Abstract

Eschatological science and scientific eschatology. - The science which this speech is dealing with is almost extinct. Far apart from modern intellectual life it is surviving only in certain adventist sects, in religious subculture as it were, and thus, under the ban of both modern science and official churches as well. Through all of the Christian middle-ages, however, eschatological science stood in full bloom and high esteem. The case of Joachim de Fiore, the Calabrian abbot , is taken as a paradigm - although he was concerned not so much with the apocalyptic Last Events than with a “trinitarian” construction of history and with the advent of the aeon of the Holy Ghost. Eschatological science proper is based on canonic and other authentic prophecies but it is not prophecy itself. It aims at revealing the revelation once more, taking biblical texts as secrets which are still to be decoded. - The paper goes on describing some more characteristics of eschatological science: The tendency of stating definite periods within the history of salvation which is understood to form a coherent body and a definable mass of years; furthermore, the scholarly art of more or less precisely determining the time-table of apocalyptic events which requires, of course, a good deal of numerical and chronological experimentation. In addition, the eschatological scientist has always been eager to read the ominous “signs of the time” out of or into current history of his own days, and this capacity particularly makes for his public prestige and influence.While eschatological science has always started from undoubted prophetic and apocalytic premises the other phenomenon which the present speaker terms “scientific eschatology” is, quite reversely, parading as an authentic independent science in the modern meaning of the word not realizing their own hidden eschatological schemes. This is briefly illustrated by the “Communist manifest” and Lenin's statements on the “world revolution”