Preface to the Paperback Edition

Preface

A note on abbreviations

Introduction

1. Vision of a new day: early Semitic Christianity and Christian apocalyptic

2. Making history intelligible: eschatology and the apologists

3. Regaining the light: eschatology in the Gnostic crisis (150-200)

4. Senectus Mundi: eschatology in the West, 200-250

5. A school for souls: Alexandrian eschatology and its critics (185-300)

6. The dawn of the final conflict: Latin eschatology in the Great Persecution (303-313)

7. Facing death in freedom: Eastern eschatology in the age of Nicaea (325-400)

8. Redemptio Totius Corporis: Latin eschatology in the fourth century

9. Grace present and future: Greek eschatology in the fifth century

10. Signs of a Church triumphant: Latin eschatology in the fifth century

11. Apokatastasis and apocalyptic: Eastern eschatology after Chalcedon

12. The end of all flesh: eschatology in the sixth-century West

Epilogue: a common hope

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What did early Christians believe about last things? Eschatology religious doctrine about "last things"is the hope of believing people that in the end the incompleteness of their present experience of God will be resolved, that loose ends will be tied up and wrongs made right. Rooted in a firm faith in Jesus crucified and risen, Christian eschatological hope has proved remarkably resilient, expecting the Lord to return very soon, and wavering little when the wait has been prolonged. This comprehensive survey, based on Christian texts in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian traditions from the second century through Gregory the Great and John of Damascus, is already well known to biblical scholars, church historians, theologians, and other students of the history of Christian thought. Appearing in an affordable, paperback edition, it is now available to students and to contemporary believers, whose hope it aims to nourish and stir up by acquainting them with the faith of their forebears in Christ.