Customized Christianity: Ethics à la Carte

The following is one of a multi-part response to an article by Jim Burklo entitled "How To Live As a Christian Without Having to Believe the Unbelievable." For an introduction to these thoughts, see Burklo's Bible.
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I have made a number of arguments against Jim Burklo’s vision of a believable Christianity over the past week. I criticized his willingness to assume an oppositional relationship between faith and practice, his inability to distinguish between marginal and central biblical stories and truths, his dangerous Christology, and his selective hermeneutic. All of these, however, are part of a broader flawed attempt to collapse religion into ethics. It is only by elevating ethics to the status of comprehensive and exclusive truth that he can effectively disregard the doctrine, dogma, and fantastic stories that he believes hinder people from finding genuine Christianity. Unfortunately for Burklo, Scripture gives us every indication that ethics are rooted in theology, conditioned by soteriology, and aimed toward eschatology (just to name a few of those evil, confusing categories that label trivial matters).

Burklo, as mentioned repeatedly, believes that the central message of the Gospel is the Sermon on the Mount. Far be it from me to ever stand in the way of someone trying to refocus Christians on the Sermon on the Mount, but the majority of Protestant Christianity is going to have a bone to pick with Burklo. And rightly so, as there seems to be a general consensus that, if a single passage encapsulates the gospel, the real text of central importance is John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Look at that. We have a theological statement about the nature of God flowing into a soteriological statement about the mechanism of salvation flowing into an eschatological statement about the eternal destiny of humanity. Do you notice what’s missing? Any mention of ethics. This has been the animating sentiment of so much of Protestantism, precisely because of its antinomian character, from Luther’s sole fide to the now widespread evangelical idea (specifically derided by Burklo) of a personal relationship with Jesus.

Certainly, I am part of a generation that wants to correct the stress on faith without ethical strictures, but there is much to commend Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus (one of those passages where Jesus is speaking but Burklo apparently isn’t listening, as there is nothing about social justice) as a good synopsis of the purpose of the Incarnation. The biblical text is not the narrative of the struggle for a moral principle to take root among moral actors but of a perfect God trying to reconcile to Himself a willfully imperfect creation. This reconciliation, the New Testament makes very clear, takes place not with Jesus preaching on the mountain top but with him dying on the cross, being buried in the tomb, and conquering death in the resurrection. Christianity is not an ethical system which we can be convinced to believe but a comprehensive experience of a personal God that radically shapes more than just our ethics.

Otherwise, the poor are left to hope in the moral regeneration of the world for their deliverance. The sick are left to hope in the dedicated work of altruistic physicians for their healing. The oppressed are left to hope for a people powerful enough to enact their liberation but righteous enough not to use that power to oppress. It’s a false hope, an empty hope, very much like faith in an unresurrected Christ is an empty faith. Faith in Christ and hope for an inbreaking kingdom are realities which transcend how we treat one another. They have to do with the totality of existence, and all of reality falls inside the scope of Christian faith.

Genesis, historical or not, teaches us about the nature of the physical world and God’s relationship to it. The Psalms reveal the human character, both as it is and how it can be when it allows itself to be transformed, more than just morally, by the redeeming power of God. Job guides us through the problem of evil and, centuries before the greatest philosophers the world has known would reach the same conclusion, declares that it is irresolvable (but nevertheless God). The prophets instruct us on the interrelatedness of piety and social justice, a lesson Burklo could stand to revisit. Micah introduces us to a vision of the culmination of reality which will define not only Judeo-Christian eschatology but the whole of Western civilization’s utopian vision: peace, fertility, leisure, uncoerced global unity, and the eternal pursuit of knowledge.

Most, if not all, of these themes are taken up explicitly or alluded to by Jesus in his ministry and, if we are going to accept the validity of the biblical account, they must be engaged by Christians as well. We cannot simply call them trivialities, hindrances in the way of creating a heaven on earth (something which Burklo doesn’t seem to believe that Scripture explicitly states is beyond the scope of human possibility). God’s transformative work is not limited to human behavior. Being in Christ is a total transformation, and that includes those pesky truths that Burklo encourages us to ignore. We may never understand them perfectly and we may dispute about them until the second coming, but pursing those truths is part of the great pursuit of perfection, of conformity to the image of Christ.

And, of course, an unwillingness to engage these doctrines and stories, the marginalization of everything that isn’t explicitly command in the social ethics of Jesus, has profound and tragic implications for ethics. Burklo relishes the fact that “Jesus said nothing about [homosexuality and abortion] whatsoever in the New Testament. There’s no hint in the Bible that these topics mattered to him at all.” While the factual accuracy of much of this may be disputed, the real issue is with Burklo’s logic. By the same reasoning, Jesus never mentioned eugenics and therefore there is no reason to assume that the actions of Nazi Germany bothered him. He certainly didn’t talk about atomic weaponry and therefore the atrocities in Nagasaki and Hiroshima probably wouldn’t have mattered to him. After all, harkening back to the points about the divine sparks, Truman probably reasoned that the bomb was how many Americans thought they could express love for the Pearl Harbor widows.

In truth, Jesus presented a radically different view of reality, and more than presenting it, he inaugurated it. The mission of Christ was not primarily one of persuasion. It was one of redemption, and it is impossible to crack the pages of Scripture and think otherwise. The greatest change achieved when he ascended into heaven was not that he had presented a wonderful new ethos for people to construct their own heaven but that he had made of himself the conduit through which humanity might find themselves reconciled to God—which, it turned out, is “heaven.” Trying to take Christianity and customize it, sanitize it, by saying, “I like the ethics but not the other teachings” (i.e. doctrine, dogma, and stories) is a little like saying, “I’m a Muslim but only because I feel compelled to make a trip to Mecca once in my life.” Religions are not like buffets: “none of that ‘I’d rather gouge out my eye than go to hell’ nonsense but I’ll have a double helping of the meek shall inherit the earth.” They stand or fall on the strength of their interrelated features. Frankly, without a benevolent, personal deity who became incarnate as an expression of love to recreate the world and me with it if only I choose to allow myself to be transformed, the Sermon on the Mount doesn’t make sense. If I’m imagining my most pleasurable world, my “heaven on earth,” I’m ashamed to admit that liberating the oppressed is a lower priority than legalizing marijuana and prostitution. Certainly turning the other cheek doesn’t sound heavenly at all.

Activism vs. Quietism: Where Anarchism Falls

The following is part of the Anarchy in May series which examines Christian anarchism and quotes prominent Christian anarchist thinkers. For a more detailed introduction and a table of contents, please see Anarchy in May: Brief Introduction and Contents.
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As is so often the case, the question of whether Christians are to be quietists or activists presents a false dichotomy. It is one, nevertheless, which has powerful rhetorical force. There are few, if any, legitimate quietists left in the world, and those that do exist have a relatively muted voice in the public discourse (unsurprisingly). The specter of quietism, however, looms large because any time anyone expresses any pessimism about the ultimate efficacy of human effort—divinely empowered or otherwise—they are immediately labeled as quietist heretics and left to scramble for some other justification for Christian service to society.

There is some value in this, admittedly, because quietism is antithetical to the Gospel. For our purposes here, let quietism be defined as the belief that because humanity is incapable of achieving the aims of the Kingdom by its own activities, such activities are meaningless. How can this view stand up to Scripture? Jesus came to announce the imminence of the Kingdom and with this made a clear effort to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and set the captive free. In enjoining that his disciples do the same, Jesus made impossible any honest attempt at quietism.

But activism is no less futile and no less incompatible with the true message of the Gospel. Activism is just as destructive if we understand it to be the belief that we have been tasked with the Kingdom purpose of feeding the hungry and therefore must believe it is possible and pursue as an end the total elimination of hunger by human effort (with the same being true of healing the sick and setting the captive free). Such a hope and such an effort is not only the height of human pretension, but it has always invited Christianity to align itself with decidedly unchristian forces pursuing the same ends—because, of course, it is the temporal end of defeating biological hunger which is falsely kept in the forefront.

Anarchism, properly understood, provides an alternative social ethic. Unfortunately, the temptation toward quietism is great for anarchists, and accusations of quietism make the temptation toward activism even greater. Rightly employed, however, anarchist thought invites Christians to take the possibility of achieving total implementation of the Kingdom out of the picture. In fact, at the heart of anarchism is both a hearty pessimism about human ability to achieve anything, especially the aims of the Kingdom, and the eschatological mindset which makes attempts to achieve those aims nonsensical anyway. What Christian anarchists are left with is a clear command to engage in social ethics without any confusion about whether or not society can be redeemed through our efforts.

Instead, the anarchist social ethic—active without being activist—insists that the hungry are fed as a critique of contemporary human (and therefore futile, transitory) structures of power and as a witness to the church’s proleptic experience of the eschatological Kingdom. We feed the hungry as a condemnation of a world which has refused to feed them in spite of protestations that it is within their power and as an invitation to the hope that there is a God who can make good on His promises. With this in mind, quietism can be ultimately rejected as a false Christianity which, in neglecting its social duties, is in fact neglecting the very proclamation of the Gospel, the living homily which calls people out of the flawed, oppressive, and dying world and into a community oriented toward the perfect, liberating, and eternal Kingdom. At the same time, this social ethic can never follow activism down the path of unholy alliance with the coercive and incompetent methods of secular attempts to solve social problems out of a misguided, optimistic, and ultimately idolatrous humanism.

This is not to say that Christians cannot or should not praise or even participate in efforts toward social justice out of some vague judgment that Christians can only be involved in Christian charities. (Although, if Christians were doing social justice right, it would be everyone else who would be coming to us to get involved and not the other way around.) It merely means that the social ethics enjoined by Christ and incumbent upon all Christians are not an end unto themselves to be pursued by any means and with any company. Almost more importantly, the social aims of the Kingdom are certainly and necessarily beyond the scope of human power to achieve, and any confusion on that point is an invitation to idolatry: the belief that if we just work hard enough, there are human solutions through which every little African baby will be cured of AIDS and every American can have health insurance and all God’s children can eat their fill of organic, free-trade flaxseed burgers. We pursue social justice not because we can achieve it but as a testimony to our participation in a kingdom and commitment to a king Who, greater and more faithful than human governments, can do all we ask or imagine.

An Anarchist Manifesto

The following is part of the Anarchy in May series which examines Christian anarchism and quotes prominent Christian anarchist thinkers. For a more detailed introduction and a table of contents, please see Anarchy in May: Brief Introduction and Contents.
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Below, I would like to offer a summary and adaptation of Vernard Eller's twelve "basic principles of Christian Anarchy," which he adapted and expanded from Jacques Ellul. Admittedly, I have some reservations about some of Eller's points, and what follows will often gloss over or actively change those aspects in an effort to give a depiction of anarchism which I think more nearly aligns with the Christian ethos. Additionally, it warrants mention that I by no means believe that these twelve represent the best or even most basic aspects of Christian anarchism. There are principles which I would include that Eller did not. There are omissions that I would have made, even omissions of points with which I wholeheartedly agree, simply because I do not think they are basic or essential to anarchism. With all those disclaimers having been made, however, what Eller offers in this list from Christian Anarchy is a collection of important statements and clarifications about the shape of anarchism particularly suited as an apology for those facing uninformed criticisms about what it is to be a Christian anarchist.

1. In Christian anarchism, the separation from and eventual dissolution of human governments is not an end in itself.  It is only ever endorsed and pursued with the aim of making room for and anticipating the ultimate and absolute reign of God.
2. Christian anarchists are not concerned with commending anarchism as a political system superior to contemporary power structures.  As a rejection of humanly devised political systems, it would be hypocritical to propose political anarchism as an alternative to traditional hierarchical systems.
3. Christian anarchism does not even suffer from the delusion that anarchism is viable for secular society.  It admits that human structures are a necessary (or at least efficient) means for ordering a humanist world.
4. As such, Christian anarchism sees no particular threat in the existence of human structures of power.  The danger is only in accepting the legitimacy of their claims to power and mistaking for real the illusory authority they purport to possess.
5. The problem with human structures of power is not that they are "of the devil" necessarily, but that they are human.  Just as humans are invariable sinful so to are the governments they construct for themselves.  Just as humans are only redeemable in dying to themselves and being reborn to God, so anarchists look for an eschatological death of human powers and the fulfillment of the divine Kingdom.
6. Just because all structures of power are equally human (and therefore necessarily sinful) does not meant that all structures of power are equally evil, at least not teleologically.  In recognizing that the the United States government is not righteous and inevitably corrupts whoever participates in it, anarchists are not prevented from appreciating moral distinctions between the USA and Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.  It is possible to be aware of and even grateful for human governments that are less overtly atrocious than others without endorsing, participating in, or falling at the feet of any human government.
7. The purpose of Christian anarchism is not to actively attempt to unseat or overthrow human governments, even as their dissolution is earnestly anticipated.  As already mentioned, Christian anarchism is not intended to be an alternative political system and recognizes that pure, political anarchism is untenable as a large scale social system.  Since it would be impossible for humanity to implement anything but a human government, it would be hypocritical to attempt by human effort to replace world governments with anything else.  What's more, the very notion of actively overthrowing a human government implies an appropriation of the very coercive and sinful means that mark human governments as incompatible with the Christian religion.  "To undertake a fight against evil on its own terms (to pit power against power) is the first step in becoming the evil one opposes."
8. This unwillingness to attempt forcibly to overthrow human governments does not translate into apathy toward their evils or silence about their injustices.  "[Christ] challenges every attempt to validate the political realm and rejects its authority because it does not conform to the will of God."  Christian anarchism is not retiring simply because it refuses to incite political revolution.
9. Just as it is not silent about the evil of government, it is not apathetic about the injustices in society.  Anarchists are not so lost in the eschatological vision of a God who is going to "settle things in the end anyway" that it lacks the grounds for social engagement.  In truth, it is the eschatological vision of a legitimate power structure and the church's proleptic experience of that reality on which the social ethic is grounded.  Anarchists seek to be like Jeremiah's exiles in Babylon, to "seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf."  Such a social conscience cannot, however, be construed as an endorsement of the legitimacy of Babylon.
10. Christian anarchists are not ignorant or afraid of politics, not if they are responsible Christians.  Anarchists are always willing to engage with human governments, but always as outsiders, always true to their critique of finite structures of power, and always aware of the ethical dangers involved in political contact.
11. Christian anarchism is active but not activist, clearly and definitely engaged in the world without any false pretension about the scope of human ability or goodness.  It is eschatological rather than utopian, recognizing that the human mind is incapable of independently conceiving of what a perfect society might look like.  It is narrowly rather than broadly focused, thoroughly skeptical of any suggestion that changes at the top might invoke a systemic reformation of society.  Finally it is realistic rather than dramatic; because it is not interested in selling a partisan vision of the world in an effort to provoke action from one end of the spectrum or the other it has the benefit of being able to candidly assess what is and is not in the scope of human ability.
12. Christian anarchism is committed to the Christian notion of freedom which is distinct from the political notion of autonomy.  Governments, and all human structures of power, cannot give you either, though it is common in the prevailing rhetoric to hear the latter promised under the name of the former.  Christian anarchism, on the other hand, rejects the stress on autonomy characteristic of secular, political anarchism of all stripes in favor of the Christian notion of freedom, the freedom to pursue God and to attempt to enact His will free from any artificial and exterior constraints.  It is, in essence, the freedom from the second master of humanistic politics and the recognition that in trying to serve both, Christians are wont to emphasize that which appears nearer rather than the God who seems distant.

Revelation as History

History is fundamentally an exercise in hindsight, and, if you believe the old adage, it is always written by the winners. It is, at its heart, a looking back on the past in an effort to order it and interpret it based on a more perfect knowledge. The historian knows who wins and who loses, and can make judgment based on that knowledge. History, for example, allows us to see from the beginning what never could have been known at the outset of the Civil War, that the Union would prevail and that American society would be committed to personal over corporate liberty and national government over state governments.

It has been sometime since I finished my little devotional commentary on Revelation, and I think enough time has passed that I can safely muse about the book once again. It seems to me that the purpose of Revelation may best be understood by reading the book not as prophecy or even as the narrative of a past mystical experience but as history. Revelation takes the reader into the future (or, perhaps more accurately, into the eternity of God) in order to look at the past. (Of course, whether this is the past in a preterist or a historicist or an idealist sense is up for debate.) We are granted the perfect knowledge of a God who stood not only at the beginning of history but who is already standing atemporally at its end. Armed with that knowledge, we can look back at "the past," which includes our present, with the kind of "objective," critical eye that historians look at the past. We can know that God and His righteouness will prevail. We can know that our own deeds will be subject to judgment. We can know that a horrible defeat (more horrible than Sherman marching to see, for certain) awaits the devil and his cohorts.

It is history at its finest and its most ironic. It is wonderful because it allows us to look back into the past with a knowledge more perfect and more comprehensive than even the most learned historians. It leaves no ambiguity about the outcome; it has all the certainty of decided fact. Yet it teases our minds because the "past" which it writes so authoritatively about is not only our past, but our present and our future. It cannot properly be called prophecy because it does not say, "I predict this will happen" or even assume a tone of anticipation. It is history because it declares frankly, from the perspective of transcendent eternity, "This is what happens." Live accordingly.

Christ, Jain, and the Material World

Perhaps the most constant--and, in the opinion of many, damning--critique leveled against Eastern religions by Westerners is their negative view of the world and their apparently escapist approach to soteriology, borrowing from Christian theological jargon. There is a perception, right or wrong, that Eastern religions see the world as a fundamentally broken place which must be fled and that flight from the world involves the absorption of the self into a cosmic consciousness or nothingness or both. Jain is certainly at least as open to this criticism as any other Eastern faith. While the commitment to life that is apparent in ahimsa would suggest a profound respect for the world, Jain religion does not actually protect life because it believes it is in some sense enduring, sacred, and intrinsically valuable. Instead, the respect for life is, in some sense, merely a subtle act of self-interest, a necessary ethical step on the path toward liberation, an escape from the cycle of death and reincarnation. Included in this escape is an escape also from the confines of materiality and anything which is in any sense associated with the world. In the Acaranga Sutra, the reader encounters once again the teachings of Mahavira which here describe the nature of existence after liberation is finally achieved:

The liberated is not long nor small nor round nor triangular nor quadrangular nor circular; he is not black nor blue nor red nor green nor white; neither of good nor bad smell; nor bitter nor pungent nor astringent nor sweet; neither rough nor soft; neither heavy nor light; neither cold nor hot; neither harsh nor smooth; he is without body, without resurrection, without contact of matter, he is not feminine nor masculine nor neuter; he perceives, he knows, but there is no analogy whereby to know the transcendent; its essence is without form; there is no condition of the unconditioned. There is no sound, no color, no smell, no taste, not touch--nothing of that kind. Thus I say.

The idea certainly has an aesthetic appeal. The idea of a conscious, non-corporeal existence has such an appeal to the Christian mind that it has been adopted (from Greek philosophy rather than Jain) into Christianity's own escapist soteriology in the form of the soul's flight to heaven. While that expression of Christian thought is deeply suspect, there is admittedly a strong affinity between the way Mahavira speaks of the transcendent and the way orthodox Christian thinkers have spoken of it. Consider this roughly parallel thought of Gregory Palamas:

Every nature is utterly remote and absolutely estranged from the divine nature. For if God is nature, other things are not nature, but if each of the other things is nature, he is not nature: just as he is not a being, if others are beings; and if he is a being, the others are not being. If you accept this as true also for wisdom and goodness and generally all the things around God or said about God, then your theology will be correct and in accord with the saints.

Gregory describes transcendent reality--in this case, God--in many of the same terms as Mahavira: real and aware, but invisible, non-corporeal, and fundamentally indescribable. There is, in both, the bare minimum agreement that philosophical materialism must be rejected. It is part of an intuitive function of human psychology that scientists explain as evolutionary attempt to grapple with and quantify the unknown but which theologians more liberally suggest may be an innate sense of the divine common to the species. Beyond this, Jain and Christianity diverge in their understanding of the relationship of the transcendent to the divine. In spite of what many Christians have suggested about Orthodox theology, for example, there are no Christian bodies which believe that humanity's ultimate goal is to become that transcendent reality which is non-corporeal and indescribable. The essence of the transcendent God, in Christianity, is what all reality is defined against; at the moment when the creation is absorbed wholesale into the Creator, both cease to exist in any meaningful sense as Christians conceive them.

More importantly, and with significantly less flavor of the esoteric, the Christian view of the transcendent and its relationship to the material world reveals an essential disagreement with Jain about the value of material existence. In creating the material world, God declared it good, and, whatever evil occurs in it, His handiwork has never ceased to be good at its core. That would explain why the Christian picture of redemption is not one of the transcendent calling people out of the material but of the immaterial taking on physical form in order to redeem creation. The Christian story of salvation has never been one of Christ leading people out of the world (in the sense of material existence). Just the opposite: the promise of Christian salvation centers around the idea that humanity will be resurrected into a new body to enjoy the presence of God on a new earth. A Christian respect for life and for creation is centered, therefore, not on a self-serving ethic but on a commitment to the eternal value of God's creation. Christian liberation is not a liberation from the world (again, in the sense of materiality) but liberation for the world. Christians have been freed from sin so that they might free the rest of the creation from the consequences of sin and so that all creation might then share in the experience the transcendent, not in ceasing to be creatures but as creatures were intended to experience the Creator.

Re-Reading Revelation: An Invitation (Ch. 22)

I realize that, from the outset, I promised that this series would be about how you can read Revelation rather than how you should read it. I have done my best to hold true to that promise, trying to offer a way for the troubled Christian to engage Revelation without being overcome by the hairsplitting nuance of Christian eschatology. This final thought will try to tread the fine line between describing a facet of the book and prescribing a hermeneutic for it. A problem arises, however, in that the final section of Revelation has something critical to say of the way that most people today read Revelation. The conclusion of the text, which traditionally ties any literary work together, specifically lends itself to something other than a strictly eschatological interpretation. In other words, John spends a great deal of time talking about the end but that vision of the future is not an end in itself. John tells us "what must soon take place" with another purpose in mind.

He is not shy about revealing that purpose to his readers either. In fact, from the beginning, John announces how he intends his readers to receive his work: "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near." The sentiment is paralleled in the final passage: "And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book." What precisely does it mean to "keep" the words of a prophecy? Certainly John is not talking about merely possessing them. The NIV renders the term as "take to heart" and the NASB as "heeds." John himself gives no shortage of clues about what he means. Consider these verses which follow after the call to "keep" the words of Revelation:

-- When John falls down to praise the angel, the messenger repeats one of the central commands of the book: "Worship God."

-- "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let...the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy."

-- "Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done."

-- "Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood."

It is almost as if, realizing that he is running out of papyrus, John feels the need to hammer his point home with a quick repetition of essentially the same command: obey. In a way that ought to be telling to modern readers, John does not spend his final moments in an exposition of the cryptic future that he predicts. Instead of stressing the when and the how of Jesus' coming, he merely assumes that coming and proceeds to tell us how we should respond. "The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come." And let the one who hears say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price." With these words, we discover that Revelation is not a history book written cleverly in advance of the events it records. It is an invitation to the lost and an exhortation to the found. Jesus is coming soon. How will you react to that good news?

The beauty of realizing this overarching message and purpose for Revelation is that it transcends all our petty disputes. The wonderful, terrible God of judgment offers salvation to His church and solicits a response of obedience and praise from it. That message--more clearly and surely stated than any eschatological supposition--applies to the pre-millennialist and the post-millennialist alike. This preterist and the idealist are both compelled to read His glorious works and fall down at the feet of the Son of Man. The outpouring of God's wrath convicts us all, regardless of where (if anywhere) you want to locate the rapture relative to the tribulation. That is not to say that some of these issues are not mentioned in Revelation or that there discussion may not be relevant, to an extent. It is merely an effort to demonstrate that John has an intention for his text that our modern descent into polemical madness has caused us to forget--or at the very least to subordinate to petty squabbling. That Jesus is coming seems to be enough for the author and when he is coming seems to be precisely the kind of irrelevant thinking Jesus warned us against. John tells us what our first response to his text should be, and it isn't to construct an eschatological timeline. The Spirit invites us to come, to wash our robes, to persist in holiness, to worship God, and to relish the blessings we have as those who have heard and kept the words of the prophecy. "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!"

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For a full list of "Re-reading Revelation" posts, see Re-reading Revelation: Statement of Purpose.

Re-Reading Revelation: Statement of Purpose

There is perhaps no more contentious issue in biblical studies than how to interpret Revelation. There are certainly more important issues, more uplifting issues, more fruitful issues for our examination, but for whatever reason--most likely because the cryptic nature of the book allows for such a breadth of interpretation--nothing inspires the kind of doctrinal knockdown-dragout fights that Revelation does. Today, of all days, is the perfect day to illustrate this, as I assume that once again Harold Camping's predictions will have fallen short of expectations. No matter if you are a radio evangelist, a theologian, an exegete, a minister, a layman, or (as I am) a historian, one can easily weary by looking at contemporary and historical disputes over premillennialism versus postmillennialism versus amillennialism versus millennialism and more. At a more basic level, there are preterists and historicists and idealists and futurists and probably -ists so remote in their thinking that they have yet to find a label. A thousand issues which ultimately transcend Revelation inevitably get bogged down in its enigmatic imagery.

In a recent discussion with someone about a thoroughgoing preterist approach to the text, I made the suggestion that we might all be better off if we could just set aside the eschatological questions we bring to the text and read Revelation for the many truths it reveals about God: who He is, what He does, and how we ought to respond to Him. In reflecting on that conversation, I realized that it had not been since my early youth--ignorant as I was of the complex of controversial questions which the book generated--that I had read through Revelation for anything other than polemical purposes.

I propose to remedy that now and in the process to share what I believe are some of the eternal (and incontestable) truths which Revelation has to offer readers that have little or nothing to do with the what, the when, or the how of the end of the world. As a disclaimer, I should clarify that I do not think that Revelation is totally without anything to say on these matters. Clearly, the text raises important questions about God's ultimate plan for the world, questions that require serious thought. I am by no means a full-fledged idealist (or really a full-fledged anything). I do believe, however, that there are ideals which the author of Revelation, assumed to be John, embeds in the text, those that he wants to teach to his audience and those which are implicit by virtue of their common faith in a single God. It should not be forgotten that while the eschatological questions which dominate the study of Revelation are certainly valid, they are probably not primary. John was, after all, writing to comfort and strengthen an audience in a time of intense trial. He was not writing an academic treatise on the end times. The approach that will be taken here will be to look at Revelation as a spiritual text from an apostle to the languishing churches. The truths which will be the focus will be those that resonated with the foremost desire of the audience for salvation, for vindication, and for a glimpse (a revelation, if you will) of the God whom they served. In re-reading Revelation with these specific principles in mind, Christians can be enriched and find strength and solidarity in a text which has been the source of so much divisiveness.

List of Entries:

Encountering Jesus (Ch. 1)
Letters (Chs. 2-3)
Throne Room (Chs. 4-5)
Seals and Trumpets (Chs. 6-8)
Two Woes (Ch. 9)
Kingdom Come (Chs. 10-11)
Great Battle (Chs. 12-16)
Fall of Babylon (Chs. 17-18)
Joy and Judgment (Chs. 19-20)All Things New (Chs. 21-22)
An Invitation (Ch. 22)

Songs of the Church (Excursus 1)
Three Angels (Excursus 2)

Have Prophecies Ceased: Answering Tough Questions

An analysis of the primary text regarding cessationism and of the two main stances on its meaning--scriptural cessationism and eschatological cessationism--yielded a picture of spiritual gifts which were given to Christians in the interim until the final consummation of creation. Spiritual gifts roughly correspond, oddly enough, to the gift of the Spirit who was promised by Christ to come in his stead until the time of his triumphant return. Unless you are part of a small and largely disregarded minority that believes Christ has already "returned," this means that the spiritual gifts which Paul subordinates to love in 1 Cor. 13 are very much alive and well in the present, or at least they ought to be. This leaves the thoughtful Christian with a number of important questions that warrant answering. The treatment here will necessarily be cursory but should serve at least as an introduction to what this author thinks is the best way to tackle the legitimate problems.

The first issue that arises is one of semantics and may seem trivial at first. It is important, however, because it is these small matters of translation that allow people to more easily perpetuate misunderstandings of the text. Years ago when I first raised this question to my spiritual and intellectual betters, I found their explanation that "the perfect" was the New Testament to be entirely satisfactory. It would not be until much later when I had studied Greek, hermeneutics, and theology that I could more fully evaluate their proposal. The sad truth of the matter was that if the text had been translated more appropriately, I may never have fallen into error at all. The question then is this: should το τελειον be translated "the perfect" or "the end?"

In the interest of fairness, I will make what I consider to be a reasonable demand of biblical translators. When translating the world, all that matters is that they translate the three parallel instances in 1 Corinthians the same way. If they want to change the other two references to το τελειον to "the perfect," I suppose I can live with that (though I doubt that they could). Otherwise, its smacks of intellectual dishonesty to deliberately elect for a translation which runs against the standard usage in a given book, and that even before the obvious nature of the immediate context is considered. The more I reflect on it, the more audacious it is to me that any translator should opt for a divergent translation of το τελειον in 1 Cor. 13 when the typical translation not only maintains consistency but also accords better with the sense of the text.

In truth, however, I think that there is no truly appropriate translation of the term. I am of the opinion that Paul intends το τελειον as a double entendre. The first and obvious sense is "the end," since Paul has been stressing temporal issues (i.e. the transience of spiritual gifts and the permanence of love). Yet, as the other passages clearly indicate, the expected end is one in which Christ comes. In this sense, "the perfect" is a very appropriate translation as it is the arrival of the perfect one which signifies the end. I would love to see a biblical translation which opts for "the end" in the text and comments on this richer meaning in a footnote.

It was previously discussed that the view that the New Testament represented "the perfect" which would come arose as a defense of biblical authority against Pentecostalism. This raises two important questions that may be answered in turn. If authoritative prophecy continues, what is the grounds for biblical authority which all Christian bodies claim? If spiritual gifts persist, should we not all join Pentecostal movements? The questions and their answers are interrelated, but for organizational purposes they will be answered individually.

For Christians who have a view of biblical authority dependent on an idea of miraculous spiritual inspiration which has since ceased, the belief that miraculous spiritual gifts does present a serious, even unanswerable challenge. If the Bible is normative because the Spirit inspired it and the Spirit continues to inspire prophecies, then Scripture is put on the same level as whatever prophecy may be uttered by any would be prophet with a pulpit. Too readily when faced with this problem, Christians attack the latter premise and deny that inspired prophecies can continue. In truth, as we have seen, it is the former premise which is novel in the history of Christendom. The earliest Christians could not have understood Scripture to be authoritative merely by virtue of its origin in the Spirit because they quite clearly believed that they were still being inspired by the Spirit.

In contrast to the modern method of determining scriptural authority, the church from its earliest times until the "completion" of the canon used apostolicity not inspiration as the criterion for authority. In doing this, they were following Paul's own example, who himself declared in the same letter to the Corinthians "Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?" It is important to recognize that he did not insist "Am I not inspired? Have I not been filled with the Holy Spirit?" How could he, since he admits that the audience to whom he writes are all inspired and full of the Holy Spirit. With this in mind, the early church used apostolicity as the sole rule for canon. This took the form of three general questions: was the text written by an apostle (or "apostolic man"), is the text accepted in the major Christian churches founded by the apostles, and does the text agree with the oral tradition that was transmitted to the church by the apostles (the pre-canonical creeds)?

The tendency among many modern interpreters is going to be to want to reduce those three criteria only to authorship. While I do not share that impulse, it certainly more closely approximates the early church's understanding of authority (both during the process of canon and in the Christian world depicted by the New Testament) and is more easily defensible in the face of criticism from both non-Christians and charismatic Christian groups. In response to the secular critics, the authenticity of the canonical texts can be defended with no more or less uncertainty than the presumptuous theories which abound about their forgery. It certainly should be admitted by all that there are no texts of apostolic authorship yet discovered which are not in the canon. No non-canonical text even comes close to being able to make such a claim. In response to latter day prophets in the various charismatic movements, an appeal to apostolicity allows Scriptures authority to go on unquestioned without making a definitive statement about any particular prophet one way or another. Whatever the prophecy is, it is subordinate to Scripture and lacks any ultimate, a priori authority because it does not and cannot meet the single criteria for original normative teaching: apostolicity.

(None of this is in any way intended to reject the reality of biblical inspiration, only its ground as the sole or even primary criteria for Scripture's authority. What inspiration is and how it relates to the normative nature of Scripture is far enough beyond the scope of this topic that I feel justified in not treating it here.)

This relocation of the locus of scriptural authority, or rather a correction of a dislocation of that locus, does not in any way automatically validate a Pentecostal understanding of spiritual gifts. The fact that the early church accepted the continuation of spiritual gifts but rejected early charismatics (like Montanus) should give pause to anyone who would immediately leap to Pentecostalism. I am of the very firm belief that both Pentecostals and reactionaries who feel the need to deny all ongoing spiritual gifts grossly misunderstand the nature of the gifts being debated.

The relationship between prophecy and Scripture was discussed at length in the refutation of scriptural cessationism, and so a total restatement of that position would be unnecessary here. It is important to remember the nature of biblical prophecy, however, and to recall that the prophets of Israel were not fortunetellers. Shockingly little time is spent in the Prophets making absolute predictions of the distant future. The work of the Prophets was more as inspired interpreters than as soothsayers. They reminded Israel of their forgotten heritage and their obligations to God, interpreting the authoritative text of the Torah and the instructive history of the Israelites for a contemporary audience. I recently visited a megachurch who had a troupe of prophets who divided the congregations into sections and prophesied over them. On the opposite side of the stadium (which is the most appropriate term for the venue), a prophetess announced to one section that their student loans were all soon to be forgiven. In addition to feeling deeply slighted that the usher hadn't sat me in that section, it was appalling to me that people could even imagine a continuity between that sort of Miss Cleo nonsense and the work of Hosea or Amos.

Similarly, the way tongues is presently being practiced is quite contrary to what is seen in Scripture. Most importantly, speaking in tongues throughout the New Testament is exclusively the phenomenon through which someone spoke a human language that he or she did not previously know for the benefit of those in the audience who understood that language. Paul, moreover, insists that any time tongues-speaking occurs in a service that an interpreter be present to explain what is being said to the remainder of the church. Every instance of tongues-speaking I have been present for has been a speaking in "angelic tongues" (a behavior which Paul references rhetorically and somewhat pejoratively in 1 Cor. 13 but that no one is ever reported in Scripture to have actually done) in which the speaker enters a trance-like state, screams some gibberish, and then goes on as if nothing had happened. While amusing, the behavior in no way imitates what is described in Scripture and in truth serves no discernible purpose whatsoever.

The misunderstanding and misappropriation of the spiritual gifts described in Scripture by charismatic churches (throughout history, not merely Pentecostalism) is lamentable. These movements do nevertheless challenge us with another important question: if spiritual gifts do continue and they are not being experienced in charismatic churches, then where are they? There are two options that I can devise for explaining this and both seem to me to be at least helpful in understanding the present state of affairs. For my part, I believe that the answer is likely a synthesis of the two.

The first is an appeal to utility. The purpose of most of the spiritual gifts are no longer pragmatic in modern Western society. In a world with advanced medical care and abundant interpreters for every language commonly spoken, miraculous healings and tongues-speaking are not only out of place but unnecessary. We have an abundance of ministers, teachers, and, in my opinion, prophets if anyone would listen to them. It seems that healers and tongues-speakers flourish elsewhere, particularly in Africa and southeast Asia. Some would like to attribute this to cultural primitiveness (which stinks of ethnic hubris) or the prevalence of charismatic movements there (which displays a profound ignorance of the state even of the Churches of Christ in Africa). I prefer to think that God continues to pour out His Spirit on behalf of the poorest and neediest of His children.

The second explanation is an appeal to spiritual atrophy. It should come as a surprise to no one that the Spirit is not poured out into denominations that want to confine it to the inspiration of Scripture. We do not invite the Spirit to move in our movements and therefore we find ourselves spiritually stagnant. This may sound like a very limited critique of Churches of Christ and other similar movements, but in fact the same accusation is made by other groups about churches which are historically much more in tune to the work of God in the Spirit. Consider these quotes from Seraphim of Sarov, a Russian Orthodox monk and mystic of the not too distant past:

In our time because of the almost universal coldness toward the holy faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and because of our inattentiveness with regard to the acts of His Divine Providence concerning us, as well as to the communion of man with God -- because of all this -- we have reached a state in which we may be said to have withdrawn almost entirely from the true Christian life.

Now some people say: '...Is it possible that men could see God thus clearly?' Yet there is nothing obscure here. The lack of understanding is attributable to the fact that we have strayed from the simple vision of the early Christians and, under the pretext of enlightenment, have entered such a darkness of ignorance that we consider inconceivable what the ancients grasped so clearly; even in their common talk, the idea of God appearing to men had nothing strange in it.

The simple fact is that if we make a war cry of dampening the Spirit we should not be at all shocked when our experience confirms our beliefs. The Spirit will not force an apathetic, sickly church to be gifted. We have become "too good" for the Spirit: too smart, too civilized, too orderly. However the Spirit moves, we should be unsurprised that we do not experience it.

There are undoubtedly more questions to answer as well as more questions raised by the above answers. This is not, however, the place for an exhaustive study of spiritual gifts, if such a thing were even possible. My position is that the Spirit will not be withheld from Christians and neither will the gifts attendant to its presence. What this translates into practically is an openness to the exercise of gifts, even miraculous gifts, which are consistent with their biblical descriptions. I have never seen anyone healed or raised from the dead, never seen anyone speak in tongues, and been convinced that these acts were miracles. I must, however, as a Christian allow myself to be open to the possibility that I serve a God powerful enough to achieve all this and more and Who has promised His church that His Spirit will abide with them in power until Christ returns finally and triumphantly.

Sources consulted in writing this series:

Collins, Raymond F. 1 Corinthians. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999.

Conzelmann, Hans. 1 Corinthians : A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975.

Fee, Gordon. First Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

Grudem, Wayne A. Gift of Prophecy in 1 Corinthians. Washington: University Press of America, 1982.

Oster, Rick. 1 Corinthians. Joplin: College Press, 1995.

Witherington, Ben. Conflict and Community in Corinth : A Socio-rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.

Ancient Christian Commentary, New Testament, Vol. 7: 1-2 Corinthians.

Have Prophecies Ceased: The "Eschatological" Answer

The view that the New Testament represents “the perfect” which will come and cause all prophecies to cease has been shown to be inadequate both because of its inconsistency with the argument Paul is making in 1 Corinthians 13 and because of its inconsistency with the nature of Scripture and prophecy. The only option which remains for consideration then, from the list of four major stances on the meaning of “the perfect,” is that the term is a reference to the eschatological future.

It is noteworthy, as a launching point, that the term most often rendered “the perfect” (το τελειον) may be rendered with equal accuracy “the end.” In fact, a simple look at the regular use of the term in 1 Corinthians will recommend this translation. Consider the following passages in which I have put the corresponding word in bold:

1 Cor. 1:4-9

4I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, 5that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— 6even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— 7so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

1 Cor 15:20-25

20But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Both are extraordinarily telling for a number of reasons. In chapter one, Paul makes certain to define what he means by “the end” (the same term used in chapter thirteen): “the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ” and “the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” There can be no doubt that when Paul talks about the “telos” here he is referencing the eschatological coming of Christ. More interesting still is the connection between this final end and the spiritual gifts which are granted by God for Christians as they wait to that end. The parallel to the teaching in chapter thirteen is perfect (not to mention so glaringly obvious that it ought to put people to shame who believe that the New Testament is being referenced in the latter): spiritual gifts exist to sustain Christians as they wait for the end, the coming of Jesus Christ. Paul even references, in addition to God granting spiritual gifts for this purpose, knowledge which, in chapter thirteen, he adds to prophecies and tongues as realities which will pass away when the end comes.

The second passage is equally strong in its corroboration of an eschatological rendering of the term in chapter 13. Once again word in question is explicitly elaborated on by Paul. “The end” (or “the perfect”) is the time when Christ destroys every temporal authority and power (including death) and beings his eternal reign. What the reader is left with is two partial descriptions of a single event (which Paul uses the same term to describe). On the one hand, when the end comes prophecies will cease. At the same time, when the end comes so too will Christ come to conquer every foe, to resurrect the dead, and to reign eternally. They are parallel events.

With the addition of 13:10, these are the only unqualified uses of the term in 1 Corinthians. (In the rest of Paul’s letters, the only additional use of the term in this unqualified way as merely “the end” is in 2 Corinthians 1:13-14 which once again has an eschatological overtone.) It seems odd, if not willfully ignorant, to translate a term which Paul uses consistently in various ways depending on our polemical needs.

Even without those other references, however, the context of 1 Cor. 13 would still strongly indicate that an eschatological future is in mind with the term “the end”/“the perfect.” In fact, it is difficult to interpret it any other way. Paul, still speaking of the end when prophecies cease, speaks of a time when we will see God “face to face.” Surely no one would suggest that the fulfillment of this promise came to pass in the completion of the New Testament. More telling still is the self-referential comments at the close of verse twelve: “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Paul is undeniably speaking here of a time in the future that he will experience. To suggest that this is anything other than an eschatological moment is to suggest that Paul’s own knowledge was imperfect but that it was magically perfected in the cessation of prophecy at some point during or after his life. (Even transmillennialists--who aim to collapse all eschatology into the events of AD 70--are still left with the pressing question: was Paul languishing in ignorance in heaven in the years between the time of his death and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple?) The only interpretation consistent with Paul’s personal hope here and his position on final resurrection, which he is about to defend so rigorously in chapter fifteen, is that Paul is imagining the promised eschatological completion of all things in which he, like all Christians, will know God with an intimacy that is impossible in the present. Then will knowledge and tongues and prophecy and hope and faith all become obsolete, not because they have been superseded by a better means of mediating knowledge but because they have completed their purpose, to bring us before the Father with only Christ as our mediator.

This view stands up to exegetical scrutiny in a way that puts the others to shame. Additionally, however, it also coincides with the usage of 1 Cor. 13 in the early church. Consider the small selection of examples which follow in which the earliest church fathers all understand prophecies, tongues, and knowledge not to have ceased but rather look forward to an eschatological future in which they will see God face to face.

Gregory the Theologian, Oration 28.20:

If it had been permitted to Paul to utter what the Third Heaven contained, and his own advance, or ascension, or assumption thither, perhaps we should know something more about God’s Nature, if this was the mystery of the rapture. But since it was ineffable, we too will honour it by silence. Thus much we will hear Paul say about it, that we know in part and we prophesy in part. This and the like to this are the confessions of one who is not rude in knowledge, who threatens to give proof of Christ speaking in him, the great doctor and champion of the truth. Wherefore he estimates all knowledge on earth only as through a glass as taking its stand upon little images of the truth. Now, unless I appear to anyone too careful, and over anxious about the examination of this matter, perhaps it was of this and nothing else that the Word Himself intimated that there were things which could not now be borne, but which should be borne and cleared up hereafter, and which John the Forerunner of the Word and great Voice of the Truth declared even the whole world could not contain.

Basil, Concerning Faith:

Even though more knowledge is always being acquired by everyone, it will ever fall short in all things of its rightful completeness until the time when that which is perfect being comes, that which is in part will be done away.

Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, XVI.12:

Thus also the Holy Ghost, being one, and of one nature, and indivisible, divides to each His grace, according as He will: and as the dry tree, after partaking of water, puts forth shoots, so also the soul in sin, when it has been through repentance made worthy of the Holy Ghost, brings forth clusters of righteousness. And though He is One in nature, yet many are the virtues which by the will of God and in the Name of Christ He works. For He employs the tongue of one man for wisdom; the soul of another He enlightens by Prophecy; to another He gives power to drive away devils; to another He gives to interpret the divine Scriptures. He strengthens one man’s self-command; He teaches another the way to give alms; another He teaches to fast and discipline himself; another He teaches to despise the things of the body; another He trains for martyrdom: diverse in different men, yet not diverse from Himself, as it is written, But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith, in the same Spirit; and to another gifts of healing, in the same Spirit; and to another workings of miracles; and to another prophecy; and to another discernings of spirits; and to another divers kinds of tongues; and to another the interpretation of tongues: but all these worketh that one and the same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will.

ibid, XVII.37-37:

If thou believe, thou shalt not only receive remission of sins, but also do things which pass man’s power. And mayest thou be worthy of the gift of prophecy also! For thou shalt receive grace according to the measure of thy capacity and not of my words; for I may possibly speak of but small things, yet thou mayest receive greater; since faith is a large affair2238. All thy life long will thy guardian the Comforter abide with thee; He will care for thee, as for his own soldier; for thy goings out, and thy comings in, and thy plotting foes. And He will give thee gifts of grace of every kind, if thou grieve Him not by sin; for it is written, And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye were sealed unto the day of redemption. What then, beloved, is it to preserve grace? Be ye ready to receive grace, and when ye have received it, cast it not away.

And may the very God of All, who spake by the Holy Ghost through the prophets, who sent Him forth upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost in this place, Himself send Him forth at this time also upon you; and by Him keep us also, imparting His benefit in common to us all, that we may ever render up the fruits of the Holy Ghost, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, in Christ Jesus our Lord:—By whom and with whom, together with the Holy Ghost, be glory to the Father, both now, and ever, and for ever and ever. Amen.

Ambrose, On His Brother Satyrus, 2.32:

For now we know in part and understand I part. But then we shall be able to comprehend what is perfect, when not the shadow but the reality of the majesty and eternity of God shall begin to shine and to reveal itself unveiled before our eyes.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies, IV.9 (see also Against Heresies, II. 28 and V.2):

For one and the same Lord, who is greater than the temple, greater than Solomon, and greater than Jonah, confers gifts upon men, that is, His own presence, and the resurrection from the dead…And as their love towards God increases, He bestows more and greater [gifts]; as also the Lord said to His disciples: “Ye shall see greater things than these.” And Paul declares: “Not that I have already attained, or that I am justified, or already have been made perfect. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect has come, the things which are in part shall be done away.” As, therefore, when that which is perfect is come, we shall not see another Father, but Him whom we now desire to see…neither shall we look for another Christ and Son of God, but Him who [was born] of the Virgin Mary, who also suffered, in whom too we trust, and whom we love…neither do we receive another Holy Spirit, besides Him who is with us, and who cries, “Abba, Father;” and we shall make increase in the very same things [as now], and shall make progress, so that no longer through a glass, or by means of enigmas, but face to face, we shall enjoy the gifts of God.

Others could of course be added. Tertullian with his spirited embrace of the Montanus, the “incarnate Holy Spirit,” springs to mind immediately as one champion of the ongoing role of spiritual gifts in the church. The above should suffice, however, to establish the point that early Christians believed strongly in the ongoing role of spiritual gifts in the church. This leaves us with an understanding of 1 Cor. 13 that stands up not only exegetically and logically but historically.

This result opens the door for a number of difficult questions about the nature of spiritual gifts, the basis for Scriptural authority, and the legitimacy of Pentecostal interpretations of the charismatic early church. That these questions might be more easily dismissed with a different interpretation of 1 Cor. 13 is irrelevant. The meaning of the Scripture is readily available to anyone open to see it and it is corroborated by the early church. What questions arise must be answered while admitting this truth not in an attempt to revise it for our own comforts sake.

Merry Judgment Day!

Well, it is May 21st, the day believed by a very vocal minority to be Judgment Day. And there is no reason why it shouldn't be Judgment Day, though I suppose if you're sitting at your computer today reading this it is probably either not Judgment Day or it is too late for you anyhow. While so many reasonable people have laughed off, if somewhat uneasily, these predictions of final judgment today, there is no reason why judgment is any less likely to come at 6 p.m. EST than at any other time. If we appeal to the bibilical promise that no one will know the day or the hour then we forestall judgment forever because inevitably there is someone somewhere convinced that today will be the day (whatever the day may be). In truth, no matter how fervently these predictions are put forward as fact and even if Harold Camping is correct, he didn't know. He just happened to guess right the loudest.

More interesting to me than whether or not judgment is actually reigning down on us (as you read this, of course) is precisely the way people have reacted to the "knowledge" that the end is near. There has been a frantic setting of their moral lives in order and, more publicly, a surge of evangelical effort. But why? The end has been near for thousands of years, at least as far as the apostles were concerned. "The end of all things is at hand" (1 Pet 4:7). People in the earliest Christian decades lived with the constant expectation of an immediate return of Christ, as rightly they should have--even knowing now that the return would not come. After all, Jesus exhorts his disciples to this kind of attitude in Matthew 24:

Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Imagine if the money, time, and effort that went into this propoganda campaign about the looming end of the world had been expended in a less controversial (and, from a secular atheistic point of view, laughable) evangelistic enterprise. Or for that matter, distributed to the poor in an effort to be morally upright whether the Lord was coming today or in another two thousand years. I suppose my point is that times like these show clearly the lamentable state of Christian life. We ought to live always as if we are an eschatological people standing right at the brink of eternity. When predictions like this one gain popular currency we see that those who change were not living eschatologically to begin with and those who don't, more likely than not, are simply not convinced that there is any urgency to change.

That day is coming like a theif. It may not have come today; it probably didn't. But when it comes is oddly less important than the fact that it comes. It is real regardless of its precise timing, and we, as Christians, are called to live in the light of that reality.

Just How Violent Is Jesus?

Someone recently directed me to this article, which is just nonsensical enough to be dangerous. The question posed is whether or not the typical representation of Jesus as a peaceful prophet and Muhammad as a violent prophet is accurate. The conclusion: Jesus is perhaps the most violent religious figure of all time.

Let me begin by stating that I do not believe that Muhammad was especially violent. The article suggests that the demonization of Muhammad relies on the depiction of him as particularly bloodthirsty. If there are those who believe that, I think that is a deeply unfounded view of history. The fact that the author of the article turns around and attempts to demonize Old Testament figures is hypocritical and equally misguided. Muhammad was not especially violent and neither was Moses or Joshua or David. They were all a quite typical level of violent for warlords or kings of their periods. (I will not go into here the hermeneutics necessary to understand the violence of Old Testament figures, as the post is primarily an issue about Jesus.) Muhammad, had he been a simple king and not a religious figure, would probably be remembered as the military and political genius who inaugurated one of the great empires in medieval if not world history. So the author is right to oppose historical misrepresentations of Muhammad.

When addressing the question of whether or not Jesus is a more violent figure, however, the author leaves the bounds of his own investigation in an attempt to make his case. It is here that the argument falls woefully short. He wants to compare the past historical actuality of Muhammad’s actions to the prophesied eschatological judgment which has Jesus as its agent. An intellectually honest answer to the question of which religious leader was in fact more peaceful requires a direct comparison with corresponding parameters. Islam, no less than Christianity, understands God to be a just God who will punish the wicked and reward the righteous. If we compare the religions in terms of their eschatological picture of the fate of the enemies of God, both are “violent” (if we want to use that word in a superficial way). If we really want to get to the root of each teacher’s character, however, then it is appropriate to confine ourselves to the actual evidence relevant to the question: the behavior and teaching, between birth and death, of each man.

These, in a brief and inadequate way, are the actual facts:

• Muhammad was a political leader who ordered, endorsed, and conducted military campaigns. He gave his disciples a framework for a future philosophy of violence which set boundaries on its appropriate use. His life and teaching led immediately to an expansive empire founded on military conquest.
  


• Jesus was a political pariah who never attacked another person, never endorsed attacking another person, and who ultimately died in peaceful submission both to God and the political authorities. He explicitly forbade violence of any kind, never retaliating for any physical affront and never intervening violently to prevent affronts against others. When his apostles behaved violently anyway, he rebuked them and corrected the damage caused. The church, adopting this teaching, was led to centuries of voluntary persecution.

Those facts cannot be disputed and are not disputed by the article. Instead, the author tries to draw deeply flawed parallels between the temporal life of Muhammad and the eschatological destiny of Jesus. The parallel becomes particularly weak when the difference between the way the two figures function in their respective religions is observed. Muhammad is believed to be the culmination of a line of prophets; Jesus is believed to be God. Acting as God in the final judgment, he is the agent of divine wrath and will naturally be presented in a way which enacts judgment on evildoers in a way roughly analogous to the way the just God of Islam will dole out justice.

As a human agent, however, the career of Jesus could not be more distinct from that of Muhammad. Only by fundamentally altering the rules of engagement can the author even begin to depict Jesus as more violent than Muhammad. Even the suggestion that Jesus’ pacifism could be a product of his political situation patently contradicts the narrative in the Gospels. Jesus is expected by his disciples to seize power and at one point a mob even tries to make him king. At every turn he rejects the possibility of political authority, finally concluding before Pilate that “if my kingdom were of this world, my followers would fight.” He redefines rather than conforms to the militaristic messianic expectations of contemporary Jews.

Ultimately, the linked article represents the same ugly polemic that “Islamophobes” use to try to discredit Islam. It is methodologically flawed and transparent in its motivation. It is possible to admit that the historical person of Muhammad was violent in a way typical and even necessary of political leaders and to realize that Jesus was nonviolent and eschewed political power without being an “anti-Muslim ideologue.” A calm, cool examination of the facts will reveal that eschatologically, Islam and Christianity have similar conceptions of God’s justice (which, in Christianity, includes the agency of Christ as a member of the Trinity) but that the actual careers of their “founders” are profoundly different on the question of violence.

The Problem of Evil: Solution or Apology?

I am taking a course this summer entitled “Providence and Suffering” which deals very generally with the problem of evil: how it has been approached historically, how it might be approached biblically, and in what way it should factor into modern religious thought. Undoubtedly, that means that questions about suffering, free will, sin, natural disaster, death, evil, and providence will all feature more prominently in my thought as a result. Yet, before I even seriously begin preparing for this course, something about the problem of evil strikes me relative to the witness of Scripture.

My sole encounter with the problem of evil up to this point has been its somewhat clumsy application by the occasional atheist who I have encountered. It is generally presented as some great and exhaustive formula by which the concept of an all power, all loving God may be rationally undermined. It is the novel product of rational thought, emancipated as it now is from the ignorance and tyranny characteristic of the fundamentally religious culture of the past. Inevitably, I accept the argument on these grounds as a peculiarly atheistic attempt to undermine God and respond, myself somewhat clumsily, with rather shallow arguments from free will as if the recognition that humanity is responsible for most evil somehow expiates God from any culpability in its existence.

I don’t propose to solve the problem of evil here – though of course I expect to be able to present an entirely novel and thoroughly incontrovertible solution by the time my course is complete. What struck me at the very outskirts of my study is the blind acceptance that the problem of evil is somehow a modern critique of God born of rational thought or atheist “enlightenment.” Certainly, in its modern formulation – (A) God is omnipotent, (B) God is omnibeneficient, (C) Evil exists, therefore either not A or not B – the problem has a decidedly scientific, atheistic tone. When, however, it is rephrased to get at the root of the existential concern – why do bad things happen to good people, and good things to bad people – the question becomes one as old as Scripture and undoubtedly older, one that Christianity has by no means shied away from engaging, though perhaps not explaining as we might like.

It is something of a cliché to mention Job in connection with the problem of suffering, but he certainly represents a clear engagement of the problem. Qoheleth, though less commonly mentioned, is an equally important witness to the way that even early on the Judeo-Christian faith has understood that the world is not the ideal place which perfectly accords with our expectations of or hopes for it. “In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: a righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man living long in his wickedness” (Ecc. 7:15). The creation account and the flood account both try to understand why it is that death and toil and disaster enter the world, and the prophets are constantly explaining both natural and political calamity. Still, these only can justify why bad things happen to bad people, something which few if any would object to or even properly include in the problem of evil. What Job and Qoheleth lament is that bad things happen to good people.

The hope for a world which parallels our inherent sense of justice underlies Christian eschatology. Then the righteous are rewarded and the wicked are punished. Ultimate and providential justice are meted out fairly and without hint of corruption. The visions of Micah 4 and Revelation 21 where those who come to God are blessed and those who are distant from Him are destroyed sits well with some primordial expectation we have for sensibility in the world. Whatever the cause of inequity in this world which the faithful have always recognized as deeply flawed, there is always the hope, even the inviolable promise, of a sensible world where inequity is translated into perfect, universal, comprehensible justice.

I am certainly not encouraging metaphysical escapism, and I realize that Christian eschatology does not answer the problem of evil only promises that the problem will be corrected. My point is that the reality of inequity, the problem of evil, is not some great modern, atheist “gotcha;” it is not a philosophical trump card that should catch Christian’s by surprise or cause them some kind of new unease. It is a disquieting reality but one that is recognized as part of our theology which can be dealt with, ignored, or explained away but which should never shock us by its mere existence. That bad things happen to good people is the foundation for our eschatological hope, a great leveling where the room that we have left for God’s wrath is filled with His righteous, reasonable fury. We cannot be surprised when some giddy antitheist discovers the argument and seizes on it like a child with a piece of pyrite. We know that evil exists, in some sense and for some reason in spite of our all-power God of love. Whether or not we should even engage the problem depends largely on the person presenting it and their intention in doing so, but that the problem exists should neither surprise us nor subvert our faith. It has always been there.

In fact, I found particularly interesting the peculiar way that Scripture has us live out our hope for a perfect world in the reality of this imperfect one. It should not go without notice that while we affirm that a perfectly sensible world, ideally in accord with the will of the Maker, is one where bad things happen to bad people and good things to good ones, we are nevertheless never called to actualize such a world in the present. We are not told to dole out justice to the iniquitous nor reserve our praise for those truly virtuous. In fact the Christian, in an almost incomprehensible irony, is called to intensify the inequity of the world. On the one hand, Christians are told to accept willingly, joyfully, with almost reckless abandon suffering which comes on them in spite of and even because of their innocence (Matt 5:11-12; Jas 1:2-3; 1 Pet 2:19-24). On the other hand, they are commanded to treat the wickedest oppressors with the greatest munificence, praying for their enemies, blessing those who curse them, feeding those who hate them, and forgiving those who kill them (Matt 5:38-48; Acts 7:60; Rom 12:17-21; 1 Cor 4:12-13). It is almost as though God has commanded us to spit in the face of this warped, corrupted world. The recognition that we are powerless to truly redeem it (a power which lies inevitably with God, an event which we eagerly await) does not deliver us helplessly into apathy. It calls us to highlight, almost comically, the injustice of it. We proclaim our innocence but do not condemn those who make us suffer on account of it. We decry the wickedness of others but answer that wickedness with even more manifold blessings.

If the problem of evil is truly irresolvable, as I suspect it is, and Christianity does not have the answer to the problem, it at least offers a reaction which is infinitely better than fatalistic despair or self-deluded ethical nihilism. Christ - even if he has not imbued us with the comprehensive, inexhaustible knowledge of the Father - has taught us how to cope in a world which will always be, despite some foolishly optimistic claims of science, fundamentally incomprehensible to us as participators therein. In that way, Christians may offer an apology for the faith without presuming to offer any comprehensive answer to the problem.