Collaborative eschatology. Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan suggests dropping this term at your next social event for an interesting conversation starter.
Eschaton (eschatological) is just an ordinary Greek word, that means the end. If you are in line at a grocery store, you are looking for the eschaton—the end of the line.
But it’s also a loaded word in evangelical circles because of the relevance that has been placed on it regarding the divine end of the physical world.
Yet Crossan informs us that eschaton is not being used to refer to the end of time, as we 21st-century people would understand it. In the ancient world, no Jew or Christian or Pagan could imagine the end of the world as we can, given the state of climate change or the threat of nuclear weapons:
We know how to do it Atomically, Biologically, Chemically, Demographically and Ecologically-and we are only at E!
Eschaton was never about the divine destruction of the physical world. In the King James Version of the Bible, the phrase end of the world is repeated in Matthew 13:39-40 and 24:3 and 20. However, the Greek term translated there as world is actually aion, from which we get our word eon which means a period, a time, an era.
What then did eschaton mean to the first century Jew? For ancient Jews and Christians, only Yahweh could destroy the earth—but he wouldn’t do that because he declared it good. No, they did not believe that Yahweh would destroy it. What was going to end was this present era of evil and injustice, suffering and oppression.
Eschatology spoke of a physical world, an animal world, and a social world transmuted from violence to non-violence. Rather than being an escape from this world to a dis-embodied paradise, eschaton is about the divine clean up of this world.
For first-century Jews and Christians, earth to heaven is actually upside down—Yahweh’s kingdom is heaven to earth. In the Lord’s prayer, the kingdom of God is about the will of Yahweh on earth as it is in heaven.
In the ancient Jewish experience the world was unjust and they kept getting more than their fair share of injustice. The Persians, the Assyrians, Medians and the Babylonians and the Macedonians...and now the Romans. Our faith they say, tells us that Yahweh is just and in control of the universe...
...but in our experience, the world is not this way.
Therefore, what the first century Jew was really asking is, when is this injustice and oppression going to end? and When is Yahweh going to do something about it? Their hope and faith demanded that Yahweh would overcome some day and, hopefully, in their lifetime.
In the same way many in Ukraine now are asking:
How long will this injustice continue? When will it end? Yahweh, when will you save us?
Everyone at that time was saying, including John the Baptist, any day now it’s happening! But Jesus comes up with this extraordinary claim that took them all by surprise:
It's not coming soon, it's here already!
Crossan helps us imagine someone in the crowd hearing this…
Jesus, did you say here, or did you say near? How can you say it's here—look around, nothing has changed! What’s-his-face is still on his throne in Rome and Antipas is still in his palace. Nothing has changed and you’re claiming it has arrived?
...Putin is still shelling us and destroying our homes and killing our children...
...The Taliban have taken over Afghanistan and are continuing their extreme oppression...
...11,000 Yemin civilians have been killed and injured with 13 million now facing starvation….
How can you say the kingdom is already here.
And Jesus answers through a combination of passages:
Don’t you see what has been happening? You’ve been waiting for Yahweh to intervene by divine intervention. You’ve been imploring Him to do it for you…and yet He’s been waiting for you to do it with Him!
And this is still true after 2000 years.
Everyone is waiting for Yahweh’s divine intervention. Waiting for Yahweh to rescue us from our suffering world that He has stamped good.
He’s not telling us, wait and be ready—and when it gets really bad down there, I’ll rescue you in the nick of time. No. Rather...
It. Will. Not. Happen. Nothing will happen. You will not experience the kingdom of justice and peace unless you collaborate with Us.
Thus, the way of Jesus looks like this:
The Church will not be able to do it without the Holy Three, and the Holy Three will not do it without us.
This was summarized by two African Bishops—a millennium and a half between them and they summarized Christianity as succinctly as Jesus did.
God made you without you—God will not justify you without you.
North Africa: Augustine bishop of Hippo Regeis, in modern Algeria.
God without you, will not, as you without God, cannot.
South Africa: Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of Capetown
This, says Crossan, is the heart of Christianity and the message of Jesus. It’s a participatory kingdom, a participatory eschaton where nothing will happen without collaboration.
This doesn’t mean we can just mention Yahweh’s name but really doing it our own way. This, after all, is what it means to take Yahweh's name in vain - and Church history has been stained with the blood of this transgression.
So then what do we do? What, exactly, does collaboration look like? What are the rules of engagement?
"When a tradition has been going on as everyone expects it to, and someone comes along and causes a shift in our worldview…it can be scary because we don’t know where it's going. The old thing was a comfortable pair of shoes."
Everyone says…war brings peace. Violence is the only way.
But the Holy Three shout out loud Not this way!
Follow me.
“The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but [good] news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures.”
― Walter Wink, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millenium
Resources
John Dominic Crossan: God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome Then and Now. P 78-88
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