World Christianity Goes Online with Wikipedia

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The massive online encyclopedia grows at an average rate of 800 articles per day, but in 2016, at least 25 of those began here in New College, Edinburgh. A new but growing field, World Christianity thrives upon the continuous challenge of disseminating scholarship from small to growing institutions from Beijing to Botswana. Through a series of Wikipedia projects conducted during Fall 2016, the Centre for the Study of World Christianity and the School of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh have experimented with a new platform for disseminating information quickly in a rapidly changing field.

Women-and-Relgion-Edit-a-thon at New College. Photo by Dr Alexander Chow.

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Studies in World Christianity 22.3

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Eschatology, Time and Space

Studies in World Christianity

In his famous commentary on Romans, Karl Barth examines Romans 8:24–25 and explains that, without eschatological hope,1

there is no freedom, but only imprisonment; no grace, but only condemnation and corruption; no divine guidance, but only fate; no God, but only a mirror of unredeemed humanity.

For this Swiss theologian, Christianity void of ‘restless eschatology’ is Christianity void of a relationship with Christ and a new life offered by the Holy Spirit. Eschatological hope is the basis for Christian salvation and offers a reason to strive and a reason to change – to change oneself and to change one’s surrounding world. Most commonly, eschatology is understood in terms of the dimension of time. But for others, eschatology reorients understandings of the dimension of space. The four articles in this issue of Studies in World Christianity engage this overarching subject of Christian eschatology, but also how different contexts develop understandings of eschatology in terms of time and space. Continue reading →