Christians and Postmoderns: Joseph Bottum, A Young Medievalist, Made His Debut in First Things with an Account of Faith in a Postmodern Age (February 1994)

We are living at a time near the end of the world. Not that our age is apocalyptic: Apocalypse means an uncovering, a revelation, and revelation is what we lack. And not that our age is eschatological: Eschatology means the discourse, reason, science, the logos of last things, and all that kind of scientific discourse is coming to an end now. All we have left is the eschaton itself and the disquietude of decline. The atom bomb, I think, hid this from us for a while, for the atom bomb was such a modern thing. I do not mean just that it was expensive, technologically elegant, and an overwhelming demonstration of mathematical physics; or just that it was bound up with "wargasms" and all the strange destructive sexuality of modern times; or even just that it was modernity's last sick attempt to master nature. I mean that the atom bomb hid from us the ending going on all around us, and that far from destroying modern times, the atom bomb kept modern times alive for nearly fifty years. The threat of global nuclear destruction made the eschaton intelligible. All those good-hearted people who demonstrated outside nuclear bases, who signed petitions and held parades--all of them knew why they felt so close to the edge, and all of them knew why their dreams were filled with visions of the world's end. They had someone to blame; they had an explanation--the sort of explanation modernity had always promised we would have: rational, true, and morally convincing.