Salvation & Eschatology (1): Salvation is for this earth and coming in history

God's goal for us is not that we go to heaven. Our purpose and eternal destiny is on earth. God's salvation, then, is not about souls going to heaven, as in some timeless, spiritual concept of "being saved". Instead, salvation is all about this earth, and it is unfolding in God's history with the world.

In a few blogs, I'll be exploring salvation in eschatological perspective (eschatology = study of the "last things" or "the end of time"), drawing from Jurgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg.

[Part 8 in a series on New Wine and systematic theology, drawn from my research master thesis Life to the Full. From Creation to Re-Creation, VU University 2014]

L'Afrique Périphérique - Rolf Weijburg

Rolf Weijburg, Lamu Island, colour etching, 1988, 36x50 cm

 Lamu, the languid island off the Swahili coast of Kenya where I stayed several times since the 1990s, captured by graphic artist Rolf Weijburg in an etching that is reminiscent of drawings by explorers and adventurers in colonial times but honestly reflects todays realities, too. It's one of the etchings in an awesome book by Weijburg, who travelled the islands around the African continent, L'Afrique Périférique (Galerie PETIT, Amsterdam).