Re: The suffering of creation

Re: The suffering of creation

Your two criteria don’t provide a basis for differentiating between what has been and what has not been fulfilled. You seem to be saying, on the one hand, everything has been inaugurated, on the other, nothing has been consummated. But on what basis should I agree with you that judgment on Jerusalem is more fulfilled than the coming of the Son of man? Why do we have to tease apart the events of New Testament eschatology - which in the texts belong to the same basic nexus of hopes, which have a narrative coherence - and allocate some of them to the past and others to an indeterminate future? The inaugurated eschatology consensus is beginning to look to me like a classic hermeneutical fudge.

To be honest, it looks a bit like Rev.19 to me (even the punishment of the heavenly rulers, cast into pits awaiting judgment ‘after many days’ parallels the imprisonment of Satan during John’s ‘thousand years’).

See, hearing echoes is not so difficult! I’d agree, but I would connect the imprisonment of Satan with the overthrow of Babylon - satan is the force behind Rome’s opposition to YHWH and his people, just as the ‘host of heaven’ inspired the hostility of the ‘kings of the earth’ in Isaiah 24:21.

To argue that this has happened would, I think, have confounded the Jews then (and now), and render Isaiah’s metaphor as meaningless hyperbole.

What is the problem with seeing this as a hope that must been transmuted in Christ, through whom, as the suffering Son of man to whom kingdom is given, God reigns over his people in place of the kings of the earth? Yes, there are still enemies to be defeated, but Christ reigns now, God’s kingdom over his people is an established fact: because Christ died, because we have the Spirit, because the early church remained faithful in the face of persecution, no Caesar can rule over us, the back of satanic opposition has been broken, the kingdom of God over his people has come, and we are free to celebrate the fact in the extravagant language of Old Testament prophecy.

The resurrection of those in Christ By: Andrew (12 replies) 31 January, 2006 - 16:04