Prolepsis: 'Once and Future' Events

This is how Robert Jenson characterizes Pannenberg’s use of prolepsis:

A prolepsis … is simply a claim staked out in history, which, when and if history is fulfilled, will be verified or falsified, and which is of such a nature that those who in the meantime have accepted it will all along have been living appropriately to the truth that will at the end be discovered.

What’s missing? I think Jenson is calling our attention to the properly dynamic character of proleptic events. They don’t stand alone like milestones along a road. Proleptic events are the future, even as they’re creating that very future.

Rosa Park’s famous bus ride is a helpful example. By sitting in the front of the bus, Parks was a living image of the very future that she was creating. (It’s also illuminating to consider similar proleptic events, like the Stonewall riots.)

Theologically, this suggests that we shouldn’t see proleptic events as simply snapshots of life at the Eschaton. They're at work historically, as well as post-historically. We need to be attuned to how those events -- right now -- might be creating the future.

Is the Resurrection at work in biotechnology? Is the New Testament's anti-temple rhetoric at work in Web-based virtual communities?

These are some very exciting lines of thought!