Sean J. McGrath’s Political Eschatology is built around his concept of “the eschatological thought” and why it matters in times of climate crisis. The book is structured in seven more-or-less independent chapters, four of which have previously been published, although the book hangs together well.
From the beginning of the first chapter, “Endtime,” McGrath reminds of us of the abyss of time that Christianity opened in Western thinking by breaking the old model of cyclical time and replacing it with the horizon of a radical future (eschaton) and the thought of the end. McGrath reminds us of the roots of liberalism in Christianity and bids it “adieu” by examining how the history of liberalism developed out of Christian thought.
In the second chapter, “The Eschatological Thought,” McGrath expands on how this Schellingian approach to the end of history differs from Hegelianism. Teleological thinking, which must not be confused with mechanical determinism, is based on the Aristotelian idea of potentia, i.e., the determinate possibility given in advance of any development. Eschatological thinking works with a much more radical concept of contingency by opening it for the radical new.
In his third chapter, “Can the Earth be Sacred Again?”, McGrath takes a closer look not only at the Christian origins of technology, but also at our loss of cross-cultural contemplative thinking: “contemplation is the antidote to anthropocentrism, that narcissistic humanism that induces Cartesian despair, the horror that we are homeless in the universe because all meaning appears to depend on us and our constructs“ (73).
The fourth chapter, “The End of History,” revisits the concept of the “end of history.” Here McGrath provides an initial criticism of consumerism and its typical liberal tendency of homogenization. McGrath uses this as an entry point to further execute his Schellingian alternative. This end is based on an eschatological inbreaking of the new “Church of John,” which is not a higher synthesis in which the former stages of the church are aufgehoben (this German word has a triple meaning: It can mean abolished, but also preserved or lifted. It is by definition a dialectical word.).
The fifth chapter, “The Theology of Consumerism,” is in many ways the highlight of the work, not only because the tension leading up to it has been successively built up in the previous chapters, but also because here McGrath takes the Anti-Christ by the horns by showing the extent to which consumerism represents a perversion of Christian values. McGrath demonstrates the extent to which the consumer is driven by secular Christian motives.
In his sixth chapter, “The Time of Pandemic,”McGrath reflects on the Covid pandemic and how it brought out the “eschatological edge of the Christian faith” (130). Something new, for good or for evil, can always emerge in eschatological time, and therefore the new as new should always be anticipated without knowledge. The early Christian eschatological attitude corresponds to the Heideggerian expression of circumspective concern (umsichtiges Besorgen), a strictly temporal notion of "existence" that is always in anticipation of the sign of the end.
In the final chapter, “Hospitality at the End,” McGrath first takes a hard look at the current situation of liberal societies, which he describes as morally bankrupt. Liberalism has failed to deliver on its promises and was never able to solve its contradictions, as Hans Blumenberg imagined it might. Thus, McGrath reminds Christians that they do not belong only to an old and forgotten past or to an always-deferred future.
With this, the ambiguities of eschatological thinking become evident. For example, the notion of sacrifice would appear to be a chance to break the dominance of contractarianism. But in our current politics, the idea of sacrifice is misused by those most attached to a contractional understanding of justice and becomes a renewed form of liberal dominance. The “sacrifice” of borders is built on the sacrificed homelands of the sacrificed. It is an open question whether liberalism would ever be able to accept McGrath’s “adieu.”
One term I missed in the book was the word of kairos(the in-breaking of eternity into temporality), in distinction to the current understanding of time as chronological (chronos). However, labelling the current climate crisis as a sign of kairos rather than eschaton seems to be the preferred interpretation in European and German political theology as Jürgen Moltmann called for their strict separation.
In general, this work is full of important implications for political theology. A political eschatology, as presented here by McGrath, and his notion of Schellings Unvordenkliches (unprethinkable) can be seen as the “real” Other (not the Big Other) of the nomos. Therefore it cannot be falsely confused with secular sovereignty. Political eschatology is thus neither the expectation of Leviathan (Carl Schmitt) nor is it a revolutionary consequence of the history of freedom (as in left-wing Hegelianism, for example). Eschatology is contingent in two respects. On the one hand, it refers to the past as "the road not taken," which also sees potentials not yet realised, and at the same time it is radically open to the future. McGraths sometimes even poetic style reminds theology that, in addition to its scientific considerations, it also has the task of keeping alive the plausibility and hope of the Gospel. McGrath succeeds brilliantly in rekindling this fire in his work, precisely because he does not leave out the negative sides of eschatological thinking, but literally "illuminates" them.
This is especially true in today's situation, in which naive secularist narratives continue to de-historicize societies. By forgetting the Christian legacy of liberalism, secular values come to appear as a priori certainties and not as the consequence of a contingent history of ideas. This tendency, which is driven forward most strongly by the despisers of Christianity, can lead to a totalization of perverted Christian values.
But as long as there are still thinkers like McGrath, a blank defeatism towards the world's crises cannot be an option. In his thinking, even catastrophes appear to be a wellspring of possible joy and hope. At the very least, they awaken in us the urge to work for a future worth living for.
Felix Treutner is a doctoral student in the department of Christian social ethics at LMU in Munich, Germany.
Felix Treutner
Date Of Review:
June 25, 2024
