In the previous post, I proposed that eschatology has developed two equal and opposite tendencies: either to consign an understanding of ‘the end times’ to events occurring in the far distant or yet to be fulfilled future, or to consign that understanding strictly to events which occurred in the distant past. In both cases, a disjunction occurs between Jesus and people living outside those times; in the former, because events rather than the person of Jesus himself tend to take over the primary focus (the ‘prophetic calendar’), and the events themselves tending to be highly disconnected with any preceding biblical history; in the latter, because the person of Jesus tends to become confined to largely historical interests and contexts.
Within the postmodern mindset, the latter tendency described may be regarded as entirely satisfactory. Postmodernism, as a literary and philosophical phenomenon, decries the personal as a source of meaning. The linguistic matrix into which we are born supposedly creates meaning, rather than authors who attempt to impose meaning on language. Or rather, the phenomenon of the linguistic matrix subtracts from meaning supplied by authors as persons. Therefore to look to a person for meaning is a fallacy, whether it is what Jane Austen intended in her novels, or within the person of Jesus himself as presented in scripture and as a living interpreter of his own story now. Persons as the arbiters of meaning are liable to hi-jack readers, just as they themselves have been hi-jacked by the unseen power-structures of their own lives and times. The task of the reader, in postmodernism, and the reader as interpreter in any situation, is to deconstruct the power structures which impose their false agendas through the author as person. Relegating the story of Jesus strictly to history is one way in which power structures can be subverted. But what do the scriptures themselves say of Jesus?
We have a sub-biblical Jesus if we view him as in any way detached from God’s over-arching purposes for creation. This is evident not only from his earthly life – where his mastery of the created world: the stilling of storms, the miraculous provision of bread – the new manna, the renewing of creation’s fractures in its diseased inhabitants – including affliction by demons and death, were a unique feature of his ministry. Gospels and letters are not hesitant in drawing attention to the significant relationship of Jesus to creation. He participated as the executive authority in the origin of creation – John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2. He is the sustaining power of the entire creation – Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3b. He is the means of restoring and reconciling all creation to its final goal – Colossians 1:20; Hebrews 1:2. This reconciliation and restoration was achieved through God’s unique indwelling within Christ, which allows little other conclusion than that he was, in a unique way in himself the very person of God: John 1:1, 9-11, 14; Colossians 1:19; Hebews 1:3. Specifically, the reconciliation he brought about was through his death on the cross – Colossians 1:20; Hebrews 1:3b.
We have a sub-biblical Jesus if he is in any way detached from the fulfilment of the covenant. Jesus draws attention to God’s covenant with Israel in the Passover meal with his disciples preceding his death – indicating that he was fulfilling all that was promised, in the widest sense, by Israel’s history, in his own person, and through the death of that person on the cross. This death was to be an atonement for sins – Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; etc. Israel’s identity had been moulded over the generations by the story of God’s action in history in the Exodus. Now, the identity of God’s people was to be moulded by a new story, but even more, by an identity with the very person through whom that story was fulfilled. The fulfilment was to be in a new covenant – Hebrews 8:8; 9:14-15. The proxy role of Israel in relation to the wider world is foreshadowed in the promises of worldwide blessing made to Abraham, and in the prophecies of a worldwide mission for Israel throughout the prophets. Just as Israel’s identity narrows down and focuses on one person, Jesus, so the worldwide role of Israel is made possible through Jesus’s fulfilment of the covenant. There were also not several covenants, but only one covenant with a variety of expressions, finding its fulfilment in Jesus – which, in consideration of the wider biblical picture, before and after the central event of his death, could be described as the covenant of God’s faithfulness to his creation, yet determination to deal with sin. It was in the fulfilling of this covenant that Israel had a message for the entire world.
We also have a sub-biblical Jesus if his identity is in any way detached from the person of God. This is true throughout the gospels, and emphatic in the letters. He was God at the creation of the universe, is God in his continuing supremacy over the universe, and remains God in bearing the universe towards its ultimate goal. He was God in the act of bringing reconciliation to the universe through his death on the cross, and is God through the presence of the Spirit on earth, continuing through the church what he began with his disciples – Acts 1:1 (his pre-ascension ministry being all that he “began to do and teach”). Jesus is the God “who was, and is, and is to come” – and, if these words apply to God the Father, they are no less true of Christ himself – the “alpha and omega”, the “first and the last”.
It is against this backcloth that eschatology must be explored, especially in relation to whatever the bible says about “the last days”; “the end of time”; the “last hour”, and anything which can be summarised as “the last things”. Once again, in having to sketch out some key features of the biblical landscape against which eschatology must be considered, I pause, and defer further exploration of a new way of understanding what is meant by “the end” in relation to eschatology, to another post.
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