Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Theology - Eschatology: Nero Revived

In the first of his Dialogues, the fifth-century Christian writer Sulpicius Severus said that “there is no doubt that Antichrist, conceived by an evil spirit, has already been born.”  He spelled out his expectations for the future: Nero and the Antichrist would come, Nero ruling in the west and the Antichrist establishing power in the East and rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem.  He will persecute Christians and demand circumcision from everyone.  Eventually, the Antichrist will turn against Nero, and then Christ will destroy Antichrist himself.

This is a remarkably good reading of the New Testament: He recognizes that the Antichrist is a religious figure associated with the temple, that circumcision is a crucial issue in the prophecies concerning the end of the age, and identifies the crucial time with the Emperor Nero.

The only problem with his interpretation is time: He’s five centuries late.

Theology - Eschatology: Faith Seeking Understanding again

A reader, Dan Glover, responds to my comments about Milbank’s take on the faith-seeking-understanding motto.  He’s more correcting my presentation of Milbank than Milbank himself:

“I think that . . . he is wrong to say that ‘this is fundamentally an eschatological rather than an epistemological point.’  I think he is pulling an either/or distinction when it ought to be seen as within the realms of both/and.  In the same way that he is rejecting the dualism in the faith/reason distinction, I think he is wrong to say that epistemology and eschatology for the believer can be separated and that this issue belongs in the realm of one and not the other.  I think this fits within both the realms of epistemology and eschatology.

“Another example would be sanctification.  Using Milbank’s same reasoning above, we might say that sanctification is not a matter of ethics but rather of eschatology.  Of course it is true that sanctification is an eschatological consideration.  Sanctification here and now can only be in part and only in the eschaton will we be fully perfected, fully sanctified.  But it is also a matter of ethics, of obedience here and now, of striving toward the perfections of the eschaton.  Is this also not true of reason?  Is there also both now and a not yet aspects to reason?”

Theology - Eschatology: Beatific vision and resurrection

N. T. Wright has recently been telling people they’ve got personal eschatology wrong.  Heaven is not the final destination for the saints, but they will be raised in transfigured bodies to inhabit a newly united heaven-and-earth.

That this causes jaw-dropping astonishment is itself jaw-droppingly astonishing.  Hasn’t anyone ever read the Apostles’ Creed?  “Life everlasting” comes after “resurrection of the body.”

But then you pick up a book by a traditionalist Catholic who celebrates the beatific vision with such (often moving) mystical energy that the resurrection fades to the background, and you realize that Wright ain’t tilting at windmills after all.

Theology - Eschatology: Endings

A partial self-review of Solomon Among the Postmoderns: Ironically, while I problematize beginnings at the outset of the book, I don’t do the same with endings.  I treat the “end” as a simple end.  Several recent encounters - including a fine paper from my student Ryan Handermann - exposed that mistake, which, once pointed out, is glaringly obvious.   Christianity’s “end” is an end only from one angle of vision.  From another perspective it is another beginning.  It is not a total closure; it’s more an opening than a closing.

This is not only obvious, but would have been a neat parry to postmodern fears of totalization.   To postmodern thought, the Christian notion of a final judgment seems tyrannical; it’s frightening.  It should be, perhaps, but on the other hand the philosophical objection can be addressed by pointing to the complex nature of Christian finality.  On the one hand, there is closure, which ensures that meanings don’t proliferate to infinity and that injustices don’t remain buried forever.  On the other hand, this closure is a new beginning, an inconceivable liberation; the end is not twilight but the blinding brightness of day.

Theology - Eschatology: Distention and eschatology

In a 1957 essay in Man and Time, Gilles Quispel claims that Augustine’s views of time have been extracted from the “great struggle between a cyclical and a historical view of the world, between archaism and Christianity,” and therefore have been misunderstood. Augustine “comes to grips with the Neoplatonists and turns time inward in order to make room for eschatology.”

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Theology - Eschatology: Justification and Judgment

Is it appropriate to use the term “justify” to describe God’s verdict at the final judgment?

This has admittedly not been common usage in Reformed theology. “Justify” has normally been reserved for the “already” of God’s verdict rather than the “not yet.”

But Paul uses “justify” to refer to the judgment in Rom 2:13, so the usage has to be legitimate.

One might wish that Paul were clearer, more precise, and didn’t use “justify” in what we might perceive is an “improper” sense.

But he did use it that way, and we’re stuck with Paul.

Theology - Eschatology: Jesus the Judge

The Father has put judgment into the hands of the Son (John 5), and God the Father has appointed a day on which the Risen Son will judge all men (Acts 17:31). The judge of all will be a Man, as Paul says in Acts 17.

According to the PCA FV Study Committee, the “so-called final verdict of justification” based only on “the perfect obedience and satisfaction of Christ received through faith alone.”

Doesn’t that mean that Jesus is passing judgment on His own obedience? And isn’t that slightly odd? Doesn’t Jesus seek His Father’s approval rather than His own?

Theology - Eschatology: Hodge on Judgment according to works

Was Charles Hodge out of accord with the Westminster Standards as interpreted by the FV Study Commitee?

Hodge writes of the final judgment: “The ground or matter of judgment is said to be the ‘deeds done in the body,’ men are to be judged ‘according to their works;’ ‘the secrets of the heart’ are to be brought to light. God’s judgment will not be founded on professions, or the relations of men, or on the appearance or reputation which they sustain among their fellows; but on their real character and on their acts, however secret and covered from the sight of men those acts have been. God will not be mocked and cannot be deceived; the character of every man will be clearly revealed.”

In addition to “general representations of Scripture that the character and conduct of men is the ground on which the final sentence is to be pronounced,” Hodge notes that for those who hear the gospel “their future destiny depends on the attitude which they assume to Christ.” He points to Matthew 25, arguing that “the inquest concerns the conduct of men toward Christ . . . The special ground of condemnation, therefore, under the gospel is unbelief; the refusal to receive Christ in the character in which He is presented for our acceptance.”

While I agree with Hodge’s last point, I would add that in Matthew 25 the attitude to Christ is expressed in how one treats “the least of these my brothers.” Even here, the judgment is according to what people have done, and particularly concerns whether they have acted with charity toward Jesus’ brothers.

Reading Matthew 25, I’d like not to believe in judgment according to works. But I can’t avoid it.

Theology - Eschatology: Judgment according to works

Revelation 20:11-15 is widely taken as a scene of final judgment. Despite some potential preterist doubts, it does appear to be a final judgment scene. It comes after the millennium, and the ones to be judged are raised from the dead.

The dead in v 12 includes all the dead, not only the wicked dead. The names of some of the dead are found written in the book of life, and they escape the lake of fire. Those names are not written are tossed into the lake of fire, with death and Hades.

Twice in this passage, John says that the dead are judged according to their works. They “were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds” (v. 12); and “they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds” (v. 13).

Would John fall afoul of the Westminster Standards as interpreted by the FV Study Committee?

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Theology - Eschatology: Realized Eschatology

Christians find an anchor for life in historical events, centrally in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

We are not the only ones. For some, the Holocaust becomes the key to understanding all subsequent history. For others, the Spanish Civil War. For others, the founding of the US, or the French Revolution.

Has it always been this way? Or is it possible that after the cross and resurrection, realized eschatology has become unavoidable? Perhaps since Jesus we can’t not believe that a new creation has come.

Theology - Eschatology: Alpha, not Omega

In his recent book on resurrection in Judaism, Jon Levenson notes that the objections to resurrection in the modern world usually came from outside religious traditions. Some took an “extreme” position that presupposes “atheism and thus regard nature and its laws as eternal and absolute.” “Religious liberals” take a more modern view: “the modern objections to resurrection associate God with the alpha point, creation, but disconnect him from the omega point, the messianic end-time, which, it is respected at all, is reformulated as a product only of human beings following moral law and thus ushering in a perfect world.” Deists, for instance, would credit God with setting up the order of nature, but would deny Him a role in its fulfillment.

Two comments: First, this highlights the revolutionary importance of the twentieth-century recovery of eschatology. And, second, this perspective on modern thought highlights the primary continuity between modern and postmodern, that is, the hostility of both to eschatological closure. Postmodernism is, from this angle, only the belated recognition of the consequences of affirming Alpha while denying Omega.

Theology - Eschatology: As if it were planned

Few areas of theology have been as ridiculed in modern times as eschatology. Antichrists, dragons, beasts, final judgments - it’s all superlatively mythological for modern rationalists.

Sometime in the early part of the twentieth century, however, New Testament scholars began rediscovering the centrality of eschatology in NT theology. For some, this deepened skepticism about the authority of the apostles - they expected the end of the world, and they were clearly wrong. Others recognized the “eschatological tension” of now and not-yet that is so much at the heart of the apostolic gospel.

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