“The New Testament is essentially the presence of the eschatological event. Its purpose is not to teach us the existence of Paradise, nor to promise us this Pradise in the future, but to show us this Paradise already present in Christ: ‘This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.’ It is not the proclamation of Judgement to come, but of Judgement already here: ‘Sentence is now being passed on this world; now is the time when the prince of this world is to be cast out.’ The Old Testament proclaimed that a servant of God would be a lamb sacrificed for the sins of the world. The New Testament shows us ‘the Lamb of God…he who takes away the sin of the world.’ And it teaches us that with the coming of this Lamb, the fate of mankind is at once unveiled and disclosed, that the Last Things are revealed and fulfilled. Christ, as C.H. Dodd says, is ‘realized eschatology.’”
-Jean Danielou in Christ and Us.
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