the Fall this divine image was destroyed, or at least fragmented, and needs to be fully restored. This happens finally in our resurrection, beginning in this life through our faith in Christ. The crucial point in Luther’s thinking is that humankind does not exist by virtue of its own power but solely by the power of God. In this sense human existence is therefore “ecstatic” – it is not due to itself, it is due to God. For Luther, “enlightenment to eternity” means liberating humankind from the dominion of sin. In his terminology, the old being must die for the new being to arise and live a new life. Through faith, our resurrection begins here and now.19 Grundtvig takes Luther’s point on the destructive consequences of sin, but he argues that our inborn human life is more positive than Luther gives credit for. The divine image may have been weakened and darkened by the Fall, but it was

Enlightened to eternity  177 in no way destroyed or severely fragmented. He nevertheless agrees that human existence is not due to itself but is due to God, a distinction between Christians and naturalists which he clarifies in his introduction to Nordic Mythology.20 Both groups agree on the divine image and the fallen experience, even though the naturalists prefer to speak of a human delusion rather than an actual fall from grace. Where they disagree is on how to heal the breach. The naturalists believe this can be done by human hand, the Christians only by Baptism and the true waters of renewal, in which God heals the loss and completes the cure in our resurrection.21

An upward- and forward-driven destiny Grundtvig’s understanding of our growth of faith as a growth in Christ reminds us of the Orthodox Christians’ reverence for the icon, a reverence which is also making its presence felt in the West. When we stand before an icon of Christ, it is not we who are looking at the icon, but the icon that is looking at us. It seeks to imprint itself on us and reveal the signature of Christ and our divine image. This understanding is in clear opposition to the widespread talk of “realising oneself” in our day. In a Christian perspective the human self is an open project, open to God’s future and what he will do with our “self”. Here we find an open understanding of human subjectivity which in my view takes precedence over modernity’s understanding of the “self”. The latter does not recognise subjectivity as a definable entity but sees it as a composite thing, consisting of a number of roles which we play in various contexts. “Self-realisation” consists of playing these roles to the best of one’s ability. The most significant difference between a Christian and a modernist understanding of human subjectivity lies in the Christian understanding of the self having an upward- and forward-driven destiny, returning us again to the First Letter of John: “Now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known” (1 John 3:2). In a prison cell in Berlin during the Second World War the theologian and resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a poem with the title “Wer bin ich?” (Who am I?). In the poem he ponders how others experience him in his dealings with the prison guards as cheerful and firm, free, calm and clear-minded. They see him smiling and proud, as one who is used to being victorious – as though he had command over them. Yet he experiences himself as doubting and disturbed, like a caged bird longing for freedom, tired and empty and unable to pray, think or create. Bonhoeffer then asks: Who am I? This or the Other? Am I one person today and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling? He ends the poem with an answer to his questions: Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!22

178  Theodor Jørgensen Only God knows who Bonhoeffer is, who we are. The knowledge that we are children of God allows us to leave to God this question of our own identity – and dare to let it stand open. From this perspective all attempts at “self-realisation” are meaningless. Of course this does not exclude our attempt to become wiser about ourselves, but it does mean that throughout our lives we must focus on our relationship to God as one who knows us; in this way we can receive a continuing provisional answer as to who we are. The focus then turns away from the self to Jesus as the way, the truth and the life, and to Christ as the Word from the beginning, through whom and for whom we are created and whose image we bear. This is an open and challenging process, and does not find its conclusion until our meeting with the glorified Christ in the resurrection, when “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). But in our faith we already have a share in this potential, which – nourished by means of grace – constitutes the driving force in our growth in Christ: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27).

A radicalisation of the Christian hope In the triad of faith, hope and love, hope is indispensable. Christians live their lives looking forward, though without either forgetting the present moment or fleeing from it. On the contrary, we surround it with hope, and embrace it as a step towards the final fulfilment, or as part of the healing process. In two of the creeds of the early Church still in liturgical use nowadays, the hope of eternity is summarised in the words “the resurrection of the body” in the Apostolic Creed and “the resurrection of the dead and the life to come” in the Nicaean. The difference is significant: the world must be present in both the new heaven and the new earth. The theologians of the early Church had a clear understanding that human beings exist solely in relation to one another and to their earthly home in a native land; they would not survive otherwise. So the hope of eternity must contain these relations. This is testified to throughout the New Testament, which speaks of the “fellowship” in God’s kingdom where all are citizens. Indeed, through cherishing hope Christians already have a share in the kingdom here and now. Similarly, the new heaven and earth will be liberated from the old heaven and earth, with all their corruption and perishability. The content of the coming life is described poetically in many of our hymns. Christians always sought to link this hope of eternity to experiences here on earth, with images they could make tangible in order to treasure them, rebuff them or surpass them. Some images seemed more accommodating than others: a heaven above, an earth below, and beneath the earth the kingdom of the dead. When you died, you emerged either to eternal life in heaven or to eternal perdition in the kingdom of death. Life in heaven is an optimisation of life on earth, a reconciliation between God and humankind and between humans mutually, a delivery from mortal corruption and death and the establishment of a kingdom of eternal peace and justice. The comfort found in this world picture was not particularly affected by the Copernican universe with the sun at the centre encircled by the earth and the other planets, and the stars in the firmament constituting the outer

Enlightened to eternity  179 limits of the universe. The security of this picture has been radically undercut by all the knowledge that astronomy and astrophysics have brought with them in the meantime: the untold light years that our universe spans and the universes that lie beyond our Milky Way. We have become homeless in this infinite space, with a corresponding loss of security, unless, that is, we hold firm to faith and hope in God’s presence throughout his creation. Paul already knew that the Christian hope in itself contains a radicalisation. He says in Rom 8:24f, “But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it with patience”. Behind the patience lies the trust that what is impossible for humankind is possible for God – for whom all things are possible. It is this trust in God’s almighty power that permeates 1 Cor 15, where Paul argues for the bodily resurrection of the dead, similar to Jesus’ resurrection. The question under discussion is in which body are we resurrected? Paul exhorts the Corinthians to study the multitude of heavenly and earthly bodies, cf. v. 35ff, and concludes that since God exhibits such great imagination in his creativity both now and in the future, surely he can decide in which body each of us will arise. With reference to our limited human possibilities we find a similar line of thought elsewhere in the New Testament, e.g. when a rich man seeks to enter the kingdom of God (cf. Mt 19:23ff). Jesus answers: “For humans this is impossible, but for God all things are possible”. In consequence, should we not give up any attempt to concretise the Christian hope of eternity in images of time and space? If so, it will have consequences in all areas of theology, and not just for eschatology. Even the theologians of the early Church knew this. In their defence of bodily resurrection, so vividly portrayed by the Apostolic Creed in the term “resurrection of the flesh”, their theology of creation was both a defence of the goodness of the earth as God’s creation, and an appreciation of its value in the path to salvation. Their main enemy was Marcion and his followers, who sought liberation from the material world. Similar movements exist today, which is why eschatology is still an essential discipline.

Notes 1 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Monologen: Eine Neujahrsgabe (Berlin: Reimer, 1800), and Friedrich Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube: nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt: Band 1 und 2 (Berlin: Reimer, 1830–1831). 2 Cf. Martin Luther, On the Freedom of a Christian (Von der Freyheyt eyniß Christen menschen, Wittenberg: Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, 1520) and A Treatise Concerning the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ (Sermon von dem hochwürdigen Sakrament des heiligen wahren Leichnams Christi und von den Bruderschaften, Wittenberg: Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, 1519). 3 Five English volumes of Grundtvig’s works tr. Edward Broadbridge are being published by Aarhus University Press between 2011 and 2020. They are as follows: vol. 1. The School for Life. N.F.S. Grundtvig on Education for the People (2011) vol. 2. Living Wellsprings: The Hymns, Songs, and Poems of N.F.S. Grundtvig (2015) vol. 3. Human Comes First: The Christian Theology of N.F.S. Grundtvig (2018)

180  Theodor Jørgensen vol. 4. The Common Good. N.F.S. Grundtvig as Politician and Contemporary Historian (forthcoming). vol. 5. The Advance of Learning. N.F.S. Grundtvig’s Philosophical Writings (for­thcoming). 4 T.W. Oldenburg and P. C. Kierkegaard (eds.), Nordisk Tidskrift for christelig Teologi 1–4 (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1840–1842). Re-published in a collected edition, Copenhagen, 1870. 5 Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54.3. 6 From Grundtvig’s song, “What a Great Wonder Is Human Life” (Menneskelivet er underligt), no. 85, (tr. Edward Broadbridge), in Broadbridge et al., Living Wellsprings. 7 Cf. ch. 11, “Inborn and Reborn Human Life” in Broadbridge et al., Human Comes First. 8 The words are from Grundtvig’s hymn (The Danish Hymnbook 2003, no. 379) “There is a way the world is unaware of” (Der er en vej, som verden ikke kender). An English version, though not these words, can be found as no. 185 in Grant me, God, the Gift of Singing (2nd edition) (Vancouver: The Danish Lutheran Church of Vancouver, 2001). 9 Grundtvig’s hymn (The Danish Hymnbook 2003, no. 379) “There is a way the world is unaware of” (Der er en vej, som verden ikke kender). 10 Cf. Grundtvig’s hymn (The Danish Hymnbook 2003, no. 397) “Though grieved by your longing say not in your heart” (Trods længselens smerte, sig ej i dit hjerte, otherwise untranslated), (tr. Edward Broadbridge). 11 “Dear child, sleep sweetly” (The Danish Hymnbook 2003, no. 674), no. 68 (tr. Edward Broadbridge), in Broadbridge et al., Living Wellsprings. 12 Cf. Grundtvig’s hymn “My Light in Darkness, Jesus sweet” (Mit lys i mørke, Jesus sød! – otherwise untranslated) (The Danish Hymnbook 2003, no. 539), (tr. Edward Broadbridge). 13 Grundtvig follows Paul’s distinction between vaos, Church as sanctuary and institution, and ekklesia, Church as Congregation. 14 No. 123 (tr. Edward Broadbridge), in Broadbridge et al., Living Wellsprings. 15 See note 12. 16 No. 26 (tr. Edward Broadbridge), in Broadbridge et al., Living Wellsprings. 17 Sermon otherwise untranslated (tr. Edward Broadbridge). 18 Theses 37 and 38: Et qualis fuit terra et coelum in principio ad formam post sex dies completam, id est, material sui, – Talis est homo in hac vita ad futuram formam suam, cum reformata et perfecta fuerit imago Dei. 19 Cf. Rom 6:1–14 and Martin Luther, “Die Taufe” [“On Baptism”], in Der Große Katechismus [The Large Catechism] (Wittenberg: Georg Rhau, 1529). 20 N.F.S. Grundtvig, Nordic Mythology (Copenhagen: J. H. Schubothes Boghandel, 1832). 21 See ch. 11, “Inborn and Reborn Human Life”, in Broadbridge et al., Human Comes First. 22 English translation taken from www.dbonhoeffer.org/who-was-db2.htm.

Bibliography Athanasius. On the Incarnation: The treatise De incarnatione Verbi Dei, translated by Penelope Lawson. London: Mowbray, 1982. Bonhoeffer, D. Widerstand und Ergebung: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2011. Broadbridge, Edward, tr. and ed. Living Wellsprings: The Hymns, Songs, and Poems of N.F.S. Grundtvig. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press 2015. ———, tr. and ed. Human Comes First: The Christian Theology of N.F.S. Grundtvig. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press 2018.

Enlightened to eternity  181 ———, tr. and ed. The Advance of Learning: N.F.S. Grundtvig’s Philosophical Writings. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, forthcoming. ———, tr. and ed. The Common Good: N.F.S. Grundtvig as Politician and Contemporary Historian. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, forthcoming. Broadbridge, Edward, Clay Warren, and Uffe Jonas, eds. The School for Life. N.F.S. Grundtvig on Education for the People. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2011. Danish Lutheran Church of Vancouver. Grant Me, God, the Gift of Singing. 2nd edition. Vancouver: The Danish Lutheran Church of Vancouver, 2001. Grundtvig, N.F.S. Nordens Mythologi [Nordic Mythology]. 2nd revised ed. Copenhagen: J. H. Schubothes Boghandel, 1832. ———. “Den Christelige Børnelærdom”. In Udvalgte Skrifter [Selected Writings], vol. 9, edited by Holger Begtrup, 329ff. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1909. ———. “Kirkelige Oplysninger især for Lutherske Christne”. In Værker i Udvalg, edited by G. Christensen and H. Koch. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1942. ———. “I begyndelsen var Ordet” [In the Beginning Was the Word]. In Sang-Værk, vol. 1, nr. 56, 143–144. Copenhagen: Det Danske Forlag, 1948. ———. “Menneske først og Christen så” [Human Comes First, and Christian Next]. In Sang-Værk, vol. 3, nr. 156, 296–298. Copenhagen: Det Danske Forlag, 1948. ———. Grundtvigs Prædikener [Grundtvig’s Preaching], edited by Christian Thodberg. Copenhagen: Gads, 1984. ———. “Der er en vej, som verden ikke kender” [There Is a Way the World Is Unaware Of]. In Den Danske Salmebog, nr. 379. Copenhagen: Det Kgl. Vajsenhus, 2003. ———. “Lyslevende fra himmerig” [Living Light from Kingdom of Heaven]. In Den Danske Salmebog [The Danish Hymnal], nr. 66. Copenhagen: Det Kgl. Vajsenhus, 2003. ———. “Mit lys i mørke, Jesus sød!” [My Light in Darkness, Jesus Sweet!]. In Den Danske Salmebog, nr. 539. Copenhagen: Det Kgl. Vajsenhus, 2003. ———. “Sov sødt, barnlille!” [Dear Child, Sleep Sweetly!]. In Den Danske Salmebog, nr. 674. Copenhagen: Det Kgl. Vajsenhus, 2003. ———. “Trods længselens smerte” [Though Grieved by Your Longing]. In Den Danske Salmebog, nr. 397. Copenhagen: Det Kgl. Vajsenhus, 2003. ———. “Menneskelivet er underligt” [What a Great Wonder Is Human Life], nr. 94 in Højskolesangbogen, 18th edition. Copenhagen: Folkehøjskolernes Forening i Danmark, 2006. Luther, Martin. A Treatise Concerning the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ. (Sermon von dem hochwürdigen Sakrament des heiligen wahren Leichnams Christi und von den Bruderschaften), Wittenberg: Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, 1519. ———. On the Freedom of a Christian. (Von der Freyheyt eyniß Christen menschen) Wittenberg: Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, 1520. ———. “Die Taufe” [‘On Baptism’]. In Der Große Katechismus [The Large Catechism]. (Wittenberg: Georg Rhau, 1529). ———. Disputatio de Homine, WA 39,1, 175–177. In Gerhard Ebeling, Lutherstudien Band II, Disputatio de Homine 1. Teil, 15–24. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1977. Oldenburg, T.W., and P.C. Kierkegaard, eds. Nordisk Tidskrift for christelig Teologi, 1–4 (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1840–1842). Re-published in a collected edition, Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1870. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. Monologen: Eine Neujahrsgabe. Berlin: Reimer, 1800. ———. Der christliche Glaube: nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt: Band 1 und 2. Berlin: Reimer, 1830–1831.

Index

accountability 34 – 36, 42, 52, 56 Adorno, Theodor W. 104, 108 adventism 7; see also Christ, return of Altner, Günter 4, 104 Anthony, Saint 98 Anthropocene 13, 19, 45 – 47, 53, 89, 99, 101 anthropogenic climate change see climate change, anthropogenic apocalypse(s) 5 – 6, 10 – 11, 16 – 17, 24, 31, 42, 45 – 46, 49, 53, 89 – 90, 100 – 101, 111, 113, 122 – 124, 155, 159 aporia 140 – 142 Appadurai, Arjun 95, 103 Arendt, Hannah 36 – 37, 39 Aristotle 31, 34, 36, 176 ars moriendi 4 art 19, 89, 96 – 99, 106, 114 – 122, 126, 128 – 129 Asad, Talal 73, 84 assisted suicide see euthanasia Assmann, Aleida 104 Athanasius 170 atheism 6, 24, 66, 149 Augustine 5, 7, 39, 93, 105, 122 – 123, 152, 154, 169 autonomy 6, 63 – 65, 74, 82, 141 – 142 Axelson, Tomas 134 – 138 Baptism 52, 164, 170 – 171, 177 Barber, William 51 Barlach, Ernst 121 Barth, Karl 36, 105 Bauman, Zygmunt 83, 84 Beauvois, Xavier 134 belief 2, 20, 22, 41, 46, 68, 74, 133 – 135, 138, 150; religious 2 – 3, 5, 13, 20, 21 – 22, 41, 46, 70, 77, 91 – 92, 94, 96, 101, 109, 124 – 125, 133 – 142,

146 – 148, 157, 162, 169 – 171, 174; see also faith Bell, Daniel 90 Bellini, Giovanni 19, 89, 96 – 99 Benjamin, Walter 8 Bergmann, Sigurd 18, 42, 49, 84, 133 Bible 4, 52 – 53, 139; see also John, Saint; Matthew, Saint Biggar, Nigel 82 Bingen, Hildegard von 12, 24 Bishop, Jeffrey P. 64 – 65, 74 – 75, 77 – 79, 81, 82 Blomqvist, Helene 134, 140 – 141, 143 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 177 – 178 Brahms, Johannes 132, 137 Bråkenhielm, Carl Reinhold 83, 139 – 140 Breivik, Anders Behring 33 – 36, 42 Camus, Albert 125 Canova, Antonio 115, 128 – 129 Casanova, José 73, 84, 85 Catherine of Alexandria 97 Catholicism 26, 135 – 136 causality 48, 64, 152, 158, 164 ceremony 55 – 56 Certeau, Michel de 93 chiliasm see millenialism Christ 2 – 3, 5, 8, 24, 48, 89, 97 – 100, 105, 108, 133, 136 – 137, 139, 142, 155, 157 – 161, 165, 168 – 179; death of 24, 133, 137, 139, 160, 168; return of 5, 7 Christendom 42, 168, 174 Christology 13, 22, 105, 169 – 171 Church 5, 7, 20, 30, 38 – 39, 51, 69, 93, 100, 135 – 137, 142, 153, 160, 164, 170, 174, 180; Catholic see Catholicism; early 114, 133, 134, 168, 170, 178 – 179; (Lutheran) Church of Sweden 15, 20, 77, 133, 138 – 139;

184 Index medieval 76; Nordic churches 17, 26, 30, 34, 69, 72, 76 climate change 10 – 11, 17, 23, 24, 45 – 60, 66, 91 – 92, 101, 155 – 156; anthropogenic 11, 13, 45, 53, 90, 91, 101 Coakley, Sarah 142 Cohen, Leonard 2, 11, 13, 22, 25 colonialism 54 – 56, 92; neo- 90, 92; post54, 92 common future 1, 3, 10 – 12, 14, 15, 91, 95, 115 Conradie, Ernst M. 91 Constantine, Emperor 114 contextual theology 11, 13 – 17, 25, 30, 52, 93 conversion 1 – 4, 123 COP (United Nations Climate Change Conference) 11, 55 Cöster, Henry 67 creation 1, 5, 7, 10, 12 – 14, 23, 53, 95, 98 – 103,  109, 124 – 125, 133, 136, 140, 146 – 148, 152, 154 – 162, 170, 176, 179; creatio continua 20, 109, 148, 152, 155 – 157; creatio ex nihilo 148; liberation of 13, 90, 92, 99, 103; new creation/creatio nova 4, 12, 90, 92, 98 – 100, 109, 148, 156 – 161, 165, 176 Cruz, Ted 32 Davis, Kipp 31 death 4, 38, 47, 54, 61 – 66, 69 – 80, 83, 84, 98 – 99, 113, 116 – 117, 119, 121, 137, 159 – 162, 169, 173 – 176; death penalty 41; eternal 178; of Jesus Christ see Christ, death of; of the soul 41; of the universe 161; see also ars moriendi; euthanasia; life after death deification see theosis Delaney, Susan J. 106 – 107 Delblanc, Sven 140, 143 Derrida, Jacques 90 despair see hope, hopelessness “Disaster capitalists” 49 divestment 55 – 56 divine image see images, of God/ imago dei doctrine of discovery 54, 56 earth 4, 5, 11, 13 – 15, 19, 25, 31 – 32, 47, 53, 69, 76, 88 – 104, 113, 124, 136 – 137, 140, 161, 176, 178 – 179; new earth see creation,

new creation/creatio nova; see also creation ecology 54, 92; destruction of 12, 42, 52, 54, 91 – 92; ecological movements 91, 96; see also climate change ecumenism 51, 55, 135 – 136 Eden see paradise empathy 1 – 3, 12 enlightenment 168 – 170, 174, 176 Eriksson, Anne-Louise 139 eschatology: axiological 89 – 90; choratic 7, 93; inaugurated 3; petro-eschatology 45 – 60; process 11, 17, 50; realised 2, 8, 67, 70; spatialised 7 – 8, 10, 15, 18 – 19, 46, 88 – 112, 133; teleological 89 – 90 eschaton 1 – 3, 5 – 8, 12 – 14, 45 – 46, 66, 69, 89, 93, 98; see also time, end-times eternal life see life after death eternity 7 – 8, 19, 21, 67 – 70, 74, 76, 82, 88, 99 – 100, 103, 113, 124, 160, 168 – 170, 176, 178, 179 ethics 7, 9, 11, 17, 30 – 43, 50, 61 – 64, 75, 78, 96, 101, 102, 107, 108, 153, 156; of hope see hope, ethics of; medical 61 – 64, 82; see also euthanasia Eucharist 20, 52, 108, 133 euthanasia 9, 15, 17 – 18, 61 – 85 evil 20, 31, 36, 37 – 39, 41 – 42, 49, 66, 98, 124, 133, 154 – 156, 169; problem of 33 – 36, 40 – 42 faith 1 – 2, 4, 6 – 7, 12 – 16, 18 – 19, 20 – 21, 22, 23, 32, 42, 51 – 52, 69, 71, 73, 80, 84, 89, 123, 126, 133, 135 – 140, 143, 147 – 148, 156, 158 – 159, 161, 164, 168, 170 – 171, 176 – 179; faith, hope and love 52, 71, 80, 171, 178; see also belief fear 12, 16 – 17, 30 – 35, 42, 54, 92, 118, 122, 138, 155, 173 final judgement 5, 15, 70, 146 – 147, 155 – 156, 159, 168 flood 53 forgiveness 37 – 39, 56, 136 fossil fuels 46 – 49; see also petroleum Foucault, Michel 64, 92, 105 Freire, Paulo 125, 130 Fritz, Charles 51 Fukoyama, Francis 90 functional differentiation of society 72 – 73, 85 futurology 8, 90, 93, 95

Index  185 Galtung, Johan 50 gender (in)equality 26, 90, 92 geography 11, 89, 95 – 96; see also spatiality geopolitics 15, 21, 23, 25, 46, 48 – 49 geopsyche 50, 53 Giddens, Anthony 95, 103 Gilgamesh 53 global warming see climate change glory 20, 171, 174, 176, 178 grace 50, 169 – 174, 177 – 178 greenwashing 48 Gregory of Nazianz 5, 9, 12 Grundtvig, N.F.S. 168 – 181 guilt 34 – 39 Habermas, Jürgen 85, 95 hamartiology see sin Hartling, Ole J. 78, 81, 82, 85 Hauerwas, Stanley 70, 82, 84 Hauptmann, Gerhard 116, 119 Havel, Vaclav 21, 22 health care 64, 76 – 78 heaven 4, 19, 39, 70, 73, 83, 89, 94, 99 – 103, 107, 108, 123, 124, 136 – 137, 176, 178; see also creation, new creation/creatio nova Hedenius, Ingemar 66 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 24, 115, 125 – 126, 128 Heidegger, Martin 75 Heimat 19, 89, 99 – 100, 102 – 103, 107, 108 Hellpach, Willy 50 heteronomy 7, 141 – 142 history 2, 5, 6, 8 – 10, 12 – 14, 18, 19, 36, 42, 52, 89, 92, 105, 108, 113 – 116, 123 – 126, 128, 129, 146 – 147, 153, 155, 157; of Christianity 4 – 5, 7, 14, 16; end of 5 – 6, 18, 66, 89, 90, 121, 147; salvation 13, 92, 97 – 99, 159 Hölderlin, Friedrich 17, 56 Holocaust see Judaism, persecution of Jews Holy Spirit 5, 9 – 10, 12, 92, 99, 103, 171, 174 home 14, 19, 49, 54, 88 – 112, 178 – 179; see also Heimat hope 1 – 4, 12 – 13, 16 – 17, 18, 20 – 24, 30 – 44, 45 – 48, 51 – 52, 56, 57, 65 – 73, 77 – 80, 84, 91 – 92, 101, 114 – 116, 123 – 126, 128, 130, 132 – 142, 154 – 162, 168, 171, 178 – 179; ethics of 32 – 33; hopelessness 12 – 21, 30 – 31, 34,

40 – 41, 45, 48 – 49, 61, 68 – 69, 91 – 92, 117 – 118, 123, 133 – 134, 138, 142, 163 Horkheimer, Max 108 hospice care see palliative care human dignity 8, 41, 61, 63, 129, 142, 176 human rights 49, 51, 53, 63 – 65, 99, 107, 119, 126, 129, 134, 146 images 1 – 3, 7 – 9, 14, 17 – 21, 24, 30, 42, 89 – 100, 102, 125, 133 – 142, 162, 175, 178 – 179; of God/imago dei 12 – 13, 40, 89, 99 – 101, 168, 171, 173 – 178 imagination 1 – 3, 9 – 10, 13 – 14, 21, 23, 24, 45 – 56, 88, 90, 113, 121 – 122, 137, 141, 162; of God 179 immanence 20, 66, 133, 146, 150, 156 indigenous peoples 15, 26, 48 – 56, 58, 92, 96 Inga, Ingrid 54 interreligious 51, 55, 134, 136 Irenaeus 17, 50, 170 Islam 35, 72, 97, 134 – 135, 147; Islamic eschatology 105; Islamic State 16, 42 Jackelén, Antje 68, 75, 82, 83, 84, 138, 156 – 157 Jaspers, Karl 36 – 37, 39, 140, 143 Jerusalem 94; heavenly 107, 123 Jesus Christ see Christ Joachim of Fiore 5 John, Saint 9 – 10, 122, 132, 168, 170, 171, 175, 177, 178 Johnson-Debaufre, Melanie 25 John the Baptist 168 Jones, Van 53 Judaism 4, 5, 8, 38 – 39, 42, 89, 94, 96, 99, 108, 147; Jewish eschatology 5, 89, 105, 108; persecution of Jews 36 – 40, 121, 123 Judgement Day see final judgement justice 6, 16, 20, 35, 49, 51, 126, 134, 141 – 142, 178; injustice 15, 52, 90, 92, 141 – 142, 156 Kaemmerer, Ludwig 118 kairos 3 – 4; see also time Kant, Immanuel 6 – 7, 22, 36, 107, 149 Karl V, Emperor 114 Keller, Catherine 25, 46 King, Martin Luther 146 Klein, Naomi 49 – 51, 126

186 Index Kollwitz, Käthe 19, 116 – 122, 126, 129 Krebs, Angelika 107 Land, Norman E. 98 Last Judgement see final judgement late modernity see modernity, late Lepsius, Sabine 118 Levinas, Emmanuel 75 liberation 3 – 4, 7 – 8, 10, 13 – 14, 18, 21, 24, 42 – 43, 65, 89 – 93, 99 – 103, 105, 125, 130, 176, 178 – 179 Liebermann, Max 119 life after death 21, 39, 66, 69 – 71, 73 – 74, 82, 98, 133, 137, 139, 159 – 161, 169, 174, 176, 178 Linné, Carl von 125 Løgstrup, Knud Ejler 40, 84, 125 love 2, 4, 6, 20, 25, 40, 51 – 52, 61 – 62, 69, 71, 76, 78, 80, 96, 118, 134, 138, 140 – 142, 153, 159, 168, 171 – 172, 178 Luther, Martin 39, 171, 176 MacFarlane, Robert 47 Marcion 179 Margaret of Antioch 97 mass murder 16, 30 – 33, 41 Master Erhart 126 Matthew, Saint 4, 98 McFague, Sallie 50 McKibben, Bill 47 Meakin, Christopher 134 medical ethics see ethics, medical memory 1 – 3, 8 – 10, 13, 53; collective 10, 23, 129; of God 161 – 162 messianism 5, 8, 23, 24, 89 Metz, Johann Baptist 8 – 9, 23, 105 millenarianism/millenarians 30, 35 millenialism 5 – 6, 15; post- 32 miracles 2 – 3, 128, 158 misery 19, 40, 41, 48, 114 – 119, 126 modernity 4, 9, 14 – 15, 17 – 18, 36, 54, 65 – 67, 71 – 79, 84, 85, 88, 90, 93 – 95, 103, 177; late 4, 11, 15, 17 – 18, 38, 67 – 69, 72 – 80, 83, 84, 90 – 92, 101 – 102, 107; post- 72, 84, 90 – 91; technological 9, 95 modern medicine 18, 63 – 65, 74 – 80, 82 modern society 62, 72, 83, 85, 94; see also modernity Moe-Lobeda, Cynthia 49 – 50 Moltmann, Jürgen 6, 17, 23, 32 – 33, 39 – 42, 43, 45 – 46, 48, 56, 66, 105 music 31, 88 – 89, 121 – 122

Nagel, Thomas 148 – 157 Nakashima Brock, Rita 50 Napoleon 114 – 116, 126, 128 – 129 national identity 115 – 116 nationalism 102 natural disasters 6, 12, 31 – 32, 40, 48 – 51, 101, 123, 126, 155 Nelson, Derek R. 38 – 40, 43 new creation see creation, new creation/creatio nova Nietzsche, Friedrich 114, 149, 169 Noah 53 NODAPL 54 Nordic 13, 15 – 16, 25, 26, 32 – 33, 35, 63, 71 – 80, 81, 85, 107 Northcott, Michael 6, 23, 104 oil see fossil fuels; petroleum Origen 5 Ortega-Aponte, Elias 25 Pallasmaa, Juhani 102 palliative care 63, 78, 81, 82 paradise 3, 5, 50, 98, 124 – 125 Paris Accord 56 Parker, Rebecca Ann 50 past 1 – 3, 8 – 10, 13 – 14, 20 – 21, 23, 41, 46 – 48, 52, 56, 67, 90, 92, 99, 104, 105, 116, 125, 129, 148, 156, 164; see also history Paul, Saint 80, 89, 97, 99 – 100, 107, 108, 160 – 161, 168, 179, 180 peace  16, 20, 23, 30, 108, 123, 126, 134, 136 – 137, 141 – 142, 146, 178 petroleum 17, 45 – 55; see also fossil fuels Philippi 99 – 100 Phillips, Dewi Z. 67, 69 – 71, 74 Picht, Georg 104 pilgrimage 7, 14, 19, 93, 98, 107, 124 place 1, 7 – 8, 14, 17, 24, 30, 46, 50, 52, 69 – 70, 74, 89, 91 – 96, 100 – 102, 104, 105, 124, 172 pneumatology 9 – 10, 24 polarisation 20, 133, 135 – 136 politics 2, 5 – 7, 10 – 11, 13, 16 – 17, 23, 30 – 41, 46, 49 – 50, 72, 75, 82, 85 – 86, 89, 95 – 96, 100, 107, 119, 142; see also geopolitics; theopolitics Pope Francis 13 postmetropolis 92 – 95 postmodernity see modernity, postpost-secularism see secularism, post-

Index  187 power 4, 6 – 10, 13, 23, 24, 37, 42, 47, 50 – 51, 53, 74, 90 – 96, 100, 104, 105, 135 – 137, 142, 148 – 149, 153, 162, 169, 171, 176, 179; powerlessness 4, 6, 20, 51, 91, 96, 134, 138, 142 present 1 – 10, 19, 21, 24, 32, 35, 41 – 42, 52, 62, 65 – 67, 83, 90 – 94, 105 – 106, 113 – 114, 139, 146 – 148, 150, 156, 161, 164, 178 process theology see eschatology, process prophecy 4, 6, 8, 23, 42, 45, 51, 53, 55, 56, 124, 155, 169 Qumran 31 Raphael 115 – 116, 128 reality 10, 18, 22, 32 – 33, 39, 50, 66 – 67, 71, 74, 77, 79 – 80, 83, 104, 106, 123, 139, 149 – 151, 155, 161 rebirth 168 – 171 reconciliation 20, 37 – 38, 41 – 42, 52 – 55, 133 – 142, 149, 178 redemption 41, 46, 50, 92, 136, 140, 159 re-enchantment 51 refugees 40, 42, 101, 132, 136, 142 reincarnation 169 religion 10, 11, 15, 18, 20 – 22, 32, 46, 49, 51 – 56, 57, 62, 67, 69, 71 – 79, 82, 84, 85, 92 – 96, 101, 105, 106, 114, 119, 124, 126, 133 – 138, 146, 148 – 149, 155 – 156, 168; see also belief; faith remembrance see memory respect 11, 49, 52, 56, 63, 129, 135 – 136, 161 responsibility 3, 14, 34 – 37, 48, 53, 63, 68, 75, 101, 138; see also guilt resurrection 2, 12, 21, 22, 40, 42, 70, 133, 137, 139, 146 – 147, 157 – 162, 170, 174 – 179 Rilke, Rainer Maria 19, 89, 100, 102 – 103, 107, 108 rituals 4, 55 – 56, 80, 154 Roman Catholicism see Catholicism Roman Empire 36, 89, 99 – 100, 114 – 115, 123 Rossing, Barbara 24, 100 Ruyter, Knut W. 76 – 78 salvation 9, 13 – 14, 18, 89 – 92, 97 – 99, 105, 107, 137, 139 – 140, 159, 168, 174, 179; soteriology 13, 18, 89 – 90, 169

Scandinavia(n) 20, 26, 133 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 169 Schmidt, Ulla 81 Schmitt, Carl 6, 23, 24, 89, 104 “Schutzmadonna” 126 – 128 Scott, Peter Manley 108 Scranton, Roy 52 Scruton, Roger 107 Second Coming see Christ, return of secularism 2, 17 – 18, 30, 39, 63 – 66, 71 – 80, 84, 85, 86, 123, 138, 149; post- 2, 17 – 18, 72 – 80, 82, 83, 84, 85; secularisation 18, 71 – 73, 77, 79, 169 Sheldrake, Philip 108 sin 6, 36 – 40, 92, 136 – 138, 140, 176 Skrimshire, Stefan 11, 24 Smith, Jonathan Z. 94 Sobrino, Jon 48 Solnit, Rebecca 50 – 51, 57, 123 – 126 soteriology see salvation soul 5, 12, 41, 70, 162, 169 space 4 – 5, 7, 10, 14, 18 – 19, 21, 24, 47, 51, 53, 69, 84, 88 – 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 113, 121 – 122, 125, 128, 133, 158, 179 spatiality 7 – 8, 15, 18 – 19, 49, 88 – 103 spatial turn 8, 93, 110, 112 Spielberg, Steven 10 spirit see Holy Spirit spirituality 10, 21, 49, 55, 92, 94, 96, 100 – 101, 153 Stalin, Joseph 2, 123 – 124 Standing Rock 54 – 56 Stenström, Hanna 139 Stern, Nicholas 11 stoicism 17, 32 Stoltenberg, Jens 34 suffering 4, 6 – 8, 11, 14, 17, 19, 24, 40, 48, 51 – 54, 61 – 66, 69 – 70, 74 – 75, 78, 80, 89, 91 – 93, 98 – 99, 105, 121, 132 – 139, 142, 153, 156, 159, 169; of God 8, 24, 40, 50, 137, 139 Svenungsson, Jayne 6, 24 Syria 16, 20, 32, 40, 42, 133 – 134 Tanner, Kathryn 90 Taubes, Jacob 5 – 7, 89, 104, 108 Taylor, Charles 84, 85 – 86 technology see modernity, technological teleology 151 – 154; see also eschatology, teleological theopolitics 6, 14

188 Index theosis 170, 175 Tillich, Paul 82, 93, 102, 105 time 1, 3 – 8, 10 – 16, 18 – 19, 46 – 47, 53, 55, 65 – 70, 74, 79, 82, 83, 84, 88 – 96, 99 – 100, 103 – 104, 105, 109, 113, 121, 125, 133 – 142, 158, 179; end-times 1 – 3, 12, 19 – 21, 65 – 66, 101, 113, 116, 118, 121, 123 – 124 Tinker, George E. 92 tradition 10, 11, 15, 19 – 20, 34 – 36, 54, 69, 72, 76, 77, 83, 89, 92, 94, 114, 137; Christian 3, 7, 9, 16, 18, 30, 36 – 42, 45, 62, 61, 79 – 80, 93, 134 – 139, 146, 159 transcendence 6, 38, 50, 66, 91, 96, 99, 113, 126, 156, 169 Trier, Lars von 31 Trinity 9, 13, 101, 152, 161, 171; Trinitarianism 5, 9, 10, 13, 24 Troeltsch, Ernst 14 – 15 trust 3 – 4, 12, 15, 18, 20 – 21, 68 – 69, 71, 78, 80, 84, 126, 138, 141 – 142, 179; trustworthiness 20, 52, 134, 138, 141 Tuan, Yi-Fu 96

utopia 94 – 95, 107; utopianisation 19, 89, 93 – 95, 107; utopianism 6, 32, 121, 124, 155 Utøya 30, 33 – 34

Ullmann, Linn 17, 61 – 62, 78 UN (United Nations) 10

Žižek, Slavoj 24 zombies 31, 42

Vicenzotti, Vera 107 Wagner, Richard 18, 88 Wallace, Mark 51 Wallace-Wells, David 155, 163 “Weber-Cycle, The” 19, 116 – 119 Weber, Max 92, 105 Westerlund, Katarina 65 – 66, 70 Westhelle, Vitor 7 – 8, 14, 89, 93, 133 Wiles, Maurice 160 – 161 Wilhelm II, Emperor 118 – 119 Wingren, Gustaf 147, 153 Wolff, Christian 125 worldviews 15, 18, 20, 31 – 32, 35, 41, 64, 72, 80, 83, 92, 96, 102, 115, 134, 135, 137 – 138, 148 – 152, 155, 159 Wright, Georg Henrik von 66 Younan, Munib 133