ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Philosophic Conceptualities of the Self in Messianism / Mahdism Eschatological Agency ======================== The One Divine Being acts uniquely and unilaterally to bring human beings and the rest of creation to ultimate perfection.

In doing so, His action is unconditioned in relation to all human action and response.[^12] Here the human being is enjoined to witness divine acts of reconstructing reality that consummate history and achieve a perfected condition of human and environmental relations. M/M doctrines belong entirely to the conditions of eschatological agency.

M/M doctrines are certainly a key aspect of motivation for ethical agency but once they become a reality in future time, the truth conditions for action shift to eschatological agency. Indeed, whenever the two models of agency are confused or conflated, quite negative consequences often follow, e.g., "hastening the day"[^13] such as a vision of large numbers in religious revival.

While religious revivals can be most laudable events, they do not constrain the Divine Being in any way to change the appointed time of the end. When "hastening the day" becomes politicized the eschatological vision of M/M doctrines become temporalized and believers try to approximate divine action in their own actions, the outcome can be quite the opposite to the will of God in terms of ethical agency.

In order to avoid such outcomes, their distinction requires strict maintenance.[^14] A key feature of M/M doctrines is that they present a model of reality where ultimate truths and acts of divine consummation are exclusive of human intention and action. M/M doctrines conceive of perfected human conditions, conceptualize their religious hope of a perfected future in terms of unilateral divine agency and posit epochal schematization of history.

If followed consistently, M/M doctrine foreclose the possibility of conflating divine and human action and truth realization. The necessary distinction above requires focus upon ethical agency and rests upon the conventional conceptuality of synergistic agency typical of everyday religious belief and practice.

M/M doctrines can serve then as antidotes to utopian aspirations (including religious perfectionism) installed in social and political planning that over-estimate the human capacity to achieve the divinely revealed visions of consummation and perfection.