Philosophy and Theology

Volume 17, Issue 1/2, 2005

The Metamorphosis of “The End of the World”
From Theology to Philosophy and Back Again

This paper highlights certain features of the metamorphosis that the concept “the end of the world” has undergone from its origin in early Christian thought to the present day. This concept has, in recent decades, become increasingly prominent within Western European Lutheran and Roman Catholic theology. This paper demonstrates that the notion of the end of the world popularized by Jürgen Moltmann and Karl Rahner, despite the traditional, biblical language in which it is couched, has more affinity with the philosophical concept “the end of history” developed by Hegel than it has with the ideas common in early Christianity.