Teleology vs Eschatology? Exploring a Zizioulian desideratum

Zizioulas’ landmark work Remembering the Future articulates a powerful vision of eschatology as a central ontological category for Christian theology. Zizioulas' interest in eschatological ontology, however, begins earlier in his career. Already in Being as Communion, he interprets Maximus' triad of genesis–movement–rest as comprehensible only "from the end" rather than organically unfolding "towards the end" (96). In this position we find the seeds of Zizioulas' later more sustained treatment of the question of eschatological ontology in Remembering the Future. In this paper, one element of this discussion will be examined, namely Zizioulas' hard separation of the notion of teleology (captured by the phrase "towards the end") from that of eschatology ("from the end"). This division between teleology understood in a negative light and eschatology understood in a positive light, is discussed at some length in Remembering the Future, 101–109, and will form the basis for this paper's exploration.