eschatological tension
Definition
The eschatological tension describes the theological reality that believers already dwell in the heavenly reality of Mount Sion (Heb. 12:22-24) while not yet in full glorification. This is not a lack or incompleteness to be remedied, but the present mode of God’s kingdom. The tension is not problematic but normative — it constitutes the ethical and spiritual task of the church.
In George Warnock’s The Vision and the Appointment (b9), eschatological tension frames the understanding of the church’s present task of overcoming: we already dwell in the heavenly city (realized eschatology) and taste the coming age (future eschatology), yet not its full manifestation. Holding this tension continuously is the call to witness.
George Warnock (b9)
Warnock locates Mount Sion not as future destination but as present dwelling:
“We have not come to Mount Sinai with its terrors and thunderings, but to Mount Sion — the city of the living God. This is our inheritance. This is our appointed place.”
(The Vision and the Appointment, Eschatology, Chapter 4)
The tension between “already” (Sion as present) and “not yet” (the completion of all things) keeps the church in her calling: neither fleeing into mysticism nor falling into materialism, but participating in God’s present work of exaltation.