I suggest that we take as a starting point the distinction between two tasks.
The first task is that of defining as well as we can the historical-eschatological narrative that has given rise to a ‘gospel’ that needs preaching. The primary reason for doing so is to ensure that we are telling the right sort of biblical story, but this approach may also prove especially helpful for defining a postmodern ‘orthodoxy’. Michael’s paper offers important guidelines for exploring these questions further, but this summary will concentrate on our attempts to answer the particular question about the gospel.
There seemed to be agreement in our discussions that the thinking and agenda of modern evangelicalism have created distortions in the core narrative of Christian faith and that these distortions have in turn forced us into certain doctrinal positions with which we are personally uncomfortable and which are especially unhelpful for the purposes of emerging culture mission. There is a need, therefore, to revisit the biblical texts and reconstruct the story in the light of an historical-critical hermeneutic (Andrew). We are likely to find, as a result, that much of the language of eschatology and salvation, by which we define the gospel, relates specifically to the fate of second temple Judaism and the emergence of a renewed people of God in the pagan world. How this works out in detail still needs to be clarified but it is already evident that this sort of retelling of the story will have important implications for how we understand the gospel.
The second task has to do with determining how we interpret and apply this gospel within a postmodern cultural context.
A useful distinction was made between an essential ‘kerygma’ and the secondary teaching that safeguards the integrity of the kerygma and expounds its implications for mission and the life of the church (Dan). We recognized the possibility that the secondary teaching might have to be adjusted in response to social and cultural change.
However, we also identified at least two respects in which the gospel has to be shown to be more than a set of abstracted beliefs or propositions. First, the gospel should not be separated from its narrative context, which helps us to keep in touch with the historical-eschatological story behind the gospel; secondly, the gospel should always be embodied, communicated, lived out, in relationship and in the life of the community. One way to ensure this relational aspect would be closely to identify the gospel with the person of Jesus (Hud).
The emphasis on community here also has implications for how we understand conversion. We found Kallenberg’s suggestion helpful that conversion should be understood as ‘naturalization into community’ (Rogier). This way of thinking corrects the individualism and epistemological reductionism of traditional evangelical models of conversion. It also agrees with the argument that in a ‘post-eschatological’ situation salvation should be understood not as gaining life after death but as entering a community of the Spirit in which we experience the life of the age that has come.
This ‘new life’ also needs to be understood in creational terms (Wes). If in certain respects the gospel is the product of the narrow and particular story of Israel, it must also be fitted within a wider creational or cosmic narrative. This expansive, holistic outlook resonates with postmodern hostility to reductionist intellectual strategies, but at the same time there is an inherent optimism in it which challenges the scepticism and pessimism of postmodernism, offering not another way to announce the demise of the modernist project but an authentic new beginning. Again there is a significant connection here with the ‘post-eschatological’ emphasis on the ‘worldly’ orientation of the renewed community of God.
What Happens When People Die?
You will have to excuse me, I’m new here, but I honestly don’t know what you are talking about. I reviewed Rogier’s article and was left with similar confusion. What on earth do you mean by “post-eschatological”? Why should not salvation not be understood as gaining life after death? What do you mean by “entering a community of the Spirit in which we experience the life of the age that has come.” What about the age that is coming? Or is there even an age coming?
Though “this expansive, holistic outlook resonates with postmodern hostility to reductionist intellectual strategies,” and at the same time “challenges the scepticism and pessimism of postmodernism,” but how does it give comfort to the bereaved who lost a dearly loved believer? Though it does offer “another way to announce the demise of the modernist project but an authentic new beginning” how does it show death being defeated?
Could this gospel give courage to those being persecuted? Whould those who were being thrown to the lions, or burned at the stake during the Reformation, or thrown in prison for years in many different countries today believe this “post-eschatological” gospel? Do you think these Christian martyrs throughout history (not just the modern period) would have set in their minds that obedience to Christ is more important than preserving their own life?
Though, I come across as rhetorical, and maybe even ignorant, I just don’t see exactly what the above gospel is or what kind of answer it could give the question, what happens to people after they die?
Post-eschatology and the problem of death
Adam, many thanks for taking the trouble to read these articles and set out your response. These are important questions and should be addressed.
‘Post-eschatological’ is a provocative and to some extent misleading term. I have used it not because I want to argue that there is no eschatology to come, that it is all in the past, but to underline a growing conviction on my part (I don’t think I’m alone in this) that much of the ‘eschatology’ that we find in the New Testament relates specifically to the difficult and definitive transition that the people of God went through in the first centuries. This has two critical and related implications regarding i) how we define the mission of the church, and ii) how we understand the final ‘eschatological’ condition.
(You could also have a look at A Lutheran critique of open source theology and Almost back where we started from on this site.)
The argument that is beginning to ‘emerge’ in certain parts of the church is that the ‘end’ will not be the destruction of this creation and the removal of all the ‘saved’ to heaven but the renewal of creation. In this new creation there will be no dualistic distinction between heaven and earth, the dwelling of God will be with humanity, there will be no more death, and so on. This new creation, however, was inaugurated in Christ’s resurrection on the first day of the week, and it continues as believers become ‘new creation’ in Christ. Mission then comes to be understood in its fullest sense as bringing about the new creation - worship, reconciliation, healing, peace, justice - within history, not least as a sign of the new creation that is to come.
Those who are already ‘new creation’ in Christ will obviously be part of the new heavens and the new earth that John sees in Rev.21:1-5. What happens between death and the final resurrection of all the dead is perhaps debatable. My own view is that between dying and being raised from the dead there can only be a state of being dead. Others might see some sort of continuing dormant existence implied in the metaphor of sleeping. I do not think, however, that a soul departs the body at death and goes either to heaven or to hell - that is a notion that essentially we have misappropriated from Platonism.
I would, however, make an exception to this, which may answer the point you made about ‘Christian martyrs’. It seems that the early church believed that those who suffered with Christ, or for the sake of Christ, would also be raised with Christ, would go to be with him, would share his glory, would reign with him, within the framework of this early eschatological crisis. In Revelation in this is clearly labelled as the ‘first resurrection’ - of those who had been ‘beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God’ (Rev.20:4-6) - but it appears at numerous other points throughout the New Testament. Behind this, I think, lies Daniel 7, where the Son of man figure, to whom the kingdom is given, represents the oppressed saints of the Most High. I’m not sure whether the New Testament strictly teaches that believers who die for their faith throughout history - that is, following the confrontation with Rome - will also participate in this first resurrection, but it would seem to me a reasonable inference to make. In any case, this hope is there precisely to persuade those who faced the brunt of persecution from the supreme enemy of the people of God, the fourth beast of Daniel’s reapplied prophecy, that it is better to lose one’s life for Christ’s sake than to save it.
Here’s how I think I would want to sketch the argument about salvation. The people of God, the people to whom John the Baptist and Jesus were sent, faced judgment because as a nation they had stubbornly refused to take the path that God had determined for them. This judgment would mark the ‘end of the age’ and would be realized in thoroughly historical terms - the instrument of God’s wrath would be Israel’s oppressor, Rome; judgment would take the form of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and the devastation of the nation. Jesus, however, offered Israel salvation - a narrow path that led to life - in the form of a new covenant in his blood, the defining characteristic of which would be the indwelling of the Spirit, the life of the age to come. What surprised the disciples soon after Pentecost was that God also gave the Spirit to Gentiles - those who were far off were brought near through the death of Christ. They became part of a ‘saved’ people, a people that would survive the devastation of second temple Judsaism and enjoy the abundant life of the new covenant. This is what we are now part of - the age which has come, in which we have been called as ambassadors of Christ both to point forward to the new creation and to bring it into the present.
This bringing of the new creation into the present has to do with more than just converting or even ‘saving’ people. We make disciples for the sake of God’s mission; we don’t do mission simply for the purpose of making new believers. It occurs to me (somewhat off the top of my head) that the presence in the new heaven/earth of a tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations (Rev.22:2) may have more to do with the nature of mission as a bringing of God’s future into the present than with the intrinsic character of the new heavens and new earth.
Death is defeated in Christ’s resurrection, in the resurrection in him of those who face death out of obedience to the gospel, and in the new heaven and new earth which appears only after death and Hades - the last enemy - have been thrown into the lake of fire. There ought to be comfort for the bereaved in that, though I’m not entirely sure that the New Testament especially aims to answer that question. Jesus did not die and rise again from the dead primarily, if at all, so that we can be comforted about the fate of loved ones. He died for the sake of the kingdom of God and for the people through whom God would bring about his reign on earth as it is in heaven. Those who are baptized into that people, the body of Christ, need to know that nothing can separate them from the God who calls them into obedience to the gospel. But the assurance is given for the sake of the mission in the present.