A survey of the subject in various pre-Christian religions and cultures, an examination of the development of eschatology in the Old Testament, brief overview of Christian teaching
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Eschatology Search: Submit Search Home Encyclopedia Summa Fathers Bible Library A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > E > Eschatology Eschatology Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more — all for only $19.99... That branch of systematic theology which deals with the doctrines of the last things (ta eschata). The Greek title is of comparatively recent introduction, but in modern usage it has largely supplanted its Latin equivalent De Novissimis. As the numerous doctrinal subjects belonging to this section of theology will be treated ex professo under their several proper titles, it is proposed in this article merely to take such a view of the whole field as will serve to indicate the place of eschatology in the general framework of religion, explain its subject-matter and the outlines of its content in the various religions of mankind, and illustrate by comparison the superiority of Christian eschatological teaching. As a preliminary indication of the subject-matter, a distinction may be made between the eschatology of the individual and that of the race and the universe at large. The former, setting out from the doctrine of personal immortality, or at least of survival in some form after death, seeks to ascertain the fate or condition, temporary or eternal, of individual souls, and how far the issues of the future depend on the present life. The latter deals with events like the resurrection and the general judgment, in which, according to Christian Revelation, all men will participate, and with the signs and portents in the moral and physical order that are to precede and accompany those events. Both aspects — the individual and the universal — belong to the adequate concept of eschatology; but it is only in Christian teaching that both receive due and proportionate recognition. Jewish eschatology only attained its completion in the teaching of Christ and the Apostles; while in ethnic religion eschatology seldom rose above the individual view, and even then was often so vague, and so little bound up with any adequate notion of Divine justice and of moral retribution, that it barely deserves to be ranked as religious teaching. Ethnic eschatologies Uncivilized societies Even among uncivilized cultures the universality of religious beliefs, including belief in some kind of existence after death, is very generally admitted by modern anthropologists. Some exceptions, it is true, have been claimed to exist; but on closer scrutiny the evidence for this claim has broken down in so many cases that we are justified in presuming against any exception. Among the uncivilized the truth and purity of eschatological beliefs vary, as a rule, with the purity of the idea of God and of the moral standards that prevail. Some savages seem to limit existence after death to the good (with extinction for the wicked), as the Nicaraguas, or to men of rank, as the Tongas; while the Greenlanders, New Guinea negroes, and others seem to hold the possibility of a second death, in the other world or on the way to it. The next world itself is variously located — on the earth, in the skies, in the sun or moon — but most commonly under the earth; while the life led there is conceived either as a dull and shadowy and more or less impotent existence, or as an active continuation in a higher or idealized form of the pursuits and pleasures of earthly life. In most savage religions there is no very high or definite doctrine of moral retribution after death; but it is only in the case of a few of the most degraded cultures, whose condition is admittedly the result of degeneration, that the notion of retribution is claimed to be altogether wanting. Sometimes mere physical prowess, as bravery or skill in the hunt or in war, takes the place of a strictly ethical standard; but, on the other hand, some savage religions contain unexpectedly clear and elevated ideas of many primary moral duties. Civilized cultures Coming to the higher or civilized societies, we shall glance briefly at the eschatology of the Babylonian and Assyrian, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, and Greek religions. Confucianism can hardly be said to have an eschatology, except the very indefinite belief involved in the worship of ancestors, whose happiness was held to depend on the conduct of their living descendants. Islamic eschatology contains nothing distinctive except the glorification of barbaric sensuality. (a) Babylonian and Assyrian In the ancient Babylonian religion (with which the Assyrian is substantially identical) eschatology never attained, in the historical period, any high degree of development. Retribution is confined almost, if not quite, entirely to the present life, virtue being rewarded by the Divine bestowal of strength, prosperity, long life, numerous offspring, and the like, and wickedness punished by contrary temporal calamities. Yet the existence of an hereafter is believed in. A kind of semi-material ghost, or shade, or double (ekimmu), survives the death of the body, and when the body is buried (or, less commonly, cremated) the ghost descends to the underworld to join the company of the departed. In the "Lay of Ishtar" this underworld, to which she descended in search of her deceased lover and of the "waters of life", is described in gloomy colours; and the same is true of the other descriptions we possess. It is the "pit", the "land of no return", the "house of darkness", the "place where dust is their bread, and their food is mud"; and it is infested with demons, who, at least in Ishtar's case, are empowered to inflict various chastisements for sins committed in the upper world. Though Ishtar's case is held by some to be typical in this respect, there is otherwise no clear indication of a doctrine of moral penalties for the wicked, and no promise of rewards for the good. Good and bad are involved in a common dismal fate. The location of the region of the dead is a subject of controversy among Assyriologists, while the suggestion of a brighter hope in the form of a resurrection (or rather of a return to earth) from the dead, which some would infer from the belief in the "waters of life" and from references to Marduk, or Merodach, as "one who brings the dead to life", is an extremely doubtful conjecture. On the whole there is nothing hopeful or satisfying in the eschatology of this ancient religion. (b) Egyptian On the other hand, in the Egyptian religion, which for antiquity competes with the Babylonian, we meet with a highly developed and comparatively elevated eschatology. Leaving aside such difficult questions as the relative priority and influence of different, and even conflicting, elements in the Egyptian religion, it will suffice for the present purpose to refer to what is most prominent in Egyptian eschatology taken at its highest and best. In the first place, then, life in its fullness, unending life with Osiris, the sun-god, who journeys daily through the underworld, even identification with the god, with the right to be called by his name, is what the pious Egyptian looked forward to as the ultimate goal after death. The departed are habitually called the "living"; the coffin is the "chest of the living", and the tomb the "lord of life". It is not merely the disembodied spirit, the soul as we understand it, that continues to live, but the soul with certain bodily organs and functions suited to the conditions of the new life. In the elaborate anthropology which underlies Egyptian eschatology, and which we find it hard to understand, several constituents of the human person are distinguished, the most important of which is the Ka, a kind of semi-material double; and to the justified who pass the judgment after death the use of these several constituents, separated by death is restored. This judgment which each undergoes is described in detail in chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead. The examination covers a great variety of personal, social, and religious duties and observances; the deceased must be able to deny his guilt in regard to forty-two great categories of sins, and his heart (the symbol of conscience and morality) must stand the test of being weighed in the balance against the image of Maat, goddess of truth or justice. But the new life that begins after a favourable judgment is not at first any better or more spiritual than life on earth. The justified is still a wayfarer with a long and difficult journey to accomplish before he reaches bliss and security in the fertile fields of Aalu. On this journey he is exposed to a variety of disasters, for the avoidance of which he depends on the use of his revivified powers and on the knowledge he has gained in life of the directions and magical charms recorded in the Book of the Dead, and also, and perhaps most of all, on the aids provided by surviving friends on earth. It is they who secure the preservation of his corpse that he may return and use it, who provide an indestructible tomb as a home or shelter for his Ka, who supply food and drink for his sustenance, offer up prayers and sacrifices for his benefit, and aid his memory by inscribing on the walls of the tomb, or writing on rolls of papyrus enclosed in the wrappings of the mummy, chapters from the Book of the Dead. It does not, indeed, appear that the dead were ever supposed to reach a state in which they were independent of these earthly aids. At any rate they were always considered free to revisit the earthly tomb, and in making the journey to and fro the blessed had the power of transforming themselves at will into various animal-shapes. It was this belief which, at the degenerate stage at which he encountered it, Herodotus mistook for the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. It should be added that the identification of the blessed with Osiris ("Osiris N. N." is a usual form of inscription) did not, at least in the earlier and higher stage of Egyptian religion, imply pantheistic absorption in the deity or the loss of individual personality. Regarding the fate of those who fail in the judgment after death, or succumb in the second probation, Egyptian eschatology is less definite in its teaching. "Second death" and other expressions applied to them might seem to suggest annihilation; but it is sufficiently clear from the evidence as a whole that continued existence in a condition of darkness and misery was believed to be their portion. And as there were degrees in the happiness of the blessed, so also in the punishment of the lost (Book of the Dead, tr. Budge, London, 1901). (c) Indian In the Vedic, the earliest historical form of the Indian religion, eschatological belief is simpler and purer than in the Brahministic and Buddhistic forms that succeeded it. Individual immortality is clearly taught. There is a kingdom of the dead under the rule of Yama, with distinct realms for the good and the wicked. The good dwell in a realm of light and share in the feasts of the gods; the wicked are banished to a place of "nethermost darkness". Already, however, in the later Vedas, where these beliefs and developed expression, retribution begins to be ruled more by ceremonial observances than by strictly moral tests. On the other hand, there is no trace as yet of the dreary doctrine of transmigration, but critics profess to discover the germs of later pantheism. In Brahminism retribution gains in prominence and severity, but becomes hopelessly involved in transmigration, and is made more and more dependent either on sacrificial observances or on theosophical knowledge. Though after death there are numerous heavens and hells for the reward and punishment of every degree of merit and demerit, these are not final states, but only so many preludes to further rebirths in higher or lower forms. Pantheistic absorption in Brahma, the world- soul and only reality, with the consequent extinction of individual personalities - this is the only final solution of the problem of existence, the only salvation to which man may ultimately look forward. But it is a salvation which only a few may hope to reach after the present life, the few who have acquired a perfect knowledge of Brahma. The bulk of men who cannot rise to this high philosophic wisdom may succeed, by means of sacrificial observances, in gaining a temporary heaven, but they are destined to further births and deaths. Buddhist eschatology still further develops and modifies the philosophical side of the Brahministic doctrine of salvation, and culminates in what is, strictly speaking, the negation of eschatology and of all theology — a religion without a God, and a lofty moral code without hope of reward or fear of punishment hereafter. Existence itself, or at least individual existence, is the primary evil; and the craving for existence, with the many forms of desire it begets, is the source of all the misery in which life is inextricably involved. Salvation, or the state of Nirvana, is to be attained by the utter extinction of every kind of desire, and this is possible by knowledge — not the knowledge of God or the soul, as in Brahminism, but the purely philosophical knowledge of the real truth of things. For all who do not reach this state of philosophic enlightenment or who fail to live up to its requirements — that is to say for the vast bulk of mankind — there is nothing in prospect save a dreary cycle of deaths and rebirths with intercalated heavens and hells; and in Buddhism this doctrine takes on a still more dread and inexorable character than pre-Buddhistic Brahminism. (See BUDDHISM.) (d) Persian In the ancient Persian religion (Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism, Parseeism) we meet with what is perhaps, in its better elements, the highest type of ethnic eschatology. But as we know it in the Parsee literature, it contains elements that were probably borrowed from other religions; and as some of this literature is certainly post-Christian, the possibility of Jewish and even Christian ideas having influenced the later eschatological developments is not to be lost sight of. The radical defect of the Persian religion was its dualistic conception of deity. The physical and moral world is the theatre of a perpetual conflict between Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), the good, and Angra-Mainyu (Ahriman), the evil, principle, co-creators of the universe and of man. Yet the evil principle is not eternal ex parte post; he will finally be vanquished and exterminated. A pure monotheistic Providence promises at times to replace dualism, but never quite succeeds — the latest effort in this direction being the belief in Zvran Akarana, or Boundless Time as the supreme deity above both Ahriman and Ormuzd. Morality has its sanction not merely in future retribution, but in the present assurance that every good and pious deed is a victory for the cause of Ahura Mazda; but the call to the individual to be active in this cause, though vigorous and definite enough, is never quite free from ritual and ceremonial conditions, and as time goes on becomes more and more complicated by these observances, especially by the laws of purity. Certain elements are holy (fire, earth, water), certain others unholy or impure (dead bodies, the breath, and all that leaves the body, etc.); and to defile oneself or the holy elements by contact with the impure is one of the deadliest sins. Consequently corpses could not be buried or cremated, and were accordingly exposed on platforms erected for the purpose, so that birds of prey might devour them. When the soul leaves the body it has to cross the bridge of Chinvat (or Kinvad), the bridge of the Gatherer, or Accountant. For three days good and evil spirits contend for the possession of the soul, after which the reckoning is taken and the just men is rejoiced by the apparition, in the form of a fair maiden, of his good deeds, words, and thoughts, and passes over safely to a paradise of bliss, while the wicked man is confronted by a hideous apparition of his evil deeds, and is dragged down to hell. If the judgment is neutral the soul is reserved in an intermediate state (so at least in the Pahlavi books) till the decision at the last day. The developed conception of the last days, as it appears in the later literature, has certain remarkable affinities with Jewish Messianic and millennial expectations. A time during which Ahriman will gain the ascendancy is to be followed by two millennial periods, in each of which a great prophet will appear to herald the coming of Soshyant (or Sosioch), the Conqueror and Judge who will raise the dead to life. The resurrection will occupy fifty-seven years and will be followed by the general judgement, the separation of the good from the wicked, and the passing of both through a purgatorial fire gentle for the just, terrible for sinners, but leading to the restoration of all. Next will follow the final combat between the good and the evil spirits, in which the latter will perish, all except Ahriman and the serpent Azhi, whose destruction is reserved to Ahura Mazda and Scraosha, the priest-god. And last of all hell itself will be purged, and the earth renewed by purifying fire. (e) Greek Greek eschatology as reflected in the Homeric poems remains at a low level. It is only very vaguely retributive and is altogether cheerless in its outlook. Life on earth, for all its shortcomings, is the highest good for men, and death the worst of evils. Yet death is not extinction. The psyche survives - not the purely spiritual soul of later Greek and Christian thought, but an attenuated, semi-material ghost, or shade, or image, of the earthly man; and the life of this shade in the underworld is a dull, impoverished, almost functionless existence. Nor is there any distinction of fates either by way of happiness or of misery in Hades. The judicial office of Minos is illusory and has nothing to do with earthly conduct; and there is only one allusion to the Furies suggestive of their activity among the dead (Iliad XIX, 258-60). Tartarus, the lower hell, is reserved for a few special rebels against the gods, and the Elysian Fields for a few special favourites chosen by divine caprice. In later Greek thought touching the future life there are notable advances beyond the Homeric state, but it is doubtful whether the average popular faith ever reached a much higher level. Among early philosophers Anaxagoras contributes to the notion of a purely spiritual soul; but a more directly religious contribution is made by the Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries, to the influence of which in brightening and moralizing the hope of a future life we have the concurrent witness of philosophers, poets, and historians. In the Eleusinian mysteries there seems to have been no definite doctrinal teaching - merely the promise or assurance for the initiated of the fullness of life hereafter. With the Orphic, on the other hand, the divine origin and pre-existence of the soul, for which the body is but a temporary prison, and the doctrine of a retributive transmigration are more or less closely associated. It is hard to see how far the common belief of the people was influenced by these mysteries, but in poetical and philosophical literature their influence is unmistakable. This is seen especially in Pindar among the poets, and in Plato among the philosophers. Pindar has a definite promise of a future life of bliss for the good or the initiated, and not … truncated (25,542 more characters in archive)