Within the precincts of Harvard University, one can still hear an ardent defense of the venerable distinction between “facts” and “values,” or, as sometimes put, between “description” and “evaluation.” Arguments over this distinction go to the heart of the relation of ethics to scholarship, as was vividly illustrated recently by a controversy in this university concerning a doctoral dissertation proposal in “ethnonational studies.” Among other things, the proposal, which envisioned an examination and a critique of ideas of citizenship, as they bear on a contemporary case of ethnonational conflict, was criticized for being more a piece of advocacy, more the subject for an op-ed article, than serious scholarship. The possible consequences were portentous. If the case against the proposal had stood, the candidate would, in effect, have had no right as a scholar to pursue such a line of inquiry in the way proposed.

Then thelordsaid to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And thelordput a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. (Gen 4:15)

Theology in the 20th century witnessed a shift in emphasis: The talk about the last things did not have to come last any more as the traditional handbooks of systematic theology would have it; eschatology was no longer one branch of theology among others but lay at the center of our understanding of the Christian faith. My purpose in this essay is to go a step further than this rearrangement in theological discourse and examine a reversal within the theological understanding of eschatology itself. In the wake of the work of the Metropolitan of Pergamon John (Zizioulas), a different understanding of eschatology has emerged, one that recognizes in the Parousia not only the event that stands at the end of history (the apocalyptic closure of time with which certain Christian groups have always had a fascination), but also as that event that, grounded in the Eucharist, flows continuously from the and permeates every moment in history. In the following discussion I wish to trace and spell out the implications of such a novel understanding of eschatology for our theologies today. As my guides in this exploration, I take the theology of John Zizioulas and certain insights that recent research in phenomenology has placed at theology's service. This association might seem strange to the reader: What does the theology of things-to-come have in common with the philosophy of things-themselves? I would like to propose that phenomenology, especially as it has been recently formulated by a new generation of phenomenologists, such as Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste, and Richard Kearney, can be a very helpful instrument in the hands of eucharistic eschatology in its effort to rescue eschatology from the twin risks of either immanentizing it or relegating it to an end-of-times utopia. Furthermore, the structure of an “inverted intentionality,” as exemplified by certain liturgical forms such as hymnology and iconography, will be suggested as the precise point of phenomenology's convergence with eucharistic eschatology. I write with the conviction that eschatology is in essence a “liberation” theology (freeing us from the moralistic and sociological constellations of this world) and that, as my concluding remarks illustrate, it has real, practical, day-to-day consequences for the ways we conduct our lives and our relationships with others.

John Dewey famously argued that Darwin had introduced a new conceptual vocabulary that would completely overhaul the traditional philosophical enterprise. His sense was that the kinds of monumental metaphysical questions that philosophy typically asked about causes, trends and purposes start to look meaningless and willfully unanswerable once we absorb the tough lessons of natural selection. More specifically, Dewey thought that The Origin of Species provided a strong but beneficial dose of philosophical therapy because it illustrated how to simultaneously abandon the lifeless questions of the past while formulating new questions to take their place. Darwin's achievement revealed for Dewey that sometimes philosophical progress is not “an affair of different ways of dealing with old problems, but of relegation of the problems to the attic in which are kept the relics of former intellectual bad taste.” From this perspective, the litmus test for measuring intellectual growth is surprisingly simple. If we examine the concerns that once excited our ancestors and feel only the shudder of regret that so much energy was wasted on a lost cause, we can be reasonably confident that we have taken a few steps forward.

You may have heard of the Blessed Mountain.It is the highest mountain in our world.Should you reach the summit you would have only one desire,and that to descend and be with those who dwell in the deepest valley.That is why it is called the Blessed Mountain.Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam

Mysticism is on the rise as a topic of cultural interestand as a part of the burgeoning interest in “spirituality” that has defined the cultural temperament of our times. This shift has had a predictable effect on the kinds of students enrolling in mainline Protestant seminaries, as well on as the interests they bring. All this would have surprised faculty members of an earlier generation. If mysticism was touched upon at all in the seminary curriculum of, say, 1980, it was a topic left to the historians; survey courses in systematic theology generally would not have ventured into such arcane territory. When referred to, sources categorized as mystical—for example, Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich—were relegated to a shaky status at the fringes of theology; the “real” theological contributors included such great scholastics as Anselm, Aquinas, and Bonaventure. The textbooks used during this period illustrate the point: Williston Walker's standard History of the Christian Church, which appeared in its first edition in 1918 and was in steady use in many theological schools, was significantly revised by a team of historians from Union Theological Seminary only for the fourth edition of 1985. Until that time, the narrative focus moved rather quickly from an exploration of Christian origins and the early fathers to the great Protestant reformers with a relatively cursory overview of the Middle Ages and almost no reference to medieval mystics.