Apocalyptic spirituality

"Amen. Come, Lord Jesus" (Apocalypse 22:20). The significance of these closing words of the New Testament for later Christian spirituality is the subject of this volume. This book makes available major texts in the Christian apocalyptic literature from the 4th to the 16th centuries. The apocalyptic tradition is that of traditional prophecy based on revelation and concerned with the end of the world. Even an age such as ours characterized by its scientific and rationalistic outlook has strong elements of literal apocalypticism found in fundamentalist and charismatic groups. The popular success of Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth is evidence of this. Also the present hunger for apocalypse has adopted a variety of secular disguises typified by Robert Heilbroner's An Inquiry into the Human Prospect. Contemporary theologians like Käsemann, Pannenberg, Rahner, Moltmann and others have devoted much of their work to the meaning of apocalyptic thought. This is a collection which can show the traditional roots of this contemporary phenomenon. Dr. Bernard McGinn says in his introduction, "These treatises and letters have been chosen because of the way in which they manifest how belie