Eschatology

That branch of systematic theology which deals with the doctrines
of the last things (ta eschata). The Greek title is of
comparatively recent introduction, but in modern usage it has
largely supplanted its Latin equivalent De Novissimis. As the
numerous doctrinal subjects belonging to this section of theology
will be treated ex professo under their several proper titles, it
is proposed in this article merely to take such a view of the
whole field as will serve to indicate the place of eschatology in
the general framework of religion, explain its subject-matter and
the outlines of its content in the various religions of mankind,
and illustrate by comparison the superiority of Christian
eschatological teaching.

As a preliminary indication of the subject-matter, a distinction
may be made between the eschatology of the individual and that of
the race and the universe at large. The former, setting out from
the doctrine of personal immortality, or at least of survival in
some form after death, seeks to ascertain the fate or condition,
temporary or eternal, of individual souls, and how far the issues
of the future depend on the present life. The latter deals with
events like the resurrection and the general judgment, in which,
according to Christian Revelation, all men will participate, and
with the signs and portents in the moral and physical order that
are to precede and accompany those events. Both aspects -- the
individual and the universal -- belong to the adequate concept of
eschatology; but it is only in Christian teaching that both
receive due and proportionate recognition. Jewish eschatology only
attained its completion in the teaching of Christ and the
Apostles; while in ethnic religion eschatology seldom rose above
the individual view, and even then was often so vague, and so
little bound up with any adequate notion of Divine justice and of
moral retribution, that it barely deserves to be ranked as
religious teaching.

I. ETHNIC ESCHATOLOGIES

Uncivilized societies

Even among uncivilized cultures the universality of religious
beliefs, including belief in some kind of existence after death,
is very generally admitted by modern anthropologists. Some
exceptions, it is true, have been claimed to exist; but on closer
scrutiny the evidence for this claim has broken down in so many
cases that we are justified in presuming against any exception.
Among the uncivilized the truth and purity of eschatological
beliefs vary, as a rule, with the purity of the idea of God and of
the moral standards that prevail. Some savages seem to limit
existence after death to the good (with extinction for the
wicked), as the Nicaraguas, or to men of rank, as the Tongas;
while the Greenlanders, New Guinea negroes, and others seem to
hold the possibility of a second death, in the other world or on
the way to it. The next world itself is variously located -- on
the earth, in the skies, in the sun or moon -- but most commonly
under the earth; while the life led there is conceived either as a
dull and shadowy and more or less impotent existence, or as an
active continuation in a higher or idealized form of the pursuits
and pleasures of earthly life. In most savage religions there is
no very high or definite doctrine of moral retribution after
death; but it is only in the case of a few of the most degraded
cultures, whose condition is admittedly the result of
degeneration, that the notion of retribution is claimed to be
altogether wanting. Sometimes mere physical prowess, as bravery or
skill in the hunt or in war, takes the place of a strictly ethical
standard; but, on the other hand, some savage religions contain
unexpectedly clear and elevated ideas of many primary moral
duties.

Civilized Cultures

Coming to the higher or civilized societies, we shall glance
briefly at the eschatology of the Babylonian and Assyrian,
Egyptian, Indian, Persian, and Greek religions. Confucianism can
hardly be said to have an eschatology, except the very indefinite
belief involved in the worship of ancestors, whose happiness was
held to depend on the conduct of their living descendants. Islamic
eschatology contains nothing distinctive except the glorification
of barbaric sensuality.

(a) Babylonian and Assyrian

In the ancient Babylonian religion (with which the Assyrian is
substantially identical) eschatology never attained, in the
historical period, any high degree of development. Retribution is
confined almost, if not quite, entirely to the present life,
virtue being rewarded by the Divine bestowal of strength,
prosperity, long life, numerous offspring, and the like, and
wickedness punished by contrary temporal calamities. Yet the
existence of an hereafter is believed in. A kind of semi-material
ghost, or shade, or double (ekimmu), survives the death of the
body, and when the body is buried (or, less commonly, cremated)
the ghost descends to the underworld to join the company of the
departed. In the "Lay of Ishtar" this underworld, to which she
descended in search of her deceased lover and of the "waters of
life", is described in gloomy colours; and the same is true of the
other descriptions we possess. It is the "pit", the "land of no
return", the "house of darkness", the "place where dust is their
bread, and their food is mud"; and it is infested with demons,
who, at least in Ishtar's case, are empowered to inflict various
chastisements for sins committed in the upper world.

Though Ishtar's case is held by some to be typical in this
respect, there is otherwise no clear indication of a doctrine of
moral penalties for the wicked, and no promise of rewards for the
good. Good and bad are involved in a common dismal fate. The
location of the region of the dead is a subject of controversy
among Assyriologists, while the suggestion of a brighter hope in
the form of a resurrection (or rather of a return to earth) from
the dead, which some would infer from the belief in the "waters of
life" and from references to Marduk, or Merodach, as "one who
brings the dead to life", is an extremely doubtful conjecture. On
the whole there is nothing hopeful or satisfying in the
eschatology of this ancient religion.

(b) Egyptian

On the other hand, in the Egyptian religion, which for antiquity
competes with the Babylonian, we meet with a highly developed and
comparatively elevated eschatology. Leaving aside such difficult
questions as the relative priority and influence of different, and
even conflicting, elements in the Egyptian religion, it will
suffice for the present purpose to refer to what is most prominent
in Egyptian eschatology taken at its highest and best. In the
first place, then, life in its fullness, unending life with
0siris, the sun-god, who journeys daily through the underworld,
even identification with the god, with the right to be called by
his name, is what the pious Egyptian looked forward to as the
ultimate goal after death. The departed are habitually called the
"living"; the coffin is the "chest of the living", and the tomb
the "lord of life ". It is not merely the disembodied spirit, the
soul as we understand it, that continues to live, but the soul
with certain bodily organs and functions suited to the conditions
of the new life. In the elaborate anthropology which underlies
Egyptian eschatology, and which we find it hard to understand,
several constituents of the human person are distinguished, the
most important of which is the Ka, a kind of semi-material double;
and to the justified who pass the judgment after death the use of
these several constituents, separated by death is restored.

This judgment which each undergoes is described in detail in
chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead. The examination covers a
great variety of personal, social, and religious duties and
observances; the deceased must be able to deny his guilt in regard
to forty-two great categories of sins, and his heart (the symbol
of conscience and morality) must stand the test of being weighed
in the balance against the image of Maat, goddess of truth or
justice. But the new life that begins after a favourable judgment
is not at first any better or more spiritual than life on earth.
The justified is still a wayfarer with a long and difficult
journey to accomplish before he reaches bliss and security in the
fertile fields of Aalu. On this journey he is exposed to a variety
of disasters, for the avoidance of which he depends on the use of
his revivified powers and on the knowledge he has gained in life
of the directions and magical charms recorded in the Book of the
Dead, and also, and perhaps most of all, on the aids provided by
surviving friends on earth. It is they who secure the preservation
of his corpse that he may return and use it, who provide an
indestructible tomb as a home or shelter for his Ka, who supply
food and drink for his sustenance, offer up prayers and sacrifices
for his benefit, and aid his memory by inscribing on the walls of
the tomb, or writing on rolls of papyrus enclosed in the wrappings
of the mummy, chapters from the Book of the Dead. It does not,
indeed, appear that the dead were ever supposed to reach a state
in which they were independent of these earthly aids. At any rate
they were always considered free to revisit the earthly tomb, and
in making the journey to and fro the blessed had the power of
transforming themselves at will into various animal-shapes. It was
this belief which, at the degenerate stage at which he encountered
it, Herodotus mistook for the doctrine of the transmigration of
souls. It should be added that the identification of the blessed
with Osiris ("Osiris N. N." is a usual form of inscription) did
not, at least in the earlier and higher stage of Egyptian
religion, imply pantheistic absorption in the deity or the loss of
individual personality. Regarding the fate of those who fail in
the judgment after death, or succumb in the second probation,
Egyptian eschatology is less definite in its teaching. "Second
death" and other expressions applied to them might seem to suggest
annihilation; but it is sufficiently clear from the evidence as a
whole that continued existence in a condition of darkness and
misery was believed to be their portion. And as there were degrees
in the happiness of the blessed, so also in the punishment of the
lost (Book of the Dead, tr. Budge, London, 1901).

(c) Indian

In the Vedic, the earliest historical form of the Indian religion,
eschatological belief is simpler and purer than in the
Brahministic and Buddhistic forms that succeeded it. Individual
immortality is clearly taught. There is a kingdom of the dead
under the rule of Yama, with distinct realms for the good and the
wicked. The good dwell in a realm of light and share in the feasts
of the gods; the wicked are banished to a place of "nethermost
darkness". Already, however, in the later Vedas, where these
beliefs and developed expression, retribution begins to be ruled
more by ceremonial observances than by strictly moral tests. On
the other hand, there is no trace as yet of the dreary doctrine of
transmigration, but critics profess to discover the germs of later
pantheism.

In Brahminism (q.v.) retribution gains in prominence and severity,
but becomes hopelessly involved in transmigration, and is made
more and more dependent either on sacrificial observances or on
theosophical knowledge. Though after death there are numerous
heavens and hells for the reward and punishment of every degree of
merit and demerit, these are not final states, but only so many
preludes to further rebirths in higher or lower forms. Pantheistic
absorption in Brahma, the world- soul and only reality, with the
consequent extinction of individual personalities - this is the
only final solution of the problem of existence, the only
salvation to which man may ultimately look forward. But it is a
salvation which only a few may hope to reach after the present
life, the few who have acquired a perfect knowledge of Brahma. The
bulk of men who cannot rise to this high philosophic wisdom may
succeed, by means of sacrificial observances, in gaining a
temporary heaven, but they are destined to further births and
deaths.

Buddhist eschatology still further develops and modifies the
philosophical side of the Brahministic doctrine of salvation, and
culminates in what is, strictly speaking, the negation of
eschatology and of all theology -- a religion without a God, and a
lofty moral code without hope of reward or fear of punishment
hereafter. Existence itself, or at least individual existence, is
the primary evil; and the craving for existence, with the many
forms of desire it begets, is the source of all the misery in
which life is inextricably involved. Salvation, or the state of
Nirvana, is to be attained by the utter extinction of every kind
of desire, and this is possible by knowledge -- not the knowledge
of God or the soul, as in Brahminism, but the purely philosophical
knowledge of the real truth of things. For all who do not reach
this state of philosophic enlightenment or who fail to live up to
its requirements -- that is to say for the vast bulk of mankind --
there is nothing in prospect save a dreary cycle of deaths and
rebirths with intercalated heavens and hells; and in Buddhism this
doctrine takes on a still more dread and inexorable character than
pre-Buddhistic Brahminism. (See BUDDHISM)

(d) Persian

In the ancient Persian religion (Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism,
Parseeism) we meet with what is perhaps, in its better elements,
the highest type of ethnic eschatology. But as we know it in the
Parsee literature, it contains elements that were probably
borrowed from other religions; and as some of this literature is
certainly post-Christian, the possibility of Jewish and even
Christian ideas having influenced the later eschatological
developments is not to be lost sight of. The radical defect of the
Persian religion was its dualistic conception of deity. The
physical and moral world is the theatre of a perpetual conflict
between Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), the good, and Angra-Mainyu
(Ahriman), the evil, principle, co-creators of the universe and of
man. Yet the evil principle is not eternal ex parte post; he will
finally be vanquished and exterminated. A pure monotheistic
Providence promises at times to replace dualism, but never quite
succeeds -- the latest effort in this direction being the belief
in Zvran Akarana, or Boundless Time as the supreme deity above
both Ahriman and Ormuzd. Morality has its sanction not merely in
future retribution, but in the present assurance that every good
and pious deed is a victory for the cause of Ahura Mazda; but the
call to the individual to be active in this cause, though vigorous
and definite enough, is never quite free from ritual and
ceremonial conditions, and as time goes on becomes more and more
complicated by these observances, especially by the laws of
purity. Certain elements are holy (fire, earth, water), certain
others unholy or impure (dead bodies, the breath, and all that
leaves the body, etc.); and to defile oneself or the holy elements
by contact with the impure is one of the deadliest sins.
Consequently corpses could not be buried or cremated, and were
accordingly exposed on platforms erected for the purpose, so that
birds of prey might devour them. When the soul leaves the body it
has to cross the bridge of Chinvat (or Kinvad), the bridge of the
Gatherer, or Accountant. For three days good and evil spirits
contend for the possession of the soul, after which the reckoning
is taken and the just men is rejoiced by the apparition, in the
form of a fair maiden, of his good deeds, words, and thoughts, and
passes over safely to a paradise of bliss, while the wicked man is
confronted by a hideous apparition of his evil deeds, and is
dragged down to hell. If the judgment is neutral the soul is
reserved in an intermediate state (so at least in the Pahlavi
books) till the decision at the last day. The developed conception
of the last days, as it appears in the later literature, has
certain remarkable affinities with Jewish Messianic and millennial
expectations. A time during which Ahriman will gain the ascendancy
is to be followed by two millennial periods, in each of which a
great prophet will appear to herald the coming of Soshyant (or
Sosioch), the Conqueror and Judge who will raise the dead to life.
The resurrection will occupy fifty-seven years and will be
followed by the general judgement, the separation of the good from
the wicked, and the passing of both through a purgatorial fire
gentle for the just, terrible for sinners, but leading to the
restoration of all. Next will follow the final combat between the
good and the evil spirits, in which the latter will perish, all
except Ahriman and the serpent Azhi, whose destruction is reserved
to Ahura Mazda and Scraosha, the priest-god. And last of all hell
itself will be purged, and the earth renewed by purifying fire.

(e) Greek

Greek eschatology as reflected in the Homeric poems remains at a
low level. It is only very vaguely retributive and is altogether
cheerless in its outlook. Life on earth, for all its shortcomings,
is the highest good for men, and death the worst of evils. Yet
death is not extinction. The psyche survives - not the purely
spiritual soul of later Greek and Christian thought, but an
attenuated, semi-material ghost, or shade, or image, of the
earthly man; and the life of this shade in the underworld is a
dull, impoverished, almost functionless existence. Nor is there
any distinction of fates either by way of happiness or of misery
in Hades. The judicial office of Minos is illusory and has nothing
to do with earthly conduct; and there is only one allusion to the
Furies suggestive of their activity among the dead (Iliad XIX,
258-60). Tartarus, the lower hell, is reserved for a few special
rebels against the gods, and the Elysian Fields for a few special
favourites chosen by divine caprice.

In later Greek thought touching the future life there are notable
advances beyond the Homeric state, but it is doubtful whether the
average popular faith ever reached a much higher level. Among
early philosophers Anaxagoras contributes to the notion of a
purely spiritual soul; but a more directly religious contribution
is made by the Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries, to the influence
of which in brightening and moralizing the hope of a future life
we have the concurrent witness of philosophers, poets, and
historians. In the Eleusinian mysteries there seems to have been
no definite doctrinal teaching - merely the promise or assurance
for the initiated of the fullness of life hereafter. With the
Orphic, on the other hand, the divine origin and pre- existence of
the soul, for which the body is but a temporary prison, and the
doctrine of a retributive transmigration are more or less closely
associated. It is hard to see how far the common belief of the
people was influenced by these mysteries, but in poetical and
philosophical literature their influence is unmistakable. This is
seen especially in Pindar among the poets, and in Plato among the
philosophers. Pindar has a definite promise of a future life of
bliss for the good or the initiated, and not merely for a few, but
for all. Even for the wicked who descend to Hades there is hope;
having, purged their wickedness they obtain rebirth on earth, and
if, during three successive existences, they prove themselves
worthy of the boon, they will finally attain to happiness in the
Isles of the Blest. Though Plato's teaching is vitiated by the
doctrine of pre-existence, metempsychosis, and other serious
errors it represents the highest achievement of pagan philosophic
speculation on the subject of the future life. The divine dignity,
spirituality, and essential immortality of the soul being
established, the issues of the future for every soul are made
clearly dependent on its moral conduct in the present life in the
body. There is a divine judgment after death, a heaven, a hell,
and an intermediate state for penance and purification; and
rewards and punishments are graduated according to the merits and
demerits of each. The incurably wicked are condemned to
everlasting punishment in Tartarus; the less wicked or indifferent
go also to Tartarus or to the Acherusian Lake, but only for a
time; those eminent for goodness go to a happy home, the highest
reward of all being for those who have purified themselves by
philosophy.

From the foregoing sketch we are able to judge both of the merits
and defects of ethnic systems of eschatology. Their merits are
perhaps enhanced when they are presented, as above, in isolation
from the other features of the religions to which they belonged.
Yet their defects are obvious enough; and even those of them that
were best and most promising turned out, historically, to be
failures. The precious elements of eschatological truth contained
in the Egyptian religion were associated with error and
superstition, and were unable to save the religion from sinking to
the state of utter degeneration in which it is found at the
approach of the Christian Era. Similarly, the still richer and
more profound eschatologies of the Persian religion, vitiated by
dualism and other corrupting influences, failed to realize the
promise it contained, and has survived only as a ruin in modern
Parseeism. Plato's speculative teaching failed to influence in any
notable degree the popular religion of the Greco-Roman world; it
failed to convert even the philosophical few; and in the hands of
those who did profess to adopt it, Platonism, uncorrected by
Christianity ran to seed in Pantheism and other forms of error.

II. OLD-TESTAMENT ESCHATOLOGY

Without going into details either by way of exposition or of
criticism, it will be sufficient to point out how Old Testament
eschatology compares with ethnic systems, and how notwithstanding
its deficiencies in point of clearness and completeness, it was
not an unworthy preparation for the fullness of Christian
Revelation.

(1) Old Testament eschatology, even in its earliest and most
imperfect form, shares in the distinctive character which belongs
to Old Testament religion generally. In the first place, as a
negative distinction, we note the entire absence of certain
erroneous ideas and tendencies that have a large place in ethnic
religions. There is no pantheism or dualism no doctrine of pre-
existence (Wisdom, viii, 17-20 does not necessarily imply this
doctrine, as has sometimes been contended) or of metempsychosis;
nor is there any trace, as might have been expected, of Egyptian
ideas or practices. In the next place, on the positive side, the
Old Testament stands apart from ethnic religions in its doctrine
of God and of man in relation to God. Its doctrine of God is pure
and uncompromising monotheism; the universe is ruled by the
wisdom, Justice, and omnipotence of the one, true God. And man is
created by God in His own image and likeness, and destined to
relations of friendship and fellowship with Him. Here we have
revealed in clear and definite terms the basal doctrines which are
at the root of eschatological truth, and which, once they had
taken hold of the life of a people, were bound, even without new
additions to the revelation, to safeguard the purity of an
inadequate eschatology and to lead in time to richer and higher
developments. Such additions and developments occur in Old
Testament teaching; but before noticing them it is well to call
attention to the two chief defects, or limitations, which attach
to the earlier eschatology and continue, by their persistence in
popular belief, to hinder more or less the correct understanding
and acceptance by the Jewish people as a whole of the highest
eschatological utterances of their own inspired teachers.

(2) The first of these defects is the silence of the earlier and
of some of the later books on the subject of moral retribution
after death, or at least the extreme vagueness of such passages in
these books as might be understood to refer to this subject. Death
is not extinction; but Sheol, the underworld of the dead, in early
Hebrew thought is not very different from the Babylonian Aralu or
the Homeric Hades, except that Jahve is God even there. It is a
dreary abode in which all that is prized in life, including
friendly intercourse with God, comes to an end without any
definite promise of renewal. Dishonour. incurred in life or in
death, clings to a man in Sheol, like the honour he may have won
by a virtuous life on earth; but otherwise conditions in Sheol are
not represented as retributive, except in the vaguest way. Not
that a more definite retribution or the hope of renewal to a life
of blessedness is formally denied and excluded; it simply fails to
find utterance in earlier Old Testament records. Religion is pre-
eminently an affair of this life, and retribution works out here
on earth. This idea which to us seems so strange, must, to be
fairly appreciated, be taken in conjunction with the national as
opposed to the individual viewpoint [see under (3) of this
section]; and allowance must also be made for its pedagogic value
for a people like the early Hebrews. Christ himself explains why
Moses permitted divorce ("by reason of the hardness of your heart"
Matt., xix 8); revelation and legislation had to be tempered to
the capacity of a singularly practical and unimaginative people,
who were more effectively confirmed in the worship and service of
God by a vivid sense of His retributive providence here on earth
than they would have been but a higher and fuller doctrine of
future immortality with its postponement of moral rewards. Nor
must we exaggerate the insufficiency of this early point of view.
It gave a deep religious value and significance to every event of
the present life, and raised morality above the narrow,
utilitarian standpoint. Not worldly prosperity as such was the
ideal of the pious Israelite, but prosperity bestowed by God as
the gracious reward of fidelity in keeping His Commandments. Yet,
when all has been said, the inadequacy of this belief for the
satisfaction of individual aspirations must be admitted; and this
inadequacy was bound to prove itself sooner or later in
experience. Even the substitution of the national for the
individual standpoint could not indefinitely hinder this result.

(3) The tendency to sink the individual in the nation and to treat
the latter as the religious unit was one of the most marked
characteristics of Hebrew faith. And this helped very much to
support and prolong the other limitation just noticed, according
to which retribution was looked for in this life. Deferred and
disappointed personal hopes could be solaced by the thought of
their present or future realization in the nation. It was only
when the national calamities, culminating in the exile, had
shattered for a time the people's hope of a glorious theocratic
kingdom that the eschatology of the individual became prominent;
and with the restoration there was a tendency to revert to the
national point of view. It is true of the 0. T. as a whole that
the eschatology of the people overshadows that of the individual,
though it is true at the same time that, in and through the
former, the latter advances to a clear and definite assurance of a
personal resurrection from the dead, at least for the children of
Israel who are to share, if found worthy, in the glories of the
Messianic Age.

It is beyond the scope of this article to attempt to trace the
growth or describe the several phases of this national
eschatology, which centres in the hope of the establishment of a
theocratic and Messianic kingdom on earth (see MESSIAS). However
spiritually this idea may be found expressed in Old Testament
prophecies, as we read them now in the light of their progressive
fulfillment in the New Testament Dispensation, the Jewish people
as a whole clung to a material and political interpretation of the
kingdom, coupling their own domination as a people with the
triumph of God and the worldwide establishment of His rule. There
is much, indeed, to account for this in the obscurity of the
prophecies themselves. The Messias as a distinct person is not
always mentioned in connexion with the inauguration of the
kingdom, which leaves room for the expectation of a theophany of
Jahve in the character of judge and ruler. But even when the
person and place of the Messias are distinctly foreshadowed, the
fusion together in prophecy of what we have learned to distinguish
as His first and His second coming tends to give to the whole
picture of the Messianic kingdom an eschatological character that
belongs in reality only to its final stage. It is thus the
resurrection of the dead in Isaias, xxvi, 19, and Daniel, xii, 2,
is introduced; and many of the descriptions foretelling "the day
of the Lord", the judgment on Jews and Gentiles, the renovation of
the earth and other phenomena that usher in that day while
applicable in a limited sense to contemporary events and to the
inauguration of the Christian Era, are much more appropriately
understood of the end of the world. It is not, therefore,
surprising that the religious hopes of the Jewish nation should
have be come so predominantly eschatological, and that the popular
imagination, foreshortening the perspective of Divine Revelation,
should have learned to look for the establishment on earth of the
glorious Kingdom of God, which Christians are assured will be
realized only in heaven at the close of the present dispensation.

(4) Passing from these general observations which seem necessary
for the true understanding of Old Testament eschatology, a brief
reference will be made to the passages which exhibit the growth of
a higher and fuller doctrine of immortality. The recognition of
individual as opposed to mere corporate responsibility and
retribution may be reckoned, at least remotely, as a gain to
eschatology, even when retribution is confined chiefly to this
life; and this principle is repeatedly recognized in the earliest
books. (See Gen., xviii, 25; Ex., xxxii, 33; Num., xvi, 22; Deut.,
vii, 10; xxiv, 16; II K;., xxiv, 17; IV K., xiv, 6; Is., iii, 10
sq.; xxxiii, 15 sqq.; Jer., xii, 1 sq.; xvii, 5-10; xxxii, 18 sq.;
Ezech. xiv, 12-20; xviii, 4, 18 sqq.; Psalms, passim; Prov., ii,
21 sq.; x, 2; xi, 19, 31; etc.) It is recognized also in the very
terms of the problem dealt with in the Book of Job.

But, coming to higher things, we find in the Psalms and in Job the
clear expression of a hope or assurance for the just of a life of
blessedness after death. Here is voiced, under Divine inspiration,
the innate craving of the righteous soul for everlasting
fellowship with God, the protest of a strong and vivid faith
against the popular conception of Sheol. Omitting doubtful
passages, it is enough to refer to Psalms xv (A.V. xvi), xvi (A.V.
xvii), xlviii (A.V. xlix ), and lxxii (A.V. lxxiii). Of these it
is not impossible to explain the first two as prayers for
deliverance from some imminent danger of death, but the assurance
they express is too absolute and universal to admit this
interpretation as the most natural. And this assurance becomes
still more definite in the other two psalms, by reason of the
contrast which death is asserted to introduce between the fates of
the just and the impious. The same faith emerges in the Book of
Job, first as a hope somewhat questionably expressed, and then as
an assured conviction. Despairing of vindication in this life and
rebelling against the thought that righteousness should remain
finally unrewarded, the sufferer seeks consolation in the hope of
a renewal of God's friendship beyond the grave: "O that thou
wouldest hide me in Sheol, that thou wouldest keep me secret,
until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time,
and remember me. If a man die, shall he live again? All the days
of my warfare would I wait, till my release should come" (xiv, 13
sq.). In xvii, 18 - xvii, 9, the expression of this hope is more
absolute; and in xix, 23-27, it takes the form of a definite
certainty that he will see God, his Redeemer: "But I know that my
Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand up at the last upon the
earth [dust]; and after this my skin has been destroyed, yet from
[al. without] my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for
myself and my eyes shall behold, and not another" (25 - 27). In
his risen body he will see God, according to the Vulgate (LXX)
reading: "and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I
shall be clothed again with my skill, and in my flesh I shall see
my God" (25 - 26).

The doctrine of the resurrection finds definite expression in the
Prophets; and in Isaias, xxvi, 19: "thy dead shall live, my dead
bodies shall rise again. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the
dust" etc.; and Daniel, xii, 2: "and many of those that sleep in
the dust of the earth shall awake: some unto everlasting life, and
others to everlasting shame and contempt" etc., it is clearly a
personal resurrection that is taught -- in Isaias a resurrection
of righteous Israelites; in Daniel, of both the righteous and the
wicked. The judgment, which in Daniel is connected with the
resurrection, is also personal; and the same is true of the
judgment of the living (Jews and Gentiles) which in various forms
the prophecies connect with the "day of the Lord". Some of the
Psalms (e. g. xlviii) seem to imply a judgment of individuals,
good and bad, after death; and the certainty of a future judgment
of "every work, whether it be good or evil", is the final solution
of the moral enigmas of earthly life offered by Ecclesiastes (xii,
13-14; cf. iii, 17). Coming to the later (deuterocanonical) books
of the 0. T. we have clear evidence in II Mach. of Jewish faith
not only in the resurrection of the body (vii, 9-14), but in the
efficacy of prayers and sacrifices for the dead who have died in
godliness (xi, 43 sqq.). And in the second and first centuries
B.C., in the Jewish apocryphal literature, new eschatological
developments appear, chiefly in the direction of a more definite
doctrine of retribution after death. The word Sheol is still most
commonly understood of the general abode of the departed awaiting
the resurrection, this abode having different divisions for the
reward of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked; in
reference to the latter, Sheol is sometimes simply equivalent to
hell. Gehenna is the name usually applied to the final place of
punishment of the wicked after the last judgment, or even
immediately after death; while paradise is often used to designate
the intermediate abode of the souls of the just and heaven their
home of final blessedness. Christ's use of these terms shows that
the Jews of His day were sufficiently familiar with their New
Testament meanings.

III. CATHOLIC ESCHATOLOGY

In this article there is no critical discussion of New Testament
eschatology nor any attempt to trace the historical developments
of Catholic teaching from Scriptural and traditional data; only a
brief conspectus is given of the developed Catholic system. For
critical and historical details and for the refutation of opposing
views the reader is referred to the special articles dealing with
the various doctrines. The eschatological summary which speaks of
the "four last things" (death, judgment, heaven, and hell) is
popular rather than scientific. For systematic treatment it is
best to distinguish between (A) individual and (B) universal and
cosmic eschatology, including under (A):

�  death;

�  the particular judgment;

�  heaven, or eternal happiness;

�  purgatory, or the intermediate state;

�  hell, or eternal punishment;

and under (B):

�  the approach of the end of the world;

�  the resurrection of the body;

�  the general judgment; and

�  the final consummation of all things.

The superiority of Catholic eschatology consists in the fact that,
without professing to answer every question that idle curiosity
may suggest, it gives a clear, consistent, satisfying statement of
all that need at present be known, or can profitably be
understood, regarding the eternal issues of life and death for
each of us personally, and the final consummation of the cosmos of
which we are a part.

(A) Individual Eschatology

Death

Death, which consists in the separation of soul and body, is
presented under many aspects in Catholic teaching, but chiefly

�  as being actually and historically, in the present order of
supernatural Providence, the consequence and penalty of Adam's sin
(Gen., ii, 17; Rom., v, 12, etc.);

�  as being the end of man's period of probation, the event which
decides his eternal destiny (II Cor., v, 10; John, ix, 4; Luke,
xii, 40; xvi, 19 sqq.; etc.), though it does not exclude an
intermediate state of purification for the imperfect who die in
God's grace; and

�  as being universal, though as to its absolute universality (for
those living at the end of the world) there is some room for doubt
because of I Thess., iv, 14 sqq.; I Cor., xv, 51; II Tim., iv, 1.

Particular Judgment

That a particular judgment of each soul takes place at death is
implied in many passages of the New Testament (Luke, xvi, 22 sqq.;
xxiii, 43; Acts, i, 25; etc.), and in the teaching of the Council
of Florence (Denzinger, Enchiridion, no. 588) regarding the speedy
entry of each soul into heaven, purgatory, or hell. (See JUDGMENT,
PARTICULAR.)

Heaven

Heaven is the abode of the blessed, where (after the resurrection
with glorified bodies) they enjoy, in the company of Christ and
the angels, the immediate vision of God face to face, being
supernaturally elevated by the light of glory so as to be capable
of such a vision. There are infinite degrees of glory
corresponding to degrees of merit, but all are unspeakably happy
in the eternal possession of God. Only the perfectly pure and holy
can enter heaven; but for those who have attained that state,
either at death or after a course of purification in purgatory,
entry into heaven is not deferred, as has sometimes been
erroneously held, till after the General Judgment.

Purgatory

Purgatory is the intermediate state of unknown duration in which
those who die imperfect, but not in unrepented mortal sin, undergo
a course of penal purification, to qualify for admission into
heaven. They share in the communion of saints (q. v.) and are
benefited by our prayers and good works (see DEAD, PRAYERS FOR
THE). The denial of purgatory by the Reformers introduced a dismal
blank in their eschatology and, after the manner of extremes, has
led to extreme reactions. (See PURGATORY.)

Hell

Hell, in Catholic teaching, designates the place or state of men
(and angels) who, because of sin, are excluded forever from the
Beatific Vision. In this wide sense it applies to the state of
those who die with only original sin on their souls (Council of
Florence, Denzinger, no. 588), although this is not a state of
misery or of subjective punishment of any kind, but merely implies
the objective privation of supernatural bliss, which is compatible
with a condition of perfect natural happiness. But in the narrower
sense in which the name is ordinarily used, hell is the state of
those who are punished eternally for unrepented personal mortal
sin. Beyond affirming the existence of such a state, with varying
degrees of punishment corresponding to degrees of guilt and its
eternal or unending duration, Catholic doctrine does not go. It is
a terrible and mysterious truth, but it is clearly and
emphatically taught by Christ and the Apostles. Rationalists may
deny the eternity of hell in spite of the authority of Christ, and
professing Christians, who are unwilling to admit it, may try to
explain away Christ's words; but it remains as the Divinely
revealed solution of the problem of moral evil. (See HELL.) Rival
solutions have been sought for in some form of the theory of
restitution or, less commonly, in the theory of annihilation or
conditional immortality. The restitutionist view, which in its
Origenist form was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in
543, and later at the Fifth General Council (see APOCATASTASIS),
is the cardinal dogma of modern Universalism (q. v.), and is
favoured more or less by liberal Protestants and Anglicans. Based
on an exaggerated optimism for which present experience offers no
guarantee, this view assumes the all-conquering efficacy of the
ministry of grace in a life of probation after death, and looks
forward to the ultimate conversion of all sinners and the
voluntary disappearance of moral evil from the universe.
Annihilationists, on the other hand, failing to find either in
reason or Revelation any grounds for such optimism, and
considering immortality itself to be a grace and not the natural
attribute of the soul, believe that the finally impenitent will be
annihilated or cease to exist - that God will thus ultimately be
compelled to confess the failure of His purpose and power.

(B) Universal and Cosmic Eschatology

The Approach of the End of the World

Notwithstanding Christ's express refusal to specify the time of
the end (Mark, xiii, 32; Acts, i, 6 sq.), it was a common belief
among early Christians that the end of the world was near. This
seemed to have some support in certain sayings of Christ in
reference to the destruction of Jerusalem, which are set down in
the Gospels side by side with prophecies relating to the end
(Matt., xxiv; Luke, xxi), and in certain passages of the Apostolic
writings, which might, not unnaturally, have been so understood
(but see II Thess., ii, 2 sqq., where St. Paul corrects this
impression). On the other hand, Christ had clearly stated that the
Gospel was to be preached to all nations before the end (Matt.,
xxiv, 14), and St. Paul looked forward to the ultimate conversion
of the Jewish people as a remote event to be preceded by the
conversion of the Gentiles (Rom., xi, 25 sqq.). Various others are
spoken of as preceding or ushering in the end, as a great apostasy
(II Thess., ii, 3 sqq.), or falling away from faith or charity
(Luke, xviii, 8; xvii, 26; Matt., xxiv, 12), the reign of
Antichrist, and great social calamities and terrifying physical
convulsions. Yet the end will come unexpectedly and take the
living by surprise.

The Resurrection of the Body

The visible coming (parousia) of Christ in power and glory will be
the signal for the rising of the dead (see RESURRECTION). It is
Catholic teaching that all the dead who are to be judged will
rise, the wicked as well as the Just, and that they will rise with
the bodies they had in this life. But nothing is defined as to
what is required to constitute this identity of the risen and
transformed with the present body. Though not formally defined, it
is sufficiently certain that there is to be only one general
resurrection, simultaneous for the good and the bad. (See
MILLENNIUM.) Regarding the qualities of the risen bodies in the
case of the just we have St. Paul's description in I Cor., xv (cf.
Matt., xiii, 43; Phil., iii, 21) as a basis for theological
speculation; but in the case of the damned we can only affirm that
their bodies will be incorruptible.

The General Judgment

Regarding the general judgment there is nothing of importance to
be added here to the graphic description of the event by Christ
Himself, who is to be Judge (Matt., xxv; etc.). (See JUDGMENT,
GENERAL.)

The Consummation of All Things

There is mention also of the physical universe sharing in the
general consummation (II Pet., iii, 13; Rom., viii, 19 sqq.;
Apoc., xxi, 1 sqq.). The present heaven and earth will be
destroyed, and a new heaven and earth take their place. But what,
precisely, this process will involve, or what purpose the
renovated world will serve is not revealed. It may possibly be
part of the glorious Kingdom of Christ of which "there shall be no
end". Christ's militant reign is to cease with the accomplishment
of His office as Judge (I Cor., xv, 24 sqq.), but as King of the
elect whom He has saved He will reign with them in glory forever.

P. J. TONER
Transcribed by Michael C. Tinkler


From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.

Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).

This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the  entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this  worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
mail at (knight.org/advent). For  more information please download
the file cathen.txt/.zip.

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