The two well known American Lutheran theologians, Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson, have collected a very lively, accessible and interesting set of essays on the topic of eschatology. It would be ideal for theology undergraduates, giving insights not only into eschatology itself, but also Christology and the doctrine of creation. The symposium maintains a fine standard throughout the essays, with no real weak link among them. A common thread behind the essays is a reaction to the demythologising of biblical eschatological language into a purely subjective meaningfully felt moment of faith.

The symposium opens with the great theologian of eschatology, Wolfhart Pannenberg. He writes on the task of eschatology, and in effect offers a typically succinct and well argued survey of the key doctrines. He is particularly useful in discussing the person and resurrection: how can personal identity survive death, without doctrine relapsing into a platonic view of an immortal soul? Pannenberg teaches that we really do die with no soul surviving death, but that God holds our identity and confers new life upon it out of his sheer grace. We might say that this is a logical conclusion to ‘justification by grace through faith’—we depend on God for absolutely everything, out of his sheer generosity. Pannenberg concludes his essay by emphasising our participation in the Trinitarian life of God. Paul Fiddes’ recent book The promised End questions Pannenberg’s view that life reaches ‘closure’ at this point, but Pannenberg might argue that the Trinitarian life confers all the time and experience we will need for an eschatologised existence? It is a pity that this very American symposium does not seem to take account at all of British work, such as that of Fiddes. Here Jenson’s own essay should be mentioned, since he too discusses the moment of our resurrection, and dwells on it as the moment of transformation and simultaneous judgement: perhaps my suggestion that a Lutheran model of justification by grace could be used to weld Pannenberg and Jensen together!

Paul Hansen writes very well on eschatology and the OT, under the heading of prophetic and apocalyptic politics, including a useful criticism of the fashionable Bruegemann’s postmodern approach to the texts.

I find it ironic that right at the time many of my younger colleagues in the Harvard English department are rejecting deconstruction and returning to a vivid interest in author and setting, Walter Bruegemann publishes the first postmodernist theology of the Old Testament (48).

Likewise the NT is really well handled by Arland Hultgren, who shows how untenable is the vogue view that Jesus was a ‘sage’ rather than an apocalyptically orientated prophetic figure—Vermes, the great Jewish scholar, would agree with Hultgren with his description of Jesus as a charismatic prophet. Jesus ushers in the kingdom, enacts it, not merely issuing advice as to how to live it!

Skipping over fine essays by Novak on the Jewish law and eschatology, and the Eastern Orthodox handling of the book of Revelation, we reach a brilliant finale by George Murphy on science and eschatology. Here we meet very clear discussions of the formal possibilities of time working backwards—surprisingly with no reference to Pannenberg—and to the need for transfers of heat and energy if ultra stability, death, is not to be reached. Murphy produces intriguing analogies relevant to creation and eschatology, including Tipler’s controversial ideas, and brings in Pauline theology by way of biblical possibilities. Murphy rounds off a really stimulating and learned symposium: highly recommended as a resource for theology students.

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