Abstract
Robert Jenson has shrewdly observed that ‘Mainline modern and—at least so far—postmodern theology has been characterized by inability to attach any descriptions to the proclamation, “See, I am making all things new.”’ In one sense it is precisely this aporia that Thiel seeks to fill, in offering a self-consciously ‘thick eschatology—one that exercises the eschatological imagination more vigorously’ (p. 12).
Before setting out on such an account, Thiel interrogates that inability: mainstream modern theology’s reticence in matters eschatological. He addresses it by way of discerning reflection upon Karl Rahner’s well-known essay ‘The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions’, which becomes a kind of foil. Thiel admits that the demands of Kantian epistemology should be recognised by theologians; nevertheless, he suggests that these considerations should not unduly limit eschatological talk by being conflated with a cluster of apophatic theological concerns regarding mystery. Loss of nerve here, he avers, issues in a kind of ‘imaginative reductionism’ (p. 2). Moreover, the force of perennial concerns regarding idolatry can be registered in the wrong way, and properly understood they need not represent undue strictures (pp. 12–17). Thiel sorts through the issues here with exemplary clarity.
The opening discussion is not simply so much methodological ‘throat-clearing’. Importantly, it goes beyond a ‘free pass’ sponsoring simple retrieval of pre-modern eschatological dogma, though it does suggest we ought to take this tradition seriously. In particular, though, a methodological commitment is made at this point that has ramifications throughout. Thiel proposes a hermeneutical rule based on the doctrine of bodily resurrection. That is, ‘The Christian belief in this ontological continuity … provides a context within which claims for a reflective continuity between “now” and “then” can be made’ (p. 21).
This early decision also lends Icons of Hope a distinctive character over against other prominent speculative works of eschatology in contemporary systematics. Namely, it does not proceed by elucidating the divine dynamics of consummation. It does not as such explore the transcendent glories of the Beatific Vision. Like such projects, it certainly represents a remarkably constructive undertaking. Indeed it sets about no more and no less than the task of imagining the life of the blessed dead: this is the specific kind of eschatological speculation that Thiel’s resurrection-continuity methodology permits.
To this focused end, the argument proper unfolds elegantly in a number of stages. To begin, Thiel considers the question of the activity or passivity of the saints, preferring Jonathan Edwards’s vision of an active community of love to Thomas Aquinas’s sheer contemplation. What, then, is it that the saints do? Amongst other things, they are engaged in the practice of forgiveness. Thiel makes this claim on the basis of the hermeneutical approach he has established, arguing from an exegetical description of what the risen Christ does.
The lengthiest piece of argumentation (pp. 57–105) is an absorbing foray into the development of doctrine, specifically the doctrine of purgatory. While Thiel sensitively traces the findings of several modes of historical inquiry, these are not determinative in the final instance; the contours of the book’s argument are shaped by an additional layer of interpretation he offers himself. This involves excavating the sources of ‘eschatological anxiety’ that underwrote the flourishing of purgatorial ideas—a complex narration that adds a distinctive approach to the recent resurgence in scholarly treatments of purgatory (it would be interesting to read this chapter alongside Jerry Walls’s slightly earlier work, which goes unmentioned here). At its heart lies the idea that a sense of lack of hope for positive eschatological judgement funded a competitive spirituality. In the hierarchical system, this anxiety was all pervasive: even the most ardent ascetics lacked surety compared to martyrs, and lay people compared to ascetics.
This fine-grained analysis is rooted theologically in the understanding that two distinctive apostolic moods produce two differing construals of eschatological faith and discipleship (pp. 66-68). The history of anxiety is owed to the Matthean sensibility, with its stark eschatological sense of separation. In contrast, a Pauline sensibility emphasises the unmerited graciousness of God’s gift of redemption and tends to undercut such tension. With this distinction, readers will probably do well to bracket out any initial worries about such a sharp binary and to observe how it operates in the substantive discussions throughout. In the final analysis, the partial re-integration of the Matthean in a thoroughly moral but never soteriological mode seems to be what makes Thiel’s ‘Catholic style’. Ultimately, some readers will find his hermeneutical frankness a refreshing reminder of doctrinal theology’s need to read Holy Scripture discerningly; others will no doubt find his decisions arbitrary.
The book generously displays medieval artistic renderings of the Last Judgement, ably demonstrating pre-modern propensity for eschatological imagination. Thiel is not simply interested in images that illustrate the fraught, bifurcating anxiety of competitive spirituality, however. Other images made under the influence of a Pauline (here Reformational) sensibility exhibit a sense of ‘eschatological anticlimax’ (p. 119), and he finds sites of this highly instructive. (His repetition here of the mainstream theological commonplace that the Left Behind series does not represent orthodox eschatological doctrine is perhaps superfluous to the otherwise highly controlled unfolding of the argument.)
At any rate, the Matthean/Pauline distinction and the salutary features of eschatological anticlimax are employed to gain critical traction on the situation of the post-conciliar Roman Catholic church. Thiel takes Vatican II’s embrace of a Pauline sensibility to be a generally positive development. Nonetheless, it raises a delicate question. How, after that embrace, does one inhabit it in a Catholic style? How might this style avoid the moral relaxation that threatens to dissipate the positive tension of lives lived towards genuine judgement? Thiel strives after an intratraditional consistency here, seeking to utilise the Tridentine doctrine of grace in his answer.
Affirming Paul’s distinction between divine judgement and divine grace, he maintains that one can affirm a universalistic hope without eliminating questions of the performance of human cooperative responsibility. There can, therefore, be genuine anticipation regarding the Last Judgement—we cannot foresee the adequacy of our response to grace—yet it is not debilitating. A short ‘narratological’ excursus supplies the formal features of this argument (pp. 138-39). In brief, even if a narrative has a promised ending, the genuine openness of potential action in via leads to an appropriate sense of ‘suspense’.
Finally, Thiel extends the discussion to the doctrine of the communion of saints. Returning to the proposal about forgiveness, he goes beyond Milbank’s partial response to Derrida. With especially insightful remarks on the question of reciprocity, he begins to limn an account of the communion of saints cooperating with redemption by the activity of forgiveness. In terms of the relationship between the blessed dead and those still alive this allows for a cautious acceptance of traditional doctrine and practices. The most striking feature, though, is in the extension of this proposal to the interrelations of the blessed dead themselves in eternity. Acting in forgiveness, they attend in healing ways to echoes of sinful discord that endure. This suggestion turns on another crucial distinction. Namely, that while sinful activity ceases, the effects of sin perdure in eternity, since they make us who we are.
Christian ethicists should find Icons of Hope’s treatment of forgiveness on this side of judgement particularly relevant, but the work has wider import for us too. With Icons of Hope and Paul Griffiths’s recent Decreation, we are presented with two audacious attempts at eschatological construal within the Catholic imaginary. Those free of anxiety about boldly speculative theology should take their appearance as an invitation, whether or not they find either proposal ultimately compelling. They are enjoined to render vivid accounts of the hope that is in them (1 Pet. 3:5), in ways evocative of faithful longing and generative of faithful action here and now. Moreover, those of us characteristically nervous about such projects, on theological or ethical grounds, especially where they concern eschatology, have reason to reflect. If we take these works in good faith, we are challenged whether our concerns were simply about poor performance of speculative theo-logy, and not in fact about the practice as such.
More specifically, given readily available egregious mis-relations of eschatology and ethics, it is clearly much easier in moral theology to identify how we should not relate them: hence ubiquitous references to Left Behind. Works like Thiel’s, with unembarrassed correlation of these awkward tracts of doctrine and the moral life, should press us to reflect on the ways eschatology should be related to ethics.
In this aspect there may be a sense in which Jenson’s challenge remains unmet: in its plea for thoroughgoing talk of divine agency in new creation. Given Thiel’s parameters it is uncharitable to demand description, say, of the significance of the accomplished perfection of the work of Christ for the moral life here and eternally. Yet, by restricting himself to extrapolation and thus the activity of the blessed dead, is there not a nagging sense that the resources of Christian doctrine have not been brought fully to bear on the question?