Karl Barth and Comparative Theology by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press

6  Karl Barth and Parousia in Comparative Messianism

Kurt Anders Richardson

Christian theology in the twentieth century turned significant attention to eschatological reflection. Under Albert Schweitzer’s devastating critique at the turn of the century, the common nineteenth-century portrait of “the historical Jesus” as a most enlightened moralist in cultural evolution had to give way to the prophetic Jesus’s “thoroughgoing eschatology”1 that characterized the gospels of the New Testament. This course correction in theology highlighted the rift that had grown up between biblical studies and theology. While Karl Barth would radically disagree with Schweitzer in many ways, his theology, and its abundant exegetical features, captures the eschatology of Jesus throughout. Indeed, it may be argued that one of the best ways to understand Barth’s entire project in the Church Dogmatics is through its “eschatological realism.”2 The “eschatological” here refers to the fact that revelation and its redemptive realization in re-creation through Christ is the critical ground for Barth’s theological program.

Christianity, of course, is not the only religious tradition with a strong eschatological dimension. All of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) have eschatologies based on common messianic roots. “Messianism,” a term most commonly found in academic Judaism, refers to Jewish doctrinal systems expounding belief in a Messiah figure, shaped in large part by the “King David” narratives and prophetic allusions of the Old Testament. Messianism includes a cosmological perspective that is “messianic,” descriptive of the events and universal implications of this Jewish figure and fulfillment of the End of Days, the consummation of the divine plan for redemption and final judgment. “Christology,” the theology of the person of Jesus Christ in Christianity, is also justifiably termed “Christian messianism”—given its marked “Davidic” elements (see Rom. 1:1–4). Jesus Christ’s second coming or appearing (parousia) brings about the End of Days. As discussed more fully below, the Shi’a system of belief in the Mahdi (from muhtadun “the rightly guided one(s)” (see Qur’an 3:51–56, 90; 6:82; and 4:175) or hidden (“occulted”) Twelfth Imam and his appearing (parousia) at the End of Days to accomplish much the same divine goals, is justifiably termed “Islamic messianism.” All three faiths present scriptural narratives of their own, but with many overlapping features of an “Abrahamic messianism” that are conspicuously related to a common core of Judaic conceptuality and expectation. Typical of these narratives are their “apocalyptic” features, end time cosmological events signaling the End of Days in often cataclysmic terms.

Parousia is a common term in biblical and theological studies in Christianity to refer to the second coming of Jesus. But increasingly Islamic scholars have been using the term for their own eschatological visions. By the end of the first millennium, soteriological features inherent in the eschatology of the Qur’an began to manifest themselves in narratives of redemptive suffering, which led to elaborations upon the parousia of Jesus as Messiah accompanied by the Mahdi who would signal to the Muslim faithful that the end of the age had arrived.3 Shi’a theology has the most developed Muslim messianic theology (and eschatology), and as will be explored here, contains many poignant parallels to the Christian eschatology of Barth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.