On Hope Brandon Giella Eschatology is important because hope is important. The content of Christian hope is in the person and work of Christ, in his death, burial, and resurrection. Its content contains the promise of the resurrection (1 Thess. 4:13), the promise of the kingdom (Acts 28:20–31), the promise of eternal life (Titus 1:2; 3:7), and the promise of Christ’s return (Acts 1:11). Its value is infinite. This last part cannot be overstated. Without hope, “we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). Paul wrote these lines to say that there must be hope in the life to come. If not, then we are all doomed. True hope produces fruit. We Christians are not hoping in hope alone; we are hoping in a God who will act. One sits with patience and peace when waiting for a bus whose arrival is sure. Likewise, we live and suffer with patience and peace when waiting for a God whose arrival is sure (Rom. 5:1–5; Psalm 39:7). It is the antidote for despair (Psalm 42:5; 43:5), the gladness in waiting (Prov. 10:28), sanctification (1 John 3:3), boldness (2 Cor. 3:12), evangelism (1 Peter 3:15), and fortitude in persecution (Acts 23:6). Hope is the only thing to live for. Some would say joy, but without hope there is no joy (Rom. 15:13). Without hope, we are consumed with what Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones calls morbid self-importance, the eternal inward search for value. This vacuum leaves us in depression and anxiety for the future. The Christian will concern himself with toiling and spinning, with chasing after the wind, with lawsuits among believers, with lust concerning futures spouses, and all the rest. The vice lists will be his résumé, and infinite death will be his destiny. If you have ever experienced depression, even as a Christian, then you have felt the Eternal Footman hold your coat and snicker. In short, you were afraid. And you had hope! But imagine that when you die, the darkness envelops you, and there is nothing, no time, no purpose, no existence. This fear will cast his shadow long into your present, covering every step you take. But we are not like those without hope. To find a very potent picture of this, one need only read “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus, or Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche, or glean through the leaves of a tragic masterpiece like The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (was it not Wilde himself who said, “A map of the world that did not show Utopia would not be worth considering”?). The real tragedy is when you read the work of one whom you love who died without hope. Reading through Mortality or Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens moistens the nose and tightens the forehead. The irony is not lost, however, by noticing little hopes underneath his words. Like when Hitchens quoted a poem by his friend Kingsley Amis: “Death has this much to be said for it: You don’t have to get out of bed for it. Wherever you happen to be / They bring it to you—free.” But he objects: “I can’t quite applaud this admirable fatalism. I personally want to ‘do’ death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.”1 It is this sort of hope, even in an atheist, that holds the world aloft by a tiny thread. But this thread, you see, makes all the difference, going from death to life, from living dyingly to dying livingly. 1 Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir (New York: Hachette, 2010), 7. Covenansationalism Brandon Giella Is there really as much disagreement between covenant theology and dispensationalism as indicted? At first glance, dispensationalism (hereafter D) marks off separate segments of God’s economy. Covenant theology (hereafter CT) marks off very similar segments at very similar points. For example, the Fall institutes what Dists call the dispensation of conscience, while CTs call it the Adamic covenant. Likewise the Flood institutes what Dists call the dispensation of government, while that very period is known to CTs as the Noahic covenant, and so on. While the outworking of this theology is sometimes different, it seems to me that what are called dispensations by Dists are simply called covenants by CTs. Disclaimer: Those to whom I listen for spiritual guidance are all CTs. The thing I like about CT is to me its central thing: It is based on a promise from one Moral Agent to another, or to a group of moral agents. It isn’t a framework of economy so much as it is a commitment and a hope for redemption. Dispensationalism seems to be merely a system of actions, while I see CT as a Personality with affections. One is the bones, while the other is the brains. Now, I don’t mean to get all Middle Class White Girl, running strictly on what merely sounds good, but looking at the definitions alone, I would gladly choose CT over D: “A dispensation involves a mandate and responsibilities, ruling all humanity as history moves toward fulfillment of the perfect rule of Christ,” while “a covenant involves a promise and anticipated fulfillment that moves the elect closer to the fulfillment of all promises through Christ.”1 Do you see the difference? One emphasizes responsibilities, while the other is a promise and a fulfillment. Dispensationalism seems to indicate that “what is transpiring now is a sort of departure from the plan” of God, rather than something he planned all along.2 While later forms of D deemphasized test–failure–judgment theology, it appears as though that is written into its DNA. The DTS Doctrinal Statement labels this as man being under “various responsibilities,” and that the dispensations are the “results of the failures of man.”3 Granted, this may be an unfair treatment of D and CT, but I know little about either, so these are merely initial impressions. On the other hand, CT seems to imbed hope and grace into its DNA. Much of the description of the covenants is wrapped around fulfillment of the elect, that the plan all along was to fulfill what God had promised, uniting all of scripture. This is most evident in Dr. Svigel’s description of the New Covenant: “The New Covenant, mediated by Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham and the Davidic king, is the unconditional means by which all covenants are fulfilled.”4 1 Michael Svigel, “Covenants and Dispensations,” (class lecture, Dallas Theological Seminar, February 9, 2015). 2 Millard Erickson, A Basic Guide to Eschatology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 123, Kindle. 3 “Doctrinal Statement,” Article V, Dallas Theological Seminary, http://www.dts.edu/about/doctrinalstatement/, accessed February 17, 2015. 4 Svigel, “Covenants and Dispensations.” Millennialism Brandon Giella Some say the millennium is the thousand years of peace that Christians like to fight about. So, let me join the battle. There is one main problem I see with both premillennialism and postmillennialism. First, premillennialism lets humans off the hook, so to speak. Rather, it doesn’t let people off the hook, but they use it to justify laziness toward the world. For example, just the other day, someone told me a friend of his said, after littering, “Oh well, Jesus is coming back soon anyway.” However, if this person were a postmillennial, he would have more motivation to care for the world, since we are preparing it for Christ’s arrival. Second, the charge against postmillennialism is a little more serious. Simply, as any reader will notice, Revelation 20 comes after Revelation 19. This chapter, in verses 11–16, seems to suggest Christ’s return, followed by Revelation 20:1, which begins with the word then: “Then I saw an angel…” The recapitulation view is difficult at first pass, and Occam’s Razor, though not an endall-be-all, would be simpler to believe—but stranger things have happened. We are, after all, talking about The Word of God arriving on a celestial horse with a robe dipped in blood destroying kingdoms with a sword coming out of his mouth. However, Dr. Svigel points out the seemingly backward unfolding of events of Christ’s return from a premillennial perspective: “Why would God allow Christ to reign for a thousand years, then release Satan to deceive the nations again?”1 Speaking of Occam’s Razor, something I appreciate about a postmillennial, partial-preterist view of Revelation is the simplicity of the thing: When the Bible uses phrases like “the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” or the prophecies of Matthew 24 and Johannine literature (the beast was Nero, the antichrist Cerinthus), it isn’t difficult to believe he was talking about the present era coming to end with the destruction of the temple, ushering in a completely new age, the “millennial” or “golden” or “church” age, rather than some end times prophecy. The language of Matthew 24 seems to suggest he is talking directly to those disciples rather than to some future Christians. So then, it may be that we are now in the millennial reign of Christ where the gospel is being proclaimed to the all the nations in ever-increasing numbers, colonizing the world. The most important thing is that this view is scripturally faithful. The general language of the Paul and Christ’s teaching seems to suggest that what Christ accomplished was doing away with an old era, a Judaic era, and bringing forth a new era, a Christian era. However, there are two texts that I cannot get around: 1 Corinthians 15:23–28 and Revelation 20. In short, I am sympathetic toward the optimism and purpose of postmillennialism, and even the partial-preterist position, but there are a few texts that are problematic. But really, why is it that this millennial question surrounds one word used in just seven verses in one chapter of the Bible? 1 Michael J. Svigel, “The Millennium” (class lecture notes, Dallas Theological Seminary, March 23, 2015). The Tetrad Brandon Giella Life is ugly. It is full of death, murder, lies, gossip—wars in Yemen, rapes in colleges, and blood sinking into the earth at the sword tips of Boko Haram. “Suffering,” it seems, “is one very long moment.”1 What hope is there? Well, that depends on one’s interpretation of Revelation. Revelation typically has four interpretations in order to understand the theme of its words. These are preterist, historicist, idealist, and futurist views. Full preterism states that the events in Revelation have already occurred, while partial preterism states that some of the events are yet to occur; the former is considered heresy, and the latter can be considered orthodox.2 Historicism says the events in Revelation have been unfolding throughout history, in one long moment. Idealism is that the events in Revelation are spiritual realities—spiritual ideals—and not necessarily physical ones. The futurist approach is that the things in Revelation are still yet to happen. This last view is probably the most popular. Of course, there are implications based on each. Suppose all these things are in the distant future waiting to happen. This typically yields one of two responses. Either the futurist may lose interest in the present, hoping for some distant, unknown future when Jesus comes to “take me home”; this has caused some ill-timed, yet well-meaning, comments at funerals everywhere. That sort of religion, the “pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die-by-and-by religion is an opiate for the masses.”3 Or the futurist may have a very rigid and joyful hope in the coming kingdom, in the coming return of Christ, striving ardently to complete the race. Suppose they are only spiritual ideals rather than actual, physical events. What hope is there in that? Suppose these events have been unfolding throughout history. This may perhaps affirm the believer in what she believes, making her confident in the gospel, both in its proclamation and in its vivification. However, there is the off chance that she may become the next Bible code prophet, counting ridiculous numbers, something something blood moons, or making up acrostics out of thin air, which, as we all know, with a text of roughly 800,000 words, one can make a message out of a molehill. Or suppose the book of Revelation was written for first-century believers, a sort of coded message for the saints to endure the coming hardship. Perhaps when Paul wrote that Israel’s disobedience was “for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come,” he meant that the “end of the ages” was the end of the Judaic aeon at the destruction of the temple in AD 70 and the coming kingdom was inaugurated with the resurrection of Christ. Without a proper understanding of eschatology, life may be ugly and without hope. “We are under the harrow and can’t escape. Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable.” 4 But, just maybe, with the proper spectacles, life’s groanings may blossom into a something beautiful, something “not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Only then can we understand hope, and thus, Revelation. Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, in The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde (London: Wordsworth, 1997), 1069. Douglas Wilson, “Preterism and full preterism,” YouTube video, posted by Canon Wired, July 2, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO5eJig4Lh0. 3 Douglas Wilson, Heaven Misplaced (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2008), 22. 4 C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, in The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 668. 1 2 The Living Dead Brandon Giella When you die, the black, dead mass of visible darkness will grow long and deep over your body and embrace you like a sinking rock. Time will slow until it disappears. The felt blackness will pass between you and your friends, your home, your former life, until you alone slide into creeping shadows. Your voice will go mute, your thoughts will become unclear and disoriented, until you no longer remember anything. Your brain will power down and depression will envelope you just before your emotions, too, altogether disappear. Then all will be over. Or at least that’s what our culture wants you to believe. There are generally five views associated with life after death: general Protestantism, status intermedius, psychopannychia, annihilationism, and spiritism. The protestant view is that the souls of believers go immediately to be with the Lord with no state in between, according to the Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 57), the Westminster Confession (XXXII, I), and the Second Helvetic Confession (XXVI).1 That would be my view, but only because the Bible told me so. The other views are intriguing, and they’re not uncommon. The Catholic view, status intermedius, takes most of its position from the intermediate state called Paradise or Abraham’s Bosom (held by Origen and Pope Gregory I). The sinner awaits the final judgment in this “preparatory state,” as Irenaeus calls it, while the believer awaits the same but in a state of paradise.2 Another view is psychopannychia, or soul sleep. This states that the soul loses consciousness after death, falling into a state of some dreamless sleep, after which the dead are awakened into the final judgment. It exists as a spiritual being somehow, apart from the body, but in a state of “unconscious repose.”3 Psychopannychia was rejected by Tertullian and Calvin.4 Annihilationism states that sinners cease to exist consciously after death. They are practically reduced to non-existence. This view comes from a few scriptures that speak of “destruction” of the soul, that they “perish” (Matt. 7:13; 10:28; John 3:16; Rom. 6:23; 8:13; 2 Thess. 1:9).5 This has been rejected as neither scriptural nor rational.6 However, some bright scholars still accept it.7 The last view, spiritism, is simply that the souls of the dead are still living in some way, and they can be contacted through a medium. Scripture forbids this communication, however.8 In short, the only acceptable view is the general Protestant view mentioned above. L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1938), 679; citing Luke 16:19–31; 23:43 (cf. 2 Cor. 12:3–4); Acts 2:31; 2 Cor. 5:1–8; Phil. 1:23; 1 Thess. 4:14, 16; 5:10; Heb. 12:23; Rev. 6:9. 2 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, V. 5, § 1. 3 Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 688. 4 Philip Schaff and David Schley Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910), 600, citing Tertullian in De Anima, c. 58, (Paris, 1534). 5 Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 690. 6 A.H. Strong, Systematic Theology (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1907), 1038. 7 Sinclair Ferguson, “Universalism and The Reality of Eternal Punishment: The Biblical Basis of the Doctrine of Eternal Punishment,” Desiring God Conference for Pastors (Minneapolis, MN, January 29, 1990), http://www.desiringgod.org/conference-messages/universalism-andthe-reality-of-eternal-punishment-the-biblical- basis-of-the-doctrine-of-eternal-punishment. 8 Guy P. Duffield and Nathaniel M. Van Cleave, Foundations of Pentecostal Theology (Los Angeles: L.I.F.E. Bible College, 1983), 518–519, citing Lev. 19:31; 20:6, 27; Deut. 18:9–12; Is. 8:19, 20; 1 Chron. 10:13, 14. 1