Prolepsis

What is prolepsis? Merriam-Webster gives us one definition: the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished. It is a term which comes from rhetoric, but has gained theological significance in the work of folks such as Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jürgen Moltmann. Frankly, while I am familiar with the use of the term in both theologians work (as well as others), my familiarity with Pannenberg is a whole order of magnitude higher, so I'm gonna talk about this sort of stuff mostly by dialoguing with Pannenberg. 


Prolepsis is a way of talking about God, and the Kingdom of God, as really present with us. The Kingdom is an eschatological event, but it is present now to the believer and was present both in the person and message of Christ, as well as God's self-revelation throughout history. If Jesus only initiated the Kingdom, then it is still developing, and we have to hope it's gonna turn out right. If the Kingdom is developing, we also have to answer why it is that God is unchanging, but His Kingdom isn't all the way here yet. It gives us a way to talk about the Kingdom as "already, but not yet" and still make some sort of sense.


There's a lot that runs out from this idea, and I personally think that we can't have a lot of the things we might want to talk about as Christians without the idea of prolepsis; additionally I think that the idea of prolepsis restricts some of our options in our theology. I'm exploring this here on the blog and in an article in development, and I hope that anyone who has got some ideas will be chiming in.