Showing posts with label Resurrection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Resurrection. Show all posts
Thursday, May 31, 2012
The Millennium
I am unsure of which millennial view best suits my tastes, but perhaps that is the wrong perspective to have. I do not have to find something palatable in order believe in its reality. I believe that the farthest view from my own and to which I disassociate myself the most is that of Dispensational Premillennialism. I tend to isolate myself from such ideas and timetables as are portrayed in such books as the Left Behind series. I do not think that these books and the interpretation of scripture behind them are faithful to the text and to the Christian tradition. I also believe that they venture outside the limits of reason. I understand that God can work outside of our understanding, but he has already revealed certain things about the end and I feel as though much of Dispensational Premillennialism goes outside of what God has already revealed to us, to provide us with an eschatology that is outside the bounds of orthodoxy as well as plausibility from a logical standpoint.
I do not particularly care for the position of Amillennialism either. I can see the appeal to this idea, given that Christ has not returned in the last two thousand years. It would seem as though the early church misunderstood him when he spoke of his return as well as misunderstanding the idea of his future reign over all the earth. Perhaps it would be best to view his words as having spiritual significance. Christ’s reign over the world would be through the growth of the church, which would make the world into a better place over time. I can see how one might find this view appealing, but I believe that it has serious flaws. Christ indeed reigns over the world through the church in a spiritual sense, but I believe that the future reign of Christ is not limited to this idea. The whole created order will one day be restored, and this cannot be done by only a spiritual sense of Christ’s reign. One with this view may believe that death is a part of the natural order, and while death may be natural to life presently that does not mean that death belongs in the creation. Spiritual death is obviously bad, but I would argue that physical death is also bad, at least in its present form. Someone who has an Amillennial understanding may believe that medicine and technology will eventually find a way to eliminate death for humans, but I do not believe this to be true. I believe that there needs to be divine intervention, one that is seen in both a spiritual and physical “millennium.”
Postmillennialism is more optimistic than Amillennialism. Amillennialism does not believe in Christ’s return, but only, it would seem, in the spiritual reign of Christ in such a sense as it exists now. Postmillennialism shares some of the ideas of Amillennialism in that it places much emphasis upon the work of the church in the world. However, Postmillennialism believes that the work of the church will usher in the new millennial age in which Christ will return. We are to prepare the world for the return of Christ, making his house ready for him before he gets back. I find myself indentifying with this sort of view in the sense that I believe that we should do our part in getting the world in order in preparation for Christ’s return. However, I do not believe that the church on its own, even with the spirit of Christ living inside of us can do away with every last evil before Christ comes back. This is where I see Postmillennialism to be somewhat naïve. I do seem to identify with this model more than most other models, though. The early Nazarenes also held this model up as their standard. I think that it would do the church good to believe in much that this model has to offer. I think it would do the world much good as well. I believe that we need to recapture that spirit of the early holiness movement and understand that we as the church are bringing the kingdom of God into the world through Christ. Christ told his disciples that they would do even greater things than what he had done during his earthly ministry. I believe that what Jesus said was true for his first disciples and I believe that it remains true for the church today – we who are the product of those first disciples.
The problem that I have with Postmillennialism is that I do not think that we will ever be able to perfect the world to what it ought to be as much as we try. I believe that the church will grow to become like nothing the world has ever seen, and I believe that we will prepare the way for the second advent of the Lord, but I also believe that as good increases, wickedness and evil will also increase. The evil presence that is in this world will use the good for its own purposes. It will use the strength of the good to make itself stronger. I also believe that the good is greater than the evil, and that through the return of Christ and the establishment of the “millennium” evil will begin to be thoroughly eradicated from the creation. I believe that just as the church and all that is good will continue to grow beyond what we can possibly imagine, evil will also grow in this world to something beyond what we can possibly imagine. However, the good will never be extinguished by the evil. Christ lives in the church. He died once and it is impossible for him to die again. We are in a war with the darkness, and the second advent of Christ is one of the decisive and ultimate stages of that war, just as his first advent was.
I do not know what the millennium, or the millennial age will look like, but I know that it will be good. We are given glimpses of this in both the Old and the New Testaments. This age is spoken of by the prophets. Isaiah says that the Lord will reign in Zion, and that he will establish his rule on the earth. He says that God’s people will live on his holy mountain, and that the creation will no longer be harmful and destructive. The animals will not kill each other and the people will not live in misery. They will have children who have a hopeful future. Apparently, death will still exist in Isaiah’s vision, but people will also live very long lives. He says that if someone failed to reach a hundred years of age, then they must have been cursed. I would seem that in this picture of the new age that Isaiah sees, people will still marry and reproduce and die of old age. I am unsure of what to make of all of these things. The New Testament writers do not speak in detail about these things, but they do seem to indicate that Christ’s “millennial” reign over the earth will only be a temporary thing – as long as it may be – before the final reign and the marriage of the Lamb. The Revelation seems to indicate that only after the millennial reign of Christ, in which Eden is in a sense restored, will evil be finally and completely done away with. At this point, death itself will die; just as Paul writes that the last enemy to be destroyed is death, so John writes that after the millennium Satan, Hades, and death itself will be thrown into the Lake of Fire, being destroyed forever. I do not fully understand what this all means and what it will look like and how exactly it will take place, but it sounds pretty good to me.
Surprised By Hope
Surprised by Hope by N. T. Wright was an intriguing read. I appreciated his articulation of many things I have wondered about in regard to the faith and to eschatology. I tend to agree for the most part with his understanding of the Kingdom of God and how God’s kingdom is present now in this present reality as well as present in the future reality. I agree with his understanding of Christianity, especially in contrast with the popular notions of Christian theology portrayed in much of the United States and the western world. I believe, like Wright, that most people do not understand much of anything about the Christian hope, mistaking it for a detached sort of hope in going to heaven when we die without much thought into the here and now ramifications of salvation and the hope it brings for the present and well as the future and how both of those realities overlap and interact with each other.
In the first chapter of his book he speaks of the distorted views of death that people tend to have. He speaks of the tragedies of the Oklahoma City bombing, the death of Princess Diana, 9-11, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquakes in Pakistan, among other things. He says that these events are indications that all is not right in the world. They point to the evilness of death and its presence in the world in these various forms, through mass murder, destruction, disaster, and tragedy. In the context of these horrific events, Wright asks the question, “What is the ultimate Christian hope?” How does one respond to death if they live out the Christian hope, and how does one respond if they do not have or understand the Christian hope, and above all, what is the Christian hope? He seems to believe that the Christian hope firmly stands in its belief that God is going to make a new heavens and a new earth and that the old order of things will be done away with, so that there will no longer be tragedy, sin, and death. Everything will be redeemed, and God has already set out in bringing the whole of creation, including people, into full redemption.
He says that people are generally confused about death. This is evident in the way people, even Christians, respond to death. Christians tend to believe that Christianity is mostly about belief in life after death, but there is much more to Christianity than this notion. This idea is distinguishing enough from many other religious traditions. People, including many Christians, do not have a proper understanding nor a proper hope in the resurrection of the dead and what the life everlasting truly indicates. Many believe that people live on in heaven and that this is the goal of all believers. Others believe that the memory of someone who has died lives on through other people, or even through the breakdown of the body to become life-giving properties for other plants and animals. Other people believe that the soul exists in a way in which it is absorbed by the rest of creation and that ultimately we will all be reunited in the sense that we will all be absorbed into one giant cosmic thing, whatever that means. Others believe that there is not life after death, and that death marks the end of human existence. Most people seem to have no hope in what orthodox Christianity teaches about the resurrection of the body, either denying the full extent of the reality that their loved one has truly been separated from them in death, or else believing that death is some sort of good thing that will take us to heaven where we will finally be done with the shackles of physical being.
In the second chapter of his book, Wright more fully investigates the distorted images that people have about the Christian hope. He says that Platonism has distorted it by saying that the soul, and not the body, is eternal and is therefore all that really matters, leading Christians to partake in an escapist belief. People also believe that heaven is only some sort of other-worldly kind of spiritual place where people sit on clouds and play harps. People also believe that heaven does not really exist as a physical place. Heaven is within us, and as long as we remember those we love they will live on in heaven and in our memories. Heaven is more of a fairy tale than anything else, like a blissful dream of some kind. People have also come to believe less in the reality of hell. Also, a rise in the belief of some kind of purgatorial existence after death has taken shape. Some people believe that heaven has nothing to do with this life and do not live in the hope of the resurrection, believing that while on this earth they are stuck in sin and cannot do anything about it, so they believe that in purgatory they will finally be made free from sin so they can go be with God or whatever happens after death. People have lost the hope of the resurrection and the redemption of creation in the present sense as well as the future sense. Both are real, but not recognized. God’s redemption will make everything new, and is already at work this present life. People mostly seem to think that the goal is to get to heaven some day after death. All eschatological thought then functions under the notion that God is going to destroy the world and take us to heaven so that we can get out of this mess. Christ’s return is not seen as the complete restoration of the created order in which we now play a part, but is rather the point at which Christ takes us “home to heaven” so he can damn the rest of his creation. In summary, Wright says people are generally confused, not understanding at all the implications of Christ’s incarnation, much less his resurrection and what that means for us.
Chapter three describes the “early Christian hope in its historical setting.” Wright discusses the views of the resurrection and of life after death in the ancient world among the Jews and the pagans. The pagans believed that death was all-powerful and that everyone would have to die. People either wanted to have a new body in the future but believed they could not really have one or they believed that existence away from the body was far better and hoped that they would live on in a soul-existence after death. The Jews, however, at the time Christianity began believed in a resurrection of the body. This is something quite different from any of the pagan beliefs. This is the context in which the Gospels claim that Jesus had risen form the dead, in the context of bodily resurrection. The early Christians recognized Jesus’ resurrection as being something new and unseen before. They had not expected it, though they had looked for a general resurrection of the dead at a future date, the “last day.”
Resurrection was also linked at this point to the vision of the Messiah as reflected in much of the apocalyptic apocryphal literature between the time of the exile and the time of Jesus. When Jesus was killed, all hope in him ushering in the final age where the dead would be raised was lost. The Messiah could not be killed if he was truly the one to bring in the age of life, even though Jesus had said that he would be killed. However, Jesus’ resurrection brought to light a whole new way of viewing the resurrection of the dead and created the entire framework and basis of Christianity which emerged at this time. Christianity is focused on the resurrection. Early Christianity was based on Judaism and did not focus too much on life after death, but the resurrection reshaped Christianity to be focused almost entirely on the resurrection. Resurrection before this was “important, but not that important.” Christianity ended up separating from Second Temple Judaism because of its focus on the resurrection. Judaism had always been somewhat vague as to what the resurrected form would be like, but Christianity claimed that the resurrected body would be a remade body, a transformed body. Christians also split the resurrection into two in contrast to Judaism. The first resurrection being seen in Christ through whom we may also be resurrected to life, but also a second resurrection in which all of the dead would be raised in physical bodies once again. The Christians also believed that God had called them to work with him towards this later resurrection in restoring the world in preparation for God’s ultimate redemption of all creation. This power was given to Christians through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God now lived in us. Also, within Judaism resurrection passages were often rightly interpreted as being metaphorical in nature and were not actually speaking of a bodily resurrection, but more so of God’s restoration of Israel from captivity. Many passages could easily be interpreted that way, though not all. Christianity, though, spoke mostly of resurrection in the literal sense, both of a literal raising of Christ and of a literal raising of humanity from the grave. The view of the Messiah also changed with the birth of Christianity. Judaism had seen the Messiah as the powerful victor over Israel’s enemies who would establish his kingdom. They did not think he would be killed by Israel’s enemies. This was a stumbling block for the Jews, but was the foundation of the hope of Christianity and why the resurrection of Christ was so important to them.
Wright then goes on to point out the many flaws in the arguments people have come up with to refute the historicity of the resurrection of Christ. Some say that the early disciples were not willing to give up their view of Jesus as Messiah even after he was killed, but that is not what the text indicates. The texts portray them as feeling a sense of disillusionment with their former beliefs of Jesus as Messiah. They had given up on him when he died. They were hurt and confused by this, but they did not cling to a belief that he was still the Messiah until after he had risen. Some have also argued that Christ’s resurrection is a misunderstanding of what the disciples were describing. They were actually saying that Jesus had been exalted and taken up to heaven when he died. However, this is not consistent with their Judaism, which said that the dead, including martyrs, would be raised and glorified at a later time, not presently. Some also say that the disciples could have felt a sense of Jesus’ presence still with them after he died and so claimed that he was still alive or living again. However, the disciples did not claim this. They claimed that Jesus had been resurrected from the grave in bodily form and that he had appeared to them. If they had been filled with joy and their hearts had been strangely warmed by a feeling of Christ’s presence among them, then they would not have reacted by saying that Jesus had emerged from his grave. They would have sung a psalm or something along those lines and would not have made such wild and disrespectful claims about the body of the deceased. Also, some say that the disciples had visions or dreams that Jesus appeared to them, which happens to people who have experienced the loss of someone close. However, this assumes that the disciples were unaware that people had dreams and visions and interpreted these dreams as actual events. Dreaming, as most people do, about their recently deceased friend, would not lead them to claim that he had been risen form the dead, much less that he was the Messiah.
The fourth chapter continues Wright’s points on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. He uses the actual stories from the Gospels now to show that they do not appear to be late inventions, but perhaps the earliest written forms of the Christian tradition. He says that while other parts of the Gospels rely heavily upon the Hebrew Scriptures to support what they say about Jesus, the resurrection stories do not. Also, the four Gospels all describe the resurrection in quite different ways and are at the same time theologically consistent. Also, it is women who are portrayed as the principle witnesses of the resurrection. It seems unlikely that the disciples would have said that the women were the primary witnesses to the event if they had fabricated the story themselves. Also, if the disciples were trying to prove that Jesus had been resurrected in bodily form, it would not make sense for them to describe Jesus in ways that make him seem like a ghost at times, such as when he walks through walls, while at other times, he is acting like a physical person, as when he is eating fish. Also, in the Gospels Jesus’ resurrection is never linked to the future resurrection as it is in the rest of the New Testament, indicating that these stories are likely from the earliest of Christian traditions.
Other arguments that Wright gives to support the historicity of the resurrection are that Jesus’ tomb was never made into a martyr’s shrine, as was often the case with martyrs; also, the early church suddenly began to meet on the first day of the week instead of on the Sabbath; and the disciples were willing to die, and did die, for their claims about Christ’s resurrection, which seems unlikely if they had made it up. Wright claims that people today have been influenced by enlightenment thinking which claims that miracles do not happen, so they tend to view the resurrection as implausible. However, the people of today have also rejected much of this thought in order to investigate a lot of eastern forms of spirituality and mysticism. Ironically, they will put up with that sort of thing, but revert back to an Enlightenment view whenever it comes to something related to Christ’s resurrection or miracles related to Christianity. He goes on to say that the belief in Christ is not one that rejects history and science, nor is it one that is in its own sphere and apart from them, but it is faith claiming events “within history, demanding evidence that demands an explanation from the scientist.”
In Chapter five, Wright discusses the cosmic future and the different views people have on this. He says that many are focused on the individual and what God has in store for the individual in the cosmic future, but he says that he prefers to think of creation as a whole first before narrowing down redemption and resurrection to the individual. His point is that there is much more to resurrection than just in a personal sense. The whole of creation will be restored, and the individual is a part of that creation who will take part along with others in the redemptive process, both in restoring and being restored. Wright says that there are generally two misunderstandings about the Cosmic Future, “evolutionary optimism” and “souls in transit.” They are both often mistaken for Christianity. The first lends itself to the myth of optimism and believes that all of creation is working towards bettering itself and is slowly moving towards a perfect state. The second idea believes that we are only here temporarily, and that eventually we will be removed from the limitations of our bodily existence and live on in freedom as eternal souls. The first view is too optimistic in the natural order of the world, and the second is too pessimistic. The first one fails to understand the need of Christ’s redemption for the created order or recognize that “moral progress” has failed to bring us to “utopia.” Christ does not continue the betterment of the world, he recreates it. The second idea sees this world as beyond redemption, which is also foreign to Christianity. This world is not to be done away with, but rescued from its bondage to decay.
In chapter six Wright says that the early Christians did not believe that the world was getting better over time, nor did they believe that the world was getting worse over time. “They believed that God was going to do for the whole cosmos what he had done for Jesus at Easter.” The early Christians recognized the goodness of creation, the nature of evil, and the plan of redemption. Wright says that there are six themes in the New Testament writings that are laid out in relationship to this. The first is “seedtime and harvest,” which is based on the resurrection of Jesus being the “first fruits” of the resurrection of all people. Because of Christ’s resurrection, we also may be resurrected. The second is “the victorious battle,” in which the entire cosmos must submit to Christ, even death itself, so that Christ may make everything new. The third is “citizens of heaven, colonizing the earth,” which meant that we would not depart into heaven, but that Christ will come from heaven to earth to transform everything and we will serve under him. The fourth is “God will be all in all,” which means that “God intends to fill all creation with his own presence and love.” The fifth is “new birth,” which speaks to how the whole creation is waiting to be freed from bondage and that when the children of God are revealed or resurrected the whole earth and the created order itself will be resurrected or renewed as well. The sixth is “the marriage of heaven and earth,” which describes the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. This is the opposite of what a lot of Christians think, where they are brought up to heaven to meet God there. Heaven and earth are not opposed to one another, and they are not two different ideas conveying the same message. They are like male and female, who are made to be joined together.
Wright begins the seventh chapter by talking about the ascension. He makes the point that the resurrection and the ascension should not be viewed as the same thing. When we speak of the ascension, we do not speak of Christ dying and then being raised from the dead by being taken up into heaven, nor we do we speak of Christ dying and going to heaven as though that were his resurrection. Both say the same thing and both are wrong. Wright says that the ascension is also not just a strange idea that was added later, and he says that ascension is a vital feature of Christian belief and that without it things begin to go wrong. Some have insisted upon pure literalism to say that Jesus vertically took-off into the clouds. However, this creates some issues because it suggests that heaven is literally somewhere in the clouds within the earth’s atmosphere. Also, it indicates that heaven lies directly above the exact spot where Jesus took-off, but since the earth is round he would be perceived by people on the other side of the world as descending upside down, and the positioning of heaven in this way limits its relation to the earth by the spherical qualities of a globe, where one cannot tell the difference between up and down. Some have also interpreted the ascension where he disappears into the clouds to mean that when he died he disappeared, but that his spiritual presence lives on in us. Wright says that literalism and skepticism both lead us astray here, and that theologians who take the ascension seriously have viewed heaven and earth not as being two different locations within the time-space continuum, but “two different dimensions of God’s good creation.” He also says that the one who is in heaven may at the same time be anywhere and everywhere on earth, so that Jesus is accessible to everyone in every location on earth. He further says that Jesus did not stop being human after his death. He remained human and exists as a human right now in heaven, where he reigns in both heaven and earth in the present as well as in the future. The church is evidence of his reign on the earth, but the church should not be confused with Christ himself. This has happened in history with “triumphalism” and has always led to disasters of one kind or another. Also, it is by the Holy Spirit and the sacraments that Jesus is present with us now. Wright goes on to say:
“when the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not talking about two localities related to each other within the same time-space continuum or about a nonphysical world contrasted with a physical one but about two different kinds of what we call space, two different kinds of what we call matter, and also quite possibly (though this does not necessarily follow from the other two) two different kinds of what we call time. We post-Enlightenment Westerners are such wretched flatlanders. Although New Age thinkers, and indeed quite a lot of contemporary novelists, are quite capable of taking us into other parallel worlds, spaces, and times, we retreat into our rationalistic closed-system universe as soon as we think about Jesus” (115).
Wright also says that the Eastern Orthodox church views heaven as the inner sanctuary and the earth as the outer portions of the temple. The ascension leads us to believe that “God’s space and ours…are, though very different, not far away from one another” (116). He says that God’s space and ours interlock in many different ways, but that they are also separate right now for a time. One day, though, when Christ returns, the two will be joined together as in marriage.
After this, Wright speaks in more detail of the second coming of Christ. He says that most mainstream Christians confess to believe this but they do not have a clue as to what it means. In his discussion on the second coming Wright says that this has to do with the outcome and such of the individual person in the context of the renewal of the entire cosmos. When God renews the cosmos, he says, Jesus will be at the very center of this. He notes that the second coming has become a hot topic among a number of different evangelical groups, mainly fundamentalist ones. These groups tend to believe that we are now living in what they call the “end times.” They believe that Jesus will come back in the midst of certain geo-political events and will take all the Christians away, leaving the world to fend for itself for a little while. Wright believes that this obsession with an inappropriate interpretation of the second coming of Jesus is a problem. He says that this type of interpretation leads one to believe that Christ’s return must only be able to happen under certain conditions and that it also leads one to think that there is no point in making any effort to better the environment in which we now live because it is only going to get destroyed anyway. On the other side of the spectrum are the post-Enlightenment liberals who find it embarrassing that anyone would believe in a literal second coming of Christ and especially a day of judgment. The second coming sounds too much like an outdated supernaturalism and the judgment makes God sound too wrathful for their taste. He also points out that ironically many people these days have become increasingly interested in mysticism and the supernatural, but that people tend to avoid those things if they have anything to do with Christianity.
With chapter eight, Wright says that Christ will indeed return. However, he points out that his return seems to indicate that he is absent at the present. Wright says that Christ is not absent even though he has not yet returned, and points back to his previous explanations of the ascension. He says that people often misinterpret what the Bible means when it says that Christ will come on the clouds. The Son of Man passages, which hearken back to Daniel, are not speaking of Christ descending from heaven to earth, but of his ascent into heaven or entering into God’s space. Christ’s words were justified by his ascension. This was the sign showing that what he had predicted would happen in the future to Jerusalem would indeed happen. By his ascension, his words were vindicated. Many Christians think that in the future Christ will come down from heaven and we will rise up from the earth and meet him at the halfway point. Wright also says that Jesus did not really teach about his second coming, but that this does not mean that it is not true or that it will not happen. The rest of the New Testament does teach about the second coming of Christ. I am not sure I agree with Wright on this point. I feel as though Christ does address his return at places, such as with the verse, “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” among some others. I do agree, though, that Paul’s letters are much clearer than the Gospels in the issue of Christ’s second coming. Wright talks about the concept of parousia in the New Testament and how this reflected the idea of Christ still being present in spirit but not in body at the current time. It refers to a sort of interim period between when Christ was present in the body in the past and when Christ will be present in the body in the future. Further, Paul wished to show that Christ was the true king both now and in the future, as opposed to Caesar who was a sham. Wright says that the passage which talks about Christ’s descent and our ascent to meet him in the air are three different word-pictures from the Old Testament all wrapped up into one in order to convey his eschatological theme. Wright also takes a jab at rapture theology here, saying that it is Gnostic in its origins. Wright ends this chapter by stating that Christ’s ascending as well as his appearing were both fundamental elements of Christian belief right from the get-go.
In chapter nine, Wright says that at his appearing Christ will play the special role of judge. If God is a good God then he must be a God of judgment when faced with a “world full of exploitation and wickedness.” The nineteenth century embraced a sort of optimism about the human condition believing mankind to be progressing into a glorious state, but the twentieth century was a great hindrance to that optimism with all of its war and destruction. Some people say that who we are on the inside is all that that matters and that we do not need to be held accountable for what is on the outside, but this is contrary to New Testament belief which indicates that we will be judged for everything about us, both the outside and the inside, and that Jesus will be the judge of both our thoughts and our actions. With Christ’s coming everything will be judged. This means that when he comes everything must be transformed. Death and decay will be overcome and God will be “all in all” as the entire cosmos undergoes a transformation. With this realization, the church should not think that it can bring about this change all on its own and it should not think that it cannot do anything at all until Christ comes back and makes everything right again. The church has an active role in the parousia, one that is not absent from Christ.
In chapter ten, Wright focuses on the redemption of our bodies. He says that Paul writes that we are promised a new bodily existence. This is the “fulfillment and redemption of our present bodily life.” Wright says that the resurrection of the body was an integral part of Christian belief from the start but that overtime it became unpopular among many segments of the church because of different ideas to which they had held that did not seem to agree with the idea of a bodily resurrection. Much of the church came to believe that upon death, one either went immediately to heaven or to hell in a “one-stage postmortem journey” that sometimes included an intermediate purgatory and sometimes did not. Wright believes that this idea of heaven and hell has helped to lead to an escapist theology among Christians who see the goal of this life to be to go to heaven when they die. Wright refers to something he calls “life after life after death,” saying that we do not simply go to heaven or hell when we die and that is all that happens. There is a restoration of the created order that takes place. Yes, we live on after we die, but our bodily existence upon the recreated or renewed earth will come at a later time after we have died. This is what the resurrection is. It is about heaven coming to earth and creation, including us, being restored even after we have died and gone to be with the Lord. The resurrection is not just a spiritual resurrection when we go to heaven. The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament make this clear. Another thing to point out is that when the Bible uses the word heaven it is often referring to God in reverent language. So the idea of going to heaven is really the idea of going to be in God’s presence, which does not start when we die, but here and now. Wright refers back to C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce when trying to describe what the future body will be like, saying that it will be fuller, more real, more complete, than what we have now. We will not be ghosts at the resurrection, but we will be less ghostlike than we are now. However, Wright is hesitant to go as far as Lewis went in his interpretation. Lewis tended to think that the present reality was only a shadow or copy of what was to come, which is a bit too Platonic for Wright, who believes that the present reality will be redeemed.
Chapter eleven is on purgatory, paradise, and hell. He says that “purgatory is basically a Roman catholic doctrine.” The Eastern Orthodox church and most Protestant churches have rejected it. Purgatory seems to allow for more people to be able to enter into heaven than would have entered without it. However, this is not exactly how purgatory was supposed to function. It is not a universalistic kind of idea. Only Christians – no non-believers – went to purgatory. It was for those who had not become holy enough to enter the presence of God and needed further refinement after death even after experiencing salvation in this life. Some people believe that purgatory allows for us to do whatever we please in this life because we will have another go at it later, but this is not how this doctrine was supposed to function. The idea some have is that whatever journey we were on in this life when we died will continue on after we die. Wright does not agree with this universalistic sort of interpretation. Wright says that the reason ideas such as purgatory worked was that they were allegorical of the present life. In this life we are refined and purified, and this often through suffering. It is “a projection from the present onto the future.”
Wright concludes that all of the “Christian departed” are at rest in the presence of God. This is what we may refer to as paradise. It is not, however, to be confused with the later resurrection of the body. In speaking of paradise, people often refer to the thief on the cross to whom Jesus said, “Today you shall be with me in paradise.” People often interpret this to mean that when the thief died he was with Jesus in paradise, or in heaven. However, this also seems to contradict the traditional church belief that Christ descended into hades when he died and then ascended from the grave on the third day. The question then is why would Jesus say that he would be in paradise? Wright says that the answer lies in the context of the statement of the thief. The thief asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom, thinking that the kingdom is only a future reality, but Jesus corrects him and reassures him by telling him that the kingdom is not just in the future, but it is present. This is why he says “today you will be with me in paradise.” He is indicating the present reality of the “not yet” which is made present through himself. In speaking of hell, Wright points out that several times when Jesus refers to hell, he uses the word “Gehenna,” which was the trash dump, where waste was burned outside of the city. He is using a picture that the people are familiar with in order to speak of a greater truth. There are a number of people who have become bothered by the images of hell they have been given so they prefer to become Universalists, wondering how a loving God could send someone to a place of eternal fire and torment. The picture that Jesus uses is one to say that “unless you repent in this life you are going to burn in the next.” However, the focus is on repentance in this life, and not on a future hell. This idea of reaching a place that is beyond all pity and all hope in the next life is firmly connected to this life and whether one repents or not. Wright again falls upon Lewis’s The Great Divorce, saying that in the end those who are beyond all hope are the ones to whom God says “Thy will be done.” Wright concludes that damnation and hell are things that reflect who we have chosen to be. He wonders if in being damned we have reached the point of becoming sub-human or ex-human. He says that those things that we allow to define us in this life are things that will define us in the next. If we allow ourselves to be controlled by bitterness, sensuality, or power then we will become these very attributes and eventually cease to be in the image of God entirely and we will no longer be truly human at least in the sense that we were intended to be. This is damnation.
In chapter twelve, Wright begins his discussion of the role of the church in the kingdom of God. He shows that the point of Jesus’ resurrection was that we may also be resurrected and that the entire cosmos may be resurrected or restored. The church plays an active role in the redemption that God will bring and even now is already bringing into the created order. Paul says that if Christ’s resurrection does not bring about our own resurrection then “we are to be pitied above all men,” for “if there is no resurrection of the dead then not even Christ was raised,” and if Christ was not raised then the Christian faith is pointless. Also, in speaking of the kingdom of God, Wright says that whatever you do now carries on into the future – into God’s future. This is how the church participates in God’s redemption.
Wright then discusses the meaning of salvation. Salvation means to be rescued from something, and in Christian belief this something is death. Yet, people still die. If being rescued from death means that we will live on as souls after our bodies have decayed this does not mean that we have been rescued from death. It simply means that we have died. If we are to be truly rescued from death then our bodies which have died must be rescued. This is what salvation is – the rescue of both body and soul. In the Gospels Jesus’ healing miracles are associated with salvation, indicating that salvation also has to do with the healing of the body at some point. At this point, Wright summarizes everything he has covered thus far by saying: “the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us” (200). Wright reiterates at the end of this chapter the idea that kingdom of God is breaking into the present, on earth as it is in heaven.
Chapter thirteen continues the idea of “building for the kingdom.” Wright points out first of all that it is God who builds the kingdom, but that God works with his creation in such a way that he uses us as instruments in his work. Secondly, “we need to distinguish between the final kingdom and the present anticipations of it” (208). The kingdom has been inaugurated and we are participating in the coming kingdom, but ultimately only God can bring about the final restoration, the creation of the new heavens and the new earth. “The work we do in the present, then, gains its full significance from the eventual design in which it is meant to belong” (211). Wright also speaks of the topic of justice, saying that he does not mean to over-emphasize social justice, but that our sense of justice or our understanding of justice ought to be the result of our recognition of our living in between the time of Christ’s death and resurrection and the time of his appearing. Wright also seeks to point out that we must also avoid dualism which leaves us with no concern for social justice at all. Wright also mentions that in Jesus’ time, resurrection was a bit of a radical idea. It seemed to be rather a late-comer on the scene in the history of the Old Testament. The resurrection doctrine was revolutionary and “spoke of God’s determination to bring about the new Exodus” (214). After speaking for a while on the dangers of a poor eschatology and how that can lead to a flawed sense of justice, such as was seen in Nazism, he talks about beauty. His view is that beauty is almost just as important as spirituality and justice. God’s intent is to restore the beauty of his creation. He also talks about evangelism and says that if we are helping to bring about the work of new creation then we seek to “bring advance signs of God’s eventual new world into being in the present” (225). This can be seen in evangelism. Evangelism can be a difficult word for some people because it produces images of televangelists and political evangelicalism, but that is not really what evangelism looks like. Evangelism proclaims that “God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil, corruption, and death itself have been defeated, and that God’s new world has begun…” (227). A private relationship with Jesus is not the only thing that matters, which is how some have interpreted evangelism. This is not a private and merely personal thing.
In chapter fourteen, Wright provides justification from the biblical texts to support what he claims the mission of the church should be. He provides thorough examples from the Gospels, from Acts, and from Paul’s letters. In the Gospels the picture made is that Jesus is risen from the dead just as he said he would be. The idea of Jesus being raised and showing that there really is life after death is not indicated at all, but rather, according to Mark, Jesus has been raised, so his disciples should hurry up and go see him – he is waiting for them in Galilee. What Jesus was referring to when he said some would not taste death until they saw the kingdom coming in power was his resurrection. His resurrection “completes the inauguration of God’s kingdom” (234). The resurrection is not just a miracle intended to show just how powerful God is when he wants to be, nor is it telling us by visible means that there is a life waiting for us in heaven after we die. The resurrection is about God’s kingdom being established on earth as it is in heaven, and in this kingdom death is eventually abolished forever. According to Matthew, “resurrection doesn’t mean escaping from the world; it means mission to the world based on Jesus’s lordship over the world” (235). According to Luke, the resurrection provides a whole new way of telling the story of God and Israel and God and the world. On the road to Emmaus, the two men recognize how Jesus’ death was a horrible tragedy in the grand scheme of things. They had believed that he was the Messiah, and then it all blew up in their faces. Jesus then shows them a new way of looking at the Law and the Prophets, indicating that the truth about himself was already there, but had just not been recognized or understood yet. Yet through his death and resurrection the whole of Scripture and of history may be looked at in a new light, a brighter and clearer light. In John the disciples go fishing and catch nothing until Jesus helps them. After this, Jesus tells Peter to shepherd his sheep. The fishing may be understood as representing what they had been doing all along as Jews. The shepherding, however, shows a new way of work that relates to the newly inaugurated kingdom.
In Acts 1-12 Jesus is proclaimed by the disciples to be the risen Messiah, as they are mainly preaching to the Jews at this point. When Paul preaches to the Greeks, he also proclaims Jesus to be Messiah, saying that Jesus’ resurrection brings resurrection to all believers. He preaches this in the Areopagus and the people cannot believe that someone could be raised from the dead. In the very place where it was announced by Apollo through drama six hundred years prior that there was no hope at all for a resurrection of the dead, Paul proclaims the resurrection boldly. Paul goes on preaching this in his letters, saying that through Christ’s resurrection we will all be raised, and not only us, but the entire creation will be restored.
In chapter fifteen, Wright continues to talk about what the mission of the church should be, this time from a more future-oriented perspective. He begins by emphasizing the celebration of Easter, and that being not just once a year, but every first day of the week as the early church did. They met every Sunday of every week in addition to meeting with each other additionally throughout the week in order to celebrate the anniversary of our Lord’s resurrection, what we would call Easter. Easter is then not only an annual celebration, but a weekly, and even a daily one. The hope of Easter should live on in us throughout all the year. Wright says that we should be attempting to celebrate Easter in new creative ways as Easter is a sign of new creation: “in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind” (256). I agree with him very much on this matter. I am a bit miffed at times by our people’s lack of genuine enthusiasm for Easter. Easter should not be viewed as the end of a forty day gloomy fast.
Wright also discusses what will happen to space, time, and matter as a result of the restoration of all things. In discussing space, he refers back to Celtic tradition which believed in “thin places” or places where the distance between heaven and earth was minimal. With the renewal of space, the distance between heaven and earth is done away with because heaven and earth have become one. He also says that time itself is focused upon Christ. Every time we date something, we still date it in regard to its placement in time in reference to the time of Christ. Every Sunday we go to church is also an indication of the renewal of time. Sunday is the eighth day of creation, where God begins to restore all things to himself. The renewal of matter can also be seen beginning to take place in the sacraments. Here we have the presence of God himself in created matter, just as Christ was made a sacrifice for us by becoming earthly matter in the hope that matter would be renewed, so that Eucharist works in similar way as the presence of God incarnate, God made into flesh to restore flesh. When we take the Eucharist we are identifying ourselves with Christ just as Christ identified himself with us. We remember his death and suffering and resurrection and we anticipate his appearing where he will restore all things so that God will at last be all in all. This is all practiced in our mission to the world, in love, prayer, scripture, and holiness. All of these things are signs of the renewal that Christ brings to us now and in the future. This is the hope of the world that we must bring unto the farthest reaches. Christ works through us to bring hope and healing to the world, and just as he has inaugurated this mission, so will he also bring this mission to completeness.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Eschatology of the Early Church
Introduction
The fathers of the early church based much of their eschatological thought upon the writings of the New Testament.[1] For the most part, these early theologians had a very similar base on which they founded their eschatological theologies. While they tended to diverge on details, many held to surprisingly similar views overall. David Fergusson in his article Eschatology writes, “In the eschatologies of most of the Church Fathers a pattern emerges from New Testament sources.” [2] Fergusson goes on to say that this pattern is evident in the writings of the Church Fathers, giving a list of what most often appeared as the foundation for much of their eschatologies. He writes, “At death, all human beings enter some intermediate state, perhaps sleep or a disembodied existence. This is followed by the return of Christ (the parousia), the resurrection of all the dead, their judgment and final destiny in either heaven or hell.”[3]For the most part, this is on what the early church fathers based their beliefs on the “last things,” however, not all held to this model. Some of the ideas that were developed were in fact quite a bit different from this model, while at the same time carrying some overall similarities.
Irenaeus
Irenaeus speaks out against the Gnostics of his time who believed that the resurrection of the dead was purely spiritual and that this was simply an act in which the spirit returned from whence it came. Irenaeus held to the belief of a bodily resurrection, recognizing that the future reward of the saints was both physical and spiritual. Christ would return to the earth to set up his kingdom, where the relationship between mankind and God would finally be completely restored upon the end of a thousand year period of time where the final judgment would take place to be followed by the consummation of time.[11] Irenaeus believed that the dead would rise to live upon this earth, and that Christ’s reign would usher in a new order of creation in which the images presented in the last few chapters of Isaiah would come to fulfillment, “‘The wolves and sheep will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and the serpent earth like bread; and they will not injure nor disturb in my holy mountain, says the Lord.’”[12]
Irenaeus speaks of the final restoration of creation in his Against Heresies. He says that during the Last Supper Jesus spoke to his disciples, saying that he would not drink of the fruit of the vine again until he would “drink it anew” in the Father’s kingdom. Irenaeus points out that wine is for the physical body, not a spiritual one, and that kingdom of which Christ speaks in this verse is a physical kingdom that would be established upon the earth. Allister McGrath writes of this, saying, “The reference to the future drinking of wine is a sure indication that there will be a kingdom of God established upon earth before the final judgment.”[13] Irenaeus believes that the earth will be restored to what it was originally supposed to be like at the time of creation. He says that this new earthly realm will be set up when Christ returns at his second advent. He also believes that the millennial age will go into effect when Christ returns to restore the creation so that this new state to be established will last for a thousand years.[14] He says that at the end of this thousand year period of time the final judgment will take place.[15] Irenaeus states that when Jesus spoke of drinking wine anew in the Father’s kingdom, he was promising two different things: “The inheritance of the earth in which the new fruit of the vine will be drunk, and the physical resurrection of his disciples.”[16]
Hippolytus
Hippolytus appears to have taken the parable of the rich man and Lazarus as told by Jesus in the New Testament rather literally in its descriptions of the afterlife. At the end of this parable, both the rich man and Lazarus die. The rich man is taken to a place that Jesus calls “hell” where the man exists in a state of pain and agony. Lazarus, on the other hand, is taken by the angels up to “Abraham’s bosom.”[17] In this parable, Jesus describes a great chasm dividing the rich man and Lazarus so that neither go move from one place to the other. However, the rich man is still able to communicate with the patriarch Abraham. Hippolytus believed that in this parable, besides making a point about loving ones neighbor, Jesus was actually giving a detailed description of what the afterlife would look like. In his Against Plato, On the Cause of the Universe he writes that when people die they are taken to a place called “hades.” He describes hades as a sort of temporary holding-place.[18] This place is not to be confused with either heaven or hell, but may be seen as a sort of foretaste of both places. He says that there are different regions within hades, and that people go to these different regions depending upon whether they were righteous or wicked in their lives.[19] In the region of hades known as hell those who were wicked receive punishment from the angels according to their deeds. However, the punishment is not as extreme as what will take place at the final judgment when those wicked people will be removed to the lake of burning sulfur, or the second death.[20] The righteous, after death, would be taken to a place in hades known as “Abraham’s bosom,” where there would always be present the “smile” of the fathers and the righteous until the final judgment when they would be taken to heaven, or paradise.[21]
Hippolytus also believed in the physical resurrection of the body. He believed that the bodies which we had during our lives on earth would be given back to us after the resurrection.[22] He also believed that those who had rejected Christ and lived wicked lives would receive the same bodies with the same illnesses and infirmities that they had carried on earth, but that the righteous would receive back their bodies healed and restored to what they were originally supposed to be like.[23] He describes heaven as well, saying that there will be no sun or moon or seasons there because these would indicate the passing of time, and time will be of no consequence there. There will be no constellations or roaring seas, and the righteous will not reproduce to make new generations of people for everything will be complete.[24]
In Hippolytus’s commentary on the book of Daniel it is clear that he interprets the beast in Daniel’s vision to be the Antichrist of the New Testament.[25] He interprets the iron legs of the statue within the story of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar as representative of the Roman Empire, which was still in power at the time of this writing.[26] Hippolytus believed that the Roman Empire would eventually fall and be divided into ten different kingdoms or perhaps ruled by ten different kings or authorities.[27] He believed that after this the Antichrist would come and there would be a time of “tribulation” where the “saints” would be persecuted.[28] He also believed that the stone described in the vision which smashes the statue and becomes a great mountain that fills the whole earth is representative of Christ and Christ’s kingdom which will fill the entire earth. He believes that Christ will return during the time of the Antichrist and that Christ will then judge the world.[29] Hippolytus also believed that the reign of Christ would come after the earth had experienced 6,000 years of history.[30] After studying the many numbers of the Old Testament, he concluded that because God rested on the seventh day of Creation, as well as instituted the Sabbath day of rest for His people, that Christ would return 6,000 years after the creation of Adam, which he believed to have been approximately 5,500 years prior to the birth of Christ.[31] He believed that Christ would reign for a thousand years in the seventh millennium, which he considered to be a thousand year Sabbath.[32] He even attempts to prove this theory by using the construction of the ark during the time of Moses as an example, saying that measurements for the ark are evidence that Christ was born in the year 5,500.[33] He also reasons that the Roman Empire will only last for approximately five hundred years.[34] Hippolytus quotes the scriptures which say that with the Lord a thousand years are like a day and applies this to his interpretation of the book of Revelation, saying that when John says that it was the sixth hour when he received his vision this was at the middle of the day, so when John also refers to the five kings who have fallen, the one who is, and the one who has not yet come, the sixth king falls under the reign of the Roman Empire under which Jesus was born, proving that he was born in the middle of the sixth thousand year period, the 5,500th year after Adam’s creation, during which the Roman Empire was in power.[35]
Hippolytus does not interpret the three and a half years mentioned in Daniel to be limited to the time of the reign of the Antichrist, but also of the time during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes who desecrated the temple in Jerusalem, abolishing the daily the daily sacrifice. He interprets the reign of Antiochus as a fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy, yet he also believes that the future Antichrist will abolish the sacrifice during a three and a half year time period, setting up the “abomination of desolation.” He compares the two events to each other and recognizes their similarity, but he says that the first event is a more local destruction and the second event is a global desolation. Hippolytus states that after this, once the Gospel has been preached to all nations, and Elijah and Enoch appear to announce the impending desolation of the world, Christ will then appear to judge and to reign.
Throughout the writings of Hippolytus on the “end times” he says that the Antichrist who will be established in the last days will have the appearance of Christ himself. Just as Satan poses as “an angel of light” so the Antichrist will give the appearance of being the Christ, even performing miracles amazing enough to deceive the world into believing he is the One.[36] Besides believing that Daniel and Revelation speak of the same things, Hippolytus believes that throughout the Old Testament the prophets spoke of the events of the end of the world, and he tries to pull everything together to create an overall picture of what he believes the last days will look like. With the idea that the Antichrist will have the appearance of the Christ, he points to the blessings of Jacob to his sons in the book of Genesis, in which both the tribes of Judah and Dan are compared to lions.[37] Jacob says that Judah will never fail to have someone on the throne and since Christ came from the tribe of Judah, this will be the case since Christ’s kingdom will never be destroyed. When Jacob blesses the tribe of Dan, he also describes Dan as a lion. However, Dan is apparently also compared to a snake, reminiscent of the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve, and who would “strike” or “injure” the descendant of Eve.[38] Hippolytus concludes that the “lion of Judah” is in fact Christ, whereas the lion of Dan is the Antichrist. He believes then that the Antichrist will be of Jewish descent, particularly from the tribe of Dan.[39] He holds to the same position as Irenaeus on this matter and gives further evidence to this reasoning by pointing out that in the book of Revelation the tribe of Dan is not mentioned in the list of the tribes sealed.[40]
Origen
In his writings Origen also claims that “By the command of God the body which was earthly and animal will be replaced by a spiritual body, such as may be able to dwell in heaven…”[45] While he believes that we will still have bodies after the Resurrection, he still seems to have a difficult time with the idea of these bodies being physical. McGrath says, “Origen here sets out a view of the resurrection body which is partly shaped by the writings of Paul in the New Testament, and partly by Platonic ideas of perfection.”[46] Origen claims that these spiritual bodies will not be involved in any kind of “passion.”[47] He also believes that everyone who dies will receive a spiritual body, both those who go to heaven and those who got to hell.[48]
Origen’s view that the Resurrection body would be a spiritual body was not held by all during his time.[49] Other theologians disagreed with Origen and argued against this notion that the physical was evil and that death led to the liberation of the soul. McGrath says of this Gnostic tendency, “This view was commonplace within the Hellenistic culture of the New Testament period. However, this idea was vigorously opposed by most early Christian theologians.”[50] One of them was Methodius of Olympus who argued that the human body had been corrupted by sin, and that in death the body was returning to the material from which it had been formed in order to be refashioned by the creator back into the form it was originally supposed to take.[51] He believed that God created people to be physical creatures, but that they had been warped by sin. He believed that the physical aspect of humanity was not evil, or less important that the spiritual aspect, and that at the Resurrection God would restore the physical body to the way it had been perfectly made.[52] According to McGrath, this is different than Origen’s view which stated that “human flesh was simply a prison for the eternal spirit, which was liberated at death, and would be raised again in a purely spiritual manner.”[53]
Gregory of Nyssa also holds to the same view as Methodius. He believes that the resurrected body will be restored to its original state, as it was before the Fall.[54] He refers to the Apostle Paul’s example of a seed falling and dying only to be raised up again, saying that the seed was not the original state of the plant which grows up, but rather the plant from which the seed fell.[55] He says, “Thus we learn from him not only that human nature is changed into a far nobler state, but also that we are to hope for the return of human nature to its primal condition.”[56]
According to Henry Chadwick in his article "Origen, Celsus, and the resurrection of the human body," it has long been attributed to Origen that he held to the belief that at the resurrection, those who would be raised would arise in a spherical shape. However, Chadwick believes that perhaps Origen did not actually hold to this view necessarily and that this was a corruption or a misinterpretation by later monks or scholars studying and translating his works. Chadwick points out that neither Jerome nor Methodius make mention of this spherical doctrine, and that this would indicate that Origen did not actually believe this because Jerome and Methodius would argued strongly against this idea if he had mentioned it just as they did the other ideas of his which they found to be erroneous.[57]
Origen points out that Christ is the image and glory of the Father. He says, however, that Christ came as a slave or servant into this world in order to save those who were slaves to sin, but that later Christ will come to this earth not as a slave but in the glory of God. He makes a distinction between the perfect and the imperfect, saying that those who were imperfect looked on Christ and saw nothing of beauty, only the slave, but that those who were perfect witnessed the glory of Christ.[58] Origen believes that this glory of God displayed in Christ is given to those who had received Christ. He believes this to be a present reality, and not just a future hope. However, he also affirms a future second coming of Christ in which the glory of God will be revealed and imparted to those who have believed. He writes, “But when the Word comes in such form with His own angels, He will give to each a part of His own glory and of the brightness of His own angels, according to the action of each. But we say these things not rejecting even the second coming of the Son of God understood in its simpler form.”[59] Origen speculates about the nature of the final judgment, wondering how to reconcile the scriptures which say that the sins of the righteous will be completely wiped out and the scriptures which say that every deed we have done, whether good or bad, will be brought to account. He concludes that for the one “who is perfected, and has altogether laid aside wickedness, the sins are wiped out, but that, in the case of him who has altogether revolted from piety, if anything good was formerly done by him, it is not taken into account.”[60] He says, however, that we do not occupy either of these positions, for we are neither perfect not “apostate.” We instead “occupy a middle ground,” which is why Christ must look at everything we have done, whether good or bad. He says, “…for we have not been so pure that our evil deeds are not at all imputed unto us, nor have we fallen away to such an extent that our better actions are forgotten.”[61]
Origen speaks of the Judgment Day in his commentary on Matthew’s gospel. He says that on the Judgment Day we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ where we will be judged according to what we have done in this life. He refers to this as a “reckoning,” and says that according to Christ every idle word we speak will be judged at that time, along with every selfish act such as refusing to give a cold cup of water to someone in need.[62]
Origen also discusses how the Judgment might go about taking place. He recognizes that such a thorough judgment of the actions and thoughts of everyone who has ever lived would take a substantial amount of time. However, he concludes that God’s power is beyond the power of humans, including humanity’s limits to time, and that since God created the universe in six days at the beginning He would not need a large amount of time to judge humanity at the end.[63] He also points out that Paul says the resurrection will occur in the “twinkling of an eye,” and is convinced that God could carry out the final judgment in the same way.[64]
Origen tended to have some controversial ideas throughout much of his theology. One of these evident in his eschatology is the idea that eventually all creatures will be reunited with God. This idea would indicate that even those people who had gone to hell would eventually one day be restored to God. McGrath writes, “Origen also adopted with some enthusiasm the idea of apocatastasis, according to which every creature – including both humanity and Satan – will be saved.”[65] This is just one of many of his ideas which did not sit well with other early church theologians.
Tertullian
Tertullian affirms the advent of the second coming of Christ in several of his writings. In book three of Against Marcion he speaks of how the prophets spoke of the coming of Christ and how they said he would come in lowliness but that he would also come in glory and honor. Tertullian refutes the heretic Marcion as well as the Jews for not recognizing that the prophets not only say that the Messiah would come in glory but that he would also come in lowliness.[66] Tertullian recognizes this to mean that there would be two separate advents of Christ, one where he would come in lowliness and the other where he would come in glory. He writes, “We affirm that, as there are two conditions demonstrated by the prophets to belong to Christ, so these presignified the same number of advents; one, and that the first, was to be in lowliness…”[67] Tertullian points to how the prophets spoke of how Christ would come as a suffering servant and how he would be despised and rejected, not having any beauty. He quotes the prophet Isaiah, saying of Christ “… ‘and we beheld Him, and He was without beauty: His form was disfigured;’ ‘marred more than the sons of men; a man stricken with sorrows, and knowing how to bear our infirmity’…”[68] He says that prophecies such as these point to Christ’s first coming, but that prophecies that speak of Christ’s glorious appearing point to his second coming. Tertullian says that this rejection of Christ was fitting for his first coming, as his first coming was so that he might bear our disgrace and remove our sin. However, he also quotes from the prophets, saying that Christ will come in glory. He quotes from Daniel, saying, “Behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven […] and there was given Him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away […].”[69] Tertullian also point to the prophet Zechariah who wrote of the priest Joshua. Tertullian points out that the priest Joshua represents Jesus, whose names are the same, in that at first Joshua is dressed in old dirty clothes, but later he is given fresh clean garments, the garments of a priest. Tertullian says that the dirty clothes point to Christ’s first coming and the new garments point to his second coming.[70] When speaking of the Jews and the heretics, Tertullian seems to say that they have not recognized Christ’s first coming in looking for his second coming, and that to the believer both advents of Christ are connected. They are linked together, both having significance. To Tertullian, the first advent is just as important as the second advent, and we must not forget Christ’s first coming as we study his second.
Tertullian also speaks of the resurrection of the dead and the kingdom of heaven. He is very much against Marcion’s idea that Christ promised the Jews that they would recover their country and that after death they would lay in Hades in what is called “Abraham’s bosom.” [71] He does not like the idea that the kingdom that is promised is for this world only, and the idea that the rewards to be received are only earthly and not also heavenly. He affirms that the kingdom of heaven will be an earthly kingdom in that it will be present on earth, but he also says that it is a heavenly kingdom. He believes that the coming kingdom will be present on earth, but that its origins are in heaven, not on earth as Marcion claimed.[72] Tertullian goes on to speak of the resurrection and the Millennial Age. He says that after the resurrection of the dead, Christ will reign on earth for a thousand years. He writes, “But we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely-built city of Jerusalem, ‘let down from heaven.’”[73] Tertullian then says that while this heavenly Jerusalem is present on earth during this thousand year time period, the resurrection will take place.[74] He claims that some will rise from the dead sooner than others according to what they have done during their lives.[75] He writes, “We say that this city has been provided by God for receiving the saints on their resurrection, and refreshing them with the abundance of all really spiritual blessings, as a recompense for those which in the world we have either despised or lost…”[76] He then says that God sees it fitting that the saints should be rewarded in the same place that they have suffered for Him.[77] Tertullian also says that after this Millennial Period, once all have been resurrected, the destruction of the world will occur, and will be followed by the Final Judgment of Christ.[78] He says at this point the state of the saints will become like that of the angels, and they will “be removed to that kingdom in heaven.”[79] He also makes reference to Paul’s writings on how we will rise up to meet the Lord in the air.[80] Tertullian’s main issue with Marcion in this section of his writings is that Marcion does not believe in heaven.
In Tertullian’s Apologeticus, one of his earliest writings,[81] he argues that images of heaven and hell exist in other religious traditions, but that this does not mean that heaven and hell do not exist. He refers to the similarities in these other religions and philosophies as shadows or copies of the real thing in his rather platonic-sounding argument.[82] He claims that the pagans actually stole these ideas from the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. Alister McGrath says, “Tertullian implies that these pagan writings may have plagiarized Old Testament sources, a common view among Christian writers of this early period.”[83] By using this argument, Tertullian claims both the originality and the validity of heaven and hell as portrayed in the Old Testament.
Tertullian’s belief was that in the final state of things, everything would be restored to the way it was originally supposed to be. He says that the “Omega” seen in Christ is a restoration of the “Alpha.”[84] He also says that in order for this to happen, some things must be done away with entirely. He says that in order for pain to disappear, the things which cause pain must disappear. This would include physical ailments as well as the sin nature within mankind. In order for someone to truly be made well, the disease itself must be destroyed.[85] He also refers to Revelation, where the image of Satan being cast into the lake of burning sulfur is presented. He says that the devil, too, will be destroyed, since he is one of the root causes of all that is not right in the world.[86] These views line up with the biblical text and differ from the views of some of the other early theologians. Irenaeus probably would not have entirely agreed with Tertullian that the “Omega” was merely the restoration of the “Alpha,” but would have seen the end result differing from the beginning. Tertullian’s views are also different than Origen, who seemed to have believed that everything would be restored back to God in the future and redeemed, including Satan, whereas Tertullian believed that God would eventually destroy everything that was against Him. Through these and many other examples, we can see how the early church theologians did not always have the same ideas or were in agreement with each other in their eschatologies. However, overall they were all in agreement on certain things, such as the return of Christ to the earth, resurrection of the dead at some point in time, as well as the idea that God’s kingdom would come to earth in a millennial sort of way.
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[1] (ed.) Colin E. Gunton. The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine. David Fergusson. “Eschatology.” (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge), 1997.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Kim, Dai Sil. "Irenaeus of Lyons and Teilhard de Chardin : a comparative study of "Recapitulation" and "Omega." Journal of Ecumenical Studies 13, no. 1 (December 1, 1976): 69-93.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] (ed.) Cyril Richardson. Early Christian Fathers. Vol. 1 of The Library of Christian Classics. (Simon and Schuster: New York), 1996.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Kim.
[12] Richardson.
[13] (ed.) Alister McGrath. The Christian Theology Reader. “Irenaeus on the Final Restoration of Creation” (Blackwell Pub.: Malden, MA), 2007.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Hippolytus. Against Plato, On the Cause of the Universe. (tr.) J.H. MacMahon. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5. (ed.) Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886.) (rev., ed.) Kevin Knight. “New Advent.” <http:>.</http:>
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid., Exegetical Fragments, On Daniel. (tr.) S.D.F. Salmond.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid., On the End of the World. (tr.) J.H. MacMahon.
[37] Ibid., On Christ and Antichrist.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Jaroslav Pelikan. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition. Vol. 1 of The Christian Tradition. (University of Chicago Press: Chicago), 1971.
[41] Origen. De Principiis, Book I, ch. 6. (tr.) Frederick Crombie. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4. (ed.) Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.) (rev., ed.) Kevin Knight. “New Advent.” <http:>.</http:>
[42] Ibid.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Ibid.
[45] McGrath. The Christian Theology Reader. “Origen on the Resurrection Body”
[46] Ibid.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Alister McGrath. Christianity: An Introduction. (Blackwell Pub.: Malden, MA), 2006.
[50] Ibid.
[51] McGrath. The Christian Theology Reader. “Methodius of Olympus on the Resurrection”
[52] Ibid.
[53] Ibid.
[54] Ibid., “Gregory of Nyssa on the Resurrection Body”
[55] Ibid.
[56] Ibid.
[57] Henry Chadwick. "Origen, Celsus, and the resurrection of the human body." Harvard Theological Review 41, no. 2 (April 1, 1948): 83-102.
[58] Origen. Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Book XII, ch. 30. (tr.) John Patrick. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 9. (ed.) Allan Menzies. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1896.) (rev., ed.) Kevin Knight. “New Advent.” <http:>.</http:>
[59] Ibid.
[60] Ibid.
[61] Ibid.
[62] Ibid., ch. 8.
[63] Ibid., ch. 9.
[64] Ibid.
[65] Alister E. McGrath. Christian Theology: An Introduction. (Blackwell Pub.: Malden, MA), 2007.
[66] Tertullian. Against Marcion, Book III, ch. 7. (tr.) Peter Holmes. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3. (ed.) Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.) (rev., ed.) Kevin Knight. “New Advent.” <http:>.`</http:>
[67] Ibid.
[68] Ibid.
[69] Ibid.
[70] Ibid.
[71] Ibid., ch. 24.
[72] Ibid.
[73] Ibid.
[74] Ibid.
[75] Ibid.
[76] Ibid.
[77] Ibid.
[78] Ibid.
[79] Ibid.
[80] Ibid.
[81] McGrath. The Christian Theology Reader. “Tertullian on Hell and Heaven”
[82] Ibid.
[83] Ibid.
[84] (ed.) Thomas C. Oden. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. (ed.) William C. Weinrich. Revelation. (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL), 2005.
[85] Ibid.
[86] Ibid.
Important Eschatological Passages
I would say that the most significant texts in developing a Christian eschatology may be categorized into different groups. The most significant of these groups would be the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the gospels, especially in Matthew 24-25, but as well as throughout the gospels. The second group would be the teachings recorded in the epistles, particularly when the apostle Paul attempts to explain to different churches, such as the Thessalonians, (2 Thes 2:1-12) certain eschatological ideas. Especially important in these writings is the idea of the resurrection of the dead. (1 Cor 15) Also, in 2nd Peter, I feel it is important to mention that the writer of this letter believed that we who are a part of the kingdom of God play a role in when Christ will return. He says that we not only wait for the Day of the Lord, but we “speed its coming,” (2 Peter 3:2) presumably by our actions and prayers, though it is not exactly clear from this passage alone.
The third group I would point to would be the prophetic works of the Old Testament, particularly the last portion of the book of Isaiah. In this section of Scripture especially one may see a vision of the kingdom of God colliding with this world. Such an idea was revealed further in the incarnation of Christ – the idea that the kingdom is and is yet to come – but I would say that this idea is for the most part first revealed in Isaiah, who writes that in the future God’s kingdom would be established on earth as a new creation.
The last of the categories would be placed in the category of apocalyptic biblical literature. Yes, all of the previously mentioned categories would appear to contain apocalyptic material. However, I am referring to those books of the Bible which have been specifically categorized as being apocalyptic in nature. These would be the books of Daniel and Revelation. These last two books are the most difficult to place. Daniel may be considered simply prophetic or historical, or as just one of the Writings as it is categorized in the Hebrew Bible. Revelation may be considered an epistle, or even simply a prophetic book. This book as well is most difficult to place. Important details that I take from Revelation include the ideas of a new heaven and a new earth, (Rev 21) as well as the resurrection and judgment of the dead. (Rev 20: 11-15) However, these ideas can be seen throughout the New Testament. They are not unique to Revelation. The idea of a second death, I feel, is pictured strongly in Revelation. In Revelation, Death itself is destroyed. However, Paul also talked about this in his letters (1 Cor 15).
The first category in my grouping contains the teachings of Jesus. When reading what Jesus had to say about eschatology, one may quickly find that many of Jesus’ teaching were truly apocalyptic in nature. The first section of Jesus sayings on eschatology that I would like to point to is the long section Matthew records in his gospel in chapters 24-25. At this point in the narrative Jesus tells his disciples that the large stones in the temple that they had been admiring will all be torn down in the future. Later, his disciples, apparently intrigued by eschatological dates and speculation, ask him when all of this is going to take place. Jesus warns his disciples that in the future there will false messiahs and people claiming to be the Christ. He also warns them that there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. However, he says that these sufferings are “only the beginning of birth pains,” meaning that these things do not mean that the end has come. The end, Jesus seems to say, will be much worse than these things. He seems to say that there will always be war on earth up until the end. Jesus continues by saying that those who follow him will persecuted greatly, and he seems to imply that this persecution will be the worst right before the end. He says that before the end “wickedness” will increase and “the love of most will grow cold.” He also says that end will not come until the gospel of the kingdom has been “preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations.”
At this point in Matthew, Jesus quotes from the book of Daniel, further complicating Daniel’s status and the genre in which Daniel ought to be categorized. His words become harder to understand at this point. He refers to what Daniel called “the abomination that causes desolation” without saying what precisely that it supposed to be. He says that it will stand in the holy place and at that time those who are living in Judea ought to flee to the mountains because apparently that particular point in history will the worst time the world has ever seen or ever will see again. Again, Jesus appears to be vague about the details of this event. It is difficult to know just what exactly he was talking about since we are so removed from the time and culture in which he spoke these words.
After speaking these rather foreboding words, he goes on to add a bit of hope to what he has already said. He says that God will cut short those terrible days for the sake of the elect, and that if God did not intervene at some point no one would be left alive. Jesus also says that there will be people in the future who will perform signs and wonders, again pretending to be the Christ, but he says that the elect should not believe in these people or in the signs and miracles they perform. Jesus then seems to say that the physical world itself will begin to fall apart “immediately after the distress of those days.” He quotes from the Old Testament prophets, which it makes it difficult to keep the prophetic writings in the category in which I have ranked them. Jesus quotes from them, making them easy to rank on the same level as the teachings of Jesus. This should not be surprising. Jesus did after all say that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and that all of the law and the prophets were summed up in him. So it would seem ridiculous even to try and rank these different section of Scripture as to which is the most important in regards to forming a Christian eschatology. They are all important. However, personally I would like to start with the words of Jesus and work from there. Christ is the center of our faith so it only seems natural that Christ should also be the center of our eschatology, seeing as how eschatology is an important and defining part of our faith.
Jesus also tells many parables relating to the kingdom of heaven and they very often have an eschatological twist to them (Matt 24). Passages that stick out to me that I feel I should mention are the passages where Jesus implies through parable, and even outright says that the Day of the Lord will come unexpectedly. I feel as though this is important to remember, especially when people claim that they know when Jesus is going to come back. Jesus himself said that no one, not even he, knows, but only the Father (Matt 24:36).
The Resurrection of the Body
The resurrection of the body is a very important part of the Christian belief system for several reasons. First of all, as Christians we believe that Jesus himself had a bodily resurrection. The Gospels record the resurrection of Jesus as a physical resurrection. Jesus is recorded as having a body with scars from his crucifixion. Thomas feels the wounds on Christ’s body after having doubted the resurrection and then truly believes that Jesus is alive after feeling that Jesus had a physical body. The Gospels record that the disciples were a bit startled at Jesus’ appearance to them after his resurrection. They wondered if he might be a ghost or some kind of spirit. He was not a spirit, however. He is recorded as having flesh and bones. Luke’s Gospel records: “He said to them, ‘Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.’” (Luke 24:38-9). Jesus reassured them that he was not a spirit and asked them to bring him a piece of fish, which he ate in front of them. A spirit would have no need for physical food. However, Jesus’ body, while it is physical, does appear to be different than it was before. He is able to do things in his body, such as walk through walls, that he is not recorded as having done before his resurrection.
Matthew’s Gospel has little to say about Jesus’ resurrection. However, he does record some sort of a resurrection occurring at the time of Jesus’ death. He records that when Jesus died, “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people” (Matthew 27:51-3). This passage is seldom reflected on and seems rather bizarre in its placement at the time of Jesus’ death. It seems to be a glimpse of both the future resurrection of Christ as well of the rest of mankind. This Gospel records that these people underwent a bodily resurrection, not a spiritual one. Honestly, I am unsure of what to make of this passage, since it would appear that the resurrection of the dead began occurring even before Jesus was in the grave – almost as though these folks jumped the gun and could not wait until the Last Day.
According to Paul, Christ is the first born from among the dead (Colossians 1:18), indicating that the rest of us will follow him in his resurrection. Paul writes in Romans, “If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection” (Romans 6:5). If we are to truly be resurrected as Jesus was then we must be resurrected in our bodies, for that is how Jesus was resurrected. He had a physical body after his resurrection and so will we. However, Jesus’ resurrected body was not exactly the same as it had been before his death, so we may assume that our resurrected bodies will not be exactly the same as they were before our deaths. One of the differences is that Christ will not die again. His body cannot die. In the same way, our physical bodies will no longer be subject to death.
Paul says that we will have spiritual bodies, indicating not an idea of a disembodied spirit, but rather an eternal flesh. Just as the spirit lives on forever, so will our bodies. Paul presents this idea in 1 Corinthians: “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42-4). Paul goes on to say that the physical does not inherit the kingdom of heaven, but that which is spiritual. He says, “I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:50).This would seem to indicate that we would become disembodied spirits in heaven. However, this is not what Paul is saying. He continues his discourse by saying that because the physical body will naturally perish, it must be “clothed” with the spiritual body. This is how we may go on living forever. He says, “For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’” (1 Corinthians 15:53-4). Paul is not saying that the physical creation is evil; only that it will perish unless it is united with the spiritual. We will not lose our physical bodies through death and resurrection. Rather our physical bodies will be saved by being united with the spiritual, with Christ, who is both God and man, physical and spiritual. We will always be both physical and spiritual beings. Paul says that we will be resurrected with “spiritual bodies,” not that we will be resurrected without bodies.
Paul also records that all of creation is waiting to be liberated from its bondage to decay. He writes, “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:19-21).In this is seen the idea of a sort of resurrection of all creation, all of the physical realm. Paul continues, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22-3). This again shows that in the future we will have physical bodies that have been redeemed; just the whole of the physical creation will be redeemed. All of creation will be resurrected. This idea of resurrection points to something beyond the merely spiritual ideas we have inherited from Plato and others. This idea includes a physical resurrection of all people, as well as a resurrection of the entire physical domain.
When God created the physical world, he did not create it separate from the spiritual world. He created all and he said that all was good, including both the physical and the spiritual. He created the heavens as well as the earth. This indicates that the earth and the physical creation is not evil as the Gnostics believed. They believed that we needed to escape the physical world through death in order to enter the spiritual realm. This idea is not much different than the idea of salvation that many Christians have today. Many Christians are focused solely on getting into heaven, believing that the world is purely evil and that God will destroy it someday, so the only thing to look forward to is heaven, a place where we will be free from our evil fleshly bodies and this evil physical world. However, this concept is flawed. God will indeed create a new heavens and a new earth, but this does not mean that the physical realm will be done away with. The scriptures give us a picture of heaven being united with earth in a new creation. It is a picture of the physical and the spiritual being united as they were truly meant to be.
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