World Without End

Why Zombies?

This past Sunday, great television returned to primetime. I, along with plenty others, watched the 2nd season premiere of The Walking Dead (I wrote about the first season here). The western world is taken up with Zombies, they are a pop culture phenom. 

Over the next couple of days, I want to look at the topic "Why Zombies", especially in relation to the way Christians interact within the world. The quick version is that zombies provide a place for our culture to both recognize own our destructive nature while maintaining cooperation in what we see is a flawed society. Zombie fiction inhabits a true secular eschatology, and analyze destruction and human nature. For the church, we must understand how our story functions as an alternative timeline to the story of the world.

So stay tuned over the next week and lets think about zombies together. Till then, check out this post from the past.

3 Reasons the Church should understand the zombie apocalypse

 

The Morning After.......

So it didn't happen. The internet is abound with jokes, judgements and taunting. Alot of it comes from the mouths (and fingers) of Christians, critiquing what was rightfully an ill found theology.

Several of my readers asked me last week why I was absent from speculation, linking and commentary. I was actually really busy these last few weeks, but as Saturday grew closer and closer, I felt the pit of my stomach aching for what was going to be a bad weekend for Christians. It was bad for those who hoped Camping was correct and it was a bad weekend for those who will now be lumped in with the disappointed. It will also be a bad weekend because many other Christians are slowly showing our stripes, and earning the the stereotypes of judgemental, arrogant and know it all.

The simple fact: It is easier to make fun of a bad eschatology than a developing a good eschatology.

While many pointed out that Camping was wrong, I did not see many good theological contributions as to why he is wrong. We can point our fingers, but the task of eschatological leadership is hard. While the church (and society) can postmodern away the stickier pieces of eschatology, those in it for the long haul must roll their sleeves up.

We need to learn to talk about judgement.
We need to learn to talk about finality.
We need to relate to secular apocalyptic vision.
We need to understand the actions of immanence pertaining to the words of Christ.
We need pastors who teach about eschatology.

In the words of Robert Jenson, "We need to become fiercely eschatological."

Eschatology is the orientation of the church. Without the promised 2nd coming, we have a worthless faith. We essentially sit around talking about Christmas while it is December 27th. Instead, let this infatuation with the return of Christ stay on our minds.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall ever be, world without end.

 

Tell me about the end of the world

I tell a story about answering a tough question. How do we talk to people about the end of the world? What makes our story uniquely Christian? Do we take part in the tales of destruction as the final event, or do we tell stories of grace, fulfillment and love to those who are in Christ?

We must be talking about all of these things. If we aren't, we will forget who we are. I always go back to this quote.

What you hear today...you have to tell the birthed tomorrow" (Beyond the Thunderdome).

 

End Times Round Up 1.15.11

It has been awhile since the last roundup. Here is the best of End Times thoughts from around the internet.

1. Wednesdays with Wright: Monotheism, Election and Eschatology.
A good summary of N.T. Wright's thoughts in Jesus and the Victory of God. Wright is a leader in current progressive eschatological thoughts and integrates it well into the rest of theology.  Brian does a great job of quickly summarizing a few key points.

 2. Glenn Beck and Mormon Eschatology.
More and more I think Beck is a fascinating character when it comes to American eschatology. I will wait till later to flesh that out, but this article is an interesting piece looking at his political bent and religion. Beck also factors in by urging people to horde food, another factor in Mormon eschatology. The LDS "theological" reasoning for food storage is here.

 

Abandoning

The Western fascination with abandonment is part of a cultural apocalypse.  This film has been making the rounds lately, showing the abandoned 6 Flags Themepark in New Orleans.  I have written before of hurricane Katrina as a unique American Apocalypse, and this video is part of the continuing influence.

Our culture is fascinated with End.  Our postmodern location insists upon it. While a story is not believed in, an end is part of the reality.

The bleak nature of a secular eschatology is confronted by the Church and her story and mission.  Humans have a purpose, and we are part of a definitive timeline that is ordered by the divine.  Our interest in an end does not stem from escape, but in the fulfillment of Christ and the eternal kingdom.

A Very Zombie Holiday

I found this link through Erudite Mess. A great little instructional video for the dealing with the undead during the holiday season

The Sociology of the Apocalypse and American literature

My undergraduate work was in sociology, specifically surrounding unique American social myths (I had a think for cowboys and the stories of the west).  I still think it would be fun to do further education in that field, and my interest in sociology is integral to the way that I think theologically.  I have my notes on it packed away, and it will be a project for further research, but I think that the modern idea of an apocalypse is an example of a broad sociological shift starting the mid 1850's. 

Google Ngram is part of the Google books project.  It allows you to search keywords throughout the digitized library and it creates a graph noting when the word had the most usage in its library.  I played around with it this weekend, and came up with a few interesting graphs. Here is one of them.

The three words have interesting information.  Blue (notating the use of the term antichrist) has a huge spike from the range of 1805 to 1870, peaking in around 1820.  This is roughly the same time as a major American fascination with eschatology begun...the premillennial dispensationalism theology was just one of the new movements at this time. A good resource to understand this period is Discovering an Evangelical Heritage

Both Apocalypse (Red) and Eschatology (Green) are almost dormant during this time.  They start to rise around 1860.  I would imagine this can be credited to the societal turmoil at the beginning of the American Civil War.  This was a very tumultuous time in American Christianity due to the ideas of utopianism, evangelism, and religious fanaticism that are characterized in this era. We also see another spike in around 1915, at the point of World War I.  Around 1941-1942 we see all three categories start to rise considerably.  What is interesting is the red and green peak in the late 1990's along with blue starting to take a steady rise upwards.

Some of the data surrounding the term apocalypse could be skewed, because that word has shifted from a primary theological role and more into a cultural idea, but that is part of the data that makes it interesting.

This is really basic data, and its trustworthiness is subject to some questions, but it at least shows a basic drift of when some keywords surrounding the idea of "end" were popular in American literature.  This was a quick look I took as I continue to research and think about how the West thinks about the end of times.  I hope that I can spend more time working on this type of thought in the next few months.

Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture

This semester I have been prepping to write a Thesis on the book of Revelation.  I spent some time in a Doctoral seminar on the history of Biblical Interpretation.  As part of that class I read Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture by Francis Young. This book looks at the foundations of Christian exegesis (the study of scripture) and how it was part of forming the unique Christian culture in the first few centuries of faith.  I read the book and then engaged it specifically with the book of Revelation and how we can apply some of the patristic principles to our modern day reading of Revelation.  Here is the paper (embedded from my Scribd account).

Engagement With Young and Revelation

Where it all started....

Today marks the 1 year anniverary of PostmodernEschatology.com. I want to post the first two posts today, because I think the really grounded the ideas that I wanted to start writing about.

What is this blog?

So why would someone start a blog about postmodern eschatology?  Is this a ploy for a book deal, or a really demented church plant?  Why would anyone want to spend this much time thinking about the end of the world?

Those are all questions that I rolled around in my head for a few months while contemplating devoting a substantial piece of time of my life to thinking about Eschatology.  After some urging from a few trusted friends and a professor allowing me to use this site for class credit I decided tgo for it.

My hope for this space is to direct and provide a place for conversation regarding how our faith interacts daily with what believe regarding the end of the world.  I think that our views on the end will affect how we view the rest of our faith.  Jesus preached an eschatological message, that of the envisioned kingdom. 

I do think that the greater scope of Christianity (not just 20th Century Evangelicalism) offers a critique against rampant apocalypticism, especially that which has become so popular in the last few decades.  I once had a friend ask me a question during a teaching time, "Chad, whats the end of the world going to be like?"  This wasn't a probing question looking for a heavy theological message, but a question directed out of the need for hope.  As Christians, we have an Eschatalogical hope that is about the fulfillment of the entire created order.

This man named Jesus of Nazareth spoke of hope.  His message was directed to those who had lost hope, and to a religious structure that was misdirected and man made.  That model can be placed at many other points of time in the history of humanity, and it will also be one of the key places that I will use to direct what will hopefully be a communal look at the end of all things.

So we will end things with the Gloria Patri, a great statement grounded in Christian Eschatology.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall ever be, world without end.

What is Eschatology?

Why the big word Chad?  I agree, eschatology is one of the words that gets thrown around that the average person really doesn’t understand.  Academically, it has a pretty wide focus of meaning; such as “end times”, “Kingdom of Heaven”, “judgment”, rebirth”, etc..etc...

Lets have a formal definition.  This one is from the IVP Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms:

eschaton, eschatology (consistent [thoroughgoing], realized, inaugurated). Derived from the Greek term meaning “last,” eschaton refers to the ultimate climax or end of history wherein Christ returns to earth to establish his eternal kingdom of righteousness and justice among all nations. Eschatology, then, is the theological study that seeks to understand the ultimate direction or purpose of history as it moves toward the future, both from an individual perspective (What happens when a person dies?) and from a corporate perspective (Where is history going, and how will it end?).

Ok, that's big and fancy, but good idea of what Eschatology is.  I would define it this way:

Eschatology is the people of God thinking about the action of Past,Present and Future time wrapped around Gods final purpose.

As Christians we confess our belief in an end, “We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come” (from the Nicene Creed).  Eschatology is us thinking about what we confess, and some complex ideas inside of that.  What does life look like after death?  What does the Bible teach us about heaven?  What does tradition teach us about death and heaven, and how might we recognize the classic teachers of the Church and what they have said about the end?

Overall, the greater history of Christianity defines eschatology in a light that many haven’t (except in a vindictive way) through most of the 20th century.  Eschatology is about expectation and hope, not participating in modernity and its story of hopelessness and despair. 

We have hope towards all of the eternal promises that have been given to the Church. 

We have hope in regard to what God will do to this world.....

We have hope towards a life that is both fully absent of pain, but has full knowledge of the Godhead.

The average person has to think about eschatology, because it informs the way that we undergird almost everything we think about God.  It is part of our life with God and how we share our life with others.  We need to remember Eschaton and not Apocalypse is our primary view of how God will put finality on this world.

But this isn’t just theological snobbery...

 

Black Hole Sun: Pop Eschatology in the mid 90's

I was born in 1980, and the years of 1992-1996 were highly influential for me.  I think the dramatic social influence of grunge music is just now being understood by the generation that cut its Rock and Roll teeth on the genre. My friends Tom Fuerst and Eric Crisp and I have had several conversations on how our worldview was influenced and this music shaped how we felt we belonged socially.

Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" (1994) was one of these tremendous shapers. In doing some research I found that the lyrics really served as an artistic picture and the apocalyptic music video was conceptualized by the director.  While Cornell and the rest of Soundgarden might have passed it off, a marginalized youth culture in the middle of the conservative south took this as part of the alternative youth canon.

I remember having conversations with my friends about the video.  Remember that we were all raised on a steady diet of southern religious fear, the end of the Cold War and Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth. The idyllic community in the video served as the culture that we didn't feel we fit in with.  Part of the interesting construction of our religious background, we simply interpreted the supposed judgement as relating to Christian Canon while recognizing the difference between us and popular culture represented in the video.  In the end, we would all just be burned away.

I came across this video today on the internet and it brought back a flood of memories.  I wish that I still had contact and memories of some of the deeper conversations I remember having 15 years ago. In the end, this took me back in time to a place that really formed me. This video is a good example of the dramatic inner belief that something has to happen, that destruction must come, and that life on earth is numbered; it doesn't matter if it comes from a religious or a non religious person.  It can be taken as fact, or just another entry into the pop cultural pantheon of the last 50 years.

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