A bang or a whimper?
Modernist assumptions about the fate of the cosmos are perhaps best summed up with T.S. Eliot's immortal lines: "This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper."Now it seems there's a third possibility, too: not a bang or a whimper, but a crestfallen crumble--sort of like the collapse of a falling cake.
Writing in Slate, Jim Holt explores the fate of the world through the best guesses of contemporary cosmologists in a rambling memo titled "How Will the Universe End?" (Woody Allen fans will especially appreciate his introduction.)
Taking stock of what he's learned, Holt wrote,
"It was time to tally up the eschatological results. The cosmos has three possible fates: Big Crunch (eventual collapse), Big Chill (expansion forever at a steady rate), or Big Crackup (expansion forever at an accelerating rate). Humanity, too, has three possible fates: eternal flourishing, endless stagnation, or ultimate extinction."
Pretty heavy possibilities, any way you look at it.
I have a sense that the fate of the world has become increasingly important to Christians "in the trenches"--not just the ecotheologists, but the ordinary person in the pew. In the parish, I find questions about the personal fate of individual Christians (the doctrine of soteriology) are being matched by questions about the fate of the universe (the doctrine of eschatology).
We in the West, I think, are beginning to grasp that God's redemptive work encompasses all of creation, not just humanity. (Eastern Orthodox theology has always understood this better than we have.)
Yet few pastoral theologians have engaged the doctrine of eschatology--"the last things"--as a component of (let alone as a foundation for) Christian care. But there are signs all around us--the popularity of the "Left Behind" series, the appearance of Holt's recent article, millennial cults, Armageddon politics--that suggest questions about the end times are entering public consciousness in important ways.
I don't know what it would look like to integrate eschatology into our pastoral practices. But until we do so in a reflective way, we may always find ourselves reacting to, rather than adopting a responsive and responsible position toward, public questions about the ultimate ultimate concern.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Tuesday, March 09, 2004
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