In line with the meaning of the Greek word from which it is derived, eschatology deals with eschata: the last things. Yet because this way of speaking can easily suggest a future that is indefinitely distant (and thus less than pressing), the import of the doctrine is arguably better conveyed by the traditional Latin phrase de novissimis: literally, the newest things – the definitive revelation of God’s lordship as something that has drawn near and is already breaking in upon the world. Such language appropriately echoes Jesus Christ’s own proclamation that God’s kingdom is “at hand” (Matt. 4:17 and pars.). For although the kingdom is not included among the four “last things” – death, judgment, heaven, and hell – that are the traditional topics of eschatological treatises, the hope of the kingdom does summarize their collective content: the end of the present order of creation and the inauguration of a new order of redemption, in which God’s will is done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10 and par.). Moreover, because for Christians the realization of this promise is defined by Jesus’s return in glory, the Christian hope for the kingdom is identical with hope for Jesus, who for this reason is rightly called (in the words of Origen of Alexandria) the autobasileia – God’s kingdom in person. The life of the kingdom is just the communion of creation with the Creator that has been made possible by God’s assuming a creature’s life in Jesus of Nazareth. It follows, as Karl Barth famously declared, that, “if Christianity be not altogether thoroughgoing eschatology, there remains in it no relation whatever with Christ.”1

For the writers of the books of the New Testament, as well as for Christians thereafter, “gospel reading” included reading the books of the Jewish Scriptures, which were understood to bear witness to the coming of Christ (cf. e.g. Matt. 1:22–23 and Isa. 7:14) and thereby to the gospel (e.g. Gal. 3:8–13 and Gen. 15:6). Subsequently, “Christological readings” of what became the Christian Old Testament took a variety of forms, many of which moved beyond identifying prophetic predictions of the coming Messiah to attempts to identify the preincarnate Word as a distinct agent in the Old Testament books. Although such strategies have long been called into question on historical-critical grounds, this essay will argue that there are also specifically Trinitarian reasons for eschewing such approaches to the text, arguing instead that a more faithfully Christological reading of Israel’s Scriptures will focus not on the whereabouts of the preincarnate Word, but on the topic of YHWH’s presence in and to Israel, as that which assumes new and unpredictable but nevertheless consistent form in the incarnation. This chapter explores a form of theological “gospel reading” in which early Christian writers, steeped in the Jewish scriptural traditions, discerned in Jesus the activity and presence of Israel’s God.

Faith Along with hope and love, faith has been understood in the Christian tradition (following 1 Cor. 13:13) as a theological virtue: a settled disposition enabling one to move towards God by grace. As the young Augustine observes, without faith one would not believe there was anything to hope for; without hope one would despair of attaining the realities of which faith speaks; and without love one would not even desire to come to that goodness in which one had come to believe (Sol. 6.12). It is in this sense that the tradition has generally interpreted the most famous biblical statement about faith – as making present even now something of the reality to which one is journeying: ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ (Heb. 11:1).

Faith in the theological sense is thus only possible as a gift of God, for one cannot by oneself have natural certain knowledge or even right opinion of the divine realities which the teachings of faith seek to express. Classically, therefore, faith is considered according to two fundamental dimensions: it refers both to the beliefs or doctrines to which one assents (fides quae creditur), and also to the act of trust or adherence by means of which these beliefs are accepted as true (fides qua creditor, or, especially in the work of M. Luther, fiducia).

Taizé Community of The Community of Taizé is an ecumenical monastic community located in southern Burgundy between the historic centres of western monasticism: Cluny and Citeaux. It was founded in 1940 by Brother Roger (1915–2005). Deeply concerned with the division of Christians that he saw as a cause of tension and war in society, Brother Roger left the security of his native Switzerland (where he was a Reformed pastor) and settled, on his own, in the small village of Taizé. There he prayed three times a day and hid Jews fleeing Nazi-occupied France, bringing them safely to Switzerland. Forced to leave when the Gestapo invaded his house, he returned to Geneva where three other men joined him. The little community returned to Taizé in 1944 and quickly grew, attracting men from various Protestant denominations from throughout Europe. After Vatican Council II it was also possible for Catholics to join the Community. Today, the Community of Taizé is constituted of brothers from all mainline denominations and from all continents.

Early on, the Community developed a musically rich liturgy with the help of Father J. Gelineau, S. J. (1920–2008). Drawn by the beautiful liturgy and the novelty of a Protestant monastic community, the number of visitors steadily grew. The twelfth-century village church was soon too small and a larger church was built on the hill of Taizé – the Church of Reconciliation, which can hold up to 8,000 worshippers.

Oblation Derived from a Latin word for ‘offering’, ‘oblation’ has several meanings. In Catholic canon law it is used for anything given over to the use of the Church. In the more narrowly liturgical context of the mass, oblation refers to the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine, whether as brought in unconsecrated form to the altar during the offertory (the lesser oblation) or in their presentation after consecration (the greater oblation). Protestants generally restrict the use of oblation to the offertory, on the grounds that to designate the consecrated elements (in distinction from the unconsecrated bread and wine, as well as the monetary and other gifts brought forward in furtherance of the Church's ministry) as an oblation implies that in the celebration of the Eucharist the Church offers something to God rather than thankfully receiving what God offers it.

In the monastic context oblation refers to the medieval practice of dedicating children to religious life (cf. 1 Sam. 1:11, 22–8) by trusting them to the care of a monastery. Such children (known as oblates) were raised in the community until they were judged sufficiently mature to decide whether they wished to commit their lives to it by taking monastic vows. The reasons for dedicating children were varied, and often desperation (among the poor) and convenience or political calculation (among the rich) trumped religious motives.

Laity The Greek word laikos, from which the word ‘lay’ derives, does not occur in the Bible, although the noun laos, meaning ‘people’, is frequent, specifically designating the people of God as distinct from the Gentiles. Thus, the word laos properly refers to a sacred or consecrated people, distinct from a people who are not so consecrated. Several scholarly studies have shown that, although laikos is philologically related to laos, the use of the former term suggests that it refers to a further distinction within the people of God, according to which the laikos is opposed to the priest and Levite as one who is not consecrated for leadership in worship. In short, laikos designated a segment of the Christian population that were not leaders of the community and who exercised no cultic function. It referred to those who were not priests, deacons, or clerics.

Y. Congar (1904–95) argued that in 1 Peter the priestly themes and levitical ethic of the OT are carried over to the people of God as a whole (see, e.g., 1 Pet. 2:9). By contrast, Clement of Rome (fl. 95) is the first to contrast laikos to ‘priest’ (1Clem. 40:5), and uses the former term to refer to that part of the people which is neither priestly nor levitical; nevertheless, for him laikos refers to the non-priestly, non-levitical element among the holy people.

James, William The psychologist and philosopher William James (1842–1910) is best known as a founder of the psychological–phenomenological study of individual religious experience and the philosophical tradition known as pragmatism. In theological studies, James is best known for his books The Will to Believe (1897) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Following the publication of the former, James speculated that he should have titled it ‘the right to believe’. In it he rejected the widely accepted views of D. Hume (1711–76), I. Kant, and G. W. F. Hegel by choosing theism and the right or will to believe over absolutism, agnosticism, and determinism. James observed that for many persons religion is a ‘live option’ (defined as an unavoidable and significant choice, upon which a believer is willing to act) and defended the intellectual legitimacy of adopting a religious faith. In Varieties, he rejected objectivism and advocated a radically inclusive empiricism. He argued for the validity of sensory and religious experience and hypothesized that the human ‘subconscious’ functioned as a doorway between the ‘conscious self’ and ‘The More’ that, when open, allowed an individual to receive an experience of the ‘reality of the unseen’. For James, in both volumes, strict adherence to logical reason resulted in deterministic monistic systems, while reality – as it is shaped by free will – remains empirically pluralistic.

Iconoclasm Iconoclasm (literally ‘breaking of images’) refers to Christian opposition to the production and use of religious images in private or public worship. The prohibition of images has traditionally been based on the Ten Commandments: ‘You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them’ (Exod. 20:4–5; cf. Deut. 5:8–9). The idea that the production of representational art leads to its worship – in other words, to idolatry – has been used to justify the destruction of images at various times throughout the history of the Church.

The traditional scholarly explanation for the absence of religious art during the Church's first two centuries (the earliest examples are preserved in the house-church at Dura Europas, dated to ca 240) has been that early Christians adhered rigorously to the Mosaic commandment. Others, however, view the absence of artefacts as the result of historical accident, arguing that the literary sources do not yet associate the production of religious art with idolatrous practices in this period. Patristic references to images are scattered and have been interpreted in various ways by scholars; problems also exist with regard to the authenticity of certain texts.

Easter: see Calendar, Liturgical.

Eastern Catholic Churches The Eastern Christian Churches are divided into two groups: the Orthodox Churches and the Eastern Catholic (sometimes referred to as Uniate) Churches. Until the eleventh century, all Eastern Churches were visibly in communion with Rome, though as early as the fifth century Church unity had been weakened due to Christological, political, and cultural difficulties. In 1054, the eastern and western branches separated from one another. To this day, the former have been known as the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and the latter, the Catholic (or Latin) Church. The separation was visibly expressed by the Orthodox Churches' rejection of the western way of understanding the primacy of the Pope (see Papacy).

The Orthodox Churches include autocephalous (i.e., self-governing) groups, such as the Greeks, Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, and others. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, various Orthodox communities within these autocephalous groups re-established communion with Rome. In this way, each of the Eastern Catholic Churches (except for the Maronite Church) has an Orthodox counterpart. Though they hold their eastern heritage in common with the Orthodox Churches (and, like the latter, continue to have their own patriarchs), they are in communion with the Holy See. These developments can be seen as part of papal attempts to secure unity with the Orthodox that date from the thirteenth century and continue today, most recently with the publishing of John Paul II's (r. 1978–2005) encyclical, Ut unum sint (1995).

Dalit Theology Dalits (literally meaning ‘broken’ or ‘crushed ones’) refer to the 180 to 200 million outcaste people in India. Cast out of human society and yet appropriated as slaves of the dominant Hindu caste communities, they were traditionally treated as untouchable and unapproachable because of their polluted status in the eyes of the Hindu caste communities. Even though the practice of untouchability was outlawed and a provision of reservation (affirmative action) was introduced through the Indian Constitution in 1950, Dalits continue to suffer under the cumulative effects of colossal economic marginalization and multi-layered social oppression brought on by the three millennia-old hierarchical, discriminatory, and comprehensive caste system.

In this historical context Dalit theology emerged in the 1980s as a liberation strand of Indian contextual thinking, reflecting upon the ongoing Christian mission of resisting oppression and advancing freedom, with special reference to the ‘broken people’. Dalit theology developed in dialogue with liberation theology in Latin America and Black theology in the USA. It also reflects a long history of Indian Christian attempts to inculturate the message of Christianity into the social, cultural, and historical contexts of South Asia (Inculturation). These theological currents aided in its oppositional stance towards forms of missionary and western theology that tended to be highly individualistic and calculatingly ahistorical.

Dalit theology correlates the ‘pain-pathos’ of those marginalized by the scars of untouchability with the hope of the Christian Gospel that encompasses and empowers them on a path towards overcoming the spirit of brokenness and celebrating the promise of new life in Jesus Christ.

Caesaropapism The term ‘caesaropapism’ was coined in the late nineteenth century by western scholars to refer to the supremacy of the civil authority (viz., ‘Caesar’) over the Church in the Byzantine Empire and throughout Orthodox (especially Russian) Christianity more broadly. Its aim was primarily contrastive: to distinguish the situation in the western Church, where the papacy was able to secure a high degree of autonomy in ecclesiastical matters, from that in the East, where the emperor effectively displaced the patriarch of Constantinople as the head of the Church. The sixth-century mosaic of the Byzantine imperial court in the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna is often cited as an illustration of this development, with the Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–65) in the centre, crowned with a halo, flanked by twelve attendants (including the local archbishop, standing well to the side), and performing the priestly function of carrying bread (or possibly the paten) for the Eucharist.

The roots of this imperial ascendancy in Byzantine ecclesiastical matters go back to the Emperor Constantine I (ca 275–337). Portrayed by Eusebius of Caesarea (ca 260–ca 340) in quasi-messianic terms for his support of the Church, Constantine set a precedent followed by successors like Justinian in convening and chairing the first ecumenical council at Nicaea. At the same time, the fact that Byzantine theologians like Theodore the Studite felt it appropriate to criticize the imperial attempts to decide (rather than simply to enforce) orthodox teaching shows that imperial claims to full authority in Church affairs were not uncontested.