The Image of God Struggling Toward the Eschaton: A Phenomenology of Hope

[Aaron Blue]

In a world whose function, nature, and meaning are opaque to human understanding, our very existence is a dilemma for us. On a foundation of hope, the biblical material provides an anthropological solution to this dilemma by describing humans as creatures whose function is to assist in the realization of the eschaton.

This paper consists of four main sections:

Section one explains the problem of meaning as an existential dilemma, a deep “not fitting” in this world.

Section two argues that the existential dilemma arises from living in a world that is ultimately opaque to human understanding, and therefore that hope is the most solid epistemological foundation from which to address the problem.

Building on the hope that God is faithful and will fulfill his faithfulness in this world, section three interprets the biblical material around the Image of God and the True Humanity to indicate that to be human is to have a particular function in this world, that this function has particular conditions laid on the possibility of its expression, and that this function takes a particular shape as material participation in God’s fulfillment of his faithfulness in this world.

Section four demonstrates how the hope-based structure of section three resolves the existential dilemma.

The full paper is attached to this post as a PDF.

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[Aaron Blue]

Just a warning from the field. To those who might want to take some of what I have written here seriously, be careful who you tell.

I was recently publicly denounced for sharing a few bits of this paper in a house church of missionaries I attend here in Thailand, namely the notion that God is presently ministering in the world through the Spirit to fully establish his image for the sake of the coming of the new heavens and the new earth and that it is our privilege and honer to participate in this ministry of the Father. Apparently, because I hold this view, I am a universalist heretic and a non-christian sower of dissent and confusion.

You have been warned

[Jon Stovell]

Sounds like you must be doing something right, @Aaron Blue.