Eschatology and Theology of Hope: The Impact of Gaudium et Spes on the Thought of Edward Schillebeeckx

Abstract

Before the Second Vatican Council, Edward Schillebeeckx O.P. (1914–2009) had begun to reassess and the role and nature of eschatology as a discipline within Catholic theology. He began to formulate an early theology of hope in the 1950s which he would later develop quite extensively. His reflections during the Council on the famous draft of Gaudium et Spes, and on the finished document reveal the urgency of rethinking the essential relationship between ‘church’ and ‘world’. This article examines the impact of Gaudium et Spes on Schillebeeckx's work in two aspects. First, the way that it helped to orient his eschatological thought towards an emphasis on the ‘future’. The distance between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’, coupled with the essential place of creation as the site of God's salvific activity in history, began to push Schillebeeckx towards an eschatological and primarily future‐oriented understanding of Christian praxis and preaching. Second, this article will examine the anthropology that Schillebeeckx reads from Gaudium et Spes and the way in which a ‘new image’ of humanity, in light of a future‐oriented eschatology, contributed to his attempts to rethink the tension between ‘church’ and ‘world’.