Abstract
The doctrine of Christian eschatology includes hopes of eternal life, divine judgment, and the establishment of heaven and hell at the end of history. While this doctrine was gradually forgotten by the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, and by the natural and Protestant Liberal theological insights, with the outbreak of tragedic World Wars, the Christian theology of the twentieth century reconsidered the Christian hope. Rudolf Bultmann and Jürgen Moltmann, who had touched closely on the events of those decades, interpreted the eschatology in two different ways. Bultmann’s problem was a philosophical reinterpretation of the Christian experience, and Moltmann sought to transform the hope into a trigger to alleviate the suffering of the oppressed. In his demythologizing method, Bultmann presented an existential interpretation of the eschaton, according to which the present time is the promised salvation, and whoever believes in Christ will be saved. In contrast, Moltmann believed in the literal meaning of the doctrine, i.e. the re-creation of the universe in the future, and sought to reconstruct this doctrine in the context of the sufferings of the contemporary world. The method of this research is descriptive-analytical and in it, an attempt has been made to formulate a detailed analysis of Bultmann and Moltmann eschatology using various sources, however, the main reliance has been on the books “The Coming of God: The Christian Epistemology” by Moltmann, “The New Testament Theology”, “History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity”, and “Jesus Christ and the Mythology” by Bultmann.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Hope, Eschatology, Bultmann, Moltmann, Sacred Texts Theology, Salvation, Cosmology
