Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, “Eschatology and History” 1. According to O’Donovan, the “eschatological triumph of mankind [in the conquest over death and glorification of the Son at the Father’s right hand] is not an innovative order that has nothing to do with the primal ordering of man as creature to his Creator.”  What is it instead? 2. According to O’Donovan, when we describe the saving work of Christ by the term ‘redemption’, we stress the fact that it presupposes the created order. And yet, at the same time, says O’Donovan, we must go beyond thinking of redemption as a mere restoration, the return of a status quo ante.  Explain.  How does this view open up an important place in Christian thought for the idea of “history”?  Compare O’Donovan’s discussion here with St. Augustine’s discussion of salvation history in The First Catechetical Instruction. 3. O’Donovan does not discuss this point, but how does his conception of eschatology and history help make sense of the paradox we find in the Gospels between those places where Christ says the kingdom is “present,” is “here,” as opposed to those in which Christ indicates the kingdom is still to come (like a thief in the night) and that “no one knows the day or the hour”“ 4. The eschatological transformation of the world, says O’Donovan, “rules out all the other conceivable eventualities which might have befallen creation, all those ends to which God did not destine it.”  What two views does he mention that must be rejected by this Christian eschatology? 5. According to O’Donovan, Christian eschatology “rules out the possibility that temporal extension of creation forms a random and meaningless flux.”  On this view, history has meaning.  Does it necessarily follow that we will we always be able to understand that meaning?  Why or why not?  (For an answer to this question, look at the final two pages of the reading selection.) 6. Why is it, according to O’Donovan, that Christian ethics “looks both backwards and forward”?  Explain.  How is this Christian conception of history tied to both faith and hope — a faith and hope that serve as the foundation of love? 7. What, according to O’Donovan, is the “heart” of the view known as “historicism”?  How does it differ from the Christian eschatology O’Donovan proposes? 8. O’Donovan claims that a story “has to be a story about something.”  What is our “story” and what is it about, according to O’Donovan and St. Augustine? 9. O’Donovan claims that, “Whatever scientific researchers may believe they are able to tell us about the prehistory of the universe, they can tell us nothing about ‘creation’ in the theological sense.”  Why not?  Earlier he says that creation (in this theological sense) is the “presupposition” of history?  Then later he says that creation “is the condition of history’s movement.”  What does he mean?  How is this view similar to the claims William Carroll makes about “creation” as a metaphysical concept as opposed to how modern natural scientists understand “creation” (which is really “change,” not “creation”).    10. O’Donovan claims that, “The characterization of history as process replaces the categories of good and evil with those of past and future. Instead of the Christian threefold metaphysic of a good creation, an evil fall and an end of history which negates the evil and transcends the created good, we have in historicism a dualist opposition between a historical ‘from’ and ‘towards’, in accordance with which all the traditional language of good and evil is reinterpreted.”  First, you need to understand what he means and be able to express it in your own words.  Second, please reflect on why this notion of history (this “historicism”) might be especially attractive to people who hold the modern notion of freedom as “freedom from”?  Or to put this another way, why would people who want to think of freedom as “freedom from” be especially tempted to think of history in historicist terms? 11. In the previous set of questions on the “created order,” I asked “How and why, according to O’Donovan, does ‘abstraction from teleology’ (that is to say, the kind of teleology he has been arguing for) create a “dangerous misunderstanding of the place of man in the universe”?  Consider again your answer to that question.  How does modern “historicism” lead to the same temptations and the same problems? 12. How does the Christian conception of “salvation history” and its faith in the eschatological promise make history as a “story” possible and meaningful (even though many people assume that “eschatology” makes “history” meaningless)?  How does it cause us to “respect” history and its lessons while remaining open to “new things” and the transformation of the old by the new (even though some people assume that Catholicism is not open to “new things”)?  How does it help us understand our role in the world in terms of the protection of the created order and respect for the “ends” of all created realities, especially the ends of our fellow human beings, but also those of all animals and plants and the environment as a whole (even though some people assume that the biblical notion of creation is responsible for man’s misuse of the environment)?