>Actually I see no intrinsic reason for religion to be concerned with
>eschatology. Eschatology necessitates a conception of time as limited; and
>it is certainly possible for one to conceive the world as eternal (this was
>St. Thomas' opinion],
are you sure? some of his contemporaries, like Siger of Brabant, were
pursued as heretics for so arguing. do you have a source for this
claim? my guess is that in his attack on Siger (contra averroistas) he
took on this issue. (anyone read it?) and he does have an extensive
discussion of eschatology in his summa theologica.
>even if our human frailty recognizes that its
>personall alotment is quite limited. Eschatology as a term taken in its
>proper sense deals with the chronology of the cosmos, not the individual.
>It seems obvious to me that the monotheistic religions are eschatological
>for a historical reason; namely that the OT and NT speak of the end of the
>world / the end of time. But not for philosophical or pyschological reasons.
the point is less that the OT and NT speak of the end (far more centrally
the NT) for whatever reasons, but why people persist in making this the
center of their concerns and imagining (so far incorrectly) that the end
(Parousia, for xns) will come in their generation. that, it seems to me,
calls for psychological reasons to explain.
richard
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