“The powers of the age to come are at work now”

In relation to our current/recent discussions on eschatology, a quote from Lesslie Newbigin:

There is a way of bringing the eschatological perspective to bear on our present perplexities which relieves them at no cost to ourselves, which allows us to rest content with them because in the age to come they will disappear. That is a radically false eschatology. The whole meaning of this present age between Christ’s coming and his coming again is that in it the powers of the age to come are at work now to draw all men (sic) into one in Christ.

Quoted in Yves Congar, Diversity and Communion (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1984), p. 163.