Reflection on the Christian Notion of the End
I am thinking that a systematic presentation of Christian teaching needs to consider examining eschatology immediately after considering the event of revelation as Christianity views it as having occurred in Jesus Christ. Many theologians have wrestled with the practice of placing eschatology as the last chapter. It too easily becomes an after-thought. By placing specific consideration of the Christian hope after considering faith in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, we can give proper weight to the hope that springs from this faith. By placing consideration of the community and the individual after hope, we can consider the content of the anticipatory nature of the community and individual life. Such a structural change of the traditional presentation of Christian teaching would make clearer the way in which the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love connect. It should also make clearer how the True and the Beautiful provide the power for the Good in real life.
In philosophy, the notion of where to begin is a puzzling question. Yet, even if you can figure out where to begin, where and how does it end? As in any story you tell, something drives us toward the end. What is the point of it all?[1]Yet, any conclusion to the human story or the story of this universe would seem to fall under the spell of a transcendental illusion that befalls any speculation.[2] Is it better to remain silent?[3] Any notion we as modern persons might have of the end is a natural one. The end is breaking off into nothingness. We may simply need courage rather than hope.[4] The future, the destiny of humanity and therefore of the universe, remains an open possibility that no amount of popularizing of the end times can close.[5]
In Phaedo, Plato presents a speech of Socrates on the last day of his life, delivered to Phaedo. Plato moves toward the end of with a mythological story of the nature of the afterlife (107c). If the soul is immortal, we need to cultivate it in this life for the sake of its life in eternity. The guardian spirit of each soul will judge the goodness and piety of their lives. He thinks those who lived pious lives will have release from the prison that earth had become. Those who purify themselves with philosophy will live in the future without the body. They make their way to beautiful dwelling places. We need to share our virtue and wisdom in the course of our lives because the reward is beautiful, and the hope is great. Yet, he grants that a sensible person would not insist upon the truth of the myth. He does think it worth risking the belief, for the risk is a noble one. One can be cheerful of one’s soul because one has ignored the pleasures of the body and concerned oneself with the pleasures of learning, such as moderation, righteousness, courage, freedom, and truth (114c-115a).
The philosophical intuition here is that our lives are part of a larger story, a larger picture, which we cannot see. To think of our lives in this way is to think of them morally. We are accountable for the way we live our lives. As individuals, we contribute to the story or painting, but we as individuals are not the only ones involved. Rather, human history makes us part of a larger story that humanity itself is writing.
The God of Israel is a God of the promise. The promise keeps pushing us toward a future that, in the Christian view, Jesus Christ defines. In one sense, the matter of the end (telos) is with us throughout this discussion of Christian teaching.[6] We need to have the courage to think things through to their end. The ambiguities of history need to gain clarity considering the fulfillment of the promise of God we find in Jesus Christ. Our unanswerable questions, especially regarding suffering and meaning, must cease. Our notion of the end must enliven our present, or it would be better to set it aside. If the end is the beginning of eternal life with God, then Christ is the pioneer of that life who leads us.[7] God makes eternity available to us within time. We live in a temporal reality that moves towards a real future that is open and still coming.[8]
As much as many of us, as modern Christians, might want to dismiss eschatology and apocalyptic, their basic themes are part of core statements of faith and liturgy. In the Nicene Creed, we read, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” The same Jesus of Nazareth, whom human beings crucified and rejected, but whom God raised from the dead, and who now is with his Father, will be the one who comes at the “end” of human history as its judge. He will judge me – and you, as a reader. The creed concludes by affirming, “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” Such a statement affirms that the life we have lived here on earth, in the body, remains significant for any notion of life after death. It also signals that whatever such a “life” is, it will be quite different from the life we now lead. In the liturgy of the great thanksgiving used by many denominations, the church proclaims the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. We pray to be one in ministry to the world, “until Christ comes in final victory, and we feast at his heavenly banquet.” In the funeral liturgy used in many denominations, the church affirms that “Christ will come again in glory.” Later in the same prayer, we affirm “What we shall be has not yet been revealed; but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Even as one whom people have loved had died, Christians affirm that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Because Christ lives, we shall live also. Such statements affirm that the same Son of God through whom God created all things, through whom God worked in reconciling love, is the same Son of God who will come at the “end.” He is Lord, and therefore the source of life, Christians affirm in their teaching on creation. He is Lord, and therefore the “end” will be a saving end, one that brings to a meaningful conclusion creation as a whole and human history.
God is present when we are most alive and when we are dying. God is always available in a way that brings liberation, healing, and life. Christian eschatology will need to show explicitly that the promised “end” influences the entire journey of the cosmos, human history, and individual life to arrive at that end. To put it simply and directly, the end God seeks is already at work, because God is at work in opening people to faith, hope, and love.[9]
What if we dare hope that the times of human misery are transforming into something beautiful? Is human time worth saving? Could it be that the time is coming when the destructive forces arrayed against God, the forces of oppression and violence, will be defeated? If so, those in political and economic power need to be sure they do not get in the way of the transformation that is coming, for the battle of the future has already begun.
The silence of God at the sight of the persistent suffering of finite and temporal reality is a strong objection. If we carefully consider the cross of Jesus of Nazareth in its historical reality, we see a major objection to the reality of God. One who dedicated his life to his heavenly Father faces opposition, trial, torture, and a cruel end of his life. Given the way Jesus lived his life, the cruelest aspect of the end of his life was the silence of God. God appears to have forsaken him in that moment. The reason the resurrection of Jesus by the Father and through the life-giving power of the Spirit is so powerful is that it provides a counter-ending to the story of Jesus of Nazareth. God is not silent. In the Christian notion of the end of all things, God will act on behalf of creation, end its suffering, and redeem it to the fullness of life. With all the times in human history and in individual lives that the silence of God was so disturbing, Christian teaching affirms that this silence will end. The resurrection of Jesus is a promise of this end for creation. Such a promise is one in which we can have a faith. The promise becomes a hope that is beyond a wish. The resurrection of Jesus turns the promise into a reliable hope.
The gospel must promise a describable something. Physics determines the course of the world and the universe that assumes the universe will continue a certain trajectory toward its death, obeying the law of entropy. Physics determines there will be no decisive change. In the teaching of the church, the risen Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, will act as judge at the end of history, making the outcome of history different from what we have any reason to expect. What is the nature of that difference? What does the gospel promise? The simple and direct answer is that the gospel promises inclusion of the created order in the triune life of God by virtue of the possibility of union with Christ, a promise of a perfected human community governed by justice and peace. The tradition has thought of this as deification, the concluding gift of God to us. If the goal of the action of God is the glory of God, then this glorification includes all that God has made in that glory. We need to have the freedom of the biblical writers in moving from proper direct propositions to metaphor and simile. Much of the content of the images of the fulfillment of the promise is cast in the dialectic of the hope and fear of the moment. Interpreters of New Testament eschatology need some way of dealing with a recurring feature of New Testament eschatology: the chronologically speedy return of its Lord. This expectation proved wrong. The pattern for such expectation was the exilic experience of the Jewish people, in which prophets envisioned a glorious restoration of Zion/Jerusalem that never happened. Even the rebuilding of the Temple did not bring the restoration and renewal proclaimed by the prophetic imagination. Dispensationalism, with its use of Daniel, Revelation, and the letters to the Thessalonians, are 20th century attempts at this form of expressing the Christian hope. The persistent failure of this expression does not seem to lead to the insight that this approach to expressing the Christian hope may be wrong. The whole notion of a divine intervention and the false kind of supernaturalism that it implies does not become more plausible by making it remote. Such a notion of an abrupt and catastrophic end is a literal and misleading myth. It also robs the vision of its significance. It encourages a focus upon another world rather than significance of this world to us. The metaphorical background of this expectation in Jewish apocalyptic requires greater theological and philosophical reflection to perceive the reality behind the metaphor. Christian hope must have a basis in something other than a speedy return of its Lord. We need to re-think eschatology in the light of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in a way in which our understanding of the end is as Christ-centered as our notion of the Triune God and the salvation offered in Christ. In this sense, the hope finds its basis in present communion with Christ so that this experience becomes the propositional content of the promised future. The Christian hope, the heart of New Testament eschatology, is to be with the Lord forever (I Thessalonians 4:17). At death, whether of ourselves, a loved one, or the universe, the promise is that on that day, we will be with the Lord (Luke 23:43). Christian life is a matter of living in union with Christ, while death means union with Christ in a deep, fulfilling, and satisfying way (Philippians 1:22-23).[10] Such a hope provides a limit to the limit Christian imagination regarding the end. Could you invite Jesus into your imagined end? Another limit is that the end is the rule of God, which means it is a moral end controlled by the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, and thus controlled by the love of God and neighbor, and thus controlled by the Ten Commandments. The Christian hope is nothing other than this: love never ends (I Corinthians 13:8).[11]
What does Christian teaching mean when it says that its Lord will act as judge at the end of history? If human history and individual human life were out of joint, divine judgment would mean correction. Such correction would be painful. Christian hope envisions the defeat of evil and violence precisely because it refuses to give ontological status to them. Creation is good, while evil has entered as a threat that will one day receive its judgment.[12] The entrance of eternity into time will mean the purging of the perversions and woundings of earthly existence as traces and consequences of evil in seeking autonomy from God. The accumulated mutual wrongs must be rectified. The controversies between individuals, between nations, and between generations, will have a final judge, Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Jewish Messiah, and Lord of all. This judgment will be the rectification of the human community before God by bringing it into harmony with the triune life of God. Powers hostile to the rule of God, such as death and sin, must be consigned to the past so that the full power of the redemption of creation toward which God is moving becomes reality. The Jewish hope for resurrection found in Ezekiel and later writings of the Old Testament is a hope for which Christians find certainty in the resurrection of Jesus. The return of Christ is the arrival of the rule of God, even as Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed the coming rule of God. The entrance of the Eternal into time is judgment, for it also means confrontation of our destructive drive toward autonomy from God and therefore alienation from each other and from creation. We must also face the conflict we have with ourselves. We have made shipwreck of the opportunity God has given. Our moments of time and events as separate moments make suppressing, disguising, and masking possible. Eternity brings our identity to light, disclosing the truth of earthly life. Such truth will bring shrill dissonance. To bring earthly life into eternity is first a picture of hell. In fact, if we let this sink in, it becomes a strong and terrifying conception of judgment and hell. Divine judgment executes that which is the nature of case, delivering us to the consequences of our own conduct, as Paul put it in Romans 1:24, 28, their lives perishing due to the inner contradictions of their existence. However, God is also creator. God will not allow creatures to make shipwreck on the dissonance of their existence as eternity discloses it. God has gone after us to move us to reconciliation. For those reconciled with God, judgment will mean purifying from the discord of sin, as in Isaiah 1:24 and Malachi 3:2ff. Fire purges that which is incompatible with participation in the eternal life of God, as in Isaiah 66:15ff, I Corinthians 3:12-15, I Peter 1:7. The person and word of Jesus is the standard of judgment in John 12:48. The word of Christ is the offer of salvation, for which see Luke 12:8-9 and Mark 8:38. The last judgment will confirm the word of Jesus, which we also see in Matthew 25:31-46 and Luke 13:25-27, Matthew 7:22-23. The message of Jesus is the standard of judgment, while who executes judgment is a subordinate matter. Judgment remains Christ-centered, while escaping the charge of unfair particularism in that salvation depends on our fellowship with Jesus Christ. Such a notion contradicts the love of God for the world. For those who have not heard the proclamation of the gospel, judgment based upon such a contingent and historical factor is not decisive for salvation. The question for them in judgment is whether their lives agree with the will of God. The beatitudes themselves could apply to many persons who have not heard the gospel. This idea is consistent with Matthew 8:11-12 as well as I Peter 3:19-20. Christians know the standard of judgment and receive assurance of future participation in salvation. They have already received justification and pardon. Judgment is in the hands of the one who died for us. Judgment will mean the purifying fire. The returning Christ is the transformation of our human existence into the image of the Son.
The hope of resurrection is the undoing of death. Death reveals the brokenness of time. Death is the end of our experience of time. Our death is the culmination of the experiences of dying we have had throughout our lives. We are dying all our lives. Every moment of life is a stage on the way to this final goal. Life is a process of dying, where we experience it through loss, illness, or moving from one phase of life to the next. Going through death is the only way to get to that condition where there is no longer any dying. Dying takes place throughout life. Death is the completion of this process. This death in life or living death can have two outcomes in the way we live our lives. We can accept this fact, renouncing claims on the things of this life and freeing ourselves for the hand of God, who has the power and grace to dispose of us as God wills. We can also protest this destiny by clinging to finite things for happiness.[13] Death brings final validity to our lives. One affirms life by its practice of faith, hope, and love. Death is a definite end. God in Jesus Christ has conquered the enemy that faces every human being. We can grant that death is the result of our finitude, our difference from the infinite and eternal nature of God. The television series Sopranos suggested that we simply fade to black. Nothingness would be the end. If this is so, then our human striving for wholeness and totality will end in failure. The hope of going to a better place with loved ones is common but false. Our temporality deeply conditions our experience as human beings. The question before us is whether we can say the same thing about eternity. The path to this conclusion lies in two areas of the human experience of temporality. One is through the experience of duration during our fragmentary experience of our historicity. Such duration becomes a hint (not proof) of eternity. Two is through our experience of the sensed totality of a human life. Death will not bring our lives to their totality. Thus, only eternity can give us the totality our lives toward which our lives in temporality seem to move. What makes death an enemy is that it separates lovers. We are those who live our lives in the shadow of death (Luke 1:79). Awareness of my death can help me appreciate the worth and dignity of everyone. It can lead to heroic enterprises. Fear of death can also pierce deep into life. It motivates us to unrestricted self-affirmation. It robs us of the power to accept life. Fear of death pushes us deeply into sin. Acceptance of our finitude is hard for us because of the self-affirmation of our lives and projects. It can lead me to cling inappropriately to the things of this world. When the loved one dies, part of those who loved them dies as well, giving them the experience of what death is. Death undoes love. To love is to live from hopes invested in the other, to learn what is my good from what the other does for me. When I must look forward to death, I face the emptiness of hopes and expectations, and so of love. The work of grief detaches me from the loved one who has died, but the work of grief also involves the renewal of the self that died with the death of the one we have loved. Such grieving leads to the opening of the well of life, giving a new will to live, and the courage to face new experiences of life. The work of grief remembers the dead without allowing oneself to sink into the bottomless pit of grief, having gratitude for the life shared and the happiness experienced. The work of grief allows us to participate in their transformation into that other world of God and the eternal.[14] The overcoming of death is a transformation of temporal finitude so that it can achieve its divinely appointed end. Death gives our lives meaning precisely because our lives have the finality that we take with us into eternity. Our decisions have eternal meaning because they have the urgency and seriousness that death gives them. To think morally about our lives is to live with the reality that death is close. Death is the judgment placed upon us all, whether it comes today, tomorrow, or decades from now. The things that matter to us now will not matter after death. To use an old phrase, we need to put our souls in order. The way to do that is to allow the light provided by Jesus to guide us. This means love of God and neighbor. It means living with faith, hope, and love. Such abiding truths remain matters of final importance. They are truly the things that matter. Our personal history begins at birth. We will live our lives, of course, but eventually, someone prepares the couch of death for us. Someone will regularly turn us on our side. Family and friends will visit. Yet, a time will come when the last friend and the last family member leaves. Someone will bend over us, and for the last time, turn us on our side. Everything will become quiet. Yet, one is still present and remains at our side. God was there at our birth. God will be there at our death.[15] Eternal life is the simple validation of these decisions we have made toward faith, hope, and love. God does not lose us, for even when we cease to be, God will be for us. Even in death, we are the property of God and objects of the love of God. God remains our helper and deliverer. The task of living is to engage in meaningful life and accept its hard realities. [16] It takes courage to embrace the challenge the gift life brings to us. Yes, our birth is just a fact. Our lives are like a drama in that each life has its time. Death is the frontier of our time. This unknown point is ahead of us and draws us as we approach it every moment. We shall be no longer. Our birth is the frontier behind us and is just as real and it ought to be just as disquieting. As our beginning recedes into the background of our lives, it yet needs to reclaim our attention. [17] To live the gift birth gives to us will require courage. In an analogous way, death is a fact. Yet even this facticity requires courage to live our lives despite the inevitable end to our temporality. Paul Tillich refers to this as the anxiety generated by fate and death. Quite simply, it is the threat to one who obviously has being of becoming non-being. We turn this ontological anxiety into a fear, so that we can then have courage in the face of it.[18]
What makes sin an enemy is that it undoes love. The previous discussion of death has already hinted at the close connection between death and sin. Sin promises a richer and fuller life. Yet, in its turn from God, who is the source of life, it leads to death. The overcoming of sin and liberation from it occurs through union with Christ, as an important part of the promised blessedness of human life incorporated into the triune life of God is freedom from the burden of sin. Such liberation from is also liberation for love, and therefore for community and mutuality. In this way, the final or last judgment brought by Christ is the closure of the human narrative.[19]
Death and sin are such dangers because they undo what that which gives human life its meaning – the mutuality of love. Each individual experience finds definition in relation to a context that stands within a larger context until we arrive at the totality of all experiences and events. Individual meaning depends on the total meaning of all experience and therefore on the totality of all the events that can be the object of experience. Our experiences are temporal. Each experience is open to the future contexts that will come. The total meaning of our individual contexts remains incomplete. Our individual experiences presuppose a totality of reality that remains indistinct. An appropriate analogy is our use of language. A letter is not an isolated fragmented. It is part of an alphabet. The alphabet is part of a full language. We write a word, but it is part of a sentence, which is part of a paragraph in an essay. In one sense, each letter depends upon its context within the essay. Further, the essay of a writer is often one essay among many that may require one to read it in that larger context. My point is that individual things depend for their significance and meaning upon their larger reality. To put it another way, each individual thing exists as an anticipation of what it will be in its larger context. In fact, that larger context will work its way back to influence each individual thing. Now, I hope that what I have just written makes sense in the context of language and writing. Yet, I want it to say more about the lives we lead.
If we apply this notion to an individual life in time, what might we find? Just as a book provides the context for the individual words it uses, so the duration of time is necessary for the independent existence of individuals, and therefore for their distinction from each other and from God. Of course, words are not the center of their own activity. Finite things that exist in time can engage in independent action only in the process of time. The independent existence of individuals has the form of duration as an overarching present, by which they are simultaneous to each other and relate to each other in the distinction of space. Since they do not exist in themselves, their present is distinct from their derivation as their past.
Such analogies are powerful for me in that they ring true. Yet, we need to push further and reflect upon the importance of anticipation in our human experience of sensed totality. Life is present for us as we sense it in its indefinite totality. Sensed totality is constitutive for a temporal sense of duration.[20] Yet, this presence of the sensed totality is vague when considered in isolation.[21] However, sensed totality can gain definite contours by means of recollection and expectation. Expectation takes precedence, for the future that completes life will define this individual life. In that sense, the end of time for us is more important than the beginning of time for us. As an analogy, we grasp the totality of a song only as we think ahead to the ending that has not yet come.[22] Anticipations look forward to the occurrence of future experience. They also look forward to the content of such experience. Yet, the temporal distance between the anticipation and what the content of that anticipation. Alternatively, the temporal distance between what we have been and are from what we shall be in the end, can create a difficulty with our notion of time. To state the obvious, the anticipation is “not yet” identical to the anticipated future. Temporality determines the relationship between identity and difference. Anticipation means that the present remains exposed to the risk of untruth. What exists in anticipation now may fail to come to be. Yet, anticipation means that the future anticipated content is already conditioning the present. In some form, the anticipated future is already present.
We can apply the notion of time, anticipation, and sensed totality to human knowledge as well. The form of anticipation must correspond to the peculiar character of whatever it is that we claim we grasp in anticipation. The anticipatory form of knowledge corresponds to an element of the Not Yet within the reality toward which we direct human knowing. Given the limits of finite knowledge, anticipation is not just a preliminary stage in knowing. Anticipation is the nature of human knowing. Further, the identity of things themselves is not yet present in the process of time. Even the events and things that we experience change with the alteration of the context over the course of time. Initially, this is a matter only of their meaning for us; we cannot equate the essence of things and events with their meaning for us. Events and things stand within contexts that change over time. Even the essence of events and forms within the natural world will change over time. What they are changes. Only at the end of movement through time could anyone decide what makes up their distinctive character or essence. One would have to maintain that this had been the essence of the thing in question from the beginning. The decision concerning the being that stands at the end of the process has retroactive power.
If you have travelled with me this far, you might be willing to consider that our experience of time leads us into a discussion of eternity. Eternity becomes the term for the totality and wholeness of life and meaning toward which our fragmentary experience points. Thus, the experience of duration in time is the basis for the philosophical notion of the eternal. The existence of finite, independent things in duration is the basis for thinking of eternity as the future that gives both duration and identity. In that sense, the notion of the eternal provides a way for us to think about preserving independence and individuality. Individuals are not now what they will be, and therefore are different from their future identity. Their future is outside themselves. Further, the future toward which creative forms move in the duration of their existence has an ambivalent face. Individuals have little control over that future. The threat of the future, of course, is that we may not be in it.
Eschatology points to the wholeness of finite life that cannot exist in time. The hope of resurrection involves the transformation of present life in a way that means triumph over the wrongs, hurts, and failures of this life. This pitiable life will share in eternal salvation and therefore redeem it. The risen Jesus is the first one to rise from the dead. He is the captain of our salvation. His individual destiny anticipates the universal resurrection of the dead.[23]
Eschatology points to reality that involves transformation of creation and human history so that both can live in the eternal life of God. Eternity will come into time, revealing that eternity has embraced time throughout. Therefore, the question of when and where this “happens” becomes inappropriate. If Eternity enters time, it will occur everywhere. This reality will resolve two issues, namely, the debatable quality of the existence of God and the questions related to theodicy. I can agree with Paul, who said in I Corinthians 15:12-23, that God has raised Jesus from the dead, making the early preaching of the church full of meaning and purpose. The apostolic witness truly represents what God wants to say to humanity about God, creation, humanity, and the destiny of creation. Christ becomes the paradigm of the destiny of creation in his resurrection to life with God. Our destiny is completion and fulfillment in God in a way that the world continues to endure. The reconciliation and consummation that the Bible envisions may embrace our time and history, rather than come from beyond it. A vision of a saving end for humanity brings hope and meaning into the picture. The same God who creates is also the destiny toward which God has oriented all things.
In the boundless temporality of the Trinitarian life, we can envision the redemption of creation as participation in the eternal life of God. Thus, eternity is the source of time. Eternity is also the goal of time. Time has a teleological nature. Time is a gift that allows the transformation of time into the new creation anticipated in the resurrection of Jesus. Time is for the healing, sanctifying, and bring to fulfillment of the purpose of God for creation. Events remain distinct while eternity overcomes their separation. Such eternal temporality allows for events to be re-experienced, forgiven, and savored endlessly. We see here the combination of judgment and reconciliation finding their fulfillment.[24]
What this discussion of time and eternity suggests is that Christian theology needs to show at every stage that eternity is a fulfillment of who we are as human beings. The truths of religion and metaphysics must prove themselves in the field of philosophical anthropology. This will mean that careful attention to our experience, limited to historicity and temporality, must find an intimate connection with eternity. Eternity, rather than contrasting in an oppositional other way, must bring human experience to its fullness. Thus, if our present is a fragment of reality, we can think of eternity as the presumed future and ultimate wholeness. What we say about the consummation of reality becomes a repetition of a philosophical anthropology.[25] Thus, the Christian notion of time and eternity require anthropological demonstration.[26] We will have no answers to questions regarding last things so long as we do not clarify the relation of time and eternity.
This discussion of time and eternity allows us to explore traditional themes in Christian theology regarding the anticipated end.
The transformation that occurs through the final judgment can be stated with simplicity. Christ will know himself in the people of God without reservation. This one body will adore the Father as those whom the Father ordained for him and whom the Spirit has brought to him. The Spirit will be free to play infinitely with the possibilities of love between the father and the embodied Son, and the Father will simply rule and love and be loved. The redeemed become participants in Christ and become God-bearers to each other. The vision of God, when we shall be like God, for we shall see God as God is (I John 3:2). Such seeing is the illumination by which other things become visible. We now live by hearing; in the transformation brought by the rule of God the hearing of the redeemed will be itself a seeing.[27] The work of the Holy Spirit at this point is that of the glorification of God in creation and the gathering and transforming of creation into offering this glory to God. The Spirit will transform creation to make it possible for it to participate in the eternal glory of God. Thus, the Son and Spirit work together in judgment by completing the work of reconciliation so that creation may participate in divine life. Such a future transforms creation into union with Christ in such a way that it becomes the Body of Christ. As eternity enters time, all that happens in creation becomes a revelation of the love of the Creator and Reconciler of the world. The power of the divine Spirit transforms the dissonance of judgment into the peace of the rule of God and the many-voiced harmony of the praise of God that will sound out from the mouth of renewed creation.
In the spirit of being clear about that for which Christians hope, we need to re-consider popular notions. If fulfillment of the promise involves the restored Body of Christ, then our personal restoration to life is significant only as a part of that Body. This hope is different from the dissolution of the self, or rescue from the wheel of karma, reincarnation, for the transmigration of the soul. The redeemed will live with and in Christ. The redeemed will be available to each other. They can locate each other. Personal embodiment in resurrected life involves personal location, so the redeemed will have their space, but a transformed space of the new heaven and the new earth which will be the process of their discourse with each other. The question arises as to who these redeemed are. Matthew records Jesus as saying that just because some calls him Lord, does not mean the person will enter the rule of God, for many will even prophesy and cast out demons, when they are engaging in iniquity that will lead the risen Lord to say that he does not know them (Matthew 7:21-3). Paul hints that those who hope for the return of Christ must do so with trembling as all persons must pass through the fire of judgment, with the possibility that there will be nothing left (I Corinthians 3:10-15). It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31). Such statements are consistent with Israelite prophecy, which focused upon the faithful remnant within Israel while judgment was reserved for the rest of Israel. All this suggests that some who are within the boundaries of the people of God will not become part of the rule of God in the future. They will not reach their divinely appointed destiny. We can assume this will be true for those outside the people of God. Under this scenario, followers of other religions, or of no religion at all, arrive at salvation, could receive the gift of salvation because the course of their lives coincide with the course laid out by Jesus. Since they anticipate a future different from that of Christian hope, the content of their unintended future will become a surprise. If parts of creation will never reach their divinely appointed end, then the judgment will consist of the eschatological erasure of that finite, temporal being from existence. This closes the door to the popular notion of an eternal punishment for human beings who, no matter how evil they were, did so in a finite and temporal fashion. At the same time, Paul can also affirm the life of obedience reflected in Jesus will mean justification and life for all (Romans 5:18). Despite the presence of rebellious Israel, he affirms that all Israel will be saved (Romans 11:26-32). God has reconciled all things into the divine life through Christ, whether in heaven or in earth (Colossians 1:20). The plan of God in the fullness of time is to gather up all things in Christ, whether in heaven or on earth (Ephesians 1:10). Such statements led Origen and minority early Christian thinking to affirm the restoration of all things (apokatastasts panton). Since the Father has called one person, Jesus of Nazareth, is it not possible that the calling of the Father goes to all persons, and that in him our response is to fulfill our divinely appointed destiny, even when we out of our strength and wisdom are weak and rebellious? This would suggest that at death, the Spirit, who knows us better than we know ourselves, will have just the right word of truth that will lead to the conviction and repentance of that person, so that the Spirit will be successful in bringing all persons to the Father through the Son. If this is so, God loses nothing that takes place in time. The redemption of creation becomes an act of the Spirit that restores all finite things to their divinely appointed end. They do not lose their existence in the eternal present of God. God becomes the future that receives finite forms and creates a space for them alongside God in eternity. This will mean that multiplicity will find reconciliation. Former antagonism is gone. This will mean the full actualization of individual identity and social relations. Only the breathing of the eternity of God can constitute human society in a way that embraces individuals as well. Such participation by individuals in the eternity of God occurs only after a radical change. While the majority tradition sides with the first scenario and a minority with the second, wisdom suggests that while we will develop our individual opinions, the available biblical evidence is inclusive.[28]
In the end, God will rule. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Everything else that Christians say about this rule of God in the future has an intimate connection to the vision of the reign of God, what it will look like and feel like. This statement means that anything that I say about the future involves a time when the “lordship of God” over individuals, human community, and creation, becomes a reality. The suffering and pain of human community and history, and the suffering of creation, is a denial that the lordship of God is universally a reality. Creation sighs under the dominion of corruptibility and death. Individuals may well persist in accusing the Creator and demonstrate their unwillingness for reconciliation with God by focusing on the misery we find in the world and individual life. The Christian concept of God is an anticipation of the reality whose concept it claims to be. Eschatological consummation will bring definitive proof of the existence of God and final clarification of the nature and work of God. Before then, of course, the absurdity of suffering and wickedness provide material enough for atheism when it comes to the postulate of a loving and wise Creator. The eschatological perfecting of the world for participation in the glory of God will show unbelief and doubt its wrong basis. It will prove the love of the Creator for the world. If we are to have reconciliation, it will be transformation as well. Within the flow of history, we can only see anticipations of that lordship. For that reason, the hidden quality of the rule of God will always make it deniable and debatable. Christians who believe that in Jesus Christ we have found the “truth” need to humbly admit that this belief remains “belief,” a trust in what we “hope” will be in our lives and Christian communities at one level, and a “hope” of what will be in the “end.” Confirmation of the truth of what we preach will not occur until the promised future arrives, bringing about a consummation of the intent of God in creation and in the sending of Jesus Christ. Christ is still in the process of coming. The appearance of the Son in the form of a slave was only the beginning of the coming of Christ. In that first coming, Christ redeemed humanity by embracing the slavery from which Christ wants to free it. Christ is coming again, for the fact that Christ has come already come must continue to gain clarity. Christ has already transformed the heart of all things because Christ has taken all things into his heart.[29] The rule of God is not obvious during our personal or communal histories. If the affirmation of the providential care of God for the world is true, it demands eschatological verification. However, traces of that rule show up in Jesus and therefore in the history of Israel. The election of a people is a sign of the future, when human beings will give proper recognition and respect to each other, to the created order, and to God. The rule of God will bring peace and reconciliation. Sin and its alienation will give way to communal peace. Thus, we already are, in some sense, what we shall be. Identity involves integrating the facts of present life into what we can be and shall be. Our present situation anticipates this future and defines our lasting identity. The eyes of love see in us the potential of our destiny that we can realize here only in a fragmentary way. Of course, God sees us with these eyes of love. What we accomplish in this life points beyond the fragmentary way we have actually lived our lives. Our successes and failures experience change in the eschatological transformation of our lives. The reconciliation already embraced in the cross is a foretaste of the future consummation. Thus, the end of our time is the revelation of the love of God shown in the consummation of creation. Eschatology fulfills independence rather than negates it. In the end, divine love declares itself. God does not remain silent forever. Creation is already an expression of the divine love that grants existence. We see this love most clearly in the reconciling work of the cross. The coming of divine love into time culminates in the Incarnation, God with us. The eschatological future will consummate this revelation of love for participation in the eternal life of God. The gift of the Spirit is a pledge for this participation, allowing believers to experience peace with God. Such a revelation will remove all doubts. The “very good” pronounced in Genesis 1 is true throughout history, since God is present in its history, leading us through the hazards and sufferings of finitude to participate in divine glory. Creaturely reality has an orientation toward its future consummation. Further, if the end reveals the righteousness of God, then this righteousness has an ambiguous presence in history. The praise of creatures anticipates the eschatological praise of God. Considering this future of salvation, history is a manifestation of divine love. We find here the basis for the immanent Trinity calling itself out of itself and becoming the economic Trinity. The distinction and unity of the immanent and economic Trinity constitute the heartbeat of the divine love. With a single such heartbeat, this love encompasses the entire world of creatures. The rule of God is the end of history, as we know it, while also becoming the completion and fulfillment of human history, and with it, the acts of God in creation and redemption.
God will harmonize created time with triune time and created powers with the communal life of the Trinity. The redeemed will know themselves as personal agents in a life shaped by Trinitarian life. The Father through the Spirit will give the redeemed the eyes of Christ so that they can see God and each other in new ways. All this suggests mutuality and harmony within the communal life and within the Trinity. The end is the harmonization of the conversation of the redeemed and their conversation within the eternal conversation occurring within the Trinity. Within the conversation, the meaning and the melody are one. The end is music.[30]
The event of Jesus of Nazareth is the central event of the acts of God. Many people think well of Jesus. I am glad for that. It remains easy for people to think Jesus was a great man who taught worthwhile things. One might even argue that he had a gift for leadership. He certainly displayed courage in the presence of capital punishment. One could argue that he was a great prophet, calling the Jewish people to renew their faith in God. Even today, many people look upon him as a great moral force in the world. Yet, such language makes me aware of the strangeness of the language of the church regarding Jesus. To speak of Jesus as a unique, yet universally significance act of God is to speak the language of the sacred and holy. To many in the world, it will be a strange language indeed. In our time, if we cannot analyze it in a scientific way, we are suspicious. Christian teaching is willing to speak the language of miracle, mystery, and resurrection, which is quite different from speaking well of Jesus. Christians are willing to witness with a language strange to the world. The mission of the church becomes nothing less than letting the miracle and mystery shine through, knowing the world will view it as a strange witness. We must take ourselves less seriously and turn toward this event as the determining factor of our thought and life. In acknowledging this event we do so through the enlightening and awakening work of the Spirit in faith. Such faith allows us to view the event of creation and the event of human creatures in a new way as works of God. The event of Jesus of Nazareth is not simply a past event, as if we only look backward to the fact that he came at a moment of time and a place on earth. The event of Jesus of Nazareth, through his resurrection and glorification with the Father, through the life-giving work of the Spirit, continues in the hope that he will come again in the future. That Already and the Not-yet of Jesus of Nazareth is a pattern for creation, for humanity, and for the people of God, that we must hold together in thought and life. The hope of Christian teaching is that the secret history of the plan of God in Jesus Christ will have an event of clarification for all to see. This clarification will occur through the work of the Spirit, who continues and completes the creative work of the Father and the reconciling work of the Son. Time will not cease. Space will not disintegrate. Rather, time and space will find their fulfillment in the eternity of God. Finite things will find their reconciliation in peace and justice within the eternal life of God. That future eschatological event will mean that faith will cease, for all things will know and have their life within the eternal life of God. Hope will cease since that for which Christians have hoped will become reality. That which remains will be love. Love endures, for God is love.
As I write the previous paragraph, I do so with some confidence. Yet, I have a confession to make. It hinges upon the witness of the apostles that God raised Jesus from the dead. Such faith is not easy for me. I wrestle with it. I keep trying to believe it and live in accord with it. If it is true, then the destiny of creation, and therefore our destiny as human beings, is indeed beautiful. As Christian communities and as individuals who have responded with faith and live with this hope can stride into the future with confidence. Thinking and living with such faith and hope fills our present with meaning and significance as we fulfill the unique vocation God has given us in the brief time we have here. As I say: I keep trying to believe. I do not find it easy. But then, I also do not find it easy to let go of Jesus. A better thought is that Jesus keeps holds of me.
In the Bible, hopes for the end have Jewish apocalyptic as their background and substance. Apocalyptic is “the mother of Christian theology.”[31] What type of mother does Christian theology have? Does apocalyptic literature contain, within its myth, an understand of the world and our place in it that still has relevance? Apocalyptic writers share some general teaching. We might even call it a worldview or cosmology. First among them is that they continue the prophetic notion that God has providential care of human history. History is a unity because God is a unity. History has gotten particularly bad due to human moral corruption. The writers of this literature have profound awareness of the difference between what is in the world and what in fact should be. Yet, as people of faith, they looked forward to redemption that would come, not in and through history, but from beyond history. Given the immensity of human corruption at this moment in history, they believed God would soon fulfill the promises made to the prophets. The more darkly looms the immediate future, the higher rises certainty that human opposition can thwart the establishment of the rule of God. They taught a discontinuity between this age and the age to come. She taught a scheme of history that claims to know the inner plan of God, who is Lord of history and vindicator of Israel as the people of God. The plan was divinely ordered to bring humanity to this moment. God arranged this scheme from or succession of the ages from the beginning. They veil their own perspective in time, for what they offer is a survey of history in which everything turns upon predetermined ages of world history. This may suggest a connection with the wisdom tradition, which also concerns itself with the timeless. She had a highly developed system of angels and demons. The fall of supernatural beings, based as it was on Genesis 6:1-4, shows the depth of corruption. She developed an air of urgency, even desperation, that the time of the end was at hand. Her knowledge of the inner plan of God gives her confidence that she can assure believers that present distress will end, and an age of bliss will follow in the reign of God. Now, for the prophets, eschatology meant the restoration of Israel, through the renewal of the Davidic line of royalty, and therefore largely political and military in character, using human weapons to defeat national enemies. In contrast, for apocalyptic, salvation from God is universal, directed toward the individual through resurrection, a defeat of demonic powers, deals with cosmic forces, a focus upon transcendent power that has the age to come coming from the world above to the earth, and it will mark the fulfillment of the purpose of God. To clarify the coming new age, we can identify apocalyptic eschatology in the following way.[32]The hope has a dualistic view of the world, expressing itself a doctrine of the two ages and a transcendental coming kingdom. It will be a new beginning free of the corruption of this age. The new age will come in a cataclysmic way (not by evolution into a new age). It will come through divine power. Therefore, the eschatological creator is not the enemy, but the perfector of the first creation. The pure miracle of this new creative act, which rules out any form of gradual evolution, corresponds plainly enough to the idea of creation out of nothing. The new age is part of a cosmic drama involving demonic powers. It has a concern for the destiny of the individual, especially expressed in resurrection and judgment. The completion of this eschatology is the work of God and marks the fulfillment of the divine plan for the world. For some writers, a Messianic Kingdom marks a transitional phase between this present age and the new age. This vision can include a generous view toward Gentiles (the righteous Gentile will come to Jerusalem to worship), a harsher view (Gentiles who did not oppress Jews will be servants in the Temple), and a still harsher view (condemnation for being Gentiles). When the Messiah is mentioned, he is a secondary figure.[33]
I want to take the Book of Revelation seriously, but from unpopular perspective. Anything the theologian says about the end must have everything Chiliastic purged out of it.[34] This means painting a picture that decidedly does not envision the return of Christ to defeat armies on earth and establish a kingdom on earth for one thousand years. This view, adopted by early authors like Papias, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus, envisioned Jesus ruling the earth from a restored Jerusalem. For Augustine, this notion had to be set aside in favor of what we now call an a-millennial view, in which Christ has already bound Satan so that the church will not experience the full onslaught of the forces and evil and therefore be allowed to carry out its mission and ministry. Christ now reigns with the saints (the church), although this is reality seen with faith.
Revelation says it is “apocalypsis,” a disclosure, an unveiling, that the author has received concerning from Christ. John says he gives testimony to the word of God. In fact, one way to read this book is an extended meditation on the Old Testament, applying it to the struggles of the church at the close of the first century. He receives a message from the risen Lord for seven churches in Asia, present-day Turkey. However, these letters are clearly for every church. The letters have the intention of warning them of the dangers they face within from heresy and immorality, and the dangers they face from Judaism and the persecution to come from the Roman Empire. Now, the important point here is that Domitian was one of the emperors who stressed the importance of emperor worship. He insisted on being addressed as “lord and god.” For John, this was not acceptable. The visions of the throne of God in Chapters 4 & 5 have the intent of showing who the true Lord and God are, namely, Father, Son, and Spirit.
The author will show that certain experiences on earth, in nature (famine, earthquake, and volcanoes) and certain self-destructive behavior by political authority (war, creating Christian martyrs, oppression of the church, tyranny) will afflict the earth. He looks at all of this from two vantage points.
One vantage point is through his series of three numbered visions, the seven seals, seven trumpets (which come out of the seven seal) and the seven bowls. This way of repeating a similar event is familiar to the students of the Old Testament. It was an ancient way of stressing its importance. One can find examples of these disasters within the first century and within the literature of the Old Testament. In particular, the plagues of Egypt seem to be re-visited upon the earth. Further, the “curses” of the Holiness Code in Leviticus 17-26, especially the seven-fold judgment described in Chapter 26:16-45, and Deuteronomy 28:15-29:1, where the curses fall upon the land due to disobedience of the people. However, in Revelation, such judgment falls upon the earth. True, Revelation may well be looking upon the destruction of Rome and Jerusalem, as the preterist interpretation of the book suggests. Yet, it would be a mistake to tie the images too closely, for the point is that throughout human history, such natural and political disasters afflict humanity, as the idealist interpretation would insist. One way of thinking of the seals, trumpets, and bowls is that while looking at the “end” from three different perspectives, thereby heightening its importance, since they are a continuous part of human history, humanity is always at its “end.” Granted, it portrays a general view of how terrible it will become. Yet, it also looks back to the plagues of Egypt to explain what has been “disclosed” or “unveiled” to him by the risen Lord. Just as the pharaoh of Egypt would not let the people of God go, so now in the present time, the modern pharaoh will not let the church live its life in peace. Pharaoh did not “repent,” but “hardened his heart,” and the same is true of human being at all times. No matter how terrible things become, repentance is not the response. Yet, if we look carefully, what John has done is say that the world as it always was, with its natural disaster and self-destructive political entities, will continue. True, such events are expressions of the wrath of God, yet, such wrath shows itself in letting human beings be self-destructive. Further, the intent is to bring people repentance, acknowledging who the true Lord of their lives and of human history is.
The other vantage point is that of the unnumbered visions. These grow in specificity and intensity. They begin with an identification of the martyrs with the seal upon their heads (144,000), describe the courage necessary to witness (the two witnesses in 11:1-14), and in the final unnumbered visions (Chapter 12ff) show the cosmic dimensions of the battle individuals and churches actually face. In other words, God will “protect” martyrs, not from martyrdom, but from becoming faithless. Yet, behind all tyrannical forms of government is the “dragon,” the forces of evil, which show most obviously in the persecution of the church. With the coming of Christ, Satan, who was still in heaven bringing accusations against human beings, the heavenly war intensifies. The coming of Christ means the excommunication of Satan from heaven, thereby creating a situation where the will of God is done in heaven. In this way, the author stresses the significance of the coming of Christ, birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Further, political authority can show qualities of a “beast.” In contrast, the faithful community is quite human (woman, child, the children of the woman, and the heavenly bride). For this author, Rome (beast from the sea, 666) and the local authorities of Rome (beast from the land) was also a prostitute (Chapter 17). When it (Babylon) falls, it will cause mourning among the economic leaders of the world but rejoicing in heaven. With the fall of Babylon, Christ defeats the beasts, casts the dragon into the lake of fire, and judges people. Yes, this is “retributive justice,” in that the earth needs to be cleansed. If scholars are right about connecting the numbered visions to the judgments in the Holiness Code and in Deuteronomy 28, then the point of judgment is that the holiness of God will be protected.
The author has taken seriously the victory won by Christ at the death and resurrection of Jesus, has limited the powers of evil by this victory (regardless of how powerful, terrifying, and beastly they appear to us), and therefore church and world live now in a symbolic millennial reign of Christ, the true King of kings and Lord of lords. This would be the position of Augustine and John Calvin, an a-millennial understanding of this passage. There is only one true judge of the behavior of humanity. The judgments rendered by human courts, especially tyrannical ones, is a false and invalid judgment. The God present to humanity in the historical person Jesus will be same God present to humanity at the end. In the face of Jesus Christ is seen the one who shall also appear at the end, when he has finally brought all history under his sway, and thus to its consummation. The judgment is of sin and death, the last enemies of God and of humanity. This judgment will bring closure. The ease of victory of the “King of kings and the Lord of lords,” a name that totals 777, is a testimony that what to us is a powerful beast is weak when confronted with the presence of Christ. In the end, the heavenly bride, New Jerusalem, coming from heaven, would be symbolic of the protection that God provides the church here and now. Christ will bring to completion of the millennial world in which we already live. the various anticipations of the end throughout Revelation is singing (4:8, 11, 5:9-14, 7:12, 11:15-18, and 19:1-5). It may be that in the end, music, which now often touches us in ways we may find difficult to put into words, is the vehicle to express the inexpressible, the new earth and new heaven. Revelation envisions a time when the dwelling of God is with human beings, that the estrangement that presently exists will be overcome. It ends in a vision, one might call it a beatific vision, of God making a home with humanity.
What I am suggesting is that this cosmic background, covered as it is in myth, is a powerful myth that should make us consider the nature of the “battle” human beings face. The battle human beings face is not simply within the heart, as important as that battle is. The battle between good and evil is played out on much larger canvas. We create beastly powers that cause death and destruction, while God creates “one like a human being,” a humane power, that gives life. Our individual decisions are part of a much larger picture that human beings are creating, a picture that involves the political decisions they make regarding their life together. Apocalyptic myth refuses to let Christian faith become only private, inward, and personal. It forces us to consider the cultural and political context of human life.
The word “myth” can be off-putting to many Christians. Myth reveals its exploratory significance and its contribution to understanding, which is its symbolic function, precisely in its explanatory pretentions. Exploring its world will disclose what is still pertinent to human understanding. Myth has the power to discover and reveal the bond between people and what they consider sacred. When we approach it from its symbolic function, it will have to be a dignified dimension of modern thought. Such myths relate to beginning and end, to good and evil. For such reasons, the myth places humanity in a larger context, a cosmic context, which, when approached in a symbolic way, becomes challenging and meaningful for us as modern readers. Myths communicate with symbols from nature, from the human psyche, and from a poetic imagination. This means entering the world of the myth in a first naivete, in the mode of “as if.” It requires a sympathetic imagination to re-enter this world from the modern world. Yet, once we enter into the symbols of myth, they will give rise to thought. One way to think of it is that in a culture without the advantages of modern science, human beings still wrestled with a view of the world in which they could place their individual lives. It would be impossible for us to place ourselves in such a world. Yet, some individuals get close. The fantasy “Lord of the Rings,” for example, is a world of myth. Now, I am not saying to Christians that we should look at eschatology exactly in that sense. I am saying to the modern person in general that if you ask of “Lord of the Rings” to be true in the sense of “did that happen,” the answer would be no and irrelevant. However, given its popularity in literature and movies, it may well be “true” in the way it considers the cosmic dimensions of the struggle between good and evil, and the significance of the role of the individual in that cosmic drama. It may be “true” in the wisdom it offers for living a well-lived human life. I am asking the reader to consider the possibility that the biblical materials regarding the end should be read in a comparable way.[35]
Faith rooted in eschatology contains a form of defiance of common-sense appearances. In the face of suffering, violence, and hopeless injustice and tragedy, such faith is bold to believe that these are not the deepest and truest realities.[36] The discussion of the end involves us in suggestive, metaphorical, testimonial, and narrative language. Much of the New Testament is more in the form of word pictures that present visual scenes. In presenting us with a picture of the end, it also presents the people of God with a directive as to its life in the present. They speak to a coming event that will inaugurate a genuinely new age.[37] Even the natural sciences can lead us to a notion of the universe as open to newness and emergence, which suggest that new and unpredictable phenomena naturally arise through the interactions of nature. This means nature itself has an anticipatory structure. The future makes a quiet entrance to the present. A dynamic tension exists between increasing entropy and the higher structuring we observe in nature. The dissolution of finite things in the law of entropy interacts with the openness of process structures to future events. New structures constantly form.[38]Science yields a future of decay and annihilation.[39] The Christian hope is in tension with the scientific description of a distant end to the universe.[40] To believe that Christ is risen and will come again is to insist that laws of nature, with their steady march toward disintegration, decay, and death, are not the ultimate reality.[41] The emphasis upon anticipation allows us to think of an inaugurated eschatology, in which, while already having arrived, the rule of God has not yet appeared in fullness.[42]
What are we to think of the promised cosmic transformation? It is in direct conflict with the scientific explanation of the end. However, the possibility that the natural world as we know it will dissolve has long been part of Christian song. Since I mentioned that the end is music, I would like to close with a few musical reflections.
I would note the beauty of “Amazing Grace” as it nears the end.
The Lord has promised good to me
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
and mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
When we've been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we've first begun.
--John Newton, 1725-1807
Here is a poet holding onto a promise that secures hope. He recognizes that he will die., but that the promise is that he will receive the gift of a joyful and peaceful life. Chris Tomlin has added a line that is powerful for this discussion:
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow
The sun forbear to shine
But God who called me here below
Will be forever mine
Will be forever mine
You are forever mine
Here is a recognition that as we die, so the universe will die, embracing the broader eschatological promise of a transformation of nature into participation in divine life. In the end, the promise is that God will be present, and such a hope can have only one basis – a word from God.
I would like to offer a few reflections on hymns that I find meaningful.
"Abide with Me" is a Christian hymn by Scottish Anglican Henry Francis Lyte, most often sung to William Henry Monk's tune "Eventide." Lyte wrote the poem in 1847 and set it to music while he lay dying from tuberculosis; he survived only a further three weeks after its completion. The hymn is a prayer for God to remain present with the speaker throughout life, through trials, and through death. He refers to the darkness deepening and the failing of help and comfort. He refers to the joys and glories of earth passing away, for all he sees is change and decay. Yet, God is help of the helpless, the one who does not change and the friend of sinners. He wants God to “abide” with him amid it all.
A much more joyful approach is one we find in “When We All Get to Heaven,” where we will find rejoicing when we see Jesus. We will celebrate the love, mercy, and grace of Jesus in mansions he has prepared. We travel this world as pilgrims who will experience clouds, but when traveling is over, we will have no shadows or sighs. We need to be true, faithful, and trusting, for then heaven will repay us for the toils of life. The prize is before us. We will see his beauty as we go through pearly gates and tread streets of gold.
Natalie Allyn Sleeth wrote a hymn was composed as an anthem and dedicated to her husband, who was diagnosed with cancer very soon after its composition. It was written for the Pasadena Community Church, St. Petersburg FL, conducted by C. Frederick Harrison, and first performed by their choirs in March 1985. It was also performed at the funeral of her husband.
In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;
In cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
There’s a song in every silence, seeking word and melody;
There’s a dawn in every darkness, bringing hope to you and me.
From the past will come the future; what it holds, a mystery,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity,
In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
A praise song that can get tears easily to flow is “10,000 Reasons,” by Jonas Myrin and Matt Redman.
The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning
It’s time to sing Your song again
Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me
Let me be singing when the evening comes
Bless the Lord
Bless the Lord
Oh my soul, oh my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before
Oh my soul
I’ll worship Your holy name
You’re rich in love
And You’re slow to anger
Your name is great
And Your heart is kind
For all Your goodness
I will keep on singing
10, 000 Reasons for my heart to find
Bless the Lord, oh my soul
Bless the Lord
Oh my soul, oh my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before
Oh my soul
I’ll worship Your holy name
Sing my soul, sing my soul
Bless the Lord
Oh my soul, oh my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before
Oh my soul
I’ll worship Your holy name
And on that day when my strength is failing
The end draws near and my time has come
Still my soul will sing Your praise unending
10, 000 Years and then forever more
Bless the Lord
Bless the Lord
Oh my soul, oh my soul
Worship His holy name (For all Your Goodness)
Sing like never before
Oh my soul
I’ll worship Your holy name
I’ll worship Your holy name
I’ll worship Your holy name
A song I have come to appreciate by Paul McCartney, The End of the End, says it well.
At the end of the end
It's the start of a journey to a much better place
And this wasn't bad
So a much better place would have to be special
No need to be sad
On the day that I die, I'd like jokes to be told
And stories of old to be rolled out like carpets
That children have played on and laid on
While listening to stories of old
At the end of the end
It's the start of a journey to a much better place
And a much better place would have to be special
No reason to cry
On the day that I die, I'd like bells to be rung
And songs that were sung to be hung out like blankets
That lovers have played on and laid on
While listening to songs that were sung
At the end of the end
It's the start of a journey to a much better place
And a much better place would have to be special
No reason to cry, no need to be sad
At the end of the end
Worship is at the heart of any religion. In Christianity, hymns and songs touch the heart of worship. In my case, three songs express the sense of life here being out of joint, in need of something “beyond” to bring it to its fullness. The “beyond” of which I speak, however, is the visual of “above,” but the visual of “ahead.” The beyond of which I speak comes from the future and embraces us.
One example we find, as the popular spiritual says, “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.” True, another hymn praises God for this world, “This is my Father's world.” A thorough theology of creation helps us to feel and behave in ways in which this world is our home. If we do, we will seek to make it a better home. Yet, the suffering and evil in this world, its sorrows and anxieties, can make us feel we are not home. It makes us sense our uniqueness in a way that can alienate us from this world. I doubt that anyone can identify with the hopes of eschatology and apocalyptic without a sense that this world is not fully our “home.” Something in us (most of us, I suppose) realizes that our lives will not have their fullness or completion here. We long for that “sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.”
A second example is the flow of thought in a favorite hymn of mine, “It is Well with my Soul,” written 1873. It begins with these words:
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Rivers can be peaceful. As Psalm 23 puts it so beautifully and memorably, “He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.” Yet, life has another, darker dimension to it. The sea of life can indeed by rough, dangerous, and life-threatening. As I understand it, the waves of the sea can be relentless. Life can feel that way. Again, as Psalm 23 puts it, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley ...” Now, the Christian has the assurance of the presence of God even then: “you are with me. Your rod and your staff - they comfort me.” As Horatio G. Spafford penned the words, “It is well with my soul.” The companion he had in good times remains his companion when life is difficult. Yet, the writer of this hymn seems to know that this answer to human trials, as meaningful as it is, needs more. The final verse of this hymn becomes apocalyptic.
And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
Maranatha – Come, Lord Jesus. I wonder if one can have genuine, vital faith, if that prayer is not in some way powerful. “Haste the day” when the times that seem so out of joint now, the times that are so ambiguous today, the times today when I can see no further than the nose on my face, yes, haste the day when it shall all become clear. I have pondered why it is that this hymn has affected me so powerfully for so many years. It may be the possibility and hope I find in it. My life has had its share of joys and sorrows, of everything moving easily and when life seems burdensome. Clouds rolling back, trumpets sounding, and the Lord descending, with all its “mythological” language, still speak to me. At times, when I contemplate whatever such images may mean, “it is well with my soul.” I am not sure that apocalyptic will make much sense to you, if some part of you does not have that hope.
A third hymn, “Be Thou my Vision,” is an Irish hymn, possibly from the 8th century, as I understand it. It concludes with these verses:
High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heav'ns Son!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my vision, O ruler of all.
The Book of Revelation concludes with the rider on the white horse, the Word of God, who also is King of kings and Lord of lords. If the God of Israel and the Father of Jesus Christ truly is Lord, he must be Lord of the “end.” If God is the source of life, and therefore Lord of the beginning; if God is present now through suffering, and therefore Lord of life now; then the hope, the promise, is that God will be Lord of the “end,” resolving the conflicts, tensions, burdens, suffering, and evil in this world. The hope is more than wishful thinking. The hope, the promise, has its basis in the victory won in Jesus Christ, in his cross and resurrection. The confidence of Christians in the promise contained in its teaching on eschatology could be illusory, of course. As Paul puts it at the Romans 8, creation still awaits, and even we who live with the Spirit, still “groan inwardly” for redemption. For that reason, it always remains faith and hope, by which we are saved. Salvation is not a full and perfect present possession. It was not fully “won” in the past, in the cross and resurrection. It awaits the God who is still to come. When we go through personal trials or are forced by world events into the critical cosmic struggles of good and evil, our prayer remains: “Still be my vision, O ruler of all.”
[1] (“Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems,” (1970) in
[2] Critique of Pure Reason (Book II, Chapter 2, section 3)
[3]
[4] Paul Ricoeur (“Freedom in the Light of Hope,” 1968)
[5] Karl Rahner
[6]
[7]
[8] Karl Rahner, “The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions,” Theological Investigations IV, 323-46, as summarized in
[9]
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[11]
[12]
[13] Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations VII, p. 287-91.
[14]
[15] Kierkegaard, Works of Love (Part One, Chapter IIIB).
[16] Karl Rahner,
[17] Barth, (Church Dogmatics, III.3 [49.3], 226-236).
[18] (Courage to Be, 1952)
[19]
[20] Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, 1-8, 210-212
[21]
[22] (Augustine, Confessions, 28.38)
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[25] Karl Rahner (Theological Investigations, IV, 323ff)
[26]
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[28]
[29] Karl Rahner, Encounters With Silence (St. Augustine's Press, 1999).
[30]
[31] (“On the Subject of Primitive Christian Apocalyptic,” New Testament Questions of Today, 1965)
[32] Mowinckel (He That Cometh, p. 270ff)
[33]
[34] (The Christian Faith, par. 160)
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