LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias

 Research Posting 2009

Joshua Schuetz – Research Posting 1

The Role of Religious Imagination in Utopian Thinking

     The study of eschatology or the view of the ‘end times’ arises from Biblical prophecies: specifically the Old Testament books of Daniel and Ezekiel and throughout the New Testament with Jesus’ references to the coming of and receiving the ‘kingdom of God’ as well as the Apocalypse (Greek), commonly known as the Revelation of St. John.  Most people are somewhat aware of these prophecies because of a number of movies (such as the Exorcist and the Omen) with biblical or end times themes.  However I was not aware of the role of religion and millennialism in utopian thinking until I began this review.

     My assignment to do a web review of the kibbutzim of Israel spurred my interest regarding Jewish thought on communal living and the quest for a perfect society.  A review of Jewish tradition then led me to Ehud Luz’s article in The Journal of Religion titled "Utopia and return: On the structure of utopian thinking and its relation to Jewish-Christian Tradition" that stated the “messianic idea has been one of the main sources of utopian thinking,” and so I was off and running to discover and learn more about this connection. A central idea expressed in this and my cited articles is that Hebrew (Jewish) history is an utopian journey; their vision of the past is a source or motivation for discovering their future (Liakos 24).

     The Hebrew people have the Exodus as their epoch event; eschatology is nothing without the recitation of the acts of deliverance (Luz 362).  For Christians, the resurrection is an analogous event.  These past histories call us forward while the future calls us back to what has not been fulfilled, so history is a utopian journey to complete things left undone along the way (Liakos 26).  Israel’s exile is seen a deviation from the law of God.  This memory becomes a ‘psychology of faithfulness’–once God delivered us and He will deliver us again (Moylen 28).  Unlike Plato’s ahistoric description of utopia, the Hebrew prophets always refer to tradition and a reinterpretation of tradition gives birth to social criticism. 

     Most utopian literature deals with communal renewal and the improvement of society.  Jewish utopian thought includes the idea of what they call teshaveh–that is the return of man to God.  This idea attempts to address the individual and self-realization as a part of utopianism, since a longstanding problem facing utopian thinking has been .the relationship between individual and communal renewal.  Can social harmony and private good be reconciled (Wright 234)? 

     This research posting begins to address the relationship between religious imagination found in Hebrew Biblical prophecy and history to the development of utopian thought.  This falls within the context of course objective 3g: What is utopia’s relation to time and history? The answer I found is that a utopian society recalls a lost covenant that precedes the existing society and attempts to restore the covenant in a new future.  The Psalmist depicts this as a metaphor of love's betrayal:  “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.”

Works Cited

Liakos, Antonis. Utopian and Historical Thinking: Interplays and Transferences. Historein, 7 (2007)

       20-57)

Luz, Ehud.  Utopia and return: On the structure of utopian thinking and its relation to Jewish-

     Christian Tradition. Journal of Religion; Jul93, Vol. 73 Issue 3, p357, 21p.

Moylan, Tom.  Bloch Against Bloch: The Theological Reception of Das Prinzip Hoffnung and

     the Liberation of the Utopian Function. Utopian Studies, 1045991X, 1990, Vol. 1, Issue 2.

Wright, Alex. An Ambiguous Utopia.  Political Theology, Apr2004, Vol. 5 Issue 2, p231-238,    

     8p.