Graphic Option TWO

I have been researching some famous takes on ‘the end’ (or ‘final things’) in preparation for an upcoming Theology Nerd Throwdown (TNT) about the resurrection and eschatology.

One of the reasons that I wanted to go back a re-visit this topic wasn’t just because we got several calls into the phone-in hotline (678-590-2739) – and not just because it is 2012 – but because my own eschatology has changed so radically in the past 10 years. So, I should probably put all my cards on the table before I interact with these legends. Two confessions:

• I do not believe that the book of Revelation is about the end of the world. I see it primarily as a political commentary on the first centuries (CE) utilizing an apocalyptic genre and therefore of little profit for purposes of this doctrine or for future-casting. Our hope come not from the book of Revelation but from the truth of Christ’s resurrection. 
• I was raised pre-millennial partial-dispensationalist, with amillenial charismatic leanings and an eye toward post-millennial expectations. My dad was a church historian and preacher so I know those camps’ strengths and weaknesses pretty well. I would obviously no longer frame the conversation the way that whole argument is constructed.

I find that in each of the following authors there something deeply attractive and then something a little troubling – some more troubling than others. Here then is my sampling of perspectives. I would welcome any feedback or new suggestions.

Irenaeus: this 2nd century writer was perhaps the first great postbiblical theologian  and he believed in a physical resurrection (Against Heresies, book 5, chapters 32-33, 36). You can see in his writings where we get most of our historical literal reading. He even believed that the new flesh would be identical to the old in which the saints would inherent the ‘new heavens and the new earth’.
The hesitation comes when he gets to this part where he is working with Matthew 26:27-29 where Christ promises not to drink of the fruit of the vine until the new kingdom. He is putting a lot of stock in the literalness of both the presence of grape vines as proof of  the physical nature of new creation and the assuredness of the resurrection because of the disciple’s presence for the drink.  There is a hermeneutic in place that I am just not sure anyone wants to assimilate in the 21st century.

Origen: this 3rd century writer has a spiritual take that stands in sharp contrast to the literalness of the Irenaeus. His doctrine is known as apokatastasis ton panton – the restitution of all things (On First Principles, book 3, chapter 6). I was prepared to like Origen – as I am a big fan of his on several other subjects.
I was not prepared however for his big leap! He puts so much stock in the idea of God being ‘all in all’ that he even goes as far as to say that there will be no more contrast between good and evil and this will be true for each individual person as well. He was definitely working with a model of ‘Mind-Body-Spirit’ that is ancient and I was not sure I wanted to go back to.

Augustine: this 5th century writer is perhaps the most famous writer on this subject (City of God, book 22, chapter 30). He helps us dream of perfect peace and promises rewards where “virtue will be the best and greatest of al possible prizes”. His is truly the stuff of bliss and delight.
I have several hesitation with Augustine, not least of which is the whole best of all imaginable worlds suspicion of human creation and limitation … but it is how he get there that is notable.

“There is a clear indication of this final sabbath if we take the seven ages of world history as being “days” and calculate in accordance with the data furnished by the Scriptures. The first age or day is that from Adam to the flood…”

We obviously live in the seventh day (of indeterminate length) before the 8th day of Sabbath rest. I’m assuming that I don’t need to elaborate why this antiquated mental construct and hermeneutic employed is problematic for the contemporary thinker.

Schleiermacher: This 19th century writer actually has a really healthy and vibrant reading (The Christian Faith) … but it is framed in a unique bracket. He begins by saying  (essentially) that the doctrine related to the consummation of the church is going to be different than other doctrines (like Christology) because so much of it is speculation and can not come from human experience. He makes a strong case for seeing prophetic pictures through the rules of art and an insistence on tracing everything back to the utterances of Christ. He points our the inherent limitations of conceiving of a future life by analogy with the present one. He is right about that! Too often talk of heaven is nothing more than a projection of the best of here. The glitch with this guy is that the minute you bring up his name in conjunction with experience you have a whole can of worms you have to deal with. 

 Bultmann: This 20th century writer stressed that our is essentially an eschatological religion that is not simply ethics or morality. He says “According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ is the eschatological event, the action of God by which God has set an end to the old world.” (History and Eschatology)
I like what Bultmann had to say. I mean REALLY liked it! But let’s be honest: unless you are going to get down with his whole existential-demythologized program … you are not going to be quoting a lot of Bultmann. He just comes with too much baggage. It seems to me that he is an all-or-nothing kind of resource.

Tillich: This 20th century giant runs his interpretation of the kingdom of God through his philosophy of history (The Protestant Era) making an important distinction between Kairos (fullness of time) from Chronos (measured time). I won’t review it here except to say that it is blazing awesome stuff and if you are prone to liking Tillich, then definitely check this out. He even explains how democracy, socialism, and anarchy are leftovers of religious utopia concepts. Tillich, however, is not for everyone – his heady and philosophically elaborate ideas are not entry level stuff. 

Pannenberg: I have never read anyone like Pannenberg. This 20th century writer accounts for the existentialist concepts of his peers while transcending their concerns and focusing on a real history and real future of the kingdom of God, not just internal personal experiences. I read a selection from The Idea of God and Human Freedom because I had just recently reread Theology and the Kingdom of God. Tripp is a big fan of Wolfhart P. so I will not take too much time here as I am sure that we talk about this plenty in the TNT.  I will just pass along this quote:

“In my opinion this is to misunderstand the meaning of the eschatological prophecies of the future. They are of course concerned with the real future, but in a different sense from predictions on the basis of natural laws, forecasts of political developments or the intuitive foreknowledge of contingent future events. The eschatological prophecies of the future formulate the conditions of the final realization of man’s humanity as a consequence of the establishment of the righteousness of God, which is essential to man’s being as such.”

You can see that it is thick reading with nuanced distinctions… but I love his insistence on a real historical expression while accounting for the abstract-conceptual concerns of the existentialists.

I am excited to talk with Tripp about Marjorie Suchocki’s process idea of being taken back into God and our experience being remembered in God and being free to experience the fullest of God’s presence for eternity – as well as N.T. Wright’s concept of  “the world being put to rights” that is so popular right now, as well a little Jurgen Multmann to make our good friend Tony Jones happy.

If you haven’t signed up for the conference yet, it is not too late! You have a month get your tickets and get to Southern California where it will be 86 degrees and sunny today.  Go to http://www.processtheology.org/

First things first, the catechism is setup as follows: a series of sermons on the 10 Commandments, a series of sermons on the Apostle’s Creed, and a series of sermons on the “Our Father.”  In the first of these sections, Luther writes in a detailed manner on each commandment.  Often times, you can tell how important Luther thought the commandment by the sheer volume he writes on it.  And the 4th, honor thy father and mother, he spends much.

While much of the sermon on the 4th commandment forms the groundwork for temporal governance, this part does not concern me so much.  What’s more important is the following:

‘Notice how great, good, and holy a work is here assigned children, which is alas! utterly neglected and disregarded, and no one perceives that God has commanded it or that it is a holy, divine Word and doctrine. For if it had been regarded as such, every one could have inferred that they must be holy men who live according to these words. Thus there would have been no need of inventing monasticism nor spiritual orders, but every child would have abided by this commandment, and could have directed his conscience to God and said: ‘If I am to do good and holy works, I know of none better than to render all honor and obedience to my parents, because God has Himself commanded it. For what God commands must be much and far nobler than everything that we may devise ourselves, and since there is no higher or better teacher to be found than God, there can be no better doctrine, indeed, than He gives forth. Now, He teaches fully what we should do if we wish to perform truly good works, and by commanding them, He shows that they please Him. If, then, it is God who commands this, and who knows not how to appoint anything better, I will never improve upon it.’

Now, as a good progressive, Luther’s above paragraph has become too simple for me.  If the world and our knowledge of it was ever simple enough to capture all human ethical relationships in the phrase “honor they father and mother,” I don’t believe it is any longer.  Progressives, in their Protestant heritage, have rightly understood that the Kingdom of God comes in and through our own work and toil, is a product of our hard-fought battles for the Just (a point that Luther will not necessarily deny). So, we appropriately develop activist centers dedicated to any number of social rights and goods; we properly recognize that the Church is, by definition, no Church at all if it is not serving those who do not consciously exist within a vision of Isaiah 11.

I, for one, will stand by this vision and progressives’ dedication to it, and I will not claim that our work is anywhere near done.  (A glance at the front cover of any Newspaper will tell you that.)  But, I would also argue for two points.  First, there are times that we progressives get a bit too abstract. We fight for justice and equality, environmental protection and environmental responsibility.  However, I would argue that what we actually fight for is more concrete.  The work we do is work toward fullness of communion between us and God, each other, and the rest of creation.  We seek to be responsible and just not simply because these abstractions are goods in themselves (and they are), but because the concrete life they afford persons (as we have and want still to experience it) is a better life, both now and in the life to come.

Secondly, I would argue that we progressives get a bit too self-righteous, believing that the fate of the world rests on our shoulders and our shoulders alone. While certainly we have a share of responsibility for the sins of this world, there can be no more anthropomorphic belief than the above.  I know that what I’m going to say is not entirely fashionable these days, but the work of God is still God’s work, work in which we do and ought to participate.  But the in-breaking of New Creation is not grounded in our actions; our actions are grounded in it, as promulgators and co-creators.  However much responsibility we must take for this world, we cannot fall into a more or less pragmatic atheism, believing that all good things rest on our bringing them about.  And even if there is some danger  from a social-responsibility perspective for saying this: the resurrection of creation to the fullness of communion is ultimately God’s own responsibility, promised in the resurrection of the Son, to be fulfilled at the end of history.  In other words, God’s work does not rest on us and us alone.

Accordingly, I think that Luther’s sermon on the 4th Commandment reminds us of just such truths.  So, next time you forget what it is as a progressive Christian you’re fighting for, and next time you begin to fall sway to the belief that we humans are our own and only ultimate hope, call your father and mother.  Remind yourself what good communion is by getting them some dammed potatoes, say, next Thanksgiving with love and without complaining, and be humble enough to know that this work is as important as anything else you do. After all, communing with your father and mother was, for Luther, the beginning of all Good human relationship, a communion that might be extended by God with our help through all creation.

A system of dogmas may be the ark within which the Church floats safely down the flood-tide of history.  But the Church will perish unless it opens its window and lets out the dove to search for an olive branch.  Sometimes even it will do well to disembark on Mount Ararat and build a new altar to the divine Spirit, an altar neither in Mount Gerizim nor yet Jerusalem

- Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (146)

Often the objective indwelling of the Holy Spirit in humanity is developed theologically through the explanation of the imago dei, by explaining the nature of humanity’s image-of-god bearing status.  While reading through God for a secular society I found a dense yet powerful quote where Moltmann contrasts this doctrine to the utilitarian understanding of life developed in modernity.  It seems quite timely in our own country’s health care debate.

Theologically, the human being’s likeness to God is not based on the qualities of human beings.  It is grounded in their relationship to God.  That relationship is a double one.  It means God’s relation to human beings, and the relation of human beings to God.  Human beings’ objective likeness to God subsists in God’s relation to them.  This is indestructable and can never be lost.  Only God can end it.  The dignity of each and every person is based on this objective likeness to God.  God has a relationship to every embryo, every severely handicapped person, and every person suffering from one of the diseases of old age, and he is honored and glorified in them when their dignity is respected.

This list can be expanded to all humanity….those in prison, those citizens of countries were we are engaged in military conflict, etc……

Without fear of God, God’s image will not be respected in every human being and the reverence for life will be lost, pushed out by utilitarian criteria.  But in the fear of God there is no life that is worthless and unfit to live (84).

If you have a response or question let me know.  Glad to ask your question during the interview.

Belief in what? Love for what? Hope for what? There’s no doubt that these weak people at some time or another also want to be the strong people, some day their “kingdom” is supposed to arrive…they call it simply “the kingdom of God,” as I mentioned. People are indeed so humble about everything! But to experience that, one has to live a long time, beyond death…in fact, people must have an eternal life, so they can win eternal recompense in the “kingdom of God” for this earthly life “in faith, in love, in hope.” Recompense for what? Recompense through what?

In my view, Dante was grossly in error when, with an ingenuity meant to inspire terror, he set that inscription

The Australian preacher would have loved this....and Nietzsche would have called it 'exhibit A.'

over the gateway into his hell: “Eternal love also created me.” Over the gateway into the Christian paradise and its “eternal blessedness” it would, in any event, be more fitting to set the inscription “Eternal hate also created me”…provided it’s all right to set a truth over the gateway to a lie!

For what is the bliss of this paradise? . . . We might well have guessed that already, but it is better for it to be expressly described for us by an authority we cannot underestimate, Thomas Aquinas, the great teacher and saint: “In the kingdom of heaven the blessed will see the punishment of the damned, so that they will derive all the more pleasure from their heavenly bliss.” (1.15)

Right now I am reading ‘God for a Secular Society‘ and in the introduction he tells this little story which I really enjoyed:

When the modern world was born, three good fairies came along, bringing their good wishes.  The first of them wished the child individual liberty, the second wished it social justice, and the third prosperity.  But then, on the evening of the same day, the wicked fairy turned up and pronounced: ‘Only two of these three wishes can be fulfilled.’  So the modern world of the West chose individual liberty and prosperity.  The modern world of the East chose social justice and prosperity.  But the philosophers and theologians chose for their ideal world individual liberty and social justice, and consequently never arrived at prosperity. (2)

The doctrine of God’s impartial love does not imply that God is not unhappy with much that is going on in the world and does not prefer the actions of some people to those of others.  It does not mean that God supports the aims of all indifferently.  What this doctrine of God’s impartial love implies is that God’s unhappiness with some people’s lives does not involve hate.  It implies that we cannot translate our hatred into divine hatred and thereby justify and reinforce it.  It implies that, when we find ourselves fighting against other people, we are fighting against people whom God loves as much as us.  It implies that we cannot justify and reinforce our own indifference to some people’s welfare by assuming divine indifference.  In brief, it implies that there can be no divine sanction for the  typical bipolar, imperialistic viewpoint, which divides the world into the favored saints and the hated enemy, with the rest of the world being a matter of indifference except insofar as it figures into the bipolar battle (p 144). 

To listen to the Parables of  Jesus, it seems to me, is to let one’s imagination be opened to the new possibilities disclosed by the extravagance of these short dramas. If we look at the Parables as at a word at rest first to our imagination rather than our will, we shall not be tempted to reduce them to mere didactic devices, to moralizing allegories. We will let their poetic power display its self within us.,  ‘Listening to the Parables of Jesus’ in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of His Work (245).

Deacon Zach Roberts has a new post on the Parables of Jesus over at Baptimergent.  It is definitely worth reading, so check it out.

The irony of parables is that most readers assume they vindicate their own cause, when actually they implicate us for our participation in injustice. If Jesus were addressing these parables to whiny emerging Baptists, he would have been at a Wal-Mart McCafe networking with white male denominational executives on a PC.

Peter Rollins, who recently published a book of parables, says:

A parable can be loosely described as a short, fictional narrative that draws the reader ?into an insight concerning some aspect of faith and life. Parables often work best when ?they challenge commonly held attitudes and unmask the poverty of some widely held value. Parables are generally structured in a very simple and stark way, with a narrative that avoids any unnecessary detail that may detract from the central, evocative message.

Wilber describes how critical theory (the variety of postmodern deconstructive practices) can result in pluralistic relativism; “it claimed that all truth is culturally situated (except its own truth, which is for all cultures); it claimed there are no transcendental truths (except its own pronouncements, which transcend specific contexts); it claimed that all hierarchies or value rankings are oppressive and marginalizing (except its own value ranking, which is superior to the alternatives); it claimed that there are no universal truths (except its own pluralism, which is universally true for all peoples).”

(A Theory of Everything, 37)

-check out his recent free stuff on James Fowler

-I will be reviewing ‘The Future of Christianity‘ once I find time.  It is a video series Wilber does with Father Thomas Keating.

- Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (343)

Why?

One could assume that Religion is, or at least has become, part of the world’s problem yet Whitehead is insistent that true religion in its various expressions shares a commitment to the world we live in. As a Christian who believes that God is with us, in Christ and in life, I want to echo his claim that religion is world-loyalty. Not only does a healthy expression of the Christian religion have a strong world-loyalty, but we believe God does.

The basic error of fundamentalism is that it overlooks the contribution of the receptive side in the revelatory situation and consequently identifies one individual and conditioned form of receiving the divine with the divine itself.

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers
in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, not seek
Any more in the desultory weather
some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can’t honestly
complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects
now and then,
Thus hallowing an internal
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love.  At any rate,
I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape);
skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may chose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow.  I only know
that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality.  With luck,
Trekking sudden through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts.  Miracles occur,
If you dare to call those spasmodic
Tricks or radiance miracles.  The wait’s
begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.

The traditional doctrines of theology do not solve the painful problem of evil.  The ordinary conception of the creation of the world and the Fall turns it all into a divine comedy, a play that God plays with himself….The freedom through which the creature succumbs to evil has been given to it by God, in the last resort have been determined by God….When in difficulities, positive theology falls back upon mystery and finds refuge in negative theology.  But the mystery has already been over-rationalized….Freedom is not determined by God.

As a preacher you must conserve other interests besides the truth.  It is your business to deal circumspectly with the whole religious inheritance lest the virtues which are involved in the older traditions perish through your iconoclasm.  That is a formidable task and a harassing one; for one can never be quite sure where pedagogical caution and dishonesty begins…I can’t blame them (the congregation) for not having the bright new knowledge of a recent seminarian, but the ministry is the only profession in which you can make a virtue of ignorance. If you have only read commentaries for twenty years, that is supposed to invest you with an aura of sanctity and piety.  Every profession has its traditions and its traditionalists.  But the traditionalists in the pulpit are much more certain than the others that the Lord is on their side.

If he had only had TBN when he was in seminary……

We make ‘acceptance of Jesus as your savior’ the real door into the fellowship of the church.  But the trouble is that this may mean everything or nothing.  I see no way of making the Christian fellowship unique by any series of tests which precede admission.  The only possibility lies in a winnowing process through the instrumentality of the preaching and teaching function of the church.  Let them come in without great difficulty, but make it difficult to stay in.  The trouble with this plan is that it is always easy to load up your membership with very immature Christians who will finally set the standard and make it impossible to preach and to teach the gospel in its full implications.

I know I have thought this one before.

Peace is primarily a trust in the efficacy of Beauty.  This trust in self-justification of Beauty introduces faith, where reason fails to reveal the details.  And this trust finally comes as a gift.  The gift of trust comes largely beyond the control of purpose.  The comes through the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something who possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.

“To what is freedom’s hope directed? ‘How much more,’ Paul often says, when he thinking about ‘freedom from….but is talking about ‘freedom for….’ How much greater is the future than the past!  How much greater is God’s grace than the sins of men and women!  How much more is freedom in its own world than mere liberation from slavery!  It is true that in history we experience, it is easier to name the negative thing from which we want to be freed than the positive thing for which we hope to be free.  But it is hope for the greater future which leads us to ever new experiences in history.  That is the surplus of hope in life, and the added value of the future in history.” (120)

Ohh and yes this is for you cathyrn.

Because of God’s cross, creation already lives from God, and will be transformed in God.  Without the cross of Christ this vision of ‘the world in God’ would be pure illusion. The suffereing of one, single child would prove it to be so.  Without perception of the suffering of God’s inexhaustible love, no pantheism, no panentheism can endure in this world of death.  They would very soon end up in pan-nihilism (213).

You cannot claim absolute finality for a dogma without claiming a commensurate finality for the sphere of thought within which it arose.  If the dogmas of the Christian Church from the second to the sixth century centuries express finally and sufficiently the truths concerning the topics about which they deal, then the Greek philosophy of that period had developed a system of ideas of equal finality.  You cannot limit the inspiration to a narrow circle of creeds.  A dogma, in the sense of a precise statement, can never be final; it can only be adequate in its adjustment of certain abstract concepts…. Progress in truth, truth of science and truth of religion, is mainly a progress in the framing of concepts, in discarding artificial abstractions or partial metaphors, and in evolving notions which strike more deeply into the root of reality.

He previously defined dogma as, ‘the expression of a fact as it appears within a certain sphere of thought.  You cannot convey a dogma by merely translating the words; you must also understand the system of thought to which it is relevant.’

As an aside, I think this might be the reason going Orthodox makes theological sense to many because if I am not mistaken they claim dogmatic finality with the big three theologians.  (Theron could clarify if he is reading)  I say that because I thought about it when I was reading Sergius Bulgakov.

‘Covenantal love bestows a great dignity on human beings.  They are dignified to take up and pursue God’s intentions in relation to creation.  God’s interests in the well-being of creation.  They are dignified to reveal God’s will and God’s plans for creation.  And they are dignified to work toward the fulfillment of the divine creative, sustaining, and transforming agency.  No less is expressed in the notion of the imago Dei….In kenotic love God inconditionally turns to creatures in order to liberate themout of the depths of confusion, lostness, and sin, to win them for the coming reign of God, and to ennoble them to the experiance and enactment of God’s love, something they con only experaince and enact as a new creation…it is the willingness [of God] to meet creatures at their greatest distance from God and even in thier atempts to seclude and shiled themselves from God, so that they may finally share in biss and become vehicles of the truly creative freedom of the divine nature…God’s kenotice love, which gives to creation an unconditional share in itself and in that power of new life, which it is, time and again directs us towards God and a fuller revelation.  The power of Gods kenotic love, revealed in Christ’s love and bestowed on creatures by the working of the Holy Spirit, draws human lives into the creative love that makes them bearers of God’s presence and the incarnation of the new creation.’

- Alfred North Whitehead

It struggles, yes,  against the earth’s enslavements, against oppression, against misery, against hunger.  All that’s true, but, for what? For something.

St. Paul uses a beautiful expression: to be free for love.  To be free for something positive, that is what Christ means when he says, ‘Follow Me.’

- Oscar Romero

An aside: Our internet and home is dead and should be revived today, so hopefully I can get back to posting more often.  For now I must use the coffee house internet (luckily they have the best coffee in town).

A guest of Whitehead mentioned that the English as a people have been so formidable for centuries due to their committed reading of scripture and so Whitehead responds.

‘The Bible excels in its suggestion of infinitude.’ Suddenly he stood and spoke with passionate intensity, ‘Here we are with our finite beings and physical senses in the presence of a universe whose possibilities are infinite, and even though we may not apprehend them, those infinite possibilities are actualities.‘ He remained standing a moment, absorbed in his own thought, then reseating himself continued, ‘The trouble with the Bible has been its interpreters, who have scaled and whittled down that sense of infinitude into finite and limited concepts, and the first interpreter was the worst, Paul.‘

I personally don’t think Paul missed the sense of the infinite, but I can sure think of some of his interpreters who did.  None the less, I do think Whitehead’s sentiment is on to something.  Within scripture we hear stories about a God who is actively involved in the world and developed a pretty good reputation for recruiting others to participate in God’s redemptive work.  When I hear people talk about the famous stories in scripture, like the Exodus or the ministry of Jesus, I find that it lacks the expectation that God is calling them to do something similar, or that God is still up to the same things.  If you can take the exodus story and turn it into a story that is really about us being freed from the bondage of sin and not also a call to lead a contemporary exodus with God in our own situations of historical bondage.   When we are open to the horizon of the infinite in scripture then we can begin to see that horizon of possibilities in our present.