In the End, God : A Study of the Christian Doctrine of the Last Things

A challenging reinterpretation of the traditional themes of Christian eschatology, locating their theological significance in the experience of the faithful.

A challenging reinterpretation of the traditional themes of Christian eschatology, locating their theological significance in the experience of the faithful. Death, judgement, heaven and hell – these are the ‘Four Last Things’ traditionally linked together under the heading of ‘Eschatology’. In this book, John Robinson examines them all with trenchancy and lucidity, providing a new and vital understanding of how these themes relate to contemporary Christian life. In the End, God … identifies a gap that exists in the treatment of eschatology within the Christian faith. As Robinson points out, eschatology had traditionally dealt with the last things in a way that is remote and removed from everyday life and Christianity, and the goal of his book is to make eschatology fully relevant to the modern world. Although it is commonly held that eschatology within modern Christianity is centred on the fact and moment of death, Robinson shows that the true nature of eschatology is something quite different. It is not about the last things after everything else, but rather is about the relation of all things to the ‘last things’ or, as it were, about the ‘lastness’ of all things. Revealing the foundation of biblical eschatology to be the experience of God by the community of faith, Robinson calls readers to embrace the eschatological vision of the Bible, but to do so in a way that is alert to its mythic character. In the course of these explorations he also lays bare his own theology of universal salvation. However, contrary to what one may expect, this universalism is one that seeks to take both human freedom and the reality of hell with the utmost seriousness. This special edition of John A.T. Robinson’s classic text also includes an extended introductory essay by Professor Trevor Hart of the University of St Andrews, and an exchange between Robinson and Thomas F. Torrance, first published in 1949 in the Scottish Journal of Theology.