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  • From: FucciXXV AT aol.com
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Rom 7, Pauline eschatology, and other questions
  • Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 17:38:27 EST


In a message dated 3/31/99 7:48:13 AM Central Standard Time,
rltroxel AT facstaff.wisc.edu writes:

> I have only begun Dom Crossan's new tome and so have not come to his
> discussion of this issue. However, if this is what he says, I congratulate
> him on supporting his observation (not new in any case) regarding the
> idiosyncratic use(s) of "eschatology" and "apocalyptic" with his own
> idiosyncratic definition. Given that "eschatology" is the rubric for
> ideology attentive to *ta esCata*, ideology that typically looks (as J.
> Collins has pointed out) not to the end events themselves, but to the ideal
> state lying beyond them, then truncating this perspective by halting with
> dissatisfaction over the present shape of things seems to me truly
> idiosyncratic. It's one thing to urge each scholar to define
> "eschatology"; it's another to treat the term as a cipher.

I may well have distorted Crossan's position in summarizing it, although I
gave it my best shot. If you can devise a more illuminating summary when you
reach that part of the book (Chapter 15) please feel free to correct mine.

I would say that he doesn't so much "halt with dissatisfaction" as distinguish
between different ways of "ending" the dissatisfying condition. "Eschatology"
is treated in practice as a genus and differing species of ending strategies
are distinguished: e.g., apocalyptic eschatology (eschatology which looks
toward a transcendental destruction of the world) as opposed to ethical
eschatology (eschatology which looks to end the current ideological "world" by
substituting a new ideological "world.")

Jim Thorn
Chicago, IL




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