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Nirvana as the Last Thing? The Iconic End of the Narrative Imagination[Note 1. Thanks for comments and suggestions are due to K. ...]
Author(s) -
Griffiths Paul J.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
modern theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.144
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1468-0025
pISSN - 0266-7177
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0025.00113
Subject(s) - narrative , abstraction , philosophy , epistemology , literature , aesthetics , art , linguistics
The essay argues that the life of the world to come, the hoped‐for final end of the individual Christian, cannot be characterized or represented narratively; that it can be represented both formally and ironically; and that what Buddhists have said about Nirvana may serve Christian theologians in the development of more adequate formal and iconic representations of the life of the world to come. This is, then an essay in Christian theology concerned primarily to elucidate, at a relatively high degree of abstraction, some syntactical elements in the Christian master text; and secondarily, to comment upon some semantic elements therein.