C. S. Lewis "The World's Last Night"

I have been posting my reflections on Lewis as we read selections for Peter Meilaender's C.S. Lewis webinar. Thus far:

• "Weight of Glory" in the volume of the same name.
• Books I and II of Mere Christianity
• Surprised by Joy
• "Transposition" in the Weight of Glory volume

This week we read The Last Battle and the essay, "The World's Last Night" (1952). The key theme in both is eschatology, the first with heaven and the second with the second coming. This post is on the essay, "The World's Last Night.

1. Lewis suggests two basic categories for why some moderns find the idea of the second coming of Christ embarrassing. The first group involves theoretical objections, the second practical.

The first theoretical objection has to do with the fact that Jesus' teaching on the second coming sits against the backdrop of Jewish apocalyptic. A harsh critic might say, "Jesus was really the same sort of crank or charlatan as all the other writers of apocalyptic" (101). In other words, that Jesus was a lunatic.

Lewis has a number of objections to this line of thinking. First, the fact that there have been apocalyptic whackos would not negate legitimate apocalypticism. William Miller who founded the Adventist movement is mentioned. Lewis counters, "A thing does not vanish--it is not even discredited--because someone has spoke of it with exaggeration" (101). 

There's a Latin expression here, abusus non tolit usum--"Abuse is no excuse." You can't automatically disqualify an idea because someone abuses it. 

2. A softer push back would say, "Every great man is partly of his own age and partly for all time. What matters in his work is always that which transcends his age, not that which he shared with a thousand forgotten contemporaries" (102). Lewis rightly notes that in this view, "we are assuming that the thought of our age is correct."

Let me leave Jesus out of it for a moment and say that I do believe that there are items of progress in which we do have a better understanding--or at least more useful one--than in ages past. The laptop I am typing on is better than anything anyone from Lewis back to Adam ever had. Obviously our understanding of science is superior--or at least our constructs are far more useful--than any place or time before in history. It is simply the case.

I am/we are not smarter than the people of the past, but how could we not be at a great collective advantage to be able to stand on the shoulders of the smartest people from all over the world throughout all of history? How could not the average understanding not be more likely to be more insightful, over time, when we have everything from the past to start from?

That's assuming we listen. No generation is smarter than the previous ones. It may only be a remnant at any time that benefits--the majority may drive us all to perdition at any time. The twisted may blow us all to a nuclear Armaggedon at any time. But the "insightful remnant" at any time should in theory stand on ever higher heights in any field that affords a collective wisdom. 

There will be fits and starts, regress and progress. But I continue to believe that this insightful remnant reached a new level of historical consciousness in the late 1800s. The current generation sees plenty of regress, but there is an intellectual remnant.

So I reserve the right to critique Jewish apocalypticism. For example, the world is not flat. The dead are not in a cave with four hollows in a mountain somewhere. Heaven is not a series of skies straight up to God. I am not smarter than the author of 1 Enoch, but I am right and he was wrong on many things. My understanding has progressed from 1 Enoch's apocalyptic worldview.

3. With regard to Jesus and the earliest generations, Lewis says some curious things. Lewis says that Jesus got it wrong in Mark 13:30 and 9:1--"This generation will not pass until all these things come to pass." Moreover, "they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime" (104).

He considers this a great sign of the authenticity of the Gospels, on the one hand. He also points to Jesus claims to be "ignorant" in Mark 13:32. His bluntness is a little jarring. I don't like using the word ignorant in relation to Jesus. 

However, he expresses a position that I often have in a more tactful way: "The God-Man was omniscient as God and ignorant as Man" (106). Jesus was unconscious when he slept. He did not read Plato as an infant. And Lewis says he was "merely organic life in His mother's womb." Lewis says we must "asquience in mystery." "It would be difficult... repellent, to suppose that Jesus never asked a genuine question" (107). 

4. He continues to rail against a progressive view of history. He and his generation lost this view after WW1 smashed it to bits. "The modern conception of Progress or Evolution... is simply a myth" (108). He is not talking about biological evolution--"I am not in the least concerned to refute Darwinism as a theorem in biology" (108).

He does note, however, that the myth of evolution preceded the biological theory (109). Nor does biological evolution have a straightforward sense of progress. I have described it as "survival of the flukest." Most importantly, even if evolution did imply inevitable biological progress, it would not suggest "any law of progress in ethical, cultural, and social history" (111).

I do not disagree with Lewis here. However, I do believe that egalitarian culture is morally superior to the colonialist world he grew up with. The values of a contemporary American public school is morally superior to the "concentration camp" school so typical of England in his childhood (see Surprised by Joy). 

He makes a snide remark against "the great campaign against White Slavery" (120). I squarely reject comments he makes in more than one place as if to say we shouldn't worry about trying to make the world a more just and equitable place. I'm a Wesleyan, after all.

5. There are some good warnings here though. We should not assume we know where we are in God's story. "How can the characters in a play guess the plot?" (112). "We do not and cannot know when the world drama will end" (113). "We do not know the play. We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V. We do not know who are the major and who the minor characters. The Author knows."

6. We should not fear the second coming. But "at every moment of every year in our lives Donne's question, 'What if this present were the world's last night?'" (117). At the same time, while perfect love casts out fear, "so do several other things--ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption, and stupidity."

God's judgment "will be infallible judgment" (121).  

Restoration (Wes Theo Series)

This weekend I want to finish my sketch of what my outline/overview of a Wesleyan theology looks like.  This is not the Wesleyan theology, but one that I think is forward looking.  Here's ground that I have covered so far:

1. Faith (Introduction)
2. God
3. Creation and Alienation
4. Revelation
5. Reconciliation

In this second to last post, I look at Restoration.

7.1 Christ's Resurrection
The physical resurrection of Jesus points to the beginning of the end and to the restoration of humanity.  In his full humanness, the resurrection body of Jesus points to the what humanity will be in the final resurrection.  However, we do not have to wait for the resurrection to see the restoration process begin. Sanctification in its common sense refers to the work that the Spirit is already doing to restore us now, in this age and in this life. We are being transformed from glory to glory now (2 Cor. 3:18).

The resurrection indicates the power of Christ over death and demonic forces in this age, begun in Jesus' own exorcist ministry on earth. "We do not yet see everything under his feet," but the day is coming and the day is begun.

7.2 Second Coming
Christians have continued to believe throughout the centuries that Jesus will still literally return to earth at some point to save those who are his own and to judge the rest of the world. The notion of a rapture, that Christians will be removed from the earth to go to heaven, leaving everyone else behind, is a more recent twist. Biblically, it is more likely that eternity will be on a restored earth and that Christians will participate in the final judgment in some way (cf. 1 Cor. 6:2-3). We meet Jesus in the air to come back down for the final judgment (1 Thess. 4:17). Nevertheless, Wesley believed we would spend eternity in heaven.

7.3 Final Salvation 
The salvation of the world is not historically limited to humanity but includes the created realm as well. For humanity, salvation means in the first instance an escape from the judgment coming on the rest of those on earth. Full salvation means the transformed body of the resurrection. For the creation, salvation means restoration from the forces of decay and corruption brought on by the Fall. If one accepts evolution, perhaps one might still look to some transformation of natural law in these areas at this time.

7.4 Final Judgment
Christians have historically believed in some sort of eternal punishment for those who are not in Christ.  Traditionally, we have pictured an eternal burning.  However, various Christians have seen some of these images as pictures rather than literal understanding. A significant strand sees hell as an eternal place without the presence of God and does not venture to say exactly what that looks like.  Another looks to some sort of final annihilation of those who by their own decisions are not redeemable. Finally, some look to universal salvation or hold out the possibility that those in hell might switch destinations even there if they truly repent.

Paul the Christ-Follower 2

... continued from the previous post.
_________
At least initially, Paul seemed to expect Christ to return within his lifetime.  We who are alive and remain will be caught up in the air, he tells the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 4:17).  He advises the Corinthians that it is best not to marry because "the time is short" (1 Cor. 7:29).  The question of what happens to believers who die does not even seem to have come up in the months he was at Thessalonica (cf. 1 Thess. 4:13).  He must have focused almost entirely on escaping the coming judgment on the living (e.g., 1 Thess. 1:10) and hardly mentioned the dead. His focus was thus almost the opposite of many today, emphasizing Christ's return to the earth rather than what happens after you die.

Language of "salvation" in Paul thus focused overwhelmingly on an event that was coming rather than on some internal experience.  The gospel was also the positive truth that God had enthroned Jesus as king and that God's kingdom was coming--it did not focus on some individual experience.  Believers would still on the Day of judgment give an account for how they had lived, even after God had forgiven their sins (e.g., 2 Cor. 5:10).  While there was no promise of salvation if a person did not continue in faithfulness (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:26-27; Phil. 3:11), other believers might only get a bit burned in that judgment, while still making it into the kingdom (e.g., 1 Cor. 3:13-15).

On the day when Christ returned, the material creation, including our physical bodies, would be transformed to become like Christ's body after he was resurrected (1 Cor. 15:49; Phil. 3:21).  Currently, the creation is enslaved to corruption and decay (Rom. 8:20), probably since the time of Adam's sin.  Our physical flesh, because it is a part of the creation, is also in its default state in subjection to the power of Sin.  This is why those without the Spirit cannot do the good, even if they want to do so.

However, the Spirit frees us now from this power of sin, and when Christ returns the whole creation will be liberated.  Paul likely located eternity on this renewed earth.  This eternal kingdom of God on earth, where Christ would reign would thus not be a matter of "flesh and blood" (1 Cor. 15:50), but of transformed bodies.

In the meantime, believers live on earth as the "body of Christ" (1 Cor. 12:12-31).  We each have different roles to play, but each is important.  The Spirit lives in the local assemblies (churches) collectively as the temple of the Lord (e.g., 1 Cor. 3:16) far more importantly than within each person individually.  Collectively as well as individually, a church presents its bodies to God as a singular living sacrifice (Rom. 12:2).  Together as well as individually, the God of peace sets us apart and makes us his, "sanctified" and blameless (1 Thess. 5:23).

What did Jesus know 3

For the first half of this section, see here.
_________
... The path that this line of questioning leads us down is a difficult one and not for the faint of heart.  Almost any answer we suggest seems to require adjustments to more comfortable positions, or at least to popular assumptions.  For example, there is the question of Jesus' knowledge.  We may tend to think of Jesus as knowing everything while he was on earth because he was God.  It would be easy to get this impression especially from reading John.

But Jesus himself in Mark explicitly indicates that he was not omniscient on earth. "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (13:32).  One way to conceptualize Jesus' earthly state in our Christian thinking is by way of Paul's comment that Jesus "emptied himself" in Philippians 2:7.  While Paul was not thinking of Jesus emptying himself of omniscience here, Christians have often read the verse in reference to Jesus emptying himself of many divine powers and privileges in his incarnation.  However we take it, the gospels clearly present the earthly Jesus as more limited in knowledge than God the Father.

Presumably, Jesus learned things the way we all do as children and adults.  Would we really imagine that he had fluent conversations in Aramaic with his mother as soon as he emerged from her womb?  Or did he announce to her at his one year old birthday that he was the pre-existent, second person of the Trinity?  In the middle of his ministry, would he have automatically understood a conversation with us in English or French, languages that did not yet exist?

It is both orthodox and biblical to suppose that Jesus learned and knew things much like the rest of us, with the exception of course that he had an unhindered connection with the Holy Spirit.  Even here, we can make a good argument that, in his full participation in humanity, Jesus played it by human rules.  Does not John 14:12 say that by the Spirit's power we can do even greater things than Jesus did while on earth?  A good argument can be made theologically that, by the Spirit's power, there is nothing Jesus did while he was on earth that we cannot also do--whether it be knowledge, power, or resistance of temptation.

So there is neither anything unbiblical nor unorthodox to suggest that Jesus may not have known his full mission from the very beginning.  When did he realize he was the messiah?  When did he realize he was divine?  When did he realize he was going to die for sins?  Could he himself not initially have foreseen how long the time would be between his death and second coming?

But was he ever mistaken in his thinking?  A partial understanding is one thing, but a wrong one?  Did he ever mistakenly tell his mother he left the camel by the synagogue when he had actually left it at the gate?  Since forgetfulness of this sort is not a sin, there is nothing unorthodox or unbiblical to suggest that Jesus made mental mistakes of this sort like any of us do.  Perfect memory and moral perfection have little to do with each other.

But now we get to potentially more problematic questions.  If Jesus' understanding of the coming kingdom developed, would God have allowed any partial understandings to end up in Scripture, anything that was less than "fully cooked"? [5] It is one thing to ask if it is possible that Jesus himself did not initially realize there would be two thousand years between his departure and return.  It is another to ask whether such a partial understanding would end up in Scripture.

Interestingly, we can imagine that many Christians will find it more difficult to imagine that a partial understanding would end up in Scripture than to imagine that Jesus himself might have had a partial understanding at some point. Is it possible that Matthew and Mark did not see that there would be a gap between the tribulations of the destruction of Jerusalem and the final return of Christ?  Is it even possible that they presented Jesus' words in a way that sounds like there would be less of a gap than Jesus himself presented the coming of the kingdom?

To a large extent, many of these questions are unanswerable.  We are plodding through them to get a sense of exactly what we are dealing with here, what the possibilities are and which are more or less likely.  As we continue this troublesome journey, we notice interestingly that Luke 21 has seriously toned down the immanent expectation of Mark 13...

[5] We do find some material in the Old Testament that is less than "fully cooked" on his way to full revelation.  Take for example this statement from Ecclesiastes 3:19-20: "For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again."  This part of the Old Testament has no sense of a significant afterlife.  The idea of a progress of revelation between the testaments seems inevitable.  It is more difficult for us to allow for such things in the New Testament.

The Rapture is Next Saturday...

I guess the rapture is next Saturday.  I'm not even going to bother finishing grading the rest of this semester's stuff. ;-) Some people have set their blogs to keep posting even after the rapture (at least till Judgment Day on October 21), so I'm not going to worry about it.

By the way, this might be a good argument for greater training of ministers and laity in how to read the Bible in context... rather than us continually making Christianity look foolish.

Tom Wright's Surprised by Hope ...8

And now, today's part 2, continuing our review of Tom Wright's, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church on this third Sunday of Eastertide.

Previous posts on Wright's book include:

Part 1: Setting the Scene
1-2. Introduction, Confusion about the Afterlife in the World and Church
3. Early Christian Hope in Its Historical Setting
4. The Strange Story of Easter

Part 2: God's Future Plan
5-6. The Cosmic Future and The Nature of the World's Hope
7. Jesus, Heaven, and New Creation

Chapter 8: "When He Appears"
I was very appreciative of this chapter because it has helped me understand Wright's position on the second coming much better. First, that in fact Wright does believe in the second coming. His understanding of the New Testament on this subject is quite interesting.

First, he doesn't believe that Jesus ever predicted his return. But he doesn't believe this in the sense that the parables about absent landords and kings aren't historical. Nor does he take predictions such as Mark 13 and others that engage Daniel 7 are unhistorical. Rather, they were about the first coming of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70.

But the rest of the New Testament rightly then speaks of Jesus' return once and for all which is yet to come. Very interesting! I'm not convinced, but it is ingenius.

Wright then goes on to discuss what the parousia is for Paul. He mentions two meanings in the background literature: 1) mysterious presence of a god and 2) royal presence. He insists the word does not mean arrival but presence, ironically contradicted by his later comments about a king arriving at a city and being escorted into a town.

Yes, Wright believes that Christ will again be physically present on earth after the general resurrection. He does not, however, take the image of Christ coming on the clouds with the angels literally. He notes the parallels in Colossians of parousia with the word to "appear." He thinks language of clouds and descending is a metaphorical tapestry of 1) Moses coming down from the mountain, 2) Daniel 7, and 3) the visit of an emperor to a colony.

I buy allusions to the second two. I'm unconvinced of the first, where it seems to me Wright is once again smarter than Paul. And once again I would charge Wright with demythologizing Paul in his exegesis rather than in his application.