The Transformative Impact of Eschatological Narratives: A Reflection on the Theology of History

This article discusses three XX century theologians, one Catholic, Gaston Fessard, one Protestant, Jurgen Moltmann and one Orthodox, Ioannis Zizioulas, who have in common an inverse reading of the timeline: not from past to future, but the other way around, from the future to the present and the past. According to them, it is our eschatological future that makes us what we are today, shaping also our past. All three theologians explain how the eschatological narrative causes behaviours, how the act of imaging the eschaton transforms the present by enlightening our decisions, giving us hope or by the real presence of eschatology in history. On this material, I will argue that the eschatological turn in theology and the rediscovery of the importance of the theology of history imply certain existentialist consequences. Thus, the article explains how living in the eschatological horizon makes it possible to escape the materialist mechanical timeframe, where the past causes the present and the present causes the future.