Exploring Eschatology

The more challenging the times, it seems, the more apocalyptic themes come to the forefront of our thoughts. Given Russia's current economic difficulties and problems on the international scene, it was no coincidence,then, that eschatology was the topic of our latest seminar for distance and extension students in Novosaratovka. And even if the timing of the seminar meant that we had somewhat few participants that we would have liked (it was hard for many to get off of work in late January when the New Year's / Christmas holidays ended on the 11th), the ground we covered will serve them (and our church) well, in times of high tension and in times of peace.

It was with this in mind that I approached the two topics I led during this seminar - "Theology of Hope" and "Pastoral Care of the Dying and Grieving." The latter set of lectures was a very basic introduction that probably only raised the curtain a bit on questions of our own mortality; these issues, of course, affect our ability to give pastoral care in end-of-life situations. A number of students expressed that even this short introduction was enough to give them a new approach based upon God's love shown to the suffering through listening, presence and empathy, instead of always trying to provide "answers."
As a part of this class we read from Lev Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich." It has been quite some time since I've used my own preferred method for thinking about theology - through great literature - in the classroom setting. But in my lessons of "theology of hope," too, literature was very useful. When explaining the context of the birth of Jurgen Moltmann's theology, we spoke about the difficulty of doing theology "after Auschwitz," and read from Elie Wiesel "Night." But to emphasize that the problem of enormous suffering that we humans cause one another is not specific to Germany, we also read from 2015 Nobel Literature Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich's "Second Hand Time," which tells many sad, sad stories from the point of view of ordinary people in Soviet (and post-Soviet) Russia.

Faced with headlines predicting total economic collapse and/or World War III, I find it particularly important to hold fast to a vision of God's coming reign and to use that vision to inform our daily lives. I hope that I was able to pass on this aspect of Moltmann's theology in my lessons. From the response of the students and the eagerness to which they responded to the news that (finally!) one of Moltmann's major works will be translated into Russia - our own Anton Tikhomirov is working on "The Coming of God" - I believe that I was successful. 

Students were also inspired in another way by studying eschatology - they saw the degree to which doing theology is a creative process. As one student told me, during this course she saw that theology is not simply about finding new ways to defend old dogmas, but that it rises out of our own experience interacting with Scripture and with the experiences of others. I am encouraged when I see people in this still emerging church ask new questions and welcome one another on the road of exploration.