Eschatological Poetics: The Rules of Iconic Extension

Abstract

Eschatological Poetics:The Rules of Iconic Extension Cyril O'Regan Here I pursue the question of what role—if any—imagination can play with respect to theology. This is not only a modern issue, as can be seen in, for example: Origen's entertaining questions beyond what is probative in the teaching of the Church, such as the question of universal salvation; the risky explorations of Eckhart in his vernacular German sermons when it comes to God, creation, Christ, self, and Mary, in which he suggests alternatives to the received tradition; and John of the Cross's improvisations on mystical theology offered in the Ascent to Mount Carmel and anagogic reading of Scripture presented in the Dark Night and the Spiritual Canticles. Still, the question of what role imagination can play in theology has become increasingly more urgent and reflective in the modern period, when the limitations of received tradition and reason in the construction of theology come under scrutiny and the notion of talent, and even that of genius, comes to be applied to theological construction. Obviously, Friedrich Schleiermacher is the central figure, but it is also true that this move was repeated in more modest ways by thinkers in the nineteenth century as different as Soren Kierkegaard and Johann Sebastian Drey,1 and in [End Page 835] the twentieth century by theologians as different as Paul Tillich, David Tracy, Sergei Bulgakov, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.2 The very different theological styles of these thinkers, and specifically their very different use of imagination and the authority they accord it, is a fascinating area [End Page 836] of research, although it will not directly be pursued in this article. Here I would like to deal more narrowly with the role imagination plays in Catholic theological reflection on "last things" and, more specifically, in Catholic theology's articulation of postmortem existence. A number of things need to be said about the overall horizon of this article. First, the main authors I deal with here, both contemporary and traditional, are Catholic. Second, for ecumenical reasons, the article will focuses exclusively on heaven. I have basically put aside (without prejudice) the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which is not shared by the other Christian confessions, and although a doctrine of hell is found in all confessions, I put the representation of hell in parenthesis on the grounds that, in all confessions, there exist minority reports questioning its reality. Third, while I do not put Catholic doctrine of the intermediate state entirely in brackets,3 I treat it in a highly qualified way: insofar as it looks forward to the resurrected body.4 Fourth, and finally, the overall horizon of the article is contemporary and the criteria of adequacy when it comes to representation are not exclusively dependent on the representations generated in the premodern Catholic tradition, even if these representations prove to be both useful and orienting. One major feature of this study is a critical examination of two Catholic thinkers, John Thiel and Paul Griffiths,5 who have provided two very different accounts of heaven. Both are aware of the current anemia when it comes to the representation of the blessed state, and both suggest that the doctrinal under-determination in evidence [End Page 837] opens up the space for responsible symbolic or iconic extension beyond the received tradition. Neither is willing to take the convenient out of substituting the kingdom of God for heaven6 and then proceeding to interpret the kingdom in terms of the transmogrification of the individual or society and/or the transmutation of the cosmos. But only the first part of this study focuses on what I am calling "eschatological poetics" in its modern Catholic forms, meaning forms of theology that involve an iconic extension of and beyond the standard Christian eschatology. In discussing these very different forms of eschatology, I will examine whether and how these eschatologies complement, supplement, or replace influential representations within the broader Christian tradition, whether there are rules for iconic extension, and whether the rules are biased toward either continuity or discontinuity. I will also attempt to isolate as much as possible the assumptions about the negative states of existence that...