20th Century Jewish Religious Thought: Original Essays on Critical Concepts, Movements, and Beliefs

Eschatology

Eschatology C'~~M n~,nN n"n Arthur A. Cohen E schatology signifies the doctrine of the last and final events that will consummate the life of man and the cosmos and usher in the "day of the Lord." Such a definition, broad and general as it is, encompasses a considerable variety of classic Jewish belief and undergirds the language of the prayer book insofar as these convey teachings regarding the life that succeeds death, the coming of the Messiah , and the establishment of God's kingdom. Eschatology reflects a constellation of Jewish hopes and expectations for God's working the miracle of the end as he wrought the miracle of the beginning. Eschatological speech, as it appears in the traditional prayer book from the numerous formulations of the Amidah to the declaration of the Aleinu to the recitation of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles, reflects a coherent movement of Jewish conviction and elicits a credal reflex that, as often as it is obediently delivered , remains nonetheless obscure. There is a thoroughgoing Jewish eschatology, but there is certainly no normative clarity as to the meaning or intention of its formulas. The language of eschatology-promising the gifts of eternal life, the transformation 184 ESCHATOLOGY of history, the bringing of the nations to the worship of the God of Israel, the emergence of the messianic personage, the apocalyptic end of time and nature, the promulgation of divine kingship and sovereignty, the ransoming of the dead and their restoration to physical and spiritual vitality-all these represent elements of eschatological teaching. However, as the formulae of eschatology become elaborate and replete with allusions to biblical sources, apocryphal and apocalyptic emphases, Gnostic byways, rabbinic elucidations and metaphors, medieval speculation and modern reformulation, it becomes ever more expliCit that despite the insistence of the tradition that there is a core of dogmatic affirmation that constitutes the jew's dream of promise fulfilled and expectation gratified, the eschatological teaching is a muddle. There is profound disagreement with regard to the interpretation and reception of the belief in life beyond death. Some thinkers speak of two resurrections, some of spiritual resurrection alone without need for bodily vivification, and yet others formulate a naive and gross teaching of bodily transfiguration and paradisal gratification. No less is the disagreement over the doctrine of the Messiah, who is seen by some as entailing only a political ransoming of the jews from subjection to the nations (with the malign consequence that often contemporary jews believe that the establishment of the State of Israel coincides with the beginning of messianic restoration), while others continue to maintain that the Messiah is a person specially endowed by God and anointed to leadership of his people, and yet others hold that the Messiah is not a person at all but a mood of universal ethical regeneration. The apocalyptic end of time and history, the great mystical orgy of ruin and consummation, the triumphant emergence of the avenging God succeeded by the God of victorious compassion is-even more than the preceding notions-fraught with difficulties and stubborn unclarity. What does it all mean? What need is there for an eschatological doctrine? Why is it indubitably a portion of the teaching of historical judaism? And how may its tenets be submitted to judgment and refinement so that its essential intentions may be clarified and set straight? Rather than analyze the specific eschatological thought of Israel, this essay addresses the question : Why eschatology? Why teachings regarding the End of Days and fulfillment beyond our years and the implication of such a rich working of the theological imagination? Eschatological teaching, grounded in the hope that God will ransom, redeem, and reward the faithful while bringing evil under final judgment at the End of Days, clearly implies ethical resolutions as these are entailed by the doctrines of providence and reward and punishment. Since it is taught that the jew should not do the will of his creator out of crass desire for ESCHATOLOGY 185 reward, there can be little conviction that doing the will of God and observing the Torah with a clean heart and an obedient spirit will be rewarded. Moreover, what reward could God give to obedience in this life, in the midst of living, when the task is not yet done nor the full course of life completed? God does not reward in the midst of life; indeed, it is surely questionable whether God rewards...