“Of the three late modern trajectories,” LeRon Shults concludes at the end of chp 7 of Reforming the Doctrine of God, “the renewal of eschatological ontology may be the most difficult to understand for many Western readers.” Indeed. And this is how he defines “eschatological ontology”:
It is the “metaphysical claim that in some sense creaturely being is constituted by the coming of God” (166).
Once again these three trajectories are to see that infinity is intensive, Trinity is robust, and futurity is absolute.
So, in chp 7, Shults shows that a major trend in contemporary theology is to understand ontology (being) by examining eschatology (the coming and “future” of God). God’s futurity is the “origin,condition, and goal of all creaturely temporality and causality” (167). All things are oriented to God.
Once again, he explores the development of this trajectory: orthodoxy, Luther, Calvin, Barth, Gunton, Moltmann, Jenson, Jungel [don’t know how to make the umlaut in WordPress — anyone know?], Pannenberg, Rahner, Zizioulias, feminists and liberationists.
Conclusion: “then we may think of the presence of God in relation to the world as the gracious liberation of creation in and to the possibility of sharing the eternal life of the trinitarian persons” (200). That means that “eschatological transformation [is] the eternal intensification of the human desire to know, love and belong in fellowship with God and neighbor” (201).
Absolute futurity then is “relationality of the shared life of the trinitarian persons” (201).