Brad, I am always puzzled when I hear this said, that eternal life is eternal life here on this world. Is the history of this life, and this earth, to be continuous or discontinuous? If continuous, ie, if we are building the actual, final world NOW, then does this not lead us all to be postmillenialists? (ie, the Kingdom prevails over Babylon, before the second coming?) What do we do with Revelation (by the way, I don't subscribe to Left Behind/current evangelical historical literal interpretations, but even so, however symbolic, the Revelation seems to foretell a near-victory on the part of Babylon before her miraculous overthrow by the returning Christ). If continuous, what about all that language of the rolling up of the earth and skies? Revelation does not sound like an account of the gradual victory of the Kingdom through incremental growth and success of God's people in executing the creation mandate. It sounds like a close call.
If discontinuous, if it is all rolled up at the end and remade, and we are resurrected into a world with different physics (eg, No or a different Second Law of Thermodynamics) then what continuity is provided between what we do now, in Hershey or Toronto, and the New Jerusalem, if not simply the continuity in our own persons, in what God has made us in this life, and in what we have contributed by our love and truth-telling and truth-doing into the lives of others? '
Is there another shoe to drop? Is there to be no end-of-the-current-world, no last day, no final act? If continuous, in what way final?
Joe,
I am learning here BUT I say another "shoe can drop" and it can still be 'continuous' and again still be historic Christianity and not be post-millenial. I have much more thinkng and dialogue to do to understand the "worldview" distinction here. I think if God has another shoe to drop and even if that event is a total recreation of the creation, it still is to be considered a chapter in the story of God's victory in the redemption of creation.
brad
This sounds like communitarianism gone amok. I'm as ready to critique the excessive personal-salvation focus of evangelicalism as the next guy, but "eternal life" must Biblically mean more than the life of a never-ending continuity of mortal individuals.
The New Testament theology of the church in this present age is that while *in Christ* it is perfectly suited to the needs of this age, it is--and its members are--*radically incomplete* in this mortal age. We require to "put on immortality," we "see as in a blurry mirror," we "have this treasure in earthen vessels," and for the Apostle Paul "to die is gain."
I can't think that it's trustworthy to follow very far a theology of the completeness of the community in this age, because it seems fundamentally to cut *against* the trend of Scripture, which is to urge us to look for our completeness in Christ--now in His adequacy to our needs of the day, and for all time in His Consummation at the End.
Cheers,
PGE
PGE,
OK this is a mistake in my communication and writing not in theology. I agree with you. So lets see how to incorporatate yor emphasis into this chapter of the story.
brad
I think I agree here with PGE. There seems to be an either-or mentality going on among critics of the church today. Either it's all about going to heaven or it's all about working on earth. It's both, IMHO. These ideas need not be opposed, and must not be opposed. Both are true. "Today you will be with me in Paradise". "My Kingdom is not of this world". "To live is Christ and to die is gain". "Fear not those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell." Many other verses, not least many in Revelation, indicate a very real non-material realm or dimension to the creation. A purely materialistic understanding of the creation is not adequate, any more than a purely spiritualistic one. I will here be accused of dualism. If by dualism is meant the belief that being is not simply matter-energy and the patterns that emerge from matter-energy, but also spirit, in the sense that God is spirit and in the sense that Jesus existed prior to his incarnation, then I am a dualist.
It is completely consistent to believe that we are called to make every attempt to move the creation back toward its unfallen state while on this earth, and still have an existence beyond this current earth "in heaven" if you will, and ultimately in a new earth. It is also consistent to believe that our attempts to do this will "fail", or seem to fail when viewed only materially. In our own lives we see one aspect of ourselves being steadily improved and becoming more like Jesus even while another aspect of our being...our physical bodies...decline and malfunction and ultimately cease to work at all. The doctrine of the resurrection seems to imply that that which was sanctified and improved during life is retained and re-embodied in a body that is substantially different from the old body, yet somehow connected. Recognizable yet not immediately so. (Think Jesus resurrected.) It seems possible to me...even likely, since God seems to like metaphor...that the world will work the same way. The Church will build and improve something about the world...will build a Kingdom that is in the world but not of it...while the body of the world, so to speak, continues to decline and malfunction and ultimately comes to an end. Then that Kingdom, built in this world before its death, is replaced into a new world, like this one in the same way that Jesus's resurrection body was like his mortal body, but also different...now unending, without those elements that mandate decay and degeneration. We will recognize this Kingdom as the same Kingdom, as we will recognize each other in our new bodies. These current bodies and this current material world are the only context we have for action, now. We must work in this world, doing the works of Jesus, with these dying bodies. The fact that our bodies will die does not excuse us from working today or render our sanctification meaningless or opti
BLAST!!! Forgot the Imperial Truncator!
...or optional. Neither does a view that the world system will continue to slouch toward destruction mean that we should not do as commanded, and continue to build the Kingdom in its midst. Salt, after all, does not preserve the meat forever.
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