Saint Paul, Eschatology and Our Present Situation

Paul shared common Jewish end of time expectations. Like Jesus. And, in the two centuries before Jesus and Paul, eschatological expectations had taken a new strength. The believers were waiting for a (new) radical intervention of God in human history in order for the prophecies of the prophets of old to be accomplished. The belief in God’s capacity to resurrect the dead came more and more prominent. Why? Because God’s justice is a key element of God’s identity. To stay the God of Israel, God had to be a just Judge and be able to give rewards to the martyrs. Even if the moment of the end of things has to stay unknown, the day of the great reckoning will come. Since the 19th century however, the Church has been ashamed of the apocalyptic discourse: Eschatological discourse seemed mythological, outdated and basically useless. The present age of global ecological crisis has changed the situation. We have to rediscover the value of the maxim of the Hungarian Jesuit Gábor Hevenesi: “Put your trust in God as though the whole course of things depended entirely on yourself, and not on God; but at the same time do everything in your power as if nothing were to be done by you and everything by God alone”. Neither pietistic resignation nor voluntarist activism.