Eschatology

Eschatology deals with questions about the final destination of human beings, including the question of an afterlife. When people face life's finitude, they feel a need for a perspective that extends beyond mortality. In the case of death, they look for a completion of human life that transcends death. More generally, the field of eschatology covers the doctrine (Greek: λόγος) of the end-time (έσχατος). The end-time is one of the primordial problems of human life. The search for ideas and beliefs concerning the end-time is associated with the universal question of whether all humankind and the world can expect a future that transcends the ephemeral, regardless of transience. Religious traditions have devised various responses to these issues. Connected with the question about the end-time, people ask questions about the time of genesis. The question about the destination of human life and the cosmos is linked to the question of their origin, the subject matter of what is known as protology. Where do humans come from before their birth and where do they go to after death? Since the latter half of the 19th century, scholars of religion have tried to collect the various answers to the question about the endtime and to discern broad patterns in these answers. This effort evolved into what is now known as eschatology, which relies on theology, anthropology, psychology, ethics, philosophy, and sociology.

Personal and Collective Eschatology

In the current social climate, eschatology is very much in the limelight. The confrontation with death raises questions when individualization and the secularization of society compel people to find their own answers. In addition, environmental [Page 417]pollution and climatic change create new scenarios of the end-time. These are depicted in various ways in religions and new spiritual or esoteric trends, as well as in philosophy and public debate.

There is a distinction between personal eschatology and collective eschatology. Personal eschatology concerns what awaits each human individual after death. Collective eschatology deals with the end-time in general. At issue is what happens to humankind and the entire world when time comes to an end. There are many possible answers, of which some examples are described in this entry to illustrate the substance and function of eschatology in people's handling of mortality.

Anthropological Dimension of Personal Eschatology

Anthropologically, eschatology provides a substantive bridge between the world of the living and the world of the dead. This bridge is often portrayed ritually. According to the scholar of ritual Arnold van Gennep, death entails a twofold transition. The survivors make a transition from life with the deceased to life without that person. At the same time the deceased makes a transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead. In van Gennep's view, the transition always proceeds in three phases: One is separated from the world of the living (first phase), one finds oneself in a sort of intermediate state between life and death (second phase), and finally one is incorporated into the world of the dead (third phase). This classically structured rite of passage shows that there has to be a link connecting the worlds of the living and the dead. To the survivors, eschatology offers images of the world of the dead that can provide such a link. One possibility is that the deceased is initiated into a new life after death, enacted in, for instance, deathbed or funeral rites. Initiation into the world of the dead could mean the final step in a person's life. Already among the ancient Egyptians one finds the view that heaven is a person's final destination, from which there is no return.

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