World Without End

Adding to the library

To make Christmas easier for the various parts of my family I started an Amazon wishlist years ago.  This year, it seemed to be used by more and more people in the family.  Most of them had things to say about the amount and type of reading that was on my list, but I think my sister's thought takes the cake:

Mom..the funny thing is this isn't just for school, this is his leisure reading!!!

I will say that building a good library on things your are interested is is important, and part of that is putting resources in that you don't necessarily agree with. I am working on a post for my main blog about how to review commentaries for personal use, it should be up in the next few days.

But here is what I added to my Revelation library this Christmas through the graciousness of my family.

 

The Late Great Planet Earth: pt 1

Diving into a rather complex theological concept presents itself with many questions.  After thinking about writing on Pre-Millennial Dispensationalism for several months, I decided to tackle it from the popular level.  Many people are familiar with this theological idea through the writings of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and their “Left Behind” series.  These books are very fictionalized and a large series, so it would take a long time to walk through them.

I decided a few weeks ago to blog through The Late Great Planet Earth, because it was a monumental book, and heavily influenced late modern Western thought.  It came out at the back end of the Cold War, and America started focusing on the Middle East in several arena’s.  While many younger people today haven’t read it, this book was the primary point of influence for many in Evangelicalism.

So over the next couple of weeks, I want to read, blog, and write through it.  I hope this rises questions and causes us to think about our eschatology in light of the cross, placing the person of Jesus Christ at the center of our belief on and in the End.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be

Look what came in the Mail today!!!

This came in the mail this morning.  I have actually never read The Late Great Planet Earth

It started contemporary America's fascination with Apocalyptic thought that led eventually to the best selling "Left Behind" series. 

I have decided to start reading/blogging through it over the next few weeks (starting next monday).  I don't want to critique it, as much as engage with it.  This does mean some investigation as to how it uses scripture and how it engages with theology.

So head to amazon and pick up a cheap copy of it and get ready to read through it with me.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be

Eschatology and Hope: Time and Eternity

This last semester I had the experience to sit under Dr. Larry Wood and hear lectures on how Christian time and physics relates.  I will admit that those lectures and readings took alot of concentration and I am just now able to go back to it and spend more time in thought with the topic.

But Anthony Kelly has a great section on the topic of time and eternity that shares a vocabulary with those lectures.  Below are 3 points from chapter 2 of Eschatology and Hope.

1.  We live in time.
Creation in its every instant is related to the creator.  Time doesn't exist within God.  Thats an easy lesson to the small child, but when we get older we start to question in.  Time revolves around the divine.  God is operative within time, but not bound to it.  Time needs God.

2. According to Aquinas, creation could have been of eternal duration.
This is a philosophical allowance, but on the ground of revelation we understand that creation took place in time, meaning that it could have been eternal.  Time is an unfolding idea, and salvation has introduced a different dimension (Rahner and Pannenberg have contributed to this idea).  We are given time to contemplate (through justification and sanctification, ie our salvation experience) the divine.  God is His Triune love has time for creation and makes time for history and its full unfolding.

3.  God meets us in time.
Jesus was sent "in time" to extend a future sense back to humanity.  We were able to see the way out.  This is the proleptic imagination.  Christ and the Holy Spirit came to inhabit human time and to lead us towards the final realization of time.

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These seem like complicated ideas (and they are), but as Christians functioning in a culture that we are at odds with, gaining an understanding of humanity always being planned for combats the nihilstic ideas of the "great accident"....that our evolution is from chance and we don't matter in the cosmic scheme of the universe.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be

Eschatology and Hope: The Four Features of Hope

I wrote last week about Anthony Kelly's Eschatology and Hope, and it has been a good read so far.  What I want to share today is just a small excerpt regarding hope.  Hope is itself a foundation of Christianity, having a forward grasping hope that brings future into present is a practice of faith.  But it has fallen away, and as Kelly as put it “When the evils are so obvious, the language of hope seems to good to be true”.  It is humans attempting to find a lack of promise.

Kelly offers Four Features of Hope, and I think they are important.

1.  Hope differs from optimism
Optimism is the idea of being “happy enough” with the system.  It isn’t bad, but an emotion              expressing the facility to get by in a positive manner.  It wants prediction.

On the other side, hope is fine with spontaneity, and logic no longer needs to function.  We don’t expect anymore.  WIth hope, we realize that humanity is never in total control, and a Christian Eschatology presupposes a creating, saving Triune God who is in control.

2.  Hope operates in a world of meaning and values.
Optimism doesn’t have a moral obligation.  Hope differs by having a “conscience and an intelligence that mere optimism lacks.”

Hope sees future life as promise and not just the same mundane “getting by”.  Hope knows about and expects ultimate good, divine good.  It changes our value system to one that understands completeness.

3.  Hope focuses on what is truly important in terms of personal fulfillment.
Hope knows that we need more than just daily bread, but it looks to a life that humanity will be able to function at its highest degree.  It is bigger than imagination, and recognizes that we have eternal value.

4.  Hope is not mere wishing for something more.
Hope means knowledge.  It is a way of life.  It inspires action.  In “engenders a deep moral sense and points in the direction of a more passionate self-involvement in the making of the world.
Hope involves others,  If you have hope, you give it to others.

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I often wonder how I have forgotten hope, and how I haven't expressed it in the various ministry arenas I have served in or simply in endeavors in life.  Just yesterday I spoke with someone about how things just seem impossible these days, and how the apocalypticism that is purported through the media (and the History Channel's Apocalypse Week) just makes them want to give up.  After that conversation these characteristics are important.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be