Heil und Zeit: Heilsgeschichte, Weltende, zyklische Wiederkehr. Drei Deutungen des biblischen Weltverständnisses (original) (raw)

2023, Urs Breitenstein (ed.); Endlichkeit und Unendlichkeit. Basel: Schwabe, 2023

Salvation and Time: Salvation History, End of the World, Cyclical Return – Three Interpretations of the Biblical Worldview The author, who studied theology in the 1960s, tells how his understanding of the biblical view of time went through two major changes. (1) Originally, he was taught that the Bible’s worldview was best understood in terms of a linear “salvation history“ that began with Creation and Paradise and will eventually end with a universal Judgment. (2) As a student, he became aware that the linear view of salvation history represents a patristic construct, and not the Bible’s own worldview. That worldview, it seemed, emphasized God’s occasional interventions to punish or redeem his people, culminating in Jesus‘ expectation of an imminent Last Judgement and the end of the world as we know it (an expectation that turned out to be wrong). (3) Eventually, however, the author abandoned this interpretation, replacing it with the notion of cyclical return. Based on an anthropological reading of a number of representative biblical passages – Deuteronomy 26, Judges 3, Daniel 2, and Revelation 20–21 –, he suggests that the biblical evidence best fits the notion of a cyclical understanding of history. In history, “good” and “bad” periods alternate. Within the biblical cycle, the phase of transition, the "liminal" or "threshold" period between the (shorter) bad age and the (longer) good and golden age, has special significance as a period of charismatic leaders and the expectation of miracles. Alternative understandings of the biblical concept of time – biblical history as linear "salvation history" and biblical existentialism with its emphasis on decision in the "now" – reflect either late antique or modern mentalities, but not the archaic mentality and worldview of the Bible (and that of Hesiod‘s Works and Days). – For an English version of section (3), see B. Lang, “God and Time: An Essay on the Bible’s Cyclical View of History,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 35.2 (2021) 301–314.