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Part Six: The Doctrine of the Last Things
Introductory Chapter
A. ESCHATOLOGY IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION.
1. THE QUESTION OF ESCHATOLOGY A NATURAL ONE.
A doctrine of the last things is not
something that is peculiar to the Christian religion. Wherever people have seriously reflected
on human life, whether in the individual or in the race, they have not merely asked, whence did
it spring, and how did it come to be what it is, but also, whither is it bound? They raised the
question, What is the end or final destiny of the individual; and what is the goal towards which
the human race is moving? Does man perish at death, or does he enter upon another state of
existence, either of bliss or of woe? Will the generations of men come and go in endless
succession and finally sink into oblivion, or is the race of the children of men and the whole
creation moving on to some divine telos, an end designed for it by God. And if the human race
is moving on to some final, some ideal, condition perhaps, will the generations that have come
and gone participate in this in any way, and if so, how; or did they merely serve as a
thoroughfare leading up to the grand climax? Naturally, only those who believe that, as the
history of the world had a beginning, it will also have an end, can speak of a consummation and
have a doctrine of eschatology.
2. THE QUESTION OF ESCHATOLOGY IN PHILOSOPHY.
The question of the final destiny of the
individual and of the race occupied an important place even in the speculations of the
philosophers. Plato taught the immortality of the soul, that is, its continued existence after
death, and this doctrine remained an important tenet in philosophy up to the present time.
Spinoza had no place for it in his pantheistic system, but Wolff and Leibnitz defended it with all
kinds of arguments. Kant stressed the untenableness of these arguments, but nevertheless
retained the doctrine of immortality as a postulate of practical reason. The idealistic philosophy
of the nineteenth century ruled it out. In fact, as Haering says, “Pantheism of all sorts is limited
to a definite mode of contemplation, and does not lead to any ‘ultimate’.” Not only did the
philosophers reflect on the future of the individual; they also thought deeply on the future of
the world. The Stoics spoke of successive world-cycles, and the Buddhists, of world-ages, in
each of which a new world appears and again disappears. Even Kant speculated on the birth
and death of worlds.
3. THE QUESTION OF ESCHATOLOGY IN RELIGION.
It is especially in religion, however, that we
meet with eschatological conceptions. Even false religions, the more primitive as well as the
more advanced, have their eschatology. Buddhism has its Nirvana, Mohammedanism, its
sensual paradise, and the Indians, their happy hunting-grounds. Belief in the continued