We have Greg Boyd speaking this week at the Christian Associates staff conference in Sopron in Hungary. His theme is pretty much the stuff of a new book that will be coming out later this year, which, if Greg had had his way, would be entitled Revolting Beauty. As it is, the will of the publisher prevailed and it will be called something else – I don’t know what.
In his introductory session this morning he talked about the calling of the church in terms of a revolt against everything that is ugly in the world. The kingdom of God puts the beauty of God’s character on display – through healing, the casting out of demons, solidarity with the poor, revolt against oppression, against greed, against everything in the culture that furthers sexism, judgmentalism, oppression. Jesus forsakes power – that is beautiful. He revolts against the structures of the world, he refuses to take the way of violence – that is beautiful. That is a revolutionary life.
The task of Christians is to follow the Jesus who incarnated that kingdom of beauty; the essence of being part of that kingdom is looking like Jesus, living like Jesus.
It’s a powerful way of conceptualizing the calling of the church. But the question I would pose at this point is: Which Jesus are we to follow? The ‘hymn’ of Colossians 1:15-20 speaks of Jesus both as the ‘image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation’ and as the ‘head of the body, the church…, firstborn from the dead’. My argument would be that much of the New Testament has to do with the second part of that equation: the shaping of a community that will imitate Christ in his faithful, obedient suffering and victory death, which belongs to an eschatological narrative of judgment on rebellious Israel, renewal of the covenant and vindication of the suffering community against the pagan oppressor.
But that storyline intersects with another storyline about the renewal of creation in which Jesus is seen as the one through whom all things were made. My argument would be, therefore, that the church is called in the broadest sense to a post-eschatological imitation of the Jesus who embodies in himself the completeness of creation. Because that imitation always takes place in a potentially hostile world, the first storyline does not become irrelevant – we never outgrow it; Jesus is always the firstborn amongst those who suffer because of their faithfulness. But the scope of the ‘imitation’ is expanded to encompass all that it means to be a blessed creation.
Re: Greg Boyd, revolting beauty, and the imitation of Jesus
I have had a number of discussions in the past with those of the realised eschatology position, sometimes known as preterite theology. I have a lot of sympathy with this viewpoint and partly because the picture of New Jerusalem in Revelation is so obviously about the Church as it should be in the present age. However, my query with them is analogous to my query to you, which, put simply, is that the term ‘post-eschatalogical’ is self-defeating.
Re: Greg Boyd, revolting beauty, and the imitation of Jesus
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by ‘self-defeating’ in this context but you may well be right. I use ‘post-eschatological’ somewhat rhetorically or playfully to highlight the fact that, as I understand it, most of what the New Testament says about the future has in view relevant and foreseeable future events, foremost among them being the devastating Jewish revolt against Rome and the eventual ‘victory’ of the faithful church over Roman imperial paganism.
However, it seems to me that there appears on the outer rim of the New Testament’s vision of the future a final eschatological horizon consisting of the absolute renewal of creation. I am not convinced that the New Jerusalem is an image for the whole people of God. Possibly, but I am more inclined to think that it stands for the community of the saints which would suffer as Christ suffered, be vindicated as Christ was vindicated, and reign with him (the Lamb in the midst of the city) throughout the coming ages. That community of the martyrs perhaps constitutes a priesthood in the city (cf. Rev. 20:6), which is the dwelling place of God’s presence in the renewed creation. The new earth is presumably peopled by those who are not in heaven but are raised from the dead, whose names, nevertheless, are written in the book of life.
So I think Revelation 21-22 constitutes a real future hope of a final victory over death and evil, not merely a metaphor for the church, though I would argue that it is part of the function of eschatology that the people of God understands itself in the light of the new creation.
If issues such as this are to be discussed properly, this has to be done outside of the traditional categories of eschatological thought, including preterism. To my mind the reading that I have put forward (eg. in The Coming of the Son of Man) arises from a critical-realist hermeneutic that prioritizes the historical experience of the community of the text.
Re: Greg Boyd, revolting beauty, and the imitation of Jesus
Hi Andrew,
I’m afraid your link to the Coming of the Son of Man didn’t work so I couldn’t read it.
Post eschatalogical is self-defeating due to the meaning of eschatalogical, which refers to the last things. I was being a little toungue-in-cheek there!
But I had a serious point in mind, namely that if the events of the New Testament, the destruction of the Temple (as in preterism) and in your case the assimilation of Christianity into the Empire are the last things, then there is nothing further to look forward to. Alternatively, the term eschaton or similar to describe those events is a misnomer, an exaggeration perhaps or even a conceit of the church. Perhaps the prota (ta prwta) or the first things would be a better word to classify these events as, if classification is required. That would mean the first prophetic events of the church age or realised age. Our own activities and aims would then be a continuation of these prota, an explanation of them.
However, I am not convinced that any explanation or classification of these events is called for (other than perhaps fulfillments of prophecy). This is a natural consequence of an open world view. I understand that Greg Boyd holds to a view of the openness of God himself and I would certainly support that but in my view, such a concept is meaningless unless one’s view of the universe as a whole (God included) is similarly open. That is definitely a realist perspective.
Personally, I would rather stick with that realist perspective than accept a kind of dispensational view of history and judging from your comments, you probably would too. It does indeed make better sense to thus treat the NT as having near-term value rather than long-term value which then transforms into a dispensationalism. In the same way, the early church’s ethical activities, make much better sense when considered as ethical decisions made by a church that was confident of its own authority to make decisions of that nature, in union with the Holy Spirit. That’s much more realistic than treating the NT as another set of laws for us to follow for all time. It also places upon us a new responsibility (as openness always does) to assert our authority as the Church of the living Christ in all such matters as a continual activity instead of just trying to understand what the NT says about some given matter (such as homosexuality???)
As I said, I would much prefer this kind of worldview. But it does leave some areas of concern and I do miss the idea of a return of Christ in bodily form in final judgement. Perhaps you will be better than me at incorporating this into my theology but at the moment I sometimes think of myself (uncomfortably) as mildly heretical in acknowledging that I can’t work out how the return of Christ fits in.
Re: Greg Boyd, revolting beauty, and the imitation of Jesus
Quote:
Grounding Biblical prophecy within the narrative-framework of the authors’ does not contradict the fact that the story, albeit somewhat in a different way, continues with us. Though one may interpret some or many of the biblical prophecies to be grounded firmly within history, or the foreseeable future of the authors’, does not rule out the fact that death is still a reality for us today, and that we can have hope that God will vindicate his people through resurrection and judgment, ultimately cumulating in a “new heavens and new earth.”
Andrew with his narrative-realist approach to Scripture interprets many of the apocalyptic expectations of the early Christians to have come to fulfillment within history, but, to the best of my knowledge, still sits firmly in the hope that there is still a future for the rest of the post-biblical church, namely in the resurrection and renewal of creation foreseen at the end of the book of Revelation and the other texts it draws upon – an image that looks beyond the historically rooted circumstances related with most other apocalyptic visions.
That is my understanding of Andrew’s approach (which I find in many ways to be a very good approach), but you better wait for his own response.
Re: Greg Boyd, revolting beauty, and the imitation of Jesus
How so? The reference is to "last things" of a covenant which even Paul describes as coming to an end, not "last things" of all physical existence. It self-defeating perhaps due to an already established context which may not be entirely accurate.
The reason many folks cannot work out a return of Christ into their theology is (in my opinion) because they have created expectations that not even Christ himself can meet. There is a great amount of confusion a bodily return of Christ can bring to a Christian’s mind. A "covenantal" approach is much more clear as far as I am concerned. If the eschatological meaning of the return of Christ is primarily re: God’s relationship with man, and if that relationship transcends this flesh body we have for a short period of time here on this planet, then a bodily return of Christ may not fit as well in one’s theology.