Personal Eschatology in the Old Believer Polemical Writings between 17th and 20th Centuries

The article explores manuscripts written between 17th and 20th centuries about people being in the next world. These writings were used by the Old Believers of different denominations to polemicize with the representatives of authority and the established church; they were also the subject of disagreement within the Old Believer movement. Special attention is paid to the writings devoted to polemics on justifying suicide for the sake of faith, preserving ministerial hierarchy (the Popovtsy (“priested ones”) and the Bezpopovtsy (“priestless ones”) – movements in the Old Ritualism)), and remaining faithful to old covenants in everyday life.

Girolamo Zanchi on Union with Christ and the Final Judgment

Union with Christ was a key doctrine for second-generation Reformed theologian Girolamo Zanchi. As a Thomist, Zanchi shared similar elements with Thomas Aquinas in his understanding of salvation as participatio, but his understanding of union with Christ differed with regard to the difference between infused and imputed righteousness. Unlike Aquinas’s doctrine of infused righteousness, Zanchi argued for imputed righteousness, which was both the foundation for one’s justification in this life as well as appearing before the divine bar at the final judgment. Zanchi’s doctrine of union with Christ has the utmost significance for personal eschatology and the judgment believers undergo at the great assize, insights that are worth retrieving for a clear understanding of the relationship between justification and the final judgement.

LIFE LIVED IN LOVE: KONSEP JÜRGEN MOLTMANN MENGENAI ESKATOLOGI PRIBADI | LIFE LIVED IN LOVE: JÜRGEN MOLTMANN’S CONCEPT ON PERSONAL ESCHATOLOGY

<b>Abstract</b> This article will focus on describing Moltmann’s view of personal eschatology, which includes his view on death, the intermediate state, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal life. The main thesis of this article is that Moltmann’s view of personal eschatology is more relevant and applicable to the Christian life here and now. At the end of this article, the author will give two applications of Moltmann’s doctrine of personal eschatology. First, Moltmann’s view of personal eschatology motivates Christians, that they must live their lives in love, hope, and faith, for they already have been resurrected and given eternal life, here and now. Secondly, Moltmann’s focus on the new earth and new heaven in this world, more than life after death and the traditional concepts of heaven and hell, should make Christians care about this world and the life in it. <b>Keywords:</b> Jürgen Moltmann, Personal Eschatology, Death, Intermediate State, Resurrection of the Dead, Eternal Life. <b>Abstrak</b> Artikel ini terfokus pada deskripsi pandangan Moltmann tentang eskatologi pribadi, yaitu mengenai kematian, keadaan peralihan, kebangkitan orang mati, dan kehidupan kekal. Tesis utama artikel ini ialah pandangan Moltmann tentang eskatologi pribadi yang lebih relevan dan berlaku untuk kehidupan Kristen di sini dan saat ini. Pada akhir artikel ini, penulis memberikan dua aplikasi dari doktrin Moltmann tentang eskatologi pribadi, yaitu: Pertama, pandangan Moltmann tentang eskatologi pribadi memotivasi orang Kristen supaya menjalani hidup mereka dalam cinta, harapan, dan iman, karena mereka sudah dibangkitkan dan diberikan jaminan kehidupan kekal. Kedua, pandangan Moltmann mengenai bumi dan surga baru di dunia ini yang lebih dari kehidupan setelah kematian dan konsep-konsep tradisional tentang surga dan neraka, membuat orang Kristen peduli terhadap dunia dan kehidupan di dalamnya. <b>Kata kunci:</b> Jürgen Moltmann, Eskatologi Pribadi, Kematian, Kebangkitan Orang Mati, Kehidupan Kekal

Demonstration and Damnation

In Blake’s mythopoeia, as well as his personal eschatology, belief is the source of life itself; all creative acts, all visionary episodes, stem from an individual’s belief. “Eternal Death,” which is the cycle of Generation, is the result of unbelief. Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke were, for Blake, the triumvirate of culpable votaries for the propagation of rational reductionism which had led to the reification of “Natural Religion” in the form of Deism and Rational Dissent in England and, with the addition of Rousseau and Voltaire, of the apotheosis in France of the Cult of Reason. The French philosophes and the English empiricists were not only at fault for forming the wheels which turned the “dark Satanic Mills?” (M 514 1.8) of man’s cognizance but, and what Blake considered their primary offence, of unbelief. This paper will discuss how unbelief is the main cause of division in Blake’s universe, accentuated “by the cruelties of Demonstration” (M 578 29.36) of empiricists who “Doubt Doubt & dont believe without experiment” (NB 609 5–9), and how the Limits placed upon man’s fall(s) act as one possible mode of redemption which allows for the return of belief and the individual’s creative vision.

Ensouling the Beatific Vision. Motivating the Reformed Impulse

The beatific vision is a subject of considerable importance both in the Christian Scriptures and in the history of Christian dogmatics. In it, humans experience and see the perfect immaterial God, which represents the final end for the saints. However, this doctrine has received less attention in the contemporary theological literature, arguably, due in part to the growing trend toward materialism and the sole emphasis on bodily resurrection in Reformed eschatology. As a piece of retrieval by drawing from the Scriptures, Medieval Christianity, and Reformed Christianity, we motivate a case for the Reformed emphasis on the immaterial and intellectual aspects of human personal eschatology and offer some constructive thoughts on how to link it to the contemporary emphasis of the body. We draw a link between the soul and the body in the vision with the help of Christology as reflected in the theology of John Calvin, and, to a greater extent, the theology of both John Owen and Jonathan Edwards.