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Last Things First
Discusses the belief in the end of the world and the ultimate purpose of human life from the perspective of Black American theology
Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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March 4, 2021
A short introduction to eschatology from a Black Theology perspective. Wilmore notes some of the current themes and debates in eschatology, before looking at Black church experiences of hope and perspectives on the Bible. Wilmore has a strong insistence that the Bible gives us Truth, not because it is inerrant but because it gives us Jesus. Eschatology for him is less about the arguments over dispensation and the millennium, characteristic of conservative eschatology at the time, but more about the kingdom of God and following Jesus in hope and death.
A few other insights particularly stood out: (1) One was that there is a study be Mbiti where he notes that certain African understandings of time did not really have a notion of the distant future. Thus, when Jesus was "coming" according to White missionaries, some Blacks had a notion a strong immediacy. (2) Black churches did not go through the fundamentalist-modernists debate in any intense way as their White counterparts, which produces interesting figures like Martin Luther King, who was a liberal postmillennial Social Gospeller in education, but had intense fervour of Jesus' coming in his preaching. (3) Wilmore notes a number of Black spirituals in how they sounded strongly "other-worldly" but served a powerful transformative purpose for those who sang them, in contrast to White other-worldly salvation, which was far more escapist.
I found this little book online, and paid a few bucks for it. It was an interestingly read.
A few other insights particularly stood out: (1) One was that there is a study be Mbiti where he notes that certain African understandings of time did not really have a notion of the distant future. Thus, when Jesus was "coming" according to White missionaries, some Blacks had a notion a strong immediacy. (2) Black churches did not go through the fundamentalist-modernists debate in any intense way as their White counterparts, which produces interesting figures like Martin Luther King, who was a liberal postmillennial Social Gospeller in education, but had intense fervour of Jesus' coming in his preaching. (3) Wilmore notes a number of Black spirituals in how they sounded strongly "other-worldly" but served a powerful transformative purpose for those who sang them, in contrast to White other-worldly salvation, which was far more escapist.
I found this little book online, and paid a few bucks for it. It was an interestingly read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review