Creation beyond Nothing and Now: eschatological reflections in the climate emergency
Southgate, C
Date: 19 March 2024
Book chapter
Publisher
Springer
Publisher DOI
Abstract
After acknowledging Wim Drees’s excellent contribution to the science-religion
debate, this essay considers three ‘beyonds’ unhelpful to a response to the climate emergency.
These are ‘beyond as sudden destruction’, stemming from an over-reliance on the apocalyptic
texts of the New Testament; ‘beyond as up’, focussing on the release ...
After acknowledging Wim Drees’s excellent contribution to the science-religion
debate, this essay considers three ‘beyonds’ unhelpful to a response to the climate emergency.
These are ‘beyond as sudden destruction’, stemming from an over-reliance on the apocalyptic
texts of the New Testament; ‘beyond as up’, focussing on the release of the immortal soul from
the material world; and ‘beyond time’, addressing the cosmological predictions of the ultimate
end of the universe through God’s transformation of creation. The essay proposes in contrast
that the same event in the present can be viewed through four parallel lenses, of which
eschatology is one. It draws on proposals from Drees’s Beyond the Big Bang and the
detemporalised eschatology of Kathryn Tanner to propose an eschatology of the present
moment, informed by divine judgment and longing, and the human vocation to respond to that
judgment and longing with parallel longing, and with both action and consolation.
Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Item views 0
Full item downloads 0