ABSTRACT
Eschatological personalism entails a different sense of time, a different temporal experience than the standard experience, and this fact carries interesting consequences for the shape and feel of personality for the eschatological personalist. In fact, the eschatological personalist freely navigates between two different temporalities and timelines: one characterized by necessity and futility and the other characterized by freedom and hope. There is the current age and there is the already-begun, but not-yet fully arrived coming age of the Kingdom of God. The sense of living as a pilgrim in the current age on the way to the blessed Kingdom of the coming age comes right out of the entire eschatological tradition from Zoroaster right up to the early Christian New Testament texts and the visionary texts of Second Temple period Jewish apocalyptic literature. The visionary, dream-like nature of these texts makes them powerfully inspirational but dangerous when mis-interpreted. These texts when interpreted as justification for utopian and revolutionary violence have been soaked in blood down through the centuries so utmost care must be taken to interpret them responsibly. To do so correctly the eschatological personalist once again invokes the transcendentals. If an interpretation leads to or involves loving realization of the inherent worth and dignity of each and every individual as well as new manifestations of the true, the good, and the beautiful, then the visions and dreams and images may be from God—otherwise they are likely to lead to destructiveness of one kind or another. That does not mean that the eschatological personalist is some kind of non-violent, milquetoast pacifist. War and killing “infinitely valuable persons” are sometimes justified. “Just war theory” addresses those times when killing is justified. The point here is that many wars and many acts of violence cannot be justified, particularly with apocalyptic texts and we should err on the side of non-violent responses at all times.
