[Tom O'Loughlin] With me is Michael Burdett
and he is looking after the module on eschatology.
And I hope that after
these couple of minutes of listening to him
you will have a better understanding of
what's in the module and what you can expect from it.
Michael, the module on eschatology. What's it about?
[Michael] Yeah. Well, there's probably three things that I
should discuss in relation to the module.
First of all, what is eschatology?
Why eschatology? And then
what might you find in the module itself?
[Tom] What is it? [Michael] Yeah, well, what eschatology comes from,
the term itself, eschata
meaning 'last, last things.' And 'ology' being 'the study of.'
So it's essentially the study of last things.
And frequently, when people think of eschatology,
probably the images which are conjured at least today,
are perhaps the Apocalypse of John,
the Book of Revelation
and the Whore of Babylon riding atop a great beast.
One might think of apocalypses in general,
which might not have anything even to do
with Christianity or even religion.
Issues of climate change are
at a tipping point more than ever, than
than any other time.
And people relate to that in a particular kind of way,
which is almost apocalyptic.
You know, if things don't change,
then we're in serious, serious problems.
So in one sense, why study eschatology? It's because we're really,
really obsessed with the future right now.
Perhaps that's because if you look around the world today,
things are changing incredibly quickly.
Whether you look at climate,
whether you look at politics,
whether you look at technology.
The kind of rapid, rapid pace of what's happening makes us
think 'goodness, goodness
what's going to be happening in the future?
How is everything going to end up?
How do I fit in all of this?'
Now in one sense, the Christian doctrine of eschatology tries to,
to answer precisely those questions
of not only just how everything ends up,
but what is it really all about after all?
So eschatology today, I think is incredibly important.
What's also interesting, at
least in the history of the doctrine itself,
Ernst Troeltsch in the 19th century said that
the eschatological seems to be closed these days.
But by the early part of the 20th century
Hans Urs von Balthasar said that it became the kind
of storm zone of Christian theology.
It's, it's very, it's a very kind of hot topic.
If you were to take the module itself
it proceeds historically
so that in the first couple units,
you'll be dealing with the major biblical material,
Pauline eschatology, the kind of
imminent expectation of early Christians
of the second return of Christ.
And then we'll kind of move into the patristic period
with people such as Augustine,
Ambrose and many others
attending to some of the kind of
different themes and contours of eschatology.
So how did they understand death,
what happens after death?
What is hell? What is the state of hell?
What is Heaven? How does it relate to the elect?
How does it relate to the damned?
What about those who didn't quite make it to
heaven that still have a bit of sin left over,
well, that's going to have to be purged.
And so each unit kind of takes a particular historical period.
So then the Medieval period then
to the Reformation period and then kind of ending in the
19-20th century doctrinal theology
and then a final chapter on
philosophical approaches to eschatology
because in the 20th century
philosophy had a huge impact
even in how Christian theology was done.
[Tom] Michael, thanks for that introduction to the module.
And to you who are going to take the module
I hope it has given you
a little introduction and an overview of what to expect.