Political Eschatology

by S. J. McGrath

Publisher:

Pickwick Publications

, 2023

Nothing is more distressing to the modern person than the experience of an unsurpassable limit of the calculable. Nothing disturbs us more deeply than incalculable time, unpredictable time--the time of the advent of the unpredictably new.

In a series of interventions into contemporary political crises, McGrath reactualizes the early Christian sense of eschatology as the experience of a time that runs out rather than moves forward. In contemporary politics, economy, ecology, and technology, much that was familiar for most of the twentieth century--the intra-generational transmission of religious values, progressive economic growth, a stable global climate, and predictable movements of peoples and nonhuman species across the planet--is ending calamitously. Endtime, however, is not only the time of endings; it is also the time of unforeseeable beginnings.

Praise for Political Eschatology

“In Political Eschatology, Sean McGrath argues that a society which mostly thinks that it has departed from Christianity is actually ‘theologically saturated’ in both its ideas and its institutions, but that this theology is fatally ‘deteriorated.’ McGrath wants to convert the now prevailing ‘apocalyptic anxiety’ to ‘eschatological hope’ by showing the proper character of Christian faith, and he succeeds wonderfully. An informative and inspiring book.”

—David Cayley, author of Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey



“Eschatology is back, and political eschatology is even more relevant than it has ever been before. Sean McGrath shows us in honest clarity and in seven well documented essays how important it is to not only include eschatology in our theological reflection about the consequences of modernity and the very future of humanity, but to make it the very center of it.”

—Gerbern S. Oegema, professor of biblical studies, McGill University

Product Details

• Title: Political Eschatology
• Author: S. J. McGrath
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Print Publication Date: 2023
• Logos Release Date: 2023
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781666798388, 9781666738094, 1666738093, 9781666798371, 1666798371, 166679838X
• Resource ID: LLS:9781666798388
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2023-12-27T20:39:21Z

About S. J. McGrath

S. J. McGrath is assistant professor of philosophy at Memorial University at Newfoundland and the author of The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy: Phenomenology for the Godforsaken.