T CONOC F Religión ESCATOLOGÍA Y EPIST PDF

Eschatology and Epistemology

William J. Abraham
The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology
Edited by Jerry L. Walls
Print Publication Date: Dec 2007

Subject: Religion, Theology and Philosophy of Religion, Christianity
Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195170498.013.0035
Abstract and Keywords
Eschatology represents the climax of a rich narrative of creation and redemption in which
God as supreme agent preserves and restores the world from its collapse into sin and
death. Eschatological claims have been deeply contested in Christian theology and philos
ophy in the recent past. In part, the worries about eschatology have often been driven by
epistemological concerns that have deep roots in the beginning of modern philosophy.
Some leading theologians have made eschatology the heartbeat of their theology, as in
the case of Jürgen Moltmann. Wolfhart Pannenberg went further and made it central to
his epistemology of theology. Epistemology is generally understood as the critical investi
gation of rationality, justification, and knowledge. While the intellectual omnicompetence
of natural science has always been challenged, eschatology in the modern period has
lived under the shadow of forms of positivism that have materially and formally cast
doubt on its intrinsic credibility. The retrieval of a robust vision of eschatology goes hand
in hand with the retrieval of a substantial vision of divine revelation.
Keywords: God, epistemology, creation, theology, philosophy, rationality, positivism, divine revelation
Preliminary Definitions and Distinctions

Classical Christian beliefs about the future fall into two categories represented by the dis
tinction between personal and cosmic eschatology. On the one hand, the individual believ
er survives the drama of death and persists in a divinely appointed state prior to the final
fulfillment of God's will for each person. On the other hand, Christ, the savior of the
world, returns as king of all creation, bringing the whole created order into harmony with
God's redemptive design. As such, eschatology represents the climax of a rich narrative
of creation and redemption in which God as supreme agent preserves and restores the
world from its collapse into sin and death. Eschatology is the teleology of redeemed cre
ation in the final appearing of God's kingdom. It is captured in a network of claims that
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date: 17 May 2020

include such topics as purgatory, the beatific vision, the final resurrection, heaven and
hell, and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth.1
Eschatological claims have been deeply contested in Christian theology and philosophy in
the recent past. In part, the worries about eschatology have often been driven by episte
mological concerns that have deep roots in the beginning of modern philosophy. The gen
eral tenor in the recent past has been one of skepticism.2 General worries about whether
we can know anything at all about the future and about grand metaphysical issues have
combined with more regional worries about the warrants for specifically Christian escha
tological convictions to make (p. 582) eschatology something of an intellectual embarrass
ment. Populist forms of eschatological speculation have added to the difficulties for the
theologian. So too has the general assumption in biblical studies that the early Christians
were mistaken in their expectations about the early return of Christ. Despite these devel
opments, some leading theologians have made eschatology the heartbeat of their theolo
gy, as in the case of Jürgen Moltmann. Wolfhart Pannenberg went further and made it
central to his epistemology of theology.3
Epistemology is generally understood as the critical investigation of rationality, justifica

tion, and knowledge.4 Epistemological concerns are commonly distinguished from con
ceptual worries about the coherence of the claims advanced. Christian eschatology clear
ly assumes the coherence of divine action and of personal survival of the individual after
death; were these to be undermined on the grounds that they are nonsensical, the central
narrative claims of eschatology would collapse immediately. Yet it is not always possible
to keep these worries at bay in the epistemology of theology, for they touch in a very fun
damental way the basic rationality of the claims advanced. This is especially the case with
respect to the question of personal survival in that many have looked to the resurrection
of the body as critical in fending off conceptual worries about the immortality of the soul
and the cognitive meaning of all theological claims.
The Pressure from Positivism

While the intellectual omnicompetence of natural science has always been challenged, es
chatology in the modern period has lived under the shadow of forms of positivism that
have materially and formally cast doubt on its intrinsic credibility. Clearly, developments
in cosmology and biology called into question conventional ways of displaying the narra
tive of creation. Robust forms of atheism with competing accounts of the origins and end
of creation replaced the various Christian world views that were central to Europe until
the nineteenth century. Christian theologians met this challenge with varying degrees of
success by suitable revisions in the content of theology, most especially in the story of the
origins. Until recently, the story of the end has received much less attention. In this in
stance the problem infects the imagination as much as it does the intellect. It is far from
easy to find a way to think of one's own survival in the face of bodily death; equally, it is
difficult to imagine the end of the world in the face of its long, slow collapse into oblivion.
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The scientific and secular background beliefs of Western culture exert enormous pressure
at this point; theologians often feel disoriented and dismayed.
The pressure was most acute in the critique of theology developed by the logical posi
tivists. Whereas earlier philosophers, like David Hume, were skeptical about the truth of
theology, positivists transposed their skepticism into a theory of (p. 583) meaning. Thus,
theistic claims were thought to be lacking in cognitive significance essentially because
they were not in principle verifiable by sense experience. Antony Flew famously and ele
gantly transposed A. J. Ayer's development of this view into a challenge that focused on
the unfalsifiability of religious claims.5
However, John Hick explored the possibility of appeal to eschatology as a way of meeting
the positivist trial head-on. He argued that positivists had failed to see that the Christian
theist was not committed to mere theism but to a rich vision that posited a resurrected
life after death that could meet the requirement of verification. In this life, there are no
differences in empirical expectation between atheists and theists; they are like two travel
ers going down the same road who expect different outcomes in the final destination.
“Christian doctrine postulates an unambiguous state of existence in patria as well as our
present ambiguous state in via.”6 “The theist does and the atheist does not expect that
when history is completed it will be seen to have led to a particular end-state and to have
fulfilled a specific purpose, namely that of creating ‘children of God.’ ”7 Suddenly, out of
the blue, eschatology seemed like an asset rather than a liability. The appeal to eschatol
ogy had been anticipated by Ayer.
It is common to find belief in a transcendent god conjoined with belief in an after-

life. But, in the form from which it usually takes, the content of the belief is not a
genuine hypothesis. To say that we do not ever die, or that the state of death is
merely a state of prolonged insensibility, is indeed to express a significant proposi
tion, though all the available evidence goes to show that it is false. But to say that
there is something imperceptible inside man, which is his soul or his real self, and
that it goes on living after he is dead, is to make a metaphysical assertion which
has no more factual content than the assertion that there is a transcendent god.8
This kind of anticipated rejoinder failed to undermine Hick's argument because Hick ap
pealed not to the survival of the soul but to the resurrection of the dead, a move that
dovetailed very nicely with the standard biblical scholarship of the time, which dismissed
the immortality of the soul as a Greek imposition on Christian theology. However, Kai
Nielsen developed a telling rejoinder to Hick. Nielsen pointed out that the nonbeliever
might well be surprised by the experience of a resurrected life after death, but that such
experience need not necessarily lead him or her to believe that God brought it about. In
the afterlife, positivists would have exactly the same problem with talk of divine action as
they do in the present life. “We still do not know what is meant by saying that a post-mod
ern encounter with Jesus counts as the indirect (but sole) evidence for the existence of
God.”9 Hick had simply transposed the problem of the meaning of theological discourse to
the life to come; he had not met the challenge at all.10
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Technically, Nielsen was correct. Experience of life after death, however carefully speci
fied in theistic terms, say, as communion with God, might always in principle be reinter
preted in secular terms. However, what is interesting is that Nielsen's unbeliever would
find himself or herself taken aback; they would be surprised at their continued existence
and forced to find a way to undermine the (p. 584) new experiential evidence; the burden
of proof would shift. This opened the door for a weaker version of the appeal to eschato
logical phenomena. Life after death could in principle provide confirmation for theistic
claims without reaching all the way to verification. In turn, this suggested that experi
ences in this life here and now could also confirm theistic claims, provided, of course,
that the positivist critique as a whole could be rebutted or undermined. Thus, elements
that could prove in time to be counterrevolutionary in the debate about the justification of
religious belief were lurking unnoticed in the wings in the appeal to eschatology. These
wait to be fully explored even yet.
In the meantime, the positivist's more general restrictions on the nature of religious lan
guage collapsed over time. This happened not because of the compelling rejoinders to
both verifiability and falsifiability in the case of religious language; nor even because the
unpopular notion of the survival of the soul after death was rescued from criticism; it hap
pened because of general developments in the philosophy of language. By the late 1960s,
the decks had been cleared for a whole new era in philosophy of religion in which the ra
tionality of religious belief produced a wealth of material that has still to be fully assimi
lated in philosophy and theology. This shift in perspective evoked and was enriched by
wider developments in epistemology. Equally fresh work in biblical studies opened up
new vistas on the meaning of eschatological claims within Christianity. Consequently, we
currently stand in the midst of a stream of inquiry that threatens to become a flood.
The Importance of God's Wider Intentions and

Plans
One of the problems in dealing with eschatological beliefs is the recurring tendency to
isolate such beliefs from the web of beliefs in which they are embedded. It is easy to dis
miss Christian beliefs about the future once they are cut off from the rich vision and nar
rative of divine action to which they belong. It is also easy to ignore the way in which we
sometimes use eschatological language in everyday speech. Thus, we speak of the week
from hell, or of places being a little piece of heaven on earth, or of having to endure pur
gatory in our work last year. More dramatically, we deploy eschatological language when
certain kinds of experience take us to the limits of endurance. Thus, when we lose a lover,
the stars cease to shine and the moon refuses to give its light. When hit by unspeakable
events, we reach for apocalyptic language to do justice to them. It is no accident that es
chatology comes back into fashion in Christian circles in times of international crises, as
happened with the First and Second World Wars. The crucial observation to make here is
that we take the language of the end and use it metaphorically or analogically to depict
(p. 585) events here and now. According to George Caird, this is exactly what is happening
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in the New Testament.11 The description of the fall of Jerusalem, for example, is laced
with eschatological tropes that bring out its significance in the great sweep of God's plan
to judge and redeem the world. The same applies even more so to claims about Jesus of
Nazareth. The centerpiece of the gospel is that the future kingdom of God has already ar
rived in his life, death, and resurrection. Believers can enter that kingdom now in the
Spirit through faith and repentance. The future planned by God is not fully realized in his
tory, but it has been inaugurated.
This crucial theological insight was clearly foreshadowed in Rudolf Bultmann's insistence
that the language of eschatology should really be understood as depicting the radical de
cision and inner transformation evoked by the preaching of the Christian gospel. While
Bultmann's exegesis and theology were driven by questionable presuppositions, he was
capturing a pivotal element in Christian eschatology. To speak of the arrival of the king
dom of God in Jesus Christ is to speak not just of the future but also of the present. The
cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ are experienced by believers as present realities.
The believer undergoes death and resurrection now in baptism and in the reception of the
Holy Spirit. The future has already been inaugurated in experiences in the present.
Bultmann's radical fideism may well have prevented him from perceiving the epistemic
significance of such experiences. Like Karl Barth, he was too well informed of the pitfalls
of the appeal to religious experience in liberal Protestantism to want to pursue such a line
of inquiry. Even though he was resolute in developing a theology that would not run afoul
of the norms and content of science and history, he set up a radical antithesis between
faith and reason.
In an important contribution, Kathryn Tanner has proposed an eschatology that is clearly

close to Bultmann's in its focus on the realization of eternal life here and now but that is
much more open to the integration of scientific predictions and faith. Just as creation has
been understood as God's upholding the universe at every moment and not in an instant
of its beginning, so eschatology should be understood as the attainment of a life lived
with God now and not in some future state of blessedness beyond death. “Eternal life
means a deepened affirmation that one's relation with God is not conditional; it is not con
ditioned even by biological death or the cessation of community and cosmos.”12 “Eternal
life is a present reality; we possess now, in an unconditional fashion, life in God as a
source of all good and need not wait for death to pass from the realm of death to that of
life.”13 The model for this life is to be found in the incarnation. In the hypostatic union, Je
sus is the one who lives in God; he is, as a human being, without existence independent of
God. By grace, human agents can approximate to this kind of existence. The result is a
spatialized rather than a temporalized eschatology. Tanner's proposal is especially subtle
in the way it combines a radical, ongoing dependence on God, no matter what happens,
with a vigorous commitment to action for the better in this life. Indeed, action on this
analysis does not depend on hope of success.
Tanner skillfully avoids the theological and epistemological reductionism that can readily
lurk below the surface in treatments of eschatology. Theological claims (p. 586) can all too
quickly be reduced to claims about encounters with God here and now; and reason can
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just as speedily be reduced to a favored vision of science and history. Neither option is
compelling. The encounter with God evoked by the gospel and the ministry of the church
is set in a rich narrative of creation and redemption that is critical to unpacking the expe
rience of faith. The forms of explanation and argument deployed in science and history
are an important part of the cognitive landscape we naturally inhabit, but they by no
means exhaust the territory as a whole. Tanner's concern is to keep in place a robust
commitment to grace and to continuous divine action in the life of faith. Her focus is more
on conceptual possibilities than on shoring up the positive epistemic status of eschatolog
ical claims.
The Importance of Epistemic Fit

To enter that terrain, we need at this stage to apply the principle of appropriate epistemic
fit to make serious progress. The principle of appropriate epistemic fit insists that queries
about the truth or falsehood of any claim should match the kind of claim on hand. Thus,
inductive claims should not be held hostage to deductive norms; historical claims should
not be dismissed because they fail to satisfy some vision of natural science; perceptual
claims should not be taken as a covert form of testimony; and so on. Discriminating judg
ment requires that historical claims be evaluated in terms of historical norms, mathemati
cal claims in terms of mathematical conventions, testimony in terms of testimonial crite
ria, and the like. This applies to theology and eschatology. As we noted at the outset, es
chatology is the teleology of redeemed creation in the final appearing of God's kingdom.
At stake is a claim about God's future action in the lives of individuals and the whole cre
ated order. To speak of the end of our lives and of the cosmos is to make claims about
temporal events that embody God's redeeming intentions, which fit into a wider narrative
of God's plans and purposes. If this is correct, then we need to step back and inquire how
we have access to such plans and purposes. If we ignore this strategy, we are likely to
make serious mistakes in sorting through what counts as pertinent considerations in ad
dressing such claims.
Within philosophy, arguments for and against eschatological claims have traditionally
made appeal to some or all of the following: a priori arguments about the nature of the
soul; empirical arguments from, say, near-death experiences; general arguments from the
divine-human relation; arguments from the weight of religious experience and human in
tuitions of hope; and arguments from the requirements of morality. The various forms of
these arguments have been directed to resolving the truth or falsehood of singular propo
sitions about a life to come. (p. 587) Moreover, philosophers have insisted that the force of
the arguments be universally available to everybody. Thus, any appeal to special divine
revelation has been disallowed on the grounds that it lies outside the purview of philoso
phy or because it involves appeal to special pleading restricted to the chosen few.
Divine revelation is indeed a unique epistemic concept, but this simply means that, like
other general epistemic concepts such as reason or experience, it must be handled with
appropriate circumspection. More important, it is a violation of the principle of epistemic
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fit to restrict the range of arguments in the traditional manner. The task of philosophy is
to discern what kinds of argument are appropriate to eschatological claims rather than to
lay down the law in advance of our investigation. This calls into question standard demar
cations between philosophy and theology that are long overdue. Happily, this judgment is
borne out by the fact that, for example, philosophers of science have learned over the
years to pay attention to the actual workings of science rather than simply to legislate
from afar. More generally, while caution is in order, the whole idea of universal reason
has come under strain from a host of quarters in the last generation. What we really need
at this stage is an equally open attitude in the epistemology of theology. To rule out ap
peal to divine revelation in advance, at this point, is not just question begging, it is also
profoundly inappropriate.
We can see this by recalling that eschatological claims are essentially claims about divine
action in the future embedded in a wider narrative of creation and redemption. Eschatol
ogy is constituted by the fulfillment of divine promise. In the nature of the case, we are
dependent on claims about divine speech acts in the past; indeed, these are pivotal in
sorting through the very content of such claims. Reliance on special divine revelation is
inescapable because it is God who critically decides what will happen in the future, and
we only know what he will do insofar as he has revealed this. If God refrains from telling
us, in his words, what are his plans, we are surely very much in the dark. General argu
ments, say, from the character and the attributes of God are not out of place; but their
place is secondary and subordinate.
Consider an analogy. It is the professor who knows what questions will show up in the fi
nal examination because it is she that chooses them; others know insofar as she reveals
what she plans to do. Such revelation generally takes the form of appropriate warnings
and promises. To be sure, from the general tenor of the professor's actions, some stu
dents may well become adept at developing robust speculations about final examinations.
These may happily be aided and abetted by inferences from the character of the profes
sor; tough professors often ask tough questions. The general epistemic principle at issue
here is that the future actions of agents are not something available to present percep
tion or secure inference and can only be discerned from the self-revelation of the agent.
This clearly applies in the case of future actions of God.
Yet generalizations about the crucial place of divine revelation only take us so far epis
temically. They identify the formal warrant for our claims; they do not (p. 588) supply the
specific content of the claims at stake. Radical particularity is crucial at this point. There
is no escaping the actual and specific claims advanced by different religious traditions
and by the competing interpretations of those claims within them. Each needs to be ex
plored and evaluated on the merits. Given the complexity and pluralism we contingently
confront, it is tempting at this point to deploy global defeaters that will eliminate the in
tellectual labor involved. Such motivation may well have fueled the traditional move to
rule out all claims to revelation. While global defeaters demand to be taken seriously, they
should not be allowed to shut down the conversation. Epistemic nuclear strikes are possi
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ble, but they have to be carefully developed; and there is no guarantee that they will ex
plode and ignite the damage they are supposed to cause.
Consider, for example, the global defeaters recently suggested by Alan Segal. After a his
torical review of beliefs about life after death in Western religions, Segal argues that we
cannot take these beliefs as literally true. This is the case because there is such variety
and contradiction, because the differing beliefs mirror our cultural and social needs, be
cause such beliefs are best seen as expressing our transcendent values, and because reli
gious beliefs generally are really works of art rather than networks of propositions that
are true or false of themselves “and not part of the discourse of propositions and syllogis
tic truths.”14 He also suggests that treating them as fictional is an antidote to fanaticism.
Speaking more generally of any appeal to divine revelation, he writes: “God may be send
ing revelations but we are talking to ourselves when we interpret our scriptures. We are
telling ourselves what the Scriptures must mean in the current circumstance; it is not
God speaking to us directly.”15
These arguments either singly or together are not persuasive. It suffices here to note the
obvious problems they face. If, as all agree, belief in a life after death is by its very nature
not susceptible to immediate empirical verification or falsification, we should expect enor
mous diversity and conflict in the proposals presented. Equally, we should anticipate that,
at times, such beliefs do indeed mirror our cultural and social needs; to move from this to
their falsehood is to commit the genetic fallacy. To claim that religious beliefs do not in
volve propositions is to advance a contested view of the nature of religious discourse that
has not withstood the philosophical scrutiny of the last forty years. Moreover, developing
a fictional account of religious discourse may indeed causally undermine the fanaticism of
some religious believers, but this is not a robust reason to adopt such a vision of religious
discourse. In fact, fanaticism may well increase in some quarters if religious believers
adopt this recommendation, for they may well feel that they are swamped by a sea of
Western liberal revisionists. Finally, it is much too easy to dismiss rival claims to divine
revelation simply because there is disagreement about the site or meaning of divine reve
lation as reflected, say, in the teachings of the various scriptures. There are all sorts of
reasons that folk will disagree on these matters other than the simple hypothesis that we
are talking to ourselves when we interpret scriptures. Generally, in religious matters, the
best way forward in adjudicating (p. 589) claims is to allow particular, positive claims and
their particular appropriate defeaters to proceed without prejudice or restriction. The
same principle applies to the specific evidence and arguments that will be deployed in the
debate about eschatology.
Divine Revelation and Eschatology

Eschatological claims in the Christian tradition rest on special revelation mediated in the
scriptures and the church. Christians fundamentally believe as they do because of the
promises of God in the Gospels. In and through the promises of the Gospels, initially con
firmed by the resurrection of Jesus, God reveals his intentions for the future. As John
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Polkinghorne remarks, “If, as I believe, any hope of a destiny beyond death can ultimately
rest only on the faithfulness of God the Creator, then appeal to the revelatory insights by
which the divine character has been made known is absolutely fundamental to the discus
sion.”16 The fitting response to such promises is hope rather than mere expectation or
prediction. To be sure, there are differences of judgment on the detailed propositional
content of that hope. These differences in turn reflect different epistemological assump
tions about the relative merits of, say, the church or tradition in sorting out the meaning
of divine revelation. However, it is important not to exaggerate the differences. The
church's long-standing, general vision of the future both for the individual and for the uni
verse as a whole is not in question.
It is easy to miss the remarkable degree of consensus that was formally and canonically
hammered out by the church across the early centuries when we add in the radical differ
ences that emerge in the theologies of the modern period. Many theologians abandoned
divine revelation for a host of reasons. Not surprisingly, they gave up on eschatology alto
gether and denied the canonical claims of the church about life after death and the end of
the world. It is an interesting feature of the modern period that many leading theologians
simply ceased to believe in eschatology as generally understood. Others turned to specu
lative philosophy, say, in the process tradition to shore up the loss. Thus, objective immor
tality was reinterpreted to mean that all our actions are preserved in the memory of God
and taken up for all eternity into the future of the universe. Still others looked to margin
al forms of science or to other religions for resources in spelling out a revisionist account
of the future. It will be interesting to see how these modern projects will fare in the hands
of those theologians who, inspired by various forms of postmodernity, are skeptical of all
metanarratives. These general developments manifest (p. 590) the fecundity of theology
when divine revelation is called into question or treated in a radically apophatic manner.
They do not in themselves undermine the robust if contested vision of the future that is
spelled out in the great tradition of the church.
Clearly, the retrieval of a robust vision of eschatology goes hand in hand with the re
trieval of a substantial vision of divine revelation.17 Once divine revelation is secure, then
we have access to God's own knowledge of his intentions and actions in the future. The
challenge initially is to secure the identity of divine revelation, but we must not allow this
observation to distract us from the epistemic achievement that lies on the other side of di
vine revelation. Given that in divine revelation we have access to God's own knowledge,
the epistemic consequences are dramatic: we have access to the highest knowledge avail
able. This is why divine revelation evokes such tenacity and fear. Divine revelation cannot
be treated casually or indifferently; it demands total trust and surrender. To the secularist
and the liberal, this kind of response appears dangerous intellectually and politically; it
looks like absolutism run amok. However we deal with the worries of secularists and lib
erals, we cannot resolve them by diluting the epistemic significance of divine revelation.
Revelation as a matter of logic secures knowledge in that it gives us access to divine
knowledge. To express the matter sharply: divine revelation gives us access to a God's-
eye view.
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Agreeing with this standard medieval insight in the epistemology of theology does not
take care of the initial challenge of identifying divine revelation. Recent work on this top
ic has presented two sets of very serious obstacles to any appeal to reason in support of
the authenticity of claims to possess divine revelation. Disciples of Karl Barth have ar
gued that, if we give reasons for the authenticity of divine revelation, then the reasons be
come more ultimate than the divine revelation, and we are committing idolatry.18 Divine
revelation is a matter of ultimate, unconditioned commitment evoked by the Holy Spirit.
Contemporary Reformed epistemologists have taken a somewhat different line.19 If we
give reasons for divine revelation, then we are evidentialists, and we cannot do justice to
the kind of commitment evoked by encountering God. What is needed is an entirely differ
ent epistemological vision in which we abandon evidentialism, secure a more externalist
vision of warrant, and locate all Christian beliefs in a web of belief that is brought about
by the inner working of the Holy Spirit. In the former case, claims to divine revelation be
come arbitrary; all who appeal to divine revelation can secure their own position immedi
ately. In the latter case, divine revelation ceases to have any epistemic significance; all
significant Christian belief is grounded in the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.
Richard Swinburne has worked out the most compelling alternative to these options.20
Swinburne retrieves the early modern claim that miracles constitute genuine evidence for
divine revelation, but he has carefully lodged this within a complex cumulative case argu
ment that takes into account other considerations. What causes pause in any positive
evaluation of his position is that his neutral criteria for special revelation turn out to be
ad hoc and post eventum; there is (p. 591) an obvious circularity in that they fit very nicely
with Swinburne's own Christian convictions about the content and media of divine revela
tion.
We cannot dispense with appeal to divine revelation if we are to secure claims about di
vine action in the future. With the Reformed epistemologists, we can agree that the initial
identification of divine action in revelation can rightly be construed as a form of discern
ment. In this regard, there is continuity between the identification of general revelation
and special revelation. With Barth, we can agree that revelation is a threshold concept;
once applied, it applies simply and totally; moreover, once applied, we are required to ex
plore the implications of divine revelation for our understanding of our own rational ca
pacities. With Swinburne, we can also argue that the initial act of discernment can be
supported and strengthened by a host of considerations both before and afterward.
Hence we should take note of diachronic as well as synchronic considerations. There is a
genuine journey of faith in which certain kinds of data only become available over time in
the journey of faith itself. Special revelation opens up a whole new world in which the fu
ture kingdom of God is made available here and now to the believer. This is the promise
of the Gospels. Our experience of the kingdom in the present confirms the initial identifi
cation of divine revelation; in the future life to come, we will have the final and ultimate
confirmation. By this point, we can see that eschatological considerations clearly have a
role to play epistemologically in the justification of Christian belief. We might say that es
chatology furnishes a network of arguments that confirm the claim that God's kingdom
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has come in Christ and that therein we have been given promises from God of the life to
come.
One way to develop the argument from eschatology is to articulate it in terms of argu
ment from the fulfillment of divine promises. God has promised that, if we come in repen
tance and faith to baptism, we will receive forgiveness and new life. When we do so come,
we actually experience forgiveness and new life. Hence, they can be explained in terms of
the fulfillment of the promises of God, who has the power and intention to make and ful
fill such promises. What is at stake here is an inference to the best explanation deployed
across the threshold of divine revelation.
Another way to develop the argument from eschatology is to put it in terms of an argu
ment from divine power. In the Gospels, we see the power of God at work in his kingdom
to undermine the powers of evil, represented dramatically in cases of demon possession.
We ourselves can experience that power in entry into the kingdom of God in new birth
and resurrection. We can also see the power of the kingdom at work in charismatic phe
nomena in the life of the church in the past and today. Clearly, one way to explain these
phenomena is to do so in terms of the activity of God. In the absence of alternative expla
nations, they furnish good reason to believe in God as the source and power of specific
events within us and around us. Again, we have an inference to the best explanation.
Arguments like these are, of course, corrigible and defeasible; they can be defeated or
undercut in various ways. They are, broadly speaking, empirical in content and spirit.
Their role is confirmatory; they do not offer proof; and they are cumulative in effect. The
primary warrant for Christian belief in the life to (p. 592) come remains faith in divine rev
elation. The believer trusts in the promises of God and assimilates such promises as me
dia of divine revelation. Arguments like these serve to strengthen such trust and to build
up hope; they provide consonant data that increase the believer's sense of certitude; out
side this context, they make little sense and carry next to no weight.
Contrary Evidence
Over against this, there are contrary data that create cognitive dissonance. In the case of
personal eschatology, there is the fact that a human person is intimately related to the
range of physics and chemistry that constitute one's body. Thus, it would appear that we
cannot survive the dissolution of our body. In this instance, we are dealing with a philo
sophical challenge that has been with us for centuries and shows no signs of being re
solved. Contrary to popular opinion and to some philosophical circles, this is not simply a
scientific problem that can be decided by more scientific research. Precisely because it is
philosophical in nature and heavily contested, its weight as a source of cognitive disso
nance for the robust theist's eschatology is limited. At the very least, it is a problem that
everybody has to live with. More positively, the Christian theologian will want to develop
an appropriate account of human nature and destiny that will accommodate the best
knowledge we have but that will also rest on divine revelation and the wisdom of the
church. Currently, mind-body substance dualism, double-aspect (mental/physical) dual
Page 11 of 16
date: 17 May 2020

ism, a retrieval of the medieval vision of the soul as the form of the body, and nonreduc
tive physicalism are in vogue. I leave open how far these options are or are not compati
ble with divine revelation.
The situation with respect to cosmic eschatology is strikingly different. The picture of the
future of the universe currently on offer is grim indeed; it is utterly at odds with the opti
mistic temporal scenario given in the faith of the church. We have an arresting contrast
between what is expected on the basis of faith in divine revelation and what is predicted
on the basis of science.
[T]he universe faces a highly problematic future. Its long-term history is con
trolled by the competing effects of expansion (the “explosive” consequences of the
big bang) and gravity (drawing matter together). These contrasting tendencies are
very evenly balanced and we do not know for certain which will win in the end. If
expansion predominates (the possibility currently favored by most cosmologists),
cosmic history will continue for ever in a world growing steadily colder and more
dilute. Eventually, all will decay into low grade radiation. If gravity predominates,
the present expansion will one day be halted and reversed. What began with a big
bang will end with the big crunch, as the universe implodes into a cosmic melting
pot.21
(p. 593)
It is by no means clear that the theologian can make in this instance the kind of obvious
revision that was possible in the case of the conflict between evolution and divine cre
ation. The standard scientific account of the telos of evolution is compatible prima facie
with a high view of human agents as made in the image of God. The standard scientific
accounts of the end of the world as envisaged by science are prima facie at odds with the
telos of the world as gloriously redeemed by God. We have on our hands a source of sig
nificant dissonance between theology and science.
One way to capture this is by noting that cosmic eschatology heightens and adds to the
problem of evil. The future developments of the cosmos are strikingly at odds with what
one would expect from an omnipotent and benevolent deity. Indeed, well before the end
of the cosmos, human agents will be dead and gone. All the core hydrogen will have been
exhausted and the sun will then change into a red giant that will burn up all surviving life
on earth. So the future looks even more pointless than the gratuitous and horrendous evil
we currently experience. The problem of theodicy becomes even more acute than it nor
mally is.
Epistemological considerations clearly play a role in addressing the problem. If science

alone constitutes our sources of knowledge, then the final future of the earth will in all
probability be as predicted. However, the theologian who insists on divine revelation is
not limited to this narrow base. Revelation and science taken together will yield a differ
ent total vision of the future than science taken on its own. In eschatology, the theologian
is making a claim about God's final acts in nature; there is more here than simply a vision
Page 12 of 16
date: 17 May 2020

of what nature in and of itself, as understood in natural science, will produce. There is
faith in the divine promise, a promise that is to be carried out by an agent with the power
to achieve his good intentions. Faith is not confined to what is available to sight and nat
ural inference; it reaches to possibilities that often stand in intense dissonance with the
latter. Abraham trusted God to make him the father of many nations even when all the
visible evidence was against it (Rom. 4:18–21). The Sadducees who denied a future per
sonal resurrection were chided for ignoring the scriptures and the power of God (Matt.
22:22–24). Likewise, trust in the promises of God concerning the future of the cosmos is
not captive to what we have good reason to believe will happen in the future. “But as it is
written, eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the
things which God has prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 3:9). “What we will be has
not yet been revealed” (1 John 3:2).
Note that there is no explicit resolution of the dissonance in these instances of divine
promise. The believer holds both to the promises of God for the future and to what is
known on the basis of reason and experience; there is no suppression of the latter; there
is no undermining of the data derived from science. However, the conflict generated by
eschatology is now seen to be no different in kind from what is already well known and
experienced in the life of faith. The problem of theodicy is not, of course, resolved by this
move, but the dissonance has been set in a whole new context that undermines any claim
that the findings of science have actually falsified the deliverances of divine revelation.
The tension is both recognized and contained.
Bibliography
Abraham, William J. Crossing the Threshold of Divine Revelation. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerd
mans, 2006.
Alston, William P. “The Fulfillment of Promises as Evidence for Religious Belief,” Logos 12
(1991), 1–26.
Audi, Robert. Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge,

2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Brown, David. “The Christian Heaven.” In Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Christopher Lewis,
eds., Beyond Death: Theological and Philosophical Reflections on Life after Death. Lon
don: Macmillan, 1995.
Fiddes, Paul. The Promised End. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2000.
Hebblethwaite, Brian. The Christian Hope. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984.
Hick, John. Death and Eternal Life. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1976.
Moltmann, Jürgen. Theology of Hope. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.
———. The Coming of God. London: SCM, 1996.
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date: 17 May 2020

Peters, Ted. Futures: Human and Divine. Atlanta, GA: Knox, 2000.
Polkinghorne, John. The God of Hope and the End of the World. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni
versity Press, 2002.
Polkinghorne, John, and Michael Welker, eds. The End of the World and the Ends of God.
Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000.
Price, H. H. “Survival and the Idea of ‘Another World.’” In Terence Penelhum, ed., Immor
tality, pp. 21–50. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1973.
Rahner, Karl. On the Theology of Death. New York: Herder and Herder, 1961.
Sarot, Michael, and David Fergusson, eds. The Future as God's Gift. Edinburgh: T&T
Clarke, 2000.
Sauter, Gerhard. What Dare We Hope? Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999.
Wright, N. T. Jesus and the Victory of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996.
Notes:
(1.) Traditional discussions of eschatology have also involved treatments of the return of
Christ, the millennium, and the Antichrist.
(2.) Van A. Harvey summed up the problems that were central a generation ago in terms
of a general vision of the canons of critical inquiry. See his “Secularism, Responsible Be
lief, and the ‘Theology of Hope,’ ” in Jürgen Moltmann et al., eds., The Future of Theology:
Theology as Eschatology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 126–153.
(3.) “As regards both its content and its truth, dogma,” as Karl Barth said, is an “eschato
logical concept. Only God's final revelation at the end of history will bring with it final
knowledge of the content and truth of the act of God in Jesus Christ. God alone has the
competence to speak the final word about God's work in history.” See Wolfhart Pannen
berg, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 1:16.
(4.) Currently, the subject matter and boundaries of epistemology are undergoing signifi
cant challenge and modification. See, for example, Richard Swinburne, Epistemic Justifi
cation (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), and William P. Alston, Beyond Epistemic “Justification”:
Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
(5.) See Flew's contribution “Theology and Falsification,” in Antony Flew and Alasdair
MacIntyre, eds., New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: SCM, 1955), 96–99.
(6.) John Hick, “Theology and Verification,” in Basil Mitchell, ed., The Philosophy of Reli
gion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 60.
(7.) Ibid.
Page 14 of 16
date: 17 May 2020

(8.) A. J. Ayer, Language Truth and Logic (New York: Dover, n.d.), 117.
(9.) Kai Nielsen, “Eschatological Verification,” Canadian Journal of Theology 9 (1963),

280.
(10.) A very different route to meeting the challenge of verification was developed by D.
Z. Phillips in Death and Immortality (London: Macmillan, 1970). Phillips argued that to
think of immortality in terms of personal survival rested on a misreading of the grammar
of religious discourse.
(11.) See Caird's seminal essay, “The Language of Eschatology,” in The Language and
Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980), 243–271.
(12.) Kathryn Tanner, “Eschatology without the Future,” in John Polkinghorne and
Michael Welker, eds., The End of the World and the Ends of God (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity
Press International, 2000), 229.
(13.) Ibid., 231.
(14.) Alan Segal, Life after Death (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2004), 725.
(15.) Ibid., 710.
(16.) John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2002), xvii.
(17.) One exception to this is John Hick, who in his later work developed an exceptionally
rich account of eschatology; see, for example, Death and Eternal Life (San Francisco:
Harper and Row, 1976).
(18.) See, for example, T. F. Torrance, Reality and Evangelical Theology (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1982).
(19.) Most notably Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford Univer
sity Press, 2000).
(20.) Richard Swinburne, Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy (Oxford: Clarendon,

1992). Swinburne rightly catches the connection between revelation and personal escha
tology: “men need to know that there is a heaven to be had after this life for those who
have obtained forgiveness and made themselves fitted for Heaven; and (if that is how it
is) that there is a Hell, for those who know God to be avoided.” See ibid., 72.
(21.) Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World, 9.
William J. Abraham
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date: 17 May 2020

William J. Abraham is the Albert Cook Outler Professor of Theology and Wesley Stud
ies and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor at Perkins School of Theology,
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. He is the co-editor (with James E. Kir
by) of The Oxford Handbook of Methodist Studies. His most recent publications in
clude Crossing the Threshold of Divine Revelation and Athens and Aldersgate: John
Wesley and the Foundations of Christian Belief.
Page 16 of 16
date: 17 May 2020

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Eschatology and Epistemology

Eschatology and Epistemology

Print Publication Date: Dec 2007

Abstract and Keywords

Preliminary Definitions and Distinctions

date: 17 May 2020

Epistemology is generally understood as the critical investigation of rationality, justifica­

The Pressure from Positivism

date: 17 May 2020

It is common to find belief in a transcendent god conjoined with belief in an after-

date: 17 May 2020

The Importance of God's Wider Intentions and

date: 17 May 2020

In an important contribution, Kathryn Tanner has proposed an eschatology that is clearly

date: 17 May 2020

The Importance of Epistemic Fit

date: 17 May 2020

date: 17 May 2020

Divine Revelation and Eschatology

date: 17 May 2020

date: 17 May 2020

date: 17 May 2020

date: 17 May 2020

Epistemological considerations clearly play a role in addressing the problem. If science

date: 17 May 2020

Audi, Robert. Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge,

Fiddes, Paul. The Promised End. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2000.

———. The Coming of God. London: SCM, 1996.

date: 17 May 2020

date: 17 May 2020

(9.) Kai Nielsen, “Eschatological Verification,” Canadian Journal of Theology 9 (1963),

(13.) Ibid., 231.

(15.) Ibid., 710.

(20.) Richard Swinburne, Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy (Oxford: Clarendon,

date: 17 May 2020

date: 17 May 2020

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Epistemology is generally understood as the critical investigation of rationality, justifica