Eschatology as Imagination: Propositional and Poetic Utterance in Evoking the Christian Future

Eschatological language requires both proposition and poetry. This paper will argue that in the intersection of disability theology and eschatology one finds at stake not so much rival dogmatic claims as rival poetic projections of the end—specifically, the end of the individual, their subjectivity, and their body. In the realm of human action, eschatology reframes the is-ought problem as the question of the relation of “will be” to “ought.” Disagreements about eschatology often take place within the space of the imagined future, rather than the propositional accounts of Christian hope. Eschatology attempts to navigate a sense of being dissatisfied with the world as it is and works with propositions to imagine alternative futures. Imagined projection, as a necessary function of Christian eschatology modelled after the biblical texts, becomes less illusory when one knows that one is projecting. By attending to the poetic aspect of eschatological efforts, I suggest, we are able to navigate more accurately the disagreements that arise when attempting to describe the unseen or to translate from “will be” to “ought.”