We live in tumultuous times. The effects of climate breakdown are all around us, as are the signs of our refusal to take notice. Under the influence of fake news, polarised social media silos, and extremist groups, it appears the centre of our political discourse cannot hold. The church appears to lurch from one crisis to the next, never quite managing to get to grips with the challenges it faces. It is easy to feel like things are getting apocalyptic.
Which makes it all the more remarkable that one of the most vibrant theological movements in the world today proudly declares itself 'apocalyptic'. But to those who are part of this flourishing school of thought, apocalyptic does not refer to the end of the world because of some political conflict out of control, or to the great derangement that flows from the climate disaster.
These theologians are using apocalyptic in its original Greek sense — apo kalypsis — a revealing. And what binds their diverse work is a commitment to writing theology that assumes that God's revealing moment comes through Jesus.
In Militant Grace, the Canadian theologian Philip Ziegler has articulated this apocalyptic approach in its most exhilarating form yet. Over 13 essays he makes the case that Jesus does not merely represent another great guru, a dispenser of common-sense spiritual truth tilted in a particularly compelling way.
Rather, in Jesus we find 'the axis for the turning of the ages, a macrocosmic revolution that is also iterated in the microcosm of human being'. This is theology that recognises that if there is any truth to the stories we read in the Gospels, then that has the potential to turn the world upside down.
Apocalyptic theology has, for the large part, been conducted thus far within the Protestant traditions. Militant Grace thus represents an ecumenical opportunity. Roman Catholic readers will find the bold retelling of Jesus' relevance for our lives refreshing. But they may also find a challenge.
Much Catholic moral teaching operates from a default appropriation of something along the lines of the famous 'see-judge-act' framework, popularised by Cardinal Joseph Cardijn. In such approaches, we imagine the hard part of ethics to be the stage where we have to put things into action. We imagine that we can all easily agree on what we see and come to a straightforward consensus on how to interpret it, but that it is in the doing of faith