(Ir)religiosity

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The Eschatological Problem

In our current context, eschatology is arguably the most important theological loci, demanding sustained critical reflection. It is certainly the most visible doctrine in the so-called secular world, forming and constituting our collective consciousness. Indeed, one could argue that the twentieth century with all its tragedies and atrocities — war, natural disasters, genocide, nuclear proliferation and the like — was one in which the eschatological narrative of modern of progress was thoroughly demystified. Yet with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the demise of Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s another eschatological narrative gained currency, that of global neoliberal capitalism best defended by Francis Fukuyama who claimed that the advent of liberal-democracy marked the highest form of human government and the definitive “end of history.”¹ The new emerging network of transnational corporatism, which undergirds the global market, constitutes what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call a new postmodern Empire.² With the financial crisis of 2008-2009 this narrative too was called into question and if the actions of both the Bush and Obama Administrations are any indication it would seem that depression and near collapse were not enough to adequately unmask the chilling logic of unbridled casino capitalism nor to delegitimize the eschatological narrative brokered by the purveyors of neoliberal globalization.³ It would seem, then, that a sound Christian eschatology has never been more important or needed than it is now.  Unfortunately, the usual alternatives are equally as grim, whether it is an escapist, other-worldly eschatology which implies that one should simply deal with her problems since this life is only a grand waiting room for the afterlife, on the one hand, or a bland realized eschatology which is reliant on the myth of modern progress and therefore remains complicit in the destructive status quo of Empire, on the other.   In other words, Christian eschatology, in both its conservative and liberal forms, all too often falls prey to the inertia of the prevailing metanarrative (in this case, global capitalism) rather than remaining fixed upon the rupture of the event, of the incoming of the reign of God within history.  Insofar as this is true Marx was correct in his famous assessment of popular religion as nothing more than an “opium of the people” and the “sigh of the oppressed.”⁴

It is my contention in this paper that a distinctively Christian eschatology, when liberated from the narratives of Empire and neoliberalism, is itself liberative.  I will begin by sketching the contours of the new postmodern Empire delineated by Hardt and Negri followed by an analysis and critique of the eschatological narrative, however overt or covert, imbibed by Empire and best seen in the work of Francis Fukuyama.  Relying on theologians and continental philosophers of religion such as Joerg Rieger, Jacques Derrida, and Jürgen Moltmann I will then offer an alternative narrative, an incarnational eschatology modeled after the gesture of the incarnation and the logic of downturn.  Ultimately, I hope to offer an eschatological vision that is both realistic and hopeful; realistic about the great weight and force of the totalizing narrative of Empire but hopeful that when unhooked from the telos of Empire an incarnational eschatology can be both wholly invested in the world and open to the in-breaking of God’s absolute future.  I am, therefore, arguing for an eschatology that is the very heart and soul — indeed, the very medium — of the work of theology, an eschatology that is not consigned to an ahistorical future, pontificating about “last things,” but an eschatology that is rooted in the material present, positioning itself as “the doctrine and wisdom of hope.”⁵

1. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, New York: Avon Books, 1993).  Even after Sept. 11, 2001, this narrative is not without its apologists.  In addition to virtually every elected official in the US government, noted New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in his The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York, New York: Picador, 2005) puts forward an argument in favor of globalization noting the technological benefits.  Interestingly, those benefits are only available for those in positions of privilege vis-à-vis the new Empire and not those upon whose backs the Empire is built. [↩]
2. See their recently completed trilogy: Empire (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000), Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York, New York: Penguin Press, 2004), and Commonwealth (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009). [↩]
3. Records of the rush to “save the system” and bailout the banks and corporations which hold the networks of power within Empire together are well documented.  For a scathing analysis of this response and its consequences if left untouched see Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (Brooklyn, New York: Verso, 2009).  In No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future (Minneapolis, Minnesota:  Fortress Press, 2009), Joerg Rieger explores this phenomenon from a theological perspective paying particular attention to the religious structure in the US governments response, i.e., the “faith” placed in the transcendence of the market despite its failure. [↩]
4. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, On Religion (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1993), 42. [↩]
5. Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms of Christian Theology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2000), 51. This has been Moltmann’s contention ever since the publication of his Theology of Hope in 1965.  More recently he has stated more strongly and emphatically that “eschatology is not just one of Christianity’s many doctrines…it is quite simply the medium of the Christian faith, the keynote, the daybreak of colours of a new expected day which bathe everything in their light.  For the Christian faith lives from the raising of the crucified Christ and reaches out towards the promises of Christ’s universal future,” Experiences of God (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2007), 11-12.  To be sure, an incarnational eschatology fundamentally rooted in the historical present does not dismiss the advent of God’s future; rather, it rejects, contra the eschatological narrative of modernity and Empire, any inclination that that future is fixed and determined. [↩]