Abstract
Questions of eschatology have become more and more relevant in times of increasing threats to survival, in science as well as in popular culture, in world politics as well as in religions.
This chapter explores if the much-debated “spatial turn” also can take place in eschatology. Could theologians assist in reconciling space and time, which in the Western history of science and culture have been commoditized, restricted and, in many modes, violently and fatally separated from each other?
I discuss two theologians who have plowed the way for such a spatial turn especially in eschatology, Vitor Westhelle and Jürgen Moltmann, and finally draw on my own reflections on Heimat where time turns into space. The intention within the chapter is to encourage theologians to accelerate the spatial turn in theology and to mine deeper the spatiality of eschatology to come, where Raum and time are integrated at depth for the best of our common earth and future.
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Notes
- 1.
Among outstanding thinkers who have resisted and overcome this split should be mentioned Max Jammer, Das Problem des Raumes: Die Entwicklung der Raumtheorien, mit einem Vorwort von Albert Einstein, Darmstadt: WBG 1960, (Concepts of Space, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press 1953), and Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values, Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall 1974.
- 2.
In the context of an ongoing process writing a book with Nordic scholars in contextual theology on Eschatology in-between hope and despair, forthcoming 2016, and my chapter “Time Turned into Space – at Home on Earth: Wanderings in Eschatological Spatiality.”
- 3.
For a discussion of eschatology’s regard of otherness in religious traditions and a comparison of Christian, Jewish and Muslim eschatologies see Wirén, 76 ff. Jakob Wirén, Hope and Otherness: Christian Eschatology in an Interreligious Context, Lund: Lund University 2013. For an intriguing discussion of eschatology in the context of environmentalism and climate change see Stefan Skrimshire, Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination, New York and London: Bloomsbury 2010.
- 4.
In her preaching (on the Good Samaritan in Luke 10: 25–37) at the annual opening ceremony for the Swedish Parliament’s working year in 2014 archbishop Antje Jackelén coined the Swedish term “dikesperspektivet” (perspective from the roadside ditch) in order to encourage politicians to revert their perspective and regard themselves as low-lying in the ditch with a strong need for others. “Med den frågan får Jesus oss att se livet och makten ur dikesperspektivet. Det är inte de andra som är i diket utan du och jag. Det är inte vi som är världens barmhärtige samarier utan också vi är i behov av den andre, den främmande, den ratade för att bli sant mänskliga.” http://www.svenskatal.se/20140930-antje-Jackelén-predikan-vid-riksmotets-oppnande-2014/ accessed 6 March 2015.
- 5.
For a more extensive discussion of how the experiences of exile and homelessness on earth and in the body were supposed to be overcome by a spiritual journey to heavenly Jerusalem, where pilgrimage served to utopianize heavenly space at the same time that it enhanced the universalization of salvation, see Bergmann (2014).
- 6.
Cf. Vicenzotti’s constructive and relevant distinction of conservative vs. utopian understandings of Heimat. (Vicenzotti 2015).
- 7.
Buenas Nuevas pa mi pueblo, text and music by Gilmer Torres, Peru, verse 3 (my translation).
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Bergmann, S. (2016). Places of Encounter with the Eschata: Accelerating the Spatial Turn in Eschatology. In: Baldwin, J. (eds) Embracing the Ivory Tower and Stained Glass Windows. Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23944-6_6
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