Yesterday we suggest there are two streams of
Christian Eschatology (Blog
08-27-15). In the first category are all those views that are more or less rooted
in a fundamental assumption that the world as we know it today is completely discontinuous with the world as it will
be when the Kingdom of God is fully restored. It is, in the words of N. T.
Wright, “a different world altogether, a world where we really belong, where
everything is indeed put to rights, a world into which we can escape in our
dreams in the present and hope to escape one day for good—but a world which has
little purchase on the present world except that people who live in this one
sometimes find themselves dreaming of that one.” (Wright 2006, p. 9)
This view seems to be supported by texts such as
2 Peter 3:10: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will
disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth
and everything in it will be laid bare.”
This view is built on a binary assumption that posits a bad world and
a good heaven, which drains away all the theological motivation for making the
world we actually live in a better place. Why “do justice and love mercy” (Micah
6:8) if the world as we know it is going to perish completely and be
abandoned for a place called heaven? The only answer that can be given from
within this paradigm is that these actions will hopefully be useful in
persuading a person to make certain theological commitments so they, too, can
escape to heaven.
Secular and religious people today have an
internal compulsion to do good in the world. Most of us know the world is not
as it should be. Most of us feel a desire to “do something” to make people’s
lives more livable. With millions and millions of people ravaged by curable and
manageable disease, senseless wars, and lack of access to the basic necessities
of life, and with our very planet being threatened by environmental decay,
there is a calling within a person’s very being to do right in the world. (More
about this below.)
But if the world and all that is in it is going
to perish, then what motivation do we have to work for good in the world?
Indeed, many in our society see Christians as part of the problem precisely
because of their eschatological commitments. Yale theologian Miroslav Volf
writes, “Belief in the eschatological annihilation and responsible social
involvement are logically compatible. But they are theologically inconsistent.
The expectation of the eschatological destruction of the world is not consonant
with the belief in the goodness of creation: what God will annihilate must
either be so bad that it is not possible to be redeemed or so insignificant
that it is not worth being redeemed. It is hard to believe in the intrinsic
value and goodness of something that God will completely annihilate. And without a theologically grounded belief in the intrinsic value
and goodness of creation, positive cultural involvement hangs theologically in
air. Hence Christians who await the destruction of
the world (and conveniently refuse to live a schizophrenic life) shy away as a
rule - out of theological, not logical, consistency - from social and cultural involvement.
Under the presupposition that the world is not intrinsically good, the only theologically
plausible justification for cultural involvement would be that such involvement
diminishes the suffering of the body and contributes to the good of the soul
(either by making evangelism possible or by fostering sanctification). Comfort,
skill, or beauty - whether it is the beauty of the human body or of some other
object - could have no more intrinsic value than does the body itself; they
could be merely a means to some spiritual end. (Volf, pgs 90-91; emphasis in
original)
A certain view of the eschatology known as
dispensationalism, including theories of the rapture, have been thrust into the
public consciousness due to the incredibly popular Left Behind novels. In some cases this
has given rise to Christian Zionism. Most nonbelievers do not realize that this
approach is a minority opinion among Christians. Most Christians do not believe
in dispensationalism.
As N. T. Wright points out in his most recent
book, Surprised by Hope, the idea of “going to heaven” as the final destination of the
redeemed is an invention of medieval theology, supported by a variety of modern
theories. The Bible teaches that the earth is our home. In fact the Bible
states that the earth will be God’s home as well (Revelation
21:1-4). It is in this sense that eschatology with an emphasis on “going to
heaven” and escaping this evil world makes a crucial mistake. Our final home is
not heaven, but earth. And God is not ultimately destroying the earth, but
restoring and renewing it. The fact is that the Biblical narrative is a story
of redemption and restoration.
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